Modern Life is Rubbish

Capital Networking

2012-01-29T21:50:00.003Z

I read an article the other day about Social Capital and social networking. I'd reproduce it here if only I could remember where I'd got it from, but I can't, and so I won't. To some extent, the whole thing made me shudder a little, reminding me of windowless, basement classrooms and monotonal lecturers droning on about social capital, in spurious connection with some tedious passage of Edith Wharton or some other cheerless tract. On the other, it set my mind wandering to my own increasingly and persistently paranoid use of the internet. You see, in between occasional references to De Tocqueville (a sort of gently firm reminder that the author knew what she was talking about) she asserted that social networks are basically jolly good, because they allow us to connect in lots of ways with lots more people, which in turn leads to lots of nice reciprocal behaviour (chatting, "liking", commenting, sharing pictures et cetera) whilst we all bond over shared interests and ideals. She also reckons we're all more confident online, can create online personas etc and present the people we would like to be to the outside world. She's probably right.

I'm not going to talk about social capital. For one thing, this is a blog and not an academic essay; I shall probably get it wrong, and there are people who read this blog who will take pleasure in mocking me for my idiocy. And that is the crux of what I AM going to write about: social media and increased online presence may well have all the positive benefits and happy outcomes beloved of the (slightly smug) columnist, but they in turn come with downsides. Aside from the ever-present danger of being sued (remember this?) there is an ever-present chance/fear of being humiliated, ridiculed, rejected, and simply ignored. In short, the likes of Facebook and Twitter expose one constantly to the threat of public failure.

One good example is the relative ease to humilate people in front of an audience. Social networking sites and even emails are informal yet safely distant. There's no chance the person you're mocking will burst into tears in front of you, or give you the good slap you might well deserve. Even if they retaliate, it's erasable at the touch of a button. In this sense we all have more power than perhaps we can really handle. In turn, it's so instant that it's easy to tap in something without really thinking it over first. Last term a colleague of mine sent a "reply all" email to the whole of our team putting me well and truly in my place (I won't go into the reasons why, which are relatively dull, not to say innocuous). Everyone I know seems to have an example of this happening in a work context: in another instance, a relatively senior staff member sent an email to a friend of mine telling her she had done her job incorrectly. Among the host of people she had copied into this correspondance (and to whom, for the most part, the matter was wholly irrelevant) was my friend's boss. When it turned out that actually the person who'd sent the email was wrong, and not my friend, she sent a terse yet private email to my friend which basically said "You were right after all". She did not, as I believe she should have done, send an email to the various senior people involved the first time around apologising. Ultimately, she could have been accused of trying to destroy my friend's reputation. In fact, Unison now lists copying people into emails in this way as a form of bullying. In my case, I went home, fretted, and sobbed a little on my long-suffering husband. My colleague was probably oblivious to this, and probably didn't intend this to be the outcome, her email most likely being no more than a little strop at the end of a busy day.

And so to Facebook. My husband thinks I am becoming obsessed with the internet, in fact, I am rather constantly afraid of my presence on it backfiring on me. I will readily admit I'm a sensitive person, and take things to heart that should really be shrugged off, and yet I was hurt when a friend mocked me the other day for misunderstanding a joke someone had made, the implication being that I was a bit slow on the uptake. Another friend replied, himself laughing at my stupdity. When I finally rejoined the fray and wrote "aw not fair, you're all teasing me now *goes and hides under rock and cries*" both "Liked" the comment, presumably assuming I too was laughing at myself, and not slowly tearing myself to pieces.

I am, more worryingly, increasingly agonising about how I come across, convincing myself in my more anxious moments that many people simply humour me, and secretly think I'm a complete idiot, bordering on a nuisance that they'd like to shake off if only they could. I worry about why someone likes all the posts everyone else puts on their wall, but not mine; I feel almost offended when I comment on a thread and people reply to all the other posts but seem to be tactfully ignoring mine; I feel pretty peeved when I message someone and they never reply, particularly if I've gone out of my way to say or send something nice or personal to them; I live in terror that someone will expose something I've said or done somewhere public, even though I can't honestly think of anything worth exposing.

In short, social networking and accompanying media have probably not had much of an impact on me in terms of social capital (unless joining a Dean Windass support page and setting up a new Bradford City page which hardly anyone has joined counts) but it has served to emphasise some of the worst and most niggling aspects of self-obsession, introspection and even paranoia.

And now, of course, I'm going to post this and, in doing so, throw myself to the proverbial lions, rendering all I've said above somewhat ironic. So while I go and wring my hands and fret myself into oblivion over yet another Facebook chat which clearly has far more significance for me than for the person with whom I'm chatting I shall leave you with this last intellectual thought: Social Capital my arse.

The Midlife Crisis begins

2012-01-15T19:46:00.009Z

My other half looks unimpressed with our latest foray into retro gaming.

There's nothing quite like the unadulterated joy of holding a joystick in your hand and figuring out how to make it do exactly what you want - and that isn't even some kind of euphemism. As a kid I dreamed of owning a "proper" games console, like some of my friends had - a C64 or an Atari - complete with proper games rather than games with unconvincing names like "Let's Play Maths!", complete with redundant exclamation marks in an attempt to make them sound enjoyable, that you could play in school for ten minutes every other week. Instead, I made do with a borrowed BBC micro every holiday (plus side: better graphics, relatively speaking, and short loading times, but no joystick) then, a few years later, a borrowed Acorn (plus side: Lemmings!) Now, more than two decades on, as I approach my mid-life crisis, I finally have my Atari.

The Atari flashback comes with 2 joysticks and 60 pre-loaded games which, according to one of the websites "defined a generation". This seems needlessly hyperbolic: I don't think anyone would claim that the likes of Human Canonball and Nightdriver defined a generation. Pacman or, say, Space Invaders possibly did, but they're not on there. Instead you get an eclectic collection of games that range from the gloriously addictive to the comedically unfathomable. The result of this combination is hours of pure pleasure.

The Atari flashback had mixed reviews. Some criticise it for its "basic" graphics and clunky gameplay, which begs the question: "what did you expect?" Others wax lyrical about the simplicity of the games, which strikes me as missplaced nostalgia, because some of the games are positively crap, even by early 80s standards. The reality is somewhere in between: some of the games are genuinely fun, and don't require the ostentatiously high-tech spangliness of their modern counterparts. Others look laughably amateurish and are, by today's standards, just plain dull: "adventure" games where your pixellated alter ego totters from "room" to "room", symbolised by different coloured squares with gaps for doors, just don't cut it if you've ever played on anything developed since.

As ever, the guide which comes with it is at times as enjoyable as the product t accompanies. It doesn't actually perform any useful function, like tell you what the heck you're meant to be doing when confronted with an unidentifiable shape on the screen which doesn't seem to actually move anywhere but seems to be being shot at (we also gave up on "Miniature Golf", which consists of several squares of various sizes which don't appear to do anything). Instead, its contents are a colletion of factual descriptions interspersed with statements of the blindingly obvious with a smattering of wistful geekery. "Now this is an interesting concept for a game", says the writer at one point, raising our expectations until we discover that it isn't. "The aim of this game is to score as many points as you can", he says at superfluously at another (really?) "Collect as many dots as possible to win points", begins a third. Dots? Really? Surely they symbolise something - coins, perhaps? Treasure? Some life-saving elixir or weapon you can use later on to destroy your enemy? Apparently not: they are just dots. The description of "Wizard" is delightfully baffling: "Get hit by an imp's magical bolt or touched by an imp and your damage goes up by 2 points. Hit an imp with your own magical bolt and their damage goes up by 2. However the Flame seems to have a mind of its own and goes deeper into the catacombs with each confrontation." Good. Glad we cleared that up. As for "Fun With Numbers", someone should report the name to advertising standards: the aforementioned "fun" is simply a series of sums, but at least you get to "choose" from addition, subtraction, division AND multiplication. Get in! I bet that was well worth your hard-saved twenty quid back in 1981.

As usual I've rambled on for far too long, but I will at least pick a couple of games that I and my trusty gaming sidekick have singled out for special praise.

Frog Pond: This. Is. Brilliant. A two-player game, you are a frog (inexplicably pink or luminous green) and you get points by catching flies on your tongue. The flies look uncannily like birds, but hey. Detail.

Bowling: Who needs the Wii when you can bowl on an Atari? AND you get to see your character perform a nice little dance to the accompaniment of some marvellous sound effects and epilepsy-inducing flashing lights when you get a strike.

Circus Atari: I have no idea what the significance of the dots at the top of the screen are, except that you get points for hitting them. You basically have to catapult a stick man on and off a deceptively difficult-to-move see-saw, but there's something sadistically pleasing about the underwhelming splat when you miss.

Soccer: Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful! Table football on a screen, with a square ball and no concept of the offside rule and no ability to move the goalkeeper on his own. Great stuff.

You probably have better things to do and far superior technology with which to do them, but if you fancy a bit of untainted enjoyment do pop round some time.

The Best Cake in the World...Ever!

2012-01-15T19:23:00.002Z

Of all the cakes you will see throughout your lifetime, I'm pretty confident I can guarantee you will never see one as fine as this. The friend who made it for me wanted to combine the two things I love, namely Space Invaders and Bradford City FC. I'm not sure what this says about me, though looking back at recent blog posts I can't deny that she got it spot on. I'm particularly impressed that she managed to get the shades of claret and amber so perfect.

Out on the Wiley, Windy Moors...

2011-12-20T16:45:00.009Z

Before I embark on the following I should probably declare an interest or two. Firstly, I do have a favourite Bronte sister, and it isn’t Emily. In much the same way as George Harrison was my favourite Beatle, I always felt that Anne, an eloquent feminist ahead of her time, was the sister with probably the most profound contribution to make, and a mass of undervalued talent with which to make it, and who often goes sadly neglected in the shadow of her more crowd-pleasing big sisters. Secondly, I should admit that I’m actually not all that keen on Wuthering Heights which I always felt, though this sounds something of an oxymoron, managed against all odds to combine the eyebrow-raising, dramatic improbability of a Mills and Boon novel with the tedium of Jane Austen (sorry, Austen fans.) At the same time, though, the Yorkshire-bred, English graduate geek inside me was still intrigued by the hype of yet anothe Bronte adaptation, and eager to see if it worked.

Given my introduction above, perhaps it did, being every bit as tedious, far-fetched and unrelentingly bleak as the original. As far as the tedium is concerned, I was actually rather pleased that Andrea Arnold decided to sacrifice loyalty to the original and call it a day soon after Cathy’s untimely death, rather than several chapters and a few more births and deaths later, as Emily did. In terms of the story, then, it’s something of a disappointment if you’re a literary purist: aside from only including half the plot, it doesn’t actually include the character of Lockwood, which means it doesn’t include the ghost, which means, ultimately, it isn’t a ghost story, just a miserable and depressing one. It also does little to explore Heathcliff’s character. I assume this is a deliberate attempt to make him enigmatic, as he is in the book, but it doesn’t work: he comes across as resentful, hateful, and ultimately a bit of a fruitcake.

The main “character” in the film, according to some of the reviews, is the "landscape". This immediately put me off a bit, having endured endless lectures about “pathetic fallacy” throughout school and university – the Disneyfication of the landscape, where it is inevitably dark and stormy at key moments of drama, only for the sunshine to come out after the goodies win the day. Except that in Wuthering Heights, of course, the goodies never win, and consequently you’re treated to two hours of windswept desolation filmed at funny angles in bad light, Arnold presumably being one of those directors who thinks that constant semi-darkness somehow makes it all a bit more arty, whereas in fact it just means you can’t really make out what’s going on. I’m not trying to claim that Yorkshire is generally basking in a warm glow of sunbeams – I don’t think I’ve ever been to Haworth when it wasn’t drizzling – but a bit of seasonal let-up would’ve been nice. It’s implied that Cathy and Heathcliff, admittedly odd though they are, bonded over the awesomeness of their surroundings, and it makes sense that they would have thus bonded in a variety of weathers.
Yorkshire, looking characteristically gloomy. Pathetic fallacy, that.

Arnold takes other liberties, too. Most notably, she makes Heathcliff black. Much has been made of this, which is wholly plausible, and as far as I’m concerned really doesn’t matter much as the point is that Heathcliff is somehow "other", though the book seems to imply he is Asian or Middle Eastern (it’s claimed that his mother could have been an Indian Princess). It does however allow Arnold to chuck in some gratuitously racist terms which aren’t in the book, possibly for shock value more than anything else, accompanied as they are by several “fucks” and even the occasional “cunt”. Again, this isn’t implausible – both are good, old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon words and probably as common then as they still are on the football terraces of West Yorkshire – but whether it’s entirely necessary is a matter of opinion. While we’re on language, though, I was satisfied by the Yorkshire accents and (nerd alert) some of the language structure: devotees of Emily Bronte will note she writes in (to a reader often incomprehensibly phonetically-spelt) dialect with a pronounced West Yorkshire inflection, yet you’d be both amazed and amused by the clipped BBC radio announcer voices of the early adaptations, whose speakers have clearly never been any further north than Watford.

So, was there anything else I liked? Well, frankly, no, but as I’ve said that could partly be down to personal taste. For me the only moment of light relief came after a particularly jaw-dropping few moments of necrophilia, where Heathcliff breaks into Cathy’s room after she has apparently pined herself to death, and appears to have sex with her corpse. The lady in the seat next to me, who’d looked pretty unimpressed for the previous 90 minutes and had already expressed dismay a few minutes earlier when Heathcliff rather over-graphically hanged a puppy from a gatepost, turned to her companion in horror and exclaimed, perhaps louder than she intended: “That wasn’t in the book!”

Indeed it wasn’t. She left then and there, and a gruelling 30 minutes later so did everyone else, possibly toying with the idea of going to the screen next door to watch “We Need to Talk About Kevin” for a bit of light relief. I in turn went home and listened to Kate Bush, whose version of Wuthering Heights is about as accurate as the film while being mercifully briefer, and whose dancing and astounding vocal range are far more chilling than anything a backdrop of Yorkshire moorland could ever offer.

And finally, if you got to the end of this clunky review, here is your reward: (about a minute in) Monty Python's "Wuthering Heights in Semaphore"

We All Stand Together

2011-11-20T16:01:00.012Z

A friend of mine has just made a list of 'Things to Do Before I Die'. I don't plan on dying any time soon, nor do I intend to make a list, not least because I'm not much good at following them. If I did have such a list, though, then last week's bit of excitement might well have been on it.

I've actually done quite a few things that might constitute "exciting". I've sung n the Albert Hall (my dad didn't come, his assessment of Walton's "Belshazzar's Feast" being "a load of bloody bollocks".) I was an extra in a film - sort of - although only my pony tail made the final cut, and only for a couple of seconds. I've played at a folk festival, I've met a few of my heros including Alan Bennett and, somewhat disappointingly as it turned out, Dean Windass (he talked in a series of grunts), and I've travelled to places as diverse as the West Bank, Malaysia and Quebec. And now I can add "singing on a charity single" to my list.

In case I haven't slammed home my lefty credentials enough on here, I should mention that I'm a Unison rep at work. You may also know that the TUC have recorded a cover of Canned Heat's "Let's Work Together", ahead of the Day of Action on 30th November, featuring a diverse group of public sector workers from across the UK. The single was released today, and you can buy it on itunes, Amazon and at various other online stores. Around 40p from each sale goes towards Age UK, so i's all in a good cause!

The aim of the single, really, is to celebrate public sector workers and what they do. There's been, predictably, a lot of negative coverage of the strike over pensions that will be going ahead on 30th, slating public sector workers, saying that it's just not the right time to go on strike, that we're fortunate to have jobs at all, that many private sector people don't have pensions so we should count ourselves lucky, we're all in this together, et cetera et cetera. Aware that most people who read this blog are probably the very "converted" to whom I shouldn't preach, here are just a few remarks on such criticism:
- Yes, many private sector workers don't have adequate pensions. That's wrong, too. Cutting public sector pensions isn't going to remedy this in any way. Everyone should get a decent pension, so once we've safeguarded our own we should also campaign for our private sector colleagues to get a good deal too.
- A pension is part of someone's pay package. Suddenly the government is asking workers to make larger contributions, work longer, then get less at the end of it. Why should someone's work conditions change like that? If you have, say, 25 days' holiday a year and your boss suddenly told you that, from now on, you'd only be getting 15, wouldn't you be a bit miffed? It's not all that different: this was in our contracts, and suddenly somebody moved the goalposts.
- Higher contributions are going to mean that more people will pull out of their pension schemes. Aside from the fact that this will jeopardise the schemes, in the long run this will cost us more as these people will then be replying on more support from taxpayers in the future when they have retired and don't have enough money to live on. Unless of course the government plans to let older people starve and freeze to death... (I wouldn't be surprised...)
- Higher contributions are neither appropriate nor practical for many people at the moment, even those who do not object in principle to the proposals, as many people (in both the private and public sectors) have faced pay freezes recently. Even those who have had pay rises have not received rises in line with inflation, so have faced a paycut in real terms. The cost of living has risen, and salaries have fallen.
- We are not "all in this together". The average pension of a FTSE 100 director is around £178,000 per year; the average public sector pension is less than £8000. This isn't exactly a fortune. While we're in the subject...
- I don't recall nurses, teachers, firemen, careers advisers, social workers, probation officers and university administrators causing the current financial crisis.
- Contrary to popular opinion, most people don't want to go on strike. Remember, you lose a day's pay when you do. It's just that it seems like the last resort. It's also a right people fought and died for in the past. Actually, many workers - including those who sang on the single - will be working on 30th, because they are nurses, midwives and those in other professions who fear that not going into work could put lives at risk. They will be supporting the strike, attending rallies and events and helping to publicise action, but not actually walking out of work.

Were my thoughts this coherent when I did an interview for Pulse Radio last week? Um, no. A clip of me saying "pensions aren't sexy, but the song is good" is currently being broadcast throughout West Yorkshire. This is why I'm sticking with the public sector and not going into the media any time soon.

Anyway. Buy the record. This will make you a good person.

Bye Bye BfB

2011-11-05T12:22:00.011Z

Before I climb up onto my high horse, which I intend to do in just a moment, I'd just like to make it clear that what follows is not going to be a side-taking rant against Mark Lawn - Bradford City's chairman - because, much as I may have opinions about him, I don't know enough about what's been going on to make some grand public statement about it, nor do I especially want to. This is, however, a bit of a plea for proportionality, and a battle cry in favour of the underdog.

Yesterday my favourite website closed, its excellent content replaced by a euphemistic statement about personal decisions, apologies for distress caused etc. For a bit of context, Boy from Brazil was a thoughtful, incisive, sometimes even witty blog-cum-fanzine for Bradford City fans, which featured a glorious balance of match reports, previews, comment pieces, news flashes - pretty much everything. It found just the right balance, avoiding the sometimes thuggish comments you find on so many chat forums whilst also steering away from the geekiness of some match reviews (you know the ones - those sport journos who write things like "the penalty took me back to Beagrie's missed penalty in the second half of the away game at Bristol City in 1999...") whilst retaining a bit of emotion and opinion, unlike the purely factual recounting of an afternoon's play ('x hit the bar in the 76th minute, y was substituted in the 84th minute...") It was, in short, a brilliant read and its absence will create a genuine gap in my life which can't be filled by the PR-led content of City's own site (nothing wrong with that, but it serves a different purpose), the ploddingly factual reporting on the BBC and the post-match verbal brawls in the T&A comments section.

But why has it gone? Well, that's what has worried me. Apparently, it's all due to an article that was posted on the website after a youth game, presumably in good faith, claiming that much-criticised chairman Lawn made disparaging remarks about the team's performance, and possibly even cheered for the opposition (though the actual article stated that this was meant "sarcastically".) It seems that Lawn took umbridge at this - and who wouldn't? - and then, suddenly, the website was gone. The Telegraph and Argus explains this in more detail (see what I mean about the comments section?)

Reading between the all-too-clear lines, the Powers That Be probbaly threatend to sue. Now, I can see why Lawn would be pissed off: to be accused of behaviour like that, whether it's true or not, is pretty damning and as such doesn't help the club, either. It also feeds into the general discontent felt by so many fans at the moment, and so was perhaps a little ill-judged, true or not. And yet, at the same time, is it really the end of the world? If it was wrong - and Hendrie says it is (and who are we to argue?) but at the same time, the BfB writers must have got it from somewhere and can't have just made up something like that out of thin air - then why would an apology and a retraction not suffice? Newspapers in this country make derogatory, sweeping statements all the time, often with no basis in fact but merely in speculation presented as such, and sometimes not even that. A couple of years ago, a student in his first week at university died in a nighclub. The very next day, for all including his grieving relatives to see, his face was splashed across the front of a local rag read by countless commuters, accompanying an article condeming a drink and drug-fuelled night of hedonism at the university-run event. Weeks later, when the autopsy results were released, the article was not formally retracted in an equally-large front-page spread, nor was an apology made. There was merely a "clarification" deep inside the paper on around page 18, I think, confirming that no illegal substances were found in the student's blood, and actually he'd died from an undiagnosed heart complaint. Given the hurt this must have caused to his friends and family, and the damage to the poor young man's reputation, was the paper shut down? Was it bollocks. The journalist removed? I don't think so. Was The Sun shut down after it made unsubstantiated and deeply wounding claims about the behaviour of Liverpool fans at Hillsborough? Nope. It's still the biggest-selling paper in the UK (though not, notably, in Liverpool.) Now, on this occasion, a fat man's pride has been dented. Quick, call in the lawyers!

The debate about the libel laws in this country is too big and complex for me to start creating a pointless scuffle on a little-read personal blog, and yet they do seem to work disproportionately in favour of the powerful, the ones who can afford to sue or at least make life very unconfortable for anyone who crosses them, and they do, on occasions, seem to go too far. We live in an age where anybody can publish anything at the click of a button, and this can be dangerous. People do need to exercise a bit of care about what they say and how they say it. But at the same time, people should not be made to feel afraid of voicing an opinion, recounting an event or, in this case, bullied out of it altogether, and though rules is rules, to apply the same force - or, as seems to be the case give the example above, MORE force - to a group of unpaid volunteers writing for fellow fans who share the same passion as to overpaid gutter press, "professional" journalists who should know better seems more than a little unfair.

We live in a free country, and, I'd like to think, a sensible society. In a sensible society, I would hope that those with the power and the money should expect to take a bit of flack, and occasionally, to be misinterpreted and even misrepresented. It's a hazard of the job, and it happens in the real world all the time, Mark - the "I heard so-and-so said this about so-and-so" conversations round the water coolers in countless offices across the land every single day. We don't all threaten legal action. If BfB did say something wrong (and they may well have done), they should be made to apologise and retract it publicly, perhaps in a more overt way than the half-arsed attempt of that London rag I mentioned earlier, or, if they don't want to do that, put up a new article clarifying where they got the story from in the first place. Then we can let it all blow over, like the grown-ups we're meant to be, and I can continue to enjoy my favourite website (did I mention this is actually all about me?) Instead, the two journalists have been left upset and threatened, and lost their hobby as a result; countless fans have lost access to a very good source of news and opinion; Lawn has been vindicated but as a result looks like a bit of a dick, which is ironic as this is presumably why the website came down in the first place. The whole response seems to me massively disproportonate, a storm in a teacup has been transformed into a typhoon in an industrial tea urn by unnecessarily litigious and bullying behaviour, and the mutterings of discontent on the various chat forums are growing out of control as a result.

In the meantime, I almost forgot we have a game to try and win today. All of you, just grow up, move on and focus on the job at hand, which, in case you've forgotten, is to play some football. And give me my website back.

Girl Writes About Football Again

2011-10-30T10:52:00.014Z

I've not blogged about football for a long time. Admittedly this is probably something of a relief to most of you, but the truth is that, after several years languishing at the bottom of the football league, with the genuine prospect of dropping out of it altogether a constant threat, I've lost the ability to try and make such posts funny. To a non-City fan there probably are endless areas for potential humour: when Ian Holloway resigned recently, a friend of mine suggested we might like to employ him, since we hadn't had a new manager in over three weeks. Instead though we hung on to one Phil Parkinson, of whom another friend and Hull fan (thus in a position to comment on his appointment) remarked "Don't worry, maybe he does well for teams whose names start with the first three letters of the alphabet. Except Charlton."

For the first few weeks, the various negative sentiments expressed in newspaper articles and social networking fansites seemed well-founded: Parkinson favours dull football. The team that very nearly beat Leeds in their Carling Cup draw (we were winning for a while) and came out with 2 goals and several more attempts to show for it, followed up with a huge 4-2 defeat against Barnet, slunk back into defensive play only after his appointment, with a run of draws and losses against a series of mediocre teams, and only a smattering of goals to show for them. This culminated in a loss against Hereford - one of the lowest-scoring teams in the division for several years - not as the result of a fluke, or a mistake, or a bad referee decision (which, to be fair, can go some way to explain Macclesfield), but conceding not one but two goals and scoring not a single one ourselves. On top of this, our top scorer from last season - David Syers - was out with an injury and not due back for a couple of months.

And then, yesteray, we went to Swindon. I wasn't expecting a lot to come out of this. I was prepared for the long, despondent train journey home in gloomy silence, while my husband told me it was "only a game", the slating of James "He Used To Work At The Co-op" Hanson on the Facebook group afterwards, no matter how much effort he'd put in. I last saw Swindon play against Fulham, at Craven Cottage, in the FA Cup, on a freezing cold December day when every other London game was postponed due to frozen pitches. Although they lost as expected, it was by no means a foregone conclusion. They were not bad, and I'm constantly surprised that they're in League 2.

The atmosphere was as expected: an amusing smattering of casual racism in the form of ice-cream jokes ("I'LL HAVE TWO 99s WITH A FLAKE!") directed at histrionic Swindon manager Paolo Di Canio, accompanied by choruses of "Fuck off Di Canio / Fuck off Di Canio" to a popular opera tune I can't remember the name of, on account of being far too common for that sort of thing (they didn't get any further than that, having presumably had difficulty in finding a rhyme for "Di Canio".) The rest of our crowd amused themselves making "wanker" gestures at the opposing fans, who responded in kind, whilst security staff looked on with a sort of grim resignation.

The performance, though, I'm happy to say, was not as expected. In short: City. Were. Brilliant. If ever defensive play were needed, it was against a team like this: Swindon had 3 shots on target (beautifully saved by Duke - I feel bad now for having so little faith in him) and 8 off target. The match stats don't do justice to those 94 minutes at all - 33% possession doesn't sound impressive, and a measley 2 attempts at goal sounds positively rubbish. But we were down to 10 men less than half way through the second half, with Davies questionably dismissed for a foul that, from where we were sitting and, reading the reviews, from where everyone else was sitting too, didn't look too bad. This I think skewed the stats, and we abandoned the attacking play I'd been so pleased to see early in the first half and herorically defended our goal against an increasingly desperate Swindon onslaught. The lovely James Hanson was left up front all on his own and must have been exhausted by the end of it all; Luke O'Brien replaced the injured Threlfall, and Luke Oliver brought the benefit of height (he's 6ft 7!) to the side to pull off some crucial headers, getting the ball safely out of the way on several occasions. When the inevitable 4 minutes of extra time were annouced (it's ALWAYS 4 minutes!) even the most vociferous, neanderthal of the away fans held their breath, fully expecting a last-minute defeat. Hands were clasped seemingly in prayer (mine included - I have no reason to believe God doesn't like football). When the final whistle blew, you'd think from the cheers we'd won 6-0.

So the train journey home was celebratory. We got an all-important point and edged our way ahead of our nearest rivals, a single win away from moving a place or two up the table and further away from relegation, and I got to natter to a very nice chap on the Facebook page later - me, the token girl, as usual, with 5 blokes "liking" my comments on the day's match (the gist of which were just "we were proper good") probably purely because of this. OK, so I still haven't managed to make this a funny post, but it is, at least, a very happy one.

My Retrotastic Other Life

2011-10-10T22:09:00.015+01:00

I’ve fallen in love. In the space of an hour, confined in bed with my laptop and a mug of Lemsip, I’ve fallen head over heels in love for this website, and with it for an engaging geek and his informed yet pithy game reviews, written in a delightfully colloquial style (“Pretty weird game, this. Can anyone explain this to me?” “I think this one is smashing, and has lots of great puzzles.”) I’ve called him Paul, and his strengths are enough for me to forgive his persistent use of an apostrophe in “80’s”. Endearingly shy without being too socially awkward, intelligent without being arrogant, gently witty and on the admirable rather than the creepy side of geeky, Paul is from some much-maligned town – from Rotherham, maybe, or Preston – and is bashfully proud of his impressive video game-based oeuvre without being obsessive. Nowadays he probably dabbles in a world of Wiis and DSes without feeling he’s sold out, but his passion still lies on the retro side of things. We day trip over to Bradford in the Micra with “Best of the 80s" playing on the stereo and spend far too long in the Media Museum’s games exhibition before proper fish and chips and then, on the back seat overlooking Baildon Moor...Oops, sorry, got a bit carried away there.
National Media Museum, Bradford

I know deep down that he probably isn’t Paul at all, but more likely a collective of single, embittered, midlife-crisissing civil servants from Purley with hygiene issues who spend their evenings and weekends clad in sweaty, unwashed global hypercolour t-shirts ,eating ready meals directly from the carton and tetchily deriding one another’s opinions on the relative merits of the various Repton sequels with “The First Cut is the Deepest” playing on repeat in the background.

I was more than a little obsessed with BBC computer games as a child. My mum was a teacher and used to “borrow” a computer and a stash of games every holiday in the hope that I would then leave her alone for the duration, which I invariably did. I must have spent literally weeks of my childhood hunched in front of those computers doggedly perfecting my Chuckie Egg score whilst everyone else did sensible things, like shopping. Hours and hours spent staring fixedly at implausible birds climbing improbable ladders probably explains my now-poor eyesight. Over time I perfected routes through the various platform-based games, learned which direction all the unlikely causes of death went so I could go the other way (games being more predictable and limited in those days that they are now.) Before I even got to secondary school I could effortlessly breeze my way to level 8 on Chuckie Egg and smash the high score of anyone foolish enough to challenge me on any of the many takes on Space Invaders, though I never did find those Flowers of Crystal. Looking back, it probably amounted to an addiction. Then, at the age of ten and a full year after some of my wealthier, trendier contemporaries, I eventually got a Game Boy, and this fickle, disloyal child traded Dare Devil Denis for Balloon Kid. Where the wart on the end of a witch’s nose in Granny’s Garden once epitomised for me the height of cutting-edge graphics, I now wanted walking mushrooms and jumping fish corpses (huh?!) I can still complete Super Mario Land and still have eighteen lives to spare, and of this I am (I think justifiably) proud.

Recently though someone sent me a web version of Chuckie Egg, and, to my dismay, I can’t even get past level 6. Once so adept at arrow key-based manoeuvres, I now find myself giving up and making a cup of tea after a mere hour or so. You can get Repton on the same site, and I can only marvel at the patience I must have had as a child to doggedly play such a grindingly irritating game, with its gratingly chirpy Scott Joplin soundtrack and its smug-looking lead character which is to all intents and purposes some sort of upright reptile in a jump-suit. As for Flowers of Crystal, I don’t believe it even had an end, and you certainly wouldn’t get away with a game that involved typing “yes” and “no” to a series of inane questions (“Would you like to use a spell?”) nowadays.

But Paul, as ever, is a little more balanced on these matters. So here are a few of the games I used to play, along with Paul’s descriptions (*sigh*).

Arcadians: “One of my favourite games, it is really just a Galaxians clone, but it is especially well done. It has two minor gripes, the ship is a bit out of proportion to the invaders, and they tend to get you into a corner all the time. Cool things include the neat explosion sequence.” (The ship is out of proportion? Wow. That's proper analysis for you.)

BMX on the Moon: “The original game of riding along in a moon buggy, dodgin the ships overhead, shooting them, and jumping over craters on the moon. You have to be very two minded in this game, I suppose if you were good at rubbing your tummy whilst patting your head then you would be good at this! It has a nice sound when you shoot the aliens, sort of a coughing sound!”

Chuckie Egg: “The ORIGINAL platform game on the Beeb. This was a great game, I hope you have it in your collection! The aim was simple, collect the eggs and bird seed, whilst dodging the ostriches! Also, you had to negotiate gaps, holes, ladders and lifts (very awkward to use). If you got far enough, I seem to remember the ostriches being replaced by a giant bird which roamed around the screen. A true classic.” (Your memory serves you correctly, Paul. Level 9 goes back to level one, except with a giant bird that seems to be magnetically attracted to you. I wonder what they were taking when they designed it?)

Firebug: Paul says: “A really original game, this one puts you in the character of a Fireman, putting out little fires on the different platforms, whilst dodging the baddies. Highly original gameplay and great for a quick burst everyday. One of my favourites, although I can't seem to find it anymore!” (Quick! Someone find it for me now! I’ll send it to Paul, win his heart and we will drive off into the sunset in his Micra in a sort of 80s version of a fairytale...)

Repton: “Probably THE most famous game ever done by Superior, it was the Super Mario of the BBC world, this is an all-time classic. You play the part of Repton, the humanised reptile, with a zest for life, and probably (by now) one hell of a diamond collection. The idea is simple, collect all the diamonds, avoiding the rocks, and dodging the evil monsters which hatch from eggs. One of my all-time favourites.” (Ahhh, Paul, you and I will have to just differ on this one.)

Wallaby: “I think this is a cute little game, you are in control of mummy wallaby, whose baby has just been kidnapped by monkeys. You have to go through the level, punching all the monkeys (somehow the wallaby is a boxer!) and collecting the fruit, climbing ladders and trees. It is great fun, and the boxing part is great, it is a little repetitive though.”

It really is a fabulous website. Do look at it, and pine for those days when not only did we have floppy discs, but they were genuinely floppy. Meanwhile, it’s been so long since I went in the Wii Fit that I think it thinks my Mii has died.

Don't Push It

2011-08-07T22:58:00.009+01:00

It’s a species well-known the world over. Articles have been written about its members, debating their methods, their long-term effects both good and bad; people have given advice on how to handle them, better still, how to defeat them. They are, of course, pushy parents.

I’ve lived in a few places, and nowhere has this species honed itself to quite such ruthless, determined, annihilating perfection as in Guernsey. Perhaps this is because I spent my teenage years here, thus attending the sort of musical andd sporting activities that attracted mid-lifers bubbling with thwarted ambitions and broken dreams desperately displaced onto their hapless offspring. Perhaps there are other explanations, to do with money and expectation (where there is pressure on said offspring to become the CEO of a major company whilst winning an Olympic gold in some sort of yacht-based activity, rather than just a vain hope that he won’t end up nicking cars and spraying graffiti tags onto footbridges). Or perhaps Guernsey just attracts a certain type of prick.

I can understand the need to some sort of pushiness. I can understand that, if you’ve splashed out a not inconsiderable amount of money on a ‘cello and numerous lessons for Little Sebastian, it’s not unreasonable to expect the little brat to practise it once in a while. What I find harder to deal with is when every single activity a child undertakes is seen as an opportunity to crush the opposition – through any means necessary – even at the expense of fun. In fact, if these people suspect their children are having any fun at all I suspect there are sharp words as soon as they get home.

Take Rocquaine Regatta. Now, just to give you a bit of background, this is a local event which takes place on and around a beach on the west coast of Guernsey every year, and features such intellectual pursuits as Hurling the Welly and Tossing the Rolling Pin, a sandcastle competition, and a contest to see who can stay on a pole greased with soap for the longest period of time. In the old days it also featured Piano Smashing and Tomato Throwing, but these have apparently been deemed too dangerous/messy by the organisers. You’d think such an event would be just the place to let kids be kids, wouldn’t you? You’d be wrong.

Crowds gather for one of the day's highlights: the annual Hurling the Welly Competition.

So great has the influence of parents been in the past that the annual programme now “respectfully asks parents not to help their children in the building of sandcastles” for the competition. But their power is still very much in evidence. Take the bay swim, the first event of the day where hardy people – or nutters, as I prefer to call them – launch themselves off one beach into the freezing cold sea and peg it across a distance of almost a kilometre to the other beach, rather than use the perfectly adequate, tried and tested method of walking along the road, which would take a fraction of the time. Due to the intensity of this event, only children over the age of 12, with parental consent, and adults can enter. Cue Pushy parent, who thrusts a shivering youth forward.

“How old are you?” I ask the tiny creature, who is nervously chewing his goggles.

“Ten.”

His mother pokes him from behind. “Don’t be so silly. You’re twelve.”

“I’m twelve,” says the child unconvincingly, with a sort of bleak resignation. “Sorry. I forgot.”

“You can’t swim if you’re under twelve,” I tell him.

“He’s an excellent swimmer,” his mother interjects, tut-tutting at my stupidity and whipping the consent form out of my hand, “and his dad’s in one of the guard boats.”

And that, apparently, is that. I continue to give out forms and swimming caps while a middle-aged man jumps the queue and proceeds to stand at my arm criticising me for the next ten minutes, demanding I give him the forms, since he could do the whole thing far more efficiently and swiftly, and “without all this nonsense about rules and insurance.”

I see the small child again at the other end. He hauls himself out of the water absolutely shaking with cold and exhaustion, and his mother congratulates him... after she’s checked his time with me, and confirmed that he did it faster than his brother did the previous year. I wouldn’t like to have been his brother when he got home.

The ordinary swimming races are even worse. They start with a spotty lad of about ten announcing that he’s the best swimmer in the whole island his age group, then demanding I high five him in recognition of this great feat. In the under 9s race a mother is seen physically pushing her tiny daughter towards the uninviting sea. The tiny daughter proceeds to come last and cries. I tell her she did really well, at which point her mother demands angrily, “can’t you at least give her a medal? She’s only 5.” Um, no. Because she didn’t win. And she’s five?! In the Tug of War, a mother is seen balling at the Under 10s team, screaming “One, Two, Three, PULL!!!!” In the talent contest, I hear a mother say “if you don’t want to go onstage that’s fine, but just remember, you won’t get an ice cream.” (She did go up, but was beaten by a child whose talent consisted of “making my arm make a fart noise”.)

Worst of all, though, has to be the Mini Macho competition. I’d previously thought of this as one of the cuter stalwart events, where boys of all shapes and sizes are almost guaranteed to have in common the fact that none really attracts the description “macho”. (“What’s your name?” “Julian”. “What’s your favourite subject at school, Julian?” “Art.") They are told to show their muscles, walk around the “stage” (this is basically the back of a trailer) for a bit then the tallest gets a medal and the gawky kid with the glasses and the blonde curls gets a “special” rosette. Yesterday, though, as the enthusiastic youngsters bounded up on stage, I heard one mother saying “right, Harvey, now remember what we practiced. Show me your muscles” Harvey obediently flexed a puny arm. “Now your routine”. The boy jumped up and down like someone trying to do the Haka. “Did you do your push-ups this morning?”

He lost. And he was 8. I didn’t see him after that, so can only assume his mother took him round the back of the stage and shot him.

Ee it's Yorkshire Day!

2011-08-01T22:21:00.007+01:00

Well apparently today is Yorkshire Day! And to celebrate, and since I've not posted in over a month, I thought I'd share this link Along the lines of "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue"'s final round, these are Yorkshire-themed films. So, in the same vein as the Cows, here are some choice suggestions from Twitter, with some added extras courtesy of my dad and fellow Facebookers:

Forrest E'by Gump
Close Encounters of the Thirsk Kind
Gangs of York
Some Like it Otley
Truly, Madly, Keighley
Apocalypse Now Then
War o' T' Worlds
The Wold Is Not Enough
Goole Intentions
The Fred Trueman Show
Ferret Bueller's Day Off
The Whippet Man
Fry Lard With a Vengeance
For Your Pies Only
The Pie Who Loved Me
Pies Wide Shut
Sleepless In Settle
Letter to Bresnan
Hullboy (1, 2 and 3!)
Hellifield And High Water
War of the Wolds
About a Boycott
Hebden Bridge on the River Kwai
Withernsea And I
Gosford Parkin

Right. Your turn.

A Matter of Life and Death

2011-06-19T13:28:00.005+01:00

I should've known I wasn't going to get off lightly on Friday. After two weeks with two parents in and out of hospital, the death of a grandparent, and a 5.30 wake-up call to get to Guernsey for the funeral at the end of a busy week at work (70 new overseas students, inductions, socials and webinars) it was surely inevitable that my plane would do something exciting, like threaten to crash into the English Channel.

Let's get one thing straight. I cannot stand Guernsey. This has no reflection on Guernsey, really, but on its frustrating inaccessibility: if you ever manage to successfully get there (fog meant I once had a two-day holiday at Gatwick airport, the highlight of which was playing constant air hockey with my dad and going to the now-closed C&A in nearby Crawley) you then realise you've inadvertantly arrived at the Hotel California - you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. At Christmas, due to the snow, we had as glorious 3-hour delay at Gatwick Airport, happily ensconsed in Wetherspoons with half of Ireland trying to get home to Dublin. (One man, on asking us to keep an eye on his laptop when he went to the bar, quipped "twenty years ago if an Irishman asked you to keep an eye on his bag you'd run a mile, wouldn't you?") My dad was less lucky on the way home, getting stuck for almost three days at Guernsey Airport and paying for three flights with three different aurlines in the process, some of which has never been refunded.

Friday, though, was different. For a start, our flight there arrived bang on time - a newsworthy event, as my preamble has suggested. This, of course, was too good to be true.

Our flight back was predictably delayed, and we sat in Guernsey's Flatpacked-From-Ikea airport and grumbled about the inevitability of the whole thing, along with 100 or so other people. Eventually we boarded and uneventfully set off in teeming rain back to Gatwick. Almost half way into the flight, while the staff were busily serving up underwhelming drinks in plastic cups, there was a bit of a kerfuffle. Buzzers went off and the cabin crew abandoned their drinks trollies and chattered into phones at either end of the cabin. Then, with fixed grins on their faces, they took the drinks trolley away. The captain, with that marvellously unflustered air that they must specially train you in at Pilot School, came over the tannoy and announced "Erm bit of bad news, folks. The erm technical problem that delayed the aircraft seems to be back, so for your own safety we're going to need to return to Guernsey. It unfortunately isn't safe to carry on to Gatwick."

And that was it. And that was what scared us. Normally the pilot would say something along the lines of "Well folks we've got a bit of a technical fault, basically [insert technical bollocks here] and this means we'll need to return to Guernsey." Passengers would be reassurred to know that it was only the Technical Bollocks that had gone wrong, this was entirely plausible and was thus delaying our holiday, and we would happily have grumbled our way back to Guernsey. But this time, nothing. The plane then did what felt like a u-turn and we began hurtling back towards Guernsey at double the speed we'd been travelling at before. Thus followed possibly the scariest 15 minutes of my life. The lights went out; the seatbelt signs all went on and the staff strapped themselves into their special seats and refused to get up even when various passengers started to throw up and/or hyperventilate. We hit what felt like the worst turbulence I've ever experienced (having done this trip over 100 times during my life) and every noe and then the plane dropped what felt like several metres, like being in a lift. Someone towards the back of the plane rather unhelpfully announced that he could see smoke; people screamed as we plummeted towards the sea with no sight of land yet; the lady next to us crossed herself, kissed the St Christopher around her neck and began to pray. We hit the runway at a terrifying speed in the most uncomfortable landing imaginable, and careered down the runway on one wheel, until we eventually came to an improbable halt, as fire engines came towards our stricken plane. Several people burst into tears and the staff eventually got up and apologised for that "being a bit scary.2 A BIT SCARY? What planet were you on? Characteristically unfazed, the pilot's voice came onto the intercom again, saying "well, that wasn't much fun, was it?"

We were then sent back into the terminal and left there with no news for over an hour (a cup of tea at the very least would have been nice!) The upshot of the whole thing was we did eventually get home, two and a half hours late and still shaking.

So, on the bright side, we're not dead. I felt as though I'd over-reacted rather to the whole thing (although at the time I did my usual, somewhat predictable incessant chattering, smiling, asking everyone if they were alright and grinning encouragingly at the staff and thanking them, even though they'd been ultimately useless.) I was heartened, in a strange way, to find that a friend of mine who'd been on the same flight had actually been so terrified by the whole thing that she'd gone home rather than try again. Posts on her Facebook have referred to it as a "near-death experience" which on the one hand sounds a bit far-fetched, but, having been through the same thing, I see where she's coming from. It has, though, raised all sorts of questions about Facebook. Who, she mused, would update her status, had she died? It's a fair question: I found out about a friend's death from people suddenly writing "RIP" on his Facebook page, before a mutual friend had actually had time to phone up and tell me. More positively, someone I've never met who'd seen my posts on my friend and fellow traveller's page sent me a message asking if I was OK, and I appreciate that hugely. This, along with messages from friends asking about the funeral and my genereal welfare, serve as a reminder that, generally, people are nice, and even when everything is crap, there are actually little sparks of positivity in an otherwise bleak world.

And I'm still not dead, which is always a bonus.

Old Soldiers Never Die (They Only Fade Away)

2011-06-12T22:22:00.006+01:00

I'm not even sure how to start this post. I'm aware I could ramble on for hours, so I'm going to be careful not to do that. My grandfather, aged 94 and the last of my grandparents, died peacefully, at home and in the company of his family, on 9th June. There's so much say about him, not least because he was 94 and had done so much in his long life, but at the moment I think we're all just too sad to really think about things in any details. Certainly every memory that comes to my mind at the moment is quickly being obscured by tears.

When my granny died 6 years ago I wrote a poem a few days after her death. I'm not a good poet, so I feel I should caveat/apologise for what follows and in particular for anything that seems a little jarring or even trite. That isn't the intention (obviously). But as someone who writes, and who was until last week sending letters to my grandfather telling him, amongst other things, about my plays and my writing group, it just seemed a nice thing to do.

So...

"Old Soldiers Never Die"
You left it all behind. Those Durham mines
And blackened walls and dark satanic mills
For distant shores. At any rate it felt
A world away. And as the boat arrived
You said you thought you’d docked in Paradise.
A different life awaited, and though hard
Work sometimes you never felt regret.
You found true love, like something from a film
(At least that’s how it sounded when passed down
To us years on, how you opened the car
Door and your eyes met over suitcases
Or something. Well, I think that’s how it went.)

Then there were years of exile, soldiering,
Stories of japes and general "derring-do"
Til you returned to your now-battered home
To build a new life – literally – from scratch
Your own house, added to over the years
As we all came along and filled it up
With noise and laughter, arguing and tears
And instrumental practise, and with pride
You watched your clan expand, flourish and grow
In front of your eyes in your chosen land.

And now... well, now I don’t know what to say
(That’s not like me at all, you’d joke, I’m sure!)
It’s still too soon, and I can’t quite believe
That’s it. They say old soldiers never die
But only fade away. And so, farewell,
Old soldier; Grandfather; head of the clan.
And as we say goodbye your cherished home,
Sarnia Cherie, remembers a great man.

On A (Swiss) Roll

2011-04-17T23:30:00.021+01:00

I’ve been on a few coach tours now, and I still have something of a love-hate relationship with them. For a start, they tend to be more than a little contrived - take the happy, dancing villagers of Malaysia, for example. Then there’s the fact that you are tied to someone else’s schedule, so if you’d rather go and take some nice pictures of, say, the local wildlife rather than comparing snowglobes in the giftshop, well, that’s just your tough luck. At the same time, though, it’s a handy way to cram in as much as possible in a short space of time, not to mention an easy option for travelling around in places where independent travel might be difficult to arrange (take the West Bank, for instance.) In reality, it’s arguable the Switzerland doesn’t really qualify for either of these justifications. After all it’s rather small, and you don’t have to negotiate an armed guard to go from Zurich to Rapperswil. Various opposing factions underwent a furious inner monologue: “You don’t see the real country from a tour bus,” said the sneering, middle-class, well-travelled part of me. “You’ve eaten chicken feet in Hong Kong; you’ve spoken to nurses from behind the wall in occupied Palestine. What use is a tour bus to you?” “Well, actually, “admitted the less well-travelled, working class part of me, “If I’m honest that was all a bit of a fluke. I can’t believe my luck, really. Center Parcs used to be the limits of my comfort zone. I don’t really trust myself to explore on my own. I’d only miss things. Best let the professionals help out.” “You raise a valid point,” agreed my other self, adding, with a touch of pride, “you can afford it, after all, so why not? Treat yourself. After all,” (surreptitiously) “you don’t have to tell anyone, just make sure the tour bus isn’t in any of the photos.” “OK, that’s decided then. And it isn’t too expensive...” added my Inner Yorkshireman, forever watching the pennies.
Sign on a Zurich tram

And so we set off into the Alps, indeed into the Kingdom of Liechtenstein, a whole other country, complete with Marcello the Tour Guide, Zurich’s very own caricature. Marcello (a name that didn’t really go with his outfit or indeed his accent) arrived in what were unmistakably leiderhosen, and the sort of hat you normally only see on elderly gentlemen at Lords on test match days, and proceeded to interrogate his clientele.

“Where are you from?”

“The USA.”

“I’ve worked there.”

“Whereabouts?”

“New York.”

“I live in Vegas.

Not to be outdone, Marcello replied that he’d worked there too. Victoriously, he continued down the bus, and got to us.

“Where are you from?”

“England.”

“Whereabouts?”

“London.”

“London?” He looks nonplussed. “I’ve been to London. I stayed in an apartment in the British Museum. I had access to the whole museum AT NIGHT. And I worked for a while in Newquay,” he added, for good measure.

He got to an Indian couple who said they were from Chennai. He trumped this with “I love India. I worked for a while in Calcutta, helping street children.”

His reputation confirmed, he announced that we would first be embarking on a guided tour of Zurich. Having tramped the streets of Zurich for the previous two days, we were interested to see what we might have missed. Not a lot, it seemed. He imparted such words of wisdom as:

“On your right, this is the Walhalla Hotel.” All eyes turned to the right, and a big sign on the building confirmed this to be true. “It is a big hotel,” he added. We all nodded sagely.

“On your left is the UBS bank.” We looked. There it was.

“And this is the Zurich Insurance building. It is a big insurance company. They provide insurance for a lot of people.” Who were we to argue?

We trundled along in silence for a while until we came to a huge, sparkling stretch of water, at which Marcello announced “And here is the lake.”

After the “city tour” we made our way to Rapperswil, a gloriously pretty lakeside spot that you might expect to find people discussing in a Noel Coward play. Marcello did his bit, marching us up a hill to a big building with a turret and proclaiming “this is a castle” before pointing out that below us you could see a McDonalds. Everyone else trudged off, and my husband told me all about the Habsburgs, whose crest was above the door, and who had owned this and many other castles across this part of Europe during their glory days. Looking back, a happy medium between Marcello and my husband would have been just right.
Underwhelming Castle

After lunch (not in the McDonalds) we carried on through the mountains to Liechtenstein, on what would have been an uneventful journey had the man from Las Vegas not decided to be sick half way through. Announcing he didn’t feel well, Marcello responding by shouting across the whole bus “Vould you like a bag?” to make sure that everyone was aware of his plight. Afterwards, Marcello offered him some water... and charged him for the bottle. I can only assume it is this level of gall that makes the Swiss economy as vibrant as it is today.

And here I must pause to talk about Liechtenstein. The part of me that was relatively untravelled until the age of about 25 was secretly rather more excited that she should have been about this little foray into yet more unchartered territory – another nation to nominally tick off in my “places what I’ve been to” list. So I was a little disappointed when we arrived in Liechtenstein and were told we had 45 minutes before we had to get back to the bus. 45 minutes, we all protested? But this is a while country.

“You vil only need 45 minutes,” Marcello assured us.

So we set off through Vaduz, grumbling and muttering that we should have got the train. We walked to the end of the street and wondered where to go next. This seemed to be the end of Liechtenstein. We turned back on ourselves and found the tourist office, which on closer inspection seemed entirely devoid of any tourist information, but for 5 Swiss Francs they would stamp your passport with a Liechtenstein Tourist Office stamp.

Liechtenstein looked a bit like Butlins but without the swimming pool and the kiddy disco, or, to put it another way, like Butlins but less good. Vaduz, as far as we could make out, consists a huge red square that looked a bit like imitation astrotuft appeared to make up the centre of town, flanked as it was by the "Rathaus", and surrounded by some underwhelming, amost temporary-looking cafes selling ice creams made by Nestle, and two gift shops within a hundred yards of one another were selling all you could possibly want in national flags and novelty fridge magnets. Branches of H&M and an Espirit brightened things up a bit, but not a lot. Periodically a small, brightly-coloured train - the sort you might get to ferry children around seaside resorts, would trundle past. There is an unremarkable castle up on the hill, but you can't visit it because the chap in charge of Liechtenstein - the unimaginately named Count von Liechtenstein - still lives there. From his castle he can see his whole country. Frankly, I'd settle for a lego collection or a decent trainset over this. We learned from Marcello - so I would question the validity of this information - that there are 37,000 people living in Liechtenstein; a further 30,000 have post boxes at the town hall, that is to say they are registered here for tax purposes. Of the total 67,000 this lot are by far the most sensible.
Liechtenstein

Twenty minutes after being deposited in the centre of Vaduz we were standing in the sweltering carpark clutching our freshly-stamped passports and wondering where the heck the bus had got to.

But the grand finale still awaited us. The trip we were on was known as "Heidiland", on the basis that we were going to...Heidiland. Yes, actual Heidiland. The area aroudn Maienfeld where the Actual Heidi lived.
Heidi's House: "The Original"

Except she didn't, did she, on account of being fictional. It isn't even the land where the Actual Shirley Temple played Heidi in the movie - that was filmed in California. What Heidiland is, then, is a neat little bit of tourist opportunism, a successful cashing-in on visitors' gullibility and skewed nostalgic memories, forgetting, for a moment, that actually the appallingly-dubbed and seemingly endless TV drama of the early 80s was actually hugely tedious, and took up precious airtime that would have been much better used showing "Round the Twist".

I can't report on the delights of the Heidi House ("Heidi's actual house!") as I chose to spend my CF4 on an ice cream instead, and while all the others were having their photos taken with unconvincing waxworks of Peter, Heidi, Klara and Grandfather in the "authentically-furnished" house, we taunted the goats, sniggered at the Heidi lego in the gift shop, and made the most of the beautiful scenery, which seemed to have gone unnoticed by everyone else.
Posing Goats

I don't have a witty ending for this post. Like the trip, it seems to have rather petered out. After the excitement of Heidi's House, which was clearly too much for us all, we went to sleep as we were driven back to central Zurich, where we saw this:
I will leave you with an explanation of what this cake, made in celebration of the Six O'clock Bells Festival, represents, which is possibly even more humorous - and a tad sinister - than the picture itself.

"Following the parade of the Zünfte (guilds), the climax of the holiday is the burning of Winter in effigy, in the form of the Böögg, a figure of a snowman prepared with explosives. The custom of burning a ragdoll called Böögg predates the Sechseläuten. A Böögg (cognate to bogey) was originally a masked character doing mischief and frightening children during the carnival season."

Jolly good.

Rewind

2011-03-31T21:35:00.003+01:00

I will probably blog in more detail about last night's short play shindig at some point. In short, though, it was proper Macbeth-on-rollerblades stuff, the kind of thing that is probably deemed "cutting edge", possibly "arty", and in either event so obscure as to be incomprehensible to normal human beings such as myself. In amongst all of this, "Rewind" stood out as rather mundane, perhaps a little quaint, and somewhat predictable. This may well have come as a bit of a relief to some of the audience members, but probably not. They were all trendy-looking types, supporting their avant-garde friends. Then there were the 14 empty seats, booked out, apparently, by one of the actors for chums who never showed up, to the detriment of the 10 or so people turned away at the door on account of there not being room. And then there was the noise. This was, after all, a pub theatre, by which I mean it was a room up some stairs in a pub that looked as though it should really be booked out for a leaving do and not theatre, darling. But its location meant that anything that wasn't shouted was pretty much drowned out by the racket from downstairs, which is a drawback if your play is basically an elderly lady musing in an armchair. Quietly. So the jokes, such as they were, were lost in the commotion, and the whole thing was ultimately something of a disappointment.

Anyway, for my friend Greg, who would have liked to have come along, and anyone else who's not seen it, here's the script. After all, it's not likely to get another outing any time soon:

A nursing home in Bradford, UK. Kathleen led slowly by the arm to an armchair by a member of staff She is quite elderly and frail and unsteady on her feet. Throughout the monologue she is being literally “looked after” by a member of staff from the care home. Kathleen is aware of this, but is accepting of it.

KATHLEEN: [Looks at her watch.] Nearly eleven.

[The member of staff ensures she is sitting comfortably, adjusting the cushion at the back of her head and pulling the little table nearby so she can reach easily.]

KATHLEEN: I don’t know what time she’ll come, our Caroline, but I’m sure she will come. She’s not said she’ll come but she wouldn’t miss my birthday. [Pause]
[Smiles at the CARE ASSISTANT, who exits.] It’s not a bad place. She looked at others, our Caroline, but for we liked this one. She tells me how nice it is, how well I look, and how good the food is, and I’m sure she’s right. There are small things that bother me, of course, but then there were small things that bothered me at home. I don’t see enough of Caroline, and the children…they’re very busy of course. They’ve always had so many hobbies, the children. Kate plays the trumpet… or was it cricket? One of those…. [trying to remember, then, frustrated:] Oh, well, anyway, they’re very busy, and I’m sure that’s why they don’t come very often.
Our Caroline comes every couple of weeks, though. [Thoughtful] Sometimes not quite so often. [Frowns, thinking] I think she comes less these days than she used to, but maybe not. I think time just… Well, everything’s the same, you see, so it’s hard to remember.... And I think she feels she’s intruding. She thinks I have a social life here, and, you know, I don’t want to tell her I haven’t because that would worry her, to think I’m unhappy. [Pause. Thoughtful:] and I’m not unhappy. [Smiling] Last week a young gentleman came and played the piano, and we all joined in. And we had a tea party, once... [Remembering] We have a games night every Wednesday… no, Tuesday… No… Well, I don’t think it happens any more. Where was I? Yes. Caroline. Well, she comes every week… no, two weeks. Sometimes less. But then there’s the drive from Shipley – it’s at least twenty minutes each way… Well, I understand, and she knows I understand. We’ve always been close like that, me and Caroline.

[The CARE ASSISTANT re-enters with a cup of tea, which she holds to Kathleen’s lips until she’s satisfied she’s had some, then wipes her mouth with a tissue and puts the tea on the table and exits]

I’ve been here for…for a little while now, but it feels like ever such a long time. [Thoughtful] I think our Caroline was reluctant putting me here, but I was a nuisance, you see. Not that our Caroline ever said I was, of course, but I knew I was. I was starting to worry her. Ooh, it was only little things. You know, forgetting to turn things off, silly mistakes, things that if you do them when you’re young people say how daft you are, but as you get older they start to worry about you. I’ve always found our Caroline’s house ever so confusing. She has these two doors on the landing that look exactly the same, and one night Steve came out and found me sitting in the linen cupboard. Told Caroline I seemed “confused and distressed”! Well, I’d say that was a bit of an exaggeration. I never have been able to remember which door is which and of course I realised when I came up against a load of sheets and towels it wasn’t the toilet, and I was just getting my bearings when Steve walked in and gave me ever such a fright, it’s no wonder I reacted the way I did. You don’t expect people to be creeping around their own houses at all hours, do you? Well, he was fine. Big fuss about nothing, if you ask me. I was ever so sorry about the bump on his head, of course, but I hadn’t broken the skin or anything and Caroline told me he’d soon see the funny side.

[The CARE ASSISTANT returns with a hairbrush and starts to slowly brush KATHLEEN’s hair]

You see, they do look after me. Our Caroline comes every day and she says I’m looking well and notices I’ve had my hair cut, and she says things like “isn’t that a nice dress, Mother? Isn’t that a lovely dress?” She talks to me a little like the nurses do, I’ve noticed, but then we’ve not got so much to talk about these days. She brought a friend with her the other day and they brought a box of chocolates then talked amongst themselves. Caroline said “Mother doesn’t talk much these days”. And is it any wonder? They talked about what a nice place it was, then they talked about a film, and I couldn’t very well join in as I’d not seen it. “You could take me to the cinema one day”, I tried, once, and they smiled, sort of sadly, and Caroline patted me on my shoulder and said “don’t eat too many chocolates, Mum, you’ll spoil your dinner.” [The CARE ASSISTANT exits.]

There were other things too, of course. The doctor explained them to me. I could hear them talking at night, what with them paper-thin walls, talking about me after I’d gone to bed. “She’s not right”, he’d say. “She’s not safe”. Not safe, I ask you! This from the man who thinks it’s safe to drive after four pints and once ploughed his car into the central reservation on the M62! And then he’d recount some daft thing I’d done, full of embellishments, usually, how I’d forgotten where I was, or where they lived. Well, really! All I’d done was telephone the wrong number and ended up speaking to this young girl who’d bought their old house in Otley, and of course I realised soon as she’d picked up the phone but then we had ever such a lovely chat. Well, it turned out she knew our Caroline and phoned later to check I was alright, bless her, because I’d been ringing about something quite important, I think, that must be what it was… though I can’t remember now what exactly… Well, anyway, Steven said this was a sure sign, and he’d read about it in the Daily Mail. People who are starting to get dementia who go back in time and forget where they are. Well, I’d not forgotten at all! They’d only been in Shipley five years, which is hardly a lifetime, and I’ve a good memory for numbers. And anyway, I used to see a good deal more of them in those days before they moved, so I must have just been…what do you call it… auto-pirate. You know, when you do things without really thinking, because they come naturally. I think I must spend a lot of time being an auto-pirate.

[CARE ASSISTANT returns with a biscuit]

CARE ASSISTANT: Would we like a biscuit?
KATHLEEN: No, Love, thanks, Love.
CARE ASSISTANT: Are you sure? You like biscuits don’t you? They’re lovely biscuits.
KATHLEEN: No. I’m alright, Love.
[The CARE ASSISTANT looks concerned and holds a biscuit in front of KATHLEEN’s nose as if to tempt her.]
KATHLEEN: No, I’d better not, Love, I expect my daughter will bring me some chocolates. [The CARE ASSISTANT exits. To audience:] Ooh, it does irritate me, that does, them talking to us as though we’re in nursery school, all sing-songy, and when they come up to you then lean in close to your face and it’s always,
CARE ASSISTANT: [returning] do we want some more tea?
KATHLEEN: and
CARE ASSISTANT: would we like a biscuit?
KATHLEEN: [sighs] I don’t know why they all use this “we” all the time, but maybe someone’s said that’s what you’re meant to do, because they all do it. But it does get to me, that. I don’t want to say so because I wouldn’t want to hurt their feelings. They mean well. They’re only young, these girls, you know, and they do their best.
[The CARE ASSISTANT exits.]
Now where was I? I can’t remember. That’s the trouble, you see, they come up to you just when you’re… and then… [sighs] Well, what with all this fuss around you… Now. Had I got to the apple cores? No? Oh, well, that was a right performance. You’d think I’d set fire to the house the uproar that created. Well, we were having this family dinner and the kids were coming over… I probably shouldn’t call them kids now, should I? Emma… [rattily] No, no, Kate!… and….and her brother… They’re not really kids any more. Well, they were all coming over – it was some big occasion – and I’d said I’d help out and, well, Steven said he didn’t think that was such a good idea, what with me forgetting things, but our Caroline cut him off, she said, if Mum wants to help that would be lovely, so I made an apple pie. Our Caroline’s never been much of a cook. I expect she’s too busy really for all of that. I know people don’t cook these days like they used to. But she used to love apple pie as a child. So I made this apple pie and made it all nice on top with the sugar and the little pastry apples. And I got it out of the oven and everything without them reminding me, because Steven was worried I’d forget all about it and burn it. Anyway, we had this meal and afterwards I cut open the pie and… [getting upset at the memory] well, it should really be ever so funny, but I found I’d gone and thrown the apple away and put the cores into the pie… Well, I was ever so upset, and our Caroline laughed and said what a funny thing to have done, and we’d all laugh about it later, but then Dan… Ben… he got all miserable, saying he’d saved an apple-pie space and now there wasn’t any, and so I said I’d make it up and buy him ice-cream and then… and I’ll never forget this… Steven got ever so angry. He got up and he shouted “Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage?” Well, I thought, there was no need for that! And I told him so! I did! And Steven turned to our Caroline and said “she’s changed! Look at her, Caz” (ooh, I’ve never liked the way he calls her that. Caroline’s such a pretty name, and her father chose it for her) “Look at her, Caz,” he said “she’s out of control. She doesn’t know what she’s doing”. And there was this almighty row, and I told him he should respect his elders, told him I’d like to see him do a bit of cooking once in a while, and he said they were on the breadline looking after me, that I was ruining their relationship, and the kids got upset, then Steven said that was my fault too, that I’d upset them…. Oh, it was awful. [Sips her tea and recovers. The CARE ASSISTANT hurries in and holds KATHLEEN’s hand, as if to calm her down.] Well. I ended up in hospital. I can’t remember why, now. [Frowns, thinking.] I think something happened…. [Obediently, to the CARE ASSISTANT] That’s why I’m here, you see. I can’t manage.

[The CARE ASSISTANT checks the teacup, sees it is empty, and takes it away.]

She doesn’t talk about him much these days, mind, and he’s not been since the day I moved in. She thinks I’ve not noticed, but I have. I know Caroline. And I’m not going to ask where he is because I know he’s not around. I suppose if I did ask her she’d make something up, say he was ever so busy at work, but what do people want with a British builder these days when all them Poles and Czechoslavs will do it at a fraction of the price? No. [Confidently] He’s definitely buggered off.
[Looks at her watch]. Nearly ten past. [Fretting.] I hope she’s not broken down. It’s a long way, from Otley. She usually does come around eleven. I think it’s because it gives her an excuse to leave, because I need to get ready for my dinner. I think otherwise she’d feel guilty, us running out of things to say. [Pause.] I expect she’ll be here in a minute.

[The CARE ASSISTANT returns with another cup of tea.]

I never did ask what happened to her face, but these days she’s looking better. I didn’t like to ask, but she’d volunteer the information. “I went and opened the kitchen cupboard into my face,” she said once, and went on in elaborate detail about how the cupboard doors are on springs, and if you push them too hard they jump back at you. “Can you believe it?” She asked, and I couldn’t. A few months ago, after her standard kiss on the cheek and “you’re looking well”, I replied by saying she was, too, better than when I’d seen her before, and she blushed, saying the weather was good and they’d been over to Scarborough and she’d caught the sun. Well, I don’t know. I don’t get outside much these days. But Nancy, who lives here with me, says she reckons our Caroline’s got a new man. I do hope she has. [Frowning, thoughtful] but if she has I hope it isn’t because she’s [thinking] you know [brightly, remembering] on the rewind. You know, to get over Steven, going out with some new chap on the rewind. [Sighing] Of course, I’ll never meet him. Some silly woman in her reading group told her people with dementia can’t cope with change, and now we’ve nothing to talk about, and every time she comes it’s kiss, you’re looking well, I bought you some chocolates, isn’t it nice here? Do you still play cards? Don’t eat too many, you’ll spoil your dinner, goodness is that the time? And she signs the visitor’s book apparently so the staff can tell me later that she’s been, which they do.

[The CARE ASSISTANT comes up to KATHLEEN with the book and kneels in front of her, pointing]

CARE ASSISTANT: We’ve had a visitor, today, haven’t we, Kathy? Wasn’t that nice?
[The CARE ASSISTANT pats her on the shoulder, closes the book and leaves her side. PAUSE.]

KATHLEEN: And I suppose it is nice. Everything is nice. And one day it will all just… stop, and there won’t be anything to be nice, or to complain about… I don’t expect I’ll notice. And I expect it will be a blessing for our Caroline, too, in the end. [Pause. Looks at her watch]. I think it’s too late for her to come now. We’re having our dinner at twelve. Marconi Cheese. [to the CARE ASSISTANT, standing nearby.] Do I like Marconi Cheese?

Blackout

Top 25

2011-03-13T18:53:00.003Z

As you may know, I'm quite partial to lists, and today I had a look at the "25 most played" tracks on my ipod. I'm not sure what this assortment says about me, but in case you have any ideas:

- ABBA - SOS
- Half Man Half Biscuit - Joy Division Oven Gloves
- The Pogues - Sally MacLennane
- The Pogues - The Broad Majestic Shannon
- Emmylou Harris - Born to Run
- Eels - I Like Birds
- Oasis - Don't Look Back in Anger
- Dixie Chicks - If I Fall You're Going Down With Me
- Shooglenifty - The Pipe Tunes
- Eels - Climbing To The Moon
- D:Ream - Things Can Only Get Better
- The Bangles - I'll Set You Free
- Take That - Shine
- Blur - There's No Other Way
- Half Man Half Biscuit - Little In The Way Of Sunshine
- The Chieftains - Cotton-Eyed Joe
- Oysterband - The Shouting End of Life
- Eels - Paradise Blues
- The Beatles - In My Life
- Tony Christie - Amarillo
- The Smiths - I Won't Share You
- The Beautiful South - Don't Marry Her
- Huey Lewis and The News - The Power of Love
- The Cranberries - Dreams
- The Smiths - Stretch Out And Wait

I don't know how ABBA made it to the top, how there are no Morrissey tracks and only one Bangles track, and how Take That got in there at all, but anyway, there it is. Have a good week :-)

The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark

2011-03-07T21:39:00.010Z

Re-reading children’s books as an adult is often something of a revelation. Often, the revelation is simply that the whole adult thing is actually a bit of a cover, which can be blown by a few well-chosen quotes from a mournful toy grey donkey, and you have to admit to yourself that being paid to sit at a desk all day is all very well, but in all honesty you’d rather be out playing Pooh Sticks. At other times you are taken aback by the sheer banality of the content, and begin to understand why your dad suddenly found something pressing he had to go and do – usually in the shed – when you asked if you could read “Where’s Spot?” together for the fiftieth time. (I’m not sure why they had such a pressing need to know where Spot was in the first place.) And sometimes the revelation is that actually there’s something rather clever – or, more often than not, rather rude – that you never noticed as a child and that was probably put in there to make the lives of the adults who read the books to the children marginally less tedious.

There are quite a few books from my childhood that have the first effect on me, and whose glories far outweigh those in the likes of Harry Potter, which I never really got into, not least because J. K. Rowling’s propensity for adverbs got more than a little irritating after a while. (Have you not noticed that in those books nobody ever just says anything? Everything has to be said casually, or urgently, or sharply, or coldly...) To name but a few, if you’ve never discovered Allan Ahlberg’s “Please Mrs Butler” or anything by Shirley Hughes (gorgeous drawings that look like places where real children live, as opposed to those perfect 1930s detached houses that came complete with a garage and a dog called Pat) I urge you to go and borrow them from your local library while you still can. Then of course there was the real Winnie the Pooh, which was far, far funnier than Disney’s poor yet popular imitation, especially when read on a cassette by Alan Bennett, and includes lines like “You can’t help respecting anybody who can spell Tuesday, even if he doesn’t spell it right.”

But there’s one book I’ve always loved more than any other, and judging by the outpourings on Facebook lots of other people agree with me – “The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark”. If you have no idea what I’m talking about I recommend you to go away and read it or, better still, get Maureen Lipman to read it for you (not in person – she’s probably quite expensive – but you can get it on CD in Waterstones for a fiver). Basically, it tells the story of Plop the baby barn owl (and where can you go wrong with a name like Plop?) who is (there’s a clue in the title, folks) afraid of the dark. So his mother sends him off on his own – in the daytime when they’re asleep – to find out all about the dark, in frankly a shocking display of owlet neglect that would have avian social services flocking to the nest these days. This premise thus established it’s easier to imagine a tiresomely predictable chain of events, at the end of which, lo and behold, Plop decides he does like the dark after all. And there is a bit of that at times. Fortunately for Plop, it so happens that everybody he meets seems to have an almost fetishistic love of the dark and absolutely no qualms about meeting a talking owl. Not one of them says “Yeah, I see what you mean, dark’s quite scary cos you might get mugged and that”. Instead they babble on about fireworks and stargazing and Father Christmas. Similarly Plop fortuitously stumbles upon lots of nice, wholesome people, and not the sort of people you might routinely expect to be hanging around in the dark. Jill Tomlinson might well add a touch of realism to the whole story by having Plop meet teenagers who, far from getting their kicks playing hide and seek in the woods and singing round a campfire are sitting on the wall of the local garage slowly drinking themselves into oblivion with a bottle of White Lightning. But she doesn’t, and, pleasingly, she mitigates the whole “this book is going to teach you something” with some lines so sweetly funny I (much to F’s annoyance, as he was trapped in the car with the CD playing) let out a delighted “awww!” every time I heard them. They include “I don’t think owls have those. Not barn owls, anyway,” and (Plop’s only a baby, you see, and he can’t really fly yet) “he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and fell of his branch”. It occurred to me that this is a book I’ve never seen dramatised on TV, yet I have far more visual images from it than from many that have.

Anyway, I’ve rambled long enough and I’ve proven, as per the start of this post, that the whole adult thing is just an elaborate yet flimsy cover, and one day people will find me out and realise I’ve just been masquerading as an adult all this time, it’s just that these days I have a husband and gym membership and I drink coffee and real ale and other such things that denote grown-up status. In case you were wondering, I am actually going to give the CD to my 5-year-old niece, in the hope she’ll enjoy it as much as me. But it’s going on my ipod first...

Oh What a Beautiful Morning

2011-02-16T20:15:00.012Z

I don't often do nice on this blog, but I'm prepared to break the habit of a lifetime to share some of the wisdom of my favourite 8-year-old, at whose home I stayed last night. This is the 8-year-old that we took on a London Duck Tour mid-December having been assurred by her that "It won't be too cold as long as we wear our hats, and our scarves, and our gloves."

At 5.30am, cosily wrapped up in a sleeping bag on a lilo in my cousin's lounge, 8-year-old appeared.
Me: "Are you OK?"
Her: "Yes. I'm going to get into bed with you and play on my Nintendo DS. You can go back to sleep if you like."

She snuggles up to me and pulls most of the sleeping bag off me.

Her "Are you going to go back to sleep?"
Me: "Yes."
"But you have to get up soon anyway."
"Not for an hour and a half."
"OK."
(Pause of about 30 seconds)
Her: "I'll turn the sound off so you can sleep."
Me: "Thank you."
(Pause of about a minute.)
Her: "Do you want to have a go?"
Me: "No."
(Pause of another minute)
Her: "When you were my age, was Nintendo DS invented?

I make the mistake of embarking on a long and involved discussion on the merits of Chuckie Egg, and the thrill of having your once-a-fortnight go at the spelling game on the classroom's one computer. She is non-plussed.

Her: "Where are you going today?"
Me: "Harrogate."
Her: "Why?"
Me: "I'm going on a conference."
"What's it about?"
"Oh, we're talking about how to help people keep their jobs and how to make sure people get paid enough and stuff.
"Oh." (Pause) "That sounds boring."
"It is."
"Then why are you going?"
"Because I have to."
"Can I come with you?"
"No. You have to go to school."
(Pause while I watch her successfully complete an agility trial with a cartoon dog on her DS, to which she reacts with an enthusiastic "YES! GET IN!")

I roll over on the bed and make what I hope are sleepy noises.

"Do you still eat coco pops?"

And so began my day. It's nearly over now. I'm tired.

Smiley and Sunshiney

2011-01-29T12:14:00.011Z

Today I will be mainly being smiley and sunshiney. This is because someone told me yesterday that I was usually full of smiles and sunshine, and, well, I don't want to let them down. Actually, I've been contrary to this in every possible way this week, so I have a lot of smiling and sunshineyness to make up. This has culminted in me being at home and reduced to doing what I do every weekend, namely a trip to Morrison's followed by listening to Bradford City lose, and cursing at the radio commentary for which I pay £6 a month. I shouldn't be at home. I should be in Oxford, with some nuns, being silent.

When I put it like that, what was I thinking? The idea of me remaining silent is about as crazy as Benedict XVI announcing he's going to join the Hare Krishnas. Perhaps my week of disasters was some sort of divine intervention to stop me embarking on this ridiculous escapade.

Actually it's not as bad as all that. First of all, Bradford drew. Every commentator in the land talked of "City heartbreak", on account of the fact that Chesterfield's equalizer was scored in extra time, but hey, 1.) we drew. We get a point for this and 2.) this is Chesterfield. They're not just tipped for promotion, it's almost statistically impossible for any other outcome to occur, unless they lose every single game from this point onwards. We, on the other hand, we recently beaten by Barnet. At home. We should have been murdered in yesterday's match.

Still, being a woman and that I probably ought to move on. Listening to the commentary, I know there was at least one offisde offence yesterday, and obviously my brain is in danger of exploding if I think about this for too long. So I'm going to talk about the NHS.

I'm a big fan of the NHS. Having seen the American system, where drugs companies advertise heart drugs on television and surgeons boast about their survival rates on freeway billboards, where insurance companies pay people to find loopholes in people's claims for lifesaving treatment and the poor have to opt to be drug trial guinea pigs in order to get any treatment at all, I know how lucky I am.

Unexcitingly, my need to make use of hte NHS at all came about when I caught my shoe in the back of my work trousers and tumbled down three steps in rather spectacular fashion while suited commuters looked on with indifference. I moseyed off to work, made a cup of tea, and congratulated myself on having not held my hand out to stop myself, snapping my wrist in the process. Instead, I fell on my hand, bashing it against a nice big chunk of concrete. So I watched with interest as my hand got bigger and bigger, until by the evening I had a very worthy bruise and couldn't take the rings off my fingers. One sleepless night later, I presented myself at the local minor injuries unit.

The nurse reminded me of an old-fashioned school matron from an Enid Blyton novel - likeable and no-nonsense at the same time. She introduced me to a young woman who was a medical student and was there to "observe", then she pressed her fingers along my bruise until she touched a certain point and I leapt about two feet out of the chair.

"That's the bit that hurts?" she said, pressing it again a little harder as if to check the reflex was genuine. Satisfied that it was, she summoned her medical student over. "It could be a fracture," she said. "Just here". And she picked up a biro and marked the spot, pressing agonisingly into my hand as she did so. "What do you think?" The medical student came over, looked at it quizzically, then had a prod. At this point, I burst into tears.

Later, the same nurse came back and announced "Now, we can put a cast on, but you'll need to wait until someone's available to do it, and it might make having a shower and sleeping difficult, and you'll have to come in in a couple of weeks for us to take it off. As it's only a hairline fracture it won't really do a lot, but it will protect it. Or I can strap it up for you now, but you'll have to be really careful not to knock it or it will really hurt."

Hmm. I assume this constitutes "patient choice".

So I let her strap it, went home and took codeine and spent the next two nights feeling nauseous and slipping in and out of skippy dreams.

Oh sorry. Smiles and sunshine. Yes. I forgot.

Bradford Calling

2011-01-22T22:48:00.014Z

In what will probably come as something of a relief to readers of this blog, yesterday's match against the giants that are Burton Albion was postponed - something to do with it being a bit cold - and so I shan’t be moaning about yet another disappointing yet predictable defeat, futilely defensive playing and the fact that we have a perfectly good player on loan from Hull who we persist on playing for ten minute stints only, making me wonder quite what the point of him is.

No, I won’t be writing about that. If by chance you’re interested in my deep thoughts on the subject, carefully withheld from the public until such eminent commentators as Michael Wood had said them first, thus legitimizing them (I’m a girly girl, you see, and as such incapable of forming such opinions by myself) then you can check out the Boy From Brazil website. Here you will find a throwaway remark suggesting that Burton Albion fans who’d rocked up to Bradford expecting to see a thrashing only to find themselves wandering around at a loose end should visit the brilliant National Media Museum to pass the time.

Ahhhh the National Media Museum. Yes. I agree wholeheartedly that this is indeed a place everyone should visit. In my day, of course, it didn’t have so grand a title, being known as the somewhat less catchy “National Museum of Photography, Film and Television”. This was an absolute goldmine of a place for small children at a time when the most exciting thing that could possibly happen to you was to open a packet of crisps to find a piece of paper telling you you’d won another packet of crisps. In particular, they had one state-of-the-art exhibit where you got to pretend you were a newsreader. You sat in a small booth on a non-adjustable chair, so if you were below about 5 feet tall, i.e. if you were a child, all you could see on the playback was your head poking over the top of a large desk. There was an introduction with a sombre voiceover by, I think, Michael Burke, then you had to read an autocue. The choice of news story was, on reflection, perhaps not perfect for the hoards of youngsters who had a go, being a report on the famine in Ethiopia, accompanied by graphic images of dying children. When I went back 15 years later in an attempt to persuade my southern boyfriend that there was more to my city than mushy peas and racial violence (the likes of Wikipedia don’t help when they list Peter Sutcliffe among their “notable Bradfordians” but forget about the likes of Adrian Edmonson and Delius) they were still using the same news story, and around half the other interactive exhibits were out of order.

But what else is there to do in Bradford? Well, lots, apparently. We’ve come a long way since we ran for Capital of Culture in 2003, setting up a “Bradford Embassy” in Trafalgar Square which consisted of free Bombay Mix and posters of Gareth Gates and a bloke handing out leaflets to the handful of people who turned up reminding them that we were quite good at rugby. There’s so much to do in Bradford, in fact, that Visit Bradford has confidently produced a page entitled “50 things to do in Bradford”. Now, OK, quite a lot of these are not actually in Bradford. Many are, predictably, connected to the Bronte sites in Haworth and several basically suggest “leave Bradford and explore the countryside around it which is all pretty and that”. Others are positively clutching at straws: apparently we have a Museum of Reed Organs and Harmoniums, unbelievably the only one if its kind in the UK, and elsewhere in the list they suggest you might want to visit a cemetery or simply eat a curry. But even when you discard those they’ve still come up with a good 30 or so attractions, and they’ve not even mentioned the ice rink, or the fact we have no less than 3 branches of Greggs in Kirkgate alone.
So as Monty Python might say, apart from the National Media Museum, famous serial killers and harmoniums, what has Bradford got to offer us? Well, in case you’re popping up there any time soon, here’s my list of things to see:

1. Saltaire. I could write pages and pages on Saltaire. It’s possibly my favourite place in the UK. Briefly, it was built by a wealthy businessman to house his mill workers in the 19th century, and it’s now a UNESCO world heritage site. The mill itself has been converted into a gallery featuring works of art by David Hockney, with the upper floors selling, somewhat bizarrely, vintage designer furniture. Nice scones in the cafe, too. As for the area itself, the houses are gorgeous, and Roberts Park is lovely. And it has its own brewery. How many places can say all of that?
2. They’re probably right about the curry, but I’m not sure I’d go with their choices. You might want to try the Three Singhs, simply because it has an awesome name (and, incidentally, they used to sponsor Dean Windass). Alternatively head to Omar’s Balti House on Great Horton Road, famous for selling naan breads large enough for the whole of your party to share. I took my husband there once and he commented on how few cats you see on the street in that area, but don’t let that put you off.
3. The National Museum, as I said above. I’m told they’ve mended the buttons on the interactive exhibits so sometimes they actually work now. If you do go, let me know what news story they use these days.
4. Have a mosey round Buttershaw. I promise that, contrary to popular opinion, you’re unlikely to be propositioned by a crack whore if you head over there. It’s all famous now, being where Andrea Dunbar lived and as such being recently used in The Arbor and, maybe more famously, in Rita, Sue and Bob Too. The Guardian even claims we beat LA in some respects these days, and who am I to argue with the Guardian? And who needs Hollywood anyway?
5. Get proper fish and chips. They can’t do them down south. Mother Hubbard’s, a Saturday treat when we couldn’t be arsed to cook and where you got a nice cup of tea with your jumbo haddock, has sadly gone, but there are plenty of other places. You might want to follow this up with a proper pint - Bradford's full of real ale pubs with sensible (i.e. not London) prices.
6. Bradford University’s Peace Museum. Whilst my own institution has a museum full of misshapen human body parts pickled in jars, Bradford has a museum optimistically dedicated to Peace. Awww. Incidentally, their Peace Studies department plays our War Studies Department every year for the Tolstoy cup, annually kicking our war-mongering ass.
7. Keep your eyes open for misspellings and mistakes on signs. Only in Bradford can you get a carpet shop called “Alladins’s Cave” and a corner shop that claims to be “Open 7 days a week. Closed Fridays.”
8. The Bronte Birth Place. OK, so you can visit the all-singing, all-dancing Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth, but few people realise the Brontes were actually born in Thornton in Bradford. When I was a kid this building housed an underwhelming tearoom, but now they've jumped on the commercial bandwagon and for a small fee they actually let you in to look at reconstuctions of what it might have looked like in the old days, sort of like a pre-Victorian version of the pretend rooms at MFI.
9. Architecture. Carefully hidden amongst the Brutalist monstrosities of the city centre there’s some amazing Victorian architecture, from the Town Hall to Listers Mill, from Cartwright Hall to the Wool Exchange (which now houses a branch of Waterstones), from the Midland Hotel to the fabulous Alhambra Theatre and of course the Cathedral.
10. Valley Parade. Home of Bradford City. Of course. I’m sorry, but it had to be done.

So there you are. In this age of austerity, I hope I might have persuaded you to consider West Yorkshire for your summer getaway this year.

Space Invaders

2011-01-03T21:11:00.004Z

My latest obsession...

These are the work of a street artist who has "invaded" cities all over the world and hidden space invader mosaics within them. We saw a couple in Paris, congratulated ourselves on spotting them but didn't think to take pictures. He's been doing it since 1998 and a lot have been destroyed, but some, like the one we saw today in Fitrovia, are still there. So, if this is your cup of tea too, happy spotting!

Evolving English: Great for Geeks

2010-12-29T15:35:00.007Z

I was quite excited by this British Library exhibition and project when I stumbled across an article about it on the BBC website a while back. For a start, it initiated a nice little chat thread on Facebook which kept me amused each time I checked back between appointments. One of the aims of the "Map Your Voice" element of this project is to see how much variation there is in the way we pronounce certain words and how these pronunciations may have changed over time, such as "schedule", "migraine", "garage" and "scone" (it's got a magic e, for goodness sake! If it was meant to be pronounced "skon" it wouldn't have a magic e, would it? Crikey, did you never watch Look and Read?!) A friend of mine rightly pointed out that he must have a different version of Mr Tickle, the book they make you read out as some sort of test on these things, to the one in the British Library, as his doesn't at any point get a migraine due to his stressful schedule and end up going to sleep in his garage. But anyway, I digress...

So yes, the laudable and rather interesting aims are to map voices to presumably see how pronunciation varies and how much it's changed. But I have a few issues with this, and as I haven't whined a lot on this blog recently I thought now was about time.

Firstly, there are two ways you can contribute to the study. You can go to the - free - exhibition... if you live in London or you happen to be there, and if the booths are working on the day you go (when we went they weren't - a recorded woman with a slightly stern voice got half way through the set of instructions then gave up.) This does possibly skew the results slightly favouring the south of England, tourists and migrants from both home and abroad, which possibly makes for an interesting if unrepresentative melting pot of accents. But the good people of the British Library have thought of that, and have allowed you to take part remotely, via the means of technology. This is great, if you have a computer, with a microphone, a gadget-obsessed husband to help you out and are not phobic about downloading then registering your details on the programme you need to use to do the recording. This potentially skews the results to the a.) young, b.) wealthy (just the other day various newspapers commented on just how many kids don't have access to a computer) and c.) less remote, and in doing so probably loses out on some interesting data, and consequently, something of the great variety of voices they are trying to "map" in the first place.

And finally - and this is what irrirated me most for purely personal reasons - the way they ask you to label your recording once you've done it doesn't really allow you to acount for and explain the very diversity they are investigating in the study. Perhaps this is all part of the plan, and the whole project is staffed by modern day Henry Higginses trying to work out every inch of every participants' past purely by their way of speaking. If so, good luck to them, because social mobility is such that this must be pretty difficult nowadays, even for an expert.

The instructions ask you to state on your recording title where you spent most of your childhood, and then asks you to pinpoint on a map where you made the recording - not necessarily where you live now, but just where you happened to be at the time. This is fine if you're, say, from Liverpool and never moved. It's less fine if you're from a Bradford-based family but spent part of your childhood in Lancashire and your teenage years dividing your time between Guernsey and Yorkshire, with a brief spell at a boarding school with people from all over the world before setting down roots of a sort in London. And I suspect some people who originated overseas have even more of a problem than I did. Despite the very obvious fact that putting down "Lancashire" as a place of origin made my whole being shudder to its core (and my apologies to the British Library, who at the end of my recording will have heard a little snippet of "Put Lancashire", "But I don't have a Lancashire accent" at the end of the recording before I pressed the "pause" button), it's also misleading. Accents - as David Crystal, my favourite Linguistics Professor (what? You don't all have a favourite linguistics professor?)and whose own accent is a mix of RP with splashes of Liverpool and North Wales - has pointed out, are formed as a result of all sort of different things: where you're from, where your family is from, where you live, where you study, what you do... and they adapt depending on where you are and to whom you're speaking. This is why, when I go north, my husband tells me I sound Northern, whilst my Bradford-based family think I sound posh. Having an accent that isn't RP (which IS an accent, by the way, there's no such thing as "not having an accent", unless you spend your days blissfully silent) can be a mixed blessing. Dickheads like this will actively not recruit someone with a "working class accent" (and I put that in brackets because I'd love to see their definition of what makes an accent "working class", and perhaps back it up with some sort of evidence, which they should be able to do, what with being lawyers and all that?) At the same time, some accents apparently make you sound more trustworthy than others and also more intelligent - but obviously these are not qualities top law firms are keen to portray. And others are just, well, dead sexy. (Um, sorry, but on this, like many other topics, the Telegraph and I differ here. I'd go for Irish every time. Mmm...)

The exhibition, though, is superb. It's perfect for geeks like me who want to gaze at Very Old Books and murmur "hmm, that book is very old" and feel smugly intellectual about their Anglo-Saxon content, some of which I can still actually understand! (I realise my BA dissertation in the decline in use of the "be" prefix in post Anglo-Saxon word formation does little for my image, carefully honed to no avail throughout this blog...) It also includes a Tony Harrison poem, a section on the history of word games and lots of very lovely recordings from speakers all over the world, including, bizarrely, Guernsey. It's open til April, so do go along, and do map your voice online, while I go and rewrite Mr Tickle....

Poor Attempt at Poetry

2010-12-27T17:38:00.006Z

Why mixing boredom, loneliness and nostalgia is a very bad idea...

I was happy once – that endless year
Of infinite embraces, days on end
Spent outside countless bars, the violin
A conversation starter, real ale
For reels and unaccompanied laments,
A quick refrain from “Northlands” or a jig
On stony beaches as the sun went down
On so-still seas and misspent summer days.

I was at ease, singing of funerals
And stretching out on gravestones, of the dead,
Of marrying too young, of broken hearts
And other subjects alien to me.
Exploring graveyards, each a resting place
Of tragic bards or renowned radicals.
We’d leave trite messages in memory
And trek over well-trodden trails and tors .

I was ecstatic. Dragged over the wall
Across some A-road, stumbling without shoes
Gripping your hand as you told me to shush
And walk in a straight line when we got home,
Humming some new-learned tune and giggling.
And drinking whisky long into the night,
Then as you slept I breathed in rural air
And dreamed of drowning in your deep blue eyes.

Where e'er we go we celebrate/The land that makes us refugees: Partying with the Irish

2010-12-21T18:59:00.008Z

This bloke liked last night's Pogues gig, and frankly, what is there not to like? The Pogues remain one of my favourite bands of all time, an irresistibly explosive Dubliners-meets-the-Clash sort of crossover, a fluctuating gaggle of superb musicians from guitarists to banjo players to saxophonists to tin whistlers (is that right?) supplying an endless repertoire of raucous Irish gloriousness, and fronted by a man so hedonistic he makes Amy Winehouse look like an amateur.

It has long fascinated me that Shane MacGowan isn't dead. Quite simply, his ability to remain on this earth is nothing short of a miracle, and i'm beginning to think he's actually invincible. Every year I find myself in the same queue, namely shivering my arse off in South London sleet a few days before Christmas while a surly security guard frisks me for goodness knows what, convinced this will be the last time I get to see him alive, and congratulating myself for getting onto See Tickets quickly enough to be here at all. But it never is. Whether he was at Brixton Academy in spirit with us last night remains to be seen, but he was (just about) there in body.

And last night he actually made it onto the stage unaided, if unsteadily. This is an improvement on last year, when, allegedly, the following conversation took place:
Shane: (getting out of the car) Where are we?
Minder Chappie: Brixton Academy.
Shane: Do I like it here?
Minder Chappie: Yes.
Shane: Good. When was I last here?
Minder Chappie: Yesterday.

Last year, he was guided firmly to the middle of the stage, his hand put on top of the microphone, and left there to growl something incomprehensible at the audience which I think ended with the word "fuck!"

"Shane says it's grand to see you," the banjo player translated helpfully.

Last night, Shane didn't even bother to say that, and nobody bothered to pretend, either. He gazed, swaying, into the crowd of bodies in front of him and every now and then mumbled out a song title. Every now and then he sang, too.

And this is where, for me, it all fell down. Admittedly Shane MacGowan isn't known for his dulcet tones, and he probably wouldn't last 5 minutes on the X Factor, but I've always been extremely impressed in the past that, in between his incomprehensible slurred ramblings, you can normally hear the lyrics, and the sound he makes, if a little unique, is always spot on. Last night you couldn't, and perhaps that's why, disappointingly, they let him wander off before "Thousands Are Sailing" (which is the greatest track of all time, no arguments) and left it to someone else to sing. Shane is prone to wandering off during sets, and i'd be intrigued to know how much of this is deliberately worked into the set to give him a rest (presumably some of it) and how much is impromtu. Whichever the case, we got noticably more instrumentals last night - which is fine with me - and the tone was altogether more folky than usual.

They're down there somewhere... It's hard to take a picture while jumping up and down

But aside from Shane's dubious performance, which just teetered on the right side of being what you'd expect from the Shane you know and love rather than being perhaps a little sad, this was, like all Pogues gigs I've been to, pretty awesome stuff. Their repertoire is simply superb, not to say timeless, which perhaps explains the somewhat bewhildering demographic in the audience, from teenagers in trendy boots to ageing punks to middle-aged Irishmen in green t-shirts spilling Guinness over their fellow fans, to white-haired crucifix-wearing ladies called Bernadette, all jumping up and down united in enjoyment to the cacophony from onstage. They moved effortlessly from the pure folk of The Irish Rover to the lyrical Thousands Are Sailing to the frenzied confusion of Fiesta (what's with the tea trays?) with plenty of the likes of If I Should Fall From Grace With God, Bottle of Smoke and Sally MacLennane in between (I did in face lose a fiver betting If I Should Fall would be the opener, but hey, you can't have everything.) By Fairytale, which is the moment each year when every Brixton-bound Pogues fan knows Christmas has really begun, even those squeamish enough to have booked seats rather than entrusting themselves to the pulsating mass of Guinness-swilling bodies downstairs had long got to their feet to join in. A nervous-looking girl destined to be forever anonymous on account of not being called Kirsty came onstage for this grand finale and sang pretty well, but it wouldn't have mattered if she'd mimed because 5000 drunk people of tenuously Irish origin were enthusiastically drowning her out. An over-excited chap in a "Look them in the eye and say Pogue Mahone" shirt with teeth to rival Shane's turned round and tried to waltz with me, which was a little difficult given the row of seats in between us and the fact he could no longer stand without help; glittering bits of paper fell from an unidentifiable spot somewhere in the ceiling. And then it was all over. We made use of the queue-free toilets (this is by far the best reason to have VIP tickets) and fell out into the freezing night, sliding unsteadily towards the tube and trying not to trip over the hoards of chancers flogging a variety of vaguely Pogues-related t-shirts and other memorabilia.

OK, re-reading what I've written, yes, it was amazing. It always is. Not as good as last year, perhaps, but pretty exhilirating, feelgood stuff nonetheless. Shane, try not to die before next Christmas, love. We'd miss you.

That's science, that

2010-11-12T23:13:00.010Z

Type "improbable research" into Google and you're immediately rewarded with an array of options that could easily help you while away even the most tedious of train journeys. There is of course the Guardian's dedicated "Improbable Research" section, which this week features such intruiging headlines as "The Life-saving qualities of Pizza" (that's the kind of research I like to hear, though interestingly it contradicts this which came out a mere week earlier) and "Why Dead Mice Need Parachutes in the Forest" (I may have to come back to that one). Then of course there are the Ig Noble Awards. And then there are reams and reams of completely genuine research studies carried out by venerable institutions, presumably on the basis that they agreed with Frankie Boyle when he said "Shall we find a cure for cancer? No. Let's see how many fruit pastilles it takes to choke a kestral."

I was particularly proud to see a good friend's alma mater appear on Sky News earlier in the year for its groundbreaking research into... wait for it... which dance moves most attract women. Yep, apparently they filmed 19 "volunteers" (read "egotists"?) dancing, mapped their moves onto featureless avatars (if I'm honest I'm not wholly sure I know what that means) and then got 35 women to "rate" their dance moves. Now I've watched these videos and however hard I try I simply can't seem to get turned on in any way by a "featureless avatar", regardless of what they might be doing with their hips and neck. But apparently I should and, in particular, I should pay attention to "the speed of movement of the right knee".

Now I can honestly say that I've never noticed the speed of someone's right knee or their "wrist movements" (easy, now!) when in search of a mate. OK, perhaps we do, subconsciously, but even so, I'm fairly sure that such characteristics come pretty low down my list, well below more trivial things like, I don't know, whether they make me laugh or will agree to accompany me to a City game once in a while. Call me a hopeless, old-fashioned romantic, but I tend to notice a chap's physical appearance (I'm a sucker for big blue or green eyes - in fact I think my ideal partner is probably the cat in Shrek) and respond better to flattery, humour, a nice cuddle and at a push bribery in the form of alcoholic beverages before I cut to the chase with: "but before I let you take me out for dinner, give me your best Funky Chicken." (Er, no, that wasn't a euphemism.)

And just when I thought it couldn't get any better than that, I found this. I wasn't even on the hunt for it at the time, I was trying to find the version of online Tetris that's somehow deleted itself from my internet favourites. And it turns out that Tetris is not only a welcome distraction on a rainy lunch hour, but a potential cure for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Now I'm not knocking the Oxford University for trying to find a cure for PTSD - good on them, I say - but I am, well, more than a little amused at the whole concept of the study, and how it might have worked in practice. First of all, I'm willing to bet that the whole hypothesis, despite the long words and lofty explanations that no doubt appeared in the introductory paragraphs of the final report, was conceived in a pub one night, possibly just after the quiz machine had eaten the responsible academic's last pound coin because he incorrectly guessed the capital of Mongolia (It's Ulaan Batar, in case you were wondering). I say this because what the "experiment" entailed was as follows: the volunteers were shown distressing footage involving death, destruction and generally depressing stuff. They were then told to either a.) bugger off and see what happens or b.) play Tetris and see what happens or c.) play a pub quiz game, presumably lose your pound coins in the process, and see what happens.

And what happened, apparently, was that the pub quizzers fared worst, whereas the Tetris-players experienced considerably fewer flashbacks than either of the other groups. I feel that this would be of little comfort to the poor people who took part ("You can't get to sleep for all the images of that horrific carsmash, you say? But hey, on the bright side, you've got to level 9!") and I wonder at the ethics assessment of such a study. I feel even sorrier for the group that are not only experiencing sleepless nights as a result of their participation, but have lost any confidence they had in their general knowledge, and I'm hoping they were all properly compensated. On the flip side, I love the idea of psychiatrists across the land prescribing game boys as therapy, amidst cries of "Get in!" from Nintendo as they enter into a lucrative partnership with Glaxosmithkline and badger Harvard to see if there's any mileage in Balloon Kid being used to treat Aviophobia.

Now where were we? Oh yes: now about that cure for cancer...

Gnome and Away

2010-10-31T08:00:00.005Z

My phone rang at 10.15 one Monday morning while I was watching a particularly enthralling presentation on "Getting Ready for Global Desktop". I turned it off and quietly fretted my way through a ten-minute explanation on how to move documents from the z drive to the m drive, thinking, what's happened? Who's died? My aunty, you see, rarely phones me, and never during the working week. She'd left a voicemail imploring me to call her back, and I tried to read between the lines, wondering if I was mistaking her usual tone of voice for anxiety.

She picked up immediately.

"I was wondering if you could be really kind and do me a bit of a favour."

Of course, I said, relief that if this was the conversation opener it was unlikely anyone had died.

"I need you to send a postcard to a friend of mine. It needs to be a London postcard, with a famous landmark, like the Eye or something like that, because it needs to be obviously from London. Let me give you the address," she continued, before I had the chance to ask anything about it, and reeled off a name and address in Clayton.

"Ooh one thing," she said. "It's actually from a gnome."

Of course it is, I thought. A gnome. Right.

"He's called Algernon" she continued, as if this explained everything. "He's travelling round the world and he's just got back to London so he needs to send a postcard and it needs to say "having a lovely time in London, see you soon, Algernon."

She went on to explain that Algernon had lived with them until some time in the late-90s, when the recipient of the postcard - I'm going to call him Dave - apparently snapped and admitted he didn't actually like gnomes, he found them creepy, and he would be perfectly happy if he never saw him and his silly red hat again. So poor old Algernon packed up his fishing rod and went off into the Big Wide World (though I suspect in reality Mrs Dave had a hand in this and he only got as far as a Cleckheaton car boot sale). There was more to it than that, though if I'm honest I was only half-listening, as I was writing an email about the pros and cons of the Student Visitor route of entry to the UK at the time. Apparently Algernon was more than just a gnome, he was a sort of therapist, called in to mediate on all sorts of family disputes involving Dave and Mrs Dave's children in what seems to be a flagrant abuse of his right to gnomic self-determination, and frankly if I was him I'd think twice before sending a postcard to my old tormenters. But anyway, apparently Algernon is one to forgive and forget, and, having been in Paris a few weeks back, he did the logical hop via Eurostar and is now in London.

I did send a postcard, which I'd been instructed to write in childish script, because apparently this is how gnomes write, and who am I to argue? I don't know if it got there, and I don't know what Dave's reaction was. I also sent a book of zombie cupcake designs to a friend in Hounslow, a sketch about Jesus working in a chip shop to a writing competition in Newcastle and a birthday card to my old boss bearing the slogan "Congratulations on still being alive." I really do hope, in these uncertain times where the threat of a terror attack remains high, that someone somewhere is monitoring my mail.

Girl Writes About Football And Stuff

2010-10-11T19:19:00.018+01:00

I'd love to be able to write something witty and incisive about Bradford City. There's a great drama somewhere here, a bit like those films that were so popular in the 90s: windswept fans sporting retro shirts immortalising the glory days of 100 years ago, huddled together on makeshift terraces suffering bitter disappointment week after week, coach journey after coach journey endured in disillusioned resignation to the almost inevitable drop out of the football league. The lead character: my dad, 70 that day, ever the optimist in a world of shattered dreams set against a background of eternal Northern drizzle and branches of Gregg's. And then suddenly, a mere week after an almost unbearable defeat at home at the hands of those football giants that are Morecambe, comes this: a win. And not just a win. Not a last-minute, skin-of-our-teeth, one-lucky-goal-in-extra-time win. Not this time. This was a proper win, a two-goal win. And we even scored them both ourselves. Strangers embraced strangers, united in claret and amber, relief and elation. Tom Adeyemi legged it up the slope to the away stand and gave his mum a hug. Somewhere on the other side of the pitch, Peter Taylor drew a sigh of relief and lived to fight another battle (against Cheltenham, as it turns out. Big-time stuff, this.)

I'd love to give you a blow-by-blow account of every nail-biting minute, the three yellow cards that seemed a little over-zealous in what had the generally friendly air of an after-school kickabout; Zesh Rehman and Luke O'Brien, inexplicably on the bench a week ago, darting around the pitch with flashes of nifty footwork, like Darcy Bussell on speed; the fleeting but promising return of the lovely James "He Used To Work At The Co-Op" Hanson showing us what we've been missing and reminding me why I secretly wish he was my kid brother; Luke Oliver being something other than shit; two fabulous goals, the first one seemingly coming from nowhere, the second from a bloke who if I'm honest I'd pretty much forgotten played for us; a few heart-stopping saves (and one very nearly Rob Green moment) from Jon McLaughlin; their fruitless but valiant attempts to at the very least equalize, which would have given us one point and kept us where we were, at the arse-end of the table, which made for a breath-holding last 20 minutes; the coveted three points and the queues in the pub afterwards.

I'd love to tell you all that, but, well, for some reason I have a feeling you're not really that interested, and anyway, Jason Mckeown does it better. In context, this wasn't quite the David vs Goliath battle I'm making it out to be. This isn't Weatherall-Scores-Against-Liverpool-And-Secures-Premiership-Glory all over again. This is City clawing its way to two places above relegation by beating the titans that are Barnet, a club that almost dropped out of the league last season and which has been immortalised on this blog more than once for playing on a slope and having a giant bee for a mascot at which we ritually hurl abuse every year before losing 2-1 despite scoring two of the goals. In fact on Saturday the most exciting moment for many of the Barnet fans present was when Mr Bumble did a lap of honour to show off the cup he'd won against such strong contenders as Leo the Lion, Spork the Tiger,the Scunny Bunny and Sammy the Shrimp in a football mascots charity race that week. He signed quite a few autographs on the way round. (As an aside, why is Crystal Palace's mascot called Pete the Eagle? Pete? Why the lack of alliteration? Why Pete?)

I'd love to tell you all that. But then I saw this in the match programme, and frankly, nothing I could write could compete. I've independently verified that it's not a spoof, so if you're interested you should get yourself a season-tickets so you can secure yourself that valuable discount:

"Oi Churchill! Can you arrange the scattering of my ashes at Underhill? Can you get me a hearse with amber and black plumes?"

"Ohhhhh YES!"

Have a good week :-)

2010-10-03T09:00:00.014+01:00

I am quite rapidly going off men. Present company excepted (F is lying next to me, pretending to be asleep) men seem to be more and more feeding my sense of inadequacy and increasing pessimism re: life, the universe and everything. Perhaps it's because you think entanglements with the opposite sex won't happen once you're safely married, or at any rate won't matter, and so when they do it's all the more noticeable. Perhaps there's just some genetic predisposition that ensures a straight woman will always, if subconsciously, be shaking her metaphorical feathers for the male of the species' approval. Psychiatrists and the cheerful likes of Schoppenhauer and his ilk probably have tons to say on the subject - that you're constantly in search of the ideal mate, that human beings always crave that extra little bit of praise and appreciation. I don't know, because I couldn't be arsed to look it up. But either way, present company excepted, I'm rapidly coming round to the idea that a spot of self-imposed hermitry might soon be in order, because frankly, it's easier that way.

First off, there was Thursday. Thursday has the fortune, or misfortune, depending on how you look at it, as masquerading as my new Friday, largely because there's a karaoke night mere metres away from my front door and, well, it would be rude not to go. So I trotted along with my best friend, who, newly single, was possibly trying - and it turns out succeeding - to exude an air of availableness.

My friend is extremely pretty, smiley and chatty and within the hour there was a little gaggle around her, two of them literally at her feet as she sat poised on a bar stool, as if administering wisdom to her new disciples. Two of the three didn't so much as glance at me, so enraptured were they. The third smiled politely, almost as if looking for my approval, and after a while I felt rather like the sensible elder sibling, keeping an eye on yet cramping the style of my much cooler kid sister. Perhaps because I looked lonely, I was eventually approached (I say approached, more fallen on top of) by a bloke who probably didn't fancy his luck with my friend, but thought I was a possible alternative. One of those ultra-confident men who looks like the obligatory joker who gets thrown out at the interview stage of The Apprentice every year and is probably more middle class than he likes to let on, he started his courtship by settling himself down on my knee, which was more than a little uncomfortable. He then waved the karaoke book in my face and declared "this is rubbish! It's arranged by song! I don't want it arranged by song, I want it arranged by artist." I pointed to where he could find such a book, and he leapt up, thrust his bottle of Peroni into my hand and said "guard this. Don't drink it," and went and deftly retrieved the magic book from the hands of another customer, and plonked himself back down on my knee. Flapping the book up and down in front of me he promised me he would sing anything I wanted, so long as it wasn't Westlife. I suggested the Spice Girls, and watched while he considered whether or not this was a joke. After a little consideration, he suddenly said "Ooh, ooh, what's the one that goes...." and launched into a tuneless and wordless rendition of something I had no chance of placing. "Come on, come on, you know, it was sung by that guy, you know, the one who did that other thing, the Welsh one, the Welsh one who might be Scottish. He's not dead," he added helpfully. In the background, someone had started singing "The Summer of '69". My new admirer leapt unsteadily to his feet, taking me with him, then before I knew it was dangling me a couple of feet above the ground with his hands digging uncomfortably into my ribs and shouting, seemingly to anyone who might want to know, "I'll have this one."

I politely untangled myself, finished my beer and said "Oh well, time for me to go home." He lunged forward in a sort of hug and says "you're going? It's early."
"I've got to get home to my husband," I said, flashing my wedding ring at him in the hope this might help. It didn't. It elicited the response "You're married? That's MENTAL." He turned to his friend. "She's married! That's MENTAL. You're, like, twelve."

"I'm twenty-eight."

"You're twenty-eight? That's MENTAL! She's twenty-eight!" he announced to the chap who looked as he was hoping to soon embark on a tonsil tango with my friend. "That's MENTAL! And she's married. That's MENTAL."

I left. True to my Sensible Older Sister cameo, I went home, made a pot of tea and played internet scrabble. Rock and Roll.

I wouldn't have deemed an outing to a gay bar last night to present me any such problems. After all, it's a gay bar. It isn't somewhere I'd normally go if I was in need of male attention, so seemed a fairly safe bet after Thursday. Not so. As I sat there, a man who has frankly spent too much time agonising over which hair gel to use and, possibly, then hedged his bets and gone for them all at once, stood inches away from me and ostentatiously removed his top. He then bent over with more theatricality than was strictly necessary and pretended to rummage around in a ruck sack. Eventually he took another top out, gazed at it thoughtfully then slowly began to reclothe himself.

Then he nudged me.

"Why didn't you look?"

"Huh?"

"Why didn't you look?"

I'm not used to men in gay bars demanding to know why I'm not staring at their bare chests. Actually it's not that common an occurrence in the likes of the Bentham, King and Queen or any other pub I frequent either.

"Erm..." I indicated F, who was gazing into his pint with an expression that said he'd rather not get involved.

"Oh. You don't want your boyfriend to see? I'm straight."

He added this as though somehow that was OK, that F would be rightly worried if a gay man hit on me, but a straight one baring all is just fine.

"Do you think I'm gay?" he demanded. I tried to make what I hoped sounded like non-commital noises.

"Do I look gay?" he persisted. I looked at him. He wasn't holding his wrist aloft and proclaiming "I'm free!" nor had he burst spontaneously into a medley of show tunes, but he was standing in a gay bar with his shirt off.

"I hate gay bars," he said, scowling.

I suggested to him that perhaps, in that case, he was in the wrong venue.

"Would you sleep with me if your boyfriend wasn't here?

Well, full marks for forwardness, I suppose.

Oh well, at the very least I guess this proves I've still got it, whatever "it" is, but whether I want "it" is another matter entirely. On the upside, this Sensible Big Sister did win at scrabble on this occasion, on account of scoring 72 points for the word "cervical". And if that doesn't do it for you, chaps, then I don't know what does.

More serious stuff

2010-09-26T18:00:00.002+01:00

I've blogged more times than most of you probably feel is absolutely necessary about Bradford City, and many times about the fire, so this is more of a quick plug for next year's Bupa 10K. OK, it's early, but I wanted to get a page up and running in advance. It's here

I am going to take myself away, drink a lot of tea and try to think of something amusing to write about. It's been too long...

Finally an Eels review

2010-09-19T20:24:00.005+01:00

When Mark Oliver "E" Everett stepped onto the stage at Brixton Academy alone and oddly-clad in a white jumpsuit and launched into a haunting, solitary rendition of "Daisies of the Galaxy", a collective silence fell across the audience that seemed to say "this is going to be good".

And it was - fabulously good - though E hadn't started as he meant to go on. Anyone in the audience looking for the mournful, lilting despair found in the likes of Electro Shock Blues would have been disappointed by what followed. The band, sporting Blues Brothers-style hats and spectacular beards that are worthy of a whole review in themselves, were positively and uncharacteristically upbeat as they launched into a cover of Lovin' Spoonful's Summer in the City, quickly followed by almost hyperactively cheerful versions of other favourites including the fabulously quirky I Like Birds (I'm willing to bet that most of the audience didn't suss what they were listening to until at least the second line) and a "Twist and Shout" version of the wonderful (and admittedly already pretty feelgood) Mr E's Beautiful Blues. Hot on its heals came other fast and furiously-performed numbers, from Paradise Blues to Looking Up (somewhat too Gospelly and sounding unnervingly like John Lennon doing Revolution). The Eels' versatility shone through to an impressive degree as E and his beardy mates swung deftly from the blues to what at times felt like a metal gig, to snippets of utter lyrical loveliness from the new album in the form of Spectacular Girl and the almost religiously positive Oh So Lovely, which I dare you to listen to without feeling just a teensy bit uplifted.

I won't say I wasn't disappointed when, even by the third encore, Last Stop This Town had failed to materialise, and the likes of Climbing to the Moon, in my opinion one of the most hauntingly beatiful melodies ever written, clearly wasn't going to get a look-in. But with all of the above, interspersed with a hugely original cover of Summertime, the occasional yet spine-tingling bit of solo E and an impressive drum solo from a bloke called Knuckles, how could they possibly go wrong?

The Seaside Town They Forgot To Bomb

2010-08-30T21:42:00.007+01:00

In these days of austerity and environmental concerns, jetting off to far-flung and exotic destinations is less on the cards than perhaps it was a few years ago. Ash clouds, strikes, natural disasters and travel companies going bust all over the place are perhaps a sign that it's time to start exploring the delights on offer on our own, accessible, British doorstep.

Yes, delights. And Margate.

I've visited quite a few seaside towns over the past couple of years. I've been on a sort of accidental tour of them, in fact, sometimes intentionally, and at other times to watch football. Each visit has delivered its own little anecdotes and a not inconsiderable amount of rock for family and friends who fall on such multi-E-numbered candy not wholly with a sense of irony. I got engaged in Blackpool, then caught in a hailstorm the same day... in June. In Torquay I encountered a racist taxi-driver ("We have taxi drivers here from Bradford - they come down with monkeys still on their backs") who was a handy warm-up act for the racists who plagued the football match he was driving us to, but on the upside I won a meerkat playing darts. None of these, however, was a match for Margate.

I last visited Margate in January for a "team-building weekend". My five colleagues and I formed one of only two groups of guests in the guesthouse we were staying in, the other being two elderly sisters down for a funeral. Dinner was served at 7 every night by a stony-faced woman who thought catering for vegetarins meant taking the lump of meat off the plate, and gave us a choice of two desserts: lemon freeze cake (whatever that is) and fruit salad out of a tin. The "swimming pool" was no more than a large bath, but we couldn't use it anyway as it was closed for "maintenance", so we spent the nights driving up and down the seafront playing loud music and wrecking the suspension on our minibus.

So I was intrigued to see the "real" Margate. From the Visit Thanet website it looked potentially promising. The website gives no less than three pages of "attractions" one can visit, admittedly only two of which actually seem to be IN Margate, and many of which seem to involve Mini Golf, but we were only going for a day, so how many attractions would we need?

Bristling with excitement - well, OK, bristling with indifference, but let's suspend our disbelief for a while - we pulled into the first carpark we found, and consequently pulled into Dreamland. Now according to Wiki Dreamland actually closed in 2005, which would perhaps explain why what was effectively a piece of wasteland behind a bingo hall didn't look very inviting. What apparently used to house one of the world's oldest rollercoasters (the skeleton of it is still there and looked quite haunting) is now home to a very temporary and bleak-looking fairground complete with second-rate dodgems and poor-quality, unwinnable cuddly toys and one of those terrifying-looking things that whizzes you from side to side whist dangling precariously 60-odd feet above the ground. My nephew was successfully steered away from indluging in Dreamland's pleasures by his dad pointing to one of the ride hands, staring into the distance and smoking somewhat desolately next to his empty ride. "You see the man there? He's the man who's job it is to make the rides work. He's also in charge of putting them together." [Pause]. "Do you still want to go on anything?"

But there are plenty of other things to do in Margate...right? Right. If your idea of a good time is feeding 2p after 2p into a slot machine and winning 5 or 6 more 2ps for every 20 you feed in, then there are hours of fun in store for you in Margate. We counted no less than 3 arcades where you can while away the day participating in this very activity. And, not ones to leave a task unfinished, we diligently stayed there until every single coin had gone, though we did have two plastic keyrings to show for our efforts. From the cosy confines of the arcade we watched as people blew past us, swept along by the howling gale with their inside-out umbrellas in front of them. On the beach, a solitary intrepid child was trying - without much success, it must be said - to operate one of the swingboats alone. The bouncy castle lay deflated and sad-looking, like some unfortunate character in some children's film. A makeshift stage optimistically promising live music sat rain-lashed and abandoned next to a hot dog stall which seemed to be doing an inexplicably roaring trade.

Deciding that perhaps we had exhausted the delights Margate can offer on a typically wet and windswept bank holiday, we popped into the sweet shop on the way back to Dreamland to buy some proper English Seaside Rock for some friends. We found some immediately. Trouble is, it says "Made in Blackpool" on it.

The English Seaside. Once you've been, why would you ever choose to go abroad again?

Don't be a fool again / they're just a bunch of hooligans

2010-08-22T14:57:00.005+01:00

Everyone's familiar (I assume) with the 3am paranoia associated with too much alcohol the evening before - the sudden realisation you're awake, you're alert....and what was it exactly you did last night?

But you can't blame alcohol this morning - not for everything, at least. For yesterday was, on balance, a horrible day. On the one hand, I won a toy meercat playing darts at a fairground in Toquay. He is called Malcolm, and he will be coming home with me. It was a proper fairground, with dodgems and plastic ducks which for £2.50 you can hook to win small, underwhelming toys made in China, the kind of fairground that brings back floods of nostalgia first forged in the travelling fair in the Ribblesdale Baths carpark circa 1986. On the other hand, we found ourselves at the City away game yesterday mere metres away from a group that calls itself, inexplicably, Bradford Ointment, and which is, as far as we knew, banned from both home and away games. Too cowardly to go up to them in person and tell them to shut the **** up (probably just as well, as you will see) I'm going to go some small distance to making up for this by blogging about it now.

Middle class person that I am (and I realise I shatter this illusion slightly by pronouncing class was a hard "a"), I've always been mildly embarrassed by the behaviour of City fans at away matches, but it's always been just on the right side of tolerable. Polite Barnet fans, announcing that they would like to welcome the visitors from Bradford, are probably a little dismayed when said visitors then sweep into a chorus of "What the fucking, what the fucking, what the fucking hell is that?" to the tune of "Guide me Oh Thou Great Redeemer" and directed at Barnet's mascot, the man-dressed-as-bee Mr Bumble, but this is in reality quite funny... right? Similarly, when a marginally rotund player for the opposing team is substituted for another and leaves the pitch, they're fair game to be on the receiving end of comments like "Nice one, we can see now." Aren't they? That's just banter. But the Ointment Gang took this to a whole new level, and it wasn't a level I liked one bit.

I've been to more Bradford matches than I can count. I've been to such salubrious locations as Aldershot and Accrington, and yet, apart from the somewhat over-exhuberant use of the f word and the odd bit of personal abuse, I've never been truly offended by anything, and never have I felt ashamed to wear a City shirt.

Yesterday, though, all that changed. As the announcer at Torqauy generously announced the arrival of the "Visitors" from Bradford, to general jeering and chants about "Southern Pansies" from the assembled mass of which I was a part, a little bit of me though "Oh, heck", but the rest of me was mildly amused. There's no danger, I thought. Torquay haven't conceded a goal in the last 9 of their home matches; they're top of the league. If we're the first team to break their run, well, all I can say is: Nice one, City! If not, well, there's no shame in that. We're at the seaside; it's a bank holiday next weekend. Who cares what happens?

I'm not going to give you a blow-by-blow account of the match because, frankly, I know you couldn't care less, but let's just say that being one goal and one man down ten minutes in is not the start we were hoping for, and this only served to fuel the passions of the group next to us. Bradford Ointment are, I discovered on reading up on them later, a "professional" rent-a-gang, a group of "committed football hooligans" who've proudly asserted on national television their intent to cause general disruption wherever they go, and a group many of whose members are currently banned from going anywhere within five miles of away games. On the evidence of yesterday, those who proudly associate themselves with it (they had displayed an enormous BNP-style England flag which was tied from the top to the bottom of the standing terrace in such a way that a whole exit route was blocked, much to the dismay of my health and safety-obsessed husband) are also, for want of a better word, racists.

Amidst the torrent of carefully constructed criticism that basically ran along the lines of "Taylor, you're ****ing shit!! Your players are ****ing shit!! You're a bunch of ****ing ****s! Are you happy with this shit you ****ing ****?" the ringleader managed to call Torquay player Chris Zebrowkski (who I'm pleased to say then scored the second goal, securing the home team a comfortable win) something I'm not even going to repeat on a blog for reporting purposes, and for which I'm both appalled and amazed he wasn't carted off there and then. Later on, after an admittedly half-arsed display by the Bantams, he decided to target the players themselves, screaming at Zesh Rehman for being a "Paki", his tirade culminating in the outburst "You think you're so ****ing good for community ****ing relations!! Why don't you ****ing go home you Paki bastard!"

Nobody did anything. Nobody, including us, dared to, unless you can count talking to a steward, who shrugged his shoulders and said they were "onto him" but there was no police support and there was basically nothing they could do. They are probably right; the group, as they were (this might have been a new contingent altogether) are well known for starting violent fracas both in and out of grounds, and such a fight on a terrace packed with families and with one exit route blocked could have been very dangerous indeed. At the same time, though, I type this with tears of anger and disappointment pricking in my eyes. What must the players have thought of us? And the home supporters? We have a reputation in Bradford as a city bristling with racial tension, but this is untrue; it is unfair. We are a warm, generous, vibrant city. We have faced more than our fair share of social and economic problems but we are bouncing back every day. Thugs like this only serve to enhance this bad and largely undeserved reputation, and at this I am upset and ashamed. They have no place in football - the FA claim to be taking a hard line on racist abuse - and they have no right to associate themselves with Bradford City.

I didn't stand up to them, because frankly, as I have admitted, I am a coward. But I am doing the best I can to rectify this. I am, as the chant says, City til I Die, and so Bradford Ointment I say this to you: get the hell off my terrace. You are not welcome here. And to Torquay fans: my sincerest apologies.

Nth Degree

2010-08-19T20:10:00.005+01:00

Well it's that time of year again. You know, the time of year when Admissions "accidentally" diverts their phone to my office, and everyone over 25 suddenly starts talking about "Our Day", as in "It was harder in our day. In our day nobody got As. In our day we had to take 12 3-hour exams in 4 days. In our day the exam papers were in code and you had to crack the code before you could answer the questions, and you had to memorise pi to 250 digits then write it on the exam paper in your own blood while Miss Whitham held a gun to our heads. Kids couldn't do that now."

Probably not. But in "your" day (I'm picking on the over-35s now) you didn't pay any fees, you got some free cash from the government that you wouldn't need to pay back and you could sign on in the holidays.

Which is not going to be a problem for a significant number of students this year, because apparently there aren't any places. Now this isn't strictly true. I know this, because I've had a look. There are a smattering of places available if you wanted to try your hand at any of the following:

- Sports Surface Management (er...mowing the grass at the Oval? Being one of the people who has to break it to a baying mob of Bradford fans that the match is off because the pitch is waterlogged AGAIN?)
- Alternative Theatre (Hamlet on Pogo Sticks)
- Animal Behaviour - (the study of the centre of any provincial town on a Saturday night
- Customer Service - (presumably 3 years of honing such phrases as "I understand what you're saying madam, but..." and "I'm not authorised to answer that question")
- Emergency Studies (I need a library book - and quickly!)
- Equestrian Psychology (And how does winning the Grand National make you feel?)
- Foot Health (Podiatry for people who don't like long words)
- Music with Outdoor Studies (Playing the violin on a hill?)
- Pilot Studies (at City they call it Air Transport Operations, which makes it sound less like you'll be reading about Biggles and more, well, Degreeish)
- Risk Studies (3 years looking at risk assessments and tutting at blocked fire exits. My husband would love this!)
- Sport History (that would be SO useful for pub quizzes...)
- Television Design (I assume this isn't actually designing the televisions?)
- Pretty much anything if you're prepared to go to Bolton.

So there you go. If you've got your results but don't have a place yet, check out UCAS. It kept me amused for, ooh, at least 15 minutes.

One Skinny Latte. And a Pie.

2010-08-07T16:30:00.025+01:00

Greggs has gone all... up-market. Yes, that Greggs. Greggs the Bakers Greggs. Greggs "Patrick McGuinness Does Our Ads and We Think That Adds a Touch of Class" Greggs. Greggs "If You Scrunch Up A Slice of Our White Bread it Turns Back to Paste" Greggs.

You get the picture.

But now Greggs on the Strand has redecorated. A shop that in the past would not have looked out of place in the Kirkgate Shopping Centre (I believe they have two there, in fact) reopened with a shiny new sign designed to look like overly-varnished wood, and a sort of 1970s-style breakfast bar along one wall at which you can perch precariously on a trendy chrome bar stool as you eat your Steak Bake and flick through one of the women's magazines that has inexplicably appeared there. Doughnuts and other such produce which used to sit tantalisingly under a see-through plastic counter for generations of kids to gaze at and implore "Pleeeease, Mum? Pleeeease?" are now proudly displayed in huge wicker baskets - the sort of thing that would attract the term "rustic" were this Hamstead or Kew Green, and that, conversely, attract flies and a touch-before-you-buy attitude from the Strand's fastidious clientele. You then go to the counter and are asked if it's "eat in or takeaway". Eat in?! Are you kidding? What would possess you to want to eat in a Greggs? Even Patrick McGuinness doesn't eat in Greggs, he takes his pasty away and eats it in the privacy of his own car while it pisses it down outside. Eat in?

It seems that to an extent this sophisticated exterior masks the same old Greggs, though. You can still get a Meal Deal, and a Meal Deal still includes a Grab Bag bag of crisps so big that even Gary Linekar might save some of it for later, and you still get a reassuring choice of Coke, Sprite or Fanta when it comes to the drink "option". But even the food itself is edging into suspiciously high-class territory. For a start, they seem to be catering for the health-conscious, and frankly, my health is not something that's generally in the forefront of my mind when I go into a Greggs. I've never stood in a Greggs and thought, "Oh, I'm glad to see the the chicken salad sandwich is now on wholemeal bread and contains low-fat mayonnaise", but rather something along the lines of "I really fancy a pie". But, in case you're interested, low-fat mayonnaise is now on the menu along with other new products which include "cupcakes" (SMALL cakes, to you and I) Steak and Mushroom Lattice (steak and mushrooms in fancy pastry, aka a Crap Pie) and Maple and Pecan Swirl (which sounds altogether too American for me to even investigate further).

And that's all very nice and admirable, but there's a Pret a Manger two doors down from this particular Greggs, and if I want an overpriced bit of fancy pastry in a paper bag I'll go there (they do "swirls" too - they have cinnamon in them and I'm ashamed to admit they're rather good...) But I don't want that from Greggs. I want instant sugar-based gratification from the likes of Jammy Biscuits, which are exactly what they say they are: bisciuits with jam in them, or a bun with its fake icing and underwhelming yet nostalgic glace cherry on top. I want slathers of full fat mayonnaise on my shiny white bread and the comforting assurance that a coronary could be just around the corner. I'm not really into Grab Bags or Fanta, but I appreciate the thought and would be sad to see them go.

So true to these sentiments, I went for a breakfast meal deal (being as I was in urgent need of sustenance on a Friday morning, having yet again fallen foul of the mistaken belief that Thursday night is the new Friday) in the form of two rashers of bacon in a big white roll, and a strong coffee.

"What kind of coffee would you like?"

They have different KINDS of coffee in Greggs? Don't mess with my hangover this early in the morning!

"Um...."

"Cappucino, Latte, Skinny Latte, or filter."

I didn't ask what was in a Greggs skinny latte. One sugar instead of three, perhaps? Semi-skimmed instead of full-fat milk? I'm assuming it isn't soya milk, but who knows these days? I chose the take away option and multi-tasked by walking down the Strand whilst eating and listening to Blur (God bless ipod shuffle) and got bacon fat on my blouse in the process.

There are no less than 7 branches of Greggs in Bradford; there are 5 in Blackburn; there's even one in the Arse End of Nowhere that is Nelson; you can look these sort of scintillating statistics up on their website, and I'm sad to say that I did. There are also 2 just on Lower Marsh Street in SE1, though I've never worked out why. Greggs, which Stuart Maconie singled out as a shining example of Northern greatness, is putting down roots in the South faster than you can say "Accrington Stanley? Who are they?" but in doing so it's changing.

Or, as one of my friends incisively put it "Gentrification: the final frontier".

The One That Got Away

2010-08-02T18:49:00.005+01:00

I think the bloke who plays David Platt in Corrie walked past my window today, and the fact that this potentially constitutes news surely means it's time to start thinking of moving on. 19 mostly-inane telephone calls and a Power Ballet (power ballet?! Surely you should do that to Power Ballads?) session later, perhaps it's time to make a mental note that swirling melancholy and reading too much Tony Harrison is a bad combination if you haven't written anything in a while:

The shop is open seven days a week
But closed on Fridays – so its sign proclaims.
Returning in the dusk it may seem bleak
At first, as, walking through the sheeting rain
The past flashes before you, menacing,
In sordid neon letters, lights the way
And on the blackened walls graffiti sings
“So long, suckers” – the one that got away.

Gusts of abandoned plastic bags and chip
Cartons with their discarded chips, and glass
From broken bottles, cigarettes and strips
Of unsuccessful scratchcards, and a mass
Of derelict white goods free for the taking,
A sofa, soiled mattress, broken chair,
Two lads eyeing the pickings, hesitating
As strains of Danny Boy waft through the air.

Still more graffiti, misspelled and irate
On splintered boards where windows ought to be
And walls and garage doors splattered with hate
Attack at once a whole community.
So far removed from once-cherished ideals
Concocted from beneath Victorian domes.
A broken bicycle with missing wheel
Plaintively signals: Come on in; you’re home.

* * * * * * * *

The Only Way Is Up

2010-07-31T23:18:00.003+01:00

It is a truth universally acknowledged - or hypothesised by me, anyway - that when things are all running smoothly and you feel you can handle anything Life throws at you, Life muscles in and bites you on the arse, slaps you round the face, then kicks you headlong into the gutter before sniggering and sauntering away.

So I've temporarily locked life away in a tamper-proof box and am resorting to late-night blogging and, of course, football until I can be arsed to go and open the lid again.

So forget all this World Cup mallarky; that's old news. The real thing kicks off in a matter of days, and I shall soon be pootling off to Torquay to watch for myself. Oh yes, it doesn't get any better than that.

And my self-worth did peep round the doorway and toy with the idea of maybe moving back in for a while when, having sent a letter months ago to Bradford's fanzine with this very suggestion, I read this on City's website today. In case you care (I have it on authority that at least one of you does...) they are bringing back the strip worn in 1911, the year the Mighty Bantams won the FA Cup. The replica strip is going to be worn at cup matches this season, to commemorate the days when we were, um, good. Admittedly it's hard not to dwell on the fact that the reason the anniversary is so important is that we've done pretty much bugger all since, but all the same...

What would make it an even better commemoration, though, would be if "Speirs" could be printed on the back of the fans' shirts. Jimmy Speirs scored the winning goal that day. He was killed in 1917, at the Battle of Passhendale.

I received an email the other day from an old friend who'd joined the army straight from school. The email said "I'm now a banker, which is a sell-out, but it's better that being shot at." It sure is, and on reading it I felt flooded with almost physical relief that he was safe and well. I'm soppy like that; I'm an idealist; I'm naive; I'm basically an idiot.

And I am City to the core.

And I don't understand why, 100 years on from the victory of which we're so proud, we're still sending men to remote parts of the world to shoot the crap out of each other and blow one another up.

Oh well, here's to this season - and the only way is up.

2010-07-26T18:38:00.006+01:00

My life has been punctuated by surprisingly interesting and pleasurable diversions recently, from Andi Osho's preview show (if you go to Edinburgh, GO SEE IT!! GO! GO!) to watching the Mighty Yorkshire thrash an uninspiring Middlesex, to hearing from 3 old friends. My visit to York University, however, cannot be squeezed into this category.

For those of you fortunate enough not to have been, York University is one of those esteemed institutions founded at just the wrong time. Whilst the likes of Durham and Oxbridge can boast dreaming spires, Manchester and Bristol Victorian grandeur and newer establishments dazzle with an abundance of chrome and glass and futuristic magnificence to rival the Jetsons, York exhibits a level of archictectural prowess of which communist Bucharest would have been proud. That is to say, it's made of concrete.

Not nice concrete, either, if such a thing exists. The University's own "Brief History" can only bring itself to describe it as "low-rise, prefabricated buildings around a man-made lake", which is true if a giant tin bath full of water surrounded by generous quantities of duck shit constitutes a "lake". Perhaps this gloomy picture can be brightened slightly by knowing that the Boomtown Rats have played there, and apparently students are occasionally ticked off for hunting the rabbits, though they were probably just trying to ease the monotony of being stuck for three years in a marshy, concrete jungle which makes Dagenham look picturesque.

Oh, and there was pubic hair in my shower. Quite a lot of it and, crucially, it belonged to someone else - presumably the previous occupant of my room at Alciun College. Sorry, I was going to try and inflict that image on you a little more gently, but frankly I can't think of a tactful way to put it. My "accommodation", for which we queued for over an hour because there were 600 of us and two women on the desk who seemed to want to have a nice chat with us all, was also notably devoid of lavatory paper and a waste bin. As for being "en suite", well, it was one of those student all-in-one shower rooms, by which I mean it's perfectly OK to have a shower provided you don't mind having to perch on the edge of the toilet while you're doing it - which is probably prefarable to wading around in the puddle you're creating on the floor while trying to dodge the pubes that are now floating in it. There was a somewhat superfluous shower curtain which had seen better days, but as my mate said "I was worried if I used it I'd end up laminated between it and the wall."

This is not the worst of it, though. You would think, wouldn't you, that one of the few perks of staying in student accommodation is that at least you can guarantee there'll be a cheap bar somewhere within spitting distance. Right?

Well, I don't know. There were certainly SIGNS for various bars. We even found one of them, but it was shut - students in York clearly make a run for it at the earliest possible opportunity, and apart from the rabbits basking in the drizzle knowing they won't get shot at til September, the ducks and geese merily defecating on all the walkways and the occasional stray bishop attending the General Synod (which was going on at the same time) the campus is entirely devoid of life in the summer, and, consequently, it is also devoid of beer. It was also starting to feel like an episode of The Prisoner: one sign pointing towards a bar looked promising, so we followed it; a while later, we saw another sign, pointing left, and licking our lips in anticipation, we followed that, too. There were no more signs for a while, until we saw one pointing down a hill. We were practically running at this point... and came upon a dead end. We retraced our steps and went back to the sign. Sure enough, it pointed down the hill. On the other side of the very same sign, an arrow pointed back the way we came. I stand by the fact this mysterious bar doesn't exist. If anyone has ever found it, let me know. My only consolation was that the food was fabulous. For a start, they had proper gravy - none of that "jus" rubbish Warwick served up at its far slicker conference operation the year before.

I survived, though, thanks to the Huby arm of my lovely family who took pity on me and drove me into Heslington for a couple of pints of Black Sheep. Thanks Fiona - I owe you one.

Thank You For The Music

2010-07-17T22:14:00.003+01:00

I realise in advance that this post threatens to destroy in an instant any credibility I've built up over the last few years in presenting myself as a cynical and on occasions angst-ridden Smiths fan, so I'm going to make my confession early on and get it over with: on Friday night I went to see Mamma Mia. No, wait, that's not the worst bit. I LOVED it.

I really did. I absolutely loved it. Much as I'm relishing the opportunity for a spot of self-absorded-yet-communal mopery in the form of an Eels gig in September, I sent my inner Smiths fan into temporary hibernation for the night and rocked up with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law to the Prince of Wales Theatre in Coventry Street (yeah, the yellow one you can buy on the Monopoly board. In case you every wondered where it is, it's just next to Leicester Square - much where it is on the Monopoly board, in fact.) Now if you are one of the three-or-so people left in the Western world who hasn't been to see the Meryl-Streep-sings-ooh-Dominic-Cooper-is-nice-I-hope-they-sing-Waterloo frenzy that was the film version of Mamma Mia, let me explain the storyline. First of all it has NOTHING to do with Abba, much in the same way as the (even less-convincing) musical "We Will Rock You" has nothing to do with Queen. It doesn't even have anything to do with Sweden (it's set on a Greek island, though I'm not wholly sure why), and even the 70s barely get a look-in. Mamma Mia is the sort of happy and wholly unlikely plot that gives cheese a bad name, a valiant if spurious attempt to get all the hits from Abba Gold plus the ones that that boy band covered into an a two-hour singalong fest with occasional if unnecessary six-packs and a few skimpy dresses thrown in for good measure. The basic plot is this: a 20-year-old, whose ageing single mother used to be some sort of singer so that the plot isn't clutching at straws so much when the songs come up later, wants to know who her dad is, and so rather than going on Jeremy Kyle and demanding a paternity test she invites the three possible fathers to her wedding, having found their names in her mother's diary, which has handily been hanging around for 20 years unguarded, and into which its author has non-discreetly apparently listed every sexual encounter she ever had. Presumably she meticulously wrote their addresses down too so the daughter knew where to send the invites, and in another happy twist of fate they never moved house, and clearly none of them have anything pressing to do back home, because they all obediently turn up on said Greek island as invited. Not only that, but they prove to be quite good at singing and dancing, enabling them to play a full part in what follows when their ex-lover, her two ageing sidekicks, possible daughter and for that matter all the inhabitants of the island start breaking into spontaneous choruses at opportune moments in the unfolding drama. We get Dancing Queen at the hen do (well they had to get it in somewhere) to Slipping Through My Fingers (as her daughter puts on the wedding dress) to The Winner Takes It All (when confronted by her old flame and possible father of her child from all those years ago). Even Waterloo featured, if only as an encore. The only one they didn't manage to work in was Fernando, which is a shame because it's my favourite, though it's probably just as well, because, knowing the lyrics, the plot would have had to go from spurious to utterly surreal for that to work.

The upshot of all this is that the daughter decides she's too young to get married, but that's OK, because one of her mum's blokes steps in with the line "Why waste a good wedding?" and he and Meryl Streep (or Linzi Hately in the stage version) get married there and then. Surprisingly the vicar, who seems to be inexplicably Anglican and either way not Greek Orthodox as one might expect, smiles jovially and goes right ahead as though this sort of thing happens every day - I'm sure in real life his bishop would have something to say about that. But then I'm sure in real life he would think it rather infradig to join in with the obligatory chorus of "I do, I do, I do", so let's just suspend our disbelief for a bit.

But anyway, despite - or because of - all of the above, it was simply brilliant. It was so utterly implausibly ridiculous that we were happy to go with it all, and anyway, Morrissey fan or not, you can't help but admit that Abba were something else - proper tunes, for a start, my mum would say. Great tunes, memorable lyrics, and enough fond memories of Discos Gone By (remember EYP 1998, people?!) to have people literally - and I use this in its correct sense - dancing in the aisles, clapping and singing along. Some in costume, but please be reassurred that this was going a little too far for me.

It's a rubbish plot - as I say, it would have been a lot easier to nick a hair off them all and run one of those DIY paternity kit tests, and would have involved a heck of a lot less singing and leaping across Greek beaches in anachronistic flares. But it's GREAT. You should see it. Please? It would make me feel a lot less self-conscious at having had so much fun...

A Quest for World Domination

2010-07-10T20:40:00.009+01:00

So there are just 22 hours left to wait before tomorrow's titanic forces battle it out to determine who will gain the ultimate victory, which comes up for grabs only once every four years: I'm talking, of course, of the epic struggle between Paul the Psychic Octopus and Mani the Psychic Parrot.

So where's the drama? Well the unlikely-named, German-based but Weymouth-born (you didn't know that, did you?) cephalopod, who I'm sure I don't need to tell you already has a 100% success rate when it comes to this year's World Cup predictions, has predicted Spain to win, whereas upstart and somewhat less humorously-named Mani is certain it's going to be the Netherlands. So, what can we conclude from this? Well, apart from possibly concluding that it's all just a load of bollocks, or that Mani knows which side his kroketten are buttered whereas Paul is just keeping his tentacles crossed he doesn't get turned to calamari, maybe we can hope for a nail-bitingly close match? Crucially, in his picture, Paul is sitting on top of the Spanish flag, but with two tentacles most definitely resting on top of the Netherlands. Perhaps this means it will go to penalties, with that Robben bloke or one or his tall blonde over-consonanted colleagues missing that crucial goal?

Not so, says newcomer Harry the Crocodile, wading in at this unacceptably late stage and devouring chicken from under the Spanish flag, which inexplicably leads his Aussie owner to declare not only that Spain will win, but that "it will be a close match - 1-0 to Spain."

So where does this leave the gamblers amongst us? Well, it would be both unwise and unfair to desert Paul after all this time and put our faith in some upstart bird with no football-based track record who currently spends his time pecking out lottery numbers in Singapore's Little India, or, worse, some narky reptile with a penchant for chicken whose fortune-telling credentials are so far unknown. Paul's choice, on balance, seems more than probable, and our own leading commentator, a man unrivalled in his skills as a crisps salesman as well as his knowledge of the game in question, agrees with him

But at the same time, you can't help but think that Paul might be getting a bit cocky. He certainly looks more than a little smug in his Daily Mail picture ("Schtuff you, Holland!" he could be saying), and maybe it's high time he was taken down a peg or two. As for Harry, well, he's probably just copying the Cocktopus, thinking he will be hailed a hero for mere plaigiarism, for which, frankly, I'd like to see him turned into some expensive handbags. As for Mani, well, he has an honest face (look at those little eyes!) and a sob-story to boot: day after day performing cheap fortune-telling tricks for passers-by from his tiny cage on a hot, dusty street. Mani is, after all, the avian equivalent of an X-Factor semi-finalist who's come from a Council Estate in Newcastle yearning for their big break.

A further selling point of predicting a Dutch win, though, is that, in my heart of hearts I'd love to see it happen. For a start, when we went to Spain a couple of years ago it was, to all intents and purposes, broken, and thus we failed miserably in climbing up to the top of Columbus and going up in a cable car as both had broken lifts. In the Netherlands, conversely, I climbed up Utrecht's Dom Tower and took in the obligatory views of the (freezing flippin' cold, but still) city below. And more to the point, two of my favourite people live there, and, in England's absence, are cheering on the chaps in orange. And anyway I don't want to give some freakish, eight-legged creature which I've always thought wouldn't look out of place in a sci-fi film the satisfaction of knowing he was right, AGAIN, and I'd be even less happy about giving some repile the wrong impression that he somehow had psychic powers when he's clearly just trying to get in on the act and has a good PR adviser. And finally - I promise, finally - it would amuse me hugely if lots of gamblers lost a lot of money because they were daft enough to place a bet on the basis of a prediction made by an over-confident sea-creature who I'll wager has never even seen a terrace or drunk tepid tea from a polestyrene cup in sheeting rain or eaten a dodgy handburger proffered from a van by a bloke called Dave in his poxy, tank-dwelling life.

So, GO NETHERLANDS! I'm off to buy an orange t-shirt, and tomorrow you will find me in the nearest bar drinking Amstel - which incidentally Camino claims, somewhat improbably, is "Spain's most popular beer". Not after tomorrow... I hope.

My Weakness Is None Of Your Business

2010-06-27T22:15:00.010+01:00

So let's be serious for a bit. Not long, I promise - I shall self-destruct if I do the whole serious thing for too long, and the result may not be pretty. But just this once...

I would love, eloquently and straightfowardly, to be able to explain depression - not just symptoms in an A-Z list, but the actual effect of it all, the overwhelming, drenching wave of utter hopelessness... But, as that sentence proved, I can't, without resulting in what sounds like melodrama. That's perhaps because it is, utimately, all rather melodramatic. It can feel like the world is ending, and if it doesn't, well, it can feel like it flippin' well should - and quickly. Depression is all-encompassing. It probably affects different people in different ways, and to different degrees, but ultimately, it's disabling, sometimes just in some aspects, sometimes disasterously so. It can stop you from doing things, from daily tasks to one-off acts, and if it doesn't, it can at the very least stop you from enjoying them. Small things take on the deepest significance. Throwaway comments from friends become the most piercing of criticisms, cheap digs suggest you might have hurt someone irreparably, whereas in reality the person you think you've hurt is probably oblivious to your angst. Emails soliciting no reply cause panic: the person must hate you, or they would have responded. Numbing paranoia ensues. Depression can cause tidal waves of unshakable anxiety - sleeplessness, nausea - the whole bundle. You want to curl up in a corner and sob yourself to an early grave, or, worse, you lash out at others, and THEN you want to sob yourself to an early grave. Nothing is fun any more - not even the things you enjoy, or the things you are best at. Life becomes something to dread; day after day all you're doing is passing the time - and managing to do even that is an achievement. The sensible bit of your brain can't override the bit that says "I want it all to go away. I want to go away. I can't do this any more."

And, worst of all, eventually someone will blithely say to you "Cheer up" or (lethal!) "pull yourself together!" or even a simple "snap out of it." (To which I believe the response is "I'll snap YOU out of it if you don't...[insert phrase of choice here]" After which, of course, you will feel irrepressively guilty, having hurt someone you love, will assume that they never want to see your sorry ass again, and why should they? because frankly YOU don't want to see you're sorry ass again. You're useless, you're a nuisance... And so it goes on.

I can't explain it well, but I would urge everyone to read Marcus Tresothick's autobiography. It helps, of course, that the bloke is one of the greatest cricketer's the world (well, at the very least, Somerset) has ever known. But it does go to show this: you can have everything going for you. You can be hugely successful, great at what you do. You can be physically attractive. You can have, to all intents and purposes, a great life - a lovely, supportive family and enough money not to have to worry about making ends meet. But with depression, and whatever the likes of Janet Street Porter (*coughBITCHcough*) might write in whatever rag remunerates her to wind people up, none of that matters. It can affect anyone, of any age, of either sex. And unlike a lot of illnesses it isn't always visible. Someone may be full of bravado, acting the class clown, a joy to be around,but on the inside they might be tearing themselves apart in gradual, painful little rips.

So be kind to people. Try to understand, and if you don't, accept that because it isn't something you can fully grasp, it doesn't make it any less real, or any less painful. Be kind to other people, and be kind to yourself.

In the words of Forrest Gump, that's all I have to say about that.

To pee or not to pee

2010-06-21T16:12:00.006+01:00

Well I didn't go to Rotterdam. This is partly because Eindhoven Mate announced that he was actually in Corree, which, as it turns out, is not Korea spelt whimsically, but Korea spelt in French. Either way, though he wasn't in happy striking distance of the Gare de Nord so instead I stayed in Paris, where I spent my first night in an English bar, drinking English beer, where I and lots of other English people shouted abuse at the England players performing underwhelmingly on a big screen. Basically, I did exactly what I would have done in Camden, except the beer was around £2 more expensive. I also had an interesting tour round the delight that is the French public toilet.

Now, on the one hand, the French public toilet has a lot going for it. First and foremost, such a thing exists, which is more than can be said for Italy. You can go into any of the little grey toilet tardises which litter the streets of Paris and urinate to your heart's content. This is a little ironic, given that, of all the nations on earth, it is the French who seem the least inhibited when it comes to the question of where one should or should not urinate. During our stay we saw no less than 3 men nonchalantly pissing in public, making no attempt to pretend to hide behind a bush or anything so prudish. No, they happily stood there, one outside the Sorbonne, one on what was basically a traffic island masquerading as a public park, and a third in a doorway in the Latin Quarter, cocks aloft, and just got on with it. This all in spite of the fact that generally in France, unlike public places in the UK, you don't seem to need to pay to pee.

This willingness to urinate in public, though, perhaps comes through years of realising that the facilities on offer are perhaps not all they seem. Over four days in France I had more genuine opportunities to practice my French conversation whilst engaging in the cameraderie offered by a queue for a bar's toilet than I had at any other point.

The bar in question ostensibly had two toilets: one for women and one for men. So far so good - this is already rather a lot better than the previous establishment had managed. The problem was the Ladies was out of service, and the regulars seemed to think this was a permanent state of affairs. Fine, there was a cublicle in the mens, and it didn't seem inappropriate in the circumstances for women to use that. To get to it you went through a Wild West-style swing gate, which was small and therefore left nothing behind it to the imagination, rendering it somewhat pointless - behind it were two urinals, which you could mooch past to the single cubicle. Oh the fun I had saying to chap after chap - none of whom was in the least bit phased - "il n y a pas une toilette pour les femmes. J'attend pour cette toilette." I then gesticulated towards the swing doors, indicating that they could jump the queue, because, as I chirpily continued "Il y a une pissoir mais c'est pas pour les femmes!" Oh how we chuckled - I like to think my French teacher would have been proud. It certainly proved more useful than "Le livre est sous le table" and "le chat est sur la chaise" and all those other useful things I've never had the need to say in France.

As I say, though, this was a relief having left a pub off the Rue Mouffetard where I queried the existence of a single toilet which had definite "male" sign on the door, innocently asking "Est ce qu'il y a une autre toilette pour les femms?" The barman smirked on hearing the question, and replied, with a certain amount of relish, I think, and in pointed English "No. Is mixed."

It might well have been mixed. It was also a hole in the floor with no lock on the door that made me rather nostalgic for Malaysian facilities.

2010-06-14T22:42:00.002+01:00

I am bored.

I am alone.

I am blogging at 11pm when I should be thinking about bed.

I'm going to go to Rotterdam.

Why? Beause it's there. Because I have about 30 hours to kill at the start of which I will be in Paris and at the end of which I will need to be back in London. 30 hours is an annoying amount of time, because it isn't long enough to go anywhere far-flung, but it is long enough to start brooding, and it would feel like something of a waste of a day's leave to be sitting in a flat, shouting disbelieving abuse at my Wii Fit (I'll give you a Wii Fit age of 35...)

The Man in Seat 61, oracle of all that is Train Travel, tells me I can get to the Netherlands. RailEurope though is a little less optimistic. I can, it tells me, get to Eindhoven, where I was hoping to rock up and persuade my friend who lives there to stop saving the world, or whatever sciencey things it is he does in Eindhoven, for just enough time to show me the sights, which I suspect are not many. But this will involve a near-5-hour trundle across a country I have no interest in trundling across, and a change in Rotterdam, and this is somewhere I'd actually like to go. Plan B, then, might be to persuade said friend to come down to me. Plan C involves me, a bar, and as many random Europeans as I can find to watch the football with - and what a choice we have on 21st: Spain vs Honduras or South Korea vs Portugal, and frankly, if I said this thrilled me, I'd be lying. Even I have to draw the line somewhere.

2010-06-08T22:33:00.005+01:00

So, in one of my occasional efforts to pay back my debt to society I have booked an appointment to have some grumpy people suck a pint of blood out of my arm in exchange for an underwhelming biscuit and some tepid tea in a polystyrene cup. I booked said appointment in the usual way, online, and received the usual terse email confirming my alloted time... along with the following postscript:

***Attention Football Fans***

The last time we had a World Cup (2006), the summer blood stocks fell to their lowest level for six years and there is a concern this could happen again due to a lack of donor attendance at session when key matches are on.

We have noticed your donation appointment coincides with

Argentina Vs South Korea 12:30
Greece Vs Nigeria 15:00
France Vs Mexico 19:30

If you think this would affect your capability to attend the session on this date please contact us again by either re-submitting another form or call our donor helpline on 0300 123 23 23 to arrange an alternative time.

Now, I booked my appointment for 8.45 in the morning and I can't for the life of me think how a match between the might that is Greece vs Nigeria 6 hours later might prevent me from keeping my appointment. Or, in the words of the blood service, make me "incapable" of doing so. Frankly, this worries me. I can only think it's because you're not supposed to drink within 12 hours of giving blood. Well, you can if you want to, but the effects can be interesting.

It could all be academic anyway. I recently returned from the States, and apparently you can't give blood within a certain amount of time after returning from the USA because of... malaria. Yes, I kid you not: malaria. So, while I was freezing my arse off wrapped in my Boston, Massachusetts hoodie, I could well have been harboring a potentially deadly, mosquito-borne tropical disease. You learn something new every day.

* * * *
As a mildly creepy addendum, a friend of mine today booked her appointment, to coincide with mine (moral support and that sort of thing). As someone who freely admits that at best she lacks interest in the game, she was nonetheless surprised when she received an email confirming her appointment time, but not including the postscript about the day's fixtures. What I want to know is: WHAT DO THEY KNOW ABOUT US? AND HOW DO THEY KNOW IT???

I've said it before and I'll say it again: they're watching us... and this lot want your BLOOD...

Born To Run

2010-06-01T10:23:00.012+01:00

So, I was fairly contented with my 1:01:07 time, which, despite being gallingly ever so slightly in excess of the 1 hour I was aiming for, can't be bad for a first 10K road race.

I was pleased. I was the fastest person with my Christian name (out of, um, 4) and I ran the second 5K in a record (for me) 26 minutes.

Or a "PB", as I understand you're meant to call it.

And here's my problem: Other People.

I made the mistake a few weeks before the race of joining a chat forum (which will remain anonymous) for said race, and within minutes I was reminded of everything I hated about sporty people at school, and, by extension, why I hated sport and assumed I wasn't very good at it. This site seemed to largely be a place where people go to inflate their egos, and in doing so, crap on everybody else's. Hoping to find lots of words of encouragement from seasoned runners, I instead found the likes of "Looking forward to the 10K. Will be a nice relaxing warm-down after the marathon." A fellow first-timer had innocently asked the question "What is a good time to aim for?" and probably wished she hadn't, having elicited such responses as:

"Well, let's just say I'd be very disappointed if I was anything over 50 minutes." (No, mate, let's NOT just say, hmm?) and

"I'm aiming at 45 minutes." (Let's read the question, shall we? Did she ask what time YOU were going to run it in? Do we even care?)

"Anyone in reasonable physical shape should be aiming at under 55 minutes." (That told me, then.)

"The world record is around 27 minutes." (Er... and?)

There then followed an impressive tangent where people tried to out-modest each other in that awful ironic way where they say the exact opposite of what they mean:

"Well I've done hardly ANY training this year as SO busy at work. Just about managing a couple of 10-15K runs each week." (Translation: I'm trying to make you feel inadequate about the level of training I've done. And by the way, my job is far more important than yours. And I'm a wanker.)

"I have been suffering with a ligament injury so am having to come to terms with the fact I probably won't beat my current PB of 48 minutes, though I hope to do it in under 50." (Translation: I am super-human and/or probably don't have a ligament injury. And either way, I thought I'd drop in that I'm faster than all of you lot. And a wanker.)

"I was disappointed last year as I ran it with flu and managed a pitiful time of 45 minutes. My PB is 42 so I hope to beat that this year." (Translation: see above.)

"Training going OK. Got a PB of 51 minutes last week so shouldn't complain. Will be disappointed if I don't break 50 on the day, though." (Translation: I'm already faster than you most of you lot, and just want you to know that, even if you are happy with your efforts, I shall be sneering at you. Oh, and I too am a wanker.)

Other discussions included such topics as: "Look How Much Money I Spent On My Shoes" and "What's The Furthest Distance You've Run? I Bet Mine Is Longer".

So by the end of reading all this I was convinced that unless I ran a half marathon every week and spent my savings on a pair of shoes that looked to the untrained I like space boots I wouldn't get round at all, and even if I did finish I would do so shamed by the overwhelming averageness of my time, not to say shamed by the fact that I was running a mere 10K not just because it was something to do on a bank holiday Monday when there were no marathons on. I started to forget about piffling detail such as the fact I was raising money for charity and this was a Nice Thing To Do, and none of my sponsors would say "Eee an hour and one minute, you say? I think I'll be having me fiver back, then..." Funnily enough, few people on said chat forum actually mentioned things like charities, and those who did were ignored. ("It's my first 10K and I'm doing it in memory of my brother who died of a heart attack last year", wrote one woman, which elicited no response.)

Now, the day after the race, I have plans. I plan to run in my City shirt (that's the kind of classy chick I am) for the Bradford Burns Unit next year. And maybe I could "smash" my "PB" (if you're allowed to use that term for a time of over an hour.) Looking at the chat forum, people are announcing their times to one another, even though I don't think any of the people there have ever met, which begs the question: why are you telling us this? "38 minutes. Not too bad." writes one "I took 10 minutes off my PB with a sub-40 time" boasts another. (Well GOOD for YOU.) But the winner here: "Came 331st overall, 269th in my age catagory. Not bad considering I ran an abysmal time by my standards. We were stuck in the pen at the starting line far too long with no water so I must have got dehydrated." (The fact that you're better than, what, 95% of participants rather than 96% of participants is terrible, isn't it? I think you should sue the organisers... Go on... I dare you...)

All I can say is thanks to the person who wrote this:

"My first 10K. Very happy with 1 hr 15 mins, and reckon I can take a couple of mins off that as I stopped for a piss after 7K."

Nice.

I read the news today, oh boy

2010-05-27T19:08:00.006+01:00

And I read this. I read it and it left me, I suspect along with everyone else who read it, with a single incredulous response: "There's a Bishop of Croydon?"

Because, let's face it, where Bishopping goes you can't help feeling Nick Baines has drawn the short straw. You wonder how he must feel when hob-nobbing with his fellow bishops from Rochester, Durham, Winchester - towns steeped in centuries of history, their Cathedrals towering over the town in all their stately resplendance. I can almost hear him defensively interjecting "What do you mean? We have IKEA! And the UK Border Agency Public Enquiry Bureau. And we're the home of Nestle UK - it says so on the platform of East Croydon Railway Station."

Which is a good start, because I didn't even know it had a Cathedral, and if I'm honest I'm still not certain - though if they have a Bishop I guess they must be keeping him somewhere.

So being the Bishop of Croydon has about as much cache as being the Duke of Aldershot or the Earl of Cleckheaton. But that's not really Nick Baines's fault, and in his defence, the bloke likes football.

Which is presumably why he's written prayers especially for the World Cup. And good prayers they are, too. I particularly like "Lord, as all around are gripped with World Cup fever, bless us with understanding, strengthen us with patience and grant us the gift of sympathy if needed. Amen." He also remembers to pray for those who don't like sport, which I'm sure will be of comfort to my mother, who will no doubt get an awful lot of knitting done over the next few weeks. On a more serious note, he prays for South Africa.

And his reasoning for all this? "More than half the population pray at some time and everyone will be affected by the World Cup in one way or another, so it makes sense to have some prayers for those that want to use them." Well, yes. And at some point everyone will be affected in some way by, say, acne, piles and people walking irritatingly slowly in front of them when they're trying to actually get to somewhere, so using that logic... well, anyway.

It also makes you wonder if this might prove anything, depending on who wins. If England does win, does that mean God sides with the English? Or has He just given them victory out of pity? Does the fact that the Italians, French and Brazilians always win prove conclusively that God is a Catholic? Um, no. Does God even like football? I always like to think he prefers cricket. Which generally speaking would mean he's Australian, and there are some anachronistic difficulties with that which take us into a philosophical discussion about the meaning of Time which I can't be arsed to have.

Looking back at this blog, football has played rather too important a part in my life this year. This very moment I'm sitting rubbing my hands in anticipation at the thought of the League 2 play-off final this weekend - which sounds fine, until you remember that League 2 is actually League 4 with a more comforting name and my team were actually 8 places off the play-offs. Yet I rubbed my hands in glee when Barnet stayed up and Aldershot stayed down, safe in the knowledge this gave me two accessible places to watch my team score a few own goals and generally make a complete balls-up (get it?) of the whole shebang.

What's more, a Theology student of mine, inexplicably excited by the Bantams mug on my desk, was more than a little enthusiastic by my AKC efforts to the extent he was insistent I should jack in this advice lark in favour of a PhD on something to do with Cultural Memory and Bradford City. Which would be lovely, though I'm not entirely confident I could tell you what Cultural Memory is, nor is "cultural" a word I've ever particularly associated with Valley Parade... but it's tempting...

Also in the news was the intriguing headline "Pink Hitler advertisement upsets Sicilians." On so many levels, this isn't worthy of my comments...

Bye bye Charlie

2010-05-10T20:58:00.002+01:00

"I get to spend a lot of time with you" Wii Fit greets me smugly, before telling me I have a Wii Fit age of 35 because I can't co-ordinate my hands and legs to get something to stay within a little blue box on screen within a certain time frame.

"I haven't seen much of F lately," it comments as I dwell on my state of unbalancedness, and I note with amusement our 3 characters on screen - mine looking slightly emaciated, jumping up and down in an annoying way like the narky girls who were keen on hockey at school used to, next to H, a sometime-visitor to our house, who jumps up and down a little before looking tired and thinking twice. In between them F's character, bulging out of the blue jeans he lovingly chose when creating the Mii (and believe me the likeness us so uncanny as to be just a little creepy) has fallen asleep standing up. We know this because its heading is lolling and there are zs coming out of its mouth.

"You've run before," Wii Fit exclaims triumphantly after I've chased a cat (?!) past a couple of waterfalls and into a Northern European Town of Unknown Origin (it has old houses and a windmill - I'm confident with Northern Europe.) No shit Sherlock. Wii Fit doesn't know that yesterday I ran a few metres under 10K from Twickenham to Richmond to Teddington Lock. Then ate a large chocolate eclair. I'll give you Age 35.

I wouldn't say Wii Fit is running my life. No. I still have a CHOICE. I still feel I could CHOOSE to, say, write a poem or read a book or watch TV. I'm just choosing not too. Yes. Choosing... Right...

Speaking of running, it's time for a plug. I'm desperately trying to get sponsors for this 10K through London, and am running for a mate I blogged about (scroll to the bottom) in November. So, you know, if you maybe, um, have a fiver to spare... I'm also running for Mind, and I feel a little mean as poor lovely Mind has fallen to the bottom of my priority list now that Will has his gorgeous grin on my other page, but they are here

As for the running? Well I've discovered muscles I never knew I had in bits of my body I can't say I've ever noticed before. I've noticed bits of you can hurt that surely aren't meant to. And I've become obsessed. I should be writing about the election.

But everyone else has already written about the election, so I'm not going to, except to gloat that not only has Charles Clarke (immortalised on this very blog as the MP who used to nick other MPs' dinner money) not only lost his seat, he lost it to a Lib Dem chap called Simon who is several decades his junior and one of the pepole he proverbially crapped on from a great height when pushing through top up fees. You remember, Charles? Those debates when you couldn't even be arsed to sit up straight and tuck your shirt in or look as though you respected our right to an opinion? Ooh, that's gotta hurt. Does it hurt, Charlie? Does it? Serves you right you slovenly, discourteous, overweight, charmless tosser.

2010-04-27T22:37:00.011+01:00

I clearly have too much time on my hands and sport on the brain, and this is most definitely a bad combination. The sport bit seems somewhat unavoidable now - for a start the cricket's got off to a reassuringly ambling start at Lord's and my race is looming, and I came home from almost two weeks marooned half way across the globe only to receive a reproachful ticking off from my Wii Fit, which chided "Even if you're busy you should still take time to exercise." BUSY?! You don't know the half of it. You're a MACHINE! Yes, my Wii Fit is like a jealous partner, immediately suspicious should I spend time with any other exercise aid. My Wii Fit doesn't take the time to find out that actually I was ragging it up a tower in Boston. Having reprimanded me thus, Wii Fit, having told me in that unlikely helium-sucking voice to "Step on me" (which I always find a bit disconcerting), congratulated me on losing weight, then, when I scored 4 stars on a muscle workout, commented (somewhat proudly, as though it was somehow responsible for any sporting prowess on my part) "You're no stranger to exercise." Fickle machine. Didn't take back its wounding comments about my fitness commitment did it, though, hmm? Noooo.

Ahem.

So yes. My holiday came at possibly quite an opportune moment as my obsession with my new gadget, and my determination to get one over on it whenever possible, was in danger of spiralling out of control. "Unbalanced?" My partner caught me shouting at the screen after my fake little cartoon ski-jumper missed his take off and flew headlong down the slope in a giant snowball. "I'll show you unbalanced!"

"Do you think you might be taking this too seriously?" F ventured, gently prising the Wii remote out of my hand, which was fine, because I wasn't using it, I was too busy heading imaginary footballs at a fantasy goal while deftly dodging giant severed panda heads (no, I don't know either) and shouting "Get in! Oi, Taylor, where's my trial?"

So I had some unfinished business with my Wii Fit and its vilely nice fake personal trainer when I finally got home, and in case you're interested I've now beaten my high score on the hula hoop, step plus (yes PLUS - none of this half-arsed step for me), football, ski slalom, pretty much every muscle workout and yoga pose, not to mention the aforementioned ski jump, and my husband is starting to forget what I look like. Then Wii Fit - yes, the Wii Fit that told me it hadn't seen much of me lately - told me to take a break. So I skulked off to the gym and rowed 5K instead. SEE, WII FIT??? I CAN LIVE WITHOUT YOU!! BUT CAN YOU LIVE WITHOUT ME? HMM?

I also came home to the slighly improbable news that, in my brief absence, my football team had leapt inexplicably two places up the Division 2 table (remember that's Division FOUR to people who can count) to an unremarkable 14th as opposed to a dismal 16th. (Oh, don't worry, we've dropped back to 15th since and there's not a lot in it.) Overcome with excitement, my creative side jostled to get a word in edgeways, and the upshot is the first 3 verses of a 12-verse poem, which possibly shows I was reading too much Tony Harrison on the plane. Yes, as I said, too much time on my hand. You'll be pleased to know I just joined a choir...

Saturday. Another faceless town
Of pound shops and graffiti. Yet again
Supporters in their hundreds have come down
To brave the air of menace, and the rain.

Claret and amber-clad they left at dawn
With Ginsters to sustain them on their way
Longing for victory over rivals sworn,
Clinging to memories of glory days.

Four defeats in a row now, and one draw
Yet something tells them this time they will win it
If they can only maybe try to score,
Avoiding own goals in the ninetieth minute.

God bless the Irish

2010-04-25T21:12:00.007+01:00

I love the Irish. I've always loved the Irish, because they are good-humoured and have good booze; they throw a great party, and they gave the world, amongst other things, The Pogues and Father Ted. I even love them for populating the world with bars which guarantee I can have a vaguely acceptable pint and watch some sport wherever I am in the world. And now I love them even more because they got me safely home. I love them in spite of the fact that their in-flight entertainment system broke, so I couldn't watch The Hurt Locker for the third time in an effort to catch the end without falling asleep. In fact, I giggled when, after two attempts to show the safety video and failing, a timid voice came over the tanoy saying "All flight attendants to their stations for a MANUAL check."

It seems we are not the only ones who love the Irish. The only other time I've been on a flight that has broken into spontaneous applause on hitting the runway was on a particularly bumpy flight back to Guernsey one winter, and in that instance passengers were showing their appreciation at not being dead, which is not quite the same.

Relieved to be finally back on British soil, tapping away on my own computer with Cocteau Twins playing away in the background as I sip proper tea, I've been browsing various news websites to find that many people haven't been too fortunate. Thousands are still abroad and will be until May. Oh and I was particularly interested by some of the comments here presumably from people who were not left in limbo for days in a foreign country. Now, as it happens, we did, in the end, have a rather good additional 4 days in the States, but this was only once we'd got out of the chaotic labyrinth that was the Response to the Volcano, i.e. personnel from the Foreign Office to Virgin Atlantic taking refuge under their desks and saying "Please don't hurt me!"

So what was the response? Well, it was this:
We were due to fly home on 19th from Washington. Our flight was cancelled. Fine, we thought. This has been going on for a few days. Virgin will have this in hand. So, as instructed by their website, we phoned them.

49 times.

On the 49th time, we eventually reached a recorded message (previous calls had cut us off or given us the engaged tone.) So we settled back to wait for a reply and listening to the recorded message, singing the praises of Virgin's complimentary amenity packs (they come with socks and eye masks. Oh yes.) We listened for two hours and 5 minutes. Then a chirpy woman called Rachel answered (I say chirpy... I'm lying...) Now to be fair to Rachel she'd probably been getting it in the neck all day from stranded Brits and had the right to be well and truly fed up with her lot on life by the time we got to her. Rachel offered us a flight on May 4th. We pointed out to her that this was over two weeks away, and perhaps not entirely practical, and thus followed the obligatory lecture on how we were not the only people stuck (a fact we were well aware of having encountered some very harrassed looking teachers and a hoard of teenagers from if their accents were anything to go by, somewhere in the Midlands, grabbing fast food at the Old Post Office earlier in the day - a position I can't even bear to imagine).The next day the skies began to clear and planes started flying, and by the following day things were almost back to normal. At any rate, US television had stopped covering it (it had been receiving, ooh, I'd say about 5 minutes each hour up until then. In fact, to my amusement, Fox News reported Nick Clegg's performance in the first TV debate above the fact that the whole of Europe was out of bounds, and the rest of the time were too busy calling Obama a Marxist to much bother about anything else.) So we tried to phone them again to see if anything had come up. We tried at 10pm and were on hold for 2 hours. We got up at 5am, and again, after 18 attempts, were put on hold. For two hours. At 7.15 we gritted our teeth and booked ourselves a flight from Boston a whole week earlier than the one we'd been promised by Virgin. Aer Lingus described availability on this flight as "good". We could, incidentally, also have flown into Schiphol, where we have a friend (he doesn't actually live at the airport, obviously, but nearby...) In fact, we would have been happy to be flown anywhere which meant we were on the right continent, and would make our own way back from there. We told Virgin this. They repeated that we had to take what we were given.

I'm not for a minute suggesting that Eric the Volcano (as I'm calling it, not even attempting to pronounce or spell its actual name) was in any way some sort of clever airline ruse to keep us trapped in the US, though I'm sure the US government will find a way of blaming Iran sooner or later. On the contrary, I do have some sympathy with the airlines, who must have all lost millions. However, to all the anonymous and supercilious web commentators out there, I'd like to make the following points:
- One commented that airlines were not putting their seat prices up for stranded passengers, they got to fly for free. Well, not quite. We got to fly for the price we'd paid if we were prepared to put our lives on hold for a fortnight. This would cost us, the airline company itself (who under EU law are obliged to pay our bed and board during that time) and our employers quite a bit of cash, while at the same time there are planes flying with empty seats.
- Yes indeed. We flew back with Aer Lingus - lovely, wonderful Aer Lingus - and counted 9 empty seats on that flight. And yet we were not offered the chance to fly back with a carrier other than our own. Virgin, who we'd paid already, could have offered us a transfer - even if they'd asked us to pay the difference. They didn't. (Some airlines apparently did.)
- This doesn't seem wholly fair. It seems even less fair when you realise there are families with young kids, and teenagers who are meant to be taking GCSE and A Level exams shortly, who are still stuck, and who don't have the money to just go ahead and book another flight. There were two of us - imagine being a family of 5?
- Yes, airlines pay bed and board, but you need to ask for that to be refunded AFTER You get back. Again, how on earth do they expect family groups to just pop sums like that on the credit card?
- Having browsed the internet, I realise that one thing that would be handy would be some sort of site that told you how to access healthcare abroad - what you might need to pay, and, specifically, how to get a prescription if yours runs out, and how much this might cost. Contacting the Embassy in such an instance involved access to a phone, and even if you got this far, you were then faced with another recorded message telling you if you were stranded you should "contact your airline or travel provider." My airline can't even staff its phoneline, let alone dish out drugs.

But, on a cheerier note, I want to say...
- Thank you to all the people who flooded my Facebook page with offers of places to stay all across America - and indeed to their cousins, friends and others whose floors and spare rooms they were volunteering for us.
- Thank you to all the people in the US who made us feel welcome, from waitresses to tour guides (with the exception of the bloke in the hotel who was obsessed with Baltimore. Mate, you need help! Get over Edgar Allan Poe, already, he's been dead for years. Oh, and the father who loudly told his kids in Boston that we had a nerve being there. I know - F and I personally kicked your ass at Bunker Hill and are now almost 300 years old! How can we show our faces?)
- Thank you to our friends in the UK who sent encouraging messages and listened to our email rants.
- Thanks to whoever the artist was who put these cows in Logan airport - yes, I'm not sure if the one on the left is wearing sunglasses or a black bra over its eyes, either...

- And once again thank you to the beautiful people of Aer Lingus.

Passing the time

2010-04-24T20:00:00.016+01:00

So, what DO you do when you have an uncertain amount of extra days in a foreign country so vast you probably don't have the time to get to the interesting bits? Well, apart from spending 5 hours on hold to your airline listening to a recorded message so inane it's a miracle you don't end up throwing the telephone from your 8th floor window in disgust (the message begins "Hello Gorgeous, we're SO glad you called." Hello WHAT did you just call me?) there is, I suppose, the usual stuff you do on holiday, namely, for us:
- Climbing up some high things to take in the view. The fewer elevators en route the better. The resulting calf-aches are all part of the fun.
- Finding a good graveyard to mooch around. I love a good graveyard.
- And preferably a big old church to throw into the bargain.
- And, so you can say you've been, some art galleries jam packed with glorified innuendos from artists you've never heard of, but which you have to look at as you pass them in search of the one genuinely famous item in that museum, which invariably turns out to be on loan to the gallery you visited last year.

We did all of these things. In THREE cities. Bingo. Here are some highlights:

New York
A view from the ultimate High Thing, the Empire State Building (though it has lifts - and rather impressive ones at that.)

...and a memorial for 9/11 in a lovely church round the corner from Ground zero:

...and a spot of Jackson Pollock...

Washington:
A view from the tower of the beautiful National Cathedral - bam - two in one!

Oh and this was the Cathedral, in case you're interested:

We then proceeded to the art gallery at the Smithsonian, which was missing various things, but did include the Avercamp exhibition we'd already seen in Amsterdam 3 months ago.

Boston:
A big monument. 294 steps and no lift! Calves ache like hell. Mission accomplished!

And here's the view...

This handily formed part of the Heritage Trail, which also took you to no less than 3 churches and 3 graveyards: I don't know who Ezra Dibble is. I just like that fact his name was Dibble. Anyway, Boston Tourist Board, we love you, and we are forever in your debt. Now for a flight home...

Stranded

2010-04-24T19:30:00.018+01:00

So what was meant to be a 7-day transatlantic jaunt has turned into a Kerouac-style 11-day epic, thanks to a volcano with a name so implausibly short on vowels I find it hard to acknowledge its existence. Anyway, because of said volcano (which I think starts with an E, so I'm going to call it Eric) I've seen rather more of the US than I cared to, including such centres of cutting edge, urban civilisation as Hartford, Connecticut...

... and Wilmington, Delaware...

...not to mention some random, seemingly nameless swathes of industry:

Slightly more interestingly, we whipped past Philadephia, famous for its soft cheese and the Fresh Prince of Bel Air:

... all accompanied by an unintentional but appropriate soundtrack of Eels, Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie, REM and Emmylou Harris. And if all the above isn't enough to whet your appetite and send you running towards the next Greyhound bus I don't know what is.

And it strikes me that this is one of the almost incomprehensible things about America as far as us Brits are concerned - it's so flippin' huge. Stranded in Washington D.C. with a promise of a flight a whole 12 days after ours was meant toleave (and a sound ticking off from Rachel at Virgin, who told us that there were hundreds of thousands of other people for whom they'd summarily failed to make adequate arrangements once airspace had reopened, and frankly we should ve grateful) we faced the prospect of 2 weeks in a motel in the arse-end of a city we'd already seen, or a trip to somewhere new entirely. The hotel receptionist, for reasons best known to himself, seemed adamant that his stranded guests should up sticks to Baltimore, and his insistence on the subject was so bordering on sinister that I think it's put me off ever venturing there. As we gathered - my other half and I, a stranded holidaying Dutchman and four geographers from Belfast who'd been in Washington on a conference - in the hotel loby bemoaning our lack of funds in this expensive city, he would cut in at random intervals with a sort of petulant drawl: "Go to Baltimore. Got to hostels.com. Take the megabus to Baltimore and go take a bottle of whiskey and sit by Edgar Allen Poe's grave."

Tempting though this might have been, we were eventually drawn to Boston, "nearby" by US standards and somehwere that warranted exploring. It would mean covering less than half the East coast at a cost of a few dollars each, and we'd see states we'd never see again (mainly because there isn't anything to see.) Boston was, in relative terms, not too far away, and would allow us to fly from Newark, New York or Logan with relative ease once Iceland's little shot at an apocalypse subsided. So we booked a bus and pootled off to Massachusetts with remarkable ease and no sense of urgency on the part of us or indeed the driver. 442 miles and 9 hours later, there we were - a journey about 1 and a half times the distance from London to Newcastle. Of the many little flurries of excitement we passed along the way was the welcome sign to Connecticut, which read "Welcome to Connecticut - we're full of surprises" (they lied - I was not surprised by anything during my brief visit) and a huge billboard declaring "When you die you will meet God," with an accompanying picture showing a heart monitor flatlining. I'm still not quite sure what to make of this, or indeed what the point of it was. More amusingly perhaps, not to say rubbing it in, was the following advertisement for Logan airport: This is more than a little ironic, not to say rubbing our noses in our predicament somewhat.

But not as much of this. As we put our heads together in that lobby trying to devise an escape plan, punctuated by an ocasional outburst of "You could go to Baltimore. Edgar Allan Poe's buried there. You can take a bus" a woman of indiscriminate Northern European origin walked past dragging a huge suitcase.

"Well, I am lucky, I am going home" she announced in matter-of-fact, clipped tones, as I tried to figure out if she was maybe Swedish, Danish or Dutch.

"Really? You've managed to get a flight? Where are you from?"

"Iceland."

A cold silence hit that room with a blast louder than any erruption Eyjafjallajökul could muster. Frankly I'm surprised she got out of there alive.

Sacrosanct

2010-04-09T20:39:00.011+01:00

Inside everyone there's an emo trying to get out. Here she is:

You will not be remembered. Well, you might,
But not for something good, something you’d like
To be remembered for. But something else –
Some misremembered anecdote one tells
In front of weeping relatives amassed
Inside some faceless edifice. At last
Those quarrels are forgotten (for a while)
As kith and kin compete to show a smile
Between brave tears. And no-one dares to say
“I didn’t really know her.” Anyway,
That’s not the point – you cannot be the one
To say “She’s nothing special” now she’s gone.

They probably won’t mention how you died,
And will conceal all the times you tried
To disappear; to leave this world behind.
No, eulogies will emphasise the kind
Of things a eulogy’s designed to do
The times you cared for others, or when you
Said something really funny, or perhaps
Made some silly mistake. That little lapse
Of concentration – something really small
That made us laugh, but caused no harm at all.
They’ll talk about the scholarly success:
Certificates collected in excess
Of those around you; competitions won
And musical prowess, and all the fun
You had together - every football match
You cheered at, every evil plan you hatched
With your contemporaries, and all those beers
That you enjoyed together through the years.

They won’t mention you curled up on the floor
Shaking, the bloodstains drying on the door.
They all know now and wish that they had known
Then how you’d felt so desperately alone,
Had pulled apart the curtains every day
And wondered if you’d ever find a way
To leave all that anxiety behind,
That clawing sense of failure, and find
Some drug to somehow stem the rising fear
And panic, the inevitable tears.
But you couldn’t. And now what’s done is done.
The world will find a way of moving on
And you will find your memory enshrined
For evermore in some campaign for Mind
Or somesuch charity. And now it’s true,
Ironically, the "loser" that was You
Is living an unlikely legacy
In death. Now tell me, are you really free?
Did you succeed when we all felt you’d lost?
And did you ever stop to count the cost
Of this, your Master plan? And will you be
Remembered, or made sacrosanct? We’ll see.

Nothing to Declare

2010-04-07T18:05:00.016+01:00

I WANT A PENSIONER!!! Actually, I'd quite like a puppy, too, but Frank won't let me. so until I convince him, an elderly Chinese woman would do as a stopgap.

The idea of having to declare a small Oriental pensioner at Customs amused me, hence the fact I ended up photographing this poster, which I saw in Hong Kong, land of Weird Signs usually stating the flippin' obvious ("Wash Hands After Toilet") or trying to put across something entirely incomprehensibly in cartoon form, like this one:

No, I don't know, either. Something to do with putting meatballs in holes, I think...

2010-04-07T18:02:00.001+01:00

Yes, I have indeed been clearing out my Photo folders on my laptop.

Yes, that is indeed a dancing man dressed as a giant bee.

And yes, of course we lost against Bournemouth.

Sleep is for wimps!!!

2010-04-05T00:03:00.006+01:00

Yes, indeed. Wimps, and those without insomnia. The rest of us while away the nighttime hours doing useful things, like scouring the internet to see if things that made us laugh in our late teens are still there. Invariably they are, so here's a little snippet for you:

Patrick Moore Plays the Xylophone - He does indeed, and is inexplicably still alove and going strong at 180 (or however old he is...)

The Pandas Must Die - I have nothing against pandas, and the original was SO much better.

Badger Badger Badger - now I never understood this...

Only in Kenya - I have a t-shirt with this on...

A bit of vintage Mitch

Time to Bomb Saddam - for some reason this seemed very funny at the time, though maybe less so after the catastrophe that was the Iraq War. Nice little bit of rubbish animation though...

Northern Kittens - gotta love them kittens.

And finally...

You can't beat those bunnies!

On a related note, my dad came out of our bog beaming with pride yesterday, and expressing his excitement over the fact we have books in our toilet. "Hey, it's intellecual, that!" he exclaimed, going on to tell us enthusiastically he'd been working his way through "Mock The Week: Scenes We'd Like To See" while the rest of us hopped around with our legs crossed on the other side of the door. He went into the lounge shaking his head with amazement that his daughter had now reached those heights of sophistication he'd been clawing his way towards for years without success and was now safely part of the North London intelligensia. He didn't comment on the fact that, among these badges of refinement in this mini library are "The History of Farting" and "Potty, Fartwell and Knob", a list of real names that are basically a bit rude.

2010-04-02T14:49:00.007+01:00

In what has turned out to be a fairly triumphal week I did indeed manage to write about Bradford City in my AKC paper, offering myself a self-congratulatory pat on the back as my pen scrawled across the page prattling on about how Durkheim's concept of "the sacred" could well be applied to its beleagured fanbase (my chaplain said it was relevant, and he is someone whose views on faith and football I trust implicitly). I also managed to have three of my "audience question" answers read out at The Now Show's recording last night, and will be perhaps unjustifiably joyful should they make the final cut. Earlier in the week I discovered that my church has its own cat, Sylvester. Not only that, he is apparently contactable by email. Frankly it's all a bit too exciting.

It's about to get a whole lot more exciting, too, because tomorrow I'm going to Bournemouth - yes, BOURNEMOUTH - to watch the Mighty Bantams take on... well, Bournemouth, obviously. OK, so perhaps this isn't quite a titanic clash comparable to, say, Barca vs Real Madrid, or Manchester United vs AC Milan, or even, if I'm honest, Huddersfield vs Preston Northend. But still, it's all relative, and I don't get out much. Bournemouth are good (well, again, it's all relative - when I say "good" I mean they're third in the table and thus tipped for promotion, and didn't end up with a draw in the last game as a result of two own goals.) More to the point, we drew with them last time, having as we do this habit of doing rather well against teams that are far better than us (we beat top-of-the-league Rochdale) and spectacularly badly against the likes of Barnet and Accrington Stanley. (Who are they?)

So here I am trying to second-guess Peter Taylor, wondering if he'll play James Hanson and wondering if it's very wrong to secretly kinda fancy James Hanson given that he looks about twelve. And I'm wondering what I'm going to wear, for this is no ordinary match. Oh no. My dad has secured, for reasons I don't quite understand but haven't questioned, posh tickets (as far as such a thing exists) for a pre-match four-course meal and half-time coffees etc. This means I have to hob-nob with Bournemouth fans; it also means I can't wear my replica shirt; it also means there is a dress-code, Bournemouth Hospitality People obviously thinking they're the management of Chinawhites, which states that I can't wear trainers or jeans. (HUH?!? IT'S A FOOTBALL MATCH!!!!!) So yes. I'm going to watch Bradford in a smart skirt and blouse. Um.

So on many levels, we'll see how that all goes. In the meantime I may email Sylvester the Cat and canvass his opinion on the subject.

Anywhere

2010-03-28T20:39:00.004+01:00

I've decided I want to go to Hamburg. I shared this with my husband in the car on the way to Kent to spend a weekend tearing down my sister-in-law's dining room wallpaper. He seemed a little non-plussed, despite his constant protestations over the years that we should go to Germany, on account of the fact that he did GCSE German and therefore knows how to say really useful things like "Where is my guinea pig?" and "There are four sausages in my cupboard." I don't know why I want to go to Hamburg. My reply to that question would be: "Why not?"

Actually I have a very roundabout logic that I think only works in my own fair head. It goes something like:

- I am meant to be revising for an exam, and am thus allowing my mind to wander onto anything that doesn't involve Heresies, definitions of religion and spurious ways to get football into my answers. And one such thing is...
- I want to GO SOMEWHERE! Having just come back from Somewhere Else, I already have the urge to run away from all the things I've come back to. From, in no partcular order, web stalkers, work, exams, general creeping anxiety and worry.
- There is not a chance in hell I'm getting on a plane for 13 hours EVER AGAIN.
- I have the Beautiful South song "Rotterdam" on my iPod and thus in my head. Always. Incessantly. It's just one of those songs.
- Ooh, and talking of Rotterdam, I'd quite like to go to Rotterdam.
- Yeah. That would be good. I've never been there. Nice.
- Enter The Husband, with something like "Why do you want to go to Rotterdam?" followed shortly by "is it because of that annoying song?" (I have to admit to - and possibly make apologies for - having a certain fondness for the Beautiful South, having seen them perform a late-evening set at an unusually un-muddy Glastonbury years ago. That's my excuse, anyway, and I'm prepared to stick to it...)
- Patiently explain, um, well, you see, that gave me the inspiration, you know, the song, and seeing as we've already been to both Liverpool and Rome, also mentioned, that leaves...
- Him: "I'd rather go to Anywhere."
- Hmm. What might constitute "anywhere?" Well Hamburg's a port and it's kind of only just on the other side of the border... roughly speaking...and of course there's the Beatles connection...
- Bingo! I want to go to Hamburg.
- That's decided, then.

So if anyone's been to Hamburg and has any suggestions of things to do there, please let me know. Preferably while I'm still "revising" as it will give me something else to think about. Cheers my dears :-)

Bind Us Together

2010-03-22T19:55:00.007Z

Hmm, so ending the first day of the working week with those immortal words of one Stephen Patrick Morrissey - "In my life/why do I give valuable time/to people who don't care if I live or die?" - running through my head is not a positive sign of things to come. (The answer, by the way, is normally "because you get paid for it.") And now I'm sitting brooding in a corner, Tears for Fears providing appropriate mood music, pouring hot water onto a mango teabag and wondering how many times I can do this before it stops tasting of mango. (Not that it especially tasted of mango in the first place...)

I could of course go for a deep and meaningful walk, secretly wondering if anybody will bother to come and look for me, but they won't; and anyway, it's pissing it down; and I've already been running tonight; and my tea would get cold.

So...

I'm going to think of ways to work Bradford City into my impending AKC exam instead.

And everywhere I look opportunities present themselves!

OK, so I probably won't get very far working it into an essay on Heresy. I can't think of even the most tenuous link that might do anything other than bemuse the examiners. But that's OK - I have my fun cut out of me already there trying to think up some cow definitions for Apollinarianism and Arianism. Oh yes. You'll see it here first.

And then, as I pretended to read Durkheim, elaborated little analogies started to form in my mind. Durkheim, you see, was the bloke who said that rituals were "designed to elicit, maintain and reproduce certain mental states among participating groups" (that's a quote, that!) Can you apply this to the (unswervingly optimistic) fanbase at Valley Parade? Damn right you can.

Oh and before you point out that this is not some new discovery, OK, OK, I know it isn't. My book - yes I'm reading a BOOK for this exam. Get me! - even uses football as an example of "the sacred in secular society". But to put me in a little perspective: I have an English degree. I'm qualified merely to read Durkheim and compliment him on his flowing sentence structure. Except I can't even do that, because he didn't even write in English. I'm the person who pointedly read "The Communist Manifesto" on the exercise bike in Fitness First, not because I understood it, but because I delighted in the irony of this little tableau. I know enough about sociology to snigger when F describes his A Level Sociology lessons as "Here's a picture of Marx. Now colour it in." But that's about it.

I do know, though, that Bradford has an unusually high turnout for a beleagured (by which I mean "rubbish") club, packing out a stadium of Premiership proportions every other week, and taking coachloads of supporters down to the most Godforsaken areas of Britain on the Saturdays in between. What binds them together?

I'm sure studies have been done - and when I have time I shall look for them - that look at class, and adversity, and all of those sorts of things, and the turbulent history of Bradford as a City as well as a Club probably does a lot to bring them together under that one corrugated iron roof in the name of football just as much as the tantalising power of the sport itself. But my book (same book - I'm only reading one. Oh come on, I'm not THAT keen!) gives some examples of events that have become "sacred", amongst them the death of Diana and September 11th. At Bradford, it was 11th May 1985, and it was the Bradford Fire.

56 people lost their lives in horrific circumstances when a stand caught fire and burned to a cinder in a mere 4 minutes. Now I'm normally cheerful (um, OK, that's pushing it. Shall we say "aiming at humour"?) on this blog, but it needs saying: people remember Hillsborough (and rightly so), and Heysel (at which 39 died); people forget about Bradford. Unless you're a fire safety officer (my husband watched the video of the disaster in Fire Safety Training) it isn't necessarily something you'd know about. But whole families were erased in an instant.The youngest to die was a boy of 11; the eldest a man of 86. Now, after every match, if you pop round the back of the stadium to have a peek at the simple, understated memorial you will not be alone. People pay their respects there week after week, and flowers are still left there. Silences are held each year; church services commemorate the dead on the anniversary. The club, despite its own financial problems, raises thousands every year for the burns unit at Bradford Royal Infirmary. And in the area directly around the stadium you don't generally find the undercurrent of racial resentment that can at times plague other parts of the city. In Manningham, local shopkeepers and residents, mainly of Asian origin, flocked to help, taking victims into their homes, making tea, letting people use their phones.

So yes, football does bind people together and instil a sense of community through its very power. But so does tragedy. I intend to write about both, if I get the chance, but in the meantime, I probably ought to stop sulking and be grateful for what I have. May God bless the victims of the Bradford City fire, and, of course, may God bless Bradford City.

Them Cow Things

2010-03-20T03:57:00.008Z

OK, so this probably isn't the usual way to deal with insomnia, but, having woken at 3am with stomach ache and various other ailments of the niggling, hypochondriac kind, I eventually got up, and have used this unexpected little piece of Awake Time to create - um, yes, 'fraid so - another blog! No, don't run away! Come back! This one isn't (wholly) full of my stuff, but an odd little collection of what has been an ongoing and frequently revisited theme on this blog since 2006. Bearing in mind I'm the sort of bordering-on-obsessive-compulsive person who not only puts all her books and music into alphabetical order, but frets as to how far the genres should be subdivided, it's maybe not surprising that I've finally collected together all the Two Cows into one place, and that's...

http://www.themcowthings.blogspot.com/

And Chees'm, before you point out to me that the correct title would be "Those Cow Things", I will, as my "merchandise" (t-shirt, £20, Carling Academy, woohoo!) advises, look you straight in the eye and say POGUE MAHONE!!!!!!

2010-03-15T20:33:00.005Z

So my father-in-law read my blog, and thus read "Overkill", and now I can only assume he thinks I'm a nutjob. So I'm going to refrain from writing anything that's come out of my own fair head today and will instead relate some pearls of wisdom from what is probably the single most offensive book ever written in the English language... and (wrongly?) possibly the most humorous.

In 1898 one Professor Mieklejohn published something which he erroneously termed a "text book" - one "A New Geography". Complete with a map proudly covered with pink bits, Mieklejohn sets out on an epic 576 page mission to offend every nation across the globe, with the notable exception of the British, throwing in a few sweeping generalisations and random (possibly unfounded?) observations.

Of the Dutch, who, he observes "have a fondness for old costumes", he remarks that "their most remarkable external virtue is cleanliness". He comes across as bordering on pleasantly surprised by this discovery, which makes you wonder about the hygeine of the rest of Europe.

He's rather complimentary about the Germans, who he describes as "a straightforward, honest, steady, hardworking, brave and loyal people", but dismisses the Spanish as "lazy, sleepy and prone to reverie."

To be fair, he is less dismissive of the Italians, on whom he goes into a certain level of detail:
"The common notion is that they are extortioners, uncivil, given to revenge, assassination, lying, treachery and dirt. This is a mistake. The genuine Italian is wonderfully gracious and charming, and attractive in manner. He is uneducated - 62% of the people cannot read or write. He is an ardent lover." This has to be one of the more random list of attributes I've ever read.

The Russians don't come out of it all quite so well, the "peasants" being decribed, in another rather random list, as "hard-working, fond of music and song, light-hearted, extrenely loyal, but dirty, superstitious and prone to intemperance."

But they do come out of it rather better than the entire population of Africa, who are generously described as "not all wholly savage."

But once we arrive in Asia things go rapidly downhill. Japan receives great praise: "The beautiful land of Japan has often been called, and with much justice, "The Great Britain of the East"." He then goes into the various geographical similarities, before concluding, with a hint of smug pride, "Both peoples are industrious, upstanding and fond of commerce." This however is merely context-setting for what follows:

"In character the Japanese exhibit striking constrast to the Chinese. The Chinese are dirty, the Japanese scrupulously clean; the Chinese are conceited and despise everything foreign, the Japanese keep an open mind for everything that is good; the Japanese are naturally industrious, the Chinese lazy."

Well, that told 'em.

But the Chinese are not alone. The Professor isn't all that keen on the Afghans, either. This is because they are, apparently, "rude, coarse, and careless of outward show. They are skillful artisans, generous, even truthful(!!)..." (wait for it...) "at least in peace; but when their evil passions are stirred up by war they are cruel, vengeful, treacherous and greedy. "God shield you from the vengence of the cobra, the elephant and the Afghan" is a common saying" (Yes it is! Have you not heard it?) "When any specially atrocious act is done, the Afghans themselves speak of "An Afghan job".

Riiiiiiight. Good, unbiased, factual stuff, then.

But the Piece de Resistance? Well, the Prof saves the best for last. Summoning all his remaining vitriol, he finally turns his attention to the "Native Australian", and unfortunately for the Native Australian he has obviously done something to offend this intrpid academic, who describes him as "the most degraded of all savages, with no pottery or religion" (pottery, obviously, is the measure of civilisation here; that's probably why he was generally nice about the Dutch) "In his language he can count to five and no further. He lives on shellfish, lizards, worms and grubs, and sometimes eats his own children."

I do rather like the image of grubs washed down with oysters. But other than that, words fail me.

Unfortunately, though, Miekeljohn doesn't know how to leave his audience wanting more. Having ritually abused most of the human race, he goes out on a climactic final chapter tantilizingly entitled "Coaling Stations of the British Empire".

If you come across the sequal in some obscure, UKIP-endowed second hand bookstore, do let me know.

A "genuine Malay village"

2010-03-11T02:22:00.007Z

I've only been on one organised "tour" since I've been here, as I've had mixed experiences of those sorts of things. This tour was around the area of Johore Bahru (though not visiting the city itself, which I'm told is a Good Thing.) We visited some truly beautiful stuff - a large mosque and a mausoleum, some old colonial buildings, and the coastline around the Straits of Johore. Then we went to a "Genuine Malay Village".

Now I don't know what they normally get up to in Malaysia, but if this is a genuine village I can't think that most people in this country ever accomplish very much. It also makes Malaysia seem like a sort of giant, Asian version of Beamish. In this Genuine Village, all the trees have signs stuck to them, in both English and Malay, so you can see what they are. "Palm Oil", one proudly proclaims, as he sits side by side "Rubber" and "Pepper". Genuine Malay Village clearly can't decide what its main industry is going to be, so has a bit of everything in one very small space to be on the safe side. This is very handy for the visiting tourist, keen to get a glimpse into Genuine Malaysia.

Inside the Genuine Malay Village the inhabitants are busy at work making Batik, which is rather intricate and very pretty. Fortunately, if you like them, you can go to the Genuine Malay Giftshop at the end and get some. But first, the people of GMV break into a spontaneous dance routine, followed by a little rendition on some wooden musical instruments. I can only assume this happens all the time in GMV, in the same way that we in the UK frequently leap onto our desks for a quick spot of morris dancing to break the monotony of the working day. And how fortunate that, while this is going on, there happen to be some handy benches, arranged in just the right formation for you to sit and take in this spectacle. If this has all made you work up an appetite, well, that's just unfortunate, because they then proffer durian fruit to you, possibly the single most disgusting thing to come out of South East Asia. I'm intrigued to know what possessed the first person to come across a fruit that smells like a sewer and looks like a hedgehog to think "I know, let's see what that tastes like." And I can't really describe what it tastes like. The closest description would perhaps be that it tastes like an extremely artificial, manufactured, sickly-sweet chocolate centre. It's sort of sweet, a bit like custard, with the consitency of over-ripe melon. Am I selling it to you? Fortunately we didn't take any back, since they smell so bad that they're banned from public transport.

The whole thing would be rather like visiting East London and being greeted by a group of men in caps speaking in rhyming slang, banging some dustbin lids together and breaking into the Lambeth Walk before feeding you some jellied eels. Tourists may think they've had a Traditional British Experience, but if you're that gullible I'm not sure how you'd have found yourself to the other side of the world in the first place.

And so we leave GMV, after three pewter shot glasses (which is apparently a local product, which they thus try to sell to us) of sumptuous cold chocolate drink to take the taste of durian away, several dollars lighter (yep, GMV takes dollars as well as the local ringit, which is pretty handy!) and carrying some Genuine Batik Handkerchiefs, with Malaysia written on them just to prove their authenticity. As we leave the Genuine Villagers have returned full circle and are back to their work, costumes at the ready should they suddenly have the urge to break into another dance, which I suspect they will in half an hour or so, as a coachload of Australians has just pulled into the Geniune Carpark.

Po Lin and the Buddha

2010-03-11T01:54:00.009Z

So here I am on the other side of the world seeking out the most exotic things I can find, and I found this. I sent this picture, which really sums up the most intriguing parts of the trip, to a good mate back in Europe, and the response I got was this:

"Wow, a fat man at the top of some steps. That's paradoxical..."

It made me smile, and it made me miss home.

The "fat man" is of course the Buddha, and not just any Buddha. Oh no. This, as the literature is at pains to tell you, is "The largest bronze seated outdoor Buddha in Asia."

That's quite a niche claim, and it implies there may be other Buddhas in various positions made of a whole range of materials in other parts of Asia that beat this one hands down. For a moment I'm intrigued as to what other positions a Buddha could take, as I think I've only seen them in the lotus position. Reclining, perhaps, or maybe Buddha standing up doing the ironing, or Buddha playing golf. Who knows? But it's still big, and climbing up the 280 steps to get to him does give you a sort of sense of achievement, not to say aching legs.

The Buddha is the centre of what is, unfortunately, becoming a somewhat tasteless tourist attraction. You arrive via cable car to Ngong Ping Village, which is entirely artificial and a sort of Center Parcs of the East. Here you can sample the delights of Euro Go Go, a pizza restaurant in the centre of the village, and you can buy bright purple hoodies with sparkly gold depictions of the Buddha emblazoned across the front (erm, you will NOT see me in Regent's Park in one of those.) You are given a schedule upon arrival which maps out each minute of your visit. First, you are instructed to "sample the delights of Ngong Ping Village", which presumably means buying some tatt and enjoying the use of a toilet that doesn't involve squatting or reaching for the packet of tissues in your handbag in the absence of anything you could call toilet paper. You are then allowed to go up to the Buddha, for which your brochure allocates 30 minutes. Before this you are supposed to go to the "Buddha Experience" which I think is some sort of exhibition housed in an oriental-style hut that looks as though it's come out of Disneyland. I'm afraid I can't report on the "thrills that will await you", because we didn't go. We did however trek the 280 steps up to the Buddha himself, foregoing the option of purchasing a meal ticket (much to the indignation of the lady behind the meal tickets desk.) This turned out to be well worth the effort. Upon arrival at the top you are greeted with a stunning view of Lantau Island and the sea beyond it. Unfortunately much of this view is now a building site, and the noise of several bulldozers, along with American tourists shouting "Hey, Candy, take a shot of me here!" cuts into the tranquility of this secluded spot. Unfortunately the Chinese view of "development" differs from the European one. In Europe, we'd call it "conservation". Such a spot would be protected, with perhaps a number of small, apologetic outlets being introduced to the area to cover any tourists' needs, hopefully disturbing the prevailing atmosphere as little as possible in the process, and the general look of the place would be maintained. The Chinese however are creating a themepark - the bigger the better. You descend the steps and are greeted by a chap selling bottles of diet Coke and the brand new, shiny "Walking with the Buddha Souvenir Store". Hmm.

After this you are allowed to go to your next stop - the Po Lin Monastery. This is a working monastery and it's a relief to see genuine pilgrims lighting incense and praying in front of the many gold Buddhas inside. Despite the tourists the area is quite tranquil, and even the surrounding commercialism is put into perspective for those of us who've been to Rome and been confronted by the mile or so of JPII paperweights and glow-in-the-dark Virgin Marys that line the route up to the Vatican.

If you're clever enough to sidestep the shops on the way back then one interesting and more tasteful bit of tat that's been erected is the sign telling you where you are, namely 12968 miles from the Statue of Liberty, 1972 miles from the Great Wall of China, and 9632 miles from Big Ben. I've never felt so far from home, and indeed never been so far from home. Commercialist or not, I was reluctant to leave Lantau Island and head back to the frenetic heart of Hong Kong.

Oscillate Mildly

2010-03-11T01:48:00.004Z

So two weeks into this and I seem to be inadvertantly clocking up as many modes of transportation that I possibly can, from the weird to the wonderful to the downright terrifying. In two weeks I've been on planes, trains and automobiles, buses, trams and ferries, not to mention travelling a distance of around a kilometer on a very big escalator through the centre of Hong Kong and travelling on the underground networks in 3 different cities. Most excitingly perhaps was a dizzying 30-minute ride over Lantau Island on a cable car, which we were warned may experience "some mild oscillations" due to the wind that day. Now I don't know about you, but i'd rather not experience any oscillations while dangling a precarious 400 metres above the South China Sea. But maybe that's just me.

More on that later...

Hong Kong - Don't Lick The Birds

2010-03-09T06:19:00.004Z

I have to admit I wasn't wholly enthusiastic about Hong Kong. This is partly because I’ve already been away from home and my husband for a while, and I’m starting to get homesick; it’s also because I’ve actually been finding it uncomfortable to breathe here. I’m told it’s the pollution and the weather, and this is probably true: visibility improved significantly today, along with my breathing.
Desperately lonely, I sent an email to a few friends begging for reassuring words. I received the following order from a friend:
“Just get out you – go look at some bird markets or something. Don’t lick them.”
So I went out. I left the University and I walked. And walked. And walked. Here’s a snippet of what I saw:
- A sign advertising “Adoption Day: Puppies and Pensioners”. I’d like to adopt a pensioner, but I don’t know how I’d get them through Customs.
- Lots of signs telling me not to feed any birds. So not only should you not lick them, you shouldn’t feed them either!
- Lots of birds – the ones you’re not supposed to feed. They’re everywhere!
- A Museum of Teaware. Yes, such a thing exists! It’s located in a lovely colonial building – one of the oldest in Hong Kong – and it’s actually rather good.
- The whole city, from the top of Victoria Peak. Whenever I go abroad I seem to go on trams and up high things, and if at all possible I combine the two. I went on an extremely steep tram climb up the Peak, and despite lashing rains and the sort of winds that turn your umbrella inside out, the view was spectacular.
- A lovely lady called Jill, visiting from Michigan, who was kind enough to hang out with me at the top of the Peak, and take some photographs to prove I’d been there
- An Irish bar serving Japanese beer and showing Italian football
- A taxi driver who spent the entire journey driving whilst reading the paper and hacking up phlegm out of the window
- An escalator that runs down a hill and across several streets. Apparently Jill’s friend “travels” to work on this every day.

I still have a love-hate relationship with this largely down-at-heel, consumer-obsessed, polluted city, but now there's a little more love and a little less hate.

Overkill

2010-02-25T17:46:00.010Z

There's no artsy photo to go with this, Lent-induced sobriety meaning I'm not doing pseudo-interesting things with cameras these days. Anyway, I've had one of those days when I'm feeling inexplicably high-maintenance, and somewhat abandoned by the world at large, so as an antidote to that here's a little peek into the cheerful and positive little world of my short story writing. I'm encouraged by the fact that the Chees'm liked it (on the basis it's horrible), but I apologise in advance if it puts something of a downer on what's already been a rainy and (for me anyway) largely shite day.

- - - - - - - -

She knew she was in Earl’s Court because she recognised the Finborough. This was something of a relief, having been walking past row upon row of identical, tired-looking white terraces for what felt like hours. It looked different in the early morning – sort of subdued, as though it had seen better days, which it probably had. The area around the pub smelled of stale beer and there were the remnants of broken Alcopop bottles on the pavement and inside it looked as though someone had started to tidy up then thought better of it, with half the chairs up on the tables and the rest spread across the floor at random. She stood there for a while and tried to orientate herself, and felt overcome all of a sudden by a sense of utter self-loathing. Here she was, having walked through the night with no plan of where she was going or why she was going there, and she had arrived not with some sort of new resolve about where her life was going, or having made some great self-discovery, but with utter irritation and hatred of herself because she’d come all this way without an A-Z. If she’d had even a speck of common sense, she thought, she’d have brought a hat, too. It was January, after all, and her ears were ringing with the cold. She felt she was losing movement in her jaw, and her whole body, whose temperature control was haywire at the best of times these days, seemed to reverberate with the almost arctic chill. But in the heat of the moment, or whatever you wanted to call it, flying from her Camden flat in a fit of heightened emotion – or what she mistook for or fancied as heightened emotion – in the middle of the night, such practicalities were the last thing on her mind. But what were you going to do, you stupid bitch? she shrieked inwardly at herself. You stupid, fucking, melodramatic, pretentious little shit. You think you’re so fucking clever, don’t you? Well you’re not. You’re a fucking idiot. See? Nobody’s even fucking rung you. Look at your phone! Look at it!!!! Not one text. Nobody gives a fuck where you are, you silly, arrogant, egotistical little waste of space. You thought they’d fall for it? You really thought they wouldn’t see through your drama queen performance? You thought they’d run after you? They’re all still asleep, sound asleep, because they really don’t care where you are, and they know you’ll be back – as usual.

And on a scale of one to ten, where did a little jaunt from Camden to the far reaches of Kensington rank? Nowhere - it didn't even make the scale. Other people she’d heard of gouged into their hands and feet with nails, believing themselves to be called by the Blessed Virgin to experience the pain of our Lord. Emily, in some delightful fit of mania, withdrew her entire life savings and tossed them off the bridge in Archway like confetti onto the A1 below; and as for Jay, he’d compiled that intricate folder, complete with dividers and colour coding and pain and efficiency ratings of every possible method of suicide, before going for the obvious option and waking up in hospital hours later with an aching stomach and impending liver failure. A mere mooch through the London night was at best eccentric, and at worst pathetic.

Coffee.

Coffee felt like a good idea at this moment. In fact she was craving it. And a croissant. A chocolate one. Something sweet, plenty of sugar. Her stomach sill felt as though someone had wrung it out then tossed it back, trembling, into its owner’s body, but it occurred to her now it might just be hunger. She kicked herself, then, since, aware of that feeling in her stomach again, which she’d allowed herself to stop noticing in the bitter cold, she abruptly became aware of every other symptom, flooding over her all of a sudden like some sort of bodily tidal wave, the shaking, the beating of her heart, faster, erratic, bangbangbang, harder so it was almost hurting inside her chest, as though the space was too small for it to beat effectively, the rising panic, the pricking of her eyes with inexplicable tears, then the increasing irregularity of her breath. She mustn’t become aware of that, because as soon as she did she would panic. Because surely, once you notice that you’re breathing then you’re not breathing as you ought to; it’s meant to be a natural mechanism, after all, to keep you alive, but once you have to be actively aware of it, to monitor it and work within it, then it isn’t natural any longer; and you’re but a step away… Deep breath. No, slower, you pathetic little shit. Fucking hell, are you so fucking thick you can’t even fucking breathe properly, you useless fuck?

Coffee.

She’d been avoiding caffeine for this very reason, had blamed the insomnia at night on the filter coffee she’d been drinking at work to keep her awake – the shaking, the quick heartbeat, the paranoia, the skippy dreams and fleeting flashes of energy she felt were being afforded to her simply as a window within which to run away, as far away and fast as she could.

It was just like that – the feeling you get after you’ve had too much black coffee, only its intensity was vastly magnified and it didn’t subside after an hour or two. Fin could almost feel her heart beating inside her, and it was beating too quickly, threatening to induce panic, dizziness, hyperventilation, nausea. It was becoming increasingly overpowering – the exhaustion, the tingling in her hands and lips, her increasingly dry mouth and tongue and the throbbing of her mouth ulcers; things it didn’t tell you on the “please read carefully” leaflet. True, it made some passing reference to “Cardiac arrhythmia”, but what the hell was that? Those leaflets, she thought, were designed for imbeciles and medical graduates, but not for normal people in between whose only reasonable expectation was that someone could tell them in sensible English what was going to happen to them, in what order, and at what point you needed to do something about it. But instead they told you that a minority of people got cardiac arrhythmia and died, then wasting precious space warning you the little pink tablets should only be taken orally (as opposed to what?!) The drug’s accompanying leaflet made it sound as though the transitional couple of weeks would be at worst a minor inconvenience; it referred flippantly to “mood swings”, making its patients sound like menstruating teenagers, and not previously-balanced twenty-somethings who swung deftly from wanting to throw themselves from bridges because they felt invincible to wanting to throw themselves from bridges because they felt inconsolably desolate, and because being dragged under by a filthy Thames current was preferable and mercifully briefer than drowning in your own hopelessness. If the drug’s manufacturers were going to be entirely honest they would admit explicitly that this wonder-drug that was going to strip Fin of her “mild depression and anxiety” would first induce feelings of such pain, paranoia and desperation that she’d wonder what on earth she’d been moaning about before she’d started. Perhaps that was the trick; perhaps the realty was there was no cure at all, and the drug’s true purpose was to make you count your blessings and realise how incredibly lucky you were when you only toyed with the idea of topping yourself, rather than meticulously considering when, where and how you might actually go about it, to whom you’d write before you did it, and what you’d say to them. You thought that was bad? You were sick to death of feeling weepy and tired and crap company all the time? You didn’t know you were fucking born.

They’re not looking at you, she told herself as she ordered a cappuccino – named after Capuchin friars, she reminded herself consciously, staring intently at the poster on the wall in a desperate attempt to divert her own mind while her body twitched with fear and anticipation as she waited for her coffee to appear, taptaptaptapping her feet on the floor to pass the time. “If you wriggle your toes you won’t faint”, someone had told her in a choir rehearsal once, when they were fourteen and girls were disposed to passing out in pretty little heaps during the high notes. It had something to do with blood flow – you wriggled your toes and jump-started the blood flowing so it went where it was supposed to go, or something like that. They’re looking at you. You look like a woman possessed, and they’re staring at you. So she looked away, but there was the woman in the green dress again, standing by the window, and again, on the other side of the room, waiting outside the toilet, the same woman.

Fin blinked and returned her gaze deliberately to where it had been before, and fought the urge to not turn round and shout “What the hell are you looking at?” to the middle-aged lady in the corner, who couldn’t have moved at all, and was still sitting there, drinking her Earl Grey and reading Good Housekeeping and generally minding her own business. A sort of Tourettes-like compulsion welled up inside, the same kind you get in an examination, in the acute silence of the college hall, when you suddenly realise you could leap up and shock everyone, cause havoc with a single triumphant shout of “ARSE!” or something like that. Such compulsions became at times almost irrepressible, but of course you never did it, however much you might have wanted to.

Taptaptap wrigglewrigglewriggle.

“GRANDE-CAPPUCCINO!”

She carried it to a table by the window and huddled in the corner as far away from everyone as possible, practically pressing her nose against the glass so that it steamed up, and peering out onto the street, watching the odd highly-decorated lady of a certain age walk past with a bichon frise trotting behind her. If you don’t look at them they won’t look at you.

No, it didn’t mention any of this. "Some nausea", it said. Not endless waves of travel sickness-like agony that nothing could seem to cure, certainly not the ginger and peppermint teas and the tentative nibbles of rice cakes in the morning that her doctor had dismissively recommended when she’d complained about it. And “sleep disturbances”. Did that really constitute the torture of desperate exhaustion as you tossed and turned and contorted your body until every muscle spasmed in protest night after night until finally you fell into fitfull sleep only to be haunted by visions of the Grim Reaper – a woman in green of indeterminate age, to Fin’s great surprise – and giant birds swooping down, waiting for you to lose concentration and to step into the road and SLAP! That would be it, hit by a Vauxhall Corsa so the birds could come down and peckpeckpeck away at the leftovers.

Fucking pigeons. They can fucking piss off as well.

This would teach her. Fucking hypochondriac, wallowing in her own completely inexplicable misery. Just because she’d refused to listen to some self-righteous, soft-speaking, floral-patterned counsellor trying to persuade her this all dated back to the night that man broke into her house when she was seven, smacked off his tits on God knows what, and killed the cat. That, and the fact her dad had pissed off to Morcambe on his Harley, or whatever it was that carries you off into the sunset in the depths of the mid-life crisis. As though reminding you how damn miserable life was at seven, eight and nine was going to make you feel somehow better about feeling empty at twenty-six.

She shuddered for a bit when the third or fourth mouthful of coffee went down, worrying she’d gone too far, not taken her time, and suddenly a hot sweat deluged her body and the back of her tongue went prickly, salivating at the top of her throat, forcing a warning forward so that she gulped quickly to stem it. She wriggled her toes again, took a deep breath, then another, swallowing to moisten her mouth and gripping onto the edge of the table for stability, focusing deliberately on the Cappuccino poster until the sickness subsided. Self-consciousness returned, but tinged with malady this time. She’s still watching. Maybe the woman had seen her and assumed she was pregnant? Or suffering with a hangover? She just thinks you’re mad. Look. She’s looking away. She daren’t even risk eye contact.

She’d said she’d planned her own funeral at ten, and that had freaked the dozy bint out, peering over her glasses with that honed intense concern; had initiated that phrase "medical intervention”, and the “discussions” that followed that weren’t really discussions at all, but instructions. God, little girls plan their weddings from the age of six, poor, miserable, deluded little things. Fucking sequinned meringues and pink bridesmaids and Stuart from your old reception class by your side, no hint of babies at 15 and a job at a nail bar. Not everyone gets married. And plenty of those that do get divorced soon afterwards. But we all fucking die, don’t we?

She thought about it now, between idle thoughts of cheese and onion crisps, which as far as she could remember was the only thing she’d eaten and enjoyed over the past three weeks, the only thing so artificial you couldn’t properly identify it on the way back up, so it was yet to go on the list of banned food items. They’d play “Brown Eyed Girl”, because she had brown eyes and liked the song. Nothing deeper than that, but, oh, people thought that sort of thing was deep, it would bring tears to their eyes – a young life snatched in its prime. So sad. And they’d put some stupid, fake, smiley picture on the service leaflet under a quote about candles flickering out, and someone would stand up and read some dopey poem about death not really being the end, and they’d sing some soppy, upbeat hymn, like “All Things Bright and Beautiful”, then they'd all leave and go and get leathered.

The Sun Has Got His Hat On. Hip-hip-hip Hooray! The sun has got his hat on and he’s coming out to play.

Maybe if they blamed the drug there’d be an inquest, and an episode of Panorama, with Aunty Lorna weeping into her Camomile tea and saying what a terrible waste it was, and random people she barely knew would appear swathed in black and looking all brave and proclaiming what a lovely girl she was, how she was kind and generous and funny and everyone missed her terribly.

None of which you are, mind, and don’t you forget it.

The cup was empty already and had only, if anything, served only to increase the trembling in her hands. Unless that was the cold, only she wasn’t cold; she was hot; no, she was cold; some of her was cold.

Some of her was numb.

If there’s one way to make people like you, it’s to die. If there’s one way to make them hate you, it’s to hang around long enough for them to realise what you really are: an affected, weak, self-obsessed, quivering little shit who really only ever thinks about herself, who agonises over what people think about every pissing word she says, every fucking thing she wears, every decision she makes, when in reality nobody cares – not one minuscule jot. Because you’re a tiny, irrelevant little speck of dirt filling up the planet with your vile little body, stealing its oxygen, sapping its energy, and giving nothing in return. All you had to do was come here and get on with it and live and then die and not hurt anyone in the process, and you couldn’t even manage that without help, could you? And you couldn’t even cope with the help when you got it! And you’re tearing yourself apart now and all because you’ve got a dry mouth, and your lips are chapping, and you’re a bit tired, and you feel a bit dizzy, and you can’t stop crying even though you’ve nothing to cry about. You are a feeble, self-obsessed, dim-witted, pathetic, arrogant, lazy, unwanted waste of space; you have lived and will die a useless failure, and nobody will miss you.

This is the story of Finola Gray , she whispered to herself, leaving the empty cup on the table and walking zombie-like from the café onto the pavement, who the last was so utterly infatuated with her own importance that she narrated her final moments to herself as she...

The Vauxhall Corsa was going too fast around that particular corner, not knowing what might be around it, but the driver had done that journey many times and knew there wasn’t normally anybody about at this time on a Saturday morning. The woman in green stood motionless in the doorway, a witness to the whole episode.

And above the buildings, filling cold, bright January sky, the birds were already circling.

I've Measured Out my Life in Teaspoons

2010-02-25T06:20:00.003Z

Having been awake since 4am, and with lines from Prufrock running inexplicably through my head, I finally decided enough was enough and got up, having measured out my life in coffee spoons and objecting to this on the grounds of being a tea drinker. And so I'm up, trying to think of something mildly diverting to write about, and largely failing. Note to self - must cultivate some Australian friends: I feel the time difference might be beneficial, if only from a Facebook Chat point of view.

Or I could have a bit of a rant about Estates.

Now, our Estates department have their uses. They did, after all, come down pretty quickly to mend the kitchen door handle after my colleague got stuck in there, having only popped in to boil the kettle. At the same time, though, and I fear like most institutions, they do love their "systems".

Take the other week, for example. We came in to find our sink in the hideous alcove we call our shared "kitchen", blocked and filled with brown water (washing up debris, rather than anything more exciting...I hope...) A couple of hours later someone from Estates pootled downstairs (and I can't think of a better verb to describe their way of going round the building.) He sort of lolled in my doorway, taking "laid back" to a whole new level (he looks a bit like Jaspar Carrot under the influence of magic mushrooms, and the thought of him teetering on a ladder tryig to mend a light fighting makes me rather nervous) and said "We heard your sink's blocked".

"Oh. Yes. It was blocked when we came in. Can you have a look at it?"

"No, you need to phone the Helpdesk, they'll give you a job reference number, and I'll come back."

"Can't you look at it now?"

"No."

I phoned the Heldesk, and they did indeed give me a job reference number, and, true to his word, he came back. Ten minutes later. Efficiency?

And then, to give my week that bit of variety it so desperately craves, I got in to find a sort of mini waterfall happily pouring through my ceiling. The floor was soaked for a couple of feet either side of the "drip", as Estates called it in their "reference", and the room had that sort of lingering wet dog smell. The ceiling tiles were worryingly damp and I was sat tapping away at my computer amidst a sea of wires and other electricals. But Estates were on the case, the unsung superheroes of SE1. A mere hour after a job reference number was created they march in (a leak apparently being more serious than a blocked sink, they'd sent the Top Bloke for the occasion). Brandishing a clipboard he looks up at the leak with an expression bearing years of closely honed expertise. And he says...

"Oh. Bugger."

I've not seen him since then.

Cows cont.

2010-02-23T19:32:00.005Z

Well, I listened to Radio 4 in the gym today. Ha!! I foiled you, you Creepy Apple People!!!

Ahem.

Two more cows for you, courtesy of, somewhat randomly, my old science teacher:

INNUENDO:
You "have" two cows

OLD TESTAMENT
You have two cows. Noah sends you back out as he specifically asked for one of each sex.

- - - - -
Shameless is on tonight. The world just got a little brighter.

Born To Run (away...fast...)

2010-02-22T19:01:00.008Z

I always knew there was something suspicious about Apple. It's just that up until now I thought it was simply the fact that they are money-grabbing bastards who ensure that with every new product comes a load of new accessories which don't quite fit the old one, thus ensuring that you buy a new iPod/computer at vast expense should any of the leads/cases/chargers stop working.

But it's more than that. Apparently Apple and I are sending each other subliminal messages of some form or other. In short, THEY KNOW!!! THEY KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT ME!!!

Well, maybe not everything. Not yet. That I know of... But explain to me this: following my last post I went to the gym, popped the (shiny and new complete with new acessories... I'm not bitter...) iPod onto shuffle, and in amongst the 9 tracks it "randomly" selected for me it played the following:

Emmylou Harris - Born to Run
Kate Bush - Running Up That Hill
Morrissey - On the Streets I Ran

I have 920 tracks on my iPod. Only 4 (I think) of them have running in the title (the other is "Runaway" by the Corrs). Coincidence? ?!?!??!!!????!?Hmmmmmm????!

Oh wait. I remember. I'm diagnosably paranoid. Right. That explains it.

Looking forward to an evening in front of the TV watching reruns of Auf Wiedersehen Pet and MPs pretending to understand poor people; typing stats for work; washing up; musing about teapots; putting the finishing touches to a short story; putting washing away. Life continues as normal...

(...but they're still out to get me....)

Don't Stop Me Now

2010-02-22T13:18:00.005Z

So, the lovely people at Mind suggested I start a "running blog" to "help" with my training. This strikes me as not particularly useful for two reasons: 1.) I shall spend more time procrastinating about what on earth I can write on said running blog than I will doing any actual running and 2.) I can't think of anything remotely interesting to write about running anyway. I'm thinking my (admittedly small) readership will be even less interested in "Today I ran 5K in Regents Park. I ran past the zoo and saw some camels" (all true, incidentally) than they would in, say, jokes about cows.

So I'm going to do a bit of a plug instead, and leave it at that. If the plug works and some of you sponsor me, I can guarantee you won't have to put up with a "running blog". If you don't, well, I may reconsider...

So... Lovely Helen, Lovely Nicky and I are running a 10K (suppress your giggles, please!) in May for two lovely charities (there's a lot of loveliness going on here. Are you feeling the loveliness?) They are Mind and Cancer Research UK. I'm running for Cancer Research UK in memory of, well, quite a few people actually: my mate Will, who I blogged about in November, my friend Kirsty, who died while we were at school, my mum's friend Anne who died last year, and my granny. (I know. Chirpy stuff.) I won't lecture, as they basically do what it says on the tin - research into cancer, in terms of treatment, prevention and cure. Anyway, you can sponor us here. We're also running for Mind, who do an awful lot of stuff, in particular lots of awareness-raising and campaigning, which obviously appeals to the (currently dormant) activist within me. They also have a brilliant helpline, staffed by real people (don't knock it - this is rare these days!) which needs funds in order to keep going. My sponorship page for that is here.

My training earlier in the year was foiled by keen people who insisted on going to my gym as part of ill-fated New Year's resolutions. Happily most of those good intentions seem to have fallen by the wayside, and I now have to share my gym only with the perspiring, goal-oriented advertising execs in their shiny designer sports clothing who run at double my speed, thus producing double my sweat, on the treadmill next to me while a personal trainer shouts motivational abuse at them. I had a personal trainer once, for a couple of weeks, who was not of that ilk at all. I think she thought I was a lost cause, frankly, because she didn't bother with any of that stuff. Her name was Meggie (actually it was Maggie but she was Australian) and her catchphrase was "ah, good on ya." She would ask me what exercise I'd done since she last saw me, and whatever the answer she would say "Ah, good on ya." I think if I'd said "Well, to be honest, Maggie, I was knackered so I went home, cracked open some cans of Carlsberg and watched Shameless while eating a takeaway curry" she would still have said "Ah, good on ya." Meggie's style of personal training involved suggesting I might like to do some exercise, saying nice, encouraging things while I failed miserably at whatever it was we'd decided to do, then asking me what I'd seen at the cinema that weekend. Conversely the other chap who I once saw when Meggie was on holiday had a rather different style, which involved shouting "If it isn't hurting it isn't working" at you as you fell off the back of the treadmill, then made you lie down on the floor and contorted your body into positions which I'm sure were never intended until you felt your bones crack.

Anyway, those days are gone now - I have neither the cash nor the inclination to be ritually humiliated in the evenings and I now have a nice little routine of 6K on the treadmill and 10 on a bike and a bit of pilates while savouring the delights the iPod Shuffle function has to offer.

Rather like the whole divorce thing, the internet seems to be flooded with whole chat threads on various exercise forums dedicated to the most optimum tracks to accompany your exercise. They're generally loud and stirring, the sort of stuff that's meant to inspire you onwards in your quest for your medal and complementary goody bag of crap. There's a big 70s love-in going on on one site, which is a pretty good era for that sort of stuff, and generally everyone's singing the praises of the likes of Bat Out of Hell, Don't Stop Me Now, Eye of the Tiger and Living on a Prayer. There are a few trance music devotees, a not inconsiderable show of support for heavy metal, and another contingent who favour the bouncy drivel of S Club and Steps, which I presume has its place if you're trying to get a rhythm going, and I suppose is somewhat motivational if you pretend you're running away from it. I was pleased to see one person recommend Amarillo, though that's probably just because the Peter Kay video involved Ronnie Corbett falling off a treadmill.

I was going to respond to one of these when my iPod played me the following selection yesterday:

Joy Divison - Love Will Tear Us Apatr
Eels - Climbing to the Moon
The Smiths - Stretch Out and Wait
Leonard Cohen - Hallelujah
Kate Bush - Wuthering Heights
Morrissey - Life is a Pigsty
The Clash - Rock the Casbah
The Cranberries - Linger
Bob Dylan - A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall
The Smiths - I Won't Share You
Nick Cave - Where the Wild Roses Grow

I figured that, with the possible exception of The Clash, none of these would appear on any such forum, and having looked, I think I was right, but it was an interesting experiment.

One tip though - I think I've found the ultimate track to run to: ELP's Fanfare For The Common Man. Seriously. Try it. And whether you try it or not, please sponsor me!!!

2010-02-20T19:43:00.001Z

In case you were wondering, we lost 2-0 to Accrington Stanley.

Yep, that's right, Accrington Stanley.

Yeah.

I know.

I thought that.

Oo Areeee Yer?

2010-02-14T21:54:00.017Z

Who ARE we?

Seriously?

You don't know?

We're Bradford City! The Mighty Bantams! Stuart McCall's Bradford Army!

Ring any bells?

No?

That's probably because we're now languishing somewhere towards the lower end of League 2. For the Americans (and the less sportily inclined - Oi Frank, you there?!) who read this blog, I should point out that "League 2" is what the FA et al kindly call what should rightly be termed "Division 4", to make the likes of us feel better. In British football, we have the Premiership, where Manchester United, Liverpool and all those other teams with fanbases far beyond those fair cities bask in glory and vastly inflated wages; then we have the Championship, where embittered sides jostle with one another for the much-covetted prize of promotion, that they may too sleep with each others' wives and sip champagne in far-flung jacuzzis; then we have League One, which, confusingly, used to be the name of the Premiership, before it was downgraded to the Championship, before it became the new name for the Third Division (are you with me so far?) League One is full of plucky underdogs, championed by news presenters and TV chefs (Delia's precious Norwich are here... but not for long, if the current table is anything to go by!) and those clubs who are down on their luck (Leeds United. Oh, how the mighty have fallen!) League One is actually where the interesting football happens - often nail-biting games, a whiff of violence mingled with fried onions hanging in their air, cold, seatless terraces open to the elements...

...

And then there's us. Are you still here? Here we are, in League 2, previously Divsion 4... well, you get the picture. I'd like to say League 2 was also full of plucky underdogs. But that would be lying. League 2 is, for the most part, a little bit sad, both in terms of the level of football played and in terms of the attitude of some of the players - a sort of listlessness tinged, on occasions, with simmering resentment. League 2 has much of the menace of League 1 (as my mate says "this is proper football - people get hurt") - without, unfortunately, any of the skill.

Take my experience at one of my beleagured team's matches as an example. Aldershot, that bastion of unity in a faceless, squaddie town, are currently languishing in League 2, though, it must be said, doing so with somewhat more finesse and rather higher up the table than the Mighty Bantams. I went to Aldershot last year and felt they were trying to replicate a sort of small-scale Millwall experience for their visitors. There were police everywhere, and a minute or so before the game their fans (and the terraces were packed) started banging on the stands and chanting "Aldershot Call The Shots". This carried on. For the entire game. That's over two hours, assuming they didn't stop at half time - and I'm not convinced they did. The hardcore amongst them carried on doggedly throughout. An element of polyphony was achieved only when our goalie was approaching the ball after a failed attempt on their part to actually score anything - which happened quite a lot. On such occasions a small, adventurous group strayed from the main chant long enough to shout "You're Shit! Uh!" at us.

So there's the menance. But what about the incompetence? Well, I'm a Welfare Adviser. I'm a Welfare Adviser whose sport of choice is cricket. I play the violin, sing, and write plays. Whenever I watch the Bantams I find myself frantically shouting "Get in a space! Where are you?" And that, my friends, says it all.

I shouldn't be so mean. The average age of our team looks to be about 16, after all, so I presume they have to fit in their training around their maths homework. But still, it doesn't bode well, and perhaps it explains why, despite our colourful, exhuberant and (some might say deludedly) loyal fan base, we are still doing so horrifically badly.

It's true, and it's sad, because, fan-wise, we're still attracting some of the biggest crowds in lower-league football to both home and away fixtures. We even managed to take a 200-odd crowd to Torquay a few weeks back, and who in their rights mind would travel from Bradford to Torquay in the middle of winter (or, indeed, at any time?) This is a team that went on an open-top bus tour through the wonderful city of Bradford, attracting massive crows, and even released a DVD called "We Are Stayin' Up!" when they narrowly missed relegation from the Premiership, beating Liverpool (I kid you not!) in 2000. I still remember the "Bye Bye Wombles" posters - which (oh ye of little faith) I thought a tad optimistic as the time, but we did of course wave bye bye to Wimbledon that day, and look what happened to them! Oh how the Not Always Totally Crap have fallen.

And this week we waved bye bye to Stuart McCall, a previously fine midfielder who's led us, admittedly with an impressive lack of success, since 2007. And now we are floundering more than ever, if that's possible. Not waving, not even drowning. We sunk long ago.

I'll tell you what sums up the current state we're in, and that's two defeats by...wait for it... Barnet. I kid you not. That's Barnet, the team that plays on a sloped pitch that would shame most schools; a team whose fans - the smattering that turn up - act as though they've accidentally taken a wrong turning on the way to the theatre, but don't want to be rude and slip out during the interval. Barnet fans are more like cricket fans are in 1920s short stories - they clap politely at every shockingly-aimed kick - balls can sail off metres above the goal, and the true Barnet fan's response will be "Oh, bad luck!" To my great amusement, while this was all going on, the Bradford fans, who'd come down en masse for the occasion (there were more of us than them, crammed onto stone terraces) were keeping themselves amused by hurling abuse at a giant bee - Barnet's mascot, Mr Bumble - to the tune of Guide Me Oh Thy Great Redeemer, cleverly amended to "What the fucking, what the fucking, what the fucking hell is that?"

A good point well made, I feel. But we still lost 2-1. Shame? That doesn't even begin to describe it.

We sighed with relief at today's tedious 0-0 draw against Grimsby, and trudged back to prepare for next week's battle... and dangerous mixing of the counties... against Accrington Stanley.

Who are they? I hear you cry.

Exactly.

The Best of the Rest

2010-02-12T19:33:00.009Z

Thanks for all your cow suggestions. You are all beautiful people and you should be very proud. Here are just a few for you:

NIETZSCHIAN
The cows are dead.

MR T-ISM
I pity the poor foo' that don't have no cows!

LAKE WOBEGONISM
You have two cows. They are strong and above average, and will one day become the key to a meandering little adventure.

SKEPTICISM
You suspend judgement, for the time being, as to whether or not you have any cows.

YODAISM
Two cows you have

DYSLEXIC ANALYSIS
You have two woks

GUERNSEY
You have two cows. They are Jersey cows. You mock them.

APPLEISM
You have two cows, both are white and shiny. Both of them are touchscreen cows that can only eat apple grass bought from the apple grass store. Everyone else has two cows just like them. You are deeply hip.

MICROSOFTISM
You have two cows, but neither are compatible, one of them just crashed due to bad grass, and the other needs more RAM. They can eat eighty different kinds of grass, and each will make them behave slightly differently.

ENGLISH FOOTBALL
You have two cows. You screw both of them.

BRITISH FARMING
You had a lot of cows. The man from DEFRA burned them. Now you have nothing.

BUDDHISM
You have two cows. They used to be rabbits.

FATALISM
You have two cows, and one day they will die.

THATCHERISM
You have two cows, and a share in a third. Your neighbour has none, and their barn is about to be repossessed. Well done you.

YOUTH CULTURE
You has, like, two cows, you get me? Respect.

NIHILISM
You have two cows, but you don't milk them because they're going to die anyway.

IKEAISM
You have two cows which you assembled yourself. One is missing an udder. The other has three ears. You're not sure how that happened.

ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVISM
Someone had two cows, so you invaded their field and set them free. You feel good.

BRITISH BANKING
You have a lot of cows. You squander them. The taxpayer pays for some more.

SOUTH PARKISM
You have two cows. Cows are bad, mm'kay? They trample Kenny and kill him.

ACID TRIP
You have two cows. You're not sure how they got into your apartment. Or why they're pink. Or why they're singing Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell.

POST-ALCOHOL
You think you had two cows last night... you might have lost them on the bus... oh, God, did you really say that to them? Your head hurts...

Triumphal Return of the Cows

2010-02-09T08:11:00.003Z

Well, it's been a while - 4 years, in fact. But the cows are back! Enjoy!

BLAIRISM:
You say you think your enemy has two cows, and go to war over it.

WESTMINSTERISM:
You have two cows. You claim for them both.

ETHICAL GIFTISM:
You have two goats. They are given to a family in Africa.

FASHIONISTAS:
You have two llamas. Cows are so last year.

PARANOIA:
You have two cows. Why does the one on the right keep looking at you funny?

SHAKESPEAREISM
You have two cows and two bulls. For spurious reasons the cows dress as bulls and the bulls dress as cows. Much hilarity ensues.

BRONTEISM:
You have three cows. They live on the moors in Yorkshire and die tragically young.

JANE AUSTENISM:
You have a cow and a bull. They are obviously made for each other, but don't find out until Chapter 18.

LIBERAL DEMOCRATS:
You have two cows. Your neighbours have 8 cows and 11 cows respectively, but you still think your cows stand a chance.

VENTURE CAPITALISM - AN ICELANDIC CORPORATION
You have two cows.You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened byyour brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associatedgeneral offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows.The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman IslandCompany secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all sevencows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows,with an option on one more. You sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States,leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided with the release. The public thenbuys your bull.

WIKIPEDIANISM:
You have two cows. Cows are green in colour and descended from horses. Their diet consists mainly of waffles with maple syrup and their favourite activities include ice skating.

More to come... Please suggest more in the meantime!

Breaking Up is Hard to Do

2010-02-03T21:01:00.008Z

I'm in the wrong job. It seems that the biggest growth industry isn't higher education at all; it's the rise of the Divorce Party.

This trend hit the news a few months ago with some rather fascinating pictures of "Divorce Cakes." Apparently it's now the In Thing to have a good old celebration to toast the end of a beautiful relationship - a sort of stag/hen do in reverse. I can see, on the one hand, that a spot of booze-fuelled communal vitriol might help in such circumstances - think of it, perhaps as Marriage Guidance's contemptuous cousin. At the same time, though, you can't help thinking it's that the party planners and greetings card designers, cake makers and DJs of this world are rubbing their hands in glee and thinking "Kerching!"

Yes, DJs. For music is, it seems, key to the successful divorce party. Google it, and frankly it opens up a whole new world you probably never knew existed. One DJ casually remarks "Here's a selection of the songs I get asked for most often", which begs the question: How often do you do this?!?

There are chat forums to help you choose "suitable" music for your post-divorce knees-up (because heaven forbid you should choose something inappropriate - oh, think of the shame!) Now I know i'm easily amused, but I did laugh out loud when, after skimming through lots of militant feminist posts extolling the virtues of Gloria Gaynor, and lots of embittered souls oozing with fury and waxing lyrical about any songs that touched on partner homicide, someone called Ellie chirpily if mystifyingly wrote "I chose the theme to Hawaii 5-0 to open my divorce party." Of course you did. Um...why was that exactly?

I guess the sort of music you choose very much depends on a number of factors, and what sort of mood you want to go for - philosophical, celebratory, vengeful, full of relief or mournful, or perhaps a combination of all of these (tricky things, emotions.) So here's a little snippet from the cheerful world of Divorce Party planners, from the comfortingly nostalgic to the gently uplifting to the frankly scary.

I Will Survive
Don’t Look Back in Anger
Suspicious Minds
The Winner Takes it All
I Hope You Die (The Bloodhound Gang at their very finest)
Last Night I Dreamt Somebody Loved Me (nothing like bit of Morrissey to cheer you up.)
Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off (Probably a bit late for that if you're already marking the divorce)
D.I.V.O.R.C.E.
Tainted Love
Torn
Too Much, Too Little, Too Late
It's My Party and I'll Cry If I Want To (nothing like having a good sulk to sort things out)
Good Riddance
Don't Marry Her (Sound advice a tad too late?)
Sisters are Doin’ It For Themselves
I Feel Like a Woman
I Want To Break Free
Every Breath You Take (I always found this song more than a little creepy)
All By Myself (ahhh nothing like having a good wallow)
Breaking Up is Hard to Do (but presumably you managed it)
Cry me a River
I Shall be Released
Forever Young
Diamonds and Rust

I rather liked the little foray into the world of Joan Baez at the end, but I think I've hit on an even better idea. Screw the DJ (actually don't, that would look like being on the rebound and ultimately be a bit tacky) - how about some live music instead? I can recommend the following ditties by Mitch Benn and Bill Bailey.

In the defence of the whole shebang, one of the (only) funny moments of the otherwise unimpressive Phoenix Nights spin-off that was Max and Paddy's Road to Nowhere was an episode where a spurned lover performs a heartfelt karaoke rendition of "The First Cut Is The Deepest", so I wonder if there's a market somewhere in divorce and break up-themed karaoke venues. Anyway, do feel free to suggest some songs for this, so that, in the event of my employer including me in its "rationalisation process" (i.e. firing me) I can consider this as a new career option. Oh and just in case you were wondering, by the way, no, I'm not. My hairdresser did innocently ask, when I said I was married last year, if I was still "with him". What's more she seemed distinctly underwhelmed when I said I was, and proceeded to tell me about various clients who all got married "too soon", or "out of convenience" or "out of desperation". We live in quite a bleak and hopeless little world, really.

Night night.
x

I Would Go Out Tonight...

2010-01-30T18:45:00.011Z

I think I might be having a mid-life crisis. I realise this means I plan to be dead by 56 (and I have to say I'll be pretty miffed if I'm dead at 56 as frankly I have far too much to do and that would be a serious impediment), and yet I seem to be showing many of the signs. I haven't yet bought a Harley, but that's probably more because I wouldn't have the faintest idea what to do with it, rather than because I'm only being half-arsed in my attempt to cling on to eternal youth.

I was, however, struck by a sort of fashion epiphany/paranoia a few weeks back when I made a throwaway comment about not having any style. My mate's response was "Yeah, you do," and, looking me up and down, "that's your style." Now that would have been all well and good, except that I was wearing a pair of shapeless, £8 jeans bought from ASDA in 2006, a top purchased when supposedly looking for clothes for my grandmother's funeral in 1999, and a Middlesex County Cricket Club jumper. Now, there's nothing wrong with that per se, but I draw the line at it being deemed my "style". It occurred to me that I spend pretty much every evening now in a vest top and jogging bottoms, and I haven't had a haircut since June last year - and that one was only because I was getting married. And then followed a sort of urgent revelation: "You're getting old; there's a lot of options out there but you can't pull them off for very much longer."

So what could be done about all this? Well, to kick off I bought some knee-high boots, which is a pretty good start, and based on the fairly reliable fashion sense of my stick-thin and trendy cousin. (At any rate she spent around 12 hours cumulatively in Westfield over the Christmas holiday so she jolly well ought to know what she's talking about!) Next, I bought some skinny jeans. This dented my confidence slightly, because I made the mistake of buying them in Top Shop, where it turns out I'm a size 12. This was even more of a shock given I'd just bought a comfortably baggy size 8 jumper in Monsoon, and somehow managed to grow two sizes in the 100 yard mooch down Oxford Street (NB I realise Monsoon likes to flatter its customers while Top Shop, conversely, prefers to gently but firmly push its clients towards unnecessary body angst). Now skinny jeans are fine - they actually look rather nice - but a.) they are really flippin' cold in the winter (the wind goes right through them, and you can't really fit leggings on underneath, which is my normal clever get-around) and b.) they are rather undignified to put on, having to be eased up bit by bit as you wave your legs in the air. Though that's probably just me.

Next on the list, then: glasses. Now, I hate eye tests, but Specsavers had refused to send me any more contact lenses until I relented and went for one, presumably in case my eyes have fallen out or something since they last saw me a mere 12 months ago. There's something about eye tests that makes me squirm far more than the doctor or dentist. First of all, the word "test is very apt: I feel I'm being trialled for some MI5 post or something (and for all I know that might be how they do it.) The officious, unsmiling 16 year old who's conducting the test flicks several seemingly identical images of black dots in front of me and barks
"Which is better, a or b?"
"Um...a?"
"c or d?"
"Um..." I barely had a chance to look...
"Probably d?"
I feel this might be some sort of sociology experiment, that I'm going to be zapped with an electric shock if the correct answer is c. Then she complicates things further.
"Which is clearer, the number 24 or 42?"
"Um..."
"42 or 24?"
It's like being on University Challenge. If you pause she'll start telling you to hurry up then dock you 5 points.

To make matters worse, once the pressure of this is all over and I can take my head off that hard plastic chin rest and start trying to release the crick in my neck, she starts shooting puffs of air into my eyes - 3 in each eye no less. Actually 4 in one, as apparently I blinked (well, wouldn't you?) She then briskly tells me my prescription has changed and my left eye has got worse again, making me wonder if I should apolgise for this, and marches me downstairs and deposits me with her equally chirpy colleague to pick out some new glasses.

"I'd like to look at some Missoni ones," I venture, having made the daft mistake of booking an eye appointment the day after pay day.
Chirpy Colleague is having none of it.
"They're too big for your face. They will not suit you."
I try a pair on, and she shakes her head emphatically.
"Your face is too small."
Well, that told me.
"You can have them as sunglasses."
Right, well that sounds OK, I need some sunglasses.
"Why don't you look at some others first?"
Er, because I don't want others. I want those.
"How about these?"
She thrusts some huge brown DKNY glasses into my face with what can only be described as a lump of bling on the sides.
"Um, I don't really like the...diamond thing."
"Try them on."
I try them on. They look ridiculous.
"What about these?"
"I really do like Missoni."
"These are Gucci."
Exactly. I.e. they're not the ones I've just said I like.
"Try them on."

This goes on for a not inconsiderable amount of time. The upshot? Next week I shall be picking up my prescription MISSONI sunglasses. Which apparently won't suit me, because my head is too small and they are blingless.

Last on the list: hair. This is another experience I try not to have too often, partly because it's expensive and partly because I don't like having long conversations with ultra-cool preoxide blondes while they inflict pain upon my scalp. I also don't altogether trust my own abilities to explain what I want, and in turn their abilities to suspend their disbelief and actually trust that, unadventurous and bland though this makes me, I really don't want my head shaved, or my hair coloured pink, or an 80s perm. So I ask for blonde highlights and sit in near-terror for an hour whilw my hair is wrapped in bits of tinfoil, prattling inanely about my holidays and hoping I don't walk out looking like Myra Hindley. To make things worse, my (lovely) hairdresser has not only a very pronounced French accent, but also a lisp, so I'm answering "yes" to rather a lot of things (like "do you 'av a thide parting?") without actually knowing what she's said, but too embarrassed to ask her to repeat it for the third time. I'm also anxious at the revelation that I'm the only customer in the shop and apparently a guinea pig for some trainees, who all look about twelve. A girl with a brace and an alice band washes me hair, someone else mixes the dye for it and then, worryingly, someone I presume to be the manager shoos them both away and does the dying herself, before finally unleashing her speech-impaired colleague onto it for the grand finale.

So what was the result? Well, fortunately my hair looks more like Jennifer Aniston's than, say, Pixie Lott's, though I've inadvertantly gone for the Agnetha Faltskog look tonight, wearing my knee-high boots complete with a 1970s above-the-knee, all-in-one...thing (dress? Maybe?) and lots and lots of blue eye shadow and facial glitter. Bring on the party!

You Say Goodbye/And I Say Hello

2010-01-24T17:20:00.003Z

Strange and potentially sad weekend of meetings and farewells. Not least of these was the Long Goodbye to Julie aka Mad Julie/Ex-blogger Extrordinaire/My Catholic/Friend. Julie has finally taken the plunge (I say that flippantly, but as plunges go this is the kind of massive, splash-making plunge they want to guard against in swimming pools when they say "No Bombing", because Julie is not only disappearing to the other side of the world on Thursday, but disappearing to become a nun in an enclosed order in Louisiana (click on the link and scroll down for pictures of nuns on swings. There's something strangely lovely about this.) Apparently she'll have to abstain from all caffeine, alcohol and dairy and she won't be allowed any contact with anyone - for the first few years at least - not even by letter, let alone the likes of Facebook and email. To me this is not only an utterly horrifying thought, it also strikes me as fundamentally weird. But then I'm currently sitting here happily sipping tea and eating chocolate to the dulcet background strains of ABBA and announcing this to the world at large, and this makes me greedy, exhibitionist, quite possibly even fantasist all in one, so I'm certainly not one to judge! Anyway, good luck Petal, we're thinking of you.

To commemorate this momentous goodbye we went to Pizza Express, about which I'm not so much going to rant as simply relate the ad hoc, pot luck attitude that has replaced what used to be called "customer service." Broadly speaking, you can guess where a restaurant comes on the expense scale based on the demeanour of its staff. At the higher end, the staff are surly and supercilious but generally coldly efficient; this attitude fades gradually until you get towards the lower end - the chain restaurants - where the staff are often unnecessarily chirpy but unreliable. Then there are the restaurants in the middle that have missplaced pretensions. The staff here have mastered Surly and Rude but are unfortunately lacking when it comes to competence. TGI Friday, for example, happily falls into the middle category - we had a lovely chat with a young chap at a TGIs in Cheltenham who made up what he lacked in waiting with a broad smile, engaging hyperactivity and chattiness - he was training to be a primary school teacher and told us all about it, then served us steak instead of ribs with a beaming grin as he flew past us on a pair of rather superfluous roller skates. Pizza Express, unfortunately, so often falls into the latter category. We were once well and truly put in our place at the Euston branch when, having waited for a good couple of minutes for a table, we were eventually sat down by a window and abandoned. After 15 minutes we asked a waiter if we could order, only to be told, angrily, "You can't just come in and sit down! You need to wait to be seated! How are we supposed to know you're there if you just come in and make yourself at home? You need to wait!" When we told him his colleague had done the whole seating bit the response was simply "oh." At the end of the meal we waited 45 minutes for the bill. The staff at Charlotte Street were a little less accusatory but unfortunately also appeared to be in a world of their own. We were given menus and then, about two minutes later, the waiter was behind us, meerkat-like, pen poised, demanding our order. When we asked him if we could have a couple more minutes we were given fifteen, having apparently missed our chance. Dessert was also a little odd - I ordered coffee ice cream (along with J, who's presumably trying to cram a lifetime's caffeine and dairy into her final 3 days of freedom) and minutes later the waiter, still seemingly wired and beaming, appeared waving a bowl at me and saying "We don't have coffee ice cream. This is pistachio ice cream. We don't have coffee."
"I don't particularly like pistachio."
"It's just like coffee."
Well, no, it isn't, really, is it? It's more like... well, pistachio.
He looked rather hurt, and offered me chocolate, to which I agreed, at which point he sped away and reappeared seconds later, with a bowl of coffee ice cream.

Which, incidentally, was very nice, if a little bemusing.

Anyway, for anyone who hasn't sussed it yet (I'm always a little slow on the uptake and have only thought to look here for the last year or so) vouchercodes has some super offers on and frankly I wonder why, living where I live, I ever bother to cook.

Schimple!

2010-01-19T18:11:00.009Z

OK so this morning I had 3 injections in preparation for a trip to somewhere I'm still in two minds about visiting. Add to this some prescription drugs, self-medication, huge volumes of caffeine and the not inconsequential lungs full of "it's-legal-in-Amsterdam" smoke I've been breathing in over the last few days, and... well, I'm going to go for a sort of Dutch-inspired stream of consciousness. We'll just see what happens...

So, I spent a long weekend in the Netherlands (I'm not allowed to say Holland for historio-geographical reasons - namely that Utrecht isn't technically in Holland, it's in Utrecht.) I normally try to go on holiday under some sort of pretence of it being educational in some way, or at at any rate cultural. This... well, wasn't, really. But here's some stuff I've discovered:

- A sort of tradition has evolved whereby whenever we go abroad we have to climb something steep and high. This time it was the Dom Tower, with its 400-odd steps. This made me realise a.) I like views, and this one was a good view; b.) my mate is unexpectedly afraid of heights; c.) the training is starting to pay off: no achy legs the following day. Woohoo!
- Public transport elsewhere in Europe is better than in London. Quick comparison: Warren St to Heathrow - trains delayed; had to stand until Hounslow (pre-rush hour!) doors kept failing to shut. Utrecht-Everywhere-Utrecht - double-decker trains, on time, seats galore. Ooh and Amsterdam has trams. You can't beat a tram. Eeee, reminds me of t'North!
- Museums are cool, but the best part of the weekend was listening to my friend hurl random abuse at the people on the Antiques Roadshow.
- The Dutch don't know how to make a decent cup of tea, but they always have a good selection of poncey teas available.
- Dutch pancakes are not as nice as French crepes
- ...but they do love their sausages
- I also love their sausages
- I love all sausages
- That isn't a euphemism
- Ooh and those little deep fried things with minced beef and potato in them...mmmmm....
- Where was I?
- Oh, yes...
- Watching "Goldmember" before going to Holland was not a Good Idea, because it makes you want to laugh at the Dutch language and accent.
- But then, their word for shop is "Winkel" and "whipped cream" is "slag room", so they are asking for it.
- And apparently the words for "mate", "whore" and "rented property" are all the same, which is just screaming out for some sort of sketch to be written about it.
- But nonetheless, putting "Sch" before every word beginning with an S in it does not consitute a Dutch accent and is neither big nor clever
- (Ooh, does that make the Meerkat Dutch?)
- (Why have we assumed all along he's Russian?)
- (Do they have Meerkats in Russia? Or Holland? Except for in zoos?)
- (I'm Confusched.com.... )
- (I said that's neither big nor clever!!! And anyway, that's the wrong advert, schtupid!!)
- SCHTOP IT!
- Ahem. So, anyway, back at the blog...
- I have wonderful friends and have just discovered one of them reads this blog, so I'm going to be nice about him
- He's lovely and clever and wonderful and reads this blog!!!
- And my other mate's not so bad either
- Though his kitchen is crap
- Do they not cook in Holland?!?
- I have an obsession with washing up even if it isn't my washing up. Any washing up will do. Anyone got any washing up that needs doing?
- Amsterdam is a very strange place and I'm not sure what to make of the slightly overweight women baring all in skimpy leather in their windows, presumably to attract passing trade.
- Amsterdam is also cold, but very pretty
- Anne Frank's house is well worth a visit but is inordinately depressing. (I was expecting this...)
- My tendancy towards unprovoked paranoia and anxiety is unaffected by foreign climes and arctic temperatures. I didn't check to find out if it would be exacebated by the legal highs Amsterdam's "coffee shops" have to offer
- Because I'm old and boring
- I have a mixture of Dire Straits and Abba running through my head...
- ...which is an odd combination... and rather irritating...
- I am very lucky to have some lovely friends who make me laugh and feel cosy and warm and are eminently huggable. I had an ultimately fabulous weekend with 3 of my most favourite people
- I'm going to stop typing lest my reputation for cynicism and misery ends up in tatters

Tomorrow is another day.

I don't think that's a real elf...

2010-01-06T19:39:00.007Z

So, I've been looking back at one of the most enjoyable holiday periods I've had in a long time - a party at which nobody died, the most brilliant Pogues gig I've ever been to, and lots of sporty and semi-sporty things sprinkled on top of it all. Ooh, and I met Father Christmas.

The real one, I hear you ask? Er, probably not. Not unless Father Christmas speaks with a Devon accent, drinks real ale and lives in a tent at Colyton Tram Station.

This little excursion was all part of the enforced jollity that is the Christmas season. We left Seaton Tram Station in a near-blizzard of sleet and trundled across some wasteland on a cold, antique tram that had seen better days, driven by a peculiarly miserable reindeer. I say reindeer, actually it was a bloke in a Bo Selecta bear costume to which he'd added some antlers. When we finally arrived we were welcomed by a buxom, over-tanned elf with a perm who asked us if we were looking forward to meeting Father Christmas. The Elf, semi-nude and covered in goosebumps in what were sub-zero temperatures, was clearly there to distract the crowd while they waited patiently for their two minutes in a tent with the grumpiest and least-convincing Father Christmas this side of Coronation Street (remember Percy Sugden's efforts?) and I have a feeling she had loftier ambitions than this - maybe one day a panto in Plymouth. As she babbled on in a west-country accent, asking us all what we were going to leave out for Father Christmas when he came to our house (apparently he likes sherry, but I think this one was more of a special brew man) my niece lent over to me and conspiratorily whispered "Aunty Polly, I don't think that's a real elf. I think that's a lady dressed as an elf."

Our two minutes with Father Christmas were fairly underwhelming. He came across as rather cantakerous and looked irritated when he asked me nephew his name and he proceeded to tell him his name, his brother and sister's names and his mummy and daddy's names (which are Mummy and Daddy respectively). Santa looked at me with what I feel was contempt, as if to say "if they're Mummy and Daddy who the **** are you?" and possibly presuming me to be the nanny. "What do you want for Christmas?" He asked the kids, and without waiting for the full answer he shoved some ill-wrapped parcels into their hands and said "Happy Christmas". I wished him Happy Christmas and said thank you. He ignored me. He adjusted his fake beared and reached for his beer as we sidled out. In the cafe we were plied with mulled wine and forced to watch an entertainer who was a bizarre sort of combination between Larry Grayson and Bernard Manning. Whateve he was he was out of date. He had a live dove which flapped its wings on command, and at one point he came over to me and said "Do you want a stroke, love?" followed by "Let me put my dove away, then". Erm... He made unidentifiable balloon models for the children, had a hat that turned round and round at the press of a button, and relied on Allo Allo-style innuendo to amuse the adults.

We spent the afternoon feeding 2p pieces into the machines at an amusement arcade in Seaton, and with dogged determination, despite the machine persistently delivering piles of coins back to us, we'd eventually lost them all.

Aw, Bless 'Em

2010-01-04T21:50:00.004Z

This lot might be good when they leave school...

To be fair to them, I've seen some seriously dreadful support acts, but this lot, faced with the rather daunting task of supporting the Pogues (in my view one of the most stunning and insummountable groups that ever walked these fair shores, to be sure), were not one of them. Get past the grating Mockney (Lily, eat yer heart out) and the fact that they look like they're skiving Double Geography and the King Blues are actually rather good. Their music - touchingly optimistic but lyrically oddly beautiful, alongside tunes that make you want to jump up and down while pretending you're not - is desperately trying to get the balance between edgy political and well pretty, innit? but they're not far off. At some times encouragingly if jarringly Clash-inspired, these guys are not only not bad, they're actually good. They're on Twitter (so I'm told), Myspace and Facebook. If you're on Spotify it's worth checking out I Got Love (aahhhh) and Save the World, Get the Girl (oh where did my optimism go?) They may sound sickeningly positive, but cynics like us could do worse than to let a bit of this into our acerbic little hearts once in a while...

I'm not bitter....

2010-01-04T18:18:00.007Z

Oh no, wait, I AM bitter. Bitter and twisted. One day back at work, several narky emails from the same American, same old bitterness. But if all else fails, I feel sure I can get a job as a chambermaid.

But I do have my home back - Hotel Penter is temporarily closed. I say "back", I have it back, post-8 - yes 8 - guests in the last month - until Saturday, when another 2 arrive; I have it "back" if you don't count the wardrobe full of someone's clothes, a suitcase full of someone else's (French and Latin) books, a photo frame and several leftover kitkats of indeterminate flavour (it claims to be cheesecake. I'm not convinced.) I have it "back" if you don't count the bike that's in our vault, the coat and scarf mysteriously left on the hook by the front door, the pile of rubbish that needs clearing out of the spare room, and the Christmas card we (semi)-lovingly gave to one of our guests only to find it abandoned next to the sink. Like I said, I'm not bitter. After all, I'm now free to piss in the shower and cook naked, should I wish to (I don't.) On the upside, F has bought a Dyson. Apparently this is very exciting.

So what's my purpose in life now? With nobody around to ply with copious amounts of tea or wash up for, I'm somewhat surplus to requirements. Ooh, I know - I'll run 10 kilometres. That'll be good.

Yes, I've signed up for the Bupa 10K. This is the result of some ill-placed enthusiasm - possibly induced by copious amounts of legal cold-curing drugs - that I can't quite seem to resurrect now. I'm running for Cancer Research UK for Will, and for Mind (and I'm rather proud to have worked an Eeyore quote onto my page already, namely "We can't all and some of us don't". Oh yes - give us yer money!!)

Now 10K is a long way. It's twice 5K to be precise, and 5K is the usual distance at which I can feel as though I've achieved something. To put it into perspective, I ran 7K in the gym 3 weeks ago, and my legs wouldn't work when walking downstairs for 4 days afterwards. 10K is a long way, unless you're a marathon runner. I'm not a marathon runner. Everyone did 3 sports at my school, unless you were a singer, in which case you were exempt from 1. I was a singer. While everyone else was scraping mud from their sweating bodies I was going "Ooh, top C. Nice one."

It's also a terrible time of year to be attempting to do anything remotely sporty, because it's New Year, and my gym is full of keen people. They all have personal trainers who shout orders at them as they sweat copiously over all the machines I want to use. They all wear shiny new vest tops bought in the sales and they talk superciliously about their abs, which annoys me, because I've been going for years and am not certain I'd recognise an ab if it came up and bit me on the...well, the ab. It doesn't matter much, in that next week it will get quieter, and come February it will be the Marie Celeste again, but in the meantime, grrrr....

I went to Pilates tonight, but my Pilates teacher didn't; I ran 3K instead; I ached and gasped for breath; I brooded about the fact it was only 3K; I brooded about the fact that I no longer have a surrogate flatmate to drag to the gym with me to give me the impetus to actually do something while I'm there; I brooded about the fact that my students hate me because (I know, how could I?!?) I'm not the Home Office and their visas are still languishing in Croydon; I brooded about the rubbish that still needs to be taken out and then bed that still needs remaking; then I drank tea and skulked around the flat listening to Morrissey. Happy New Year, sweet people.

Some Other Stuff Happened

2009-12-15T20:47:00.011Z

So what about the rest of the week? To be honest, it felt rather like the gap year I never had, crammed into three days: I lay on my bed listening to the minarets, waiting for the immodium to kick in and watching a solitary cockroach scuttle up my wall, and I thought: wow - this is all rather exciting. Aside from Bethlehem, we went everywhere - Masada, the Dead Sea, Nazareth, Caeserea, Tiberius...

Geographically, Israel is the most amazing country I've ever visited. Roughly the size of that universal unit of measurement that is the Wales, Israel neverthless manages to cram into itself just about every type of scenery possible. Head towards the North, and you could be forgoven for thinking you've stumbled into North Yorkshire, with huge, rough moor-like hills liberally covered with sheep for as far as you can see. Head west a little way and you're on the Med, and could easily mistake your surroundings for Sicily, or the Greek islands. Turn around and head south, and you could be in the middle of the Grand Canyon; mosey into Jericho, and you're in the middle of a desert. you simply don't get this in the South East - frankly a hillock constitutes news in South Camden.

So when we weren't hopping around being Pilgrims we were hopping around being tourists, and the first obvious stop was the Dead Sea. At -418 metres below sea level, the Dead Sea boasts, amongst its more famous accolades, the Lowest Bar in the World, where you can buy coca cola, Budweiser and other products imported from the USA. Admittedly this fades into insignificance alongside the Sea itself, famously full of salt to the extent that nothing can live in it, and shrinking at an alarming rate each year to such an extent that within 100 years it will probably have gone altogether. It's claimed that its waters, 8.6 times saltier than the ocean, apparently, and mud have healing properties, a fact that makes a lot of money for their gift shops where bottles of the stuff are sold by the thousand. I don't know about that, all I know is the water flippin' hurts on mouth ulcers. There is nevertheless something rather exhilirating at being able to fall backwards and then bob up and down with absolutely no effort, and I like the Dead Sea.

Next stop Masada, about which I had strangely mixed feelings. On the one hand I felt a sort of spine-tingling exhilaration gaping out of the bus window at the vast and awesome scenery, complete with the occasional camel; on the other three of us, me included, spent much of the trip retching into Tesco bags, which did mar the mood slightly. Probably fortunately for me and everyone else on the bus I eventually emptied my stomach in the toilets at Masada and happily moseyed up to Herod's fort to some of the most stunning views I've ever seen. Masada must have been the most impressive of palaces, though it's famous mainly for the mass suicide of all of its 960 citizens while under siege my Romans, which frankly strikes me as a bit over the top, not to say daft.

Another seriously odd place is Jericho. For a start we're told that, if we're asked at the checkpoint later on if we've been there, we have to say no. This is something to do with the Intifada. Jericho is in many places a depressing place. Once rich in tourism not only due to its historical and Biblical fame, but also because it was home to Israel's only casino (gambling is banned in the State of Israel, but the Palestinian Authority's control of Jericho resulted in a nice loophole which meant that visitors and their cash came from afar for several years). Since the Intifada, though, tourism has unsurprisingly dropped massively. The casino has gone; the houses look tired and the whole town is in need of a bit of a face-life - it's a bit like Blackpool out of season, only uprooted and plonked in the middle of a desert. We do however visit a fabulous foodstore and leave with arms full of succulent Jericho oranges, dates (which are of less interest to those of us still on the immodium) and Turkish Delight to die for. Jericho also affords us one of the more interesting photo opportunities of the trip, in the shape of PLO-founded Al Quds Open University, its titled daubed in chalk above what looks like one of the body piercing salons in Camden Town, flanked with posters of Che Guevara and Yasser Arafat.

Tearing through the Jordan Valley, gazing into a whole other country on one side of us, Morrissey aptly singing "I will see you in far off places" on my iPod, I am, for a moment, utterly content. We pass by nomads, the children playing outside makeshift, ramshackle, corrugated iron dwellings, camels teathered outside and, anachronistically, satellite dishes on the roof. Maybe they can't cope without the cricket (which incidentally was going rather well this morning... less so now...)

Primal Typing Therapy

2009-12-11T18:54:00.003Z

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

HEUIYR5NCYDNCPUZNYA8O;WYCBZY;DCHA;HCBO'VECFUOBLUICYTXOY;RGIBYR!

* * * *

[and breathe]

2009-12-09T16:02:00.003Z

In general I agree that one should never meet one idols - invariably they turn out to be dickheads. This isn't always the case - I met Ian McShane once and he was very sweet (and very short); I also met Dean Windass, whose goal against Yeovil had won me some cash, and despite the fact the mighty City had just won all thanks to him and here was a young woman offering to buy him a drink with her windfall, he still glared and grunted then stomped off. I wouldn't necessarily rate either as an "idol", but, well, it's all good practice.

Then a few weeks ago, purely by chance, I met Alan Bennett! I can't even begin to to sum up in normal language how amazing this is. I have a sort of vague hierarchy of people I admire, which is a somewhat eclectic mix featuring the likes of Michael Palin, Desmond Tutu and Morrissey. But Alan Bennett would probably be right at the top.

I've loved Alan Bennett since I was a very small child. Being a good Northerner and the daughter of one good Northerner (and one good Southerner with very well honed literary tastes) one of the things I remember as a very small child is listening to Alan Bennett reading the Winnie the Pooh stories in that perfect and unique voice of his. Thus begun a sort of addiction.

Anyhow, having devoured everything of his I could the older I got, I eventually wrote to him a few years ago after my grandmother died. This sounds perhaps a little odd, but I'd just read "Untold Stories" and a lot of the things he wrote about his mum and her dementia rang true, so I wrote to say thank you, and to share a little piece of quintessentially Northern humour (when we drew up to meet the hearse on the day of the funeral my dad somewhat bizarrely asked the undertaker "How's business?" and he replied "Oh great! We've had two new ones come in last night!" Then we buried by granny.) It never occurred to me he'd write back, but he did - a little postcard thanking me for the letter, and including a brief anecdote about Thora Hird. Apparently he does this, and I think that's lovely. Anyway, I was coming home from work unusually early - about 4.30 - and was on the tube - also unusual. I was plugged into my iPod and happily dousing myself in a spot of Morrissey when I glanced down the carriage and most probably physically jumped in my seat when I saw him sitting a few seats away. I agonised very brielfy about leaping up and saying hello, because he was engrossed in the Guardian (I was relieved to see he reads the Guardian) and didn't give the air of someone who wanted to be disturbed. Rightly or wrongly, I decided I couldn't pass up on the opportunity to say hello, so I sidled up to him and apologetically said that he'd written to me a few years ago and that I wanted to say thank you.

"What did you write to me about?"

I told him and he smiled politely - I suspect he didn't remember. So I elaborated, told him my grandma was from Bradford, and that his stories rang nostaglic bells with our family.

"Are you from Bradford?"

Sort of, I said, but I'd moved. I wasn't really from anywhere...

He sympathised, and we talked a little bit about accents, because both our accents were considerably more Northern by this part of the conversation than they had been at the beginning. We don't fit anywhere - Southerners think we're Northern, and Northerners think we're Dead Posh.

I got off at Goodge Street, which wasn't my stop but I didn't want to disturb him any longer, but I hope the conversation didn't irritate him. He came across as a truly lovely, quiet and self-effacing sort of person who liked anonymity, but I hope, in this instance, being recognised was a pleasure and not a trial, and that he understood how appreciated and admired as he is by an awful lot of people, it's just I happened to be the person with few enough inhibitions to toddle up and say so.

If It's Wednesday It Must Be Jerusalem

2009-12-06T10:11:00.013Z

I've never been on an organised tour holiday before, and I have to say I'd think twice before going again. First of all, we have a schedule, and woe betide anyone who messes with it. Now I'm all for having a brief idea of what you want to see, and, as a result, an outline of when you intend to see it, but when this starts to interfere with the experience you start to wonder if it's all worthwhile. Take the Holy Sepulchre, for example. We are marched into this grand building, given a brief talk about what it is, then, as we gaze in awe at our surroundings and try to digest that fact that here we are, in the middle of Jerusalem, in possibly our holiest site, our guide interrupts ou reverie with a shout of "Fifteen minutes back on bus, chop chop, shake a leg." We then have mere seconds to decide which bit we want to look at most, which is normally determined by the length of the queue, i.e. if there is one (and there usually is) we need to rule that out. Queues normally form in front of objects of veneration. Our guide tells us that the stone at the entrance is the stone that Jesus's body was laid on after death, except that it probably isn't. We can't get to the stone to make up our own minds, because it's covered with weeping Polish women. Later on in the week we visit another site which seems far more likely to be the place where Jesus was actually crucified, and where the weathering of the rocks carved out what is unmistakedly a skull in the cliff face.

So here's a typical day in the life of a Pilgrim on an organised trip:

- Get an alarm call at 5am, even though breakfast isn't until six and you need all of 15 minutes to get ready

- Have breakfast in the hotel. This consists of 15 minutes repeatedly putting the toast through the toaster (I found 8 revolutions gave you something approaching toast) and 5 minutes eating it.

- Put in your drugs order with Fr Angus, who has morphed into Dr Angus and is doing a roaring trade in immodium in particular. This is probably because we were told not to drink the water before being told "And here's some lovely salad for dinner. Would you like ice in your drink?"

- Clamber onto the bus and ignore the arguments over seats. The bus is a bit like a year 7 classroom, in that wherever you found yourself sitting yesterday, this shall be your seat for evermore. Tough luck if you're sitting next to someone who eats their own snot, or, in our case, in front of the happiest man on the planet, who even once referred to himself a "Happy Colin", and who rises at 4.30am daily to sing praises to the Lord before breakfast. Throughout the day, Happy Colin treats us to outbursts of joyous wisdom, including "This is the day that the Lord has made!" to "Blessed is the day when Jesus conquered Satan."

- Arrive at agreed destination and are promptly shown the "Coffee-Out" (the somewhat imaginative euphemism our guide uses for the toilet. Apparently he'll burn if he says "toilet".) If we're lucky there's also a Coffee-In to help us recover from our early start.

- Finally assemble outside whatever it is we're meant to be looking at. Obligatory group photo follows while the guide looks at his fake rolex and tuts. Thus gathered we are given a brief talk as to what it is we're supposed to be looking at, which usually goes something like this "Welcome to the Pater Noster. This is where Jesus is said to have taught his disciples the Our Father. Except he probably didn't. We don't know. Anyway, here's a nice church built on top of it by an Italian bloke in the 1920s, only you can't go in because there are some Poles sobbing on the doorstep. Enjoy! Ten minutes, back on bus, chop chop, shake a leg."

- Get mobbed on the way back to the bus by peddlars that could have stepped straight out of a pantomime trying to flog all manner of jewellery, postcards, wooden shepherds, water - you name it. We are forbidden from buying from these people: "They cheat you. I take you to nice place where you do lots of shopping."

- Arrive at "nice place" to do lots of shopping. This nice place is run by a Palestinian chap called George who claims we are receiving a 50% discount. Baskets are thrust into our hands as we walk through the doors, and free shot glasses of mind-blowingly strong coffee is liberally handed out as we pile ourselves high with olice wood nativity sets, "I Love Jerusalem" plastic snowglobes (oh yes - with pink glitter in place of snow!) and bottles of holy water and oil ("for annointing only") on which there is a three-for-two offer. As we leave we see our guide getting his cut, in the shape of handfuls of American dollar bills.
- Return to the bus, and it's onwards to the next place on the list, where, invariably, there's another church built by an Italian, a garden tended by Franciscan monks and a couvenir shop run by Johnny, "the greatest woodcarver not only in Bethlehem, but in the whole world." In Cana we are told categorically that this was not the same Cana where water was turned into wine - that Cana was destroyed was destroyed centuries ago by an earthquake. But you can still buy wine by the gallon in its many gift shops. We sampled some of their pomegranate wine - I'm afraid I cannot recommend it.

Anyway, chop chop, shake a leg, we pilgrims are becoming tourists for a day.