The Provincial Princess

Also on fatherhood

2010-07-02T05:21:00.000-07:00

My brother Hugh wrote a very interesting piece about fatherhood recently. It basically discusses the idea that the gender roles and social structures defined by patriarchy do not function to the benefit of men any more than they benefit women. Well, I totally hear that.

One point that I found particularly interesting was his discussion of role models of emotionally available men, and why this makes it difficult for men to be the caring, ‘present’ fathers they might like to be. This interests me greatly because I see this in many of my friends as they become parents and it applies to women just as much as to men.

It is just as challenging for women to work out how to be the kind of mother that allows the father to be emotionally available, to be practically involved on an equal level, when the only role model you have is a 1970s/1980s nuclear family where the father wasn’t interested in being home for bathtime and the mother – who was a full-time homemaker - took it as read that she would mother her husband as much as her children.

So I see many people whom I previously thought of as quite radical, revolutionary thinkers acting in ways that seem odd, for example at parties the women gather with the children in one room and talk about childcare while the men stand in another and talk about anything but – even though by doing this they are showing their own children exactly the kind of family unit that they would *say* they didn’t want to perpetuate.

We are all trying to figure out our places in the new society that we would like to see, indeed we aren’t even really sure what that society would look like, and as Hugh says this is even tougher when you haven’t slept properly for months. I appreciate that Hugh is writing specifically about fatherhood here but to present it as a problem that only applies to men means he doesn’t address the whole issue.

Ironically, though, he is guilty of doing exactly the same thing elsewhere when he assumes a ‘normal’ family unit is one where a father goes out to work to support a family and the mother is a full-time homemaker.

It’s easy for a new father to end up feeling quite lonely because, at work he has to be a professional and perform, and at home he needs to be a great dad and there’s little space left for him to reflect. Of course that is not to say for a moment that Mums don’t have it tough too – being a Mum is one of the toughest jobs in the world. It’s just that, like trying to manage a home and look after a young child, consistently earning cash to feed a family, trying to be emotionally available and not having time to see the friends who gave you a sense of who you were prior to fatherhood do all pull in different directions.

Yes. Of course it is difficult to juggle the different demands on one’s time. But Hugh, I am astonished that you seem to think this is limited to men and that women have only the job of ‘being a mum’. This was your own family set-up until quite recently, but surely you are aware that in Western societies most households need two incomes? Usually, both parents must work out of necessity.

With that in mind, do you think a working mother gets more sympathy than a working father when she tries to put the needs of her family before the demands of her job – for example, needing time off to care for a sick child? And if she does ask for it, do you think the reaction is ‘What a great mum, she’s really there for her family, it’s so great to have people in the organisation who care about work/life balance’ or is the reaction in fact suspicion that she isn’t ‘dedicated enough’ to her job and therefore should, for example, be passed over for promotion in favour of a man? Do you think that mothers, even those who are lucky enough to have a partner involved in childcare, do not feel pulled in different directions trying to ‘consistently earn cash to feed a family, to be emotionally available and not having time to see the friends who gave you a sense of who you were’?

We need to decide: do we want Fathers to be strong Real Men, or do we want them to be loving and emotionally present? It’s quite confusing to be asked to have it both ways. If we want Dads to relate more fully to their families, we need to stop mocking and denegrating their feelings and instead to acknowledge and celebrate them.

The assumption you seem to be making here, which is usually the underlying assumption in complaints from men that they aren’t ‘allowed’ to show their feelings, is that women, by contrast, are allowed to show our feelings without negative judgement in our society. That is simply not true.

Yes, women do tend to be more honest about how we factor feelings and emotions into our decision-making, and yes, we constantly see images of women being emotional. But this is not lauded in our culture as a positive trait.

On the contrary, it is used against us and has been the main crux of our oppression for centuries: women, patriarchy tells us, are wishy-washy bags of emotion who just can’t think logically, so shouldn’t be allowed to vote, shouldn’t be doctors, shouldn’t expect to have responsible jobs, just can’t think/argue logically like men. On the other hand, if we deny our emotions we are unfeeling bitches and likely at any point to dissolve into a mess of (probably hormone-related) emotion at any point, so you can’t trust us either way.

You might as well ask the question here: do we want mothers to be strong Not Real Women, or do we want them to be loving and emotionally present?

We need to stop mocking and denigrating feelings in *everybody*, not just men, and acknowledge and celebrate them in *everybody*, not just men.

And this brings me onto your mention of ‘win-win’ and your aside that ‘that goes for feminism too’. Feminism is about achieving equality, not about putting one gender above another – in fact the very same arguments that you are making throughout your preceding few paragraphs, with which I wholeheartedly concur, and in most of the entire post. Please get a basic understanding of feminist theory rather than assuming that ‘we’ are de facto against ‘you’ as is so often portrayed by people who haven’t done their homework – see here for starters http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/06/03/faq-arent-feminists-just-sexists-towards-men/.

The adjustment required on becoming a father isn’t helped by negative stereotypes in the west. I have pulled up one or two female speakers in public recently when they have projected stereotypes of men that would be considered outrageously sexist if they were expressed about women today. Rightly, it is no longer acceptable to crack dumb blonde jokes about women, but Dads are still fair game for negative humour.

Hugh, of course it’s unacceptable to denigrate fathers with negative stereotypes, but are you seriously suggesting that ‘it is no longer acceptable’ to be sexist? Perhaps dumb blonde jokes aren’t laughed at in your circle of liberal middle-class nice guys, but please, look around you, open a copy of the Sun, watch a stand-up comic, whatever. Women are most definitely still ‘fair game for negative humour’. And if you think it's only fathers who are denigrated, or who don't have 'safe spaces' to discuss their experiences, open the Daily Mail, or talk to a mother about whether she finds it easy to admit that she found it difficult to breastfeed, or whether she has a 'safe space' to talk to friends about how her child's company sometimes bores her shitless.

Hugh’s points about the prevalence of female authority figures in a child’s early years are very interesting and valid. Again, this is something that works to the detriment of females as well as males – the idea is set very early on that women do the nurturing, men do the wage-earning.

This contrasts with what I’ve seen in other cultures such as the Far East, where men are proudly involved in nurturing children and it is perfectly normal for babies to be carried, cuddled or disciplined by the men in their family. Whether they are entirely involved in the practical side of childcare such as feeding and nappy-changing is another matter, but the displays of affection are there and this carries on into adulthood where it is often perfectly acceptable for men to hold hands or hug.

But if you want your sons to have more male role models, you are going to have to be those role models, lads – no one else can do this for you. Are you willing to give up your high-paid jobs, downsize your affluent lifestyles to something you can afford on two part-time wages and spend more time with your kids? If you want to address the imbalance of female authority figures that children meet in their early years, why not retrain as a nursery nurse or primary school teacher? You can’t have it both ways. Or sign up to be a scout leader and when people take the piss, tell them how and why their attitude is unacceptable.

it is confusing as a man to be expected to Be Strong and Bring home the Bacon and also at the same time to be emotionally available and be present and involved. Some clarity about what constitutes a workable set of possibilities for the role of a father would be helpful: something pragmatic and rooted in reality not something derived from an ideological standpoint.

Yes, things are changing. Deal with it. No one else is going to figure it out for you, and the process is not always going to be comfortable, nor are you always going to have unflinching support from everyone around you. Things is tough all over. Want some clarity about a workable set of possibilities? Decide on them and then live them. If you want change, you have to pick up your pitchfork and make a revolution.

My submission to the Browne review of higher education funding

2010-05-17T04:20:00.001-07:00

Dear Lord Browne, please make a special 'pre-1990s graduate' tax for everyone who went to uni when you still got a full grant plus housing benefit and could sign on in the holidays. They can afford it, especially since they went on to buy houses when houses were actually affordable, and are therefore now rolling in it in comparison to those of us who graduated later. We had to pay off loans and pay inflated property prices caused by those early graduates investing the money they didn't have to spend on repaying loans in 'developing' property. Not to mention that we had to work in the holidays instead of signing on and sitting on mummy's sofa talking about revolution and getting our laundry done for us. It's time to redress the balance.

In case you didn't realise already that the system is fucked up

2010-05-07T01:29:00.001-07:00

So at the moment, the Tories have 7 percentage points more of the votes cast than Labour, and 44 more seats in Parliament. Yet Labour have only 7 percentage points more votes than the Lib Dems, but have almost 200 - TWO HUNDRED - more seats in Parliament. I'm waiting for someone to tell me how that is democracy.

Bristol West's answer to Sam Seabourne writes...

2010-05-06T03:30:00.001-07:00

Oh god, god, god, god, god. Just realised that this time tomorrow we may well have a Tory government. Oh GOD GOD GOD GOD GOD GOD GOD GOD GOD.
I'm already planning to go out and help the local Lib Dems tonight at the polling station, but will it be enough? I suspect we will win in our constituency since it was tight last time between Labour and Lib Dem and I can't see people round here voting Tory. Mind you, there are a lot of small businesses, shops etc, who might go blue. More likely disillusioned Labour voters will go Green or Lib Dem, and the Greens have no hope of winning so fingers crossed for Stephen Williams getting those tactical votes.
Hopefully the leaflets I delivered will have helped, I feel like a right proper local activist (even got a text message from Nick Clegg -allegedly-this morning saying thanks for my hard work). Shame that some of the envelopes I pushed through doors were empty by mistake... I only realised when a woman came running out to ask what was meant to be inside the envelope I'd put through the door. 'Election information', I said. 'Oh, which party?' she said.
Of course I should have said 'Your local Conservative candidate madam!' But like the well-meaning leftie fool I am, I told the truth. 'Says it all really, but then they're all just as bad as each other aren't they?' was her parting shot - can't help kind of agreeing with her given the record of the local council but hey ho.

A question for runners

2010-05-05T02:41:00.001-07:00

Dear fellow runners, if there are any of you reading this, I have a question.
It goes without saying that we all have little movie-training-montages running in our heads as we go - you know, cutting from yourself looking determined running past bushes, to yourself looking determined but slightly tired running past the duckpond, to yourself doing the hands-on-thighs-while-looking-up-determinedly pose) while waiting at the zebra crossing. And it's obviously important to shout 'AADRIEEEENNNNNE' in your head if you have to run up any steps.
But my question is this: when you've finished your run and you're doing your bit of walking to cool down, do you worry that passers-by won't realise that you've just run a bloody long way and will just think you've wimped out? And if so, how do you cope? Do you do lots of puffing and 'phew'ing? Do you hold your phone to your ear and talk loudly about 'GOD I've just run MILES I'm KNACKERED...yes...just doing the WARM DOWN now'? Do you affect a limp so they'll think you *could* be running but you've just injured yourself?

Brarse: an update

2010-05-04T03:52:00.001-07:00

In case anyone's interested, in the end I got a dress made to measure. However, despite careful measuring and my explaining to the (very sweet) dressmaker that I was there specifically because I have trouble finding dresses that fit around the tits, when the dress arrived in the post I found... it doesn't fit round the tits.
So I've got to go all the way back to Brighton and get it altered. Fercryingoutbloodyloud it's not like I'm some kind of freakish physical anomaly! I just want a nice frock to wear to my mates' weddings! Is that so much to ask?

Great news, girls: the glampon has arrived!

2010-03-25T05:20:00.001-07:00

Not sure what to make of these: tampons delivered monthly to your door in 'gorgeous, feminine' packagine. I mean, putting aside the obvious practical consideration that if they get delayed in the post, or you come on a day or two earlier than expected, you'd have to go out and buy Always like, er, always, my first reactions are rather mixed.
OK, so they seem to be basing this marketing on the idea that having your period doesn't have to be grim, a shameful reminder of your own dirty womanhood, and that's a positive thing, even if you haven't yet tasted your own menstrual blood as Auntie Germaine recommends in the Female Eunuch. Yes, your monthlies can be chances for more glamour and femininity, through having your tampons in, wait for it: pretty packaging. Embrace the classy neutrals and pseudo-damask pattern on the box, girls! Feel the loveliness of that 'silk fit' cotton (is it cotton? is it silk? is it some kind of hybrid made by force-feeding silk worms cotton wool until they barf?) as you shove a lump of condensed fluff into your bleeding fanny.
But how exactly is this new? How is it different to what all sanitary 'protection'* manufacturers do all the time when they cover their packaging with pink swirly butterfly-type stuff? I've never seen tannies (or sannies for that matter) in Tesco's packaged with a photo of Jenna Jameson draped over a Lamborghini or any other kind of 'masculine' design.
Plus I take quite a big issue with all this 'have a happy period' ((c) Always) crap anyway. You know, the adverts with some bird on rollerskates/running along the beach/getting her samba on in a carnival. Sure, we shouldn't be ashamed of having periods or treat them as if they're an illness rather than a normal part of life, but what do we gain by pretending that they don't hurt? Given the choice between going rollerskating on the first day I get the painters in, or curling up on the sofa with a hot water bottle and having a good cry over repeats of Sex and the City**, I know which one I'd rather be doing.
Women have nothing to gain through pretending that female-specific bodily processes are all just a great happy joy session. Pregnancy: a beautiful experience. Childbirth: all it takes is a warm bath and if you have an epidural you're a quitter. Breastfeeding: comes naturally to everyone. The menopause: nothing more than a few hot flushes, dearie. Periods: just something you get on with and don't complain about. Bullshit - or, indeed, cowshit.
Of course, if you use a Mooncup like I do, you don't have to get anything delivered in any kind of packaging or worry about running out - or pay £2.29 a month (including TAX! Don't get me started) for the priviledge. It's not pretty, but I fail to see why it needs to be.

*Please, protect me from my body's natural processes, just like when I have a cold and buy a big box of nasal protection wipes with integrated tissue-feel cotton-weave technology!
**This is just my personal thing, I'm sure readers have a variety of coping mechanisms, all equally valid.

Brarse

2010-02-10T12:42:00.000-08:00

Just spent 2.5 hours shopping for dresses. Now hate every single bit of my blotchy mid-winter body. Especially the top half. Would it KILL one bloody shop to make dresses that had room for some bazookas in them? Or is everything designed by bitter flat-chested women huddled over their sketchbooks cackling 'ha ha, this'll really piss off those busty bitches'? (Actually, they probably are skinny and bitter since they are Fashion People and we all know Fashion People don't eat food or ever have fun.)
The worst thing is you never get any sympathy for having big tits. People seem to assume it's all prancing around in a mohair twinset having a jolly fun time with Rock Hudson, rather than the reality of never being able to buy anything in any of the following categories:
- buttons down the front (gaping issues)
- strapless, backless or one-shouldered (unless you want your breasticles bashing your knees, since strapless bras don't work past a C cup)
- thin straps or racer back (have to wear a bra, and probably one with sensible inch-wide straps)
- sheer or lacy top/back panels (all the above underwear issues)
- any type of dress (either fits round the tits but nowhere else, or everywhere else and you can't zip the top up)
- tunics/kaftans/baggy t-shirts (tenting)
- t-shirts with pictures on them (distortion of image)
- any other tight t-shirt (a one-way ticket to sweatpatchville)
- anything empire-line (the empire is never big enough)
- anything sleeveless (armpit gaping)
- anything gathered at the waist (rides up)
- high-waisted skirts or trousers (frumpy)
- horizontal stripes, frills or 'interesting' shoulders (wiiiiide looooooooad)
- anything low-cut (whoreish) or high-neck (lumpen) or tight (whoreish and lumpen)
- most of the underwear and swimwear in the universe.
Anyway I'm just going to wear jeans to the wedding reception on Friday and to hell with it. Everyone will be looking at the bride anyway.

Fish empathy

2007-07-03T08:13:00.000-07:00

I know it's a serious thing and I do love fish and think they are my friends not my food and the quilt seems very beautiful but… it's just the phrase 'fish empathy quilt' that makes me totally unable to take thisseriously.

Sorry PETA. Don't dump horse poo outside my house please.

Vegetables: an update

2007-07-03T07:20:00.000-07:00

Prince Charming has signed up for an allotment. So, we may soon have that vegetable patch. It won't be mine, though, he made me promise I'd let him do whatever he wants in it ( which will be herbs, beetroot and potatoes, knowing him) because I don't let him tell me what to do in the garden. By the way, the garden's coming on a treat. I've got 7ft-high sweet peas that smell gorgeous and the passion flower is taking over the whole place. You can almost pretend you're in a lovely cottage somewhere if you block out the sound of the car alarms.

Emo, I am

2006-11-24T06:14:00.000-08:00

I've decided I quite fancy the bloke out of Muse (the singer, natch, not the one with the silly hair - I mean, really, with the money they earn he must be able to afford a decent snipper). According to a teenage friend of mine* that makes me officially emo. No, I didn't know what it was either, but it's apparently the latest incarnation of the over-sensitive teen. It's like a cross between indie kid and goth with a bit of riot grrl thrown in.

Anyway I'm sticking with my Matt Bellamy crush. Any man who can scream like that must be pretty damn good in the sack, surely. Plus, he stands on a stage with lots of lights and pyrotechnics and big noise and plays a guitar, and I've always been a sucker for that kind of thing. He'd have to fatten up a bit, otherwise I'd crush him, but I'm sure we could have a few solid meals of cider and pasties (he's from Devon, so that's doubtless his favourite meal) and he'd bulk out in no time. I'm mildly concerned that this might be his sex face, but hey, we're emo so we'd surely be doing it in the dark anyway.

* I play online computer games, which necessitates spending some of my free time with teenage boys. Most of them are intensely irritating. I'd like to stress that I'm not some kind of Debra Lafave. And, by the way: eww!

A sub-editor writes...

2006-09-15T04:26:00.000-07:00

Why oh why is there not a command in Indesign or Word to 'Find all bullshit' and 'Replace with sparkling wit'?

I mean, really:

The saw has been in use since the time of the Pharaohs some 4 _ thousand years. Its sole purpose is to cut wood in either a straight line or a curved one depending on the type of saw and its design purpose. Modern saws are vastly different to those early varieties, the quality of the material they are made from is far superior, and the technology applied during the saws development has made a more accurate, efficient, and easier tool to use.

'Its sole purpose is to cut wood'? Gaddam! And there was me trying to use a 14in tenon saw to hold up my trousers. If only someone had told me earlier.

Help me, Obi-wan Kenobi

2005-02-22T16:02:00.000-08:00

I've got quite a bit of work to do at the moment, so what better time to piss about on the internet finding a new photo for my profile (right)? I'm a bit bored of the princess cake, so I decided to go for the best princess ever: ass-kickin' robo-babe , feminist icon and an early role model for me and many other women who grew up with brothers in the late 1970s/early 1980s. Let's face it, Luke wouldn't have survived through the first reel if it wasn't for her; and then, while he's pissing about "finding himself" by waving a big shiny stick around, she's getting on with fighting evil and generally getting stuff sorted out, like women through the ages before her and plenty of women to come after her.
Plus she got to shag Han Solo and we'd all like a go on that, wouldn't we.
And while I was looking, I found this. How cool? I need one.
This is just weird though. And slightly pervy in a way I can't quite define.

Bloody London gets all the attention

2005-02-22T11:06:00.000-08:00

Oh great. According to BBC Breakfast it's snowed more in south London than it has here. Yet another example of the London-centric attitude of this country. It's just not fair. I'm joining the Countryside Alliance.

Hunter S Thompson dies

2005-02-22T09:08:00.000-08:00

So

Farewell then, Hunter S Thompson.

You never meant shit to me.

But apparently, you should have done

So maybe it's time I got round to reading one of your books.

Reasons why living here is better than living in London, #687

2005-02-21T07:30:00.000-08:00

It's snowing!!!!!!!!!

I bet Felicity Kendal never had to put up with this sort of thing

2005-02-21T07:08:00.000-08:00

Oh woe. My compost heap has let me down. Like an unruly teenager, it has embarrassed me in front of my family.
When my sister-in-law came round with my brother and a lovely cake (I'm enjoying a hefty chunk of it now as it happens, washed down with a nice cup of tea) I took her out to view the Green Refuse Compacto-Decomposition Unit and she was duly impressed, but I couldn't help noticing that some of the floorboards nailed together to make the front side were coming adrift. I could only lean against them to cover them up and smile winningly in the hope that SIL wouldn't see them (she said she couldn't see anything amiss but dammit, I knew it was there).

Anyhoo. I've just been to Tesco's to buy supplies for a small gathering of friends I'm hosting this weekend to celebrate my 30th birthday (it's not a party, my official birthday party is happening later in the year). We've got cherryade, cream soda, three sorts of jelly, raspberry ripple ice cream (two tubs - I toyed with the idea of getting different flavours but really, you can't improve on raspberry ripple), champagne, party rings, happy face biscuits, pink wafer biscuits, jammy dodgers, burgers, hot dogs, dandelion and burdock, processed cheese slices, coleslaw, potato salad, onion rings, assorted crisps and lashings of ginger beer! The plan is to get really high on sugar and run around breaking things. I need TV for my bumhole!

An amusing situation with a chicken

2005-02-19T22:54:00.000-08:00

...well, not really, but I have been Good Lifeing it up today, spending a good hour or so in the garden taking my compost heap up to the next level. I don't mean I put more scraps on it so it got taller, I mean that I have turned it from a simple heap of garden waste and kitchen scraps into a turbo-charged Bio-Waste Decomposition Zone(TM).
You may recall that I had fashioned rudimentary (but oozing with Scandinavian design flair) sides for my heap out of an old Ikea futon - actually, you may not, as my detailed description of the process was lost forever from the literary canon in an unfortunate blog-posting malfunction. Well, it had remained since then as a three-sided affair with large gaps between the slats of what was once the futon and really, although it looked cool, it wasn’t heating up properly and nature was not able to take its course. To make things worse, I’d been banging on to Nice Next Door Neighbour about how an aerobic composting system was much more efficient than his anaerobic plastic bin that he got from the council, even though I had no idea what I was talking about and was totally making it up.
Once again, though, it was the Nice Next Door Neighbours who came to the rescue. My Organic Fertiliser Production System(TM) now has a fourth side constructed from the neighbours’ floorboards – old ones, that they’re replacing, I didn’t just barge in and start ripping up their living room floor - and is covered on all sides with their old living room carpet (dog hair still attached for extra insulation). It even has – get this – a lid made of carpet, which can be folded back for convenient access and then replaced to keep the heat in. And the whole thing was achieved by some very satisfying nail-bashing which made me feel very capable and post-feminist even though most of them are well on the piss.
It’s now overtaken the woodpile as my number-one pride and joy. I’ve caught myself looking out the window admiring it twice already and I’m really looking forward to my sister-in-law coming over tomorrow afternoon so I can show it to her.

'Illness' behind job response delay, publisher claims

2005-02-09T13:50:00.000-08:00

Finally got ticked off with waiting and emailed the first interview people to ask them what the hell was going on (although obviously I phrased it more arslikhan-like, but that was the jist). Apparently the publisher is off sick and no one can make a decision without him. Which I guess is fair enough, although surely the man's got a damn phone? Tsk.

Publisher in 'comes to senses' shock

2005-02-04T03:14:00.000-08:00

No, I still haven't heard back from the people I was interviewed by before, but I have just been offered an interview by another magazine in the same company. Which is nice. I asked about the salary range and the top end of it is a whopping 70% of what I earned in London, so that's just about acceptable and I said yes. Haven't arranged a day yet though.
The downside is that it's a permanent job whereas the other one is maternity cover but hey, there's nothing to stop me leaving after eight months anyway I guess. And with mortgages and suchlike looming on the horizon, permanent employment is seeming unusually attractive.
Hmmmmn. Still, it's nice to be wanted and anyway I always make it a rule not to turn down a job before I've been offered it. In truth, though, I'm really hoping the other people offer me that job before I do this interview so I don't have to sit through it. And I don't know what the hell I'm going to wear, I don't have any smart clothes that still fit.

Top bird

2005-02-01T13:06:00.000-08:00

This isn't supposed to be a "links I think you'll find interesting" kinda blog, but I've just seen this story about a parrot who can have conversations and it's so amazing I think you'll, y'know, find it interesting.
I'm not sure it isn't a hoax, it's that crazy. And I definitely don't go for the telepathy stuff. But, dammit, the thing can use past and present tenses and form sentences to talk about new experiences, it clearly isn't just repeated stuff, ahem, parrot-fashion.
I wonder if I will one day be able to teach my chickens to talk.
Perhaps the reason parrots, mynah birds and so on are the ones most commonly known to talk is that they have lives worth talking about; a chicken's conversation would probably be little more than: "Hi, how are you? Me? yeah, yeah I'm fine as it goes. I laid another egg today but it disappeared, as usual - honestly, you try to keep an eye on them, but as soon as your back's turned they just go walkies every time. God knows where they end up. Apart from that I did some grubbing around and scratching; got scared a few times and that bloody cockerel was hassling me for most of the afternoon, but all in all, nothing much to report. At least we haven't seen that fox around lately, phew, did I tell you about the time last year when he nearly got through the fence? I did? Oh. What's been happening in your life then?"

Waiting…

2005-02-01T08:10:00.000-08:00

The interview guy said he'd get back to me "in the early days of next week". That was on Friday morning. It's now the early days of next week and I haven't heard a peep yet. Damn him! Damn him!
I'm trying not to care, because I know it's only a job and will probably be boring just like all the other jobs I've ever had (apart from any that have involved working for Taxloss, obviously) but failing.
Waiting to hear about a job interview is like waiting for a call from a bloke you've just met. There's the initial confidence that he will call, then the anxiety as time passes, accompanied by increasingly less-confident assuring of self that boy time is different and that just because he said he'd call on Tuesday doesn't mean he won't leave it until Thursday or even later, then the slowly dawning realisation that actually he's not going to call, followed by the eventual conclusion that you're ugly, boring, undesirable, possibly foul-breathed and should have shagged him then and there while you had the chance and not tried to make him think you were respectable by telling him to take you out for a date or two before you got ur freak on even though you knew it was a given that you'd jump into bed by 9.30 on the first date anyway.
OK, so when it comes to a job interview, maybe the last bit doesn't quite apply, but I have got increasingly niggly worries about what I should have said and how I came across. Did I seem witty and confident or needy and uptight? Will that feature that I left him to show the breadth of my experience work against me because it's a bit shit, even though I did point out twice that I wrote it a long time ago and I've got much better since then? Were there any vegetables stuck in my teeth?
And all this while Bessie is in Nicaragua and Mrs Mod is laid up in Yorkshire with a runny tummy - how is a girl expected to cope with this kind of stress without a brace of best friends easily to hand?

Interview update

2005-01-27T07:21:00.000-08:00

It all went very well, the bloke was very nice but seemed to have the erroneous impression that the world of trade magazines is entirely populated by sensible, hard-working, professional people who meet their deadlines and that I might be put off by the fact that his team have the radio on in the office and girlie calendars on the walls. I say "seemed" because of course in a job interview one can't ask anything gender-specific, so I gleaned this from things he was saying like "it's really not a very PC office, in fact I'm afraid it's often quite the opposite" and "the staff writers are all guys in their 20s, but in the nicest possible way they're not the most mature of 20-somethings".
Anyway it seemed like a wicked place to work, although I don't want to say too much in case I identify it, and I've got a little caption-writing test to do which is fun (I like writing captions).
If they like me I've got to go back and see the publishing director, which will be a bit of a trauma as I don't have a) any smart clothes that still fit me or b) any days when I'm not working in London for the next two weeks at least.

PS The interview guy also said that even if I don't get this long-term thing, there is a massive shortage of decent magazine production freelances in the West Country, which really cheered me up. There's nothing that warms the cockles of a job-seeker so much as hearing that a potential employer is absolutely gagging desperate. So there's plenty of work, McReadie, Taxloss, Sundried...what are you waiting for? Let's head to Somerset and start that commune we've always talked about. I'll feed the chickens, Hypatia can knit jam and Sundried can be chief goat girl.

Just a few informal words...

2005-01-24T04:56:00.000-08:00

Yay! I've got a job interview tomorrow. It's for six months' or so maternity cover at a place in Bath, so it's ideal.
They've asked me in for an "informal chat, just to get to know me a bit and so I can find out what they're about", so obviously I'll be preparing a full presentation and taking in quadruplicate copies of my CV and cuttings. I won't be falling for the old "informal chat" line again, that's for sure, not like the time I went somewhere for an "informal chat, just to rubber-stamp your appointment" and ended up facing the most horrendous job interview I've ever done with some woman whohadn't read my CV, seemed to think I was some second-jobber who should be begging for the privilege of joining her magazine and kept saying things like "so, you're moving out of London for a different pace of life, that means you won't be willing to work after 5pm, then, does it?".
The bloke on the phone sounded nice, but the thing is that a West Country accent makes everyone sound cuddly and loveable so I expect he'll actually be some super-charged uber-efficient type. Which is actually probably a good thing if I'm going to be working for him coz there's nothing worse than working for a nob-jockey.
Anyway I'm v pleased. Even if I don't get the job, which is highly likely, it's encouraging to have an interview.

My American TV drama habit is getting out of hand

2005-01-22T00:49:00.000-08:00

Last night I snapped at Prince Charming because he tried to talk to me in the middle of my two-hour Dark Angel session - and earlier today I saw the CSI partwork thing (builds week by week into a fascinating behind-the-scenes guide, plus a look at real-life crimes and how forensics help to solve them!) advertised on TV and for a moment I actually thought to myself "hmmn, that sounds interesting".

It's all Taxloss's fault, for it was he who first said to me, "You know, I think you might quite like CSI, you should give it a try". You know, he gives it all the "I'm such an intellectual political observer and wry satirical commentator" but tonight Provincial Princess can exclusively reveal that actually he regularly rots those Oxbridge-honed brain cells in front of prime-time dromma.

Anyway, I can't afford the CSI partwork because I'm going to be spending my £6.99 a fortnight on The Pocketwatch Collection (builds week by week into a fascinating history of classic timepieces, and each week there's a reproduction pocketwatch with a high-quality mechanism, absolutely free).

Apparently, the only publishing sector growing faster than partworks is the women's mag sector. So I think maybe I should be sending my CV to De Agostini instead of Future.

Do you think they'd be impressed if I sent it a little bit at a time, so it builds week by week into a fascinating resume detailing my skills and experience? I could include a stylish binder with the first page and a free example of my previous work absolutely free for them to keep, every week.

Monsieur, there is a burrrmb

2005-01-19T09:53:00.000-08:00

Ah, but of course it was Nina Myers. I mighda known that scheming bitch would be at the bottom of all this...

Still, who cares, now that Miguel's on the scene? Darn it, if you guys had told me about him I'd have watched this whole thing a lot sooner. Hummuna hummuna! He dresses like a 1991 British indie kid (why do American 'rock' people do this?), fights like Jean-Claude van Damme, had his own recording stuido, loves kids, isn't afraid to mess with the authorities, is happy to rush across town, leaving his place of work, just because his girlfriend gets a bit whiney on the phone and then when she says there's a nuclear bomb about to go off in Los Angeles, he believes her and (and this is the crucial point for me) helps her escape, rather than rushing back to his recording studio to save his guitars,which is undoubtedly what Prince Charming would do. And hell, I respect him for that, but you know, sometimes I dream...

Another thing: I'm up to 1pm now, and no one yet seems to have realised the comic potential of dropping in the classic "there's a bomb in the city!"/"a buh--!!"/"no, not a buh, a bomb" dialogue. What this show needs is Leslie Nielsen - dagnabbit, if I was dying of radiation poisoning and only had 12 hours to live, I could sure use him popping up to say "the encryption key? what is it?"/"it's a series of numbers and letters that would allow us to decipher the files we transferred to NSA, but that's not important right now".

Could you be in '24'?

2005-01-18T18:48:00.000-08:00

The events in this blog entry happen between the hours of 6pm and 7pm. Typing occurs in real time.

I'm celebrating my purchase of a brand new shiny TFT monitor - and therefore some blessed relief from my migraines - with a '24' DVD marathon courtesy of Amazon's new DVD rental service. It's been great fun (I'm up to midday in Series 2) but several things have struck me.
The first is that all the women look exactly the same - even the little girl is like a minipops version of Elisha Cuthbert/the two sisters and what the presidential aide woman would look like if she had blonde hair. Only the lesbian daughter from Roseanne is distinguishable and she's about to die, which is a shame because she's a vastly under-rated actress who brings a touch of class to a show that is, frankly, chod, although enjoyable chod. Why isn't she in more stuff?
The second is, why does Hollywood insist on equating obsessive compulsive disorder with perpetrators of domestic abuse? If it's not '24', it's 'Sleeping with the Enemy'. But for crissakes, just because a man likes his ham'n'eggs arranged in a particular way on the plate doesn't mean that 45 minutes later he's going to be whacking his daughter's head against a bedstead and shouting "Kim if you move I will kill you".
The third is that almost the entire cast of characters appears to be phenomenally stupid. Not the actors, they are clearly clever enough to be laughing all the way to the bank, but - aside from possibly Tony Almeida, who by the way really should have been promoted by now - the characters are all just dim-witted as hell.

To illustrate, I’ve prepared what Americans, for some reason, call a “pop” quiz. It’s got nothing to do with pop, though.

1) You are an FBI agent working undercover with some armed terrorists. They reveal their plot to blow up a building full of your friends and former co-workers. Do you:
a) Smile, tell them it’s a great idea and attempt to sabotage the explosion
b) Smile, tell them it’s a great idea and start looking for a way to get away from them so you can inform the authorities
c) Wait until they’re 15 feet away with their backs to you, pop behind a parked van and call the president of the USA on your mobile phone for a quick chat?

2) You are rescuing a badly injured little girl from her physically abusive father. He has threatened to kill you and has told the police you’ve kidnapped the child. Your own father has advised you with no small sense of urgency to go to your aunt Carol’s house in San Jose. Do you:
a) Go to your aunt Carol’s house in San Jose
b) Call the police and explain your side of the story, citing the child’s battered mother as a witness, then take the kid to a hospital so she can receive treatment
c) Call your father’s former co-workers at the Counter-Terrorism Unit, disturbing them in the middle of serious FBI business, and insist on taking the child over to their premises?

3) You have found out that your sister’s fiance has terrorist connections. Your family’s life could be in danger if anyone finds out what you know. Do you:
a) Act normal until your private investigator can give you any more information on what to do
b) Call the police
c) Tell your dad what you know and then act all weird and grumpy, snapping at your sister and freaking out when her fiance tries to take you to a mystery location in his snazzy red car?

4) You are a terrorist goon guarding a nuclear weapon factory, the centrepiece of which is a glass case containing highly radioactive plutonium. Some police and FBI chaps break in and start looking around. Do you:
a) Sneak out and make a run for it
b) Call your bosses and tell them what’s going on
c) Open fire with a machine gun, shattering the glass case and thus putting your own life at risk from radiation poisoning?

5) You are a terrorist planning to bomb the Counter-Terrorism Unit within a matter of hours. An old mate shows up, fresh out of Joliet, carrying the severed head of your arch-enemy who has been in impregnable protective custody for a number of months. Your right-hand man suggests that the timing suggests more than a coincidence. Do you:
a) Wonder how this bloke managed to get access to your arch-enemy in order to kill him, put two and two together and realise that he is an undercover FBI agent
b) Tell him it’s great to see him again but you’re a little busy right now and could you call him tomorrow
c) Welcome him with open arms, tell him details of your plot and invite him along to help out?

If you answered mainly c, then congratulations! You are stupid enough to be a character in ‘24’.

Still, it's top entertainment. Trouble is, I can't work out who the woman in the photos is, because she just looks like every other woman in the show, only wearing a brown wig. Hey ho - only one way to find out I suppose!

Och, ma heed

2005-01-11T05:41:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the lack of posts, dear reader. I have started getting migraines so I'm trying to avoid looking at words on VDU screens as much as possible (for someone who earns their living working with words on a VDU screen, this is something of a challenge). Anyway I'm going to see my lovely GP on Friday and no doubt she will prescribe me a course of antibiotics, as they usually do, although being as she is the nicest doctor I've ever met she might have some constructive advice too. I'm also going to go for a massage as well which will probably help so I'll be back soon with all the news from the sticks.

I hate computers.

2005-01-04T12:35:00.000-08:00

I just wrote a really long, funny, new year's post and then clicked "publish" and went downstairs to feed the cat. When I got back my screen was showing an error message and however many times I clicked "back", all I got was the empty blog input screen and my 500 beautifully crafted words were lost forever. Feeling very disgruntled because it was my first post in ages that was actually about what this blog's supposed to be about, ie my experiences of downsizing. Can't be arsed doing it all over again, particularly as I have to write some job begging letters.
So here's a quick synopsis: happy new year; I nearly exploded from eating over the holiday but yet strangely there is much tasty food still left uneaten at Castle Provincial that's bound to interfere with my fnew year's resolutions, see below; I've made a compost heap with sides fashioned from an old futon, which still has the Ikea sticker on for a touch of Scandinavian design flair; Nigella Lawson is quite irritating; the next door neigbours are going to give us their three-piece suite, thus proving my theory that if you are faced with a stressful situation such as how the hell you're going to be able to afford a sofa, sitting around on your arse doing nothing until the problem sorts itself out is invariably the best option.
Seriously folks, you should've read the unexpurgated version. Still, I'll save some of the best jokes for future posts.
In the meantime, here's my new year's resolutions:
1) Write my posts in Word and then copy them into Blogger rather than just typing into the screen
2) Smoke more fags. They really are lovely and I don't get through enough of them.
3) Watch the entire new series of America's Next Top Model, which starts on 12 January, and this time there's 14 finalists instead of 12, just to add that extra 16% of drama (although to be honest half of them could be the same people as the last series and who'd be the wiser, most of them look identical anyway)
4) Lose the 9 pounds I've put on since I stopped dieting in August (to this end, I've just ordered "Penny Smith's Power Yoga" and "Tracey Shaw's Salsacise!" on video, so any readers in Bristol may hear thumping and swearing coming from a seemingly ordinary suburban house in the next few weeks)
5) Spend an hour a day working on some serious creative writing, instead of writing stream-of-consciousness nonsense on this blog or coming up with a variety of creative reasons not to write anything.
Hmmmn. With number 5 in mind, now seems like a good time to hoover the living room.

2004-12-28T06:18:00.000-08:00

I can't get over the flood thing in the Indian Ocean. Me and Prince Charming have been to several of the places that were affected and every time I see them on the telly it just breaks my heart. I mean, I didn't even have a very good time in Phuket but seeing the main street barely recognisable under a load of rubble and water was just awful; thinking of all the corpses on the beach where I sunbathed is just unbelievable.
And then there's all the people that I remember from my holidays who are almost certainly now dead. For instance, if you said to me, "Hey, remember that waiter in the New India Cafe in Port Blair in the Andaman Islands, the one with the lazy eye who was so patient about explaining what all the things on the menu were, and who had to keep reminding us that they didn't serve dosas at lunchtime or thalis in the evening? He's popped his clogs, the poor old chap" that would be kind of sad.
But not only is he almost certainly dead, but very probably all the half-naked guys who worked in the tiny, roasting hot kitchen are dead; the guy with the crazy tika designs on his forehead who worked the till is dead; the friendly receptionist at the Jagarnath hotel who lived on one of the outlying islands and had to get the ferry to Port Blair at dawn every morning is dead; the lady who did my laundry and had the weird iron full of burning coals is dead; the family who slept out on the roof of the neighbouring house are dead; the guy at the beach on Havelock island who made me a bhang lassi is dead; the man and his wife who ran the restaurant by Beach Number 7 who made such nice vada are dead; the coral reefs were we went snorkelling are destroyed; the little secret beach covered in cute little hermit crabs where we made love is now littered with the corpses of fishermen; the cafe with the slowest service in the world, where we waited two hours for a curry and then saw phosphorescence in the water on the way home, is rubble; the family on Havelock island whom we walked miles to visit because they had been so kind to our friends the year before are dead... it's all a bit too much to bear, really. And I'm sitting here all safe and warm in my house in Bristol; I can't even begin to comprehend what it must be like for the people who actually live there.
The worst thing for me though is that this really is a case of there but for the grace of god; if the earthquake had happened in the Atlantic Ocean instead of the Indian Ocean, it'd be us who'd be burying three generations of our families and then fighting our way through a crowd to get a bag of rice from Oxfam. If we were lucky enough not to be dead. OK, maybe there's a whole load of geological reasons why it wouldn't happen in the Atlantic, but it still freaks me the hell out.
PS Encouragingly, I just tried to donate some money to the Red Cross earthquake appeal, and couldn't get through coz it was so busy. Just out of interest, I wonder how much money the general public of America will be donating to the relief fund, in relation to the amount they donated to the September 11 disaster fund?

Santa Corpse, Inflata Claus and mmmmmmmn.....cake part III

2004-12-24T12:59:00.000-08:00

Hello - it's Christmas Eve and this is a special festive edition of Provincial Princess. In other words I have a large glass of Baileys and a big chunk of Momma Charming's christmas cake to enjoy while I type (no marzipan, unfortunately, because Prince Charming doesn't like it, the freak).
Well, it is Christmas and of course it's a well-known scientific fact that anything consumed while there's a tree in your living room doesn't make you fat.
It's been a bit of a last-minute rush here at Chateau Provincial; I'd like to say that it's because of us being such interesting people that we couldn't find time to do the shopping in between a round of fabulous parties where I got to wear lots of spangly dresses like the kind they always have in the fashion pages of the December issues of women's magazines ("sparkle your way through the party season for under £50", you know the kind of thing). But guess what. Actually I've been bloody ill for weeks and PC's been visiting his folks.
The thing that really rankles is that we actually DID have a Christmas party to go to on Wednesday night, which, like, never happens, because whatever they tell you in the magazines, apart from possibly one office piss-up, no one except journalists on women's magazines really has a round of parties to go to where the dress code is formal and people actually intend to stay sober enough to risk wearing a sparkly frock.
But for once we did have a party to go to, with the chance to make lots of lovely new friends, and I had a new pair of fluffy boots and some new earrings to wear - boots £20 from Ebay, earrings £3 from a stall outside the Bristol City Museum. So as you can imagine I was like totally stoked to the max, dude (the person we were going to the party with is a surf instructor, so thought I'd get into the spirit of things there, lingo-wise).
Sadly, though, I was struck down by another flare-up of this horrible lurgy I've had for weeks. You probably know someone who's had it, too, as it seems to be going around: I keep getting flu for a few days, and then feeling better, but as soon as I leave the house I get ill again and have to go back to bed with 15 boxes of Kleenex Balsam and a hot water bottle. Last time, I had such a blinding headache I couldn't even read the National Enquirer, so I couldn't find out how Britney's coping with the miscarriage she hasn't had and what Beyonce would be doing if Jay-Z had been unfaithful, which of course he hasn't, but if he had, well, she'd be heartbroken because she's really fallen for him, say close pals, and let's hope it doesn't turn out to be another Whitney/Bobby thing.
So PC set out on Wednesday night at 7.30 on his own - and eventually came home at 4 o'clock the next afternoon, having had a brilliant time while I'd been losing half my body weight in snot.
So he's been Useless Simon since then, nursing a few extraneous emotions, but luckily, Superwoman that I am, I'd already done most of the Christmas shopping in a brief moment of convalescence on Tuesday night. I got really organised and went to Asda at 10.30 pm to miss the crowds; I'd have gone even later but for some reason, our normally 24-hour Asda decided to close at midnight in the busiest week of the year. Evidently the Wal-Mart family needed to get the kids to bed early or something.
I managed to spend £120 even though I was determined to be frugal, but really, that five quid Cava is so minging, you've got to get the Lanson haven't you. And also there was a much-reduced choice on the shelves at that time of night - again, the concept of Christmas being the busiest time of year for supermarkets seemed to have passed by the Wal-Mart family; I had to run round the vegetable section grabbing things as they were being tidied away, at only 11pm, so I couldn't get the Value potatoes and had to get the posh ones (I sense a marketing ploy). So much for Julie Walters "going hands-free". And they were re-stocking the shelves already so you had to squeeze your trolley past big pallet-loads of washing powder and stuff, which seemed a bit unecessary since they were going to be closed for six hours. Now I know why my mum used to take the time to make her own christmas pudding.
Anyway I got it all and on the way home I took a little detour around the estates to look at the lights on the houses. I'm a big fan of outdoor Christmas lights - I don't have any myself because I can't afford them, what with the Asda Super Special Real Brandy Whole Lotta Nuts! Christmas Pudding-style Giant Desert (Serves 12) that I had to buy because there weren't any of the small ones left, but I do like them on other people's houses.
Call me a chav if you think it's acceptable to mock the working class for having tastes different to those of more priviledged people, but I think when it's getting dark at half past three, a few flashing reindeers brightens the place up a bit.
The fashion this year seems to be for snake lights that spell out "Merry Christmas" which is very festive. There were some rather dodgy ones though, including a couple of people who had large Santas hanging on ropes out of windows that were blowing around in the wind in a manner a little too reminiscent of corpses dangling from gallows. Or how I imagine a corpse would look hanging from a gallow, I've never actually seen one. And someone else had a really odd Santa-in-a-box thing going on on their garage roof, which looked like a bloke in a red coat was burgling their house.
But the clear winner had to be the 15-foot-high inflatable Father Christmas in someone's garden. They had a big hedge, rather incongruously as it suggested they enjoyed their privacy, which would seem something of a contrast with drawing attention to yourself with a fucking great big blow-up Santa. Still, it cheered me up no end after the shopping nightmare.
So hoorah to them. You don't get that kind of thing in Stoke Newington, that's for sure. Merry Christmas everyone, and remember: if you feel sick, just eat a few segments of satsuma, and you'll soon find you can fit in another mince pie. Hoorah!

It's not all work, work, work ...

2004-12-13T12:40:00.000-08:00

...although I kind of wish it was. It seems I needn't have worried about the local paper because I heard back from the lady and she said she hasn't got the budget to employ freelancers. So you see I was right - all that worrying and planning I did about how to persuade her to hire me was a complete waste of energy because she came out with the one thing I can't argue against.
It was a very nice email though and she did imply that if she had the money she'd hire me, which is encouraging I suppose, and also said she'd keep my details in case the situation changed, which might be true I guess, although it might also be double-speak for "I'm going to file your email under W for Wastebasket".
To add insult to injury, Prince Charming sent out a load of emails asking for work to the Bristol-area electrical companies listed on the NICEIC website and this morning at 9.30 he got a phonecall offering him an interview. So, even bearing in mind that people in the construction industry start work quite early, he effectively got an interview for a job two hours after applying - and he'd only got up to C on the list of companies. That'll be the skills shortage that we're always hearing about, I guess.
Now he's stressing out about whether he might get a better offer somewhere else. The jammy git. And I'm about to catch another bloody bus up the M4 to work in London, again, although at least this time it's working with Sundried and the old Housing Today gang - I've been away long enough now for the office to have gained a sepia tone of nostalgia, which I'm sure will disappear at about 9.35 tomorrow morning when I have to sub Case of the Week.

Everybody needs gurrt lush neighbours

2004-12-13T04:09:00.000-08:00

The nice man from next door came round again the other evening to lend us his digital camera so that Prince Charming could take some photos of music stuff he's selling on Ebay (now that he's bought an Imac G5 - wooooh! - and a flash guitar with effects built in, the room full of pedals and keyboards and and other things with twiddly knobs on them are apparently no longer necessary). Nice Neighbour is turning out to be so nice that I am kind of wishing we'd gone to their party when we first arrived - they had some people round on Saturday night and it sounded quite raucous (apparently they have a tradition each year of getting their mates together and then driving round the local estates looking at all the lights on people's houses, and then getting pissed, which sounds like quite a laugh).
Anyway he told me about this great website. I was particularly interested to find out from the Bristolian dictionary that the local variant of "itchy chin" is "itchy barry" - where I grew up it was "chinny reckon" (with the emphasis firmly on the "on" and with an accompanying gesture of thumb to underside of chin). What a living language we have.
I attempted to extract information from Nice Neighbour about the Nasty Neighbours on the other side, but he didn't know much about them apart from the fact that they have a large barky-type dog. Being the owner of a large dog himself, he didn't necessarily agree with my theory that their dog was unhappy because they keep it in a small house, but we did have a good bitch about the fact that it got out of their garden twice over the weekend and ran around everyone else's gardens weeing in flowerbeds and scaring the life out of poor Ringo. I went round and knocked on the door to let them know their dog was loose and they didn't answer, although I could hear them out the back going "Harry! Harry!" which I guess must be the dog's name.
I didn't ask Nice Neighbour if he'd noticed the jeans. They're still there - two months to the day since I moved here - although now unfrozen.
Stil, he probably hates me now because not only did I say that keeping a big dog in a city was a bad thing, I also keep accidentally interrupting him so he probably thinks I'm super-rude. This is something I do when I'm really interested in a conversation and want to ask questions about what someone's saying (it stems from having grown up in a household where if you wanted to get a word in edgeways, you had to shout the other person down, and if you wanted to ask a question about what someone was saying, you had to interrupt or else by the time you got a chance to say your piece, not only would the conversation have moved on to other topics but you probably would have all grown up and left home) but it always comes across as the opposite.
At least I didn't crack jokes about foreigners or anything (his wife is Spanish). But I'll probably do that next time.

The hardest word

2004-12-09T12:07:00.000-08:00

Yikes. I've just turned down some potentially highly lucrative work in January on the basis that it was in London and I don't want to be always working in London rather than doing stuff here. So now I'm getting the wibbles about whether I should have done it - will I starve? Will it be the last work anyone ever offers me ever? Will I use the time constructively or just end up watching daytime TV? Did I, basically, do completely the wrong thing and make a terrible mistake that I'll regret for ever and ever and possibly even longer?
Every freelance reading this will, no doubt, be nodding along in understanding but for those of you who are still wage slaves, I'll explain: contrary to popular belief, being freelance isn't all about pottering in the garden and tapping out interesting articles about your hobbies, in between flitting from highly-paid part-time contract to highly-paid part-time contract. Well, OK, sometimes it is, but generally most freelances that I've met say yes to any work they're offered (within reason of course - clearly, it doesn't do to get out of bed for less than £100 a day).
This makes things quite difficult because of course most people go freelance because they want more spare time to relax/pursue other projects/work within, say, a 75-mile radius of where they live, but there's always this nagging feeling that if you say no to any work then that's it, you'll starve and die and really bad stuff will happen to your cat.
It didn't help that this is work for RIBA Journal who are good payers, too (don't worry Taxloss and Sundried, I told them to ring you instead).
But the fact remains that if I'd taken the shifts I'd have been in London for pretty much the whole of January and even though I am too skint to buy the lovely pair of fluffy boots that I've been watching on Ebay for the past week, I have to spend some time looking for work in Bristol. I mean, I want to start house-hunting, and I want to start that book I'm always talking about writing, and I want to sleep in my own bed at night and stuff.
I did apply to the chief sub of the local paper yesterday though so I am very proud that I achieved something in between knitting hats and watching Buffy re-runs. I did it all flash by email with PDFs of some of the stuff I've worked on before (it took my ages to get my Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0 Starter Edition, the free software I got with Windows XP, to make the PDFs, and a lot of swearing, but I managed it in the end and I'm quite proud of that too) and an email about how great I am. But she'll probably just email back and say the usual guff about using people with newspaper experience.
Now, I know I'm always wittering on on other people's blogs about how you should think positive and not assume that the worst is going to happen, but I have had problems before with persuading people that I'm good at my job because I've mostly worked on trade mags and people who work in other areas of publishing seem to have quite a low opinion of trade mags in general. They all seem to think they're jokes, like the guest publication slot on Have I Got News For You.
Granted, some of them may not be the height of publishing quality, but some of them are very good and it annoys me when people don't give me a chance because of that - not least because I am actually very good at my job and I am certain that anyone who hired me for a shift would want me back again. I've been a chief sub and I know how hard it is to find good people and what a joy it is when you actually find a freelance who's reliable and talented.
Plus, I don't see how there's any difference between subbing hard news or human interest features for a magazine or for a newspaper. So I don't understand why people turn me down because I don't have newspaper experience - but then I've never worked on a paper so maybe there is some subtle difference that I don't see.
Anyway the point of all this is not just to whinge (hey, it's my blog, so suck it up, readers!) but to ask your opinion. If the woman from the paper does say no, should I basically say the above to her? Not in so many words, obviously, but should I just say, 'look, I'm not just blowing my own trumpet, I'm really good, everyone who hires me always wants me back again (which is true), I've been a chief sub myself so I know how many people are out there making a living from freelancing because they're basically too crap to get a full time job, but I'm not one of them, so give me a chance and you won't regret it'?
If you were hiring, would that make you think, what an arrogant woman, or would it make you think, OK, maybe I will ring her referees and ask them about her instead of just dismissing her straight away?
For me, it would be the former, but I generally like people who speak their minds.

Reality TV

2004-12-08T13:03:00.000-08:00

Now, as you probably know, the best thing about being ill is having a licence to sit around wrapped in a duvet watching daytime TV instead of working. Well, this goes for the home-worker, too, particularly if, like me, you are someone naturally given to work-avoidance tactics.
So that’s what I’ve been doing the past couple of days. And what I found out was that this is not nearly so much of a waste of time as it’s often thought to be!
Yes, that's right. I can now exclusively reveal that daytime TV is not brain-melting chod, in fact it's remarkably educational. Let's take a look at just 10 of the many things I’ve learned from daytime TV in just the past 24 hours!

1) Tarantula legs taste like prawns.
2) A paranormal investigator’s equipment always includes a thermometer.
3) If you spray glue onto roses and dip them in glitter, you can make a lovely sparkly display for your Christmas table.
4) Whether boiled, scrambled or fried, eggs in the morning can be bliss if they’re served with a kiss.
5) When Prince Charles informed Diana of the death of the bodyguard with whom she’d been having an affair, he did it in a rather brusque tone of voice.
6) Pork from a female pig, or sow, is more tender and tasty than that from the male.
7) Dogs aren‘t just a fashion accessory, even small ones like those owned by Paris Hilton or Britney Spears take quite a lot of looking after and are likely to do "mini-poos" on your carpet.
8) If you are a woman of colour hoping to be successful in Hollywood, you can’t just wait for the roles to come to you, you have to get out there and make it happen.
9) It’s best to focus on the things you have in common with your work colleagues than your differences.
10) The (Irish) singer from the Corrs did not have any trouble doing a regional Irish accent for her latest film role, although she did take quite a bit of time to study it.

Have you learned anything useful from daytime TV recently? If you have, I‘d love to hear about it! You can call, text, or email, or evenmake a comment by following the link below. How easy is that?
Wow, that's so simple. Anyone could do it, really. Now, coming up later in this blog, we’ll be looking at my efforts to avoid doing any work and asking: how the hell am I going to afford to pay the rent in January? But first, it’s downstairs to the living room to find out what’s happening on today’s episode of Scrubs.

Snot funny

2004-12-06T13:31:00.000-08:00

Be ad Bridz Charbing have both god derrible golds. So I doad feel buch like bloggig. Bud I doe id's beed a while (sorry, duthing very idrestig has happud laidly) so I thord I'd just pop od to benchud that the dext door deighbours have still god the sabe pair of jeads od the washig lide, bud because we had a frost this bordig, they are dow frozed solid. Which I thord was quide fuddy.

Sunday afternoon. Again.

2004-11-14T13:33:00.000-08:00

Well, here I am again getting ready to go up to London for a few days' work, but this time I am actually quite looking forward to it. I've had a joyfully unproductive week at home and I'm now very much looking forward to visiting my friends Mr and Mrs Mod. Also God knows I could do with earning some money so even the prospect of working doesn't seem too depressing. It's a shame I've got to sit on the Megabus for three hours (at least) beforehand but hey, them's the breaks.
And Bessie and Mr Big are coming to see me next weekend so I've got that to look forward to (me and Bessie are going to sort out the garden). Yay! Maybe this moving house wasn't such a bad idea after all - although Prince Charming said last night that he felt lonely for the first time since he came to Bristol at the start of October. I guess six weeks isn't bad going, but I am worried that he doesn't seem to be getting out much. We decided maybe a good way to meet people was to find some kind of motorbike club that he could go for rides with - in London he was always saying he wished he knew more people who were into bikes - but that's not really a November thing I guess.
Of course, he could always, like, get a j-o-b, but I didn't say that coz I didn't want to listen to him telling me yet again all the terribly valid reasons why he can't find one till the new year.

That song

2004-11-13T00:36:00.000-08:00

OK, now I come to sing the whole thing through, I realise that I actually lied about being able to remember the whole Brownie Guide Song. There's only one line I can't remember and it's really bugging me, so if anyone can fill in the bit between "We're Brownie Guides, we're Brownie Guides, we're here to lend a hand" and "We're Brownie Guides, we're Brownie Guides, from north, south, east and west, we're joined together in our hope to strive to do our best" I'd be very grateful. I'm guessing it might start "We're Brownie Guides, we're Brownie Guides", if that's any help at all.

Just call me Mrs Make Do and Mend

2004-11-13T00:30:00.000-08:00

One Halloween many moons ago when I was a Brownie we all had to take in carved pumpkin lanterns to the meeting for some reason that now escapes me. Probably so that we could dance around them singing "We're Brownie Guides, we're Brownie Guides, we're here to lend a hand" etc (yes, I can remember the whole damn song, and my promise as well). Anyway my mum and dad wouldn't get me a pumpkin to carve, so I had to take in a lantern made out of a swede instead.
Their excuse was that they didn't like pumpkin and that if I was going to carve a vegetable, it should be one that they could eat rather than throw away. It seemed perfectly reasonable until I arrived at the meeting where, of course, I had the piss roundly taken out of me by the rest of the pack.
At the time, it seemed like the kind of traumatic experience that was bound to scar me for life but, knowing what I know now about a) the price of pumpkins and b) my parents' financial situation at the time, I can understand it. My reason for mentioning it now, though, is not to use my blog as some kind of cheap therapy device(believe me, if I wanted to harp on about how my mum and dad fucked me up, there's plenty of other incidents I could mention that were far more traumatic than having the wrong type of vegetable at a Brownie Guide jamboree) but because I am extremely skint myself at the moment and I've been thinking about how it's affecting my life.
My friends Tom and Barbara Goode, who live just down the road in Bath and whom I am getting to know much better now I live down here too, said to me the other day that poverty breeds creativity. Well, that certainly seems to be true, as I am thinking up all sorts of creative ways to avoid looking for work.
But I also made a delicious supper involving lots of fresh vegetables tonight, partly because I didn't have the money for a Friday night takeaway but also because not working means I have the time to cook healthy tasty food. It was marrow stuffed with almonds, hazelnuts and marjoram, with broccoli and butter-mashed swede on the side which is what made me think of my Brownie story*.
And I have started making Christmas presents and I'm very proud that I have made three presents so far without spending a penny (snarf!) - I have knitted and crocheted up some of my huge stash of leftover wool into rather snazzy hats for two ladies and a gentleman. Lots of other people are going to get baked stuff.
So, in short, I am going to make someone a lovely wife one day if I carry on like this. However, I am not going to be a best-selling novelist. I am going to have to shelve the writing project while I make some money because although Prince Charming assured me before we moved that he would be earning loads of money and I could relax and really work on my dream of being A Proper Writer, he now has a whole load of very valid reasons why he can't find work until the new year. So he's spending the whole time working on a concept album with lots of widdly guitar solos.

Other than that, I had another twinge of missing my friends tonight because I got a text message from Bessie saying that she wished she could come over and hang out like when I used to live in London. I was too tired to call her back and I got a bit sad because I was thinking about all the times we used to pop over to each others' houses to watch Sex and the City, or Yoga Goddess would come round and we'd all sit and yammer on about blokes and babies and skincare.
I guess that's another reason to look for work, so I can start making more friends who live nearby, but it takes a long time to work up to really good mates like Bessie and Yoga Goddess. It is much nicer living here than being in some tiny flat in Walthamstow or Leytonstone, which is where we probably would be if we hadn't moved, but I do wish I could have brought all my friends with me.
There is a tiny flame of hope inside me, though, that won't die, and it keeps me thinking that maybe, just maybe, some of them might like it so much when they come to visit that they might decide to move here....

*Following the ecstatic reaction to my discussion of marinated tofu a few months ago on Real-Life Chicklit, I believe some readers may be interested in the recipe. So here it is (besides, I'm really very proud): 1 marrow, big enough for two people to eat as a main dish; about three big handfuls of mixed, unsalted almonds and hazelnuts, chopped - chestnuts would probably be good, too, or pine nuts; 1 handful of pumpkin seeds, bashed a bit; 1 slice of brown bread, crumbed; 1 egg; about a teaspoon and a half of dried marjoram; salt and pepper. Cut the marrow in half lengthways and scoop out seeds. Stir everything else together and stuff it into the hole. Drizzle lots of olive oil over the top and bake at like, 180 or something, until it's done, probably about half an hour, maybe more, I didn't time it (the marrow won't go brown but the stuffing will). Then serve with a rich tomato sauce or maybe a nice thick homemade onion gravy - or, if you are feeding it to a bloke, Tesco's vegetable gravy granules and tomato ketchup. I'm sorry, Nigella who?

Executive burn-out claims another victim

2004-11-09T09:57:00.000-08:00

I'm not working this week (well, not paid work anyway) so I set myself a target of setting up my little office and sending out some letters to prospective employers in Bristol this week, because, although I do not wish to seem ungrateful to these people who have been paying my bills for the past couple of months, I am getting sick of flogging up and down the M4.
I managed to set up the office (see below) and it's rather nice here in my turret with a view over my grounds and a number of other back gardens. The ivy on our extension is still a vibrant shade of crimson, the early-flowering snowdrops and crocuses in the little pots on my windowsill are starting to push cute little green spikes up out of the earth and the next-door neighbours have had the same pair of jeans hanging on their washing line for more than a week now, causing me to wonder whether they've died/moved out, leaving their horrible barky dog behind? That would explain why it barks so much. If they'd been remotely friendly since we arrived, I'd investigate.
But I can't be arsed to start looking for work. I've found lots of magazines in Bristol that I plan to apply to, but it's amazing how much stuff suddenly needs doing around the house whenever I think about actually writing some letters. Anyway it's 9.45 and I have already chased a bunch of invoices, which I feel was quite a constructive thing to do over breakfast.
Bugger it. I deserve some time off. It's been quite stressful these past few months, not to mention that I'm still recovering from the year I've just spent working godawful hours as chief sub at this magazine.
It's a nice dry day, so maybe I'll go and mend the cat flap. We got one with a magnetic lock on it so Ringo could go in and out and the nasty black intruder cat wouldn't be able to, but he hasn't quite twigged how it works so he's just bust through it instead (and it looks like he's actually undone the screws, which I find quite impressive and slightly unnerving, but they must have worked loose while he was banging at the door with his paw... or did they?)

Mmmmmmn.... cake.... part II

2004-11-08T15:48:00.000-08:00

By the way, while we're on the subject of cool cakes, if I ever persuade Prince Charming to make an honest woman of me I will have my wedding cake made by these people. I stumbled across their shop in Brighton last year and found myself unable to move away from the window - luckily it wasn't open and Bessie was there to drag me away or I might still be there now. I mean, these cakes are like, four feet high, people, and just look at those ingredients.

My retail hell

2004-11-08T14:52:00.000-08:00

Hello and good afternoon. I am writing to you through the medium of wireless connectivity which I successfully installed yesterday in my home (well, I put the CDs in and followed the instructions, but when it came to putting the card into the back of the pooter I fluffed it up and had to storm upstairs and hide under the duvet for a bit while Prince Charming made me a cup of tea and did some magic inside the PC box that made it all OK again, but you know, I still think it's a triumph of feminism coz I was quite wary about taking the back off the computer but I still did it and I didn't touch any of the circuitry or anything*).
I have called my network Wendy Wireless because "Belkin" just sounds too much like "merkin" frankly. Even Prince Charming's laptop is working on it. Yay! Get me. Well, get him too I guess, coz he did help, but it was mainly me and I did go through hell to get the thing in the first place. You see the only PC World I could find is right over the other side of Bristol in the Cribbs Causeway Retail Park and if you ever get the chance to go there, I strongly suggest you don't. Not only was there a massive queue to get in, but it was the most horrendous mall I've ever been to (and bear in mind here that I lived in America for 6 months, so I've seen a few horrendous shopping malls in my time).
Imagine Cabot Place in Canary Wharf, right: now pile three of those on top of each other. Then think of an average-sized out-of-town retail park with your B&Q, your Harveys Furniture World, your Hobbycraft superstore and so on, and double it. Put two of those either side of the enormous covered shopping centre, slap a TGI Friday's** on the edge and fill in any surrounding area with a car park that stretches as far as the eye can see. Stick the M5 next door and fill every available inch of space with badly-dressed, waddling, stupid people and their snotty-nosed screaming offspring, remove any kind of signage that might indicate where customers might like to go to find the particular store that they've come to visit, and you've got the Cribbs Causeway Retail Park. I seriously very nearly had a panic attack when I ended up in the covered mall by mistake and had to run to the nearest exit for some fresh air.
I eventually found PC World entirely by chance, and after some minutes of walking along the foot/cycle path (who's going to CYCLE to a bloody out-of-town retail park? What, do they allow bikes on the M5 now?) looking at the PC World sign on the other side of an impenetrable piece of "landscaping" (some tatty bushes) I eventually found my way through and lingered next to the networking secton feeling useless because I didn't understand any of the packaging even though lots of people had told me wireless networks are very easy to set up. Was I going to have to admit to Hypatia that I was unable to follow her example and wirelessly network my entire abode? Would she believe me when I claimed it was because my house is bigger than her flat? Would I be able to find my car again?
But of course where there's a princess in need, there is inevitably a knight in shining armour, and so it was that eventually this damsel in distress heard the sweet words "Do you need some help there?" and I turned to find a lovely chap called Colin beaming down upon me, his purple airtex shirt gleaming as if, as I strongly suspect, he was actually sent from heaven to solve my problems with an avuncular smile and some cheery words of advice. He was so helpful that I didn't at all mind paying the money that I could have saved if I'd gone to Maplins or something instead of PC World. Also, I got the whole of Norton Internet Security and Norton GoBack for the same price as I would have paid for the Norton Antivirus 2005 upgrade, so I think that made up for it a bit (now I just have to find out what the hell GoBack actually does).
Anyway I hope you are impressed. And if anyone ever tells you "wireless network? Oh that's easy, all you need are a router and a couple of cards for your PC and laptop", don't believe them. There's a hell of a lot more at stake.

(*isn't it incredible how much dust lives inside a computer? I never knew!)
(** here's a fun game: even if you've never been to TGI Friday's, I bet you know what's on the menu. Go on, try it. I'll start you off: "hot" "wings" probably with some amusing brand name, nachos, potato wedges, trips to the salad bar - and probably some kind of "eat the whole of this huge gutbucket dessert without chundering and you get your entire meal for free!!!!!!!!(TM)" special offer)

Mmmmmn.... cake....

2004-11-03T23:57:00.000-08:00

I've just looked more closely at cool-cakes.co.uk and they really are very cool cakes. It's my 30th birthday in February, can I have the Harry Potter cake with the individual edible sorting hats?

Feeling a bit better

2004-11-03T23:34:00.000-08:00

I'm now back in Bristol with a week off the dreaded London slog and therefore feeling much better, particularly as Ringo and Prince Charming are very pleased to see me and being very nice (well, actually PC has disappeared upstairs to play Max Payne 2 and Ringo is asleep on the floor cushion but I'm taking this all as signs of welcome).
Anyway thanks for all the messages of support (well, all two of them anyway) and you are all (er, both) right, I should keep my chin up etc and I am trying to. I got offered seven days' work at a very good rate today which has cheered me up quite a bit, although it is in London, but never mind, at least it means I don't have to take any other work for a while. Roll on that first novel.
AND the Megabus was really quick today and got me home half an hour early! Truly I must have done something to please the gods.
In fact I am so up-cheered that I have added a photo to my profile. The suspicious-minded among my readers, or indeed the many of you who have actually met me, may spot that it's not actually a picture of me, although I really, really would like to have a skirt made entirely out of cake. Barbie truly is the luckiest girl in the world, isn't she? Not to mention having breasts that have stayed pert for more than 50 years. I hope the people at cool-cakes.co.uk don't mind me using the photo, but I did a google search on "princess" pictures and theirs was the best one that came up so I hope they will take it as a compliment (there was a lot of anime stuff too of course, but I'm so over anime, aren't you?).

The evil weed strikes back

2004-11-02T17:25:00.000-08:00

And I'm smoking again. Bollocks.

Still, lovely fags, though. Mmmmmmmmn.....

So, farewell then, summer

2004-11-02T17:20:00.000-08:00

Who are these people who decide that the hours of the day sould be arranged so that we all go to work in the sunlight and then go home in the pitch dark? Surely it would be better to set the clocks so that we go to work in the dark and then dawn comes at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon so we get nice bright evenings? The season wouldn't be half so depressing if we got to get a bit of sunlight on our faces now and again and didn't all get massive vitamin D deficiencies.

Unwanted guests, undeserved accusations and flap cracks

2004-11-02T08:19:00.000-08:00

I must apologise unreservedly for an horrendous slander further down this blog. I implied, nay stated, that Prince Flufflupagus von Tuftylumps, aka Ringo, aka That Darn Cat, was annoying Prince Charming and me at night with demands for food, eating us out of house and home and had broken through the door of his cat flap.
Well. It's much more sinister than that. We had musjudged the poor beast, as we discovered last weekend when the realisation began to dawn that We Were Not Alone In The Living Room. A very, very ugly and frightened looking black cat was lurking behind the sofa.
We attempted to coax it out, but it bolted past us and ran upstairs to the spare room, apparently no stranger to the layout of the house. It flattened its ears and hissed at us, but we eventually chased it out and got it safely out of the cat flap.
We soon regretted out sympathetic treatment of the beast, however, when we noticed the fragrance of stale cat piss pervading the living room, and it began to occur to us that Ringo had perhaps not been eating all that food himself - indeed, that his frantic early-hours clawing may have been because he was frightened, not greedy. How guilty we now feel to have reacted angrily in the middle of the night. Cat-loving readers, fear not, however, he has been well and truly rewarded with extra Kitbits and cuddles, and I think he's starting to forgive us.
The cat flap has now been completely pulled off, apparently by the impostor, so is currently blocked with a pile of PC's toolboxes which not even a nasty black fiend can get through. Ringo is once again venturing outside for short periods of supervised play, although a little nervous about going out on his own, and Prince Charming braved the unenviable task of cleaning the wee off all the furniture (luckily, we haven't got a proper sofa yet otherwise it would have been ruined).
The Evil Black One has only been sighted once since, and we are going to pursue a strategy of being so scarey and horrible to it that it won't want to come back in the house again. I am going to get one of those magnetic cat flaps for Ringo, but I'm not sure if he will like having the magnet thing on his collar. We shall see. He is a big fat lump though (not all the extra food appears to have been filched by the intruder) so he needs to get outside for some exercise so I may not allow him to be fussy about the collar.
Mind you, of course the first thing he did when he went outside was eat loads of grass and then come indoors again to sick up a nice furball on the bathroom mat, but hey ho, that's the joy of pet ownership.

On the buses

2004-11-02T08:15:00.000-08:00

This coming and going to and from London is really starting to get to me. And no, it's not Bessie's futon - which I am now finding remarkably comfortable despite the absence of extra cushioning (see "Floored", below) - it's just the endless up and down, up and down the M4. The Megabus is cheap and cheerful but a bit grim at times, and always full of students which is a bit irritating, and last week on the way down to Bristol the windscreen smashed and we had to sit in the freezing cold waiting for an hour and a half for a replacement bus to arrive (Mind you, yesterday on the way back up again we had a proper National-Express-style coach with comfy seats and air con and stuff so I mustn't grumble).
It is tiring, though, when you've worked solidly for four days, and made sparkling conversation with the people you're staying with, and then done a three-hour grim coach journey home again, and I always seem to end up bickering with Prince Charming as soon as I arrive because he expects me to be as fresh as he is after not being at work all week. But that's relationships for you I guess.
The worst bit, though, is that I really don't feel like I live in Bristol. It's really nice to see so much of my London friends when I'm staying with them, and they always make me feel very welcome, but I feel like a homeless sofa-surfer who visits Bristol at weekends rather than someone who's moved out of London to Bristol. And when I get there, PC is bored of hanging around the house and wants to do things like going to the Brecon Beacons, which we did on Friday and it was lovely but didn't much help me put down roots in BS5.
Still, after tomorrow I'm not coming to London for a week or two, so I can hang out and explore a bit. Also I have signed up for some interesting crafty-type day courses at Bristol Folk House in the interests of a) learning to crochet/make pots/write stories and b) making friends. On the latter note, PC and I went out dancin' on Saturday night, and did meet lots of nice people which buoyed our spirits considerably, although we'd chosen a hippy trance party as we knew it would be full of nice friendly types but forgot that of course they'd be almost exclusively in their early 20s so a bit young, possibly, to be lifelong pals. Still, we had some good chats.
All in all, I'm still having mixed feelings about the whole thing. I'm not regretting the move, but I didn't realise it was going to be so darn hard - and expensive: the Megabus is cheap, but when working out my projected income from days worked in London I forgot to factor in the incredible amount I end up spending on tube travel and food (my lovely friends are generous enough to let me stay at their houses and eat their dinners, but would probably draw the line at me helping myself to big fat sandwiches to take to work for lunch).
In fact freelancing is turning out to be a lot less fun that it was last time, partly because of the travel (which I guess is only temporary until I find some work in Bristol) but mainly because the company I've been working for is really, really slow at paying me and I am now massively overdrawn and in debt to PC, so on top of everything I've got massive money worries.
When I started this blog I wanted it to be like one of those downsizing columns in the Sunday supplements, but less smug - I didn't realise how easy that was going to be because right now I can't think of very much to be smug about. Who are these people who move out of London and have a brilliant time breezing around with super-friendly locals and some unspecified independent income?

Floored

2004-10-19T05:31:00.000-07:00

God, I really should have chosen a blog template that didn't have titles on each entry. Thinking up bloody headlines for my own bloody blog is like being at bloody work.
Oh, hang on, I am at work.
Well, you know what I mean.
Anyway. What I really wanted to mention was that I am on my first trip up to London to work for a few days and I am sleeping on Bessie's living room floor: she presented me with a futon to sleep on but it is woefully thin so I have augmented it with some of the generous sofa cushions with which her lounge is blessed and it's really quite comfy. Not sure what's going to happen after the generously-padded sofa is removed this weekend, though; it is leaving with one of Bessie's flatmates and another one is moving in, so maybe I will have to use her as a mattress instead.
It's nice to see Bessie and stuff but I'd rather be in Bristol with Prince Charming and Ringo. So I think I am going to have to galvanise myself pretty soon into getting some work down there or making a start on that book I'm always threatening to write - I'm reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time at the moment, and watched a thing on telly about a woman with multiple personalities last night, which has got me thinking about interesting narrators. Particularly as I am interested in magical realism anyway and I don't want it to be a book that's set within some limited attempt to recreate "real life", which seems to lend itself to having characters whose minds work in interesting ways.
I'm also thinking about having a disabled character in there because I'd like to explore the way life is experienced from different viewpoints, and also to use some of the experience I got from having a wheelchair-bound mum (this, and her death, is pretty much the only major Life Suffering I have as yet to base my Great Art upon, so it's bound to pop up somewhere, otherwise all I've got to write about is broken hearts and stuff that everyone already knows about.) But how to avoid going too Ben Elton? Tricky.
I've also been thinking about having some seriously dark stuff in there. But I'm not sure how much I want to let my imagination run that way. If I'm going to give myself nightmares while I'm writing the thing, I want a really fat advance first.

Everybody's talking at me/Cracked flaps

2004-10-16T21:47:00.000-07:00

Yesterday in Ikea, me and Prince Charming were in the lift with our trolley, which contained two things that we'd come in for and of course the inevitable plethora of knick-knacks and houseplants that we didn't mean to buy but picked up anyway, and it wasn't working. Thus, we were treated to our first "people are friendlier around these parts" moment, as everyone in the lift engaged in a light-hearted discussion about whether the right button had been pressed/whether we were moving or not/how we should behave when we exited the lift and rejoined the queue. It was fun and our hearts were glad that we were no longer ina city where the only reaction any has to any situation is anger.
Then, later the same day, our next door neighbour came round to introduce himself and warn us that he was having a party. We had a long chat and found out all about him, and he asked about us, and we talked about dogs and council tax, and he was altogether a friendly and pleasant person.
This morning, a man came round to install our phone and cable TV/broadband, and we did have a nice chat. He recommended a good garden centre, advised me to go to Maplins rather than PC World for my wireless networking kit and said if we looking to buy a house we should definitely consider Portishead, where he lived, because the prices were the same as Bristol but you got a sea view. Well, I thought after he'd left, what a pleasant change from the uncommunicative tradespeople that we had encountered in London, where you're lucky to get a smile (although all the cable network employees that I encountered in my London flat were efficient and professional).
This afternoon, I was at the checkout in Homebase wondering whether to buy one of the very reasonably priced potted azaleas that were next to the till when the couple in front of me had to have a price check on one of their items, thus holding up the queue. They apologised to me for the holdup; no problem, I replied, I'm not in a rush. And it's raining, they said. And the sign in the garden centre definitely said 25% off all patio pots. Yak yak yak, said I, don't you bloody provincials ever shut the fuck up? I'm trying to get on with my life here, but it seems like I have to factor in an extra half hour into every task I do in my daily life, just to fit in the small talk that I seem to be expected to make with every Tom, Dick and Mary that I encounter. Can't I just spend my queueing time/lift time/whatever time thinking about stuff, like I always used to? I mean, I'm all for community, but when do people round here ever find the time to decide what they're going to cook for dinner or which picture they're going to hang on wall of the upstairs landing?
Still, tomorrow I'm back up to London for a few days' work, so that should make me appreciate it all again.
In other news: the cat keeps clawing our mattress while we're asleep, which is normally only mildly annoying, but at the moment we are sleeping on an inflatable mattress so you can see the danger. This morning I had to shut him in the kitchen so he couldn't do it any more, and then when we got up and went down to find him, we discovered that he'd managed to bust his way through the locked cat flap and make a break for it (he's not allowed out yet because he's still freaked enough by the new house and you're supposed to give thema week or two to get used to the new place before letting them out).
Cue major hysterics from me, running into pouring rain in slippers and jimjams calling his name in a quivering tone etc, while PC showed much more presence of mind and merely applied a firm shake to the box of Go-Cat which had a bedraggled and sulky, but visibly shaken, Ringo back in the kitchen in a matter of seconds.
The cracked flap is now secured with several tons of electrical insulation tape, and we are going to try covering the bed with a thick blanket to insulate it from Ringo's claws.

Should I go to my neighbour's party?

2004-10-16T13:48:00.000-07:00

He's a nice bloke, and he came round yesterday to say that he was having a party (it's fancy dress with a bling/chav theme) and also to introduce himself. He's nice enough but we appear to have very little in common (unless he's just pretending to be an IT manager with sensible shoes and actually owns a rocking sound system and a hydroponic airing cupboard) (which I doubt because the party has now officially started and I can't hear a thing).
So, should we go? We decided he must have just been being polite becuase he said "I've come to tell you I'm having a party, which of course you're invited to as well" rather than "I've come to invite you to my party". But I don't want to seem unfriendly and also we're hardly in a position to pick and choose our friends. What do I say next time I see him? Argh.
Maybe will pop in for one drink later when they're all a bit pissed and conversation flows more easily. Would be good to have someone who could feed the cat when we're away. But then, will I get stuck in one of those things like at university when you have to be friends with the people you met in Freshers' Week even though you don't really have much to say to them?

So, farewell then, London

2004-10-12T20:02:00.000-07:00

Well. Here I am in a flat that's empty apart from a computer and some horrible furniture that belongs to the landlord. Prince Charming is already in Bristol, so is the cat; all that's left is a load of cleaning and to give the keys back the day after tomorrow. I don't even have a bed because Lord Benthal has just been round and helped me throw out the horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible futon that PC and I have been sleeping on for the last couple of years (I have managed to persuade him that because we are actually going to be living somewhere bigger than a fag packet, we should invest in a correspondingly large bed).
It's been quite a while since my last confession, and a fair bit has happened: I've been getting lots of freelance work and we have officially moved to a three-bedroom house in Bristol that costs £150 less a month to rent than this pokey little one-bedroom flat in Hackney. We also had a glorious and very messy send-off party at Benthal Towers with a Wild West theme.
So far, so good; it's all going to plan but you never know what's round the corner - I am still pretty freaked out about leaving all but 2 of my friends behind in London and having been within walking/cycling distance of them all for many years, it's going to be quite a shock to the system.
I hope it turns out OK.