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August 08, 2007 On Where I Am NowHere. At least for the time being. posted by Jo | 2:23 PM April 11, 2007 On Me Being BackI'm back! Can't you see I'm back, like a fool inside a cage? First up, some pics of Dorset from over Easter while I figure out all that is new and new-fangled about bloggering. Lordy, I have many books to add to my 'books I have read' list. Pretty flowers in my mum's garden:  Fields in South Dorset:  Peacock on Brownsea Island, Poole:  Apocalyptic sky above field of RAPE (why is it called that anyway?)  Easter daffs in mum's garden:  You don't even need to ask! It's Zelati Mandy!  View towards Abbotsbury:  Right - will be back with you shortly, I have have some dickering to do. posted by Jo | 9:10 PM March 28, 2006 On Ok, One More ThingThis is for nice Rowan, who posted in my guest book - I have hunted it down (because I am a repressed sub-editor and I like to supply CORRECT FACTS) - and the quote you wanted was from October 12, 2004 - and what I said was: And you know Autumn can be lovely - the 3D light! the crispy misty mornings! - but you always just want to huddle down and get to Christmas because October/November seems like an open plain, whereas Christmas is a little hollow lit by fairy lights. The wind is too big in October. The trees make strange noises. You feel a little tremulous. Relationships crack. Messages get muddled. Nothing seems safe. In seaside towns, they are putting up boards along the seafront, ready for the big waves. So there you go. And while I'm here I would just like to wave at nice Rowan and the other nice people who have signed my guestbook. It's very sweet of you all. Here's a weird thing - you know the song 'Tomorrow' from the musical Annie? Yeah, you do. "The sun'll come out tomorrow" etc. I down-loaded it because I wanted to check the lyrics (best you don't ask why) and I have discovered I physically cannot sing along without bursting into tears. And I really have tried! Repeatedly! (Don't picture that, will you?) It's almost Pavlovian. Was I an orphan in a past life? A ginger orphan? Who can say. Anyway. Am off again now. Bye! posted by Jo | 7:28 AM March 26, 2006 On Radio SilenceHello. I have made an executive decision to take a bit of a hiatus from blogging for a while. No doubt I will be back at some point, but I have to heal my RSI-troubled hands and I have other things I need to write that, crazy as it sounds, I think are more important than blethering on here about body clocks and cow costumes! Give me a month or so (a week, probably) and I'll most likely be back in full blether mode, but I'm not really in a blethering place right now - and I also need to limit how much typing I do or I will have to find a new career that doesn't involve me using my hands (artist's model? footballer?). And we don't want that. So bye for now. I will use the notify list thing (on the right there) to send out a message if/when I come back. Or you can just pop by. Look after yourselves and watch some of that Planet Earth series if you can, it's very good. David Attenborough is like the voice of God. ps. I had a great dream last week - and I don't have many great dreams so I am going to note it here. I dreamt my friends Marco and Miranda got to number one in the charts by doing a cover version of Set Yourself on Fire by Stars (great song) and I was so excited by this, I persuaded them to let me be in the video, even though I had nothing to do with performing the song. It was very good. And I was very impressed by my sub-conscious picking a song that features a male vocalist and a female vocalist for them to sing. In other musical news, I totally love these songs: John Wayne Gacy Jnr and For The Widows in Paradise by Sufjan Stevens (who I would like to marry, not least because he uses the banjo so much in his songs and there should be more banjo in pop - and he's very pretty too, which is a nice bonus), Such Great Heights by The Postal Service (and the cover version by Iron & Wine, which is currently being used in a phone commercial), Camera by Editors and The Ocean by Richard Hawley (especially the way you can hear his Northern (?) accent when he says "tongue-tied" - tongue rhyming with 'long' rather than 'lung'). You should listen to them. I have also been loving these great lyrics to All the Wine by The National - "I'm a festival! I'm a parade!". And I think the line "Nothing fuels a good flirtation like need and anger and desperation" from Aimee Mann's The Moth is also great. I would have liked to write that. I have two lines that I did write recently which I also like: And like this, you are, in your own way, a star, minute in the night sky, dancing in your darkened suburbia, giving out a still small white light you should have seen coming millions of years ago. (I know the "like this, you are, in your own way, a star" construction is slightly clumsy, but I quite like that, it's like it is ..hesitant) and.. You are the projectionist, shining out your expanding cone of light through the floating dust motes to the big myth-filled screen. You spin the reels on their spools in your tiny box-like room, accelerating the images trapped in plastic, the speed freeing them until they are thrown by the light against that waiting wall and made epic. I have only just noticed that both those lines are about light. Which we could do with more of, frankly. It's been winter for far too long. Anyway, David Attenborough is going to tell me about interesting creatures that live in caves now, so farewell for the time being! posted by Jo | 4:54 PM March 18, 2006 On Edward No-HandsNot allowed to type. RSI. V bad. V bored. Am gesturing at the following pics without touching the keyboard. Snow from my kitchen window (yes, I live in a hedge):  Muesli I made. How bored do you think you have to be to make your own muesli? Take a moment to consider that.  The first daffs arrive in my garden and are promptly blown to pieces by Arctic winds, which were blowing when I took this:  ps. Would just like to point out to those people who seem to think that smaller people are in some way disadvantaged athletically, that Emma Snowsill, who just won the triathlon gold in the Commonwealth Games is 5'2''. She's also only 7 stone 7. So she is very tiny indeed. pps. That guy who got his zip stuck on his wetsuit in the men's triathlon? Oh, how embarrassing. I was glad the crowd cheered him so much when he finally ripped the zip off and could pull off his wetsuit and strip down to his shorts and - from the way it's going, it seems unlikely this sentence should end with the words 'get on his bike', but it is, - get on his bike. ppps. Commonwealth Rugby Sevens - full of freakishly good-looking men! Is this what rugby players look like before they get their faces mashed up in the 'proper' game? pppps. Commonwealth Games are helping with boredom but ruining sleep patterns as everything is on late at night and one finds oneself up at 3am needing to know the semi-final results of the men's cycling/ women's hockey etc etc. ppppps. Must stop typing now before the RSI police come round and get me. posted by Jo | 12:22 PM March 14, 2006 On Mad CowsLive on Radio Oestrogen FM, two women I've never met before, in my whole life, are discussing the subject of dates (one of them has one)... Lisa: ...it will probably come to nothing but people will keep asking and asking about it because I don't go out on dates much and that's what gets annoying. I know people only do it because they care and they want me to be happy but it's also because they're all just really nosy. I'm probably way too sensitive about it, but people have read in the Daily Mail that if you're 30 and single then it's your own fault for being so selfish about your career and you don't deserve to have babies and that we're all tragic 'Singletons' and oh look Bridget Jones is on and ha ha! Lisa, she's just like you! Except she's not because she is terminally STUPID. Mo: I shouted at Radio 4 on Sunday - told it to FECK OFF - as a woman was talking about the "Bridget Jones generation" who are "too busy partying to have babies". I am also amused by the idea that while women are out drinking the lager and ignoring their body clocks, twenty-something men are just sitting around knitting booties, longing to procreate. Shame on the selfish partying women of Britain. They've let us all down. And it's not like we have a shortage of babies is it? Is there a war on? No! Babies are plentiful! Why are people so annoyed by women who don't have babies or are leaving it till later to have babies? Why are we expected to regret the fact we aren't living the 1950s housewife/brood mare dream as detailed by the Daily Handmaid's Tale? I'll tell you why - misogyny and sexism. Lisa: Partying my arse. Are we meant to sit at home and wait and hope to meet a husband? No, we're out there keeping the feckin economy afloat and being paid 70% less for the privilege Also, I haven't met a boy in years who outright said he wanted kids. Most of them are too scared to even let you move in with them in case you lay claim to half their bloody Star Wars kit. Bloody feck off the LOT OF YOU. Mo: It is a nonsense. All of it. I don't think I've ever "partied" - as a verb. How do you do that? Just go around acting as if you were at a party all the time? Helping yourself to food off other people's plates and dancing inappropriately? Lisa: I'm surprised they're not blaming Kate Moss actually....they seem to be blaming her for everything else. Mo: She has a BABY. Lisa: And she actually does party her life away but no one is telling her she's being selfish because she has done the right thing and reproduced. Never mind that the kid's probably not seen its mother in two years. Mo: An interesting fact I have just learnt: Keep flowers away from fruit. Fruit emit gases that cause flowers to die sooner. Lisa: Yes, especially bananas. Fact: if you want your tomatoes to ripen quicker put them in a drawer with a banana skin. Mo: That's the kind of fact you should use to impress your date. Lisa: You're right! Thanks! I also plan to make jokes about stealing babies, talk relentlessly about my ex-boyfriend, drink so much I'm sick and then cry. Just so you know, readers - that's the last time I am going to broach the subject of 30-something women and babies. It's not that it's not important (it is); it's not that I don't think there are a billion things wrong with how the subject is dealt with, both in the media and by society in general (I do, oh yes - I really do), and it's not that I don't think that misrepresentation isn't worth discussing (it is) - it's that I am so utterly fed up with hearing about it - even from my own mouth. Not only did I swear at Radio 4 at the weekend ("Bridget Jones generation"), I swore at the Guardian ("Freezing eggs is a lifestyle choice for the sensible 30-something"), I swore at the Sunday Times Style section ("Let me tell you something, girls, being a housewife is a glorious thing and I despise all the pinch-faced treacherous career women who go to work and make me feel inadequate!") and every day I swear at the Daily Mail ("I was duped out of motherhood" says fuckwit stool pigeon woman writer paid to bemoan the fact she had fun in her 20s and now in her terrible doomed 30s might be too old to have children - "They told us we could have it all!! It's just not true!!" she wails - Who told you, you muppet? When? And how did you miss the part about the inescapable biological fact that you have a limited time to breed - and the part about using your own mind and not making the rest of us look stupid?). (A moment from last week, after Simon gave me an article like this from the Daily Mail: Me: Why do you make me look at these articles? Why? Simon: I just like to light the touch paper. Me: I'M SHOUTING AT THE DAILY MAIL AND IT CAN'T EVEN HEAR ME.) So yes. That's it. There are so many other important and interesting things in the world outside the state of my ovaries. And I am so sick to death of this relentless nagging nonsense propagated by "experts" and circulated by neurotic women (who have every right to be neurotic, with the amount of accusatory, damaging propaganda that gets thrown their way every single day) and I am not going to add to it anymore. If you want me, I'll be in the corner formulating an opinion on French novelists of the 19th Century. Any other subjects, I'll have to refer you to my (hermaphrodite) secretary. I do, however, reserve the right to whinge on and on about every other aspect of my life, as and when I choose. So on to more important matters. Check this out. It's a mental woman who wears a cow costume and travels round the world. She's also an occupational therapist. "I sometimes dress up as a cow for my clients, I think it helps them to relax," she says. Cousin: Can you imagine anything less relaxing? I love the way she says "I think it helps them relax"... maybe they are terrified of the mad woman dressed up as a cow... Me: While browsing the selection of "pix" of her wearing her cow costume in the gallery (which I strongly recommend you look at), I found this one, which... is...disturbing on many levels. Is that what they call a 'Prince Albert'?  Cousin: I hear what you're saying. The cow looks... sinister. And let's not even get started on the erm... "udders". But I think even more worrying is the fact that this woman (who is clearly as mad as a wet hen) has gone into a professional photographer's shop with a cow outfit and a gown and mortarboard and asked to have her photo taken. Also, as anyone who has ever been to a panto knows - you need two people to make a quadruped beast. Who is person B? Is he/she the brains behind the operation, using the mad occupational therapist woman as a puppet, getting the outfits, financing the trips, etc. Me: I think - and I don't want to think about it too much - that she pads the front legs which kind of just hang down in front of her. So it's just her in there, slightly stooped. Also, look at this pic from the gallery of her at a wedding - there seems to be a rival cow... thing - some kind of cow-dog hybrid - following her. It's like a mutant Animal Farm.  Cousin: I hadn't noticed that. Do you reckon they just happened to be at the same wedding and bumped into each other in a "oh-my-god-what-a-coincidence-you're-also-traveling-round-the-world-dressed-as-a-cow/dog/badger/hedgehog" way? Me: I know - what are the odds of someone else pitching up at a wedding in a half-arsed home-made animal suit? Cousin: I've just realised... it's not her that's mad. What happens is that whenever you put a cow outfit on you go a bit doolally ... check out the attached loons in descending order. I think you'll find that the maddest cow is wearing Chelsea boots with buckles - just like a cow.    Me: I think I better take my cow outfit back to the shop. Cousin: I don’t blame you. Sometimes you know you just can’t compete. posted by Jo | 11:26 AM March 04, 2006 On CameraI went scooting round Bristol on my bike today, trying out my all new digital camera, and here's a little photo essay for you. I call it 'Bristol in March'. It looks kind of nice and sunny, doesn't it? Don't be fooled. It's really cold out there. I have only put up small pics, but if you click on them they get bigger.            That beautiful wooden boat is The Matthew - a replica of the boat a chap called John Cabot discovered Newfoundland in, more than 500 years ago, beating one Christopher Columbus to the post. The other boat you can see there, with the flags decorating the masts, is the ss Great Britain, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and built here in Bristol. ps. When you spend your weekends stealing things from bins, as I do, it can be very gratifying when you find something that is exactly what you need. You may recall, on my last bin-robbing session, I found a pine blanket box. This time, I found a book shelf that matches the book shelf that mum and I bought from Ikea back in January. And I needed another one as I was already having to stack books in front of one another. So I have moved the first smaller book shelf along a bit and put the new one in my room (after cleaning it up a bit). Here it is:  I should just say - big bookcases like that are awfully hard to carry by yourself. I was like one of those little old women that finds enormous inner strength in order to lift a car off an injured kitten. Was positively Hulk-esque. Anyway, I can't type any more as I am not ALLOWED to as I have RSI or something like that, which is making my hands and arms hurt a lot. I'd like to tell you more about it but I can't until I construct some sort of head-prong device which allows me to type without using my hands. posted by Jo | 10:06 PM February 28, 2006 On The DeviceTo celebrate the arrival of my new favourite thing in the world ever - my Mp3 player (an Archos Gmini xs202s if that means anything to you) - here are the first 50 songs to appear when I hit shuffle right now! 1. Rise and shine - The Cardigans (a nice cheerful start from the special device) 2. Willie and Laura Mae Jones - Dusty Springfield 3. The windmills of your mind - Dusty Springfield (curious, I don't think it has played two from the same album in a row before) 4. Somebody told me - The Killers 5. All I want - Joni Mitchell 6. Cypress Avenue - Van Morrison (this list is starting to make me look a bit middle-aged - middle-aged with teenage kids in fact) 7. Back in the USSR - The Beatles (again with the middle-aged) 8. Ultraviolet (light my way) - U2 (middle-aged fan of stadium rock! Come on, little device, show the people I have some small measure of coolness, please) 9. I better be quiet now - Elliott Smith (ok, that's a bit better) 10. Let's go crazy - Prince 11. Waltz (better than fine) - Fiona Apple (aaaah, one of my current faves from my current most-played album - clever little device!) 12. The golden age - Beck (I only added this album ('Sea Change') to the device last night, as I just got it from Play.com) 13. Little Amsterdam - Tori Amos (ack, she was always going to sneak in somewhere, though I have deliberately limited the number of Tori albums on the device to avoid over-kill) 14. Stone free - Jimi Hendrix (I don't think I have ever heard this before - is the device sneaking in stuff of its own? It's cool though) 15. Badlands - Bruce Springsteen (I'm a Middle-aged-Dad-Rock-Fan again) 16. Bells ring - Mazzy Star 17. Only yesterday - The Carpenters (ahem) 18. One hand, one heart - West Side Story Original Soundtrack (if the story didn't lead to tragic double deaths, I would have this song sung at my wedding - it makes me bawl - I have to sing Tony's part though, as Maria's bit is too high for me, so I'm going to need to be the butch partner at a lesbian wedding for this to really work. It's still an option, to be honest.) 19. Caramel - Suzanne Vega 20. Jezebel - Iron and Wine 21. Back on the chain gang - The Pretenders 22. Millionaire - Kellis and Andre 3000 (see! I am down with the kids!) 23. The river - PJ Harvey 24. The man who sold the world - David Bowie 25. I see monsters - Ryan Adams 26. Too high - Stevie Wonder 27. How to be dead - Snow Patrol (again, one the device has snuck on, I think - no recollection of owning this) 28. Wanderlust - Delays 29. Ask - The Smiths 30. Hometown waltz - Rufus Wainwright (Rufus has lovely production on his records - they sound great on headphones) 31. Who knew - Eminem 32. Through the rain - Wes Burden (The fuck? Seriously, who is this? Oh hang on - maybe it's one of the 'demo' tracks that was already on the device. It's smooth jazz stylings with a 'rain' sound effect - it's ghastly - am going to fast forward) 33. Omnibus - The Move 34. Girl, I'm gonna fuck you up - Republic of Loose 35. Stay in the shade - Jose Gonzales 36. I just don't know what to do with myself - The White Stripes (that's fairly cool, isn't it?) 37. Another spring - Nina Simone 38. You're my queen - Mercury Rev 39. Running up that hill - Kate Bush (I wondered when she was going to crop up) 40. Surf's up - Brian Wilson 41. Walking on the spot - Crowded House (I will not deny it, I love the 'House, though I realise they are doing nothing to save my image) 42. Spin on a red brick floor - Nanci Griffith 43. Sex and drugs and rock and roll - Ian Dury 44. Lost ones - Lauryn Hill 45. This boy - Franz Ferdinand (it's all still a bit pedestrian still, isn't it? A bit Virgin Megastore. Come on, device, show my wild side!) 46. Octopus's garden - The Beatles (oh ha ha) 47. Spread - Outkast (that's better) 48. Magic moments - Perry Como (that's just embarrasing - it's from a best of Burt Bacharach collection, if that redeems me in any way) 48. Love's theme - Pizzicato Five (and now it finds the cool stuff! Tricksy little device) 49. Something he can feel - Aretha Franklin 50. Hunter - Bjork (fab song, this) I think that little exercise has taught us that I am more square than I am cool. The pretty device:  It's playing When the Levee Breaks by Led Zeppelin now, which I love. There's some Tori Amos song or interview or something I have read somewhere, where she talks about how she used to masturbate to Led Zeppelin as a teenager, and I have always thought it was probably to this song. A curious thing: the device played me The Name of the Game by Abba on the way to work and on the way home. It's got hundreds of songs to choose from, but it likes that one the most. posted by Jo | 4:11 PM February 20, 2006 On The Last Day of My TwentiesLord, that sounds doom-laden when I write it like that, doesn't it? I am about an hour and ten minutes from 30, drinking red wine and listening to Rufus Wainwright and The Carpenters. Rock on. I had a great party on Saturday - everyone was more than splendid and I got some amazing pressies - including an Mp3 player and a digital camera! And I had a whole 'This Is Your Life' presentation complete with big red book and embarassing photos. And there were 'video messages' from the people who couldn't be there and I danced like a muppet to Neneh Cherry and I managed to stay in a skirt for about three hours before I got back in my jeans and I feel like I didn't talk to half the people who were there, but I think they all had fun. I hope they all had fun. Mum and Chris were the best hosts ever, and more than ably assisted by cousin Ben and cuckoo sister Luce - as well as Master of Ceremonies Mrs Sarah Rice. Anyway, here's a few pics: Wey Valley Class of '92 represent!  Me showing Tammy how much I love her by biting her face and then laughing about it:  Pretty Lucy:  SK getting her groove on:  The stylish hosts with the mosts:  Ali and Lee:  Mum, Chloe, SK and assorted dancers:  Al holds his fitness and nutrition workshop by the fireplace:  Miranda, Susie and me, with my special wide mouth on:  Blowing out the candles:  Chocolate cake:  In summary: everyone was incredibly kind and incredibly cool and I was enormously grateful to have such tremendously fabulous people in my life and at my party! If I have done nothing else with my 30 years, I've still somehow managed to collect the best group of friends and family members this side of The Waltons. Write that in a big red book. So with ten minutes to go now till my third decade begins, I raise this glass of Tesco Cotes du Rhone Villages in a toast to them - to you - my people! My people that I love the most. Cheers, you guys. posted by Jo | 10:49 PM February 14, 2006 On My Possibly Slutty ValentineYou can read my thoughts on Valentine's Day by going here and scrolling down. I don't think I need to go through it all again. This year, I am celebrating this accursed day (which is also exactly a week before my 30th birthday) by going out for champagne with my splendid mate after I have spent too much money on expensive underwear, possibly slutty underwear. I may even buy a suspender belt (mainly because I have just read The Night Watch by Sarah Waters, which is set in the 1940s so the majority of the female characters wear suspender belts, and I think I like the formality of them, the way they have to be clipped on - I think I'd like to wear a suspender belt in the 1940s and work in a typing pool for the Ministry and share cigarettes with girls called Viv and Betty. It's a very good book, by the way. Cleverly structured, gripping and very good at showing how wartime, especially for women, was a time of greater freedom, to a certain extent). Anyway. Possibly slutty. I like those words together. I am singing them to the tune of 'Possibly Maybe' by Bjork. My favourite conversation of today (which has been shitty from the get-go, to be frank) went simply like this: Bloke one: I own 'Love Actually' on DVD. Bloke two: Oh, you faggot. I'm off to buy fripperies now. Thank jeebus for our meaningless consumer society. posted by Jo | 3:47 PM February 08, 2006 On Dirty ThirtySo. It's less than two weeks till I turn 30. Having thought I was fine with that - really just fine! - I actually find it's now making me feel a little bit sick, in a kind of stage-fright kind of way. Like I have to do an exam I haven't revised for. Just like my French A-level actually, in which I felt mildly hysterical as I knew very little and there was nothing I could do about it, and my fate (and my resulting rubbish grade) was sealed. But yes, I feel a bit like I'm not ready for 30. I haven't done everything I need to do yet! I haven't done my revision! I have been debating what I want to do about the whole palaver. I'm having a party with friends on the Saturday before my birthday, with curry and booze, and that should be fun (if I can get over my mild party fear that no-one will turn up), but my actual birthday is on the Tuesday, and I have the Tuesday and the Monday off. So what should I do? I had an idea that I would go and climb Snowdon - which, yes, I know, it would be freezing and this is a bad idea - but the thinking behind it was that I should do something that wasn't just getting drunken on my actual day of turning 30. Something that when people asked what I had done for my 30th, I could say, "Oh, I climbed Snowdon" and it would be something I was proud of and something Positive and Forward-Looking rather than: "Oh, I drank a bottle of wine and cried because my life is effectively over and I have achieved nothing" (talking of which, one of my tasks for my life coach this week is to write a list of everything I have achieved in my whole life - and it's ridiculously hard, because I do pretty much think that I stopped achieving aged about 17 - and this is obviously her deviously trying to make me realise that this is not true, but you should try it yourself, try writing the list, because it's just not that easy). Anyway, I am no longer planning to die a cold lonely death on Snowdon. I have a few other ideas. These include: 1. Going to Cornwall and walking along lovely beaches. 2. Cycling somewhere - I cycled to Bath and back on Sunday (32 miles!) and I thought I could cycle somewhere nice and stay in a B&B. 3. Going to Paris (perhaps rather an ironic idea, given my French A-level result). I have never been to Paris, and I should go before I'm 30, right? I have discovered you can get a Eurostar ticket and one night in a hotel for a combined price of about £160, which I could feasibly afford. So I would go Monday morning, stay the night, spend my 30th wandering about Paris, taking pictures, eating pastries and cheese, looking at art, drinking vin rouge and so on, and then come back Tuesday evening. This is the idea I am leaning towards, as I think it would be exciting enough to detract from the DOOM DOOM CLANG CLANG aspects of turning 30. I might even go on a boat trip on the Seine. Mais oui. And then when people ask (even if it's just the people in my head), I can casually say, "My 30th? Oh, I went to Paris." And then I will show them the pictures. I will show my children the pictures of when mummy went to Paris. The children I WILL NEVER HAVE. You see how easy it is? You see how I'm just a cross-hair, I'm just a shot away from all-out Bridget Jones hysteria? Actually, that's a lie. I'm feeling more sanguine* about the whole dying alone and barren thing these days, probably because it is starting to seem less.. vital. Not so much the kids thing, as that is important, but the marriage thing. More and more, I find myself thinking there are very very few relationships in this world that I think actually work. Hardly any, in fact. And alongside that, I am increasingly seeing weddings - not so much marriage, but weddings - as something I am not sure I want to get involved in. They seem so expensive and so stressful and so unnecessarily over-blown. I was reading something the other day about how people seem to see weddings as a talisman for marriage - that the wedding has to be PERFECT and DREAM-LIKE because if it isn't, that will mean the marriage itself is somehow doomed, somehow faulty. That if you have don't have a glorious shining wedding, then it will all be bad. Which is a nonsense, as the wedding is just the start of it and therefore it should be kind of amateurish in a way - you should save the big outlandish party with the orchestra and the fairy lights and the hugely expensive dress and the roast swan and the sugared almonds and all, for when you've been married for 20 years. That should be when you fork out thousands - when you actually have something to celebrate, not when you are just starting up the car of your married life and may break down at the side of the road in six months time. Also, another thing I have been thinking about is that there is an insidious sneaky piece of evil that makes women feel like they have failed if they don't get married. That they have failed and they are unattractive, because no-one has 'chosen' them. That by getting someone to smile next to you in a wedding photo, you have PROOF of your desirability. You are a bride! You are beautiful! Oh. You are not a bride. You are not beautiful. Why should this be? Kate Moss, I say. Kate! Moss! Unmarried. And hardly a pig-dog. Also, why should I - or anyone else - need a man to 'choose' me to make me feel as if I have achieved something? Isn't that exactly the kind of passive submission to the patriarchal order that we should be avoiding, sisters? I just have visions of women all lined up smiling in their pretty dresses with their hair done all special, waiting for some bloke to pick the one he likes the best, and I don't think that's something I should aim for - and frankly, from what I know of men, there are only a limited number I would trust to make a good choice. And who made them the judges of me anyway? Who made the readers of Nuts magazine the judges of me? If I want a husband, I'll buy one off the internet and he'll consider himself lucky, damnit. *lights bra, waves it around head* I should also add that I think it is mainly women who propagate this evil - the 'brides are winners, spinsters are losers' myth - I think it's part of the way women smilingly and silently compete with each other, through looks and diets and status and bridal magazines, and it gets us nowhere. So it's not entirely the fault of men that they are the judges of me - it's partly because we ladies put them in that position (but it also has a WHOLE LOT to do with the utter WRONGNESS of our entire societal set-up but moving on...) - and either way, it doesn't mean I have to subscribe to it. Anyhoo, how did I get down this (bramble-covered, disused) path of feminist thought? Let's get right back up to the present day with a picture of two naked women and a clothed man, because that's how far we've come. Women naked, men clothed. ** * I looked up sanguine earlier to check it meant what I thought it meant, and it does - just about - but I didn't know it was also to do with blood and the Four Humours, which is really obvious now I think about it. This is an interesting thing I have learnt today! ** Readers, I confess - my supremely shallow un-feminazi thought on first seeing that Vanity Fair photo with the naked ladies was: 'Oooh, Scarlett has an arse like me! Yay!' Which probably negates all of the above righteous right-on ranting. (That said, I don't think it's a good pic of the lovely Scarlett, as they've managed to make her look kind of ... froggy. And I still don't understand why Keira Knightly is so famous, I really don't. She does that silly thing with her mouth and it's meant to be sexy? Hello! This is me, judging a woman purely on her appearance! I think I might go and live in a cave and not say anything any more or ever again. I think that would be best.) ps. My friend Chris is in Seattle at the moment and he is writing all about it here. Go take a look. pps. I have been cooking more recently - and had a few triumphs over the weekend: banana bread - very easy, very tasty, very hard to stop shoving in your mouth - and parsnips roasted in parmesan, also easy and also tasty. The 'comforting cottage pie' was nice - I liked the horseradish mash topping (though I think it kind of drowned out the taste of the parsnips which were included in the mash), but I would thicken the sauce next time, and maybe beef it up a bit too, with some beans or more onion or tomatoes or something. It needed to be heartier I think. Cottage pies should not be wimpy. ppps. I have also discovered a great new blog (while hunting for pizza dough recipes - home-made pizza being this Friday's project) which is all about food and cooking. posted by Jo | 10:58 AM January 29, 2006 On How We Are A Bit Better NowSee, the danger (or great thing) about having a blog your mum reads is that when she hears you are all miserable she comes to your house and spends the weekend taking you to such temples of wonder as Ikea and Asda (or 'Ikeal' and 'Asdal' to give them their proper Bristol pronunciations) where you buy lots of stuff for your flat, and then she will spend the whole weekend helping you REVAMP your flat and THROW stuff out (so much stuff!) and CLEAN everything in sight and make it a JOY to behold. Witness the glory... 1. A new bookcase, assembled by hand, filled with books that had previously been on the floor, decorated with some new pictures and topped with a new plant in a new plant pot holder (also visible, to the left, a new pine blanket box we found by the bins! Nothing like spending a Saturday scrabbling round the bins with your mum, let me tell you):  2. New towering CD holder, also assembled by hand, containing all CDs in alphabetical order (the letters with the most cds? B and S - which surprised me, though I don't really know why) :  3. New vase, with new flowers, with new wine glass, with new wine:  4. New fluffy slippers in a flattering mauve (specially designed for the Sad Lady with the January Sadness) backed by new cheekily nautical rug:  Bet you wish you had a mum like mine, huh? Oh, you do. And you haven't even seen my new silver bike helmet, which is another new thing I got this weekend. Wait - I shall take a picture.  Pretty, no? I have now decided that all I need to complete my new beautiful life is a cat. A single woman approaching her 30th birthday who wants a cat, you say? A woman nearly 30 who lives on her own and wants a cat and wears fluffy slippers and steals furniture from bins and puts her CDs in alphabetical order and writes about herself on the internet while taking pictures of herself wearing a bike helmet? And this woman is single? What are the odds. ps. Clearly once I get my cat and start answering the door in my slippers, my future spinsterhood is assured, but if I were ever to get married, I would want to go here on my honeymoon. You can go on trips to see the Spirit Bear! Which is a real thing and not some Native American myth as I had thought! posted by Jo | 9:34 PM January 27, 2006 On How There Ain't No Cure For the January Blues, At All, EverWarning: This post is really very miserable. In my defence, I had a great holiday in Austria last week and now I am back. It's like that. And that's the way it is. Sometimes, I really don’t know what you have to do. You give up fags, you are nice to old people, you lift weights, you put them down again, you ‘reward' yourself (like you are a bloody dog you are training with chocolate drops) with a few glasses of wine! Lunch with friends! A low-fat pudding! Well done! Well done, you! You maybe try a holiday and that makes you realise how lacking your home life is. You maybe try a hobby and that makes you see how hobbies derive half their fun from their novelty value ("Oops, I've dropped me clay!"), and once that wears off, you’re just filling time. You maybe try visiting a 'life coach', she's a nice woman, and you can see the sense in it - that taking action is positive, that small steps get you closer to your ambitions - and you fulfill your assigned tasks and buy a little book to record your progress and it is good, it does have value, it does, and yet you still feel that it’s all just little pictures, little pictures you are drawing with crayons, like how children draw pictures of themselves living in a castle. You’re decorating the walls of your pit with crayon pictures of yourself living in castles but it doesn’t actually take away the fact you are in a pit. A pit. It’s that time of year though isn’t it? When all that is good gets suckered into badness. And all the light and all the exhilarating air - chilled to perfection! - from when you were leaning on your ski poles at the top of the Austrian mountains and INHALING TO YOUR VERY TOES is packed up and taken away, rolled away by the days, by the planes, by the luggage carousel. Which I now see (from my pit) as a good metaphor for life - life's just a luggage carousel, man - I just carry all this gloom around with me and nobody picks me up. I just go round and round and round. My zip broke somewhere over Brussels and I’m spilling out my pyjamas in front of a room full of strangers. I’ve lost my label. I’m unclaimed. I'm badly packed. I’m a hold-all of woe. Everything seems very quiet when you come back from holiday. I think sometimes it is harder to be given a glimpse of an Outdoor Fun Life you would like for your own if you then have to leave it. Be happy for a week and then not be happy. Maybe it's better not to know. But the internal Pollyanna says HEY! Ooh! You can use this as motivation for change! You use it as a way of saying ‘What can I take from this positive experience? - what can I whittle from these sticks? - what can I build with some eggboxes and toilet rolls?’ And maybe whittling and hopeful Blue Peter construction is all you can do, really, because you always have to make do with what you've got, but then you look around and you can’t work out how you got here - here in this echoing Blue Peter studio, talking to yourself while you glue random stuff together in front of a bored, blank camera man - how did you get so far away from what you wanted in the first place? Why are you in this city? Why are you in this dark little flat? Where are the people who know you? Why do you go to work in that office? And you look at your life from the outside and you feel very tired. Who got you here? Was that you? Your head is very heavy and you try to get out of the pit but the pit is comfy and you want to lie down in it. Lie down in the self-pity pit. Self-pity pitty. Pit. The pretty pity pit with the pictures. Here is a picture from Austria:  ps. This week's song is Brothers on a Hotel Bed by Death Cab for Cutie, otherwise known as track 4 on the second disc of my Christmas CD. Thank jeebus for my optimistic tendency winning through on the tracklisting of that CD, as the (sad and wistful) Brothers on a Hotel Bed is followed by a cheerier song - the lovely Richard Hawley crooning Cole's Corner in a Christmassy fashion, and yes, it's still a little string-section-wistful, but it makes me feel a little bit better and a little bit warmer and a little bit like I'm wearing a Bing Crosby jumper, and that is good - because if it was followed by an even sadder song, I would probably be slayed dead by my own music mix. What an irony that would be. And after Richard comes Nobody Does It Better by Carly Simon and it's so not in my pitch, but I will sing along. Loudly. pps. Yes, all right, after that it's Alone Again Naturally by Gilbert O'Sullivan but we don't need to go there right now. We've had enough for one day I think. posted by Jo | 11:47 AM January 03, 2006 On Happy New AngerWelcome to 2006 readers - I am full of hate. I have a really annoying itchy rash (possibly excema, possibly scabies, possibly that flesh-eating bug) which is keeping me up nights and making the hatefulness that is returning to work in January even less bearable than it usually is. It shouldn't be this way really, as I had an excellent Christmas back in sunny Dorset and a fun New Year's Eve with Lucy at Simon's party and the dancing, lots of dancing (actually, all three of my big festive nights out - one of which was here - have involved me dancing like a Mexican jumping bean for many hours, rather than my usual habit of lurking on the side-lines being snippy - I think this may be due to swapping my traditional drink of white wine for bottles of beer, which makes for more RARRR! and less slump), and I had a good New Year's Day with lots of crisps and dumb girly films like Mean Girls and Bring it On. But now I have the post-crisps bloat and the self-hate and the hate and the rash. The Hate and the Rash. Here is a picture of Weymouth Beach on Christmas Day:  However, there are some good things in the world, so I have been told. Here is a list of some of them: * Denize and Ed getting engaged on Christmas Day in Thailand - aw! And also hurrah! * Similarly, Lee setting the date for his wedding next September - party! Huzzah! * Tammy's new super glam home with the views of fields and the huge sofas! * Me going skiing in Austria in about two weeks time - yay! Me trying on padded ski clothes - instant Sumo wrestler! * Christmas presents! I like them. * Purgatory - curiously Catholic it may be, but there is a self-denying part of my personality that rather relishes the head-down-ness of January - the giving up of booze and fags (again), the long haul to spring, throwing stuff out, starting anew. All that. It is good. And right and proper. * Rufus Wainwright. I am now deep in the midst of a major love affair with Rufus. I keep switching my allegiance from Want One to Want Two (it's Want Two at the moment) but either album is going to be on my stereo at any given time. And that's a promise. Those are good things. But the rash is itching me again so I must stop typing and resume my hating now. I will do my 'review of the year' at some point soon when I am not overcome by an urge to kill and kill again. I also have this (quite bonkers) feeling that people are stopping messages getting to me - that someone is intercepting my emails and texts - oh, that sounds so completely mental when I write it down, doesn't it? I think it's more to do with the fact my computer system at work keeps crashing and the spam filter keeps gobbling up messages meant for me, and what I mean is, I think I'm hoping that a cheerful message will turn up (from Jesus maybe?) that will stop the itching and the hate and someone else's stupidity is stopping it and that makes me even more annoyed by everything. I'm annoyed by something not happening that probably isn't even going to happen anyway. If you follow me. I think I need to lie down in a bath of soothing lotion with a tin foil hat on. And a haaaapppy new year! Some links for you: Aw. Cute pics. Although the collie dog dressed up as a burger is just wrong. Pablo Neruda poems. My favourite is number XIII, in case you wondered. It's curious how most of them seem somehow familiar - like we all have an uncle who recites them after a big dinner or something like that - even though I don't think I know them at all. Montage-a-google. The very excellent Jill Soloway. And the also excellent Go Fug Yourself. posted by Jo | 2:00 PM |
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