Wandsworth Witterings

Music, language and teeth

2011-03-26T09:41:00.003Z

Went to QEH last night to hear the Bach B Minor Mass - all soloists, no choir as such. The women sounded a bit under-powered. Also bought myself a lovely blue dress from Cos and a stiff green skirt. My new look is gradually taking shape...

Just waiting to start my first ever Skype Chinese lesson. Hope technical difficulties do not interrupt transmission.

Also got an inlay on one of my bottom left molars in the continuing saga of me and my teeth - remember to brush your teeth, kids!

Titanium

2011-03-11T22:48:00.002Z

I went to the dentist on Tuesday.

He asked me if I'd decided whether to go for a bridge or an implant with my upper left molar. As it happened, just the day before I'd been reading in the Telegraph about how implants are better because they stop your jaw from deteriorating, although they are more expensive, so I asked him to confirm that.

'Didn't they talk you through that when you had your last implant?' he said.

'No. I didn't think I had any implants,' I said.

'Of course you do,' he said. 'Look at your X-ray.'

I looked. Indeed there appears to be a large screw in my jaw.

'Huh. You'd think I would have noticed that,' I said.

'You must pay more attention,' he said. 'Now for today's procedure, I'm going to have to use electricity to stop your gums from bleeding. I have to ask this: do you have a pacemaker?'

'No,' I said. 'I don't know. Maybe I do.'

'Stop that,' he said.

He then proceeded to drill too close to my root, skirting around my pain threshold most distressingly.

That wasn't a good day.

Byzantium Novum

2011-03-05T21:10:00.000Z

I have found my spiritual home.

Spring!

2011-03-05T21:00:00.003Z

Hooray, it is officially Spring, the first day of the year so far that has been warm and dry enough for me to get into the garden, so I have started work again on the path that I've been planning in my front garden. Homebase tomorrow!

Had to go into town today to get Larry a white leotard as the only dancewear shop in south London said the Fancy Footwork hordes had already descended on their shop and stripped it bare of white leotards. Found just the thing in Capezio in Endell Street, so now we know where to go for all our dancewear emergencies. Lunch at Cafe de Hong Kong - belly pork and perserved mustard - yum!

Had an altercation with a security guard in the Boots on Trafalgar Square. Should probably not go in there again for a year or so, which since I've avoided going into that Boots for the first 46 years of my life, should not be too difficult.

Am looking for a heavy duty loo brush - the kind with wire wool on the end. Do they exist or is it just in my fervid imaginings?

Just started watching Big Bang Theory. I really empathise with Sheldon.

Working my way through the Everyman PG Wodehouse - currently on A Gentleman of Leisure.

Hitting the kids with 16 minute blasts of maths. I'm trying to rewire their brains into maths brains while they're still young and pliable.

Nighty night!

Busy busy busy

2011-03-04T21:54:00.003Z

Goodness, I'm tired. Either I'm getting old or I'm coming down with something. Thank God it's Friday. I got home only to find there was nothing to eat except tomato sauce with giant pasta tubes. I hate tomato sauce pasta - it makes me feel like an impoverished Italian peasant. But LSS had made it because Grace I-Don't-Like-This McDiarmid had come over for a play date. So I ended up eating toast and Marmite and left-over rocket salad and a hunk of corned beef I found in the fridge. Was it for this the flesh grew tall?

Went to Larry's parent-teacher meetings on Thursday. Needn't have bothered. The teachers could barely fill out each 5 minute slot. Once they'd finished saying, she's doing very well, nothing to improve, needs to speak up more in class, the conversation was over. Her maths is terrible though. She understands it, just makes loads of careless mistakes in tests. I'm making her do 30 minutes of maths practice every day. Tiger Mothers Rule OK!

Busy weekend ahead as the girls are both in Coppelia at the New Wimbledon Theatre. Must spend Saturday hunting down a white leotard for Larry in Putney. Why do they always tell us these things at the last minute? And Curly has put in a request for gammon steaks and fancy mash that she found in some free Waitrose recipe book for her Saturday lunch. I'm barely going to have any time to force the kids to do extra maths. Maths! maths! maths! that's what built the empire!

I've been trying in vain all week to sign up to learn Chinese online from some outfit in Beijing. The guy keeps trying to Skype me either when I'm at work or in the middle of the night. This does not bode well for their organisational abilities.

Got my bonus letter today. Good. I can turn the heating back on now.

Curly's blog

2011-02-18T21:41:00.001Z

Now Curly has jumped on the bandwagon and started a blog too - and here it is. Its name may be in breach of commercial property rights. Oh well.

Mo's Blog

2011-02-13T21:16:00.001Z

Mo's started a blog and here it is.

Creative Bitching

2011-02-03T22:47:00.003Z

There's a girl I loathe in my creative writing class. I didn't like her last week for no good reason, other than that (1) she took care to tell us all that she'd had a play of hers put on at the Birmingham Rep when she was at university and (2) she insisted on being called Ro, instead of her actual name, which is Rohini, "because she hates the name Rohini". So I thought, she's boastful and she's ashamed of her ethnicity, neither of which is a trait likely to endear a person to me. Oh, and she has bad taste: because what kind of a name is "Ro" anyway? That's not a name, it's a verb, or something you eat as an appetiser on crispbread.

Anyway, this week unfortunately I was seated next to her, so was forced to listen to her tedious off-topic piece about the Bulger murderers, which I politely managed to find something positive and detailed to critique about. She then managed to find one thing to say about my piece and then went back to talking about herself. So now I've decided that as well as being boastful, alienated and tasteless, she's also self-obsessed and banal.

Worse still, I found out she's half Malaysian. This is very odd. Most Malaysians - apart from me of course - are immediately likeable in a social context: they come across as warm, open, friendly, modest, straightforward folk. They do NOT come across as vain pretentious graceless dooks. Well, she's not really a Malaysian, let's face it. She was brought up in this country and it shows.

Notice how much I know about her. Apart from the aforegoing, also that her mother was from Penang, her father lectures at UM, she's a lawyer and came to this country when she was 2. You know how I found this out? by showing a polite interest in the person I was talking to. How much do you think she knows about me? I'll tell you: NOTHING. She doesn't know what I do, where I went to university, what my parents do, where they're from - nothing.

I came home and was sounding off to LSS about her and he said, You should write about her for your next assignment. And I actually CAN write about her for my next assignment, which is 500 words on someone I've met who has made a big impression on me, whether good or bad. Of course I'll cunningly disguise her, by making her a half-Ugandan Indian male architect, rather than a half-Malaysian female lawyer (these are both professions populated by people who think nothing is a greater treat for their interlocutor than to listen to them pontificate about the wonderfulness of them for hours on end), but otherwise no holds will be barred. Tee hee hee! I'm going to enjoy doing next week's assignment.

This week's assignment was really difficult. It was supposed to be an autobiographical piece from our childhoods about being "in trouble". Now, I'm a middle-class Malaysian Chinese. We don't get into trouble. My whole life has been designed to not get me into trouble. I've never been in trouble. The biggest trouble I ever got to when I was a kid was being sent to the headmaster because I forgot to bring my ruler in once too often. That was a real challenge to write - and I still managed to do it without having to resort to sensationalist news stories completely unrelated to my own personal experience. Bah!

Creative Writing

2011-01-25T21:44:00.002Z

I've signed up for a creative writing course at City University! First session is on Thursday. I'm really looking forward to it. I realise it's the first formal creative writing course I've ever done. It's important to keep the cobwebs off the old machinery, I feel.

In other breaking news, I volunteered to put stickyback plastic on textbooks for Mo's school (it's a very small poor private school), then happily Larry turned out to be surprisingly amenable to doing it for me, for the price of 20p per textbook. So winners all round!

Dog still waxes adorable.

Marmalade

2011-01-22T09:25:00.003Z

Tis the season for Seville oranges and LSS has made vast quantities of marmalade. It looked really runny last night so he boiled and re-boiled it until he could stand it no more, poured it despairingly into sterilised jars and left it till morning. And lo! when we came downstairs in the morning, the runny orange stuff had set into the glowing amber sticky chunky peel-laden English breakfast comestible and I am having some on toast even as we speak, with a nice hot cup of tea.

And if anyone wants to know what they are getting for Christmas, birthdays, house-warming gifts, thank-you presents etc for the rest of the year, I'll give you a hint - it comes in a jar...

I May Be Watching Too Much Television

2011-01-20T22:10:00.002Z

I'm contemplating getting a Kindle. By "contemplate" I mean that in about a year's time I might actually get round to buying one.

Watching Charles Hazlewood deconstructing Mozart's Symphony No.39 in E Flat.

Just finished watching Le Diner de Cons. I don't understand the French. I suppose it's supposed to be a farce a la Feydeau, but it never really fizzed dans ma humble opinion.

Also just finished watching Zen. Rome and Rufus Sewell in Italian tailoring. Someone at the BBC is smiling on us middle-aged ladies!

Sudoku

2011-01-16T20:14:00.002Z

At last all that time wasted playing sudoku has paid off! We went to The Wandle today to try it out for Sunday lunch and won £20 off our bill for being the first ones today to complete their competition sudoku. Larry had the lamb shank and there was a big lovely juicy meaty bone left at the end, so we wrapped it up in the sports section of the Observer and took it home for the dog. She sat down in the middle of my campanula to eat it. I think - a la Yeats - she fancied a bit of crazy salad with her meat.

Not much else to report. Contemplated joining the Wodehouse Society, then thought I really haven't read enough Wodehouse to warrant it, so I settled for ordering his very first book from Amazon instead, The Pothunters. When I've read my way through his oeuvre, then I'll join.

Practised the Haydn and also the Mozart Vespers until my arms ached. Which didn't take long.

Have finished the Christmas cake. Started on the Christmas pudding.

Saturday

2011-01-15T21:26:00.004Z

Breakfast at Cookies as usual. ECB for Mo, fried rice for Curly and chicken noodle soup for Larry. Then Mo off to badminton, while I prevailed upon Larry to take Curly to see Tinkerbell and the Great Fairy Caper on the Sat morning £1 show at Cineworld. Halfway through she texted to say that the film was incredibly dull and demanded payment.

I walked the dog and went down to Homebase with LSS to put down a deposit. We're turning the 2nd bathroom, which no-one uses because the window doesn't shut properly and all the enamel has come off the bottom of the gigantic cast-iron Victorian bath which takes ages to fill up, into a shower-room and adding a loo. This means there will be 3 loos within the space of 3 sq m on the 1st floor and no loos anywhere else. Oh dear. Bought a white camellia.

Got into the garden for the first time since November to plant out my camellia and found the lawn liberally spattered with moss and tiny little turds. Stupid dog! Also found a snow-drop! And the winter-flowering jasmine that has been looking like nothing but depressed green fronds since last summer has suddenly come into its own!

Bought a copy of Rupert Everett's memoirs from the 2nd hand bookshop next to Earlsfield Station for £1. Had a long conversation with a New College undergraduate who called up to try to get me to donate some funds to the old college. Ha ha! I told him to call back in 10 years' time when I'm no longer paying school fees. Baked a cherry cake and ran through the Haydn Requiem that we are doing in choral society this term. Watched Waldemar Janusczak on the Baroque in Spain (we love BBC4!). Langoustine pasta and tinned peaches with evap milk for dinner. And so to bed.

What exciting lives we lead...

The Norman Conquest

2011-01-15T01:10:00.002Z

Watching a show on iPlayer about the Normans. I love iPlayer! Oh, the perfidy and glamour of the Normans! Just like the French today, in fact.

30 minutes on the treadmill and rowing machine today.

Vast tracts of cottage pie for dinner.

Other thoughts: mobile phone for Larry's b'day; Mandarin lessons for Curly; novel revision; Montaigne; Brisbane floods; January sales; and so to bed.

Train Squash

2010-10-23T06:33:00.003+01:00

I got onto the train the other day at Clapham Junction and there were no seats other than in one row of five, which had just four people sitting in it. The empty seat was between a very fat woman and one of those men who likes to sit with his legs wide apart to show what an incredibly large package he has. So I thought, I'm damned if I'm going to stand up all the way to Waterloo, just to accommodate your greed, on the one hand, and to pander to your illusions, on the other, so I squashed myself in between them. It was an extremely tight fit and neither one of them gave a fraction of an inch - you know how people normally shift up a bit if things are a bit tight on the bus. They obviously bitterly resented my crimping their commodious accommodation. And I bitterly resented their wanting to take up more space than they were entitled to, even if it meant other people had to stand. So we all three sat there, seething cores of resentment, all the way to Waterloo.

Spelling

2010-09-18T12:08:00.002+01:00

In Curly's class at school they have their weekly spelling broken down into groups, called Maltesers, Crunchies etc for different levels of difficulty, depending on your ability. Then they have an extra set of spellings, just for Curly. Larry was looking at it and said, "What does susceptible even mean?"

Spam

2010-08-20T22:49:00.001+01:00

looks like I have to activate the comment moderation because of all these mystery Chinese spam comments. I mean, I know I'm desperate for comments, but even I have some standards!

While on holiday I watched:
Despicable Me - some good jokes, surprisingly French flavour
The Sorcerer's Apprentice - not entirely execrable
Inception - basically an international heist movie, but with some pretentious what-is-reality mumbo-jumbo thrown in. Tom Hardy is a hunk!
The Jade and the Pearl - extremely low budget, started off very badly, but then became surprisingly romantic and touching - basically a rom-com Cantonese Tristan & Isolde if you can imagine such a thing with two extremely good-looking leads. I don't know why kings ever send their daughters off to be married for political purposes, while being escorted by the hunkiest most heroic general in their army.

And read:
Darkmans - had some ambition and interesting ideas, but obscured by intensely irritating writing style
Discovery of France - the French were basically half-human savages till about 150 years ago! That's the last time I let any French person lecture me on civilisation! Although there was an extremely good-looking snake-hipped young quant (all our quants seem to be French)having a conversation down by the photocopier this evening.
The Northern Clemency - somehow manages to make the extremely dull lives of a few families amazingly interesting, but falters in the home straight, when he seems to relax the iron-hard control he's exercised up till then, with parlous results for the ending

Every day at work I wonder how much more I can stand.

39 Steps

2010-08-20T22:30:00.002+01:00

Just finished watching this on i-Player - the Rupert Penry-Jones version. Drool.

Weekend at last. Must do some weeding. Also there's a dead blackbird in our front garden.

Have finally got round to printing out the last draft of the book, preparatory to sending it off to Cornerstones to see if they'll help me get an agent. Bracing myself for inevitable rejection by making alternative plans. SCBWI Agents' Party in September, plus crawling up the Authonomy ranks. Maybe I should re-start working on Charlie. That should get my mind off it. There are always more stories to tell when you're an inveterate romantic!

Chiswick House

2010-07-18T06:40:00.002+01:00

Chiswick House gardens have reopened after a GBP12m refurb so Curly and I went along to have a look. It is an amazing house and park, but to be honest the gardens are not quite ready yet, though they will look amazing when they're done. In the meantime though, the walled garden is not open to the public, there's not too much in the conservatory, and the Italian garden is not yet mature. Still, it was a nice day and I've never been to Chiswick before, apart from driving through on the way to Heathrow. It's an odd place, it hardly feels like London, a bit like Wimbledon, you feel like you're further out in the country. And it's always fun to hang out with Curly, she's so funny and switched on and loveable.

Went to Neal's Nurseries in the afternoon and bought lots of plants for the big empty bed in the garden - some lovely grasses and bluey-silvery things and intense dark-red flowering things and some tall white flowers that the bees seem to like. Perhaps I should try to remember the names of all these plants, but they don't exactly trip off the tongue. The tall white things are antirrhinum(?) I think and one of the grasses was a stipa and the reddish-brownish one was a kind of sedge. Well, I stuck all the labels next to them, so I'm sure they'll eventually sink into my memory.

The wretched boiler seems to have stopped working. Someone's coming on Monday to look at it. In the meantime, I am dying for a bath. Showers are just not the same.

Watched Mongrels on iPlayer last night. I should NOT have watched it with the girls, it is far too rude. I've got a crush on the fox Nelson, even though he is only a puppet, because he has such a lovely posh voice.

We've got the Talkers coming round for a barbie today. Well, she talks (about herself). The rest of us just listen.

Got a penalty charge for going into the Congestion zone, even though our car is a hybrid one, because LSS forgot to renew the registration with tfl. I am not best pleased.

Henry VIII

2010-07-16T20:09:00.002+01:00

I'm watching something on iPlayer about Henry VIII and the dissolution of the monasteries. What a complete and utter bastard Henry was! I hate him. He was a disgusting barbarian. The academic who's fronting the show though, Jonathan Foyle, is cute. I love BBC4.

Day Off

2010-07-16T10:35:00.003+01:00

So much for my resolutions! But I've got the day off today, so I can catch up. At the moment I'm very busy on Authonomy, trying to get my book up the charts and give it some profile. Meh, well, it keeps me out of trouble.

Went on a team dinner last night to a restaurant called Baltic in Southwark, recommended by the guest of honour, a Polish girl who is going on maternity leave. Unfortunately I'm still trying to do the semi-vegetarian thing, so instead of ordering a huge knuckle of pork the size of my head, horseradish coleslaw and red cabbage, I ended up with pickled herring, apple and beetroot, followed by Moldavian aubergine salad with flatbread and tzatziki. Frankly, I don't believe they eat salad like this in Moldavia and I KNOW taztziki don't come from there. Even as I type this, I'm beginning to wonder if Moldavia even exists, or is not just a made-up Hollywood-style Mittel Europa-type country.

Got up nice and late and went down to Northcote Road to buy Mo a pop-up one-man tent as he going camping tonight. It is raining slightly and very blowy, so he will have a very authentic British summer camping experience.

Lunch at Le P'tit Normand, which is like a little corner of France, as long as you don't look out the window onto the unlovely Merton Road. Trout for me, chicken for Mo, rabbit for LSS.

Now I am lying in bed groaning. I don't usually eat this much for lunch on a weekday. Snoozes, methinks.

Today's Food

2010-07-11T21:58:00.004+01:00

Poor old LSS had to haul his parentals back up to Wolvo today, so me and the kids were left to our own devices. Took Scrabble down to Deen City Farm as usual for Larry's riding, but she didn't get much of a walk, as it looked like rain. Instead she shared some of my fried egg sandwich, down at the cafe in Merton Abbey Mills.

Church was even more shambolic than usual as the organist is in hospital, all the hymns were mixed up, and they'd prepared the wrong order of service.

We went up to Peter Jones to buy Larry ribbon to make her costume for the Robin Hood play, plus lunch at the Stockpot (lasagna for Curly, chicken for Mo, penne amatriciana for Larry, and whitebait for me).

Then back down again to Wandsworth Common for a picnic as specifically requested by Curly - chocolate eclairs, stem ginger cookies, cherries, cream soda and sherbet lemons.

Leftover couscous and sardines for dinner and so to bed.

Why does anyone care about the World Cup final, if they are not Spanish or Dutch?

Britain Sizzles in the Seventies

2010-07-10T18:22:00.002+01:00

Another busy Saturday traipsing the kids (and also the in-laws) all over town. Breakfast at Sultan's. The Cookies & Co people have gone back to Thailand for a month because her older sister who has Down's Syndrome is in hospital, so we've decamped to Sultan's for the duration. Then to Northcote Road for Curly's ballet. LSS came along too for the ride. There was no badminton today as they are redoing the floors of the club, so Mo was off on some water-based jamboree down in Ham, while Larry was just mooching around at home with Grandma and Grandpa. Bought 4 of the best peaches I have tasted for years - perfectly ripe, drip-down-your-chin peaches from the stall on Northcote Road. Then back home to pick up Larry and Grandma and ho! for Southfields and on to Hammersmith for Curly's Mandarin lesson. While she did that, we went to buy black leggings from Primark, for Larry's end of year play. She's playing assorted villagers, heralds etc in Robin Hood. Apparently that's what mediaeval Nottinghamshire villagers used to wear - Primark leggings and yards of faux-hessian purchased from an Indian drapers in Tooting. Had a nice drinkie in the Grove Tavern on Hammersmith Grove, then post-class, we went on to the Cafe de Hong Kong on Charing Cross Road, as Larry had a yen for their belly pork with mustard (Grandma's treat). Walked back across the river to Waterloo, then home. Then had to drop Larry off at her friend Saskia's for a sleepover. S's dad, whose name I do not know, came to the door in his shorts. So now I know what his naked chest looks like, but I still don't know his name, and it is a little too late (3 years too late) to ask.

In other breaking news I'm trying to haul myself up the Authonomy charts by being a total I'll-back-anything slut. But at least I read it first and leave a comment, which is always the truth and nothing but the truth, if not always the whole truth.

LSS is now barbecuing, lovely meaty smells wafting up the stairs.

I'm back!

2010-07-09T23:47:00.002+01:00

Been busy doing all kinds of stuff, but my mid-summer resolution is to start keeping my online diary (or "blog" as I understand the young people are calling it) again and to update religiously daily.

Went to a wedding reception at Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park today. Fabulous day - scorchio, as they used to say in The Day Today. Mo and LSS had new shirts, and the girls looked like beautiful flowers in their new Monsoon dresses - very "young girls in bloom" a la Proust. Pigged out on "the little shrimp guys" as Larry called them and my day was made when a VERY NICE French(?) woman came over from the other side of the room just to tell me that I looked very elegant. (Of course I did - I was wearing my new dress from the Jaeger sale. Jaeger is going through a very good moment this season.) Oh, our Continental cousins. No English person would ever do that. We were 7 in our little Toyota Prius on the way back to Earlsfield - don't tell the cops.

Shopping

2009-08-25T11:15:00.003+01:00

So far I have bought a pair of Mizuho running shoes for GBP15, a spare set of glasses plus the lenses for GBP60, three trashy novels for GBP7, 2 Izod running tops for GBP10, and on Saturday I am going to have my hair highlighted for GBP25. Lunch for the five of us today cost GBP12 and that was expensive. I love my country. Sayangilah Malaysia!

Food glorious food!

2009-08-23T14:47:00.003+01:00

I swore that during these 2 weeks in Malaysia, not a morsel of food was going to pass my lips that I could get in the UK. I have never eaten so much food in my life. I swear my stomach capacity has increased in the 1 week that we have been back. Last night I ate 5/8ths of a mooncake by myself, without even noticing it.

Tonight we went to have Teochew porridge in SS2. I think my parents are taking advantage of the fact that there are so many of us here to order everything they want to eat. They just eat a tiny portion of it and I have to eat the rest. And then as we were driving back, we saw them stopping off at the corner all-you-can-eat durian place to buy yet more food! They KNOW I can't resist durians.

Yesterday Big Squish roped me in on a mahjong playing session. The rules are manifold and curious and they all play like lightning and can stack the tiles (even Dad with his Parkinsons) faster than I can, while I play like a doped snail. All I can say is, the civilisation that came up with the rules of mahjong clearly had too much time and ingenuity on its hands.

I've finally finished watching Battlestar Galactica. I think I would have made a good crewmember aboard the Galactica. Or a good Cylon. Or a good Cylon Galactica crewmember.

What should I watch next?

Imperious

2009-08-23T14:42:00.003+01:00

We went through Stansted on the way out to KL this year. We were walking to board the plane and I was sorting out the passports when I dropped one of them and barked imperiously to my little train of minions, Someone pick that up!

Unnoticed by me, some humble Eastern European airport worker, who was standing in the corridor minding his own business, leaped to attention and hurriedly scrabbled to pick the passport up.

I, in the meantime, was marching on, wondering why it was taking so long for the passport to make it back to me.

And give it to me! I commanded. The airport guy hastened to pass it to Mo who passed it to me, and I sailed on, unaware that any of this had even happened. I only found out about it when LSS told me later on. I am clearly turning into Margo Leadbetter. I only hope the airport guy does not go back to Krakow or wherever thinking that everybody in the UK behaves like that.

The Dedicated Postman

2009-08-23T14:35:00.003+01:00

Big Squish raises one of life's little mysteries. When we left KL for HK some years ago, we didn't bother to give the post office a forwarding address, since we never get any mail. We forgot however that we do get bank statements. But instead of the bank statements being returned to the bank or being opened and abused by the new tenants of the house, they started mysteriously turning up at my parents' house. How can this be? They were still addressed to our old house. We can only conclude that not only did the postman know that we were no longer living in the house, he had also worked out that there was some enduring connection between the people who had lived in that house (us) and the people who were still living in my mum's house, three streets down. How did he know? What a soothing vision this is of a society and time that is so peaceful and civilised that the postman can notice something like that and silently deliver the mail to the right address, without a word, without a fuss, not just for a few weeks, but for months, which is how long it took me to realise that I was paying monthly service charges for a bank account I no longer used, and close it down.

It's not the same postman anymore. But wherever the old postman is, I raise my hat now to that unsung hero.

Another postal mystery relates to Big Squish's free subscription to the Max Planck Institute's monthly journal, which she contacted them to cancel when she was moving back from Berlin to KL. Not only did they fail to cancel it, from then on, the journal has been arriving promptly at her address here, even though she obviously did not give them her KL address. On the one hand you condemn their incompetence in not discontinuing the subscription. On the other hand you applaud their ingenuity in finding out her Malaysian address. I suppose people who can unravel the mysteries of the universe's laws can easily handle tracking someone down to the ends of the earth.

Tea v Coffee

2009-08-23T14:30:00.004+01:00

Just reading a thing by David Mitchell in the Guardian about how he always wanted to drink coffee because drinking coffee is cool. No, no, no! Drinking coffee is not cool. The minute so many Tom, Dick and Harry's are jumping onto the coffee bandwagon that there is a Starbucks or a Caffe Nero on every corner, coffee has clearly lost any cool cache that it ever had.

I'm a confirmed tea drinker myself. The other day at work we were in another of an interminable series of meetings. There were about 10 people there, with the usual polyglot mongrel range of nationalities, English, Indian, Malaysian (me!) and ze French. Someone volunteered to do a tea run - all round the table he went: tea, peppermint tea, a nice hot cup of tea, oh tea please - even the Frenchman asked for tea. It was like an episode of Family at War, if anyone remembers that ancient telly series.

Literal-minded

2009-07-18T20:44:00.001+01:00

Curly just called me a blackguard, all because I said she was my little Crunchie bar and I was going to eat her up. She has kindly pointed out that she does not have a honeycomb middle and that her insides are all yucky and full of stomach juices.

So much for June

2009-07-05T07:44:00.003+01:00

Horrible hard-working June doing vile new job. No time to do anything except work. When I'm not working I'm spending all my time on the Harper Collins' Authonomy website, which is like a ghastly computergame that brings out all the worst in human behaviour.

The garden is lovely. All I want to do is spend all day every day sitting out there, with a nice cold glass of wine, reading my book, and looking at roses.

Everyone is complaining about the heat but our house remains mysteriously cool. It was hell in the winter (a frozen hell) when we used to go outside to keep warm, but now, when all around are sweltering, the interior of the house is like some serene Andalucian palace, with delightful coolness emanating from the walls. Garden ditto, due to all the lime-tree bower-like shade and the delicious refreshing breezes.

Have discovered local swimming baths at the Merton Road Aspire Centre. We go every Sunday after church. Curly has finally learned to swim unaided. Hooray! We are all looking forward to splashy fun at the Lake Club in KL in August.

Eating lots of white Magnum ice-creams. Yum!

That stupid Scot, Murray. What did he have to go and get all our hopes up for, if he was only going to dash them to the ground yet again?

I am leading a strange bipolar sort of life, where for 5 days in the week, I am in miserable hell, and for the remaining 2 days, I am in blissful paradise. When will the bank start offering round those delightful 4-day week or 1 year off for 75% pay cut proposals that everyone else is doing?

Neighbours

2009-05-26T11:40:00.003+01:00

Spent much time in the garden this bank holiday. Amazingly, not everything that we planted has died, and some of the seeds are coming up.

Unfortunately, the fine weather brought the idiot twenty-somethings who live in the first floor flat in the building next to us out onto their roof terrace, which directly overlooks our garden. I don't know what I dislike about them more - their pallid white skin in their pointless bathing suits, their execrable taste in music, their moronic conversation - was I this stupid when I was twenty-something? Is it possible?

On the plus-side, it makes a brilliant situation for a sitcom. LSS has found himself a potential writing partner and is looking for sitcom ideas. Snobbish hidebound elitist forty-somethings, living next to braindead shallow twenty-somethings, in a hideous co-dependent relationship fueled by mutual loathing. Well, it makes me laugh. When I'm not weeping.

Christian Aid

2009-05-20T23:21:00.002+01:00

went knocking on doors for Christian Aid on Saturday. The old gave. The young gave. The salt of the earth gave. You know who didn't give? Middle-class WASPS. Only two white middle-class middle-aged males gave me money - one was Irish and the other was Greek. Interesting.

Star Trek

2009-05-16T08:29:00.000+01:00

Went down to Southside last night to see the new Star Trek movie. All I can say is, I'm sick of working for an investment bank. I'm going to enlist in Star Fleet.

Gardening

2009-05-03T07:30:00.002+01:00

Went down to Homebase and bought many berries, currants, herbs and leaves, and spent the whole day in the garden planting them out and preparing new beds. It was just heaven. I love my little house and my little 18th century walled garden!

Had to make cloches out of 1 litre plastic water bottles cut in half, to stop Russell Crow getting at our tiny sweetcorn plants. He spends all his time rustling around in the bushes at the back of the garden. As he is too fat to fly far, he hops around with incredible speed - I think he thinks he is some kind of squirrel or other rodent.

School Council

2009-04-24T22:47:00.003+01:00

Larry just got voted onto the School Council by her classmates. This is the first time anyone in our family has ever been chosen for anything like that - neither LSS nor myself were ever anything at school more important than doing the hall monitor rota!

I'm very proud and happy for her - especially as just this weekend she was complaining that she can't be herself at school but feels she just stands there on the edge of the group smiling gormlessly. I'm so glad for her to have this demonstration that she is more accepted than she thought.

The Lakes

2009-04-10T20:38:00.002+01:00

up in the Lake District doing one of those house-swap things and it is great! I am never paying for holiday accommodation again! Their house is much much cleaner, tidier and better organised than ours. They have matching guest towels. And coasters. Oh dear.

Every morning we troop dutifully off to see a lake - so far, we have seen Loweswater, Buttermere and Derwentwater. Then in the afternoon we watch their 3-box set extended DVD version of the Lord of the Rings which - hooray! - I will not now have to buy.

Have also eaten more Kendal Mint Cake in the past three days than I have eaten in the past 10 years.

And read their copy of Liaisons Dangereuses (good), Italian Neighbours by that chap who wrote A Season with Verona (pretty good) and Toby Young's Sound of No Hands Clapping (crap).

Earth Hour

2009-03-29T14:02:00.003+01:00

We did that Earth Hour thing last night. It was really nice. Baby Squish and Baby Squish's Steve (BSS) were round for dinner (steak pie, since you ask, followed by Irish Academic's excellent cheeses). We sat around the fire singing the old folk songs (mainly Rodgers and Hammerstein), as our ancestors did in days of yore. It was not really dark, as light poured in from all the streetlamps. When we switched the lights back on again at 9.30, they seemed so hard, flat and prosaic, we immediately switched them off again. I'm planning to set a 9pm curfew from now on - we'll get some tealights and dispense with the electric lighting. Saves on utility bills too!

Exotic Bird of Passage

2009-03-27T20:22:00.003Z

Irish Academic paid us a flying visit. She was in town to try to get a Mozambican visa, more fool her. Unfortunately it was on exactly the day that my incipient sore throat turned into full-blown 24-hour flu, so all I could do was lie in bed pathetically. Oddly enough it is the first time I have been ill since just before last Christmas, which was also the last time that Irish Academic paid us a visit. So now she thinks that I am constantly ill. Either that or I just don't want to talk to her and I am just putting it on.

Oops just remembered that I have invited Baby Squish round to dinner tomorrow and I may have inadvertently forgotten to mention it to LSS, which is a bit silly considering it is he who is going to have to cook the dinner. Maybe I should let him know...

LRB

2009-03-19T21:09:00.003Z

Popped round to Clapham today to pick up a whole year's back issues of the London Review of Books from a kind Freecycler. I took the precaution beforehand of telling LSS the address, just in case it turned out NOT to be a kind Freecycler, but rather a psychopath bent on luring innocent book-loving females to their destruction, using free LRBs as bait.

It turned out, of course, not to be a psychopath, but just a wild-haired middle-class bloke with a meek tenor voice, in a house that smelled strongly of English curry, who rather spoiled the effect of his undoubted generosity by saying, as I left, "You'll either love it [the LRBs], or it'll go straight over your head, [you poor dim Chinese woman who probably thinks that the LRB is some kind of upmarket Grazia]." It constantly amazes me how rude people are, without even realising or intending it. Mind you, I am exactly the same. If I had a pound for every time I have accidentally insulted someone - well, I wouldn't still have to be working for a living.

Went to Swan Lake last week. Word to the wise - don't get the standing "seats", you can't see anything that happens on the side of the stage. Otherwise it was lovely, just the Swan Lake-iest Swan Lake imaginable. You know how when you're a kid you imagine how something will be and when you eventually grow up and see it, it turns out to be a miserable naff vulgar commercial letdown? Not this. Nor had the director decided to try to make his mark by having all the swans as men or setting it in a crackhouse in Brixton.

Hubris

2009-03-15T20:14:00.003Z

Today I sat outside on our old sun-warmed teak bench and read the Observer and listened to Radio 4 and drank a nice dry Soave and had a little perfect moment. There is a big fat bird in our garden - it looks like a normal songbird only about twice the size it should be. I swear it has doubled in size since I first noticed it 3 weeks ago. It is the only bird in the garden - I think it has killed and eaten the rest and now it is the size of a quail. It despises us and when we go into the garden, it just looks up from its incessant eating for long enough to give us a You looking at me? look, then goes back to its repast.

Last week, after I tempted fate, by bragging about our middle-class heaven, the heavens literally opened and rain came pouring down the side of the house, in through the cracks in our bathroom casement window, through the floor, through the ceiling and down into the kitchen. Simultaneously the pump in the other bathroom stopped working. So I had to spend muchos dineros on plumbing fixes.

Went into Chinatown today with the girls, at Curly's special request (the boys were off go-karting for Mo's birthday), and ate belly pork and preserved vegetables, and instant soup noodles with luncheon meat and a fried egg, at - where else? - the Cafe de Hong Kong, on Charing Cross Road. We lak vair much. Went on to Oriental Delights and bought a five-pack of Maggi Mee assam laksa flavour instant noodles, another of Superior Soup flavour, a pandan chiffon cake, and an industrial-size vat of chilli oil - with chilli dregs!

Saw Doctor Atomic at ENO on Friday - GBP10 tickets in dress circle! - which was very Mad Men. Quite liked it, although I fell asleep during the climactic last five minutes when they are waiting for the testbomb to drop - hey, it was warm, it was dark, it was past 9pm - I can't be expected to stay awake under those conditions. Then on Saturday night stayed up till 2am obsessively watching Entourage series 5 and the Sinead O'Connor video for Nothing Compares 2 U. I have a trashy mind.

Work mega stressful at the moment. Going to deal with it by not thinking about it.

Middle Class Heaven

2009-03-07T21:40:00.003Z

Mo beat me at Othello today. This is the first time he has ever beaten me at any game that did not involve an element of chance, and he beat me fair and square. A proud day for any parent when they are intellectually outstripped in anything by their children! Of course, now I will have to kill him.

Made an apricot and almond cake today and it was razzer yummy.

Also unearthed the remains of a water feature in our garden - I thought it was just a heap of stones in the middle of one of the beds, but the more I dug, the more stones I turned up (and woodlice), followed eventually by a kind of pipe thing, a big hole in the ground, a circular plastic thing, a reservoir and a pump. It was like an episode of Time Team. SMW says water features in gardens are good things, because they attract frogs. But there's precious little bits of our garden that get the sun in the first place and it seems silly to waste this particular patch on a water feature, rather than the say in the shady north-facing bed, which will clearly never grow anything except rhododendrons.

Put our first kitchen scraps into our brand new subsidised composter from Wandsworth Council today. It's been middle class heaven around here today, what with the composter and the green wellies by the kitchen door and the knitting and listening to the chronic afternoon play on Radio 4.

Listening to a mix CD that someone at work gave me - really nice stuff by a bunch of people I have never heard of. I have lent him Eichmann in Jerusalem in return. Is this a fair exchange?

Larry is learning Auden's O Tell Me the Truth about Love this week. Mo and I are reading Caesar's commentaries on the Civil Wars. I refuse to do any more bedtime readings of books that I personally have no interest in reading.

A Breath of Mountain Air

2009-03-04T00:44:00.002Z

SMW came to visit, complained bitterly about the lack of central heating, respectively dispensed and consumed gardening advice and lavish quantities of Rioja, took my old blue jumper that I bought from the Phase 8 on Bellevue Road on Wandsworth Common back in '98 (that was a very good year for jumpers) and vanished in a cloud of Slovenian bee pollen.

Songwriting

2009-03-02T22:53:00.000Z

Curly: [sings] She's got glands! She's got paramedics!

It's All Good

2009-02-26T21:36:00.003Z

Finished Arendt, have moved on to Borges, Selected Non-Fictions, which is so difficult my lips move when I read it and I have to go one word at a time - it's like being four again!

I went to a free workshop on Sunday with the girl who won last year's Waterstones Children's Book of the Year award, Sally Nicholls, who was sickeningly young but also really nice. It was at the Whole Foods Market in the old Barkers building on High St Ken. In pre-credit crunch days, I would have thought it was an amazing cornucopia of New World plenty. Now, it seems a little passe and fiddling while Rome burns. She was very encouraging about the bit of my book that she read, and helpfully put me onto (1) an online writers' group which I have checked out, which seems pretty good, and (2) a literary consultancy called Cornerstones, which also seem pretty good. So, as Ari Gold says, in Entourage, it's all good, and anyway it helps to take my mind off all the shenanigans at work.

The other thing that I've got into, in the spirit of getting things for free, is home exchange - like that thing that Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet do in that towering monument to cinematic imbecility, Holiday. We signed up with HomeLink and have been drooling over other people's fabulous homes all over the world. More practically, we've managed to find a very nice place in Cumbria to home-swap with for the Easter hols. I love free stuff! I'm never paying for holiday accommodation again!

Summer's Last Will and Testament

2009-02-22T09:20:00.003Z

The children have struck back and insisted that, if they're having to learn poems, then I have to learn poems as well, so here is the one for Saturday 21st Feb:

Adieu, farewell, earth's bliss,
This world uncertain is,
Fond are life's lustful joys,
Death proves them all but toys,
None from his darts can fly,
I am sick, I must die,
Lord, have mercy on us.

Rich men, trust not in wealth,
Gold cannot buy you health,
Physic himself must face,
All things to end are made,
The plague full swift goes by,
I am sick, I must die,
Lord, have mercy on us.

Beauty is but a flower
Which wrinkles will devour,
Brightness falls from the air,
Queens have died young and fair,
Dust hath closed Helen's eye,
I am sick, I must die,
Lord, have mercy on us.

Strength stoops unto the grave,
Worms feed on Hector brave,
Swords may not fight with fate,
Earth still holds ope her gate,
Come, come, the bells do cry,
I am sick, I must die,
Lord, have mercy on us.

Wit with his wantonness
Tasteth death's bitterness,
Hell's executioner
Has no ears for the hear
What vain art can reply,
I am sick, I must die,
Lord, have mercy on us.

Haste, therefore, each degree
To welcome destiny;
Heaven is our heritage,
Earth but a player's stage,
Mount we unto the sky,
I am sick, I must die,
Lord, have mercy on us.

Thomas Nashe

That's a humdinger. Spent most of yesterday in the garden, muttering: "The yungle is fornicating" to myself, so not much else to report.

Management styles

2009-02-19T23:38:00.002Z

We're considering the applicability of Dad's Army, for use in management training courses. My own management style is a combination of Wilson's "Do you really think that's wise, sir?" (to my bosses) and Captain Mainwaring's "Stupid boy!" (to my staff).

That's the difference between the Americans and the British, by the way. The Americans think all human wisdom is contained in The Godfather. The British think it is contained in Dad's Army.

Gardening Leave

2009-02-16T19:20:00.005Z

Got a couple of days' leave for the kids' half-term. Oh my God, I did some gardening for the first time ever and it was such fun! I spent most of it clearing the garden walls of creepers, which in the shrubby corner down by the huge tree, was a bit like being Klaus Kinski in Fitzcarraldo, hacking my way through the impenetrable jungle, using only a penknife. At one point I was completely immobilised by the creepers, like the heroine in one of those Saturday afternoon potboilers. I was expecting the beds to be rockhard, but in fact obviously the last lot had taken some care with them. However, the pocket handkerchief sized lawn, which we are planning to turn into fruit and veg beds, I fully expect to require the hiring of a rotary cultivator and generous helpings of horse manure.

Here's a little tribute to gardens:

The Garden
by Andrew Marvell

How vainly men themselves amaze
To win the palm, the oak, or bays ;
And their uncessant labors see
Crowned from some single herb or tree,
Whose short and narrow-vergèd shade
Does prudently their toils upbraid ;
While all the flowers and trees do close
To weave the garlands of repose.

Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,
And Innocence, thy sister dear!
Mistaken long, I sought you then
In busy companies of men :
Your sacred plants, if here below,
Only among the plants will grow ;
Society is all but rude,
To this delicious solitude.

No white nor red was ever seen
So amorous as this lovely green ;
Fond lovers, cruel as their flame,
Cut in these trees their mistress' name.
Little, alas, they know or heed,
How far these beauties hers exceed!
Fair trees! wheresoe'er your barks I wound
No name shall but your own be found.

When we have run our passion's heat,
Love hither makes his best retreat :
The gods who mortal beauty chase,
Still in a tree did end their race.
Apollo hunted Daphne so,
Only that she might laurel grow,
And Pan did after Syrinx speed,
Not as a nymph, but for a reed.

What wondrous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head ;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine ;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach ;
Stumbling on melons as I pass,
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass.

Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness :
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find ;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas ;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.

Here at the fountain's sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide :
There like a bird it sits and sings,
Then whets and combs its silver wings ;
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.

Such was that happy garden-state,
While man there walked without a mate :
After a place so pure and sweet,
What other help could yet be meet!
But 'twas beyond a mortal's share
To wander solitary there :
Two paradises 'twere in one
To live in Paradise alone.

How well the skillful gard'ner drew
Of flowers and herbs this dial new ;
Where from above the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run ;
And, as it works, th' industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers!

Not Fire, But Ice

2009-02-13T00:21:00.005Z

My God - it took me 2 hours to get home from work today. Got down into Canary Wharf station just as they were turfing everyone off a train because there was a signal problem at Bank. Went to look for a bus but there were no buses going in remotely the right direction, so ended up trying the DLR (which normally gets so crowded when the Jubilee Line is down that the platforms are positively dangerous). Platform wasn't too bad, but the train was absolutely chocka - squeezed in - it was "no need to hold on" jam-packed. At Shadwell, they kicked us all off the train due to a problem with a train somewhere up ahead. Lots of people stayed on the platform, lots of people headed off down the Highway to look for a bus. I was one of the latter group. There were signs outside to Wilton's Music Hall - I've never been to Shadwell, but I have heard of the Music Hall so felt slightly less as though I had sailed in my ship into "here be dragons" territory. Found a bus-stop with lots of other DLR refugees in it and seconds later, lo and behold, the 100 to Elephant and Castle. Got a seat too and trundled merrily through the sleeting streets of olde London Town in the direction of Liverpool St station. At Bishopsgate got mired in an immoveable traffic jam, so got off the bus and walked up Bishopsgate towards Bank in a hideous driving sleety rain. I thanked God for my new trilby hat, my good old Esprit umbrella and boots, my scarf that I got from Karachi on a site visit years ago, my Episode coat and M&S impractical lavender woolly gloves. And comforted myself with the thought that however cold, wet and miserable I was, it beat being a Jew in Poland in 1942.

Speaking of which, what do these 4 countries have in common, that they can pat themselves on the back about: Sweden, Denmark, Italy and Bulgaria.

Answer in next post!

Old Lady

2009-02-06T11:42:00.002Z

There was such a sweet old lady at the checkout at Sainsburys, when I went to buy the ingredients for Larry's cake. "I'll be 91 in June!" she said, and indicating her shopping, "Bangers and mash! That's my breakfast," (indicating the Weetabix), "and I have custard every day!" I would have liked to know more about her, like how long she'd been living in Wandsworth and, if so, what it had been like in days of yore, but she scooted off, showing a surprising turn of speed for one so advanced in years.

Living Vicariously

2009-02-05T20:58:00.003Z

Had a visit from the vicar last night, which was weird - it is one of those things that you think only ever happens in books. Talked mainly about Blackadder, the effect of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes on Huguenot immigration into Wandsworth, and his new book on Archbishop Cranmer. We gave him some port, so that we could feel we were really living the cliche.

Was supposed to go a New College networking event in the City tonight, but simply couldn't face it - the thought of all those self-satisfied arrogant bores chuntering on about the credit crisis and how successful they all are - so I came home and ate dhal and rice and mackerel and helped Mo with his linear equations instead. Much more fun.

Day off work tomorrow! It is Larry's birthday party sleepover and I have been drafted in to make a big moist sticky chocolate cake.

Big Snow

2009-02-02T09:06:00.002Z

Ha ha - big snow from Russia fell on London last night - this morning, no buses, no trains, and best of all no Citrix access to work e-mail - what's a girl to do?

Knitting

2009-02-01T06:54:00.003Z

Larry and I are learning to knit. I learned from an excellent www.cyberseams.com "left-handed knitting" video on youtube. Then I had to teach Larry by reversing left-handed knitting into right-handed knitting. We have discovered a gigantic sewing emporium on Balham High Road, just along from the Halfords and the sewing machine specialist shop. For years and years we lived in Balham and I never realised it was a sewing tackle mecca. I have bought a ball of blue aran wool mix as big as my head to knit a scarf for Larry. Larry is at the delightful stage where she starts off knitting a scarf and it turns into a pennant.

LSS says, It's odd, but my mother is capable of executing the most fantastically complex Arran jumper knitting patterns, even though she is the scattiest most confused person I know.

Me: Well, of course she can.

LSS: Why?

Me: Because, obviously, she's woolly minded.

Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Aeneid

2009-01-31T20:02:00.002Z

Curly, who is a little too proud of her intellectual prowess, took our Loeb Virgil to school for show-and-tell on Friday and informed the class that "arma virumque cano" means "of arms and the man I sing". She did not tell them that this is all the Latin she knows...

If

2009-01-31T07:00:00.003Z

Here's the nation's favourite poem, from Mr Kipling:

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

His son was killed at Loos in 1915.

Credit crunch reading: Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem. And back issues of The Garden (journal of the RHS) kindly donated by a Freecycler.

When the Rudyards Cease Their Kipling and the Haggards Ride No More

2009-01-22T23:22:00.003Z

Am reading Kim with Mo in the evenings - I must say, for a Nobel Prize winner, Kipling is an amazingly pleasurable read. My credit crunch reading is now Kipling's poems.

Watched Mortimer in Tuscany on iPlayer, which combined with the Castiglione, has made me want to drop everything and jump on a Ryanair flight to la bella Italia.

My God, will this winter never end! Have booked AirAsia flights to KL for August. Now I feel poor.

Ate at the new Rasa Sayang in Chinatown week before last - not bad. Planning to go to a Szechuan place in Bethnal Green that got absolute glowing reviews from the Observer, for Chinese New Year.

Saw Defiance. I wouldn't mind being stuck in a woodland shelter with Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber in all their rough partisan-garb over the winter.

Credit Crunch Reading

2009-01-08T21:16:00.002Z

I am doing credit crunch reading, which is when, instead of buying new books, you just read the books that you bought years ago and never got round to reading. So far, I have read a collection of Joseph Brodsky's essays, On Grief and Reason, which has made me want to go back and re-read Auden; Spoken Here (a book about disappearing languages) by Mark Abley, which dovetailed nicely with our recent visit to the Babylon exhibition at the British Museum (I want to learn cuneiform!); and am just starting on Castiglione's The Courtier, which actually I have read, but that was 25 years ago and I did not get the point of it at all. Surely in a quarter of a century I will have gained enough to wisdom to actually see why people go on about it so?

In order to stop the children's brains turning into mush I have commanded them to learn a new poem each week. To hear Curly reciting Blake's:

"The angel who presided o'er my birth,
Said, "Little creature, formed of joy and mirth,
Go love without the help of anything on earth."

is to encounter hitherto unexperienced expanses of cuteness.

Abort! Abort!

2009-01-03T14:11:00.002Z

Had a very abortive day today. First we went down to the Northcote Music Shop to get Mo a boy's guitar, but the chap there said he was big enough to use a fullsize one - and we already have a fullsize guitar - so we came away.

Then we went to the Battersea Dog's Home to see about getting a dog, but all they had were Staffies that had been abandoned by their hoodie thug owners, none of which (the dogs and the owners) were suitable for families with children, so we came away again.

Then we went up to King's Road to get a matching lamp for the one that my dear little squish got us for Crimbo, only to find that there is no longer a Habitat on King's Road. So we came away.

Then we went up to Peter Jones to see about getting some door numbers for our front door, only to find that they no longer do them. We went up to the 6th floor to see about getting personalised stationery, only to find that LSS and I disagree on the paper weight, colour, font, layout and everything else that it is possible to disagree with on the subject of stationery. So we came away.

So the only thing we accomplished was getting a single fitted sheet for Mo's bed. And now LSS has gone to Sainsburys to buy a huge vat of mushroom soup, to drown our sorrows in.

Hot and Sour Soup

2008-12-31T20:55:00.003Z

The whole family was up visiting the grandees in Wolverhampton yesterday, so I came home to an empty house and ate leftovers for dinner, plus a tub of hot and sour soup from the Peking Garden, and it was SO GOOD. The great thing about where we live now is that there is a Chinese takeaway, an Indian takeaway and a chippy, all about twenty paces away from our frontdoor, there are also about four caffs within a half a mile radius and a couple of promising-looking homely little Italians.

New Year's Resolution

2008-12-31T15:37:00.001Z

My New Year's Resolution is not to say, I'm good, when I mean that I'm fine.

J Walter Hottle Bottle

2008-12-29T20:20:00.002Z

I think I am forming an emotional attachment to my hot water bottle - it's so lovely and warm and comforting and (now that it is wearing its new Christmas stripey knitted cover) fuzzy. When we go on holiday I seriously contemplate taking it with me, because I don't want to be parted from it.

Yesterday, LSS looked up from the Sarah Connor Chronicles to announce: I can see my breath! I looked up from Celebrity Mastermind and assayed a breath. I too could see my breath. Alright, I give up - we're turning on the heating.

Back to work for me today. LSS and the kids had massive breakfast at Not the Best Cafe in Wandsworth, then went on gigantic walk across Wandsworth Common, up Northcote Road (pausing to buy Larry half-price walking boots from Blacks) and up to Clapham Junction.

Secret Agent Curly's Mission Report

2008-12-24T16:27:00.003Z

23/12/08 The Daddy monster is trying to blow up all of the earth to make a new planet for his kind of monster the Rakins!! The Rakins are the most dangerous monster in the whole unirvurse. Agent Isabel.

23/12/08 So we secret agents must stop the Rakin monsters or else they will destory all humans and animals!! The Daddy monster is the king of the Rakin monsters. The Queen is very nice and is trying to stop her husband from hurting us and the animals of the earth. Agent Larry

The Queen Rakin has asked us to stay in a very very good hiding spot just in case the Daddy monster does anything stupid or bad. Agent Curly.

23/12/08 This is very bad. Larry is a double agent and is on the Rakins side and she's found out what I'm about to do but I have a sneaky plan to stop the daddy monster from getting the note by sneaking up on him and hitting hard with a long cardboard tube on his head. All agents take this note all of you should get this note down. Agent Curly.

23/12/08 We must stop Larry from getting to daddy and telling him what were going to do to him so we have asked the Queen Rakin whats going on and she says everything going fine. Agent Larry.

Christmas Eve 24/12/08 Okay all agents this is bad news. The Daddy monster has found out what were going to do but this is good news because Larry doesn't want to be a double agent anymore because she's bored of being a double agent. Agent Rosie.

Christmas Eve 24/12/08 Everyone knows that were secre agents so we have to keep it a secret to anybody else because all of my family know that I'm a secret agent. Agent Curly. (Picture above of Agent Curly's consternation at the blowing of her cover).

24/12/08 Disappearance's are happening all over the world and we think the Daddy monsters got them locked u pin cages above shark-infested waters and is going to release the rope and make the cages fall. Agent Grace.

Umsterdum

2008-12-23T18:32:00.002Z

My goodness, I haven't posted for ages because I have been ill for ages. This cold/flu started on 5 Dec, seemed to clear up quickly, turned into a flu on 12 Dec, which kept me in my bed for 5 days. Then it seemed to get better for 3 days. Then it got worse again for 3 days (another day off sick), then better for 2 days, worse for 1 day, and now it seems to be gradually getting better, apart from the occasional stabbing pain behind my right ear and in my left elbow, general exhaustion, and having to stop and have a good racking cough every half hour or so. Everything I would have done in the run-up to Christmas I have not done, all I have done is work, rest, cough and sweat. I have been comforting myself by reading London Ambulance Service blogs, which are all about what MONUMENTAL SELFISH IDIOTS the public are, constantly calling 999 for colds, flus, stubbed toes, taxi to the hospital, period pains, paracetamol etc. It really makes you despair. I could never work for the LAS. I would not be able to make it through the first shift without telling one of these idiots off and being fired. And they get paid, like, 20-25k per annum, for doing something which is about 100 times more difficult and worthwhile than what I do.

In between, also managed to make it out to Amsterdam for pre-Christmas with the Crazy Frogs. Amsterdam was insanely expensive due to the sterling-euro parity and every expenditure had my eyes watering with the pain, while my poor credit card was giving out audible squeals of anguish. To make matters worse, the Dutch do not seem to believe in eating - you go out to lunch and are offered a choice of a grilled ham and cheese toastie (for EUR3.8), or a meatball sandwich for EUR5.50. If you want proper hot cooked food, like pasta or meat or whatever, there is no chance that you will get it for less than EUR10. The Crazy Frogs were crushed and broken by this Lutheran regime. Every time they spoke of their former sybaritic life in HK, tears sprang to their eyes.

Got home yesterday evening. First port of call was Cookies and Co for full English fry-up - egg chips beans for Mo and me, sausage chips beans for Larry, blackpudding on toast for Curly. Larry in particular suffers terribly from the curse of the continental breakfast - she cannot accept that a bit of cold bread with a teaspoonful of jam constitutes a heartening repast. And who can blame her?

Put the marzipan on the cake today. Icing tomorrow, and mince pies. Maybe this is the year that I will actually make it to midnight mass.

Cough cough cough

2008-12-13T14:22:00.002Z

just recovered from a bout of flu that left me utterly prostrated for 4 days - I missed two days of work, which I have never done in my life, and of course made me think that this is the beginning of the end and that my body is breaking down and will never recover.

Anyway, so I'm fine again, but still coughing and feeling too limp to go to today's rehearsal for Mozart's Requiem, which means I will not be doing the concert tonight, which is a shame, but I just don't feel up to it.

Irish Academic came to stay for a couple of days and showered us with lovely gifts including a Spode dish, a scarf that has the appearance of being knitted out of oatmeal and a tinkly silver ornament for our Xmas tree. She is so nice - I love people who come to stay bearing gifts.

Went to Christmas dinner with the team last night at a private members' club which has a public dining room - it was in trendy Shoreditch but I thought it was a bit lame really and the food was definitely nothing to write about, especially for the money. But there you are, hopefully soon the recession will begin to bite and rip-off places like these will all go to the wall. Christmas spirit! Bah humbug!

Got our new old piano today, from off Ebay. Just need to get it tuned and we are good to go.

It is half past two and so grey and drippy there hardly seems to be any point in staying up. I think maybe I will bake a cake.

Country House

2008-12-03T19:32:00.004Z

It's a strange thing about this house - even though it is on a big busy road, when you step inside it, you feel as if you're in the country. I suppose when it was built, it WAS in the country, and it still feels like a country house. How nice it would be if when you looked out the window, you could actually see Wandsworth as it was two hundred years ago, with cress fields all around and the river Wandle burbling away in the background.

Went to the Rothko exhibish at the Tate today, which was primo - then fish and chips with the hubby at the cafe for lunch.

On the tube today, one chap tapped another chap on the shoulder and said, in a fetching mixture of self-importance and reticence, Excuse me, but that gentleman appears to have his hand in your back pocket. It turned out that it was NOT a gentleman's hand in his back pocket, but the hand of the chap's girlfriend. There were muttered apologies and we all continued on our journey in an atmosphere suffused with embarrassment.

Poor old SMW decided to descend from her mountain fastness to take a sophisticated city break with an old chum from Goldman Sachs. Formerly from Goldman Sachs, I should say. Guess where she went? Venice. I hope she brought her waders with her.

Stupid People

2008-11-29T11:21:00.004Z

oh, what a busy past 10 days or so. Nottingham Nurse came down to visit his bro, but unfortunately (for him, fortunately for us) his visit coincided with our new washing machine arriving and the kids coming down sick. So he spent his visit hefting machinery around and mopping the childrens' brows. Never mind, the brothers did manage to squeeze in a trip to the Imperial War Museum and staggered out of the Holocaust section, wan, traumatised and wanting to hug their children.

Mo went to see Boy in the Striped Pyjamas with some other kids from the ADD therapy centre and also staggered out wan and traumatised.

We went to see Ivanov at Donmar West End last night with the Moaning Accountant and her husband, the Lovely Teacher. It was really good and made me realise that, all this time, when I thought Chekhov was a bit dull, actually it was that I was just too young to appreciate him. You have to be over 40 and have tasted despair, defeat, failure, the death of all your hopes etc, to really understand Chekhov. Which is odd, since he wrote Ivanov when he was a 27-year-old successful glamorous doctor/playwright.

Dinner afterwards at the Cafe de Hong Kong, which gave us a welcome nostalgic blast of HK, with all the right details in place - specials under the glasstops of the tables, luncheon meat and fried egg instant noodles on the menu etc. I had stewed pork belly and preserved mustard with rice - yummy!

Poor old Larry is not enjoying her tuition. First she complained it was boring because it was too easy. So LSS mentioned it to her teacher. So the next week, the stupid old trout gives the class an incomprehensible maths problem, doesn't explain the techniques you need to solve it, doesn't check whether anyone had any trouble with it and leaves Larry miserable and feeling useless - as if to say, How dare you suggest that my classes are too easy! I'll show you, you arrogant little twerp.

This, I need hardly say, is not the attitude one wishes to find in a tutor that one is paying GBP40 a session for. If I needed someone just to hand out impossible questions, not explain how to do them, and not check to see if they had been done properly, I could do that myself.

I asked Larry why she had not asked the teacher for help. She said she was too scared to. So this week, LSS has been posted of to tell the tutor that Larry finds her scary and could she be less terrifying.

I don't expect this approach will work, so I will end up having to pull Larry out and tutor her myself. Just heading off to Smiths to buy old 11+ papers.

It's strange how the world is full of people who, superficially, seem to be sane pleasant people - but when you scratch the surface you find that underneath they are living in a world of self-delusion and fantasy, and will go to any lengths to preserve that delusion, rather than risk discovering the unsavoury truth about themselves - rather like Ivanov. In his case, unwilling to accept the truth that he is really as cowardly, selfish and money-grabbing as everyone thinks he is, he shoots himself. In the case of someone I once knew at work, the unsavoury truth I fear was - gasp! - that he was not one of life's natural accountants. Frankly, I think there are many people who might have been able to see the bright side in that, and take themselves off to go and find a career that they were better suited to.

The war is not yet over, Englisch Schwein!

2008-11-19T21:32:00.002Z

Got a free incredibly heavy Ikea sideboard today from two drunken girls in Putney.

Was talking to a German girl today who had just finished moving all her stuff from her place in Dusseldorf. Apparently her parents-in-law were moving to London from Germany, so she and her husband were going to move in with them. Must be a big house, says I. Yes, she said. Where is it, I said. Belgravia, she said. Nuff said!

People eh!

2008-11-14T20:28:00.006Z

All kinds of minor people incidents today.

First of all some irate bloke in the office came storming up while East End Boy and I were on the speakerphone talking to a confused guy in nostro management, saying, You know there are other people trying to work over there, indicating Legal. It was after 6pm on a Friday in an office in London - there were about 2 people left on the entire floor. I said pacifyingly, we're nearly done, and East End Boy did the male now-I'm-going-to-add-five-minutes-to-my-conversation-because-you-can't-tell-me-what-to-do thing. Anyway, stroppy guy stomped off and EEB and I looked at each other and said, Who was that? He wasn't even from Legal. God knows who he was. Some over-strained lunatic.

Then on the train on the way home, this pompous guy came and insisted on sitting in the seat next to me where I had placed all my bags of shopping, so I had to move them all onto my lap. So then he says, Can I help you put those on the rack? Which sounds like a nice thing to say, but it really isn't, because it is just as inconvenient for me to get all my shopping off the luggage rack 10 minutes later when I get off the train as it is for me to hold the shopping on my lap. And what he was really saying was that it was not he who was inconveniencing me by making me hold my shopping on my lap, but in fact I who was inconveniencing him by not putting my shopping on the luggage rack in the first place. Passive aggressive tosspot. So sod him too.

Then on the bus further along on the way home, this South American guy suddenly started on at some girl, saying extremely loudly and expletive-ladenly: Take your f**king foot off the seat. She just ignored him. He kept on and on (not really doing his cause any favours by swearing quite so much) until eventually she said, in a really posh up-herself voice, Oh, stop talking to me as if you know me. And he persisted in telling her to take her f**king foot off the seat, and she kept on refusing. Then the woman sitting opposite her said, He's right, you know. Then Sweary Guy had to get off the bus, so he went down the aisle, still cursing and swearing about her foot on the seat and all the way down the aisle, people were saying to him, You're quite right, well done, we all agree with you. One guy who was coming down the stairs said to him, You've got to have manners. And Sweary Guy says, Wouldn't take her f**king foot off the seat. Born with sh*t in her mouth! And Stairs Guy said, Oh, yes, manners are very important, to this guy who was turning the air on the bus absolutely blue with oaths. It was hysterical. The whole bus was united in its loathing of the horrible posh blonde bitch who wouldn't take her foot off the seat. We hate people who put their feet on the seats. We HATE them. In fact, we f**king hate them!

Freecycle

2008-11-14T20:22:00.002Z

I have become the world's biggest fan of Freecycle. Since we desperately need furniture and we have no money, everyday I eagerly check my Freecycle folder to see if anyone in Wandsworth if giving away any good stuff. So far, we have got a couple of nice solid dining chairs and I have a line in for an upright piano. Hoping to get another four Heals' dining chairs next week and also a desk for Mo and some topsoil for the garden. It's amazing the stuff people will just give away! We've also managed to find a taker for the long mysterious strips of pine that were left behind by the previous owner of the house. And we've acquired a perfectly acceptable sofa (although that was just from the father of one of Curly's friends at school). OK, none of this stuff is our dream furniture, but it will all do perfectly well until we can afford the dream furniture. And we are also being green and not consuming the world's resources and all-in-all coming over all WW2 frugal and Blitz spirity.

2008-11-09T09:07:00.008Z

From our special correspondent, Curly:

Dear Diary it is going to be my birthday soon and I am going to have six presents.One of the presents is a surprise present these are the clues I have found it is a soft toy it is lumpy I will find more clues on the day.

Local Shopping Opportunities

2008-11-09T08:57:00.002Z

All those people who complain about the homogeneous high street full of the same old boring chain stores should come on down to Garratt Lane, which is jampacked full of the most diverting range of curious businesses all apparently in the last stages of terminal decay. We have Mr Wandle's Workshop, who seems to specialise in old junk, a place that repairs lawnmowers and nothing else, a secondhand clothes shop, the aptly named SJ Roots hairdressers, our local Thai greasy spoon and for the times when it is closed, our Turkish greasy spoon, Sultan's Cafe. On Merton Road we have the Villeroy and Boch factory outlet where I am planning to spend most of my time in the run up to Christmas, as nothing speaks to my soul like fine china, unless it is stationery, also a place called Chomette where yesterday we bought 6 lead crystal port glasses for GBP6, and the beautiful art deco Southfields Tyre Company.

Connected again!

2008-11-06T20:44:00.004Z

Ha ha back on the internet at last! Getting into the routine at the new house... alarm is set for 5am, so that I can switch on the light and just lie there waking up till 5.30. Get up, have bath, stumble downstairs to where we are forced to keep the wardrobe because we can't get it upstairs until we can get rid of said wardrobe. Get dressed. Make lunchbox. Have breakfast (hot buttered muffins and Marmite today). Give Mo his fishoil. Everybody else asleep. Leave house at 6.25. Catch bus at 6.27. Get to Earlsfield Station at 6.33. Catch 6.35 to Waterloo. Get to desk at 7.10. Work all day. Leave work 6-6.30. Arrive home 7-7.30. Help Mo with homework. Have dinner. Work on draft 5 of novel. Play some Brickbreaker. Go to sleep. Repeat till weekend.

House is virtually devoid of furniture. Trying to get some chairs from Freecycle. Had a real fire the other night. Felt like a person of substance.

Went to all-day Alan Ayckbourn fest at Old Vic - the Norman Conquests with Stephen Mangan as said Norman. Really enjoyed. Saw Michael Winner in the audience. LSS says it was not Michael Winner, it was Ken Russell. All I can say is, he needs glasses. It WAS Michael Winner. Paid for GBP10 seats but enjoyed the vacant GBP25 ones instead, which was a result. Lamb curry for lunch at the undeservedly empty Spice of India. Whitebait and chips at Livebait for dinner. Yum.

Big Move

2008-10-24T09:17:00.001+01:00

Great long pause in blogging is because we have finally moved house and so we are bereft of internet. Because of course back here in Edwardian Britain you cannot expect to move your internet seamlessly from one dwellingplace to another. In fact, you cannot even expect your phone line to move seamlessly from one dwelling to another. No, that would entail your NOT USING BRITISH TELECOMS, which is impossible to do. Even if you get your line rental from another company, if you move house, you have to move your line rental back to BT, then sit with them for another 12 months – unless you want to pay £75 for breaking the 12 month contract – and then move your line rental and broadband package back to whatever hopeless broadband package provider you were originally with. Because they are all hopeless. Come back, Hong Kong, beautiful wired island of the liberated electronic future – all is forgiven!

Our house is beautiful and our saddo Ikea furniture looks even sadder in it, but now we have no money to buy better furniture. We spent this month’s portion on a new Bosch tumbledryer, because the old dryer that was left in the house was like the prototype of a dryer that someone designed in, oh, say, 1850, and mocked up in the hope that some day the technology would be created that would actually make it work. It is in every way dryer-like, except that when you put your clothes in and press the Start button, your clothes do not get dry. In fact nothing happens, except that the room gets a little warmer from the energy you expend venting your feelings on the subject of outmoded dryer technology.

Bought the new one online from the Coop and, get this: we ordered it on Monday and it arrived on Tuesday, earlier than the time they said they would deliver it. I’m stunned. Efficient effective service. What is this? I don’t understand. It has shaken my worldview.

There is so much to be done. Luckily it is kids’ half-term next week so I have the week off. Unfortunately, we are off to Porto tomorrow with little sis – which will be lovely, but I am dying to get the house more sorted.

News seems to have spread around the school playground like wildfire that we have finally moved. Total strangers are coming up to LSS in the playground and commiserating with him re how difficult it is to heat big rooms with high ceilings and those huge Georgian windows – ha ha ha! – even though he has never said anything to them about the house. But somehow everyone knows which one it is. A primary school playground is a very small place.

Hair

2008-10-06T05:11:00.002+01:00

I'm looking for a hairsalon that doesn't charge GBP65 a pop to cut my hair. Peering into the local dives, they seem mainly to cater for the black population. Do you think they would be any good at thick straight Chinese hair? I ask LSS. Well, I'm sure they'd have a bash at it, says he, in the manner of someone who pays GBP8 for his haircut at Tony's of Bedford Hill.

My problem is anyone who's ever cut my hair has engaged with it in a similar spirit of enthusiastic amateur can-do-ism: "Well, madam, we are primarily a kebab shop, but I'm sure we can do something for you - Abdul, the electric carving knife, please!"

Weird Shocks

2008-10-01T20:40:00.002+01:00

Karaoke night for Little Squish's birthday last night. It was the first time I've ever done karaoke and it was excellent. I was a bit worried at first that I would come over all shy, but had not factored in that I would be there with a whole bunch of British people. I mean, I thought I was reserved - but I am nowhere compared to the British. Either that or there is some kind of exhibitionist gene in our family which allows even staid bankers to stand up and sing tunelessly to songs that they don't know very well, without batting an eyelid. Then the sister's even more exhibitionist drama school chums turned up and the rest of the Brits caved and ended up happily singing along to YMCA and Don't Stop Me Now, like everyone else.

Shock of the evening - I put on Heroes and it got skipped out of the playlist because NO ONE ELSE KNEW IT. How can they not know Heroes, for God's sake? I mean how young are they? Or rather, how old am I?!

Another weird shock. There were some chaps behind me in the lift lobby the other day speaking German and it gave me a strange erotic thrill. I have never before liked the German language. I tried to learn it once at school and I just couldn't get with it. Every time I looked in the textbook at all the cheery German dialogue, saying Thank you and Please and How much is a cup of coffee? I could not help thinking, I bet you weren't this friendly when you were throwing the Jews on the fires forty years ago. And now, thirty years later, I'm finding German sexy? What's wrong with me? Am I a masochist? Do I get off on power and domination? Am I going to end up like something out of Night Porter? Or is it just the time of the month when I find absolutely anything sexy (could be).

I took a look at the 3 blokes when I got onto the lift. They were not sexy. Still, made a mental note to watch Downfall again. What's wrong with me?!

RIP Paul Newman

2008-09-27T23:37:00.003+01:00

Simply the best-looking guy that ever lived. And a mensch too.

Agents

2008-09-25T21:21:00.003+01:00

Looked up agents in the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook today and tried to imagine some hardbitten jaded contemptuous agent reading the first 30 pages of my novel. Blanched. Looked at the first few pages of my novel and decided it was crap. Rewrites! Rewrites!

Finished the Tacitus. Nobody comes out of it very well except a delicious general called Corbulo, who very wisely stays out of Rome throughout Nero's reign, fighting the Armenians and displaying a dazzling and sexy range of military competence, a la Russell Crowe at the beginning of Gladiator.

The lovely Cormac, who normally takes Thursday's yoga class and constantly reminds us in his delightful soft Irish brogue just to experience our yoga practice today and not to judge ourselves, was mysteriously absent and substituted by a Yorkshire woman with a flat boring voice and enormous boobs. It was not an improvement.

Nightmares

2008-09-23T21:27:00.003+01:00

Had a horrible dream where I found out that in fact instead of buying the house I thought I was buying, it turned out that I had actually bought a flat in a horrible new development that had simply been designed so that it looked like the house but outside it was just a horrible flat at "236 Balham Road", wherever that is. LSS, in the dream, said unconcerned, yes, you knew that, it was in the contract. I was speechless.

I woke up all of a lather and lay there in the dark convinced it had actually happened until gradually the fog of unreason lifted and I realised that it was very unlikely that any developer actually would build a block of flats with one designed on the interior to be exactly like that of an utterly distinctive 200 year old Georgian house.

On a different subject, why in the name of God do women buy thongs? I am sick of the sight of all the wobbly bottoms in the women's changing room at the gym. It looks bloody ridiculous and about as sexy as a blancmange.

LSS called Tiscali today to try to get our phone number and broadband transferred to the new house. Oh no, says the long-suffering Scots woman on the end of the phone. You have to terminate your line rental with us, move back to BT, move the line rental with BT to the new house, then re-apply to us for your broadband once you've moved into the new house. This will take at least 10 days once you've moved into the new house. LSS said a number of things, the general theme of which can be summarised as: what the f**k kind of stupid system is that? The Scotswoman declined to comment. How different from our own dear HK where, when you call up to arrange your broadband connection, practically before you have put your phone down, a little man is standing outside your flat calling you on his handphone to ask whether it is convenient for him to come and install your broadband now.

Photocopier

2008-09-19T22:33:00.005+01:00

I saw a girl today at the photocopier - the colour photocopier appropriately enough - who looked like she had fallen through a wormhole in space from a different planet. She had short red hair and a bright red top and looked as if she were a Hollywood star preparing for a part in a film set in an office. I felt like stopping and reminding her that she works for a bank and not even a very exciting bank, and then redirecting her to an advertising company or something that was more obviously her niche.

Krispy Kreme doughnuts on the desk today. Had three. Since I had completely blown the diet, had French onion soup and a burger for dinner. Also didn't bother to go for a run.

Went to see Emanuel Gat Dance at Sadlers Wells tonight with the Little Squish. I thought this title was a weirdly tensed assertion, but it turns out to just be the guy's name. The dancing was sadly irresistibly reminiscent of the kind Audrey Hepburn does in that hipster club in Paris in Funny Face, except that it was not meant to be funny.

Oh, exchanged on our house today. I can't help wondering if the year's delay occasioned by the global crunch and the significance of the timing of the exchange in the very worst week of the crisis so far is not the universe's way of trying to tell me something. Like: don't do it!

Building and Contents

2008-09-12T22:13:00.003+01:00

Feeling very poor today because I just had to pay for home insurance on the house we're buying. Bought it through Swinton Insurance with the help of a very helpful and efficient chap called Carl in their Lavender Hill branch - this is my tribute to him and if anyone from their head office is reading this, please take note - Carl in the Lavender Hill branch.

Lo, how my standards are lowered that when someone in a service industry actually provides me with prompt, efficient, effective service, it invokes grovelling gratitude on my part.

I love Google Maps - when the insurer asked how far away from the house was the big tree in the garden, I could look it right up on the internet.

News just in from ancient Rome: Agrippina is getting her come-uppance as her son Nero arranges for her suicide. Kids, eh?

Megastress

2008-09-06T06:15:00.004+01:00

Went to see the Cy Twombly last night at the Tate, which ranged from stuff which reminded me of Curly's efforts and others (like the paintings for that woman he knew who died, and the season paintings) which I wouldn't have minded having in my living room. Little Squish said she would rather have one of LSS's dad's paintings.

I see storms are lashing Wales again. How glad I am to be in my nice dry watertight flat and not in a tent in a field in Snowdonia that has just exceeded its hydrostatic limit (which I understand from LSS is a posh way of saying that it is leaking).

Nothing to do this weekend other than stress out about forthcoming meeting with Mo's lunatic headmaster who has suddenly taken into his head (after we have spent the past year working with Mo's class teacher to get him formally diagnosed and treated) to assert that he doesn't believe Mo has ADD (unlike the educational psychologist, the NHS developmental psychology expert and the doctor with 20 years experience in children with ADD) and that he does not permit children to be on medication in the school. God, I hope I don't have to pull Mo from the school just so we can at least try him on the Equasym. How I hate dogmatism. I'm positively dogmatic about it.

Reading Tacitus, Annals. At least I don't have Tiberius' problems.

Wales

2008-09-01T21:15:00.003+01:00

Just back from our Snowdonian adventure which was fantastic! Can't wait to go camping again. The first day the weather was pretty good and Little Sister and I climbed up the side of a mountain with the kids, leaving the men behind to cook dinner. It was lovely to see how much the kids enjoyed it, even the two hulking surly teenagers, who took off their shirts (why?) and raced to the top of the rocks, leading me to think that the best thing this society could do with male teenagers is to hale them all off to some kind of Spartan training camp where they can be turned into human beings and released back into society at the age of 24. Even Curly managed to make it up to nearly the top of the rocks, even though the side of the mountain was basically a vertical bog, covered in half a foot of moss that squelched streams of water with every step. Coming back down again we avoided the vertical bog by going through a field of bracken and rocks instead - drier but much more risk of ankle-turnage. The whole thing was basically like a living video game, both the rockclimbing and the mountainside traversing, filled with constant puzzles and questions and problem-solving.

The next day we climbed up the side of the higher mountain opposite and were very proud of ourselves because the slope was the kind where your nose is virtually scraping the side of the hill as you climb. As Larry said, each step is easy, but the whole thing is difficult - which it was, especially when you looked down and considered how very easy it would be just to fall down to the bottom of the mountain. Came back down the easy way - which we only spotted when we got to the top of the ridge. Some rain, but my new Chinese weatherproof parka was absolutely brilliant. Also took a sidetrip to Anglesey to visit the village church of the Tudors in Penmynydd, sleeping in a romantic green time-proof silence next to a very nice-looking hotel made out of the former vicarage, down a lane so remote from the village you wonder if they were trying to discourage people from going to church.

This morning it rained like there was no tomorrow, in spite of all our prayers/ entreaties/ human sacrifices to the goddess of rain and midges. So we packed up everything in record time and started the drive back - of course the sun immediately came out and Wales looked stunning as we left it. Sister and I decided to detour with the girls to Malvern for a trip down memory lane - played Enigma Variations on the way over the hills, as is only fit and proper, and had lunch in a very nice brasserie by the Priory - very reasonably priced, especially compared to the indifferent rip-off Welsh pub-food that we suffered in Betws-y-Coed.

Back home now in my nice clean dry bed and happily planning our next camping holiday. Hooray for camping!

Woodland Walk

2008-08-27T23:47:00.002+01:00

Forgot to mention we went to Batemans at the weekend. When we got out of the car, we were all starving so we thought we would have our picnic before we went to see the house. Looked around, couldn't see the picnic area, but there was a sign saying "Woodland Walk" so we thought we would go into the woods to see if there was a pleasant spot to have a picnic. LSS led the way through a little grove that was a bit like an orchard. After about ten yards, the path curved round and we found ourselves walking back up through the little grove again - the entire woodland walk would have fit onto a tennis court! For some reason I found this hysterically funny, I just couldn't stop laughing, as we traipsed dignifiedly around this tiny little "woodland walk" with our picnic things.

We found the picnic area in the end at the other end of the carpark, and very nice it was too.

Robots

2008-08-26T20:57:00.002+01:00

Food and beverages:
Porridge for breakfast
Green tea to drink during the day
Leftover roast pork, mashed potatoes, runner beans and peas for lunch
Ma po noodles for dinner
Slice of toast with Marmite
Slice of toast with homemade raspberry jam
Rich tea biscuit
Cup of tea

Exercise:
yoga

Interesting conversations:
none

Divertimento:
LSS made Curly a robot outfit out of a long thin cardboard box with holes cut out for her face and arms. She did the whole range of robot activities - scratching the top of her robot head, rubbing her robot tummy, standing with her hands on her robot hips, trying to sit down and falling over on her back and being unable to get up again without assistance, climbing up the stairs, etc, and had to be forcibly prevented from putting her pillow and her hotwater bottle into the box with her before retiring for the night.

Everything just gets worse and worse

2008-08-25T07:29:00.004+01:00

Speaking of the decline in educational standards (as Dulwich was on Friday), I recently saw the following howlers - one in the Guardian, one in the Observer and one in some Barbican promotional material: "discretely" for "discreetly", "practiced" for "practised" and "centenery" for "centenary". I am shocked. Shocked, I tell you. I hope Carnaptious ensures that such appalling errors never appear in his esteemed publication.

Chinese Torture

2008-08-25T07:14:00.003+01:00

Tried Mo out on 20mg of Equasym yesterday. He managed to swallow them whole (cunningly dipped in yoghurt) - hooray! I'm not very good at swallowing pills either - it's amazing how alike we are physically - well, not that amazing I suppose. It does seem to have some effect - we did an hour of maths, an hour of French and an hour of English yesterday. Normally, he can only manage half an hour of each and no more than 2 out of the 3 and each session is peppered with plaintive requests to know whether the time is up yet. And he remembered most of his capital letters and punctuation too without prompting. I suppose simply being able to concentrate for a much longer period of time at one go is bound to help his schoolwork. Seems to have no side effects either - one of the more common ones is appetite suppression - but we went out to dim sum with Little Sister, Quasi-Sister and an Oceanographer that QS found washed up on a beach somewhere on the south coast, and he ate vast amounts of everything. Afterwards, went down to Trespass in Covent Garden and bought myself a waterproof parka for our Snowdonian adventure.

Spent an hour torturing Larry with Chinese in the afternoon. I don't know why she doesn't enjoy it - it's such fun thinking up ways to remember the characters. Yesterday we had the story of the woodcutter who went out into the woods very early to cut down a TREE to make a TABLE and on the way he saw a little BIRD flying above the rising SUN. And the next day he sent his son to cut down a TREE to make a CHAIR. And he said to his son, are you sure you are BIG enough? And the son said, Dad, of course I CAN. Now, I don't know about her, but after all that, the way to write table and chair are now indelibly engraved in my mind.

Beautiful Things

2008-08-22T23:54:00.003+01:00

Went to see Romeo and Juliet at the Middle Temple Hall. The show was OK although Romeo was just a pretty boy and Juliet's mouth was too wide and she clumped around a lot. But the Middle Temple itself is just stunning. I have never been round the back of Fleet Street and to stumble across these beautiful cobbled quads with their great plane trees and gently plashing fountains and first rate Georgian buildings is fabulous.

A peppy young American came round from the Tate to give a talk on Cy Twombly. He (the lecturer) was from Virginia, as was Cy Twombly, a fact that he mentioned some 6 or 7 times during the course of the talk. There were also some excellent biscuits.

Goulash and mash for dinner - or goumash, as the kids call it. Curly said she liked the goo, but not the lash. And who can blame her?

Happy Birthday Ruthless Physicist!

2008-08-21T22:30:00.005+01:00

Sorry, sorry, I know, it's not that I've been busy either, I don't know what I've been doing with myself. Working on draft 4 of the novel, that's what, trying to fix all the things the Ruthless Physicist said were wrong with it.

What else has been going on? We've finally exchanged contracts on the sale of our flat (without any attempt at gazundering - even though the purchasers are French. Can it be that cultural differences are finally working to our advantage?) so it looks as though we may actually be moving into our dream house in October, a mere 14 months after we first put in an offer on it.

Had lunch with Little Squish and Quasi-Squish at Pain Quotidien today. Actually I'd already had lunch (kippers, string beans and potatoes and they were lovely thank you very much), so I just came along for the treacle tart and a nice glass of rose and a fresh mint tea. Nattered away as if it hadn't been five years since the last time I saw her (the Q-S that is, I see Little Squish all the time) and invited ourselves round to visit her in Ireland. Hey, if I were going to wait for invitations, I would never go anywhere. DG, be warned, if you ever move to Prague, as you have been promising to do for the past 12 months.

Not much going on at work so have spent a happy few hours organising our holiday in Porto at half-term. Happy, apart from the time spent trying to book tickets online on the Ryanair website when I am not an EU citizen who does not want to pay GBP8 for anything extra, like luggage, airport checkin, paying by credit card, breathing too much, etc.

We are going camping next weekend on a wind-blasted barren mountainside in Snowdonia. When is that Indian summer going to arrive, I wonder?

Went to see the Revenger's Tragedy at the National last Friday with the Sub and her hub. There was much nudity and simulation of sex acts on the stage, of which there can never be too much in the subsidised theatre, if you ask me.

Reading a biography of Talleyrand. I love him and I hate him. I know he would have despised me. He seems to have despised everyone, the big Gallic knobhead.

Kampung

2008-07-24T13:32:00.002+01:00

Us young(er) 'uns enjoyed the whole kampung hut experience, but I must admit the collective response of the older generations was that it reminded them of the early months of the Japanese occupation when everyone fled to the villages - only with aircon and wireless internet.

Went to see the office ladies for lunch today. They were talking about a charity fun run that the office organised last year - the route went along Jalan Bukit Bintang and Jalan Ipoh, with the result that half the participants trailed off halfway to have breakfast dimsum. This year, they have rerouted the walk to Lake Gardens and Kenny Hills, where there are not so many culinary distractions.

Langkawi

2008-07-21T12:09:00.002+01:00

I love this resort - it has free wireless internet everywhere! At last I can make like one of those people in the adverts who sit by the pool with their laptops, glamorously checking how far London property prices have slid in the past five minutes.

It rained torrentially yesterday, but cleared up enough for us to make a trip into town in the afternoon. The weather report for today was merely for "heavy rain" but in fact it has been beautiful all day. We went down to Tanjung Rhu beach and enjoyed the same beach and the same sea as the Four Seasons people further down the beach, for the princely sum of no dollars. Although we were charged one ringgit for a rinse off at a standpipe behind the coffeeshop where I bought a bunch of rambutan for a dollar fifty.

Went to Mo's favourite Thai restaurant in a mangrove swamp for lunch, but it has gone sadly downhill since the last time we were in Langkawi, so ended up in a pizza place. Afternoon spent lounging by the pool. Ahhhh!

Bond

2008-07-18T01:14:00.001+01:00

Saw the new Bond trailer. Daniel Craig seems to have tripled in attractiveness since the last round. How can I last till November?

Movie Roundup

2008-07-15T10:10:00.002+01:00

The Emirates entertainment facilities are the best I've seen so far - loads of movies, TV, music and games, and all at your choice, fast forwardable etc. Watched on the plane - 5 episodes of 30 Rock, which I'm really liking, White Heat (we love Jimmy Cagney), the musical sequences from Chicago (we love Catherine Zeta Jones), some movie which has completely evaporated from my brain, and half of a soppy movie with Michelle Pfeiffer and Paul Rudd. I said to Larry re Michelle Pfeiffer, Do you realise that woman is in her 50s? Doesn't she look stunning? She said, That's amazing, she looks more like your age. Or even younger. I hit her.

Just got back from Journey to the Centre of the Earth (Brendan Fraser). Exactly as expected. Tomorrow Kungfu Panda. The day after that, Wanted. The day after that, Red Cliffs (John Woo).

I love the holidays.

The Story So Far

2008-07-11T10:02:00.001+01:00

Many months ago I bought some marigold tea, in the mistaken internet-sourced belief, that it would help alleviate my mystery itching. It did not work. What did work was Boots heavy-duty antihistamines. I could not find any marigold tea in the Balham Therapy Rooms, so I ended up buying it off the internet and when it arrived it turned out to be a wholesale-sized package. I have been drinking this weird-tasting tea for months now and it never seems to get any less and there is still a huge tupperware of it stashed in our larder. So I give up – even though it means that I am – gasp! – wasting money, I have finally taken the big step and thrown it away. The way things were going, I could see that two years from now, I would still be thinking a cup of the horrible stuff every day at work, and I don’t even like it.

I’ve just finished reading that Danny Wallace book where he looks up 12 old friends from his childhood. If I were to do that, they would be:

Adlina Manaf
Shirani Oorjitham
Chin Jen Yee
Maznah Hashim
Ronald Khoo and his sister Su Ming – but I have never really lost touch with them, so they probably do not count
Leong Ket Ti – actually I have seen her relatively recently too, her husband is a hotshot lawyer in KL
Sau Kim
Anne Edwards – married with kids and living somewhere in Surrey? Or Kent?
Matanat Mohsin – actually lives in London but thinks she’s too smart for me
Tanya Boyd-Meester – also living somewhere in London, but I tried to get in touch when we got back to the UK and no reply. Huh.
Holly Gillcash – American exchange student. Was going to Georgetown University. Was a lot more sophisticated than us.

I suppose the thing that holds me back from contacting any of them is the fear that we would have nothing in common any more, if we ever did. There would be none of that warmth and recovery of the past that Danny Wallace rejoices in. If anything, I would go away feeling that what I thought I had in the past wasn’t real.

What else has been going on? The Food Upfront woman came round and dropped off compost. LSS has spent the past couple of weeks crooning over it: There’s nothing yet. There’s still nothing. It’s been days and there’s nothing. You’d think by now there’d be something. We have a shoot! We have another shoot! We have nine shoots! But the first one is my favourite.

We are flying out to KL tomorrow for two weeks. Who is going to water our shoots? When we get back, we will not have shoots – we will just have a row of shrivelled dead things.

Having tussled fruitlessly with the NHS for a year(!), I have finally given up and booked an appointment for Mo at Dr Kewley’s ADHD clinic in Sussex. I am fedup with the NHS. In my opinion the best thing they could do is abolish it and make everybody get private health insurance. It is clearly not a sustainable institution.

Curly has been assessed with a reading age of 9 and is going to spend an hour a day with the Y2’s next year. She has taken this with her usual aplomb. Larry got AA’s for everything except PE and Mental Maths in her report card. Ah, I says to her, we must work on your Mental Maths (discarding the PE as fighting against her destiny – I was hopeless at PE, she can be hopeless at PE). LSS accused me of doing the traditional Chinese parent thing – what only 99%? What happened to the last 1%? Hey, if it was good enough for my sisters and me, it’s good enough for my kids! It got me to where I am today – a broken-down unfulfilled wreck, doing a job I hate, fruitlessly striving to propitiate unappeasable imaginary gods.

Accepted an offer on our flat. The guy works for First Direct so at least he should have no problem getting a mortgage. Anyway, I am not holding my breath.

Had first session with the teacher I am coaching for TeachFirst. It was really good! How unexpected.

Working on third draft of my novel. Bracing myself for inevitable rejections, by starting prep work on the sequel.

LSS finally passed his driving test after a saga that made me wonder whether I should not also be making an appointment for him at Dr Kewley’s clinic. First, he never got round to booking the test until it was so late that he would only have one shot at it before his international driving licence wore out. Then he didn’t read the instructions properly so he didn’t realise that he needed to show them the new photocard licence, instead of the old paper licence and passport, so he couldn’t take the test (and forfeited the £56 fee). Then he got home from the aborted test and realised that he actually does have a new photocard licence and it was in his wallet all the time, so he could have taken the test. Then he had to take the kids to school on public transport (gasp!) for a week because his international licence had expired. Then he made us all get up at dawn to get to the driving test centre on time on Wednesday, only to find out when we got there (and had been sitting waiting for half an hour for the test centre to open), that in fact the test was on Thursday.

Anyway, thank heavens, he has passed at last! Cheaper motor insurance – hooray! I realise this is not much of a thing to get excited about, but when you are 44 you have to take your opportunities for euphoria where you can.

Have to start sorting out senior schools for Larry. Someone remind me, if I haven’t done anything about it in a month.

LSS and the kids got on to Southwest Trains for Clapham Junction some time last week (during the whole driving test saga) on a rainy day when the train was jampacked. Larry was moaning: “It’s too crowded. It’s too hot. I’m wet. I’m bored. I want to get off!” She was clearly channelling the thoughts of every single person in the carriage, as everyone laughed. Curly (from the level of everyone’s knees) pipes up: “Why am I down here? It’s all different down here!” Cue for more merriment. Yes, they were the life and soul of the morning commute that day!

Went round to Little Squish’s last weekend to help her clear stuff. I have been longing to clear stuff out of her flat for years. Took the stuff down to Lambeth dump off the Walworth Road. It’s not as good as Wandsworth’s! She fed us extremely authentic Fukien mien, although I did not get any of the little crunchy bits. Came away with VHS videos of the entire Buffy series 1-9, and my old Felix the Cat tin box. LSS replaced her broken toilet seat and reaffirmed his manly credentials.

We went to a PYO two weeks ago and LSS has made 4 jars of raspberry jam and 4 jars of what can only be described as strawberry splot. If anyone needs any strawberry splot, please let me know.

Torrid Tube Journey

2008-06-25T08:49:00.000+01:00

My God, there was such a good-looking guy on the tube home yesterday! Like Colin Firth, but younger, taller and butcher. It was as much as I could do not to launch myself forward and commit inter-station pornography on him, but I confined myself to standing there primly reading the Economist, while secretly thinking, Take me, take me now! He got off at Balham too. What a wonderful place Balham is. Truly, it is the gateway to the south.

Curlyisms

2008-06-19T23:47:00.002+01:00

LSS and I are attempting to have a conversation while Curly persistently interrupts. In the end, LSS turns to her and says sternly: "Curly! Stop interrupting. You're always talking!"

Curly responds cheerfully: "But I have so much to say!"

Later in the week:

Curly (thoughtfully): I think my shoes have feelings.
LSS: How are they feeling? Happy or sad?
Curly: This one is angry and this one is happy.

Good day at work today - I was replacing for someone who couldn't attend on an interview course. Feedback on my interview technique from the participants: relaxed, friendly, creates rapport, flows nicely, scared the shit out of us.

Good! That is just the impression I want to make on my interviewees - that they're being interviewed by a highly polished homicidal maniac.

Weekend Wobblers

2008-06-12T19:34:00.000+01:00

I had to take the kids into Hammersmith with me on Saturday for Larry's Mandarin lesson as LSS was busy doing setup for the school fair. Unfortunately, this coincided with a time of month when I transmogrify into the Mom from Hell, instead of being the Supermom and All-round Sweetness and Light Fairy that I usually am (and not a controlling sarcastic maths-cum-Latin teacher troll, whatever LSS says). I think around the time of the unscheduled pee-pee stop at Victoria Station when the turnstile had stolen my 30p for the 2nd time and all the money was stuck in the slot and the kids were poking their heads in the way and some fat curly-haired bloke was trying to queuebarge me, I may even have called my dear offspring "morons". In the end I had to advise them that I was obviously in a foul mood and, for their own safety, it would be wisest if they did not direct any questions to me until further notice. We completed our journey down to Wandsworth on the number 44 bus in a majestic silence.

The fair went off well, but LSS also had to stay behind to strike the set, so I had to drive the kids home. I have driven this car precisely twice, the second occasion being on Saturday. I was most of the way back to Balham before I realised, using my superhuman powers of deduction, that that red circle with an exclamation mark in it on the dashboard might be subtle hint that the handbrake was on. Although I was driving like a little old lady on Mogadon, no-one amongst the notoriously impatient drivers of South London parped me - possibly because they were too busy avoiding the clouds of black smoke emitting from my brakepads.

I have adopted a slash-and-burn policy with my hair. It now looks like Anna Wintour's only not so obviously dyed (I'm sorry, Anna, please don't kill me with one of your well-aimed killer death rays from Conde Nast Towers!). Curly inspected it and announced: "You look like a Chinese girl." I rather thought that this is what I have always looked like.

Went to a "gig" last night at the Hop Cellars in Borough because the husband of Whingeing Accountant is the drummer in the band. Talked to a retired C of E vicar about their recent camping trip in the Gower. This was obviously not one of those legendary rock-and-roll gigs that go down in history, but I still enjoyed it. It's nice to be let out of my underground Mummy Accountant's steel-reinforced dungeon once in a while.

Impractical

2008-06-05T21:54:00.001+01:00

LSS announces he has just been cold-called by the Akela of the local Cub Scout group, asking if the Cubs can come and help out at the school summer fair which LSS accidentally found himself organising a couple of months ago when he blithely said at a PTA meeting that he wouldn’t mind making a list of parents who were interested in volunteering. It’s so cute! It’s like we’re members of a community or something!

Had to explain to the kids what an Akela was. I know things like Cubs and Scouts are not very fashionable nowadays, what with all the rampaging paedophiles lurking about, and I was never a Brownie or Girl Guide myself – to which I attribute my total ineptitude in all things practical – but I would be sorry to see the day when these organisations no longer exist.

I realise I am quite paranoid about my practical ineptitude. At the course I was on in Chicago, one of the sessions involved being a pretend pit crew on a Nascar car. They tried to make me one of the gunners, but I cried off because I was sure I would screw it up or staple someone to the ground or fire a bolt through someone’s forehead. Then LSS tried to sign me up to run the candyfloss stand at the aforementioned summerfair and I cried off that too because I envisaged candyfloss disasters – whole playground draped in wisps of candyfloss like a Barbie-pink Miss Havisham’s mansion, childish digits caught in the whirling machinery etc. And then today I was thinking of signing up to do various environmental-helping-out activities at some wildfowl sanctuary and I didn’t, because I thought I would invariably manage to screw up clearing the ragwort, cutting the reedbeds etc. I realise that having acquired the few practical skills necessary to function (eg driving a car, which I do as little possible; and cooking, which I actually quite enjoy), I have spent years and years not bothering to acquire any new skills. Shocking. This is a state of affairs I must rectify.

I have no interest in operating machinery and would not care if I lived and died without ever having operated a powerdrill. However, I have a list of practical things that I have always wanted to be able to do, including:

Gardening
Keeping chickens (I have tried and tried to get SMW to do this on my behalf, but she keeps on making feeble excuses about snakes and foxes)
Knitting

Can’t do much about the chickens, until we have a garden of our own, but I have today signed up for Food Up Front, so soon I plan to be growing my own rocket. Or rather, I plan to be eating my own rocket, which LSS will have grown. No! No! Bad accountant! Stop delegating! The whole point is to do it yourself! * Sigh* Old habits die hard.

The world grows more illiterate. I saw an ad on the telly yesterday for a car that promised “less emissions” and today, the photocopier told me that there were “less than 1200 pages left” on the toner cartridge. It’s FEWER. FEWER, people! Can’t you hear that it sounds wrong? What are you doing in the communication business (alright, maybe not the photocopier people, but certainly the ad agency) if you don’t know this?

Three Days of the Condor

2008-06-03T23:00:00.004+01:00

A major marital dispute arises over what is known in serious philosophical circles as the "Three Days of the Condor Question", which is as follows:

Girls, if you are single, attractive, living alone, sitting at home one evening, possibly thinking how long it's been since you've had sex, possibly wondering if you're ever going to have sex again, and an attractive young fellow bursts in through your window, who is not scary and is obviously not a murderous psychopath, and begs you to give him shelter overnight, would you sleep with him that night, as Faye Dunaway does with Robert Redford?

Personally, I don't find Robert Redford attractive, certainly not now, and not even then. So fill in your own hunk of manliness here.

In my opinion, it is not that implausible, if you accept the totally preposterous scenario above, that a gal in Faye Dunaway's position might actually sleep with Robert Redford, having only just met him an hour or so earlier, and without the benefit of any formal introduction.

LSS begs to differ and says I am a traitor to my sex.

I think he thinks this just because he is British. If 3 Days of the Condor were to happen in the UK, it would have to be called 3 Years of the Condor, at the end of which he would have plucked up the courage to ask her out for a drink.

Anyway, straw-poll, gals, what do you think?

Pork

2008-05-31T12:45:00.003+01:00

LSS has devised a method of making perfect pork crackling from a bacon joint. The crackling is absolutely crispy and crunchy, with no hard chewy bits anywhere, and the fat underneath melts in your mouth, like the bacon fat that the gods on Olympus suck on during their eternal boys' poker nights.

I ate practically all of it last night, it was so good I could not help myself, and now I do not feel very well.

Oh, we have a new desk (thank you, eBay!) and I love it.

Our Continental Cousins

2008-05-30T10:56:00.003+01:00

I see the Bishop of Rochester has made all the papers by advocating a return to Christian values. Stop the presses! Anglican bishop in shock espousal of Christianity!

History cycle is all over and now we are bereft. Particularly missing the splendid Richard Cordery as the Lord Protector Humphrey of Gloucester, exuding integrity and steadfastness from every majestic pore. We want him to be our Lord Protector. In fact, we want him to be our daddy. Thinking of starting up a Richard Cordery fan club on Facebook.

Visited an extremely worthwhile NGO in Chicago, Community TV Network, which trains disadvantaged teenagers in video production skills - for a lot of them, it is the difference between going onto college and making something of their lives, or dropping out of school/dealing drugs/going to jail/dying etc.

Had Froggy friends visiting over half-term. They are now living in Amsterdam and can advise that Amsterdam is lovely, the Netherlands is a great country, but that the Dutch stink. Apparently, Dutch people are very very rude. And this is by the standards of the French! So you can imagine how rude that is.