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Heartscalded

     
I am heartscalded.

No more This Year's Top American Model.  No more dishes piled up in the sink because really, they are going to get done tomorrow.  No more  looking out the window and allocating people marks out of 10 on their coolness rating. No more carrier bags from American Apparel stuffed in the kitchen drawer.  No more long convoluted tales about The Dublin Castle and the really funny thing some girls said in the toilet and the really unfunny things said by some stupid guys who were trying to chat us up.  No more real celebrity-spotting and withering looks and being informed that nobody under 30 has ever heard of Edward Albee so Amy Winehouse out-celebrities him by, like, a million to one.  No more going into work and being able to talk in an informed way about how Arcade Fire's second album, apart from a couple of tracks, is nowhere near as good as the first one.  No more little bits of food wrapped up in tinfoil in the fridge.  No more squabbling about who gets to use the bathroom first.  No more having to constantly re-tune the wireless into Radio 4.  No more being told that Newsnight is really depressing.  No more comments on my Spider Solitaire habit. No more cups of tea made for me late in the evening.  No more funny random stories.  No more random anythings.

In short no more Gap Year Student. 

Her mum came and collected her stuff and took her home today.  What am I going to do with myself?

A Night At The Opera

I went to the opera last night to see this.   I wasn't looking forward to it very much because I thought it would be a bit too minimalist for my taste and I'd read a review which said something like:

"The first ten minutes are really interesting, the second ten minutes are quite pleasant and the final two and three quarter hours are unendurable."

I don't mind Philip Glass.  I even know a joke about him. Well I do now because I just read it on the internet.

Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Philip Glass
Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Philip Glass
Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Philip Glass

You get the picture.   He did the score for The Hours which I watched again quite recently and enjoyed for the second time.

My companion at the opera told me something which has been eating away at me.  His brother is now a millionaire!  By today's standards this isn't a particularly big deal.  There are lots of people working in the City or doing property development or other low dog occupations like this, who are also millioniares.  The sickening thing about this story is that the guy is a poet.  My companion and I were bewailing the terrible career choices that we have made vis a vis, the making of big bucks.  Instead of working our guts out in the public sector for the greater good of humanity we should have been off writing poetry and appearing on Radio 4 and getting richer by the minute. 

In what turned out to be a busy night we also did some celebrity spotting.   Before I arrived my companion spied Alistair McGowan  disappearing up an alleyway and then I spotted Alexander Chancellor who was in the audience.  (It is hard to convey how utterly underwhelmed the Gap Year Student will be when I tell her about this.)

Today in John Lewis I overheard someone speaking on a mobile phone and recognised her voice.  It was Carole Caplin, one-time lifestyle guru to Cherie Blair.  I have to say she looked quite old and in need of a nice cup of tea and a bun.

(My companion's brother is, in his own way, a minor celebrity, which my companion finds slightly embarassing.  I don't know why.  It's not like being related to someone like this?)

This Weekend

This weekend I went to see one film at the cinema in the Barbican.  The film was The Lives of Others and I can't recommend it enough.  It has quite rightly won a number of awards.  The film is set in East Germany in the early 80s and centres round a Stasi  officer who is in charge of the surveillance of a playwright and his actor girlfriend.  The film documents how observing other people's lives affects the officer and explores the concept of "the good man".  Really worth seeing.

This weekend I watched one good thing on television.  The world (or that little part of it that has access to British television) can be divided into those people who like Little Britain and those who like this.  I loathe Little Britain and love Peep Show.

This weekend I ate one dinner out.  This was in Strada at Brunswick Square where I am currently pretending to live.   Of all the medium priced restaurant chains Strada is the best.  Clearly it was helped by the excellent company I was keeping and the fascinating conversations we had.

This weekend I went for one walk.  London sister and I met outside Warwick Avenue tube station and went strolling down the tow path by the Regent's Canal.  We passed through Little Venice and London Zoo and forced our way through the crowds of spliff-smoking Goths at Camden Market, and carried on down towards Kings Cross and then up to the Angel.  We watched ducks diving and coots cavorting and cool dudes blogging on benches. We both admired the clumps of borage growing by the side of the path and I successfully identified wild garlic.  At the Angel we ate vegetable soup followed by traybakes and lattes in Tinderbox.

This weekend I made one phone call I had been dreading, and spoke at length to someone who I hadn't seen since I'd been to a funeral over a year ago.  It was difficult but worthwhile.

This weekend I completed two-thirds of one crossword and discovered how controversial the most unlikely subjects can be if included in a blog post.

On The Town

I had dinner with Traybake tonight and said goodbye to him at Russell Square tube.  I got the lift down to the platform and while waiting for the train, got the Guardian out and started looking at the cryptic crossword.

The problem with travelling by tube on weekend evenings or, come to that any evening, is that the trains are quite likely to be standing room only and about half the people in the carriage will be drunk.

This evening the carriage I chose to get on to was full of young men.  They were all wearing dinner jackets and top hats and each of them carried a cane; clearly a stag party though quite a well-behaved one.  I suspect they might have been accountants in real life.

One of them leant towards me and said 'Oh you're doing a crossword.  Give us a clue.'   'It would be too hard for you', I said and smiled and he smiled back.  They all piled off at Kings Cross and the one I had just inadvertently insulted grinned at me in a very good-natured way.

Afterwards I thought do I really think that being able to do cryptic crosswords makes you cleverer than other people.  Traybake can't do them but he knows lots about neoliberalism and the complete works  of  J. R. Ackerley.  I know that he knows these things because we talked about them tonight.  He doesn't know what 'Game causing a complaint' (6 letters) is though.

So in fifty words or less tell me whether you think that the ability to do cryptic crosswords is a sign of cleverness.  You also have to say whether you can do them or not.  Please note doing the Torygraph crossword automatically disqualifies you.

Good Advice

Occasionally I do work for Another Organisation.  I enjoy it very much because I get to play the role of consultant and go and visit people in different parts of the country.  As they have asked for the advice rather than it being imposed upon them,  I am generally well received.

It is amazing the preconceptions people who don't live here have about Londoners.  They are always pleasantly surprised when I turn up and am not wearing scary glasses or, at least not very scary glasses, and don't speak with an advanced RP accent.  If the advice is good they are delighted and if not, it doesn't matter that much as they haven't had to pay for it (of course it is paid for ultimately by any of you out there who pay UK taxes but that's another story).

Today I went to a market town in Kent and had a short and reasonably productive meeting and then I caught the train home.  The English countryside looks its best in late April/early May. All of the trees are newly in leave and there was something about the afternoon light which made the fields look as if they had just been mown or grazed by very methodical sheep.  I saw lots of orchards with trees in blossom and I am sure a field of lavender.

I was feeling very pleased with the world and then I got a phone call from Dominica who, some of you will recall, is the person who has been threatened with dismissal during her probation period.  I know that one or two of you think it's perfectly reasonable to get rid of someone who you have given an employment contract to if you decide you don't like the look of them after a few months.  Maybe their hair's too curly or they say "haitch" instead of "aitch" or they make too much noise when they drink their tea. Whatever.

In the real world it doesn't quite work like this.

When I'd gone through everything with Dominica it became apparent to me that the manager had failed to comply with their own processes and had, to some extent, demonstrated their own incompetency in the way they had handled things.  Luckily for Dominica the director where she is working agreed with my view of things so she has not been dismissed.  Obviously it's not all good news as she no longer wants to work there and will now start looking for another job but at least it means she leaves without having something really crap on her employment record.

So not quite all's well that ends well but better than being sacked.

Five Things You Should Know Before Deleting Your Flickr Account

1.  Everything disappears and I mean everything.  It is as if you have never existed - where your perky image used to be is now a horrible blank nothingness.  You thought you were just getting rid of your account and instead you got rid of your images from everyone else's Flickr account, from your blog and probably from those holiday snaps taken by your mum when you were 11 which have been packed in a box under your bed for the last 25 years.  (I would put nothing past that crowd at Yahoo!).

2.  You can empathise with Trotsky.

3.  It takes a long, long time to re-load your photographs on to your new Flickr account,

4.  It is rather annoying to have photographs with no comments and no views - not that I had many to begin with - but every single one counted and now they're all gone as well.  No more speculation as to why some guy from New Zealand who only takes photographs of mountain peaks, has made your photograph of a coffee cake one of his faves.

5.  It is not as bad as having all your possessions destroyed in a fire or stolen by a burglar with a liking for pictures of buildings in London - it just feels like it is.

Ten Things That Are Eating Away At Me

1.  I can't access my Flickr account.  I foolishly signed out and now I can't sign in again and, although I love Flickr, I hate Yahoo and their incomprehensible instructions.

2.  I have repetitive strain injury in my right hand and it is really painful and means I shouldn't use my laptop or not until I get a mouse for it.

3.  My life is a meaningless void.

4.  I have offended Traybake.

5.  I am not taking full advantage of the fact that the Gap Year Student is away by watching exactly what I want to on television.  It is so long since I have had full control of the remote control that I have forgotten how to use it.

6.  I may be turning into my mother.  Somebody once told me that the things you most dislike and criticise in others are the things you fear most about yourself.  This is quite sobering and just try to remember it next time you are slagging someone else.  My mother does that classic thing where one small thing going wrong for her soon escalates into a catalogue of huge impending disasters. I made 3 dozen scones on Friday now and now most of them have gone stale because nobody seemed to want to eat them and its all very well you saying put them in the freezer but there's no room in there because I got those deep fry frozen chips instead of oven chips and if I tried to use them I'd likely burn the house down do you remember that time the chip pan went on fire in 1972 and anyway and I'll probably be dead before I get to eat everything in there anyway.

7.  It is very hot in London due to global warming and I don't care.

8.  I need to find a random new job - like, immediately.

9.  I have started talking like a teenager.

10. I have never learnt how to count my blessings.

By Wadhurst Station I Sat Down And Wept

8.00  Wake up in south London and feel, not surprisingly, disorientated and frightened.

8.30  Eat breakfast with Traybake - coffee and wee buns. Traybake passes off goat’s milk as cow’s milk. Feel slightly sick.

10.05 Catch train to London Bridge.  Spirits rise as train crosses over bridge to North London.

10.45 Get on train to Wadhurst. Spirits sink as train passes over bridge to South London.

11.45 Arrive in Wadhurst to start enjoyable 12-mile walk through English countryside. Bask in lovely spring sunshine and admire the jewel-like colours of the celandines, anemones, primroses and violets which are liberally studding the hedgerows.

11.47 Think about becoming a poet.

11.48  Consult walk book.  Discover first direction in book tells us to take the path by the pub. There is no pub; instead there is a terrace of brand-new Victorian cottages with uPVC windows and no right of way.

11.49  Realise we are lost.

11.48  Shout at Traybake.

11.55  Realise that TB is not speaking to me.

11.56 Decide I don’t care that TB is not speaking to me.

12.00  Wander round in circles declaring how I hate and loathe the authors of the The Time Out Book of Country Walks volume 2 and, specifically and particularly, the ones who devised the Wadhurst Circular.

12.10  Keep wandering round in circles until we come to house with woman outside. Woman says “Oh God, not another pair. You’ve got that bloody Time Out Book haven’t you? Just go up there straight through the garden and cross the road and you’ll be on the right track”.

12.15  We find the right path and feel a blessed sense of relief. Feeling of relief replaced almost immediately with insane rage.  Discover that we are now 100 yards up the road from where we first came out of the station. Realise we have just wasted half an hour  when all we needed to do was turn right and walk up the hill for two minutes.

12.20 TB asks if we are nearly there yet and when can we have lunch.

12.45  My feet are beginning to hurt.

1.00 TB asks when we can have lunch.

1.05  TB asks when we can have lunch.

1.10  TB has a pee against a tree.

1.15  TB asks when we can have lunch.

1.20  TB asks when we can have lunch.

1.30 I decide we can have lunch.

1.45  “Ah, this is the life,” says TB, lying at his length on the short, springy sheep-nibbled grass.

1.55  Remove sheep dung from my boots and think some more about becoming a poet.

2.15 Come to crossroads – both real and metaphorical. One path leads to 4 mile short cut to station; one leads to station via longer walk and mediaeval church. We choose the wrong path.

2.45  I think I have a blister.

3.00 TB has a pee against a tree.

3.15  I do have a blister.

3.25  We come to village with beautiful mediaeval church. The book tells us to take a detour if we want to see church. We start climbing steep hill. Twenty minutes later we reach beautiful building which seems to shimmer on the hillside and draws us inside as if we were in a trance. It is a Costcutters. I buy a Magnum and sit outside the church feeling happy for the first time in several hours.

3.30 TB informs me that the Church is very high. I advise him that I do have eyes in my head and can see that the spire is indeed a tall one. “Not that kind of high, ye eegit, high, like Virgin Mary high.” I decide I am not speaking to TB.

3.35  We walk down the hill.

4.00  I need to pee badly.

4.15  I still need to pee but now I am desperate.

4.30  We follow directions in the book to a spot where the authors say it is easy to get lost. We do not get lost. We see the path adjacent to a house. On the gate are two tiny signs; one saying the path has been diverted and the other saying beware of dog. We ignore one of these signs. The wrong one.

4.32   “Feck, that was a close one!” says TB. I am too busy shaking and wiping dog slobber off my trousers to reply.

4.34 We start retracing our steps with heavy hearts and even heavier boots.

4.55  TB informs me that he is never, ever going for a walk with me in his life again.

5.05 I am bursting for a pee.

5.25 We enter a deer park. We know it is a deer park because of the large sign which says “Stags Rutting.  Please Keep To Public Footpaths." The sign is affixed to a tall electric deer fence. We have learnt our lesson re signs.

5.30  I feel very low in myself.

5.40  We enter a small copse and I decide I can no longer wait a single second to spend a penny.

5.42 Deleted

5.45  I feel strangely relieved.

5.55  “Wouldn’t it have been dead funny if you had been attacked by a stag just now, and it had pressed you up against that electric fence and I’d had to take you to the hospital with big red criss-cross marks all over your….”

6.10 The smirk is wiped off TB’s face when we get lost again. We both wonder what time it gets dark. We cannot stick to the path because there is no path marked out anymore.

6.15 We exchange harsh words.

6.25  We get back on track and enter some Blair Witch Project type woods. The book says keep going north. I admire the sun sinking in the east. Something seems amiss.

6.30  We are completely lost. TB starts muttering about hypothermia and then asks me a very odd question. “Which part of yourself, hypothetically speaking like, do you think would be most tasty?   Would it be your arm or your leg?"

6.45  We finally reach a village. It is called Wadhurst. It is where we are supposed to be. We are both delighted, despite me now having two blisters. We ask a woman where the station is and she tells us it is only a mile or so down the road. I want to cry.

7.05 It is dark and cold now. TB charges down the road ahead of me and I follow behind, trying not to sob.

7.10 TB reaches the platform for the London train. “Oh great! We only have to wait, umm, 50 minutes for a train!”.

7.15    TB  has a pee behind the locked waiting room and I sit down and weep.

Salt and Pepper

 

This is what got the security people at Aldergrove airport all in a tizz.  Marked on the bottom of the Portrush salt pot is the price, 5/6.

In Which My Mother Turns Me Into A Security Risk

I'm writing this in the Internet section of Aldergrove airport.  I'm lucky to have got this far.

I checked in, having answered all the security questions honestly - no, I didn't leave my bags unattended nor did anyone give me anything to carry on and I didn't have any liquids in my bag - and everything was going swimmingly until I got to the final security check when they xray your hand luggage.  I was waiting for my bag to come through, standing next to a guy who looked like a bad lot, so I wasn't surprised to see about three of the staff peering suspiciously at something  on the screen.  I was just thinking that the guy looked like the kind of low dog who would have a bottle of Brut secreted in his hand luggage, when the call came for the person who owned the small rucksack to identify them self.

I immediately started blushing and could feel my hands getting damp with anxiety.  Clearly I look like a typical suspect - middle-aged, female and carrying a copy of the Guardian.

I was asked to unzip my bag which I did with a heavy heart.  The security woman started rummaging through it and suddenly pulled out something.

"So, what have we here?" she says, looking at me with narrowed eyes.  "Oh, it's just something my mother gave me just before I left the house".  No sooner were the words out than I realised my error.  Within seconds she had whipped them away to be xrayed again.

Luckily for me they weren't crammed with Semtex or cocaine - at least not this time.

I'm quite glad to be on my way back home although not looking forward to work tomorrow.  My mother and I went gallivanting most days apart from today when she decided, due to having eaten too much chocolate, that she wasn't up for it.  Instead I went to Ballymena to meet my sister for lunch.

This was quite auspicious for two reasons - one, I bought my first purchase in Primark ( and that's Preeemark for all you English people who can't pronounce it) and two, I saw someone who I only know from photographs on the internet and, in the Tower Centre of all places.

Once I get home I have to quickly unpack my suitcase as the Gap Year Student is borrowing it for her trip to Mexico which starts tomorrow.  I am sick with jealousy.