KAREN'S CURIOSITY CORNER

Where I reminisce, talk a lot and name drop a celebrity

2011-11-01T21:53:00.004Z

I came across The Charles Hazlewood Show on Radio 2 by accident. Somehow I found out about it and it sounded exactly up my street: popular songs being pulled apart to work out why they’re so good with other music being played as examples. The first show was going to put Elbow’s Lippy Kids under the microscope. After loving them for about 10 years I finally decided this year that Elbow are my favourite band (but shh don’t tell Radiohead).

Charles Hazlewood’s passion for music really comes across in each programme, though of course he can’t get too bogged down in musical theory as not all the listeners will have that sort of background. He therefore he comes up with some interesting turns of phrase such as “baked bean trombones”! Listening takes me back to sitting in my GCSE and A Level Music classes. Far from being dry, a lot of my classes were fun thanks to the teachers that I had. Jack Davies must’ve been around 10 years older than the GCSE class, which sometimes helped and sometimes hindered. He had quite a task ahead of him – a few of the pupils were really interested in the subject and some had simply taken it because they thought it would be a doss. He managed to keep the whole class’ attention mostly through the use of humour. He nurtured my passion for composition and introduced me to minimalist music; in fact it was through him that I first heard Electric Counterpoint without Ricky Lee Jones talking about what the skies were like when she was young.

Martin Ullyatt was a more experienced teacher, and whilst his lessons were dryer (I think the A Level syllabus has a lot to blame for this) he still had a great sense of humour. This was probably essential as there were only four of us in the class and had very different personalities. He mentioned Vaughn Williams a lot so we used to tease him that he had an “I ♥ Vaughan Williams” tattoo and even made him a 40^th birthday card to that effect. I’m not sure we thought he was up to knowing what our nickname for Dido & Aeneas was though.

I knew I was going to enjoy Charles Hazlewood’s show but something I wasn’t expecting happened. My brain woke up. It has atrophied a bit due to not being used plus it’s suffering from the unfortunate effects of depression. Most of the time I find following a train of thought as difficult as navigating through Marmite. Which is also why I don’t blog very much anymore – it can take me days to produce the one post. Twitter is perfect because you can put ideas out there quickly and succinctly without having to worry too much about the way it’s written apart from fitting it into 140 characters. For instance it has taken me about two weeks to write this post in little dribs and drabs.

My brain is like a faulty switch – it will be off and you can jiggle it and poke it and it might come on. Or it’ll be on and as hard as you try you can’t get it to switch off. I once made the mistake of listening to the radio show before bed and I was awake for hours pondering what songs I would have played as examples and wanting to reply to comments Charles had made during the show. When I’d listened to the first episode I was super excited; it was like discovering a new band or great album, or getting to the end of a really good book. So I tweeted about it a lot, and lo and behold I get a notification that I am now being followed by none other than Charles Hazlewood. At first I was a bit dubious as to whether it was actually him, I have been followed by someone claiming to be Simon Pegg in the past. We have a little chat every now and again and he seems as lovely as he comes across on the radio and TV.

So imagine my excitement when I find out that one of his bands, The Charles Hazlewood All Stars, are performing Tubular Bells live. It has only ever been played live in its entirety in the 1970s. This band also includes Adrian Utley from Portishead and Will Gregory from Goldfrapp, two bands which I am very fond of indeed. For a lot of people hearing the opening of Tubular Bells gives them the shivers as it reminds them of The Exorcist. The first time I heard it was sitting in the back of the car doing a treasure hunt quiz as part of a fete at my primary school. My mum had just bought the cassette for my dad on a bric-a-brac stall. Now when I sit in the back of my dad’s car it is entirely possible that he will be playing a Goldfrapp or Portishead CD (if it's not wall-to-wall Rammstein). The concert is like he had been cosmic ordering!

The concert is in London, but my mum and I had been talking about going down there for a bit of shopping, going round some museums and galleries and perhaps catching up with some family that live in that area. “What more perfect excuse is there to go?” I think. I go to the venue’s website to see if there are any tickets left and I see my dad’s been “at work” again! Not only are they performing Tubular Bells but also A Rainbow In Curved Air by Terry Riley. My dad grew up when the first synthesisers were emerging so he has a few LPs of what I consider to be fairly obscure stuff. My mum and I tease him for liking that album because it sounds like lots of mobile phones going off at once (listen for at least 1min to get the full effect). But the genius is that it was composed in the 1960s, long before mobiles were invented.

I quickly sent my mum the email equivalent of holding her at gunpoint telling her that we HAVE to go to this concert. Mum passed the news on to dad and she told me that he actually looked quite excited for him! Hotels can be expensive in London, but I found that there are two Travelodges nearby, they have room and are affordable. We decided it would be easier to get the train so we don’t have the problem of where to put the car once we get to London. I thought about seven weeks was booking quite a bit in advance, but it was still going to cost us £300 return. Altogether a one night stay, the concert and the train was going to cost nearly £500 for the three of us! Mum told me the terrible news that we can’t afford it. Of course I knew this as soon as I saw how much the train cost, but the fact that the concert programme even exists is like some sort of miracle and I am absolutely desperate to go. The thought of going had really improved my mood. I haven’t been to London for about 10 years and I do love going out to cultural stuff such as concerts or the theatre, and living in Cumbria there isn’t the greatest opportunity to do that. My hopes were dashed and I was plunged into the depths of despair.

I sent a tweet to Charles begging that the band came up to the Sage Gateshead and did the same concert. About 10 minutes later I got a reply saying “well... actually we are doing it there the following night”. Elation and joy! I ran around, jumped for joy and made high pitched squeals, so enthusiastic was my happiness. It's probably a good thing he wasn't in the same room as I probably would've embarrassed myself further by hugging him! I was annoyed that I couldn’t tell my mum the good news straight away because she is only about half way home from my house. Trying to sit on that news was like trying to sit on top of a geyser.

My only regret is that the effect of being "woken up" doesn't last longer than a few hours. To end this long and rambling post I want to say thank you to my two music teachers Jack Davies and Martin Ullyatt. I also want to say thank you to Charles Hazlewood for helping to reignite that spark of passion that I feel about music (also apologies that it’s made me go on a bit). So cheers Charlie, the song above is for you. See you in December.

A Christmas List

2011-10-28T14:50:00.005+01:00

The links I provide are just used for example, not necessarily the one I want or the place you should buy it from.

Ceramic baking beans
Flat baking sheet
Slow cooker recipe book
Sheep breeds book
Indian/ethnic pouffe - preferably blues/greens (HINT - TK Maxx)
Monitor riser - dull but might help my stiff neck and shoulders
In-ear headphones, preferably with mouldable fittings

I will add more as I think of them!

Best Imitation of Myself

2011-10-22T16:47:00.006+01:00

I love cover versions of songs. I'm always worried that the cover won't do the original justice, or that it's so samey they shouldn't have bothered doing it. So many can be terrible, even if the artist doing the cover is brilliant. An example of this is John Martyn's version of Portishead's Glory Box. Ugh. But so many are brilliant.

The above song - Best Imitation of Myself by Ben Folds Five is quite a perky little tune. I'm not a massive fan of them, they're a band I feel I should listen to more and for some reason I never do. Maybe because I'm not excited enough by them. There's nothing that shouts out at me that they're that little bit different. The songs I've heard have all been nice but there's nothing that's made me go WOW and get all passionate.

So, the Ben & Jason cover. Why do I think this works, and perhaps even surpasses the original? I had to make the video myself as I couldn't find a link to the cover anywhere online. To start with Ben Parker has a better voice than Ben Folds. He doesn't struggle so much with the higher notes, and if anyone slips in catches on the way up to or down from their falsetto I'm theirs! The tone of Ben F's voice is quite nasal and this gives the song a somewhat whingy feel; Ben P's clearer tone gets rid of that (a good thing).

The cover has upped the tempo, which makes it less maudlin. I think that works better as it subtly changes the meaning of the lyrics, making them seem more cutting - I swear I was listening, but I started drifting round the part about me acting my age.

Then there's the fact that it's accompanied by a string quartet. It takes the instrumentation of the original and cleverly arranges it for the strings. I'm sure they alter the colour of the chords a little by adding some extra notes here and there. Finally there's the wonderful ending full of sliding chromatics.

Sadly my brain fogginess is preventing me from further comment, but hopefully it'll wake up at a later point.

ART!

2011-07-17T11:26:00.002+01:00

I was at my parents' house for a couple of days, my mum had bought some new watercolour paints so was itching to try them, the weather turned horrible, dad was watching the Open golf tournament on TV (yawn) and so art was made. Go over to my art blog The Shadow of Ice to see it!

Defeating my own gingerism

2011-06-15T19:34:00.005+01:00

As you can see from my profile photo, I’m a ginger. Redheaded and proud! Gingerism pisses me off. Some jokes can be mildly amusing, and I can take a joke. But change the "ginger" to someone black etc. and the joke would be racist and could potentially get you into a lot of trouble. Blondes probably feel the same way about all the "blondes are stupid" jokes.

However, I am a gingerist myself. I don’t really find ginger men that attractive. It seems a bit incestuous to me somehow. But apparently we’re dying out, and to stop this we gingers have to stick together. So in the interests of maintaining a ginger presence on the planet, here are my top 5 gingery hotties, in no particular order:

Seth Green (see above) - actor. Where to spot him - Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Austin Powers films.

Josh Homme - lead singer with Queens of the Stone Age and Them Crooked Vultures. Where to spot him - on tour!

Michael C. Hall - actor. Where to spot him - Six Feet Under and Dexter.

Ewan McGregor - actor. Where to spot him - Shallow Grave and Trainspotting.

Toby Stephens - actor. Where to spot him - BBC adaptation of Jane Eyre and Bond film The World Is Not Enough.

Please form an orderly queue gentlemen... ;-)

Philip Larkin was right. Sort of.

2011-06-10T13:27:00.006+01:00

One of Larkin's most famous lines of poetry is "They fuck you up, your mum and dad." This is a blog about some of my childhood, particularly the influence of Doom, and how it could've gone horribly wrong.

The computer game Doom came out in 1993. I was 10 years old. I think we got a demo of it free with my dad's computer magazine, and then my parents bought it. I was allowed to play it even though it's rated for players aged 16+. However, when I played it I was usually under my mum's supervision. Either she was playing it and I would watch, or I would play it but she had to sit next to me. This was not her doing, it was mine. I was too scared to play it on my own because of what monster might be around the next corner! That was until I discovered the cheat for 'God mode' which makes you invincible.

Now, you could say that my parents are terrible for letting me play such a violent game at such a young age. The graphics may look terrible now, but in 1993 they were amazing. Doom wasn’t the first violent computer game I’d played. Before Doom, there was Catacomb Abyss 3-D. The sound for this used the internal PC speaker so all you got was a series of weird beeps. It also featured text information, such as “damaging blows!” when you were being attacked by zombies.

I don’t remember there being as much concern about children playing violent games back then. Maybe there wasn’t as much, or it could be that I was less media aware because I was a child. Violent video games get the blame for people (usually teenagers) behaving violently. They probably have a bit to do with me being weird, but I’m not (especially) violent.

For example, in Doom, when you kill things with a rocket launcher (as shown above) or blow up a barrel the monsters explode and make a squishy noise. I love that noise. Also in a follow-up game to Wolfenstein, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, you can shoot people in a much more accurate manner i.e. in specific body parts. My favourite noise was associated with shooting someone in the throat.

So yes, that is a bit sick and wrong but I don’t go out and try and recreate those noises in real life. Shooting up freakish monsters and Nazis doesn’t make me want to shoot actual people. If I am feeling angry, pissed off and like I might lash out at people I don’t do a Dexter, I go and play a computer game. I could imagine there being more violence related to Pong, a very early computer game.

How can a table tennis game be violent? I might be able to hear you ask. Well imagine you have the score of 0 and the person you’re playing has the score of 9. They beat you every time you play. That would be frustrating and would make me want to lash out more than if I’d been playing at shooting things.

However, the most influential thing about Doom for me was the music. I have downloaded the MIDI files so I can listen to the music without having to play the game. It’s an influence that has made me a lover of metal. That and dad’s 70s vinyl collection. Plus it has to be the greatest influence on me liking Rammstein.

Doom didn’t just influence my tastes in music. Back in 1993, some of the members of Rammstein video. You get to hear the exploding squishy noise about 2min 15s in. were also playing it. In fact their drummer is nicknamed Cristoph “Doom” Schneider for copyright reasons. If you’ve never heard the Doom music, then watch this On Rammstein’s first album, Herzeleid, the opening track ‘Wollt Ihr Das Bett In Flammen Sehen?’ features some of the sound effects from Doom – the sound of the shotgun cocking (which you can hear at around 2min on the above video) and also the death scream of your character. Also note that the repetitive guitar riffs are reminiscent of Doom’s music. A lot of Herzeleid sounds like Doom music, in particular ‘Der Meister’ and ‘Asche Zu Asche’.

So I’m a sicko who likes gruesome death noises and I love killing things. But only in computer games. Oh and I like Rammstein. It could’ve been a lot worse. I could be a mass murdering weirdo that likes Rammstein.

Folksy shop Scrap-e-Do now open!

2011-05-09T23:31:00.002+01:00

It is a little bare but it is open! Why not visit it? We also have a blog that you might like. Buy handmade items!

Ginger root in the shape of Makka Pakka

2011-05-06T18:45:00.008+01:00

People claim to find religious and celebrity faces in all sorts of things. Recently there has been Kate Middleton on a jelly bean; famously there has been Mother Teresa in a currant bun and Jesus in a slice of toast, less famously there has been the face of Mother Teresa in a gallstone. Seeing faces in things is a type of pareidolia.

Now to add to this ever growing list is a piece of ginger root in the shape of Makka Pakka! It was kindly delivered to my by the kind people at ASDA. It certainly made unpacking the shopping more interesting.

For those of you not in the know, Makka Pakka is a character from the BBC's children's show In The Night Garden, much loved by toddlers, students and some middle aged women.

The photo of the perhaps soon to be famous Makka Pakka ginger root:

Scrap-e-Do

2011-02-11T12:52:00.002Z

My mum and I have decided to run an online business via folksy. We haven't started it yet, but we do have a blog where you'll be kept up to date. So you best head over to it, yeah?

New blog

2010-11-21T22:44:00.001Z

I have decided to start a new blog to share my art. Don't bother going there yet as I haven't scanned anything in. However it is called The Shadow of Ice.

The merits of (charity) shopping

2010-05-10T19:07:00.004+01:00

When I was a child and didn't have a big appetite I used to eat off a plate that looked like the above. My mum also had a few other pieces of the set. I have fond memories of the poppy plate because it reminds me of both my mum and my childhood.

As a depressive I find it a bit of a pick me up to have a bit of retail therapy. Fortunately I don't suffer from bipolar disorder and don't get too carried away. It is even more of a thrill when you can say you've bagged an absolute bargain.

Charity shopping is akin to shopping in TK Maxx. You have to be prepared to rummage. Sometimes there will be gems and other times there will absolutely bugger all. It also depends on where your charity shop is. The Oxfam in Cheltenham was fabulous, I bought many a brilliant book from there when on holiday. The charity shops in Stirling were pretty good because they contained a lot of student cast offs and also those of some of the fairly rich folk that lived in the area. I can't imagine anything of the Queen's ended up in them though. In Carlisle I try to buy most things from the shops on Botchergate as items are priced much cheaper than in the ones in the town centre. For example you might get a set of three cups and saucers for £2.50 on Botchergate whereas in the town centre it might cost you upwards of £5. I don't think I will ever find a bargain as good as the coat I bought though - £2.75 which is amazing for a massive winter coat, and astounding once I saw the label inside and saw it was Aquascutum!

On the day I bought the Aquascutum coat (some time in late 2006) I saw a lovely dinner service in the window of a charity shop that had unfortunately closed for the day. It was made in the 60s/70s and had a green and blue bold floral motif in the centre. It was gorgeous and £10. As I'd recently moved from Stirling, and was just setting up home properly after graduating I really wanted a nice set of plates. I wondered how the hell I would get it home as I didn't have a car and didn't really have any friends in the area yet. My mum came up on another shopping trip to Carlisle very soon afterwards and went in the shop but alas someone else had nabbed it! It must have been charity shop karma saying that I couldn't get two such good bargains...

In April 2007 I blogged about trying to find a milk jug in the charity shops and to no avail. I resorted to trusty eBay instead. I saw one with a lovely retro paisley-ish pattern on it and instantly recognised it as being by the same pottery (J & G Meakin) as the poppy plate because of the similarity in colours. I bagged it for a bargainous £4.50 including postage.

Three years on my friend Sara and I have been pottering around the town centre and been for a coffee. We decide to walk home down Botchergate to browse the charity shop windows. They weren't open as it was a Sunday but we noticed a nice cake stand for her as she intends to have a retro tea party stall at Solfest this year. Further down the road there was a part dinner service in exactly the same pattern as my milk jug!

It was priced £20 for the lot. Although the photo above is not of my actual dinner service, it is identical in content. However I only have one jug and no sugar basin. Altogether there were six dinner plates, six lunch plates, seven side plates, two serving dishes with lids, serving platter and one jug. Bargainous! Especially as I came across this site when looking for photographs and you can pay £20 for one piece! The actual pattern of my set is below, called Madrid:

I swithered overnight whether I should bother going back today to buy the set as I have enough plates really. After splitting possessions with Vince I had needed to buy a few more plates and bowls and got a rather lovely set from Wilkinsons. Did I need the plates or the £20 more? Would I kick myself if I didn't buy them? Sara sent me a text message asking if I wanted to go see if they were still there this afternoon as she was bored and wanted to get out of the house for a bit, having no plans for her day off (lucky part timers). I decided that if someone hadn't beat me to it this time it was a sign I should buy them, so they are currently drying on my draining rack!

Out with the old, in with the new

2010-04-23T14:57:00.006+01:00

Vince finally moved out at the end of February, and I have slowly been turning the spare room where he slept into a craft den. It is still not finished but it has been painted nice relaxing shades of green and been fumigated to get rid of the smell of cigarette smoke. I managed to get myself a lovely knitting chair in the sale in Next (for much cheaper than advertised on the website), although I'm not sure how much knitting I'll get done on it as I think I'll have to fight Marwood for it!

"This is MY chair."

Feel the fear and do it anyway...

2010-04-23T13:17:00.012+01:00

...is the title of a self help book my mother mentions from time to time. It is what she sometimes says when I ask for advice. It annoys me because I know it's what I should do, it's just difficult! I suppose I always hope she'll come up with an easier solution, a bit like being a child again. I think most adults want this from time to time, or when you stop wanting this does it mean you're a grown up?

I'm an anxious sort of person. I'm not entirely sure where this came from because as a child I'm sure I was irritating as hell. I wanted to be the next Bonnie Langford and used to dance and sing all the time. I used make dens out of the old foam sofa and jump off the top onto the cushion from the papasan chair. In part I blame educational safety information films that I was made to watch. I could have done without most of these - as an intelligent girl I knew that train tracks, fires and farms were dangerous (especially growing up in one of the most rural counties!). I did not need to see people get electrocuted (trains), run over (trains), beheaded (head out of train window), burned (fires), suffocating (fires), maimed by machinery (farms) and drowing (in a slurry pit). My mum telling me not to do such things without graphic representation would have been enough, absolutely no need to fuel my overactive imagination.

In day to day life I probably face the fear and do it anyway without even realising it. If I do realise then I often don't give myself a pat on the back because it is something that had to be done, and everyone has to do it. But not today!

My friend Hayley-Jane had mentioned that her cat Missy had been playing in the garden and had unsuccessfully been trying to catch butterflies. I later looked out the window and saw the little black cat, that I have nicknamed Salem, chasing something in part of the closed off school playground (wall repair works due to extreme cold). From a distance I guessed it was a large bee.

About an hour later I decide it is time to do some dishes, so head downstairs to put Rammstein on so the task isn't so unbearable. There is Marwood jumping around madly chasing something. An ENORMOUS bee! I am scared of bees and wasps. Quite a normal phobia as they sting. Wasps are beasts of Satan; bees just bother me if they get too close because I know that they'll fly away once they realise I am not a flower. I wonder if it is the same bee that Salem was chasing.

I manage to call Marwood away from batting it so he doesn't get stung, and shut him out the room. I look to windowsill and bee is not dead. I climb onto sofa to open the window in the hope that it will fly out. It does not. I go into the kitchen to deal with some of the washing up, run away and hatch a plan.

Through the kitchen window I can see through the living room window to the sill. And the bee. It is wiggling its back legs over its behind, much like you see a fly doing. I wonder if Marwood has injured it, and also whether if injured they commit bee seppuku by pulling out their own stings. Bee becomes still. I go to see if bee is dead. Bee is still alive and looks as if it is having palpitations; the only bit moving is the back end moving subtly up and down. I am both happy and sad. Although I still wouldn't really want to deal with bee corpse it is preferable to live bee, but they are apparently becoming endangered and I like honey and don't want the world to end.

I go back to the kitchen to further consider plan and wash up. I decide the traditional removal of creepy crawlies of glass-over-the-top-with-cardboard-underneath will suffice. This means I will have to get closer to bee than I would like. But my only other option is to wait until my friend Jan comes round to knit at 7, which is more than seven hours away, and I might lose bee in the meantime. I would much rather know where bee is. So, I have to deal with bee myself.

At the sink I finalise the plan: glass over bee, may as well be a dirty glass as I'll want to wash it afterwards anyway. Cardboard under bee, take glass containing bee outside and release hoping it will be so pleased by freedom it will just crawl/fly away without wanting to sting me. As I have very sensitive skin I wear gloves to wash up, and couldn't help but think:

WITHNAIL: ...Keep back. Keep back. The entire sink's gone rotten. I don't know what's in here.
A space for the saucepan is cleared. MARWOOD stares at it while WITHNAIL pours water from the kettle and envelops himself in a cloud of super-heated steam. A volcanic growl comes from the fog. Bellowing loudly, WITHNAIL passes at speed with his hand in the air.
MARWOOD: I told you. You've been bitten.
WITHNAIL: Burnt. Burnt. The fucking kettles on fire.
MARWOOD: There's something floating up.
WITHNAIL paces back into the kitchen. A voice laced with revenge.
WITHNAIL: Fork it.
MARWOOD: No. No. I don't wanna touch it.
WITHNAIL: You must. You must. That shit'll bore through the glaze. We'll never be able to use the dinner service again.
He tugs at a drawer stuffed with domestic items.
Produces a tool.
Here. Get it with the pliers.
MARWOOD: No. No. Give me the gloves.
Rubber gloves are handed across. WITHNAIL stares as they go on.
WITHNAIL: That's right. Put on the gloves. Don't attempt anything without the gloves.

(Please note that my sink had not gone rotten, and that I named my cat after the 'I' character, he cannot talk. Well not English anyway).

So donned in my gloves I opened all doors between me and outside, grabbed a glass waiting to be washed and went into the living room trying to find something to slide underneath. At last I found a use for one of the many Conservative election flyers which had been put through my door. Who needs the Power of Grayskull when you have the power of Rammstein! Also quite aptly this track came on, and I had my CD player on shuffle:

Sehnsucht versteckt (longing hides)
sich wie ein Insekt (like an insect)
im Schlafe merkst du nicht (while asleep you don't notice)
dass es dich sticht (that it stings you)

Bee caught, Tory crap placed underneath, out into the yard and FREEDOM! Bee just flew right away so obviously hadn't been too injured by Marwood's paws and claws. And just to prove that I am not overexaggerating, I was brave enough to take some photos once bee was captive.

Sehnsucht lyrics copyright Rammstein, English translation copyright Jeremy Williams, from Herzeleid.
Withnail & I script copywright Bruce Robinson.

Liebe ist für alle da - Rammstein

2010-02-03T17:45:00.013Z

Is there anything more embarrassing going to a concert with your middle class, middle aged parents? You would think it would be especially so with Rammstein but this was not the case. There were a lot of people there with their parents; OK so most of them HAD to go with their parents because they were under 18. But I had to go with mine too because I don't really know anyone else who would want to see them live!

That morning I had an appointment with a psychiatrist in Whitehaven (because I know all of them in Carlisle) and was told I was definitely depressed. Well, yeah. It was good though because it put my mind at rest about a few things and seem to be on the right medication. In the interview she asked me if I self harmed and I said no, then I could see her looking at the cat scratches on my arm and I had to suppress a giggle. I wonder what she'll say in the letter...

Soon we were on our way, with Liebe Ist Für Alle Da, Reise, Reise and Sehnsucht on the stereo to get us in the mood. This week I have been mostly reading Colour Now by Kevin McCloud. As a result I was viewing all the scenery, especially on Shap, as one huge colour scheme. Even the horrid yellow and purple-grey of the snow laden sky got a look in.

Mum had printed off directions and a map but we still managed to get lost. This was partly because the car park was badly signposted, but mostly because dad didn't listen to mum's instructions of "turn right". Perhaps it was because he was hoping they would play Links 2, 3, 4? He wasn't disappointed in that respect anyway. I was just sad that I never got to shout "ÜBER DIE KREUZUNG!" (over the crossroads) which is one of the few useful phrases I remember from GCSE German.

Our hotel for the night was the Stay Inn, on the cusp of Manchester city centre and the less salubrious Salford. "Make sure you take all the valuables out of your car. They won't be able to get away with your car but they would break into it" said the German receptionist cheerily. When we told him we were going to see Rammstein he was at first surprised (none of us like metallers most of the time, apart from dad with his long hair) and then jealous. It seemed he'd had to put up with a lot of people saying that was the reason for their stay.

Mum slipped into her custom made Rammstein tshirt, made up of patches of an official one which was too small, dad lay on the bed as he wasn't getting changed (a white shirt and a cardigan. A CARDIGAN I tell you). Of course I embraced the night and dressed head to toe in black - black dress with lace, black leggins, black boots. I didn't bother doing my hair properly as it was raining a bit but did put a bit of rocker's shadowy make up on. I would have been more OTT but I didn't want to look to Corpse Bride whilst eating in Pizza Express.

The MEN Arena is the worst gig venue I've ever been too. It has a corridor all the way round it with little shops and stalls in, but no seats. I could understand if they had no bins like a railway station, but what's wrong with seats? We'd been avoiding the support act Combichrist by going to Wetherspoon's so fortunately we weren't stood in the Corridor of Boredom for long. But then began the Walk of Terror. The MEN is set out like an amphitheatre with the stage at one end, a flat section for standing and then rows upon rows of seats. We were standing, and in their wisdom the designers decided to make us walk down lots of stairs. I am scared of heights. It was dark. The stairs must have been at a 30 degree angle with a descent of about 200 feet. I have never been so pleased to enter a crowd before.

Our timing was perfect. We heard one and a half Combichrist songs, so in essence have heard them all. The two drummers were impressive and when the singer wasn't screaming/growling they weren't too bad. More standing around whilst the roadies prepared the stage. Evil man farts and Major Tom wandering selling beer. Then all becomes dark for Rammstein are about to take to the stage...

The two guitarists hack their way through "walls" with axes. Then the singer, Till Lindeman, cuts his way through a metal door using a "welding flame". They open with Rammlied, the first track from LIFAD, a perfect opener as it begins with Till singing unaccompanied and then all the band joining in at once with a huge blast of noise. Plus we get to shout "RAMMSTEIN!" during the song a lot, and it's about them being fabulous and just what you need if you're feeling down.

Rammstein are famous for their pyrotechnics and stage design. Plenty of pyros, an exploding petrol pump (during Benzin), exploding babies with Borg-like laser eyes which dropped down from the ceiling, huge angel wings with fiery tips (see my mum's blog for a video), and a flaming gimp. The poor keyboard player is killed in a different way on every tour. During the Reise, Reise tour he was flambéed in a giant saucepan during the song Mein Teil, which is about the German who advertised on the internet for someone to eat. This time Till picks up the keyboard player, which is incredibly easy as the guy is like a stick and Till has arms like legs (swoon). He puts him in a hole onstage, grabs a bucket, and is then lifted into the air on a hydrolic platform. The contents of the bucket start fizzing and Till pours hot molten lead on top of the keyboard player. After a couple of minutes he returns unscathed, apart from the fact that his boiler suit is now all sparkly!

I had such an amazing time and didn't think I could get so hoarse and partched at a gig where the songs are not in my "mother's tongue". I ended up with an adoring fan myself because I was singing along so much. Sadly he was only about 18 and shorter than me. And no I was not wearing huge rock boots, men in Manchester seem to be made short! German GCSE and repeated listening to the songs mean I can sing some parts of songs and partly understand them, and other bits I can imitate the sound but won't be saying the right words.

As much as I liked Rammstein before I have become a little obsessed now. I fancy Till (even though he's old enough to be my dad). Songs keep getting stuck in my head, the most bothersome one being Ich tu dir weh. This song is part of the reason why LIFAD has had a limited release in Germany. It was placed on the "Index", a list of media not to be sold to minors, due to the sexual content of its lyrics. Whilst I can see their point to some extent, this is not the first Rammstein album with provocative lyrics and as far as I know none of the others are on the Index. Fortunately it is only the chorus that is stuck in my head (not that most people hearing me sing speak German)! If you're not easily shocked then head over to Herzeleid.com, a fantastic site that provides the lyrics and translations.

There were many videos on You Tube that I could have shared with you but I chose this one because it's the title track, and also because of it's superior quality. Enjoy!

Poem in progress

2010-02-03T17:23:00.004Z

Influenced by the film Little Ashes, which is about when Dali met Lorca at university. Not sure if it is finished, or indeed if it is any good.

Cadaqués

Silver, blue, black,
water, moon, skin.
Two fish without scales;
drops of milky light.
Leaping -
for joy, for freedom.
They will not dance for you
for you paint with blood.

"Normal" service may be resumed

2010-01-17T18:03:00.005Z

So I've gone back to work part time on a phased return. I am not better, just rested. I still don't have very much to say for myself, except that if you would like to see what I am doing in the knitting world then go here.

Signed off

2009-12-07T19:40:00.003Z

At the moment I am currently signed off with depression. I feel guilty for not being in work, even though they are hiring a temp to cover my work. I feel like I have let it beat me because up until now I have carried on going to work and taken only the occasional day off. My boss was actually quite sympathetic which did surprise me a little. Although I feel a bit crap about it I am also quite glad because I don't have to cope with work, I don't have to keep plodding on and gritting my teeth as I am so tired because I'm sleeping very badly at the moment. Hopefully being off will give me space to heal rather than make me more miserable.

p/hop

2009-11-23T22:41:00.005Z

Dreaming of Ravelry

2009-11-23T20:30:00.007Z

Thank you Kings of Leon for almost writing a song titled after one of my most visited websites!

Long time no blog

2009-11-13T10:13:00.004Z

Why? Overcome with depression, by Facebook, ravelry and knitting. I am coming out of blog hibernation to make an important announcement for charidee.

If you support the causes of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) then please do your bit to help out. Part of their fundraising is through a knitting initiative called p/hop, or pennies per hours of pleasure. You can get knitting patterns and many other lovely knitting related things for donations based on how much enjoyment you will get from them.

p/hop is one year old this November and they are having a mega blog-athon. All they ask is that instead of blogging on your usual site you post it on their blog instead, of course leaving a note to say where you've gone! It doesn't have to have anything to do with knitting or MSF at all. Just put up what you would have said anyway! Just post sometime during the week of 23rd November, and you can visit their site beforehand to find out more information.

Flower Arranging for Dummies

2009-06-03T18:35:00.008+01:00

In May I had tonsillitis. My grandparents sent me the lovely bunch of flowers above. Now I don't know if any of you watched Kirstie's Homemade Home but I saw the easiest way of arranging flowers with very short stems, or preserving ones that have been in a big bunch for a bit longer. It's so simple that even Kirstie Allsopp could do it. OK, being a bit harsh there as she's not stupid, just a bit irritating. I think it's the way she gets so over enthusiastic about things.

So all you need are a bunch of flowers, a dish that is wider than it is deep with some water in it and some sticky tape:
Arrange strips of sticky tape over the top of the dish to form a grid pattern, and put flowers into the holes:

Keep doing this until you can't see any of the sticky tape:

Et voila! Sadly I only had a Pyrex dish to put my arrangement in but once it was full of flowers you couldn't tell anymore.

My Five Minutes of Fame

2009-04-24T14:29:00.003+01:00

Vince and my favourite radio station is BBC 6Music. When we get up we always put it on to wake us up a bit. This couldn’t be done without the help of the breakfast DJ Shaun Keaveny. He plays good music and is very amusing. Plus he likes to get the listener involved and has several daily features which requires stuff from us at home.

A popular item is Toast the Nation where listeners are encouraged to email in facts about their hometown or where they live now and celebrate how wonderful the country is. The more amusing or spurious the fact the more Shaun loves it. I think the only place that had been toasted in Cumbria was Carlisle but after today that is no longer the case. This morning I toasted Whitehaven, the town where I was born.

If you’re interested in hearing what I had to say then you can listen again for seven days if you follow this link. I encourage you to listen to the whole show if you can (it’s three hours long) but if you want to hear my bit then you need to fast forward to about 1hr 14mins.

Nesting Instinct

2009-03-18T20:37:00.009Z

I've always been interested in interior design. Perhaps I should have pursued this interest and developed this a career. Perhaps it's not too late. The first television programme I remember watching was the magazine style Homefront. Here I fell in love with the madness of Ann McKevitt and the infectious enthusiasm of Kevin McCloud. Many people now know and love Kevin, as I do, through watching Grand Designs but I'm sure many would be surprised to learn that there have in fact been eight series since it began in 1999.

Since Vince and I got back together in November we have been taking things slowly. In February we decided that we'd like to live together again so we had to tell our respective housemates. This wasn't as bad as we thought as they'd both thought we'd want to eventually. I set my housemate a deadline of getting out by June and he has amazingly found somewhere already and will be moving out in the first weekend of April.

Since we found out we would be living together again sooner than expected we have spent a lot of time thinking about how we will make the house feel more homely. We've wanted to decorate the living room for about two years and have many test patches on the wall but have never made the final step. Before Vince and I decided to live together again I decided that I wanted to decorate my bedroom in Dulux colours Mulberry Burst and Soft Stone. Vince compromised and let me continue to paint the room purple. However he wasn't too keen on the curtains I bought. I love them, especially as they are 66x90" and only cost me £16 including p&p (gotta love eBay). I wondered exactly how much of a bargain this was so I checked it out Dunelm Mill as they're usually pretty cheap for home furnishings. Imagine my face when I looked at this similar pair and saw how much they were! My lovely, brand new, fully lined curtains are pictured below:

Now I'm also hankering after a new coffee table and TV stand. The coffee table that Vince and I bought was about £30 in Argos. It is made of chipboard and has fake wood pattern stuck on top. It has many ring marks and ingrained dirt. The wood effect has come off in places where Vince and I stuck bits of tape to it when wrapping Christmas presents not realising it would come off. Vince has a TV stand for his rather enormous old CRT TV which is going in the spare room so we can play on the PS2 if someone wants to watch TV downstairs. So my TV, Freeview box and DVD player need to have somewhere to sit and I've been eyeing these up on eBay:

Quite old fashioned you may think, but as I live in an early 1900s factory workers' terrace new and minimal just doesn't look right. I've asked my parents to buy me the coffee table for my birthday as it only costs £60 including postage! The TV stand is a little pricier at £150 but I still think it's a fantastic offer as it would probably set you back about £300 in a high street shop. Sadly I'm pretty much broke until I get paid next Friday so it will just have to come out of next month's pay packet.

New Look

2009-03-11T17:37:00.006Z

Recently I got my hair cut shorter. Now I have just bought myself some new specs from the rather fabulous Glasses Direct. Go to a high street optician, enter your prescription details onto their website and you can get trendy glasses from as little as £19 including lenses. Yes I did say INCLUDING lenses!

The lovely pair I am modeling above are called Daquiri and set me back £38 including scratch resistant coating and postage. They look black but they are in fact black/dark red - a bit of a departure for me because the last few pairs I've bought have all had purple frames.

So whaddaya think?

Oh and sorry if my "lack of eyebrows" scares you - you can see why I don't bother doing anything with them as they are almost invisibly blonde!

Interesting story

2009-02-04T13:36:00.002Z

Just came across this rather interesting story on the BBC website in my lunch break. Many theories and controversy as to the cause of the mysterious goo. Fascinating stuff.

I Am Evil

2009-02-03T19:35:00.001Z

Now you can all have it in your heads mwahahahaha!

New Barnet

2009-02-03T09:02:00.002Z

No it's not a new city in Australia or America named after the area of London but my new hair cut. Sorry about the red eye but I didn't get a chance to sort that out this morning before work.

So what do you think?

Gingerism

2009-01-29T13:57:00.003Z

I visited JJ's blog and was greeted by this little snippet. I am immensely offended by that! I'm sick of society being ginger racist. If you can't say n****r word or p**i then i don't see why you should be able to say copperknob or ginger nut and the like. Ginger nut is not so bad, and indeed I don't mind being called ginge if it is said affectionately, but I do take offence to certain nicknames and the fact that it is still socially acceptable to use them.

When I was at school I used to get teased for having red hair. I used to get asked what colour my pubes were. Some boys used to lick their fingers, pretend to touch my hair and make a hissing noise as if it was hot. I was asked why I didn't dye it. Conversely, little old ladies and all my hairdressers have always said what a lovey colour it is. I have recently enhanced it using Lush henna dye.

I remember seeing Catherine Tate on Jonathan Ross last year. She was trying to get a kitten from Battersea and the first one they offered her had a problem. How bad? she asked. When it does a crap you'll have to push it's arse back in as it has a prolapse. We'll pass thanks.

A few weeks later she gets a call from the home. We've got another kitten for you but this one has a problem too. It's ginger. THE HATRED OF MY PEOPLE GOES DOWN TO CAT KIND she exploded. I gave her a round of applause.

Cumbrian Menagerie

2009-01-15T11:28:00.003Z

Getting a train on the west Cumbrian coast railway has its ups and downs. The trains are all old and could do with being retired, there are usually several mad people you wouldn't want to sit next to and the carriages inexplicably smell of a mixture between manure and marijuana. However the views along the journey are fantastic and there is always plenty of wildlife to see.

I travelled between Whitehaven (a bit of the harbour can be seen above) and Carlisle on New Year's day. It was a fantastic journey. The first good fortune I had was that it was a brilliantly clear day so the views would be amazing; the second was that I was the only person on the train so had two carriages to myself. It stayed this way until Workington when one other person got on but he sat in the other carriage so it was still blissfully quiet and chav free. My third bit of luck was that the conductor's ticket machine was broken so I had a free journey!

The terrain changes from coast to fells as the train goes slightly more inland so there is plenty of opportunity to see a variety of wildlife. I think this journey is the best one for the amount of fauna I spotted as I speeded through the countryside. Oyster catchers, gulls, several herons, blackbirds, fieldfares, jackdaws, sheep, cows, a couple of ponies, a large rook or a raven and even a Vietnamese pot bellied pig!

Strictly Scandalous

2008-11-19T15:53:00.002Z

It has been revealed that John Sargeant is pulling out of Strictly because everyone thinks he's rubbish. Whilst I agree that he is entertaining I am a bit annoyed that people keep voting him in because it means that people that can dance better than him have left the competition. He said even he was scared to be in the final as that would be "a joke too far".

I will be slightly sad to see him go as nobody dances as badly as he does, so we won't get so many disparaging comments from Arlene Bitchface, Len Old-man, Charles Breville-Sandwich Press and Bruno Tortelloni.

Bad weather!

2008-10-27T14:27:00.003Z

Photo by Chris Sellick from BBC Cumbria site.

On Saturday I braved the weather to visit my friend Amanda in Seaton. She picked me up from Workington train station and we went to Tesco to get some supplies. "Get whatever we need now because I don't want to leave the house again!" I said.

We were really bored so we did some art work. Then we watched Merlin and some DVDs, stuffed our faces full of pizza, Doritos, popcorn and Galaxy chocolate. We were occasionally disturbed by her cat Ash jumping on us straight after he'd been outside and was soaking wet and covered in mud!

On Sunday morning we decided to go down to the river Derwent to see how high it had risen. We were very pleased to see that it had swollen and burst its banks (see photo above). Sadly neither of us had cameras with us but Amanda did take some footage on her mobile phone. We got a bit muddy and fairly cold as there was a strong wind but at least we didn't get wet. We even saw a young cormorant sat on the bank.

Down turn

2008-10-14T14:26:00.003+01:00

Having a bad spell at the moment and struggling with chain of thought. No blogs for a while, and probably won't be reading anyone else's due to lack of motivation.

News that made me smile today

2008-10-07T16:11:00.003+01:00

Long time followers of my blog will know that I have had a bit of a love-hate relationship with the NHS with regards how they have treated me during my employment with them through an agency.

Last year I applied for my job permanently and was told that I couldn't have an interview because I didn't have the correct typing qualifications. The person that did get the job started in December and left in March - she thought she was moving to Cyprus but she didn't in the end. If they'd employed me they wouldn't have had this trouble and I still would have been here.

So after the secretary that took over from me and left in March, I returned as a temp in April. It has taken them until the end of September to advertise the position. I joined the NHS admin bank so that I could apply for the job internally. The closing date was last Friday. I was told by the senior secretary today that my application was accepted by the HR department and that I was in fact the only applicant.

This means that I have the job but I think they will still have to go through all the bollocks of interviewing me for equal opps. Then to get me "free" from the agency they have to give them four weeks notice. So it will probably be November before I get onto the NHS payroll but in these troubled financial times I am happy just to know I will be in permanent employment.

Apology

2008-09-29T17:41:00.003+01:00

Last weekend I slagged off Katy Perry and called her a vapid pop act. Well she was on Jools Holland on Friday. OK I'm not going to go out and buy her album on the strength of her performance but she did impress me. She rocked!

Public service announcement

2008-09-23T20:54:00.004+01:00

In case you're wondering where my mum, known to a lot of you as Gill, has gone and why she is not blogging it's because she is currently admitted to West Cumberland Hospital with gallstones and infected gallbladder. That is all the news I have but I will keep you updated.

Damien Rice

2008-09-20T22:30:00.006+01:00

I then went on to watch the beautiful Damien Rice make equally beautiful music. I really must insist that you watch this too. OK so I have already potentially taken an hour of your life if you watched all of the Jools Holland show I linked in my previous post, so why should you spend another hour watching this video? Well I'll tell you...

I have been lucky enough to see Damien live twice. Both were gigs were in the same venue in Liverpool. The venue was small and intimate, perfectly suited to Damien's style of performance. Both gigs were brilliant but were completely different.

Gig 1

This venue was seated and my then boyfriend Tim and I managed to get seats on the second row. The support act was brilliant, a young lady called Elisa who sang alone, accompanying herself only on acoustic guitar. Her voice was absolutely amazing and brought me to tears a couple of times. Don't bother with her albums though, I bought one and was very disappointed to find it was nothing like her live performance and had gone all europop and totally over-produced.

O had come out in 2002 and still not many people had heard of Damien Rice. There can't have been more than about 200 people in the auditorium. On this night Damien played alone without the band members that helped flesh out his songs on the album. Far from it sounding dull and weak, it was vibrant and exciting. Damien uses lots of pedals and effects on his guitar and voice, even layering them all up to create a wall of sound that even Phil Spector would be envious of.

He was chatty, playful and knocked the audience's socks off! He managed to weave Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" into one of his songs and did the same with Radiohead's "Creep". I think he even threw in a little Jeff Buckley.

Gig 2

A hell of a lot has changed since the last gig. I have split up with Tim and was hoping to go to the concert with a rather handsome pHD student that I'd become friends with. Alas over the summer he decided not to go back to uni and coming all the way from south Wales was too much of a trek. Luckily one of my flatmates buys the ticket from me and borrows my copy of O so she can get to know his music.

Things are different at the concert too - it's the same venue but this time we're standing. People are still milling around while the support act is on so we manage to get near the front. This time Damien is accompanied by his band but minus his co singer Lisa as she is full of cold. She manages to put in an appearance later on though much to the delight of the crowd. People know who Damien Rice is now, he gets played on the radio and there are adverts for his album on the TV. People know the words to his songs and sing along.

In the video linked above you can see that they have lots of candles and joss sticks on stage, and it was the same at our gig. Damien asks for the lights to be turned down just before they play "Cold Water". As the performance is being recorded they can't turn down the lights completely. But imagine what it would be like to be at a concert with a few hundred people and it is completely black apart from the glow of a few candles and joss sticks, which is what it was like at the concert I was at. It was so atmospheric and made the hairs stand up on the end of my neck. Then at the climax of the song, when the drums kick in, they whacked all the lights up again. It was such an overwhelming moment.

Watching this gig online didn't compare to actually being there as I didn't get to fight with my friend as to which one of us Damien was looking at! But it did capture some of the energy and vibrancy of his performance, which sometimes doesn't come across in a recording.

So if you think that his music is wishy washy coffee shop music please watch this video and see how wrong you are. The man is inventive and creative, makes an acoustic guitar makes sounds that a lot of electric guitar players would give they plectrums to be able to make, and has the voice of an angel. Playing for an audience is where his music really comes alive. I was sat there with tears rolling down my cheeks with the beauty of it. Unfortunately I have yet to read this book which I bought last weekend so I can't tell you why I did that.

Jools Holland

2008-09-20T18:05:00.006+01:00

Firstly this afternoon I watched the extended version of Jools Holland on BBC iplayer. This show had one of the best line-ups I had seen for a long time since I enjoyed Radiohead, Cat Power and Mary J Blige on the same programme. I really must insist that you watch it, so follow this link. It features such bands and artists as Kings of Leon (pictured above), Metallica, Nicole Atkins, V.V. Brown, Carla Bruni and Sway.

I normally watch Later... after it has been aired on television so I can fast forward through the performances I don't like. This week the only casualty was the one song performed by Sway, a rapper. I'm not a massive fan of Metallica but I was impressed by their performance of "Cyanide", enough to make me want to hear the rest of their new album. Be warned though, "Enter Sandman" which is no doubt one of their best known songs gets cut off part way through. I was outraged! Until I checked out the Later website and found the full performance there for all to see.

Kings of Leon are one of my favourite bands at the moment and I loved seeing them play "On Call" as it's one of the best tracks on "Because of the Times", and a couple of tracks from their new album which is out on Monday. Something tells me I will be taking a slightly extended lunch break to buy it. It's so refreshing that they're number one instead of some vapid pop act. It's been a long time since I felt the need to buy an album on the day it comes out, a privilege normally reserved for Radiohead and possibly Elbow. It makes me even more excited that I'm going to see them in December!!!

I'd never heard of V.V. Brown or Nicole Atkins before but their performances on Jools certainly warrented further investigation. Carla Bruni was pleasant enough, but she sang with an expression her face which annoyed me and didn't make me want to buy any of her music particularly.

Do you like

2008-09-20T15:36:00.001+01:00

the new look of my blog? Or should I go back to how it was before?

D'eath by D'urbevilles

2008-09-16T13:17:00.003+01:00

Image taken from Metro, who also have this opinion of the programme.

I have never read any Thomas Hardy. Most of my readers may now be gasping and thinking "philistine" as you either are my mum or are old enough to be my mum (with the exception of a couple of you) and have a passion for the classics.

I am rather fond of period drama from time to time, my all time favourite being the BBC's most recent Jane Eyre featuring the fabulous Ruth Wilson and equally fantastic (not to mention hunky) Toby Stephens. So as the nights are drawing I do like to spend a Sunday evening on the sofa under a blanket watching a good serial drama.

Sadly I was disappointed. I don't know if the fault was with the BBC's adaptation or with Hardy's story itself. It seemed to me that there was rather a lot of fictional cliches.

1. Poor family think they have aristocratic connections and send a member of their family to ask for money.

2. Head of said aristocratic family turns out to be mad old woman so affairs are dealt with by her son.

3. Son is a "bad 'un" and has his wicked way with poor innocent young maiden.

4. No longer innocent but still young maiden runs away. And yes it turns out she is up the duff.

THE END

Only it seems that there are three more episodes! What could possibly happen... so no doubt even though I thought it wasn't much cop I will watch it again to see if it improves. Of course these fictional cliches could actually be original in Hardy's work and everyone has copied him.

Where were you when...

2008-09-08T12:08:00.004+01:00

From JJ's blog:

Princess Diana died - 31st August 1997?
I was 14 years old. It is a scientifically proven fact that teenagers need more sleep so I wasn't too happy when my mum woke me up around 9am on a Sunday morning. "Princess Diana has died" she told me, having read this in The Observer. She obviously thought it was big enough news to wake me. My first thought was that she'd been shot so I was surprised to hear that she died in a way that "normal" people die - in a car crash. My mum, grandma and I were going to go down to London and camp, just so we could say we were there as none of us are royalists, but sadly I had to go back to school a few days later. I was painstakingly putting the music of Kula Shaker's song "Hollow Man" into my music notation software on the computer. I had to do it almost note by note and played it many times to see how it was sounding and to see what it sounded like so far. Therefore I always associate that piece of music with the death of Diana.

Margaret Thatcher Resigned - 22nd November 1990?
I was seven years old, and I'm guessing this was a weekday, so I would have been at school. I vaguely remember it being on the news that John Major was going to be leader of the Tories but it didn't mean a lot to me. I should imagine that there was a massive party in Cleator Moor, a nearby town, as they used to burn a Maggie Thatcher guy every bonfire night. It wouldn't suprise me if they still did...

The twin towers were attacked - 11 September 2001?
I was 18, taking a year out after finishing my A Levels and had yet to find a job. My mum, grandma and I were shopping in Carlisle. We were having a bit of an Indian summer so we decided to sit outside at a cafe called Deli France and eat baguettes. Near the seating area was a Radio Rentals shop and soon there was a crowd gathering outside the window. We wondered what was going on as we couldn't remember hearing in the news that there was a football match that day. We finished dinner and went over to the window to have a look ourselves. It was showing pictures of the Pentagon and saying that part of it had collapsed. We wondered what could possibly have happened for part of the Pentagon to collapse. We carried on shopping and when we got back home my grandad was waiting to pick up grandma and he and my dad were sat on the sofa glued to the TV. That is when they told us about the Twin Towers. I remember getting fed up of the constant news coverage because they could tell us nothing new and wondered why they kept broadcasting. I remember having to go and lie on my mum and dad's bed so I could watch Star Trek: Voyager as dad wanted to keep watching the news. They had to change the episode they were going to show in light of the events of that day, so I wonder what happened in it.

England played in a World Cup Semi Final against Germany - 4 July 1990?
Again I was seven, so I would have been at school. If the match was on in the evening then it is entirely possible that I watched it as I remember seeing some of Italia 90 as my dad was watching it. I remember singing "Anchovieeeeeees, anchovieeeeeees!" along to Nessun Dorma.

President Kennedy's Assassination - 22 November 1963
I was but an undeveloped egg in my mother's seven year old ovary.

Black holes and revelations?

2008-09-05T11:14:00.005+01:00

Pretty picture is a particle collision, courtesy of CERN.

The Large Hadron Collider is set to be switched on on Wednesday 10 September. There is talk that it might cause the end of the world if it creates a black hole. Scientists are trying to reassure us that we're not at threat, but I still can't help but feel uneasy. The point of the experiment is to discover hitherto unknown secrets about the universe.

So just in case... nice knowing you all!

All Quiet on the Northern Front

2008-09-05T09:06:00.003+01:00

Art nicked from my mum!

You will have noticed that I haven't blogged for some time. This is because I am going through a big period of change and haven't felt much like blogging. Even though I've had plenty on my mind I'm sure you lot won't want to hear all the outpourings of my heart, so don't worry I'll keep it brief!

Vince moved out a few days ago and my new housemate Phil moved in. We're all going through a period of readjustment and it'll take us some time to feel normal again. What I realised through Vince moving out was that I still loved him and still want to work things out. I haven't really had a chance to speak to him about this since he's moved out yet but I will soon. There are things he has done or said which make me think he might change his mind about us but I am trying not to get my hopes up.

Disturbing Orangina Advert

2008-08-16T04:05:00.001+01:00

Now I am not normally a very prudish person, but I find this advert far too weird even to be funny. In fact I am just plain disturbed by it. No doubt there will be loads of complaints about it so will be removed from the airwaves. God bless YouTube so I can inflict it on all of you!

Book List

2008-08-07T13:40:00.004+01:00

Over at JJ's blog Life is All Cobblers (please see links) she posted about the average person having only read 6 of the following books. Now I think that I have read 30 of these, which makes me sad that I have not quite read a third. But I suppose it's not bad going considering I'm only 25! I thought I'd have a go at doing this as I am very bored with nothing to do at work, and my boss isn't in to see that I'm not doing any :)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill A Mocking Bird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible (only ever read parts of when forced to at school and have no intention of reading any more)

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - I want to read some but don't want to read them all!

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (I thought it was rubbish)

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (one of my all time favourite books)

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (life’s too short!)

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (again life is too short)

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (not sure I have ever read this all the way through)

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (not that into Dickens so just a couple of his will do)

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma - Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (100 million times better than the film)

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (Oh the shame! Pacey plot, vaguely interesting but awfully written)

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce (again life is too short)

76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (again life's too short)

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - like Shakespeare I would like to read some but not all

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (have heard it’s pretty dull)

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks (take that you wasp fuckers!)

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Key:

Bold - I have read this book

Italic - I intend to read this book

Underlined - I especially like this book

Red - I have no intention of reading this book

Lovely walk

2008-08-05T16:46:00.004+01:00

Image from flickr.com

Normally I am a bit of a couch potato of an evening. Phil and I had decided that we should do something last night depending on the weather. Should it be horrible we would go and see Hancock, the film where Will Smith plays a rubbish superhero, or should the weather stay nice we would go for a walk.

By the time that Phil arrived at my house to pick me up we decided it was too late to drive somewhere to go for a walk as it would be getting dark soon. So we decided to go for a wander around Rickerby Park, one of the beautiful parks that we have in Carlisle as you can see above.

For an evening walk I thought we walked quite a long way but Phil said he didn't think it was that far (but then he is an outdoorsy sort of person)! We walked from my house to the park, through the park, back through the park and up to The Beehive pub for a drink and then back to my house. It must have been a couple of miles at least.

It was a lovely evening and I enjoyed being out in the fresh air. I also enjoyed the random group of drummers that had set themselves up and were playing tribal rhythms just for the fun of it.

After our drink we headed up to Tesco for a quick shop and I picked up my raffle prize of a box of Gordon Ramsay chocolates which look very nice. It as even nicer as I had forgetten I'd entered. We were amazed how many people were actually shopping considering the fact that it was almost 10pm!

Action packed weekend #2

2008-07-27T18:22:00.006+01:00

On Thursday my future housemate Phil came round for tea and then we went to see The Dark Knight. We can both highly recommend it, plenty to laugh at, loads of action, a few cringey "ewww" moments and shovelfuls of darkness. Even though it was a bit slow to get going and was a bit long (2.5 hours) I could definitely sit through it again. Heath Ledger's performance was spellbinding. I used to think he was a bit of a cheesy actor but not after this.

Friday I headed out on the town with Hazel, Zoe, Iqbal and Ignacio, and later joined by Phil. We frequented a couple of bars before ending up in Concrete. It was a bit rubbish though as the DJ was playing very shuffly indie that was boring to dance to, so Phil, Hazel and I left early.

Saturday Phil, Emma and I headed through to Maryport to attend some of the blues festival. We baked ourselves sitting on the hill amongst the hoardes to watch the bands, ate chips and curry sauce, sat on the marina and enjoyed the sea breeze, found a pub down a back street and enjoyed the best band of the day "Blues Positive" (in our opinion), commented on the amount of scary men and women in Maryport (think dodgy tattoos, muscles and a fuck off attitude), got the train home and chatted at my place for a while drinking cups of tea. Very rock and roll.

By the end of the evening I could no longer speak. I thought this was because I had spent the last two nights in loud places and therefore had to shout into people's ears, but no. I woke up this morning feeling like I'd been hit by a bus, stiff neck, runny nose, and sounding like a blues singer.

Today I have sweated all the water out my body carrying two bags of shopping back from Tesco in the intense heat, recovered and then just about had enough energy to change my bed clothes. Not all excitement then.

Action packed weekend - Sunday

2008-07-22T19:54:00.005+01:00

Image from http://www.oak-treefarm.co.uk/

Sunday was a much more sedate affair. Phil, Hazel and I sat chatting drinking tea and coffee, all in a vaguely zombie-like state. They headed off to their own places to have showers. I mooched around the house for a bit and had a bit of a doze on the sofa with Marwood.

As it was such a nice day, and there hadn't been very many of those of late, Hazel and I decided to go for a walk. I despair of not having a car on days like that as I can't get out into the countryside. I found out that Hazel also despairs as she often doesn't have anyone to go for a walk with so hopefully a Sunday jaunt could become a regular occurrence.

We walked all the way round, looked at the craft exhibition they had on in a boathouse, bought a delicious ice cream and then decided to walk all the way round again! There were a million cute dogs being walked around, especially two puppies which I think were Irish setters.

All in all I had the most fun and sociable weekend I have had in a long time and I hope to have many more like it!

Action packed weekend - Saturday

2008-07-22T12:14:00.004+01:00

Sadly I didn't get much of a lie-in on Saturday morning as Marwood wouldn't let me sleep in much past 9am. Irritating but I still love the little bugger! I bummed around for most of the day until I met up with Phil, Hazel and Zoe to head through to Brampton for the live folk festival.

When we arrived it pissed it down. Zoe dropped off her car at her parents' house whilst Phil, Hazel and I got a delicious burrito from a Mexican food stall. We sheltered in the beer tent and the shower soon passed. The sun actually came out then!

The first band we saw were called 3 Daft Monkeys, they were a lot of fun and probably my favourite band of the night. A guy on bass, another guy playing acoustic guitar and doing lead vocals and a lady on fiddle and backing vocals. I'm surprised they played so well as they had been at another festival in Dorset and their set had been at 2am. They'd had to drive through the night to get up here in time for their slot at 7pm. They went down really well and had everyone dancing. Sadly their set had to come to an end and we headed off to the other tent.

After dancing around like idiots the other tent was much more sedate and genteel. The age of the audience was much higher in this tent as there were seats. There weren't enough seats for us to sit together so we huddled along the side of the tent. We were glared at a lot by one woman as we weren't listening to Thea Gilmore in rapturous silence. She sang lovely songs and had a beautiful voice but we had been up and dancing so it was a bit of a downer. It was almost time for the next band to start in what we had nicknamed "the dance tent" so we headed back there in the hope of being near the front again.

Little did we know that Bellowhead were quite so popular. We managed to get a spot fairly near the front but not nearly as close as we had been for 3 Daft Monkeys. The tent became absolutely packed eventually, although I wasn't as crushed as the time I saw Red Hot Chili Peppers on Glasgow Green. Bellowhead had a much more confident and polished performing style to the Monkeys, and as such they lost something. They seemed to play with a bit of an arrogant swagger which didn't endear me to them much. Having said that though they had the whole tent dancing and were jolly good fun. They were hotfooting it up and down the country too as on Sunday they played the Folk Proms!

This is turning into quite an epic post! Special mention must go to the strange group that we enjoyed commenting on. There was an older man with a fairly large group of teenage boys. We decided that he was teaching them the ways of debauchery and nicknamed them the Gay Scouts. Their motto? Come Prepared of course.

When the evening came to an end around midnight we had to try and get a taxi back to Brampton. No mean feat but fortunately it was third time lucky and we eventually got back to Carlisle just before 1am. Zoe headed straight home as she was drunker than we were. Phil and Hazel decided they would crash at mine as although we were knackered we were all wide awake.

We all sat huddled in my front room wrapped in several blankets, put the fire on and watched Hot Fuzz on DVD. By the end of the film Phil looked as if he could fall asleep anywhere and I wasn't far behind him. Much faffing later we eventually managed to get the sleeping arrangements and airbeds sorted.

A fantastic evening was had by all!

Estimated time in bed: 3am

Action packed weekend - Friday

2008-07-22T11:35:00.004+01:00

It was Phil's birthday on Friday so I met up with him, Hazel, Zoe and Iqbal for a night out. Hazel was meant to meet me at my house around "8-ish" which in the end turned out to be 9!

Fortunately when Phil, Hazel and I got to the pub the band hadn't started yet and Zoe and Iqbal had managed to get a good table near the front. The band in question were the Olly Allcock Band, who I had never heard of but are apparently quite famous in Cumbria. Olly is meant to be the blues guitarist in Cumbria.

The band consist of Olly on lead guitar and main vocals, Roz on sax and backing vocals, Ed on bass and backing vocals, and "Harry" on drums. They are all excellend musicians and the pub was packed. Harry is fairly new to the band so he had to pass the audience test, which he did with ease by performing a stonking drum solo which lasted a good three minutes at least.

Lots of drunk people did embarrassing dad dancing and we had a bit of a boogie round our table but there wasn't much room as the pub was so packed. When the band finished we were all up for more of a boogie. Therefore we went to a bar called the Gilded Lily as you can get your hand stamped to get into a club called Concrete for free. Friday nights are best in there as they play lots of indie tunes rather than the banging dance stuff they play on a Saturday.

Iqbal and Phil wanted to go at about 2am and as I wanted a lift from Iqbal I sadly had to go too. I don't think I could've danced much longer anyway!

Estimated time in bed: 2.30am.

Feeling better

2008-07-22T10:57:00.003+01:00

Things between Vince and I are still going well. I am surprised at how little it feels awkward that we are still living in the same house but not together. I think that we will be able to be good friends once we've dealt with everything and have a bit of distance from each other. I have actually taken a big step forward this week where our relationship is concerned, and although I still have feelings for him I no longer want to try and work things out and am happy to be just friends. I haven't quite got to the point where I'd be happy if he started seeing someone else yet, but it is still early days!

He is going to be moving out at the end of August and I was worried that I was going to end up living on my own and be Mad Cat Lady but fortunately my friend's ex boyfriend doesn't get on so well with his flatmates so is going to move in with me. So that's another load off my mind!

Where I am From Photo Gallery

2008-07-12T21:23:00.007+01:00

From Whitehaven Harbour looking up to Kells. The chimney used to vent gases from the mines. It once got struck by lightning and the gases ignited so now has the nickname The Candlestick.

The same view but from Kells looking down to the harbour.

Jonathan Swift Cottage. Apparently the view of the harbour from here inspired him to create the Liliputians (but tthis could just be an urban legend).

Fishing nets on Whitehaven harbour.

Buttermere on a cold summer's day.

The view from my childhood home in good weather.

The view from my childhood home in not so clement weather.

Please click on the photos if you would like to see them bigger.

All photos taken by me.

All change

2008-07-06T23:53:00.004+01:00

100!

My blog has finally reached three figures...

I have not been in a blogging mood of late. I have been a bit preoccupied with real life to get bogged down with cyberspace.

Vince, my long term partner, broke up with me three weeks ago. The bottom fell out of my world and is only now starting to be fixed again. I am hopeful that we can sort things out but I am not that optimistic as he doesn't seem to want to try.

Also I found out that I have polycystic ovaries, which at least explains why I am spotty, hairy and have been putting on weight quite rapidly. Doctors orders are to do more exercise, but as I am so knackered by the end of a working day I am struggling with the motivation for this.

Not much else to report. I am still temping, secretary to a lovely consultant psychiatrist and hopeful that my job will become permanent eventually. The NHS never do anything quickly so I am not holding my breath.

Where I'm From Poem

2008-07-02T19:08:00.002+01:00

My second mum wrote a poem following these guidelines so I thought I'd have a go myself. Here is the first draft:

Where I Am From

I am from marbles and Marmite, new leather
suite, cat hair and sloe gin.

I am from the extensions and pine kitchen,
rugged mountains and bleak coast.

I am from dainty cherry and protecting elder,
wind singing in the pylons.

I am from Sunday dinners and blue eyes,
Clatworthy, Powditch and Flegg.

I am from talking too much, long baths,
baking, Grand Prix and Doom.

I am from tarot cards and physics -
the cold light of stars and the Land of Faery.

I am from Whitehaven, Wales and Norfolk,
trackless fens, fells and bottomless lakes.

I am from Peking duck, stew, leek and
potato soup and chutney.

I am from Esme's naked budgie,
the missing train and ookum flookum.

I am from the red photograph box, the out
of tune piano, the cupboard under the stairs.

'Nude' by Radiohead played on old technology

2008-06-14T18:54:00.001+01:00

I think this is brilliant!

"Tagged" by JJ

2008-06-02T16:47:00.007+01:00

JJ had a bad experience the last time she tagged people to do a meme, so I have selflessly nominated myself to respond. Again I won't nominate people but if you fancy having a go then feel free.
This is what you do - list seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they’re listening to.

1. Main Theme to Indiana Jones by John Williams - one of the most instantly recognisable pieces of cinematic music. I went to see Indiana Jones & The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull recently (I will pass judgement in another post) and in anticipation of this Vince and I have been singing the theme a lot. Unfortunately it's now got completely stuck in our heads and if we start singing it we curse the other!!

2. Canonball by The Breeders - this song from Kim Deal's band (formerly of the Pixies) came out in the 90s but I never heard it until I got a DAB radio and started listening to BBC 6Music. They played it A LOT in early 2007. I'd been trying to buy the album for ages but they didn't have it in any shops in Carlisle; now they have a new album out they finally had Last Splash in for £5. If only I'd heard the album when I was about 13/14 as I would have thought it was amazing and in fact I can't believe it wasn't on the Ladykillers album I had at that time. I love this song as it's catchy, a bit grungy and has the best bass intro :)

3. All I Need by Radiohead - taken from their latest and most controversial album In Rainbows, this is actually quite a sexy song for Radiohead. The best bit for me is the crescendo at the end (from about 2.45 onwards) with Thom Yorke singing a repeating rising melody which sounds a little out of the ordinary, which I am told is because it is in the Lydian mode. There is an official being played on MTV but I picked the other one because I liked the juxtaposition of the images of the natual world with the music, especially the rainstorm with the crescendo mentioned earlier. If you want to see the official video, which is also good, then you can find it here.

4. One Pure Thought by Hot Chip - Hot Chip are probably the band that I've most recently got into. It all started with 'Ready for the Floor' which I blogged about earlier as it sounds like they're singing "Numberwang guy". This is their current single and if you're not singing "I won't be on my way" after watching the video then I want your brain because you are immune to the evils of repetitive tunes! What I love about Hot Chip is that a lot of their songs are jolly and sing-a-long but they quite often go a little bit bonkers and sometimes have a dark melodic underbelly.

5. Where Is The Line by Bjork - since seeing her in Blackpool on 01/05 I have developed a bit of a Bjork obsession. This track is from her last album Medulla and has quite a dark feel to it. When she played it live I had a vision of what the music video would be like, or a section of a film it was used in. You can see the official music video that was made here (pretty weird, much like the song itself). The one I imagined would be a cross between a Chris Cunningham video (warning - not for the faint hearted) and er, well, porn. But it would be arty, the lighting would just create shadows and just show outlines of things and not details, and because of the glitchy way in which it was edited (see Chris Cunningham video) you wouldn't really be sure what you were seeing.

The story would be based around two lovers (they could be of any sexual persuasion but as I am straight I imagined a male/female coupling) getting into a more and more experimental sado-masochistic relationship. I think the idea for this comes partly from the lyrics "I want to be flexible/I want to go out of my way for you/But enough is enough... I want to have capacity for you/And be elastic, elastic, to be elastic for you/Where is the line with you ?", and me mishearing "I want to hurt you" when in reality it is "I want to help you" (in reality the lyrics of the song are about being annoyed by someone borrowing money all the time). Also I think it comes from the sort of violent, pulsing energy the song has. I think my favourite element is the big bombastic choir. Quite why I divulged all that in such detail online I am not sure...

6. The Perfect Me by Deerhoof - I had never heard of Deerhoof before I went to see Radiohead and Beck in a double headline concert in Edinburgh as part of the fringe festival in 2006. I quickly became a convert however. This song encapsulates the true Deerhoof spirit I think, a bit bonkers, fun and lively with amazing drumming. That is why I love this song - the drumming and the weird time signature. It almost sounds as if Animal from the Muppets is playing (but if you watch the video you'll see he looks more like Shaggy from Scooby Doo). In fact when we saw them live he was playing so hard he snapped a stick but was able to carry on! I become periodically obsessed by this song as I have it as a ringtone on my phone so it depends how many people ring me.

7. Sex And Drugs And Rock 'n' Roll by Ian Dury & The Blockheads - Vince and I quite like to listen to the Craig Charles Funk & Soul Show on BBC 6 Music as we love a good slice of funk. I listen to it when I'm getting ready to go out and putting my make up on; it's also bloody good first thing in the morning when you're finding it hard to get up. Having bought this album incredibly cheaply we found that a lot of the songs are a bit cheesey, but you can't beat this one! Listen to it and I defy you not to dance...

Bjork Earth Intruders Misheard Lyrics

2008-05-24T11:38:00.001+01:00

Now tell me if I'm wrong, but does she sing Dalek College around the 1.55 mark?

Tagged!

2008-05-07T19:00:00.003+01:00

JJ kindly tagged me about a million years ago, so here is my response to her meme challenge at last:

1) What was the last 1980s song you heard?
I don't remember what the last one I heard was, but I recently had Get Into The Groove by Maddona stuck in my head when a drug rep told me she was going to a fancy dress party as early Madonna.

2) What was the last thing you saw on Youtube?
Part 2 of 7 of a documentary about the making of Bjork's Medulla album. It has had to be cut into several chunks because of Youtube's 10 minute time limit.

3) What was the last entry on Wikipedia you viewed?
ICD10 diagnosis codes for mental illness at work.

4) What was the last computer/video game you completed all the way through?
I think it was possibly Diablo II on the PC, although it is possible to continue playing it once finished so in a sense you never complete it, but you have finished and repeat the same storylines.

5) What did you last pig out on?
Homemade Chinese meal of spare ribs and whole Peking duck and pancakes, shared between Vince, my dad and I on Saturday night. Followed by lemon roulade. Stuffed!

6) What is the last undeleted text message on your mobile phone?
Sent from Vince on a train from Sheffield Midland to Manchester Picadilly "The guy next 2me on the train has the phrase 'flange lubrication' on a work related document on his laptop screen! x" This is a private joke between Vince and I but I am sure you can guess what a flange is.

7) When did you last have a conversation with someone other than a family member?
As I walked out of work talking to one of the other secretaries. We talked about the hot weather, about how it was daft she got a parking ticket because she forgot to put the sign up in her car that enables her to free parking, and I can't remember what else.

8) Aside from where you live, what is the last village/town/city you visited?
I visited my home village so I could see my grandma before she has heart surgery tomorrow. Very sad. Hopefully it won't be the last time I see her.

9) What was the last competition you won?
A year ago I entered a competition run by Any Questions Answered, the text based service where you pay £1 for them to answer any question. I asked them about Lottery numbers and then sent them the story aboout how I won a tenner with the numbers they sent me. I then went on to win £100 for having the best story that month!

10) What are the last three blogs you visited?
Life is all Cobblers, The New Garden and The Dark Blonde - see my links section

I now tag my mum, Manda and Ruth!!!

Birthday walk

2008-04-21T21:29:00.006+01:00

I turned 25 on Thursday and to celebrate I asked my parents to take Vince & I for a trip in the countryside so I could take some photos with my new camera. They took my took me to Caldbeck and a very small sample of the photos I took are above. I am especially pleased with the macro shot of the fungus.

We had lunch in this lovely pub, went for a potter around the interesting little shops in Caldbeck and then went along the river to the ruins of the old bobbin mill and the gorge carved out by the river known as the Fairy Kettle.

That evening we went out for a meal and stuffed ourselves full of delicious Italian food. All in all a pretty good day, especially as the weather held out until we were in the car on the way home.

Family chest

2008-04-21T10:43:00.006+01:00

Photo from bravissimo.com - an excellent site for lingerie, swimwear and clothes for ladies with chests on the larger side.

According to a sign in Debenhams lingerie department 70% of British women wear the wrong bra size. Earlier on Saturday I could count myself amongst these deluded masses.

Bravissimo have some further facts: 60% of women wearing a C cup should actually be wearing a D cup - my bra faux pas was worse than this. They also think the national average of 36C is probably more likely to be 34DD. How do they know these things?

You would think with so many fashion programmes with clothing gurus such as Trinny & Susannah, Nicky Hambleton-Jones, and my personal favourite, Gok Wan extolling the virtues of correct cups we would all get measured. The effect of wearing the right bra works miracles on the women appearing on these programmes - both aesthetic and psychological - so why are there still so many wearing the wrong size?

My grandma bought me my first bra, a 28AA - so small there probably wasn't much point in me wearing it. The woman in M & S asked my grandma if it was the right size, obviously eyeing up her rather sizeable bosom. I remember the first time I was measured for a bra. I was about 14 and my mum thought it important that I wore the correct size as I was growing up. I don't mind telling you that I was a 32B.

I have been measured a couple of times since then so have stayed in the right size. However, I was measured last year by a lady in a certain high street store, I won't name and shame. I didn't think that her measurement was right but I gave her the benefit of the doubt as that's her job not mine. Unfortunately there isn't a Bravissimo shop in Carlisle so I went to Turnbulls, an independent shop with a great reputation, and in fact the place where I was first measured.

The service in there was fantastic and when the lady thought she had my size correct she got someone to check it. Considering I was only measured about 6 months ago, and I haven't changed in size since then, I can't believe that the high street measurer got it so wrong. Three whole cup sizes wrong! It looks as though the family chest is starting to develop, as ours tend to be on the larger side.

Unfortunately they didn't have the bra I liked in my size so I went round to Debenhams and M & S and ended up getting 4 bras and 2 pairs of matching knickers. I am pleased now as before I could only admire Bravissimo's bras and buy their clothes - now I can look at the bras with the intent to buy them.

Moonpig

2008-04-05T11:39:00.001+01:00

The first time I saw this advert I though I was hallucinating. Vince had gone to the corner shop to buy a lottery ticket and he came back just after it finished.

I explained the advert to him and said that I wasn't sure it was real, and knowning my luck it would be an advert that was never on TV again. Fortunately it was on later the same evening so I could prove to myself, and to Vince, that I hadn't imagined it.

I don't what it is about this advert that makes me laugh so much. It must surely be one of the simplest and cheapest on TV. I think it has something to do with the cheesy 50s style harmonies.

I have yet to use their services but I know I will one day. What I want to know is why the fuck is it called Moonpig?!

What's the significance?

2008-03-30T16:50:00.003+01:00

800

As I left work on Friday and was walking along one of the many soulless hospital corridors I came across three elastic bands on the floor.

Big deal I hear you say. I see loads of elastic bands everyday.

But have they fallen, apparently at random, to spell out 800?

Does anyone know of any significance of this number in mythology etc? Like 7 is a lucky number for some reason and 13 is seen as unlucky. The Wikipedia page is a bit dull and doesn't contain anything like that.

What could it mean?

Scientology is Gay

2008-03-30T16:48:00.001+01:00

This is an experiment to see if I can get the hang of this adding a YouTube video to my blog.

If you like this video please visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAzjwN_Ht0o and rate it, and even favourite it if you like it that much!

A bit of advertising for my friend who made the video and sings. Also check out his band page linked on the right.

Marwood film #1

2008-03-27T23:44:00.004Z

Quite dull really, this was me literally testing that the camera worked as it only arrived in the post yesterday. Quite funny though and I love m'kitty! I made a personal best of power walking from my house to the Post Office as it shut at 6 and I got in from work and found the delivery card at 5.53. Got there just in the nick of time.

New camera!

2008-03-27T23:15:00.002Z

Oooh I love a bargain. I asked for a new digital camera for my birthday and I've been a bit naughty and bought it already. I decided to go for the Fuji F50fd and it is brilliant compared to my old camera. (Adopts old grandma voice) "Ah the wonders of technology!"

I managed to get in on eBay for quite a bit cheaper than I would in other shops - it is used but it's in very good condition. I'm sure there will be many photos and films posted here as I play with it!

Misheard lyrics

2008-03-25T22:24:00.004Z

I don't know how to put a video link in to YouTube so I'm afraid it's just a boring link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW94AEmzFhQ.

I'm sure Hot Chip are singing "You're my Numberwang guy" around the 2 minute mark.

If you haven't watched That Mitchell and Webb Look you won't know what I'm talking about.

Only on Wii/Only Ennui

2008-03-25T21:52:00.004Z

Only ennui the woman on the advert says. What do you mean "only ennui"? I think. If you've ever suffered from it you wouldn't dismiss it so.

Ennui is awful. I'd rather have a Nintendo.

Neville is from The Gashlycrumb Tinies, one oof the best books for "children" ever. Edward Gorey is a genius.

Amusing sign #3

2008-03-23T10:30:00.001Z

Not sure why I find this one funny. Taken in the ladies' toilets at Talkin Tarn.

Knitting for a good cause

2008-03-23T09:49:00.003Z

I am a keen knitter but I never seem to get anything finished. I always get bored, start a new project and now I probably have about five unfinsished things on the go at the moment.

This is why I am so pleased that I got some baby socks and trousers finished in time for my friend Vik's baby boy Django - and finished in time for him to be able to wear them!

So when I checked my emails this morning there was an email from Oxfam asking for my help. They want to make a giant baby blanket made up from lots of different squares. They need 250,00 squares by September 2008. This is to represent the number of mothers who have died during pregnany or childbirth because they were unable to access appropriate medical care.

So if you can knit at all - whether you've been doing it for years or you're a novice that drops lots of stitches - please visit the site and take part. I know this is one project I will definitely persevere with.

Image from jupiterimages.com

Amusing signs #2

2008-03-12T20:12:00.001Z

You might have to enlarge this a bit but it says "U + JESUS = ENOUGH".

This too was taken in Thanet, Kent, possibly in Ramsgate.

Spam

2008-03-10T19:31:00.002Z

My mum has a post about email spam, so check it out (sorry mum can't be arsed to link it).

I just received one that was called something like "now that they have found love" or something like that, but it sounded a bit more pretentious and interesting. So I opened the email and this is what it said:

"He yearns to find a dragon's lair,,he fights without remorse..rxib9816.greatnow.com he fights without remorse.,he fights without remorse.,Sword held high above the ground,. "

Rather poetic for spam I think and I might try and turn it into a poem!

St Bees in March

2008-03-09T22:32:00.011Z

I was a little disappointed with this photo as on the LCD screen of my camera there was an almost solid beam of light. But I'm actually quite pleased with the image, especially the little footprints in the sand. I think I could have a lot of fun playing about with this image. No colour fiddling on this image.

I love this image as although it was taken in colour and I have not treated it in any way it looks like it is in black and white.

A fleeting moment of sunshine! It was a very odd day and we caught the best of the weather whilst on the beach. The little people in the photo are mum and Vince.

Looking south down the coast towards Drigg and Ravenglass there was an odd mist. I think the person in the right of the photo is mum.

St Bees Head is the most westerly point in Cumbria, and indeed the north of England. These photos were taken on 1st March and the month certainly came in like a lion. I don't know if it's because I grew up near desolate beaches such as Drigg but I prefer them that way. Seascale and St Bees are all very lovely but I do prefer them without a promenade and isolated from any town or village.

However, I wouldn't get rid of the cafe at St Bees for love or money! After a bracing walk on the beach Vince, mum and I went into Hartley's cafe for a toastie and a drink. They have secondhand books with the proceeds going to the local lifeboaft station and it's always good for a ratch. Mostly there are the inevitable Danielle Steele, Jackie Collins, Barbara Taylor Bradford and Mills & Boon books but you never know what gems you might find. We bought Forrest Gump, a book on pizza toppings and a rather pretentious sounding novel called Ella Minnow Pea.

Later in the day we met up with my grandparents for a meal to celebrate my mum's birthday, Mothers' Day and my grandad's birthday. We go at least once a year to the Cumbrian Lodge in Seascale as it is handy for my grandparents and the food is lovely. I had a tasty turkey, ham and leek pie and banoffee pie. Vince was adventurous and had ostrich which he now claims to prefer to beef steak!

Amusing signs #1

2008-03-09T22:20:00.003Z

"A dirty place to live"

After living in Scotland for just over a year I picked up some choice phrases, some of which I still use, mostly when sharing in-jokes with Vince (who is kindly modelling the street sign above).

For those of you who haven't lived in Scotland and don't know any Scottish slang the word mauchit (as it is normally spelled) means dirty, grubby, filthy etc.

Should you wish to visit this beautiful street Mockett Drive is in St Peters, Broadstairs, Kent.

I'm back!

2008-03-09T10:28:00.004Z

I now have home broadband so I will be able to blog once more!

*tumbleweeds*

Oh well.

I have to go shower before my landlord comes round so I'll leave a more interesting post later.

I have my nose in an electronic book

2007-10-29T14:03:00.000Z

I treated myself to a Nintendo DS on Saturday. I have Dr Kawashima's Brain Training and Lost Magic, a role playing game, for it.

At the moment my brain is aged 64 as I am rubbish at maths, but I have discovered that I am quite good at Sudoku. Vince's brain is 29 which is only two years older than the rest of him. We have nicknamed Dr Kawashima "Kimonagi-san" in honour of our friend, James.

Vince and James work together and they were discussing cleaning tips (!) and Vince mentioned something that he had learned from Kim and Aggie. Obviously James has never seen How Clean is Your House? as he thought that Vince was talking about a wise Japanese person called Kimonagi! Perhaps he envisioned the domestic version of Confucius.

Hmmm you can tell that my boss isn't in and I haven't got a lot of work to do!

Ooooh shiny!

2007-10-29T12:48:00.000Z

Picture from Argos website.

When Vince and I moved into our current house just over a year ago, it came part furnished. This included a rather large and ancient microwave. It was the size of Greater London, the countdown numbers occasionally went out and it didn't beep anymore when it had finished cooking.

There had been a couple of times when the microwave had reacted a bit and smoked when we'd tried to microwave something, even though there was no metal in it. However, on Saturday morning I was trying to make some cappucinos to take back up to bed. It was Vince's birthday and he was just about to open some presents. I tried to heat up some milk in the microwave in a Pyrex jug but again the microwave started to crackle and flicker and I could smell smoke. I stopped it and opened the door and saw something drip from the roof of the microwave. I think it was metal! I looked to see where the stuff had dripped from and there were two very small flames, each the size of a match flame just before it goes out.

I had to throw away the milk as the inside of the microwave had dripped into it. I managed to salvage the Pyrex jug and get whatever it was off it. I unplugged the microwave, made sure that the fire had gone out and that I didn't need Vince's help in putting it out, and then consigned it to the appliance graveyard. Our landlord is going to take it to the tip for us.

We could have asked our landlord to buy a new one for us but we decided that we'd like to buy our own as at least when we move we'll have one. The above pictured microwave is the one we bought from Argos. We waited about 10 million years for it as they couldn't find it as it had no catalogue number on the box.

Unfortunately all the taxi companies in Carlisle seemed to be fully booked so we had to walk home carrying it between us. It was heavy, awkward and really hurt our hands. It looks very snazzy, has a clock on it which gives the kitchen an eerie blue glow and it beeps! You can even do multi-stage cooking in it and has special programmes for certain foods which goes by weight!

Walkies!

2007-10-29T12:25:00.001Z

Image courtesy of Dorling Kindersley

Yesterday Vince and I bought a lead for our cat Marwood. We live in a built up area so we don't want to let him outside in case he gets run over. However, we also think that it's sad that he can't go out so we bought the lead.

You might think that it is very difficult to take a cat for a walk. And you'd be right!

Getting the harness on him was the easy part. He was alright on the lead in the house and walked reasonably well on it considering it's the first time he's ever been on a lead. Being outside was another story though! We took him out the back door into the little alley way that runs behind our house. He wasn't to keen on being outside and he fluffed his tail up to twice it's normal size. There were lots of new sounds and smells for him to discover and he seemed quite overwhelmed by it all.

He didn't really want to venture out much past the door but we persevered and we managed to get him to the top of the alley where it joins our road. He didn't really walk, we pulled him a bit, then he would do an acrobatic roll and then stop. We got him almost to the front door when he stopped, miaowed a lot and would not be moved again. Vince had to carry him the rest of the way which was only about six feet!

Once back inside he became his normal happy self again. We gave him some of the treats he so loves as he'd been such a good boy. We left the harness on him for a little while so that he could get used to the feeling of it, he kept trying to lick it off! Ideally you are supposed to train them from kittens so they adapt to it. He did really well though considering it was his first time!

I now feel even more justified keeping him in the house. Seeing how scared he was out there made it obvious that he couldn't do it on his own.

The NHS is Stupid

2007-10-18T12:04:00.000+01:00

I have been working as a secretary for a consultant psychiatrist since June as a temp. It was a steep learning curve but I think I've got a pretty good handle on the job now. I now know who everyone is in the office, I know how to contact my boss, where she is etc. I've even got used to her South African accent when typing her letters. The main component of my job is typing letters. Surely if I couldn't do the job they would have got rid of me and asked the agency for somebody else?

The job I'm doing has come up as a permanent position so I applied for it. I can't get an interview because I don't have a certificate to say that I can type! The NHS is just shooting themselves in the foot here because they're now going to employ someone who doesn't know how to do the job, my secretarial colleagues are going to have to train them like they did with me. This takes up their valuable time. Everyone in the office is so stressed at the moment. My boss is on the verge of a nervous breakdown as it is without having to get used to a new secretary. Just because they have a piece of paper to type won't necessarily mean they can do the job.

But the NHS is like that. They have lots of red tape. If they give me an interview without having the qualification they can face litigation. I can't get the qualification in time. They can't take me on and make me getting the qualification part of my personal development. So obviously I'm not capable of doing the job even though I've been doing it for the last four fucking months!

My boss has sent a complaint to the head secretary and head of the department. She has no say in who her secretary is it seems. She was very angry when I told her that I had to leave and why. My boss has a junior doctor who I'm also secretary for and he was annoyed and sent an email of complaint too. Another doctor that I occasionally do typing for praised the fact that he doesn't have to make any changes to the letters I do for him and to keep up the good work. When I told him that I was leaving he said "Well that's red tape and bureaucratics for you" and offered to give me a reference even though I don't really work for him.

I am especially annoyed today as apparently the trust that I work for is "excellent" according to an Annual Health Check published by the Health Care Commission. Another local trust was considered "weak" so god help the poor bastards that work there.

Mitey Marwood

2007-09-28T13:04:00.001+01:00

Image from Dorling Kindersley

We took Marwood to vet last night. He was very good and didn't give us too much trouble getting into the basket. He didn't like it much and he miaowed a bit on the walk to the vets.

Once at the vets he didn't bolt out of the basket when we opened the door, he didn't come out like a wild thing all teeth and claws either. In fact he was well behaved throughout.

He hated the vet cleaning his ears out with cotton wool and he wasn't too keen on the drops going in either. He shook his head almost instantly and we had to hold his back foot so he wouldn't scratch. He had a look of ecstasy on his face when the vet was massaging the drops down his ear.

We attempted to do some more drops last night. It took us half an hour to do it and I'm not sure how effective we were at doing it! Again he didn't bite or scratch he was just a bit lively and wriggled a lot in attempts to get away.

Obviously his condition is going to get worse before it gets better as he has been scratching his ears more since the drops went in. His poor flaps were looking quite pink as he has scratched them so much. I will have to keep an eye on these to make sure they don't get worse. I'll have to make him some mittens or get a funnel put on him otherwise.

Mad Moon

2007-09-27T13:44:00.000+01:00

As I am sure you all know the word lunacy is related to the moon due to the behavior displayed by animals (including humans) around the time of the full moon.

As far as I know it was full moon on Wednesday and Marwood was certainly acting strangely. I know cats are reknowned for chasing things that aren't there but he was haring around the house at 200mph and meowing a lot!

Did anyone else notice any mad moon behaviour?

Kitty!

2007-09-11T13:34:00.001+01:00

This is m'kitty, Marwood.

We adopted him on Saturday from Animal Concern. My mum and dad took us to a guy called Kevin's house as Vince and I don't have a car and he lives out in the sticks. It took us a while to find his house as it's down a tiny lane but we finally made it.

I had seen a cat called Matey on the website (linked above) which sounded great so we were there to check him out. In a giant shed Kevin has chinchillas, chipmunks, other various rodents and a whole load of cats. The cats are kept in big cages, some with more than one cat in so they had company. We met Matey and he was very friendly. I had a fuss with another cat who was constantly crying for attention because I felt sorry for her.

We then went to a smaller outside pen where there were three more cages with a few more cats in. We met Rocky, a black cat with a white patch on his chest. He was very friendly too and we were torn then about which cat to get. Then Rocky got over-excited and bit Vince. So Matey it was.

My mum wanted to take home big bruiser Tootsie as he was massive but a gentle giant. My dad was very taken with Kevin's own cat Marmalade, or maybe it was more the other way round! I wonder if seeing all the kitties will make them want to get another cat, but I think my mum still has heart set on a dog much to my dad's dismay - he doesn't like dogs. My mum says that he didn't like cats or children though when she first met and has managed to win him round on both!

We have renamed Matey to Marwood, a character in the file Withnail & I (he is "I"). He is settling in quite well and is getting used to house noises after time in a shed. He still likes to hide in places (I have lost him twice and been worried when I couldn't find him!) but it is only his third full day so I don't expect him to be fully settled.

He follows me around everywhere I go. He's very friendly and quite talkative but won't settle on your lap yet. He's always dashing about the house giving everything in sight a headbutt!

I'm finding having a cat a little more stressful than I'd like, and also it has made me sad for the passing of dear old Anonymous who had to be put down last year as Marwood is my first kitty since then. Vince has said that I seem a lot happier since we got Marwood and I'm sure that as soon as he settles down and adapts to his change, that I adapt to the change too, I'll feel in purrrfect domestic bliss!

The Trials of Being a Woman

2007-09-03T10:15:00.000+01:00

These are before and after photos of a makeover I had on the Benefit counter in House of Fraser in Carlisle in April.

In the first picture I am wearing no makeup at all and I look tired and puffy I think you'll agree. In the second I have been given a subtle amount of makeup, my skin tone is more even and I have eyebrows. About 10 products are on my face if you can believe that!

I don't wear with makeup every day, I can't be bothered with the effort. Today I have some very light cover foundation and a bit of powder on. For a little while after the makeover I did make more of an effort with my appearance, but I think this was just the novelty of having some new makeup products.

As I wear makeup so infrequently the only things that I have to buy regularly are powder and mascara as these are the things I wear the most. I am a bit of a makeup magpie however and keep buying various different colour eyeshadows and am amassing quite a selection!

I think the next product I buy will be a blusher. I have never worn this, except when age 16 I was really ill and grey and needed to get a passport photo so plastered myself in makeup, and also after the makeover. I will have to go back to the makeup counter to have a discussion about the many types of blusher that are now available and how one applies it as I haven't got a clue.

Part of me enjoys the time it takes to "beautify" myself. I enjoy thinking about the colour combinations of eyeshadows and watching the transformation slowly take place. Other times I wonder why there is this tradition of plastering our faces with various creams. When did men stop wearing makeup? Long gone are the days when men made their faces white, added red cheeks, beauty spots and wore powdered wigs. There has been a bit of new romantic revival recently with some men wearing eyeliner (much more of them should in my opinion) but men in makeup hasn't been popular for hundreds of years.

And it's not just makeup of course - men may have to shave their faces and run a bit of gel through their hair but that's about all the maintenance that is required. Women have to get rid of most of their body hair to be "socially acceptable" and you are treated as some sort of freak if you don't. Look at Julia Roberts when she didn't shave her armpits. My hat goes off to Beth Ditto, lead singer of The Gossip who is big and unshaved but is still sexy.

But what I want to know is why is it that women are expected to go to such great lengths to be considered beautiful? Who started this shaving business? Your hair grows of its own occurrence, it is natural and so therefore surely it is there for a reason. Too keep you warm and to show that you have reached sexual maturity. So if it is natural then why get rid of it?

Wild Weekend

2007-08-20T13:14:00.000+01:00

It was a horribly wet weekend in Windermere but our tent, Matilda (so called because it looks like that robot from Robot Wars), kept us dry. Unfortunately I forgot my earplugs so I couldn't stand the sound of the raindrops on the roof. It was like Chinese water torture and I thought I would go mad if I had to listen to it all night. So I crept into the house and slept on the floor of the room where my mum and dad were sleeping. Vince was able to sleep through the noise the git!

Before that though we had a grand party, ate lots of food, drank lots, had some musical enertainment on guitar, bazouki and fiddle (as long as no one was watching) and several people read some poems. I wore a dress that was much admired, bought from Monsoon sale two years ago. I'd just had my hair cut too so I was looking rather hot even if I do say so myself!

The highlight of the evening for me was my dad read a poem. It was the first poem he had ever written. He was inspired by his love of cars, his purchase of a Mini and the band Rammstein. This was an absolutely amazing thing because he kept it a total secret. My dad is a very quiet man, all friends meeting him for the first time are warned not to take it personally if he doesn't speak to them, conversation with him can be difficult. So that he wrote a poem AND then read it out in front of a room full of people was absolutely amazing. Go dad!

Vince also challenged us to write a poem one word at a time going round the room in a circle. This is the resulting poem, suggestions for a title please:

Twas angst words said despaired foresight man
but upside-down frogspawn blow job please
heron standing slithering shit arsehole rogered
salubrious kalapidgeonist* Voldemort Vince

*no idea if that's the right spelling but apparently means you like bums

The next morning we all appeared bleary eyed and ate breakfast on the terrace - croissants, veggie sausages, beans, mushrooms, scrambled egg, and for the meat eaters Ruth (Journal of a Wise Woman) did a hot trade in bacon butties from the back of her camper van Florence, who sadly died shortly afterwards requiring vehicle rescue.

I am still recovering from the lack of sleep, I'm half asleep at work today, but it was a bloody good weekend!

My bass

2007-08-17T12:46:00.000+01:00

This is my bass guitar. It used to be my baby. I hardly play it now. I think this is because practising bass can be a bit boring as you don't play the tune. Playing with a band is more fun but I don't know many songs and need to play from the tab. I am crap at jamming and improvising. This is partly because I don't know my scales.

Maybe I should knock the dust off it and my amp and annoy my neighbours a bit!

sob

2007-08-17T12:41:00.000+01:00

Things are not going well for me. I just received an email to say that the top I ordered through Bravissimo was out of stock and they couldn't order more so I hadn't been charged. If it wasn't in stock then why did it say it was on the fucking website. Arrrgh!

That means that I can pay the postage for the lovely Van Asch dress (see below). Instead I have attempted to buy a different top (above). Let's hope this one is in stock!!

Some good news though

2007-08-16T13:31:00.000+01:00

I bought this top in the Bravissimo sale. I had wanted to buy it previously at full price as it is so pretty but couldn't afford it. It is now £17 plus postage - much more affordable! Hurrah

I want this dress

2007-08-16T13:27:00.001+01:00

As made by ex-Mediaeval Baebe Rachel Van Asch. There is only one made. It is in my size. Yay!

It is £70 :(

www.vanasch.co.uk

Bargain!

2007-08-15T13:58:00.000+01:00

This is the watch I won on eBay today. I bought it to replace the one I lost when camping *sob*

It is made by Fossil and would probably normally cost over £35. I got it for £9.45 including P&P. There was a prettier watch in H Samuels, also by Fossil, which had animated flowers on its face, but this was £49.99. I was tempted but in the end I am pleased with my bargain.

I just wish I hadn't lost my watch in the first place as it was a funky Big Tic which had the time in analogue and the seconds scrolling in the background.