Blogtrotting

Are friends electric?

2010-08-16T16:36:00.000Z

I think I’ve just lost a friend. It’s a really weird feeling. Like anyone who reaches my advanced age, I have lost plenty along the way through just not seeing them, not staying in touch, generally falling out of each other’s orbit. But this is the first time I can remember thinking, in the way you do when a relationship ends, “Right, that’s IT.”
The weird bit about this is going to be that we see each other very regularly as we work together, and that I am known at work (he’s massively senior) to be a friend of his outside work (he recruited me). But after a long spell of “yes, we must catch up properly” and cancelled supper and drinks appointments – I cancelled a couple, he far more - I finally felt something snap. You see, we’d both had Wednesday in our diaries for over a month, and he turned out to have gone on holiday this week, having said last week (when I said jokingly, “Still waiting for that cancellation notice, A”) that he would absolutely not cancel, it was getting ridiculous and he really wanted to see me.
It’s a really uncomfortable feeling. I don’t want to be the needy, high-maintenance one, but I need to balance that with a strong feeling that this is not a reasonable way to behave, and that old friends don’t simply get their secretaries to send a cancellation note in these circumstances.
Part of what is annoying me is that I feel I’ve stuck by him out of loyalty when he’s had an extremely bad press at work. There have been persistent rumours (yes, that sort of rumour) about him and other colleagues, about him behaving in a high-handed manner with others, and I have refused to listen to any gossip. Call me naïve, but even when he left his wife and surfaced months later with a much younger woman, I still didn’t entirely believe that the rumours were (all, at least) true.
And yet, and yet… he’s terrific fun to be with, a good conversationalist, interested in lots of things. I’ll miss him, but I can’t number among my friends someone who isn’t prepared to put the slightest effort into maintaining a friendship. I doubt he’ll miss me, or even notice any change in our relationship, but it will be a change that has already happened with others in his circle, and I’d stake good money that it’ll happen again. As someone said about Mrs Thatcher’s downfall, “if you create a wilderness around you, you are doomed, in the end, to inhabit it”.

A complicated life, well-lived

2010-07-31T22:38:00.001Z

Some days you feel more connected to the world than others, and Thursday was one of them. On my way home at 9.30pm, after a day that had started at 5.30am, I stopped to talk to a dog (normal), and then without thinking batted a balloon back into play for some teenagers playing balloon tennis (not at all normal).

I felt more connected to the world because I had participated in marking someone else’s life: singing at a memorial service for T’s 90-year old father. It was an extraordinary life, and in a small way an extraordinary day.

Arriving bleary-eyed at Waterloo, we emerged from the crowd in ones and twos until about twenty of us were there, clutching cardboard cups of tea and coffee. We don’t all know each other well, but we instinctively stuck together, bound by a common purpose and the exigencies of the Isle of Wight catamaran timetable. We chatted, did crosswords, marked up little bits of music: you could feel the group shift and resettle, slightly nervy.

It’s a long way from London to the Isle of Wight. Not so much in miles, as in difference – flowering hedges and stuccoed houses called Sea View. The church was warm and full of small signs of what was going to happen (“Don’t sit there – those chairs are for the standard-bearers!”). We rehearsed: everyone wanting this to go well for T, but at first woefully flat and unmusical. Finally, like clouds parting or a headache lifting, it started to go better and a palpable feeling of relief spread through the group: it was going to be OK.

A rushed lunch, and then back for the service. Is there any more fraudulent feeling than walking through a guard of honour (naval, in this case) to which one is not entitled? No matter how calmly you try to walk, you’re scuttling apologetically inside. The church full of young and old, and many medals and banners.

And the eulogies, split between his naval career and his family. What were you doing when you were 24? This man was commanding a squadron of the Fleet Air Arm in the Second World War and was referred to, quite naturally, by his men as “The Skipper”. Swinging between affection and admiration (less of the latter for his driving skills, apparently, which owed too much to his abilities as a fighter pilot – scattered laughter from the many there who had clearly experienced it). I am always drawn to people who are described as not suffering fools gladly – and he was thus described by at least three people in the space of an hour and half. Less keen on the interdiction on women with sunglasses on the tops of their heads (and very glad that for once I had remembered to take mine off), and frankly baffled by the hatred of “certain episodes of EastEnders”.

Unexpectedly, it wasn’t T’s speech that had us reaching for the Kleenex, but his older brother’s. Lucky, really, as we had to sing straight after. We sang O For the Wings of a Dove (first time ever, for me, and chosen because T’s father had sung it as a choirboy), Faure’s In Paradisum, Walford Davies’ beautiful God Be In My Head and T’s own setting of the Compline prayer:

Be present, o merciful God, and protect us through the silent hours of this night: so we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this fleeting world may rest upon thy eternal changelessness.

There was a silence when we finished – of surprise? Of peace? Satisfaction? I don’t know. “Should one applaud?” muttered one of the bemedalled crowd as we trooped back to our pew. They did. We should have been applauding them. Two minutes later, after the bidding prayer, the whole church was laughing at the final organ music – A Life on the Ocean Wave (followed by Crown Imperial), as we filed out slowly into the churchyard.

This was to be the big moment – a flypast by the remaining Seafire (naval Spitfire) plane. We were all listening out for the sound of the engine (“It could be, or there could be a lawnmower coming round the bend”, remarked H at one of the false alarms). Then there it was – small, noisy and incredibly moving. The plane flew low over the church, circled and wheeled around, rolled lazily over in the sky, and was gone again, back to its base in the West Country, as the sun suddenly came out from behind the clouds. Everyone was gasping, clapping, holding out their arms as if hoping to touch it. It was like the Second Coming.

We sang again at the reception afterwards, including Over the Rainbow. In my mind, this is linked to the last of the readings at the service, High Flight (http://www.deltaweb.co.uk/spitfire/hiflight.htm) - a world above and beyond the one most of us inhabit.

Back to the ferry – again, we narrowly missed one and had to wait at the terminal –rather a cattle-truck experience. A race on board to get the sundeck seats (success!), and the people sitting on the other side of the gangway were treated to Moon River and Let’s Do It, both of which they (and we) enjoyed. As they applauded, R explained cheerfully, “We’ve just been to a funeral – no, really, we HAVE….”, causing laughter on both sides. On to the train (consternation when we thought that we wouldn’t be able to get any drinks – R the hero of the hour for dashing off to buy a random assortment of mini wine bottles). The train cut through the Hampshire countryside, and it wouldn’t have been at all surprising to see the Seafire again, wheeling above. Instead, as we pulled out of Woking station, we saw a partial rainbow, startling in its intensity. As D said, “Looks like he must have approved”

Back to work

2007-11-15T17:57:00.000Z

I'm back at work now - coming to the end of my first working week, in fact. The main surprise is how unsurprising it all is. Same desk, same colleagues, same routine (different tube station though!). Still, I am "working" from home two days a week for the moment, which means no travel, hurrah. This means that I wander around in my pyjamas with mad hair, thinking about what I need to do for work but not doing very much.

I'm sure I'll get used to it. In the meantime, I love the flat more and more: I can spend days at a time just pottering about in it. There was a frost today on the roof of MY SHED, which made me feel very grown up. And most of my stuff is now where it is going to live, though I am still annoyed with some things for not having an obvious home.

Part of my obsession with STUFF is having the right amount - enough that I can do the stuff I want to, without having so much that it gets in the way. It's difficult to tell if you have the right amount when you have different storage. I sound unhinged, don't I?

Feels like home

2007-10-05T09:37:00.000Z

The aforementioned new flat is finally coming together. The Polish bookshelf-builders have left, taking their Protean gloom with them, and leaving behind a large amount of shelving. Today's task is to put the books on the shelves: I am already starting to play Kim's Game with them, remembering where various clumps of the different sorts (history, fiction etc) are temporarily living. This one could run and run.

But learning how to live in a new space takes time. The old flat was long and thin, rooms opening off a corridor. This one has them clustered around a central large landing. Eventually I suppose I will stop walking into the second bedroom when I want a wee in the middle of the night, but bathrooms are on the left, not the right, as any fule kno.

Guilt Post

2007-09-30T19:00:00.000Z

Argh. Nearly a year gone by. Where? What did I do with it?

Reading back, Bucharest seems an awful long time ago, but since then I have been in London: and since the end of July I have been off work after having approximately 2kg of fibroids and ovarian cysts removed from me. Lovely. Actually, I have been amazed by how much better I feel, and, apparently, look, despite no makeup for most of the last 2 months.

Oh, and I've also bought a flat. An impulse buy, you know. Actually, it's the first one I'd seen that I thought "I WANT to live here", rather than "I COULD live here". Atticky, light, quiet... and if it wasn't so far out in the boonies, absolutely perfect. But after 13 years of living in the middle of town, anywhere less central was always going to be a bit of a problem, so I'm not getting too aerated about the boonie issue.

This post is the equivalent of those "oh god I've been so rubbish, will stay in touch better I swear" emails that you send. I do mean it, for now, but the flesh is weak and the spirit has just got cable telly. We shall see.

Oh, and another thing

2006-11-23T06:54:00.000Z

I drink a lot, and I used to smoke a lot too. But I still think the EU ruling on whether you have to transport your own tobacco and alcohol across borders is likely to be wrong (i.e. it is likely to be that you don't have to).

The reason? Well, obviously the tax regimes in different countries are different, and for good reason - it's generally a national consensus that has been arrived at and is accepted by that country. If it's possible to chip away at the national revenue of a country like the UK, which has lower income taxes and higher purchase taxes on things like tobacco and alcohol, then eventually that regime will be unsustainable and we'll be forced to have a higher basic tax regime.

I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. I just don't like being forced into things. And I know that the tabloid gloating and jubilation about it will drive me beserk.

A funny thing happened on the way to the forum

2006-11-23T06:51:00.000Z

Taxis in Romania, as well as being driven by some of the most – ahem! adventurous drivers in the world, are price-regulated only in the sense that they have to display their costs on their door. These vary from 0.9 to 3 lei/km for the various firms, and then there are enterprising individuals who charge up to 10 lei/km. I presume they don’t get much repeat business.

This morning, the (enterprising individual) driver who has picked me up a couple of times was there again. He is a bit more expensive than the standard ones, but he speaks English and doesn’t drive the wrong way up the tram tracks, which counts for a lot in my book. We had the following exchange:

Me: The notice on your door says 1.5 lei per km, but the meter says 2.5 lei…
Him: It’s the cost of fuel. I must come back here after every trip.
Me: But the notice should say the correct price!
Him: But then if I am not in city centre and someone wants a taxi, I can take them for 1.5 lei.
Me: But the notice on the door should say what you charge everyone. It’s a lot more expensive than the companies.
Him: Look, the guys at the companies they don’t pay no tax. Everything is added up to zero! I go to the tax office every three months and I pay my taxes. Anyway we join the EU in one month. Then everything will be change.

I think I’m just amused at his indignation that I should imply there’s anything remotely dishonest about quoting one price and charging another. The difference to me is approximately £1, paid by expenses.

I was thinking that it was a sign of a newish economy where the free market is still not an embedded concept. But then I thought that probably the only reason I have never had this conversation in Greek (for instance) is because I don’t speak it.

In other news, I had breakfast sitting at the next table to an Italian general in full dress uniform. He was covered in medals. I was longing to ask what they were for, just as I always want to know what the Royal Family have won medals for.

Pee po belly bum drawers

2006-11-18T09:17:00.000Z

For the puerile of mind, Bucharest is a good place to be. I have just walked from the Hilton to my beloved employer's offices: the route included Bulvardul Schitu and Calea Plopi. What's more, it's a beautiful morning, the sun is shining, a friend is arriving this afternoon and I managed to get here without getting lost. Zippety doo dah!

Now, oh yes, I have to do all the work I didn't get round to this week. Bugger. Oh well. I suppose I ought to be grateful that the Guardian talkboards appear to be down at the moment (I'm not, though).

Harrumph Like Humph

2006-11-14T07:05:00.000Z

I'm in a bad mood. No, make that a filthy mood. My back hurts, I'm 1300 miles from home, I'm 40, with what feels like no secure place in the world. I spend my days telling people stuff they don't want to know.

And I know perfectly well that so very much of this is down to the basics. I haven't slept properly: if I had, I know things would look different. I am annoyed with myself for lolling around on my bed drinking gin rather than going to the gym. Acknowledging these things without beating myself up for them is difficult but I'm working on it.

I had a great weekend and part of the bad mood is because I am just so tired. I don't want to face the fact that at the moment, working abroad, a weekend that includes a drunken party on Saturday and a more sedate trip to a recording of I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue on Sunday night is going to leave me feeling shattered.

ISIHAC is my favourite radio programme - the only one I will rearrange things in order to hear. Sample: Humph was talking about the day he was born: "Ireland declared independence, and Mongolia declared war on China. We appreciated the gesture, but really, a card would have done...."

There. I think I may have just cheered myself up enough to look at a spreadsheet.

A Rum Do

2006-11-09T20:40:00.000Z

I hope everyone raised a glass to the departure of Mr Rumsfeld. I don't understand America. I don't understand the gun laws, the insularity, the complacency. And I don't understand how some of the nicest people I know are American but somehow my idea of the place is so different.

Anyway, for the moment, the less bad guys won. Hurrah.

Wherever I lay my rut, that’s my home

2006-11-07T13:38:00.000Z

It’s very easy to fall into a routine, so that although to the outsider your life seems reasonably varied and possibly even glamorous, you are in fact just as trapped by it as any caricature housewife in a worthy novel. I think this is what’s happened to me.

The trouble is (“the trouble is, that I don’t know how to OAR”, as my nephew said to me, eyeing an inflatable dinghy with suspicion) that this way of living (flying somewhere to work, working, coming home) means that the basics take up so much time that you don’t get to do anything else, not unless you are possessed of superhuman organisation and discipline, which I’m not, or capable of managing on very little sleep, ditto. So the pinnacle of my achievements this week is likely to be if I can arrange to get a massage in the hotel, and perhaps even go swimming. Other than that – frankly, just carrying on breathing sometimes feels like an unreasonable imposition.

And I don’t like this. Temperamentally I need to be ticking things off on a list, and although I can do that at work, the things that I need to do behind the scenes are just too dull to count. Three loads of laundry done? Check. Haircut? Check. Catch up on sleep? Check. See what I mean?

Oh, and just to add to the gaiety of nations, BA managed to lose my luggage yesterday. It’s turned up now, but it’s amazing how discombobulated it makes you feel, like a refugee, trailing your emergency supply pack and desperately feeling the lack of your pyjamas.

Not so much a restaurant, more a way of life...

2006-11-04T13:33:00.000Z

I kept meaning to post something about last Wednesday evening, but never got round to it. This is unashamedly recycled from what I posted on the Guardian talkboard:

Last week, we went to a traditional Romanian restaurant for someone's birthday. We were asked to remove jackets at the door as apparently people are much prone to stealing the (antique) cutlery.

The main room is huge and square, with a small slightly sunken dance floor in the middle. The menu was fairly esoteric (two colleagues had bear - one smoked, one sausages) and only in Romanian (a language in which carp is rendered crap, to my delight). When the food arrived, each waiter was carrying a flaming torch in one hand and a serving platter in the other. It was ACE.

Then the Entertainment! Oh joy. The MC was a very large Hyacinth-Bucket-Style lady in a sequinned long dress and, bizarrely, wide-brimmed Ascot-style hat. The first act was the Famous and magnificently-moustached Gipsy Accordionist, Mr Viorel Fundament (click on the link http://www.pixton.org/TomsMusiciansGalleryOne.html for a picture of him - he looks like Borat's stouter, more ingratiating brother). He was followed by some very scantily-clad ladies tangoing and cha-cha-cha-ing with some of the waiters: then a very good saxophonist, then some Gipsy Singing. The coup de grace was an octogenarian singing karaoke Tom Jones hits, with a little help from us when he got to Delilah. To bed very late and fairly drunk, but it was SO worth it.

Doing Wells

2006-11-02T07:06:00.000Z

As the lovely Platypus appears to be valiantly working her way through my meanderings, here’s a new one about last weekend.

I sing in a “depping” choir – one that deputises for various cathedral choirs when the choir school is on holiday. Last weekend it was Wells.

It’s hard to describe why, exactly, it’s such a brilliant experience. Anything you say to describe it makes it sound frightful: you drive miles and miles to a cathedral city, you stay in (and pay for) a succession of dubious hotels, you rehearse endlessly, you finish the weekend exhausted, the singing is always terrifying because it’s never more than four on a part (it was two or three this weekend), the music is difficult, the congregation for evensong is often tiny…..

But, but, but…. You get to see behind the scenes. On Friday we rehearsed in a timber-vaulted room in Vicars’ Close, built in 1348, just (I think) as the Black Death was sweeping across England. On Saturday we were in the tiny Great Hall of the choir school. Between services we were in the Undercroft, a glorious junk room behind the robing room, full of antique sewing machines, obsolete tea urns, boxes marked DIRTY RUFFS and all the paraphernalia of the Church of England.

And we sang a LOT of music. A complete set of Bairstow for one evensong (slushy, but lovely). A Howells Te Deum (fiendishly difficult, a lot of it in the Lydian mode so sounding more like a muezzin than anything Western) and the lovely bouncy Britten Jubilate for Mattins. The Richard Lloyd Hereford service for the other evensong and a Campra mass setting, along with reams of psalms and some jolly good hymns (the last one of Sunday was “Abide with me” which we all enjoyed camping up.

The only thing that was missing was the usual genteel disagreement between our (spectacularly camp) organist and the director over organ registration. This was because, much to Jonathan-the-organist’s disgust, Wells does not have a 32-foot pipe (the one that makes the loudest, deepest, roariest noise) and so he was unable to make his usual efforts to destroy the building with sound.

One of the nicest experiences in my life is an autumn Cathedral evensong, warm and lit in the choir stalls with the chilly, dark bulk of the cathedral all around you, and the Prayer Book words:

Lighten our darkness we beseech thee, o Lord, and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night…..

And the Nunc Dimittus:

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word.
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;
To be a light to lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory of thy people Israel.

I’ve given up praying for the peace of Jerusalem, though. It hasn’t happened yet, and clearly all that praying hasn’t made a blind bit of difference.

Bucharest, autumn morning

2006-10-24T05:46:00.000Z

I love autumn, and today is a particularly lovely day. It's 8.40 here in Bucharest, though my computer is unkindly telling me it's 6.40, and there's a light mist around the trees in the parks. Here on the tenth floor I have a massive view: admittedly more than half of it is hideous Ceaucescu-era apartment blocks, but in this beautiful, occluded, Turneresque light it all looks wonderful.

My computer died over the weekend, but was resuscitated by the geeks in the office yesterday. I felt rather amputated, not being able to get at my emails and the internet. But in a way it was nice. I may end up living as a remote Scottish crofter yet.

In tiresome, spoilt business traveller mode, I have decided that here the Hilton (the old Athenee Palace) is much nicer than the Marriott, where I'm staying this week. It's shabbier, but the staff are simply lovely. When I first checked in there, I made some random comment about what a historic building it was, and the desk clerk came rushing out from behind his desk to show me the salon and ballroom, which are "part of the National Heritage" - fabulous early c20 rooms, gilded and mirrored. It was so lovely - and he was so proud of it and pleased that I was interested. At the Marriott, all you get is an argument about whether you ordered a non smoking room or not. Oh, and the Athenee had Duran Duran staying last week: the Marriott had Real Madrid. I know which I prefer.

What have the Romanians ever done for us?

2006-10-19T05:52:00.000Z

It was the Big Blog thingy for History Matters on Tuesday. This is what I wrote:

Today started for me at with a cheery rendition of “The Entertainer” on my mobile phone alarm clock at 5am UK time, 7am Romanian time, in the beautiful, historic Athenee Palace Hotel in Bucharest. At that time of the morning its beauty and history is entirely immaterial. I had smoked salmon and fruit salad (not together) for breakfast together with the weakest Earl Grey tea in the history of the world. Why do hotels bring you a pot of water and a teabag, rather than tea? I am seized with an insane urge to rush into the kitchen and TEACH THEM TO MAKE TEA.

After the customarily terrifying 20-minute Bucharest taxi ride (happily, today did not include the wrong-way-down-the-tram-tracks technique which makes me shut my eyes), I arrived at work around 8.20, and settled down to write a list. My Romanian team started to trickle in at about 9.00 (do I sound just a little obsessed with time?). We are helping the client to record all their financial processes for the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a peculiarly irritating piece of US legislation. I am the project manager and spend half my life convincing my team that some things are more important than others, and the other half convincing the client’s staff that we are not, in fact, after their jobs.

Romania’s an odd place to work. It’s only 17 years since the fall of Ceaucescu (I have been told that his execution is still shown every Christmas Day on national television. What a change from the Queen’s Speech), and some old habits die hard – owning up to mistakes and delays must be very scary when your parents could have been arrested for either.

My Romanian opposite number seems genuinely astonished whenever I am not physically attacked for saying what I believe to be true: maybe things would be very different if I were not the strange Englishwoman who comes in and bosses everyone around.

I am just about to go into a series of meetings, at which actions will be agreed (and then forgotten): I have to tell one of my team that she is not doing what I asked her to, and that I want her to stop (I loathe these conversations and put them off wherever possible): I will go back to the hotel, swim in the pool, feeling like a polar bear in a zoo as it’s not very big, and then have dinner with a colleague.

I spent the weekend in Istanbul, where I lived 15 years ago: it still felt like a sort of home. In comparison, I don’t feel at all at home in Bucharest, or that I have seen anything of the real city. I shuttle back and forth from office to hotel in a cab, and venture out occasionally to the supermarket (which is, fantastically, called Angst). I mostly meet other people like me, both Romanian and foreign. But the work is tiring and long enough that I accept that I can’t really spend much time getting to know the city. I look at crumbling, beautiful Belle Epoque buildings together with equally crumbling Hideous Epoque concrete blocks, through the window of my taxi. I have become the sort of traveller I despised in Istanbul. And you know what? It may be shallow, but it’s a lot more comfortable.

Down South

2006-04-08T19:13:00.000Z

So I'm home again from Scotland. There must be a folk song that's appropriate, but most of them seem to be about leaving London to rejoin one's ain folk. Well, I'm very glad to be back, and am looking forward to things like being able to go to the cinema with my ain folk on a Tuesday night.

Last week was weird. I drove down from Edinburgh on Monday - a beautiful drive for the first 50 miles or so, along the coast and past Holy Island. After Newcastle, to be honest, it's all very dull and I don't remember much, apart from hailstones. Tuesday and Wednesday, back in the office - Wednesday afternoon, back up to Scotland and out with my team. Thursday, feeling sicker and sicker by the minute, appraisal with the boss, which turned out far better than I had thought. I hadn't had a single piece of positive comment or feedback in six months, so had assumed it would be dreadful, but it was good. Friday - packed up the remainder of the flat, headed back home.

Now I'm back, and I'm exhausted, and very overcome by the amount of stuff I have lying around. I am doing little rushes at the tidying, like a puppy chasing leaves, and then having to lie down.

And I've just been out for lunch with a friend whose wife has left him after 18 months of marriage. My troubles, such as they are, seem very insignificant in comparison.

Chocolate Piano

2006-03-25T22:18:00.000Z

Does exactly what it says on the tin.

What's in a name?

2006-03-25T13:30:00.000Z

I have changed names on the Graun talkboard, twice in a week. I registered a new name, more or less for the hell of it, and didn't remember that I'd used the same details to register as Thea, about eight years ago.

My brother, who also posts, spotted my first new name, which is a childhood reference - well, he would, wouldn't he? He and I check up on each other online from time to time - I found out he'd done something clever from reading his posts (he doesn't blow his own trumpet much) and he was about to call me when I rang him, because he hadn't seen any posts from me in 4 days and was worried that I'd been eaten by an Alsatian. The second one - I think I've told him what it is. We shall see.

It's odd, though. After so long, Thea is part of me. A real life friend said that my online persona was calmer and less combative (I'm paraphrasing here) than my real life self. So here's a chance to be more joined up (or even less so). Already, Helen is different from Thea - it's a sort of licence to be cheekier and naughtier.

When I was little I was desperate, in rapid succession, to be called Caroline, Emily and Pippa. I wonder what I would have been like if I had?

Lord Gym

2006-03-17T09:56:00.000Z

And another thing. As this seems to be functioning as my online diary, I should record that I bought ten sessions of personal training at the gym as a sort-of birthday present. I can't decide if I'm enjoying it, but I like Alex, my trainer, very much - a 25-year-old rugby player with arms the size of tractors, beautiful shoulders (it's nice to have something to look at while you're being tortured) and a quiet sense of humour.

I'm alarmed by how much he has contradicted a lot of the advice I have been given about how not to further knacker my back and knees, but as I'm neither dead nor crippled yet, he may have a point, even if it does involve bending with a straight back holding a 25kg bar. He talks about "restoring normal function" as something that I can do, which nobody (doctors, chiropractors, osteopaths, physiotherapists, pilates teacher) has ever done before. Oddly, this raised my hackles - I don't know why. There is obviously a part of me that likes my clicking, creaking, aching joints as they are and would be perturbed to have "normal function" back again (after 21 years). Truly, people are very odd, and I include myself in that. Is uniqueness, even in the degree of individual joint-buggeration, so very desirable?

(Having said this, I can still make him blench by threatening to make him hold my knee while I move it through its full range. It feels/sounds like shaking muesli in a box.)

Water, water everywhere

2006-03-16T10:55:00.000Z

I am trying, in a sneaky and unannounced way, not to drink for a month. I have been thinking for ages that I ought to try. I am now halfway through, and thinking that I actually will make it. The only people I have told I’m doing it have been too drunk to remember that I said it.

It’s not that difficult, really. It’s just dull. I have been out on several boozy evenings in the last couple of weeks, and have got used to clutching my fizzy water. And another thing that I have to face up to is that I have used the excuse not to do this before that “everyone will notice” (though I’m not sure exactly what is such a problem about that, come to think of it). In fact, on the occasions I’ve been out, nobody has noticed. Or commented. I have had the car with me, which creates a ready-made excuse, but nobody has noticed anyway – until the end of the evening when you are very popular as you can drive everyone home.

But I have to say that I do miss wine. I miss the palaver of it, the corkscrews and choosing a bottle, and I miss the taste, and the feeling. I like the feeling of being slightly drunk. Is that a problem?

Just what we all need

2006-03-12T11:39:00.000Z

This is a test post to see if I am really too stupid to put pictures on my blog. It's from Kyrenia, where we went on holiday in October.

Another country

2006-03-12T00:12:00.000Z

I get easily obsessed with things from the past. When I was a child growing up in Staffordshire, we used to go past the ruined Ranton Abbey on our way to school, and I was scared and excited every time I saw the ivy-coated tower above the trees.

http://www.thornber.net/staffs/html/ranton.html

A few years back, it was the last Jewish tailor's shop in Petticoat Lane, the wooden interior with the pinstriped suitings standing out in old-fashioned sobriety against the pound shops and sari fabric shops. It's gone now, but it led me to the book "Konin" by Theo Richmond, about a vanished shtetl in Poland, and I suppose, eventually, to the Jewish music that I did last year at Dartington.

My latest find is rather posher than this. I started driving a different route to work after one too many close encounters of the articulated lorry kind on the M8, and after a bit noticed that there was a funny looking tower thing set back from the road, and a very ornamental gateway. It turns out that they are all that's left of the old house of the Duke of Lauderdale, Hatton House. Built in 1680ish (records disagree), it was dynamited in the Fifties.

After a while of driving past it every morning, in the end I had to drive along the track that leads off the road and see what was there. All that remains is two ornamental towers with a wall running between them, enclosing an ornamental terrace that was originally in front of the house. And where the house used to stand? A very ugly 1950s farmhouse and outbuildings. It's strange to think that nearly 300 years of living, and very grand living at that, has left so little trace. There: my very own Brideshead moment.

nale.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/. ../hattonhouse.html

Nothing beats live theatre, dahling

2006-03-11T18:21:00.000Z

I've just been to the theatre on my own (to see Measure for Measure at the National). It was good, both the production and the experience. I don't think I've ever done that before, but all my nearby friends were busy and it was a last minute decision. It felt very.... grown up.

It's a tricky, tricksy play and it's hard to like the heroine, who refuses to exchange her virginity for her brother's life. Maybe the idea would have been less unpalatable, or at least slightly more believable, in the seventeenth century (though if you read accounts of the time, a woman's "honour" was a currency then as now, though the rate of exchange was perhaps more than a few Bacardi Breezers).

In other news, what the FUCK is happening in America, with states banning abortion "even for victims of rape and incest"? Mind you, there are rumblings here - a woman who has been given an award for improving the way that women in need of an abortion are treated in her hospital has also been branded a baby murderer and had her home address posted on the internet. Women don't go around having abortions for fun. If you want to make a difference, work to improve sex education and access to contraception. Fuckwits. But worrying, dangerous fuckwits.

Sign language

2006-03-06T11:40:00.000Z

I've always loved defacements of posters and official notices, provided they have an element of wit (there's something rather creepy about the habit of sticking chewing gum over the eyes of poster models on the Tube escalators - modern iconoclasm?).

Example: The lifts at Earl's Court have a sign saying "Obstructing the doors causes delay and may be dangerous". For as long as I can remember (and I've been living near there for 11 years), they have been regularly altered to read "Obstruct the doors, cause delay and be dangerous". This makes me smile every time I see it.

Similarly, a poster warning about abandoned luggage ("there's two choices for what you can do about it") with a picture of a dangerous-looking rucksack, has been amended to add the helpful advice "Kick it". Now that I am a sensible, responsible member of society, with a job and all that, I like to see other people keeping the 14-year-old flag flying.

But then, how to account for the very official signs on the bollards by Leicester Square, which say solemnly "NO DIGGING", with a phone number? Anyone who is contemplating digging them up is either a) in a JCB and not likely to be reading notices pinned to the bollards themselves, or b) too drunk to read, or care.

Fortitude

2006-03-05T17:56:00.000Z

Oh, hello blog: I thought I'd lost you - incipient senility leading to forgetting username, and all that.

I turned forty a couple of weeks ago. It was brilliant - ten friends came to Edinburgh, we ate and drank obscene amounts, we walked up Arthur's Seat, all that sort of thing. It was odd to have people with me: I have got used to Edinburgh being largely a solitary pleasure.

I leave this project on 31 March to return to London, with distinctly mixed feelings. I haven't enjoyed the work, and have had one of the worst colleague experiences of my life, but I've loved the place itself. It's felt rather like living in Istanbul did: a discrete, glittering experience quite unconnected with everyday life.

But just now, being forty feels horrible. I feel old, miserable and tired. I rushed around like a mad thing yesterday and it has completely destroyed me today - I have had to keep going back to bed for little naps, like some Victorian invalid heroine.

This morning, I realised that my usual makeup was making my face look like a powdered, idiotic travesty of a pantomime dame. I scrubbed it all off and did something different, and added to my list of things to do "when I'm back in London" - get a makeup lesson.

That list currently includes:

Go to the dentist and get a checkup and two back fillings replaced:
Investigate tooth whitening:
Get the boot light on the car mended:
Sort out pension arrangements:
Buy flat:
Get job that requires rather less travelling about.

And on the seventh day, I shall rest.

Very muted wedding bells

2005-12-17T08:51:00.000Z

A funny thing happened on the way to the Forum - well, the Royal Mile, last week. My ma and I were toiling up a rather chichi road in Edinburgh when a young man in a suit leapt out at us and asked if we had ten minutes to spare. We were about to say no, thinking it was for a survey, when he said "To witness a wedding".

So in we went. The couple seemed nice: the bride was wearing a slightly sparklier version of office clothes and shaking like a leaf: the registrar did her bit. It was a bit longer than ten minutes, but it was a very odd experience and I wouldn't have missed it for the world. For that short period of time, their lives were on hold until someone came along who was prepared to play this crucial, marginal role in their lives. We had to sign their marriage certificate with our addresses, but I have no idea where they were from (not Scottish, that's all I can say with certainty).

But I keep thinking: I wonder why they decided to do it that way? With no friends or family there at all? Was there some huge conflict in the background? It's not a question that has arisen for me, but I don't think if it did that I would ever want the people I like not to be there. Whatever the reason, they were obviously very happy. Tony and Julia, wherever, whoever you are, I wish you well.

Rien

2005-12-06T08:59:00.000Z

as Louis XVI wrote on the day of the storming of the Bastille. Rien, in fact, encompasses:

someone I was growing increasingly fond of going off to Forrin for three years. I told him more or less how I felt, as clearly as you can after about 2 bottles of wine, and he said that he wished I'd said all this two years ago. It doesn't feel great, but we are still in contact, so who knows.

me shopping a colleague for being increasingly uncommunicative and uncooperative, to the point of completely undermining me in front of our clients.

a weekend in Edinburgh on my own, which I enjoyed enormously. If hermitages could be kitted out with sofas and well-stocked bookshelves, I'd sign up like a shot.

I made a half-hearted attempt to stop taking Prozac. Well, it was actually down to incompetence and not getting to the doctor's for fresh stocks. Now I have an appointment for tomorrow and have resigned myself to the fact that when there are about 3 hours of daylight if you're lucky, and you are very much affected by the amount of daylight you see, it's not a good time to come off the mad pills.

I saw a card which I bought for a good friend - one of the Edward Monkton ones. It said "We must take our tablets or we will GO MAD". When I got home that day, my best friend gave me a present. It was a mug with exactly the same thing on it. This happens to us so often (my BF and me) that it's a running joke with our other friends, who claim we only have one brain between us.

Off to the Varsity match now, to ogle the thighs of 22 year olds and wonder where my youth went (flings self melodramatically from room).

Blow, winds and crack your cheeks

2005-11-11T23:33:00.000Z

I got back from Scotland, where it is very very windy. Not a nice journey. I'm getting better at this travelling light stuff, but then it's very easy when you don't have to think about makeup or knickers or stuff like that. My only constants are my electric toothbrush and my mad pills, and you could fit those into a handbag. Obviously I travel with a large holdall full of jumpers, just for the hell of it. My BF came round and we have just sat and gossiped and listened to music - all unplanned, it's just that a works do was in the vicinity.

I have started to worry a bit about how shallow I am. Incident 1: listening to the Today programme, the second item on the news bulletin started "Jordan has issued a statement of condemnation..." "Bloody HELL!" I thought, "You can't even turn on radio 4 without being assaulted with b-list celebrity culture!". Unfortunately for me, the item continued...." of Al-Qaeda's claims to be behind the bombings in Amman yesterday".

Incident 2 - well, not an incident, just a nice evening wandering round the shops. It's not so much buying things, or spending money, as buying things that you really like. All the stuff I bought was very dull (two bath towels, anyone?) but I really like it. And my current executive flat is very boring so any stuff I add to it is good. Bring on the leopardskin throws!

Going Forth, not multiplying

2005-11-09T13:05:00.000Z

I had a perfect moment this morning (and about 1000 shitty ones yesterday, but let it pass). I was driving over the Forth Road bridge in brilliant sunshine, with the countryside and the Firth spread out below and in front of me, and it felt like the best thing ever.

So what if I was going to a meeting to discuss finances that I don't fully understand? The hills were singing.

And now, the news.

2005-11-05T11:31:00.000Z

Well, I've been gadding about. Glastonbury two weekends ago (it feels like a lot more), which was lovely - a beautiful house, where we were left to our own devices, clearly someone's home, with books everywhere. I looked at a lot of them and thought "I used to have that" - mostly about feminist theory. I don't know how I feel about not having them any more. I'd like to think that I have internalised them, but maybe I am just irredeemably frivolous these days? Or too old and tired to care any more. I loved Glastonbury, but unlike some of our group didn't think "Oh, I want to live here". I'd just like all of its second hand bookshops to be teleported to Earls Court, please. I think between us we came back with about thirty more books than we went with.

Then last weekend was singing in York Minster, with a technically very good but not particularly friendly choir. I have sort of inveigled a friend and my mother into it too, so we hung around together. Ma is very crumbly and I have to run around behind the scenes (carrying cushions, sticks, anything heavy) for her to be able to do things - I have a sneaking suspicion that she's aware of this but won't admit it because it's an admission of weakness. So I end up, always, in a state of exasperated, enraged love and affection - but I suppose I wouldn't have it any other way.

York was my cup of tea much more than Glasto. And with two branches of Betty's of Harrogate, what's not to like? I now have a bag of Fat Rascals in my freezer (very fruity scone things - yum!). I think because it was less earnest. And with fewer shops full of witches and crystals. The Minster was being lit by a French son et lumiere (well, lumiere anyway) man - the central section of the west front was striped in different colours, with the tracery of the west window picked out in pink, and the side towers constantly changing colour. I love stuff like that - ephemeral, intended to enchant, and for no other purpose. It's like makeup for buildings.

Finally, I am back in my London flat. I was a bit worried on the way home that my sojourn in my swanky Edinburgh pad would have spoilt me and that the lack of central heating and general tattiness would irritate me more than usual - thankfully they don't - I went around touching and patting things and just enjoying all my Stuff. And my bed is much better here. Why does anyone buy a six foot long bed? For anyone over about five foot six who doesn't stay entirely motionless when asleep it is too short. Here endeth the lesson.

Judith Chalmers' searing condemnation...

2005-10-16T08:29:00.000Z

Well, here I am, back from my holiday. It was lovely, mostly. I went with my best friend; we've known each other for nearly twenty years, so we just chat and bicker and gossip constantly. It was a great place for a holiday, and I'm really glad to have gone now - in another couple of years, I reckon vast tracts will be covered in nasty concrete villas. We made up some new laws which we plan to suggest to the Minister for Tourism - the first one is "No more new building to be started until all the half-finished ones are finished, plumbed and wired". That should sort it.

But it's a beautiful place, with lots of ruined castles, beautiful scenery, monasteries in remote valleys, that sort of thing. I have a vast number of pictures of random mountains and ruins (and cats). It was great. Now, where next?

No Redeeming Features

2005-09-25T08:21:00.000Z

I love my nephews. I'm a simple soul really - I love my family. So it was rather a shock to hear my sister-in-law say "I've really had enough of him, I have no patience for him, he has NO redeeming features" about the elder of the two, yesterday. He is five. He's just broken his arm, so probably a bit grouchy because of that. He's a bit bolshy sometimes, but nothing compared to most children I've encountered (I have been a nanny, a babysitter, and Oldest Cousin at any family gathering for most of my life). Obviously, I'm biased. But I still think that's a harsh thing to say. A few minutes later she was saying that she hadn't meant it at all, but I can't quite put it to bed. Should I say something to her or not? I know I almost certainly won't (and I do love her too), but it upsets me - particularly that she seems to favour his little brother so very much. I have a secret hope that the small one will turn out to be much more of a tearaway than the older one, just so she realises that he's actually a naturally fairly good chap.

In other news, I am off on holiday to Northern Cyprus tomorrow. I will do my very best not to cause a diplomatic incident but I can't guarantee it. Of course I am full of good resolutions that I will go swimming every day, do proper stretches every morning, not drink too much and read lots of improving books. We shall see.

Past Imperfect: Tense

2005-09-21T20:39:00.000Z

"So do you ever wish you'd had children, then?" An innocuous enough question, from a nice woman in my team, after we had just discovered that we are pretty much the same age and she has a fourteen-year-old daughter.

Useless to lecture her on the changing demographics of motherhood: useless to do anything, really, but answer honestly that, yes, I often do, but that it hasn't happened so far and seems unlikely to in the near future - and if it's not in the near future, it's probably never.

Even though to the outside world it might not look like it, to me in some ways it feels like it's because I have never been enough - pretty enough, nice enough, compliant enough. My rational self knows that this is rubbish: the rational self, however, doesn't get much of a look-in when you are ambushed by something this simple.

So I talked on about how much I was used to getting my own way, and how difficult it was to accommodate the needs of another adult, let alone a baby. But it wasn't a conversation I enjoyed. I could hear myself creating my persona afresh: it was never the right time, there are compensations, I have choices my mother never had.

But it's like Schroedinger's Cat. The only way you can ever prove those freedoms were worth having is by killing them dead. And if you never do, you have to accept that a significant part of the human race will pity you, which is pretty unbearable.

Shallow as I am, I would just like to record that though any emotion detected here is entirely genuine, I am very pleased with the title of this post. And quite possibly about to commit mass murder of the Japanese businessmen shouting and stamping up and down the corridor outside my hotel room.

Inciting Hatred

2005-09-14T21:42:00.000Z

Yesterday, I went out for a meal with colleagues. We are all working away from home, staying in hotels (quite posh hotels) in Edinburgh, and we met up in the Cambridge Bar in Young Street (very nice, thoroughly recommend it, even though it's full of awful idiots like me - see below).

I had a sort of out-of-body experience when I could hear our conversation from the point of view of someone overhearing us, and it was horribly sobering. We sounded like utter, utter twats: what airmiles scheme are you enrolled in, what hotel loyalty cards do you have, which of the posh hotels here is the best ("well, the Balmoral has the most comfortable beds, and the Sheraton the best gym and pool, and the Hilton the nicest staff...."), etc etc. We sounded spoilt, tiresome, and expecting an awful lot out of life.

But then, this morning, wearily packing my case to change hotels (fully booked in the one we are supposed to use on this project today and tomorrow), I was thinking that actually, yes, it does require quite a lot of nice stuff to make up for the only being at home at weekends stuff. That John Betjeman poem was going round my head:

From the geyser ventilators
Autumn winds are blowing down
On a thousand business women
Having baths in Camden Town.

Waste pipes chuckle into runnels,
Steam’s escaping here and there,
Morning trains through Camden cutting
Shake the Crescent and the Square.

Early nip of changeful autumn,
Dahlias glimpsed through garden doors,
At the back precarious bathrooms
Jutting out from upper floors;

And behind their frail partitions
Business women lie and soak,
Seeing through the draughty skylight
Flying clouds and railway smoke.

Rest you there, poor unbelov’d ones,
Lap your loneliness in heat.
All too soon the tiny breakfast,
Trolley-bus and windy street!

Harsh, but fair, I suppose. Though thinking of myself as a business woman does make me giggle, rather. And my breakfasts are anything but tiny.

Bouquets at Dawn

2005-09-11T12:39:00.000Z

Just got back from a wedding. It was nice, the bride looked good, etc etc etc. But DULL! Why are other people's friends (or in particular, other people's friends' other halves) so arse-achingly boring? And do I seem that dull to them? I bloody hope not.

One thing that struck me was how strong the imprint of the traditional wedding is. This one was between a Dutch Protestant and a black South African adopted into a British liberal Jewish family, so for the avoidance of argument there was no religion involved, but it was still all white tulle and lilies and bridesmaids and the bride's father bringing her down the aisle and stuff like that. And the civil wedding service still uses some pretty archaic prayer-book style words. I suppose if you don't want a ChurchLite wedding, you need to get some druid to do it on a hilltop at dawn or something.

I have got progressively calmer about the fact that I may well never get hitched (particularly after meeting other people's friends' other halves and realising afresh how many truly dire people there are around), but for me, when my father died and I thought that he would never haul me down the aisle and hand me over, it made me think about whether I would really want that anyway. I say no, of course not: but I bet a lot of the brides who end up being given away by daddy would have said that too. It is very odd how much of a traditionalist vein it seems to bring out in even the most non-traditional people.

The only wedding I remember actively enjoying and thinking was truly original was one that incorporated a pub quiz in between the service and the reception, with the bride as questionmaster and the groom and best man as the markers. It was brilliant fun.

The business traveller speaks

2005-09-08T20:53:00.000Z

I had an almost entirely unjustified hissy fit this morning. The hotel I was staying in very nicely upgraded me yesterday evening to an enormous suite - big enough to fit in a cocktail party of about 150 people in 2 rooms, I reckon (plus a full-blown orgy in the enormous bed). Sadly, it was just me, for one night only, strewing my remarkably small number of possessions around with abandon.

Then, this morning, they told me it would cost me more than I'd thought when I booked it. They said it was the "de luxe" rate and that I HAD been told. I said I hadn't. They said that one of the most experienced receptionists had booked it and of course she'd told me. I said she hadn't. In the end, the customer was right, but boy, did they make me feel pathetic.

Of course, to me personally, it doesn't (or rather shouldn't) matter at all, as it's business travel on expenses. But I hate the way that just because you aren't paying for it yourself you are suddenly not supposed to notice or care how much things cost, and are made to feel rather grubby for doing so. It so happens that the client I'm working for is one whom, in an abstract sense, I loathe and disapprove of, and so really I should be trying to spend as much on expenses as I could. It's just that the £6 for a litre of mineral water, the £13 for a nasty pretend-smart salad, really, really annoys me, because it is greedy and not value for money.

I ended up saying "Don't patronise me by pretending that your different rates actually mean anything, other than the maximum amount you think you can screw out of each customer...." Oh well. I don't suppose that hotel will ever upgrade me again.

Otherwise, I was remarkably cheery. I love love LOVE it in aeroplanes when you fly above the clouds and magically it's sunny there (especially evening or early morning sun), even though pissing down on the ground. I wish Donne or Shakespeare could have seen that: I'd love to read what they made of it. And I managed to time it so I was listening to Monty Python's Galaxy Song as we took off, which made me laugh: "The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding/In all of the directions it can whizz/As fast as it can go/The speed of light you know/Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is....."

Bonny Prince Thea

2005-09-03T12:05:00.000Z

Normal, sloppy and intermittent service has been resumed on this blog. For once, though, I have an excuse. I have been exiled to Scotland for work, which I am wondering whether I will end up liking very much (probably not, but I am trying to be positive).

With a bit of luck, I will be able to get a flat in Edinburgh in a couple of weeks, and then I can have friends to stay at weekends if I don't feel like the long slog down to London from Edinburgh. And Edinburgh itself is such a beautiful city (what a pity I'm working on an industrial estate outside Livingston....). Yesterday when I got up the sun was shining over the Firth of Forth and I could see it from my hotel - it was wonderful.

The getting up at five on Mondays is going to be a bit of a bugger, though. And the ultra-organisation needed to have any sort of social life (I have just arranged to have lunch with someone six weeks from now) is utterly antipathetic - I like to have a bit of give in my social arrangements. Oh well. It is, after all, what I get paid for. I just wish I could greet it with enthusiasm rather than resignation.

The Stuff Conundrum

2005-08-23T13:17:00.000Z

Excess baggage - I have been whimpering vaguely about this here for some time. So it's time to clear out some of it.

I am fanatical about getting rid of stuff. Really. I've got more extreme over the last year or so, ever since a close (very rich) friend moved to a minimalist flat which she had had gutted and rebuilt at enormous expense of money and mental effort, taking her piles of spinster junk with her. We all helped her unpack, and each of us found something that made us tear our hair out: for R, it was the box full of broken kitchen equipment: for A, the box full of empty plastic bags: for J, the carrier bag full of copper coins: for me, the plant pot filled with real earth with plastic flowers stuck in it, looking like something from Poundland (and the Gary Barlow tape that she refused to bin).

Eight months on, she has almost finished unpacking. I think once she's found a home for the shoeboxes full of newpaper cuttings and the files of university notes (we graduated in 1988) then it'll probably be sorted. Except that in this big lovely flat, which was designed to have masses of storage space, she has no room. Every cupboard, every drawer, every shelf is crammed with stuff. The suitcases in the cupboards are full of other bags. The makeup bags that you get with gifts-with-purchase are stuffed full of bottles of lotions and potions.

My reaction to the helping-unpack saga was to come back to my own, far more modest flat, and go through it hunting down extraaneous junk until two in the morning. I had five binbags full of stuff to throw away or give to Oxfam (this is on top of a regular chuck-out session). I realise that in its way that this is just as unhinged as hoarding, but it's incredibly satisfying. It's partly a privacy thing - if I am constantly reviewing what I have, then I am in control of what my possessions say about me. It gives me a (probably illusory) sense of control over my life: it also means that I can usually find things (though the corollary to that is that I get very freaked by not being able to find things). My ex-boyf. used to say in tones of wonder, "I love the way the iron is always in the same place!" as though this were some miracle unattainable by normal human beings. Is it?

I'd better go now. I haven't sorted out my makeup in - ooh, weeks, it must be.

Oom Pa Pa

2005-08-21T09:24:00.000Z

I've just got back from a week in Devon at a music summer school. It was very scary at first, because:

1. I'd never been before and was sure everyone else would be miles better than me.

2. It was a 220 mile drive from home so I couldn't just scuttle back easily if it was a disaster.

3. I was going on my own and worried that everyone else would take all their mates with them.

In the event, it was brilliant. There were a few iffy moments but the chance to spend most of a week making and listening to music was fantastic. If I'd wanted to (or had the energy) I could have gone to three concerts every day. In the end, I did:

Big Choir - we did the Chichester Psalms and an amazing, obscure piece called Sephardic Passion by a chap called Noam Sheriff. It was commissioned in 1992 by Placido Domingo to mark the 500th anniversary of the expulsion of the Jews from Toledo. There is a long, incredibly difficult mezzo-soprano solo in the middle of it which sounds like gypsy singing - we didn't hear it till the final rehearsal when a tiny Italian woman stood up in the middle of the choir and delivered it - it was stunning - so powerful.

Jewish traditional music course - with a group called the Burning Bush. We learnt folk songs and ballads and sang with the klezmer orchestra. Very disorganised, but great fun and interesting. I am in love with their clarinettist, who is sadly a. 10 years younger than me, and b. already married, with 3 lovely children (they were staying in the same house as me). If you ever get a chance to hear him (Ben Harlan), take it!

Voice workshop - I hated this but it was good for me. I ended up singing for a very classy voice coach, very badly indeed, but it has made me realise I need to find a teacher here in London (which means finding a new job where I don't have to travel, probably).

Jazz - listening to and singing various things, both in concerts and at the place where I was staying, as one of the other people there was a jazz pianist. Mack the Knife is easier with a bottle of wine in you!

Concerts - the Israel piano trio, Rafael Wallfisch, chamber groups.... all in a medieval hall.....

It was one of the most physically beautiful places I've ever been too - a medieval manor with fantastic gardens including a tiltyard. On Friday, there was a full moon, and I took a breather from the Viennese waltzes that were the late evening entertainment, and went and sat in the gardens in the moonlight. Truly stunning.

I've put a link in case after this gushathon anyone wants to know more.

The head stuff that came out of this was that I became profoundly grateful that I was not good enough at music to have the choice to go professional. This was something troubling one of the nicest (and most talented) people I met there - she had been to sing with a choir in the Vatican and had afterwards been approached by a legendary singing teacher who offered to take her as a pupil - this would mean abandoning plans to become a barrister and going off to Rome for at least a year. It may sound perverse, but I am so bad at decisions that I am very glad not to have to make one like that. I love music, and making music in particular, but I am happy for it to stay as a source of pleasure, not revenue.

And another thing.....

2005-08-02T23:34:00.000Z

Oh yes, and I still intend to write about excess baggage. I am piling up a great quantity of things to say. I should probably take them to Oxfam.

Hounded by Trolls

2005-08-02T23:23:00.000Z

Things have been strange in a dull kind of way recently. Or maybe dull in a strange kind of way. I went singing in Devon, which was lovely, and to stay with a friend. She has an idyllic house in the deep country, two lovely children, a nice husband.... but this time round I had the honesty to admit to myself that her life would bore me stiff. So that was good. I always thought I wanted children, domesticity, the whole nine yards: I'm not saying I don't, just that if it doesn't happen, it won't be the catastrophe I used to think it was.

Work has been vile. Very busy, but with very little to show for it. I am working for a madman, and with several Norwegians. I had a six and a half hour conference call yesterday, during which at one point the Norwegians started singing a folk song. I am doing my best to think of myself as an unwitting participant in some management consultancy version of Big Brother: certainly, the pointless tasks and the yoking together of mutually antipathetic personalities is a big feature of my weekday life at the moment.

The strange thing is that I am writing a proposal. I have terrible trouble with writing stuff for work - none at all with this sort of stream of consciousness nonsense. I can witter on for hours in an email or on MSN (if your firewall bans it, try WebMessenger by the way - works for me) in a relatively literate and joined-up way. But I cannot write the sort of stuff we are supposed to write in proposals. I have just spent about four hours agonising about some total BALLS about change management: quite ridiculous. I don't care in the slightest about it. What I do care about, I am ashamed to say, is people who I think are less clever than me being able to read what I write and pick holes in it. That's why this sort of writing is OK and the proposal sort isn't. Well, it's part of it, anyway. There's also my sneaking conviction that this sort of writing is actually more worthwhile than going on about leveraging synergies.

Allons, enfants de la patrie

2005-07-14T12:14:00.000Z

Happy Bastille Day. Rather than storming barricades and releasing the unjustly oppressed, I will be spending it writing stuff that I don't really understand about fixed assets. I wish someone would come and rescue me.

In other news: having eaten cake every day for about the last two weeks, and feeling extremely blubbery, I have had one of my flashes of This Must Stop and have eaten frugally (so far). I wonder how one makes these flashes more long-lasting, or, indeed, permanent?

I have so much to say about food, eating, weight and all that that I'm not sure I dare even start. Certainly not with my fixed asset reconstruction calling me. Another time, maybe.

This is to remind me that excess baggage - of all sorts - is another thing that I wanted to ramble about.

The War Against Cake

2005-07-08T14:01:00.000Z

There's hardly anyone in the office today: there are about 10 people here on a floor designed for 300. You know it's been a bad day when your employer pays for your cake - I've just been down to the teashop and my money was waved away. Now I'm just regretting I didn't get the chocolate buttons too.

How very British. Fighting terrorism by donating cake and Earl Grey.

Scary Day

2005-07-07T18:58:00.000Z

It was an ordinary day today, at the start. I got up early and went to the gym, noting vaguely on the tube report board that there were delays on the Northern Line. Got to the office just after half-nine, and registered, equally vaguely, that there seemed to be a lot of desks for me to choose from.

Then the questions: "How did you get in? Did you get stuck in the tube?" At this point we all thought it was a power surge still. I work in a building with approximately 3,500 Type A personalities, so we all had news websites open and were refreshing them and shouting newsflashes to each other. The news got steadily worse: several tubes affected, not all on the same line - doesn't sound like a power surge to me. We only really understood when we started to hear about the bus being blown up. I texted my best friend (who was waiting for a bus) to tell her to go home.

Then people started to phone their "loved ones" (vile, vile phrase). And some people found they couldn't get through. Then all the phones in the office stopped working. Then all the mobile networks switched to emergency calls only, or were just so overloaded that you couldn't phone anyone. Then our internet servers went down, and our intranet messaging service stopped, and that makes you realise how completely reliant on technology you have become. And, in my case, that you are sitting on the fifth floor of a bastion of capitalism directly above a mainline railway station. That's when it got really horrible, when you got a sense of just how vulnerable and expendable you are.

Thirty-seven people are confirmed dead as I write this. I (obviously) am not one of them. Nor do I know anyone who has been injured or killed, as far as I know. So I am lucky. But I'm also scared.

BUT - as our email servers started working again, I was bombarded with emails from friends asking me to confirm that I was OK. It was a confirmation to me of the fact that my cybervillage is as real, and as full of lovely people, as my physical life.

So this is a brain dump. I don't know how I feel. Glad that I and my circle are not hurt, desperately sorry for those who are, and totally, totally uncomprehending of anyone who can think that this is ever an appropriate thing to do. And yet... and yet.... in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in all sorts of places that I know nothing of (I spent most of my geography lessons outside the classroom as a punishment for drawing moustaches on the Masai women in our textbook) this sort of thing happens every day. And I can't see how it will ever stop.

This is possibly the most self-obsessed post I have written, since, ooh, the last one. What the hell. It's my blog and I'll wibble if I want to.

Friend-adultery

2005-06-28T14:00:00.000Z

Goodness me, how the days whizz past without me updating this. I have been musing idly on the reasons, and the most significant ones are:

1. I lead a very boring life on the whole
2. I am very lazy
3. Over the last couple of months, I have started to get a bit guilty about the time I spend on the internet and with my lovely internet friends, and whether it makes me neglect my old, real life friends. I hope not. But just sometimes, if I am owning up to having spent time with the internet ones, I feel distinctly guilty if I haven't also spent a lot of time with the others. What with that and needing to spend huge tracts of time on my own, I don't know how I ever manage to squeeze in any work, and I certainly can't think where I'd fit in a relationship (Stop sniggering, you at the back).

I'm very blessed, in that I have a group of close friends. We have known each other for 20 years this year, and most of us still live within a couple of miles of each other. I see at least one, usually more, of them at least once a week, and if we haven't met up for a couple of weeks en masse, someone will suggest a meal out or a trip to the cinema or something. I have this niggling feeling that I haven't been pulling my weight recently in the matter of organising things, or, indeed, putting in the hours. Hmmm. I think most people underestimate how time-consuming it is to maintain a really good friendship.

I expect the Germans have a big long word for it. They do for most things.

The elixir of youth

2005-06-16T09:27:00.000Z

I had a lovely evening last night. Sitting with friends drinking Pimms in a beautiful place and laughing and laughing. I got back and caught sight of myself in the mirror and I was startled how much more energetic and alive I looked than I often do. Ergo, sitting drinking Pimms with friends is better than any moisturiser.

I pass this tip on for the benefit of humanity. See you at happy hour.

Beauty Schmooty

2005-06-14T21:03:00.000Z

I'm reading a book about Diana Mosley at the moment, and musing vaguely on how different her life would have been if she had been born plain.

Being born beautiful, as she undoubtedly was, is no more worthy of any particular reaction than being born clever. But somehow, it's more acceptable to be jealous of beauty than of brains. Or maybe it's just that people are more inclined to be content with their level of brains. Or it's easier to screw people up about beauty because there's more you can do to fix it.

I'm not a particularly vain person (I think) but I find it rather alarming how much stuff I carry around with me to make me look - not beautiful, but better. But I do wonder, sometimes, what it's like to be beautiful. I can't help thinking it must be different.

What I Have Been Up To

2005-06-14T03:57:00.000Z

It has been suggested to me, in the nicest (or rather, drunkest) possible way, that I ought to update this a bit more often. Nourish it. Pay it some attention, that sort of thing. And I have been thinking about this and thinking that the reason I don't is probably because I have a very very dull interior life.

Still, here we go. In common with the other blogs in this set, I've had a very drunken weekend in the company of many many posters from the sparkly thread. I am looking speculatively at random passers-by and wondering if there will ever be a remote tissue-type service so that you can identify and run over your own liver donor. In my gym, lots of people have t-shirts that say "If you gave your body to medical science, would they accept it?": in my case, the answer is probably Yes, but only for entertainment value.

Before that, I spent some time working in Greece, which was very hot, great fun and fairly annoying. I experienced The Greek Meeting (and have had it confirmed as archetypal): three hours long, everyone at least half an hour late, everyone shouting and rubbishing each other's ideas (apart from the people who were loudly on their mobiles throughout), everyone smoking, finishing more than an hour late, and only two items on an eight-item agenda covered. My lasting memento of the trip is a huge amount of extremely cheap gin and vodka.

In other news, I met up with my ex-boyfriend who tried to persuade me to shag him (annoying and gratifying in roughly equal measure): looked at some flats but failed to find anywhere I like more than this one: tried Ocado, who are amazing needy for a delivery service.

This is all about the things I've done, not the things I think and feel. I'm not sure if that is due to a paucity of thought and feeling (see above). Still, it's been fun. And might stop certain people ticking me off, temporarily.

Throw momma from the train

2005-05-25T06:00:00.000Z

Back in the slap again, and I can't tell you how good it feels. But I have seen the portrait in an unfinished state - two sides, with and without makeup. I recognise the made-up side but not the other, so far. How can (most) men BEAR not to wear make-up? It just makes you look so much better.

Do you remember the trailer for the television adaptation of Anna Karenina a couple of years ago? Moody picture of her looking out of a window, and a voiceover saying, "This is not the life I meant to have". I went to stay with a friend at the weekend, plus her three daughters. She often says it's odd how each of us has ended up with the life the other one wanted. I can't help thinking she's got the better deal - well, until the point at which I'm not the one who has to get up at 5am with the baby after we've been out till midnight and drunk nearly three bottles of wine. There are compensations.

Little or No Makeup

2005-05-13T18:36:00.000Z

Today, for reasons too convoluted to go into here, I am having my photo taken as preparation for a portrait. I am ashamed to say that my main response to this is discomfort at being asked to wear “little or no makeup” in preparation. It has made me realise how much I rely on my mask.

It’s not that I’m generally caked in the stuff, you understand. To the man on the Clapham omnibus, it probably looks like I’m wearing eyeliner and mascara, nothing else. But it’s quite startling the difference that it makes to me – I have already been asked three times if I’m ill, and it’s only 10.19am. I often say jokingly that if your mother thinks you look better with makeup, you definitely look better with makeup – mine does…..

My first thought was “How much can I get away with under the banner of little or no?” That seemed like cheating to me. So I thought I’d just try to do what I needed to not feel too self-conscious.

So the sum total this morning is: stuff that smooths your skin out (Idealist): a little bit of powder: a little bit of skin-coloured eyeshadow (to stop the mascara smudging and giving the game away): two microscopically thin coats of mascara, combed out very thoroughly: a small amount of very sheer lipstick. Which will be eaten off and reapplied several times.

To me, I look like shit. Actually, I look like a plain, frowny, middle-aged woman whose skin, let’s face it, is a lot more blotchy and tired than I care to admit. Considering that I feel enormously flattered to be asked to be painted, this isn’t a good start. And I’m not sure it even qualifies as little or no.

Vote For Anyone

2005-05-06T03:35:00.000Z

I do hope everyone is out voting. Even if I don't agree with them. I live in the safest Conservative seat in the country (I think), and tacticalvoter.net spurned my advances on that basis. But I still think it's important to vote, though I wish there were a "None of the above" box, and if more than half the votes cast in any constituency were for that, there'd have to be a rerun.

I'm horrified and worried by the Conservative rhetoric on immigration and asylum, and their appeal to naked self-interest over any form of social responsibility. I don't like Labour's authoritarian complacency and intellectual laziness. I think the LibDem's plans for spending make them unelectable. (But I still voted for them)

I read in a newspaper article recently that everyone is taking it as read that Labour will get another term, but that nobody would admit to voting for them. The way it seems to be going at the moment is that admitting to voting LibDem is the only "respectable" choice. Weirder and weirder.

I very much hope that after tomorrow I will be able to go back to thinking about lipstick.

Ian McAskill's hot (and cold) flushes

2005-04-24T20:03:00.000Z

I can't cope with this bloody weather. I'm just about to go and change for the fourth time today. Perhaps I should move to the Urals or something.

Grumpy In Excelsis

2005-04-23T17:49:00.000Z

My downstairs neighbours moved in a couple of weeks ago. They seem very nice - she quiet, he more outgoing and full of sub-Hugh Grant charm. But they do have the most enormous sound system, with a bass that seems to reverberate through my flat on even the lowest settings. Last night - or rather this morning, at 3.30, it woke me up. So after a few experimental bangs on the floor, I went downstairs and asked (well, told, to be honest) them to turn it off.

Now I'm feeling like one of the Dick Emery spinster characters ("It's MISS!") and coming up with all sorts of self-justifications to show that they are being unreasonable, not me. But I still feel like a complete killjoy.

The List of Justifications:

a. It was THREE THIRTY A. SODDING M.

b. I have slept through some very loud noises (e.g. bells of St Marks in Venice from 200m away, dustbin lorries, a military parade going underneath my hotel window), so it must have been VERY LOUD.

c. The lease says (if it's the same as mine) that music etc must not be audible outside the flat between 11pm and 7am.

d. I have as much right not to be woken up as they do to play music.

e. It was THREE THIRTY A. SODDING M.

Domestic Bliss

2005-04-22T11:33:00.000Z

I'm not at work today, and so I have just been pottering around putting things away, hanging up things that have been lying around, watering plants and so on. I love my flat. I've lived here for more than 10 years, and despite its creaking shabbiness, leaky roof etc (it's amazing how Zen you can be about these things when you don't actually own the place), it's a lovely place to be, especially on mornings like this when the sun comes through all the windows.

I don't understand people who can live out of rucksacks for months on end. I admire them, but I know I couldn't do it. I need my books, my clothes, my mug with the Victorian gardener on it. Most of all, I need my front door, and the lovely feeling that when it's closed, it's entirely up to me how much I interact with the world.

This post brought to you by Antisocial Old Bats Ltd.

A Few of my Favourite Things

2005-04-21T08:17:00.000Z

The sparkly blog-fest, which reminds me of the school scrapbook/holiday diary, is focusing at the moment on writing lists of good things about yourself. Several people have commented on how difficult it is not to qualify them, or question whether they are really all that good, so I won't. But it's true!

Good things about me:

I am good at grammar and spelling

I have good skin

I have a lovely singing voice

I am very good at being a friend

I am funny

I rarely throw up when drunk

I can match colours from memory

I remember a lot of poetry

I am discreet with other people's secrets without making a big thing about it

I am very good at organising and sorting things out

I run a mean meeting

My chocolate mousse is truly delicious

I stand up to bullies

Now I'm getting embarrassed so I'm going to go and do something that I'm really bad at just to take me down a peg or two. But I shall come back and look at this until I can read it through without squirming.

Wall 1, Mother 0

2005-04-20T21:55:00.000Z

Well, last Thursday I got in from a friend's birthday supper to hear the phone ringing. It was a friend of my mother, telling me that she had had a call from said mother and gone round to find her in a pool of blood where she had fallen and hit her head on the corner of a wall. She had to stay in hospital overnight and had 19 stitches in her forehead (they didn't x-ray her head. They didn't need to. They just lifted up the flap of skin and saw that she hadn't fractured her skull).

My ma is 65, but she's quite fragile physically. Mentally, she's fine, and her character is - ahem - decided. I find this slide into parenting one's parents increasingly distressing - the acknowledgement that there are things they can't do, and never will be able to again.

I know that part of the reason I am so worked up about this accident is that it's five years since my dad died of a head injury. Caused by hitting a different bit of the same wall that took care of my mother last week. Should I send in a demolition crew, I wonder?

This is a test life. It doesn't really count

2005-04-08T22:30:00.000Z

So here I sit at the kitchen table (oh GOD how Margaret Drabble) thinking what can I possibly write that someone else hasn't written.

Well. Today, in my corporate cyberwarren, where only those on over 60k merit their own desk, whereat to pin pictures of their identikit Aryan moppets, I was awarded a desk by the window. So I was not overlooked, or visited, or... well, anything really.

Once upon a time, I dreamt of this. Being uninterrupted. Left to get on with Important Stuff. To draft papers for Important People. Today, I just pissed around on the internet, wrote a few appraisals, kept pressing the refresh button on my email and... went off for lunch with a lovely internet friend.

What's happened to me? I used to be an ideal employee: working hard, working late, doing more than was asked of me. And now, earning A LOT more than I did then, I can barely motivate myself to get out of bed or complete my timesheet. Sometimes, I catch a glimpse of what I ought to be doing: sadly, it's often stuff that my employers either don't value or don't understand. For example, I was asked, at the last minute, to come along to a meeting about some fancy new bells-and-whistles tool we are supposed to be using to evaluate everyone in my department. When, after playing with it, I said "But there are no criteria that apply to more junior members of staff... isn't that a bit demotivating?" - well, I might as well have said "Here, chew on this not-quite-dead rat". There was a long silence. Followed by "well, that's a valid point" in a Reaper-like voice from the main man. Oh dear.

And the thing is, I can't decide: am I taking the corporate system for a ride, or is it taking me for a mug? Does the money I get paid make up for the fact that half the time I end up feeling that I am about to be unmasked a la Scooby Doo? And most of the rest of the time, I spend heartily despising at least half of my colleagues.

This is a test post. It doesn't really count. Besides, I think I'm premenstrual. I must be; I've just eaten about a pound of shortbread. And I'm not normally this gloomy. Ask anyone. Anyone who manufactures gin, at least.