(I’m not still in Boston, btw. As discussed here)

[We are sitting on a bench eating healthy burritos out of their silver wrappers and talking about the need to having a good burrito shop in Brighton and whether we should open one. We notice there is some kind of organised crowd heading toward us, and study them munchily.]

Bad person 1: They’re not going to give us any leaflets, are they? I don’t want any leaflets.

Bad person 2: We’ll just scowl at their leaflets. We’ll just say no thank you to any leaflets.

Bad person 1: What are they doing, anyway?

BP 2: It says [squints at large sign being carried by people…] they are doing a 6k stroll.

BP 1: Oh. Nice.

BP 2: Wait … ‘A 6k stroll … For The Prevention of Shaken Babies’

BP 1: Oh. [munch munch munch]

BP 2: [munch munch munch]

BP 1: How does that work? The prevention, I mean.

BP 2: Well, I assume that while they are out here strolling, they cannot be somewhere else shaking a baby. Maybe.

BP 1: Yes. That is logical. Also I suppose it had to be a stroll rather than a run because some of them have brought their babies.

BP 2: Oh yes.

BP 1: So if they were to move any faster I think they would probably end up shaking the babies. By mistake.

BP 2: Well that would be very counter productive, yes.

BP 1: Yes. [Munch munch munch]

BP 2: [munch munch munch] Yes.

BP 1: Oh no. There is a leaflet woman coming over. Shall we run away?

BP 2: No that is not necessary. We will just tell her we are already supporters of the cause.

BP 1: We are?

BP 2: Yes. We will tell her that we, like they, also vastly prefer them stirred.

[The bad people giggle into the very end of their burritos before walking, hand-in-hand, into the bad-person-sunset]

(more…)

This is a picture I took outside the Massachusetts State House, which is one of those big official government buildings.
It is in Boston.

As you can see, they are helpfully pointing out the official entrance for General Hookers, which is useful, because we all know how much politicians of all nations do like their prostitutes - both the ‘high class’ and ‘other’ kinds.
I think it is clearly the sign of a civilised country that they take these very well-publicised dalliances seriously, and treat them in a grown-up, transparent manner.

You will note, however, that this sign is only pointing out where one might find the entrance for general hookers.
It is not specified where the entrance for ‘Specialised Hookers’ might be. I think we can safely assume it to be round the back.

[The other suggestion is that this named after a military man with a vaguely suggestive name. I think we can agree that this is clearly ridiculous.]

I have always, on here, been very overt about my love of birthdays and of presents

(yay!)

This year, by a weird combination of depression, busyness and other factors, I have cared little about my birthday at all. I don’t care about having one, about marking it, about anyone else taking any notice.

But still. It would be a shame to break with tradition. And previously, I have always loved birthdays, and always suggested this as a time in which you could, if you wanted, tip me for this blog - for which I have never sought publication, advertising or payment, because it is my baby, my labour of love. But people asked, so I have put my wishlist over there on my sidebar. Just in case.

I don’t care if you don’t. That’s what labour of love means. And also, I’m really not feeling the birthday thing this year. I’d like to postpone it, just a month or two. But apparently you can’t. So there you have it. Tradition; both my having birthdays, and people maybe giving me stuff on them. Tradition.

I know there are SOME of you out there, hello, how are you, thank you so much for your assiduous attentionings.

BUT it has been been brought to my attention several time over the last few days that due to some complex ‘RSS’ reasons, some people have been completely unaware that this site is still going. I don’t know what an RSS feed IS exactly, or how it works, but in this case it doesn’t, so it’s a bit of an academic question.

They keep saying things like ‘Oh! I hadn’t realised you were still writing this site, I have two months of archives to catch up on!’ Well, be aware: unless I say I am going to stop, I am not going to stop. Unless I have been unfathomingly busy or unbearably glum, I haven’t, I think, gone more than a week or ten days without updating this site ever. Nor will I.

So just because you haven’t spotted me on your RSS feed lately - and everyone seems to do their reading of blogs by RSS these day (myself included, which is why I am so bad at commenting) - I have not stopped, I am still here, plugging away like always.

Of course, the only people I actually want to read this particular post can’t, because they haven’t got me on their rss feed, and haven’t thought to look at the site because why would you if someone stopped blogging?

I’m not asking those of you who do know I’m here to post yourself and remind people that I am - I know I have not been community minded of late, getting in a tizzy about blogrolls and taking a bloody long time to update and reinstate my own because I am too busy just reading them from Google Reader thing … But just, you know, if anyone ever says to you “I wonder what happened to that Anna girl who used to write little red boat?” in a wistful or mocking or irritated way, could you possibly point out to them that I’m still bloody writing it?

In the meantime I’ll try and get back to figuring out what happened to my RSS feed and reinstating it. Well I say “I”. I clearly mean “I … will get someone else to …”

Thanks.

I may write an opera called The Imperfect Housefrau.
I don’t like opera very much, but I will try not to let that get in my way, because it is a good name.
It will include arias with names like

‘Oh Right Because I Assumed If You Wanted Your Socks Paired Correctly You’d Do It Your Damned Self’,

‘I Think You’ll Find I’d Only Be Obliged To Entertain Your Extended Family If We Were Married, Darling’,

‘I Have Learnt To Like Burnt Food, I Hope You Do Too’

‘Really? We Have An Iron?’

And other such perennial favourites.

That is all.

[I’m not still in Boston, btw. As discussed here]

I have mentioned on this site before that I didn’t really used to believe in rats. Although I did believe in rabbits. And it was something that I used to say for several reasons.
a) Because I had seen rabbits but never a rat so couldn’t be sure. And
b) Because it’s the kind of thing that really annoys people. Because they say ‘But don’t be ridiculous, rats exist’
and you say ‘Yes, well, you say that, but in order to believe you, I would have to take a leap of faith that I consider ridiculous. I have never seen a rat’.
And they say ‘But rats exist’
and you say ‘Yeah, whatever; what that? That’s a picture of a rat? Brilliant. Here is a picture of a unicorn. Do you happen to have a picture of a Wazzakkadunk, by any chance?’
And they say ‘What is one of those?’
And I say ‘It is something I just made up, look, here, I have just drawn a picture of it, so it must exist. It is a kind of nose with four eyes and some legs and a willy’.

Anyway, after I wrote that post - not that long after, as it happens - I saw something that was probably a rat while on a work trip in India.

It equally might not have been a rat, but was the same vague shape as a lot of the photos I had seen, and moved very fast and in a determined and bad-tempered manner, which I understood to be quite like them, so assumed it to be a rat. No one else could corroborate the sighting or identify it, though, so it wasn’t an official verification. Still, mostly like it it was one of them mythical rats.

As my old grandma used to say ‘If it looks like a television and smells like a television, don’t be surprised when, if you try and feed it bacon, you just end up with a really baconny television ….’ - actually she didn’t used to say that. That I know of. But if she had, she would have had a very good point, and her point still stands. It was probably a rat.

The one in Boston, however, was definitely a rat.

I know because, as we were walking along a really beautiful and sunny street in the Back Bay area of Boston, tall houses made of large brown stone, expensive looking, dignified, old, plush, we were walking along feeling happy and pleased with ourselves on our happyhappyjoyjoy-holiday section of our tine in town (possibly more accurately classified as our happyhappyjoyjoy-five-hours between filing work and going to the airport for the plane home)(yes, yes. Stop with the sarcastic sympathy and put the invisible violin down or you won’t be able to hear the rest of the story). Where was I?

Ah yes. As we were walking along in a happy-go-lucky manner along the - ahem - sidewalk of this well-to-do street, feeling reasonably happy and skippy, and I noticed that there was some kind of happy-go-lucky little critter running through the gardens next to us; so I looked over at the garden, and there it was. Quite the least malevolent looking animal I had ever seen, this brown thing, tripping merrily through the well-tended petunias.

“I say, My Beloved.” I said, because we are English and that is how we talk. “I say? Is that some friendly woodland turned urban North American creature, somewhat akin to a squirrel, or chipmonk?”

“Yeah” he said - for though he is English he is also uncouth. ‘Kind of like that. Not quite, but kind of like that: in that it is a rat.”

Well, I’m quite phobic of things-like-rats-but-smaller, as anyone who has read those particularly high-pitched parts of the archive might know. And believe me, if this feller had been having a scuttle underneath my fridge - and no, that’s not a euphemism in any way, shape or form, before you think it - I would have been pretty phobic of him too.

But it was harder to be phobic about something that was just skipping along so very happily.

He kept up with us for a good five or six or ten houses, and then disappeared underneath some steps. Merrily.

And that was it. I saw I rat. A real live one.
Interestingly, or not, it’s one of the stories I’ve told the most since I got back.
Mainly because My Beloved keeps introducing it with the words “HEY! Tell them about that rat you saw!!!”

So, you know, it’s not just me who’s easily pleased.

HAPPY STAR WARS DAY EVERYONE!

May the Fourth be with you all!

(To celebrate, this. It made me laugh out loud the other day, so there. Please take with my bestest wishes)

I have developed a need to write lists. Whether it is because I am becoming older and more stupid, or because my life has become less ordered and I am slowly realising that if I don’t impose some order upon it, it just balls up into an enormous mass of ‘fuckinghell!’ with added shards of ‘whatwhatwhat?’ and rolls around my head banging into things, I am not sure.

Actually I’m pretty sure it’s the latter, as I definitely *AM* getting older (I have to keep reminding myself that it’s my birthday in a couple of weeks. Pretty soon I’m going to have to put it on a to do list, otherwise I’ll not be able to make time for it at all)

Anyway. I thought I should organise the things in my head that I’ve been wanting to blog, because otherwise I’ll not get around to it. And then I thought if I did it out loud, I would be able to remember AND it would provide some content automatically, and you would know that I wasn’t dead, and this would stab several birds in the face in one go.

I have been meaning to blog all week, but I have had an - I was going to say unusually busy, but it’s becoming less unusual as spring rolls on and I get use of my full brain back - a busy busy week, between deconstructing classic music videos of the ‘big hair rock’ genre and things about certain apprentice-based television shows and other television things and my home town and where to eat there and some kind of election yesterday that I didn’t even get to vote in among assorted other things.

But just to say I am now back from Boston - since Monday, in fact - but that there were lots of posts that I wrote in my head while there but haven’t had time to sit down and type but plan on doing this weekend. So just, you know, don’t get confused if I write about ‘being in Boston’, because I’m not actually THERE still, but the posts are. Kind of. Anyway. I will here write a to do list of these posts using words that remind me what they were, which may not be done in this order - because that is not how to do lists work - and may also not be as exciting as they sound.

TO DO LIST: Boston posts for lrb

1) Whores
2) Booze
3) Dead Babies
4) Crack and why it is great.
5) RAT!

And then I will go back to the titles that people suggested.
Good. That is a plan.
Well done me.

THURSDAY: It is the second day in Boston; I have been transcribing, and now my beloved is editing and answering email at the desk. Only one of us can use internet at any one time, though we both have laptops with us for ‘writing-on’ purposes, although one of us can use the internet at any one time because he is cheap and I am scared of expenses forms. Instead, I am listening to him type, and reading - without the world wide hivemind at my fingertips - some form of dead tree matter which has a familiar feel to the stuff I would usually read online but in a font I can’t change at will, and if I want to comment on it I have to seem to scribble on the bottom of the page with a biro.

After discussing the thing being edited on and off, his conversation becomes less as he becomes more email-oriented, and somehow, though it is still bright evening sunlight outside the window, the book flops down on my face and I drift off into a heavy, dream-filled sleep, half-cocked, half-sitting, half-alert.

(Seriously - anyone who said ‘Woo! Holiday in Boston in the springtime, though, yay!’ is sadly further off the mark than I would wish for. anyone who ever thought I was even more boring in Boston than I am in real life - oh god, you have NO idea. Well, you probably do, now. You will even more when I post the other thing currently half-written and on draft…)

Twenty minutes later I wake suddenly at the burst of some bad bubble in whatever horrible half-dream I was having, and half-mumble half-shout at the still bright window, staring at the beautiful sun shining on a world that I don’t recognise.

“What? Wherewhatwhat? But. BUT?”

And then, sitting stock straight with my legs hanging off the side but not touching the floor on those stupid hotel beds that make all adults into infants, I - for no reason and with no reason - burst into confused and upset and angry tears. The kind of tears I last saw used by a two-year-old would use if woken up from a nap unexpectedly. Horizontal tears. Spraying like lawn sprinklers and watering everything in sight whether it needs it or not.

After a minute I stop, and have a shower and a twice-strong coffee from the wussy in-room coffee machine, and then I get better.

But sometimes, that is what it is like.
I always thought that jetlag just made you a bit tired.
And i don’t know whether it is because of my general oversensitivity to seasons and light and weather and things, but ‘a bit tired’ doesn’t, annoyingly, cover it. Even slightly.

Wah.

Boston. It has Cheers; it has history; it has just LOADS of universities; it has a very jetlaagged and (currently) slightly pissed me, thinking about what it is like to be in ‘it’.
‘It’ being ‘Boston’.

There. Told you I was a bit pissed.

So, I’m not Actually in Boston, of course, I am in Cambridge, because though we may as a country have had enough influence over this state that they named all their counties, towns and cities over us, we didn’t apparently have enough influence to suggest that just because you walk fifteen minutes, you’re not in a separate city.

Still, I am. I’m in Cambridge, which is lovely, and fun-filled, and pleasant, and just as full of studious-looking and wholesome and annoying students as the other one is. Today I was sitting outside a coffee shop transcribing some stuff from an interview, and the quad was full of them, all bounding with health and frisbees and direction in life, the bastards.

I mean to write more comprehensively about things, but in the meantime, just to keep them somewhere safe, some notes about Boston:

1. The accent is weird. It’s nice but … well … ok, so if you’re British and you’re abroad, your ear naturally picks up another British voice, whatever the British accent - you’re so used to them all, you pick them naturally out of a crowd when everyone else is talking differently.

In Boston/Cammbridge/whatever this is different, because the local accent here has many of the same vowel sounds as the majority of our accents do at home, which means you’re walking down the street and your ears prick up and you think ‘OOOH! Someone from home!’ and then they say another word and you realise they are not. It’s very odd.

2. I have never EVER been in a city more polite. Ever. I was walking down the street and saw a guy on a bike bowling down the pavement toward me. I stepped aside when I reached a point at which only one of us could get through (silently tutting at the fact he was cycling on the pavement at all, though it seems to be quite the accepted thing, here) but then he screeched to a halt, smiled so very nicely at me and said ‘Please, after you!’

And that’s only one example. People are, as far as I’ve experienced, universally Polite and Nice and Sincere.
Does not compute. What kind of city living is this, please?

3. On a downside, every different cafe and restaurant and deli has a different way of doing things and no apparent indication of how that might be done.
Do you choose your bread and carry it to a counter where you then choose your fillings before carrying it to another and then paying?
Do you sit down and wait to be served, quietly?
Do you order one bit here and one bit there and then pay for the whole lot somewhere else?
This is, I’m sure you’ll imagine, an almost implosible state of affairs for a social-phobic type. Such fun.

4. Jet lag. Bad.
That’s not about Boston, it’s just about me.
It makes me cry. But what doesn’t?
This makes me cry in a silly way, though. More of that at another time, I’m sure.

5. The Irish descendancy of so many native Bostonians is so weirdly obvious it’s funny. The man directing the ridiculously long line at immigration when we arrived has red curls topping his ruddy face and solid frame; the actual immigration officer who interviewed me, meanwhile, only needed a tiny green hat with a buckle to make him into the comedy leprechaun he was clearly born to be.

6. It’s sunny, and I would like to move here please.
And yes, I know I say that about every sunny plae ever.
It’s still true.

7. At the subway station for Kendall (MIT) there is a giant wind chime with ten-foot chimes and hammers that sway and chime in a deep, low, sonorous tone when there is a rush of wind from an approaching or departing train pushing through the adjoining tunnel.

How nice is that?

It’s very nice. Especially because it takes your mind off the fact that the trains are every howbejeesusingever.

Anyway. I will make some funnier stories, but right now just wanted to note down some things because I am overtired and a little pissed and yet cannot sleep.

But now I will try, all the same.

[pootles off]
SNOR

God, that’s a horrible title. I’m sitting here and regretting it just as I’ve written it, and there’s nothing I can do because I’ve been sitting here trying to think of a NON-completely hideous pun and failing and I meant to write another silly post here tonight but then went out for dinner quite by mistake and now I don’t have time.

So. I’m going away for a few days, I’m going to a conference called ROFLcon and reporting back from/interviewing people on these kinds of panels. If you do have any interest in that, or have any questions you would desperately like me to ask these internet-meme celebrities (if you do have any interest in that kind of thing), let me know.

For the rest of you (so most, then) I’ll desperately try and post from Boston while away, but will otherwise be back next week…

xxx

[Title suggested by William T, as part of this ask a few days ago.]

“Practice!”
Obviously.
That is the answer that was at some point funny, and in something, when said by someone but I can’t remember who.
And no, I can’t be arsed to look it up, because I am not at work and thus do not need to be able to quote sources. So there.

However, that may have been the way to get to Carnegie Hall back in those days, whenever those were, when whoever said it in whatever it was, but now, it would simply not be enough.

You would not only need practice, You would need some kind of directions from where you were to Midtown Manhattan (in my case those would be ‘turn left onto Gloucester Road, travel 3,472 miles, turn left again at Chibougamau, Quebec, and carry on until midtown Manhattan, Carnegie Hall will be on your left’ so as long as I remember which is my right and which my left - which I generally don’t - we should be ok) but you would also need a visa, as they’re pretty strict on those kinds of things. Seriously, because it would be terrible to do all that practice, get to Carnegie Hall, and then have someone turn up and chuck you out for not having the right kind of visa. It would be terribly embarrassing.

Because if you need to do stuff that some people might consider ‘work’ in certain countries, you ned to have a piece of paper that says that you’re allowed to do that, apparently.
Which is why I ended up with an appointment to have a breakfast meeting with the American Ambassador a few weeks ago on a Monday.

Not quite brunch - obviously, I know that more important people probably get the brunch appointments - but I was fixed up for an 8am business breakfast, or so the letter kind of said.

And even though I had to get up before 5 to make sure I was on the train with all my appropriate documents and things, and dressed smartly in something that would carry me through the rest of the day, it would be nice, I imagined. Me and the ambassaor, some watery American coffee, some Ferrero Rocher; we’d have some laughs, kick some ideas about on the topic of what really was the last great US sitcom; and then I’d show him my documents and he’d be all ‘put those away, Anna, we’re way past that now!’ and he’d smile and get some white-toothed lackey to stamp my passport and we’d kiss - though only one cheek, because he’s really not into the whole continental thing - and I’d be on my way.

So imagine my surprise when I found myself standing in a queue of a couple of hundred people ALSO summoned for breakfast with the ambassador - or rather some perfunctory and bloodless exchange with that lackey with the winning grin (who, in fact, would turn out to be the only factual element of my fantasy morning) - in the very cold, and the drizzle. Oh, and in nice if slightly tall heels, because I’d thought for some reason my journalist visa thing would be more likely to be approved if I could prove that I was able to stand around in uncomfortable shoes for long enough without complaining.

I’d come up to London with no electrical goods in my bag - no laptop, no phone, no music thing, no … well, no anything, because it had said on the letter that these types of goods were strictly verboten.
No, it said ‘forbidden’, sorry, because it wasn’t the German embassy, in which case that would have made sense.
So I had nothing to amuse myself apart from watching all the other people in the queue, enjoying the play of freezing drizzle on my cheeks and reading a slowly disintegrating magazine with a main article about the complete breakdown of control, law and humanity in Abu Ghraib - which, to be honest, I was a bit worried about being caught reading in case anyone thought I was, like, ‘trying to say summink’ and thus was an enemy of the state…

We stood in line. And stood. And stood.

And then we had our stuff checked by one set of security people - the documents in our document pouches, and things - and then we queued and queued and stood some more.

And then we had our stuff checked by a second set of security people. And then we went through the third and fourth sets of security checks, in a security hut, and had everything electrical or time-passing or interesting taken away from us, and even though i thought I’d been very assiduous, I was discovered to have a usb key and some kind of plug in the bottom of my capacious handbag, and I was tutted at and mildly told off and they were put in a plastic bag and I was given a ticket and told I could pick them up later. Maybe. If I was good.

And all the while, everyone stood very patiently and recognised there was a certain order to things and that this is just the way things had to be done, and do you know the only point at which we doubted that? Or, perhaps, the only point at which I doubted the whole sanity of it all is when a bunch of people that looked like a fat old version of a rock band turned up, and I thought to myself “God, that looks like what Robert Smith of the Cure would look like if he was old and fat” and then I realised it was, and he is, and then they all marched with their embassy accompanist past the queue and straight through the security checks without so much as a by your leave. Like they were important, or had actually made an album that anyone bothered listening to in the last 12 years or something.

In the embassy itself, after another two security checks - I hope I’m not giving too much away here, I’m not trying to write a ‘how to’ for grumpy terrorists, I’m really not; and besides, I should think that if any grumpy would-be terrorist ARE reading this (hello! Stop it!), they would be put off by how very very secure it all is. I know I was. Not that I was planning anything BAD, obv, just in a general wa… I’m just going to stop there, I think.

So there we sat, in tight little rows of hard plastic chairs, each holding their ticket with a number in the high thousands printed on, and watching as numbers far below ours were called to windows in a seemingly random but neverending stream that meant you could never look away, or go to the toilet, or really concentrate on anything else in the knowledge that as soon as we DID they would call our number and we would miss it and then have to go to the back of the queue again. Of ALL the queues.

This means, then, that you’re stuck, eyes fixed on these flashing boards and their continuous stream of numbers - unless you’re The Cure, in which case you apparently employ someone to do that for you, as they all stood at the back of the room drinking that watery coffee and talking about the days when they were a real band that people liked in more than a nostalgic way while a be-suited donk stood by them squinting at the screen on their behalf.

Funnily enough, in between the two screens of flashing numbers, there were two screens with constantly shifting photographs.

There were images of beautiful smiling children wrapped in flags and waving in a happy, contented way at the camera. And images of fluttering flags up proud flagpoles standing erect in front of stunning sunsets over municipal-looking buildings. And even one of Mickey Mouse waving at crowds while being driven slowly through a ticker tape parade. And they showed these melding slowly into each other, and in rotation, in the periphery of the thing you were actually looking at, but still very visible.
And I’m not saying that they WERE purposefully hypnotic, just if you were trying to hypnotise people, that wouldn’t be a bad way of going about it.

So with no watch or camera or laptop, in a room with no clocks, I slowly went from gruntled to disgruntled got called to three windows, filled in five more forms, handed over several more pounds and didn’t get offered Ferrero Rocher ONCE. Thouhg I did watch in shock and dismay as The Cure were clearly rushed through the system ahead of everyone else. I eman: The CURE? REALLY?!

But I didn’t kick up a fuss, because all the security guards had guns and - who knows - probably a soft spot for ‘Love Cats’ as well, so instead I sat patiently and read my quietly anti-establishment article and went to the windows when I was finally called. And when I got there, they were all very nice and friendly - well, to an extent - and did at least smile and stamp everything I wanted them to smile at and stamp; thus giving me licence to do something that I’ve not quite figured out what it is yet. Although I do know that it means the things I’m doing later this week I won’t, apparently, be doing illegally.
So phew for that.

And that’s how you get to Carnegie Hall.
Be The Cure.
Everything’s so much easier when you are The Cure.
Bastards.

[Title, which was suggested by Obi Vin when I asked has very little to do with the post. Or nothing But then, I couldn’t think what post it was ever going to have anything to do with. Oh, apart from telling you all about that time that I tried to get the other technicians in the backstage crew I was working on at the time to call me ‘Captain’ rather than the other slightly less flattering nickname they had given me, and it nearly worked. But I think I’ve already written about that, so since I really liked the title, I thought I’d just assign it to something random]

I have been accused in comments of, and due to, the post below, of being rather wussy when it comes to illness. And, in fact, of suffering ‘man-flu’ worse than any man. I will not deny I have a rather, shall we say ‘dramatic’ approach to everything illness, and may, some might suggest, tend to blow things up rather out of proportion for effect/to keep myself entertained.

And so it was a few weeks ago when I pretty much convinced myself that I might well be terminally ill.
I could make a much longer story out of it, but think it is probably well enough summed up in the twitter I made on the subject.

Trying to work out if I have a spot in my armpit or breast cancer. If it ISN’T a spot, I may have just discovered that cancer is squeezable. 12:51 AM from web

Man flu? Me? You ain’t heard nuffink, sweetheart.
It wasn’t, by the way.
Like I even needed to tell you…
But still, imagine the medical breakthrough it would have been if I HAD discovered that!

I was going to use one of the titles you so kindly donated to me last week when I was in extremis, writey-blocky wise, and asked you to, but I am too tired to go and look one up right now, so I am just going to tell you how Horribly and Dreadfully Sick I am, instead, and then sit back and hope you give me some sympathy before I get better, which should be hopefully tomorrow, because I am not really *that* sick.

Anyway, I am going to tell you about my sick, like this was an old school diary blog and no one read it, (which is some more and some less true, to various extents) and I was just an anonymous person that didn’t care what people thought of me and … anyway. I am not getting nearly enough sympathy from my beloved (mainly because I only have a slight cough)

A couple of nights ago, I had a bit of a tickly throat before I went to sleep, and it was difficult to get to sleep but then I did go to sleep all the same, and slept until the normal time in the morning. I know, it’s so thrilling even I can barely bear it, and I know how it ends!

My mother came for lunch the day after that barely interrupted night of sleep. Not from Scotland - that would have been lovely, but slightly over-the-top - but from nearer by, where she had been, and we went and had something to eat. I had salad, and so did my mother, and My beloved had some of that wet rice I’ve never really understood the point of.

(This bit isn’t related to the main ‘me being ill’ story, so don’t get all detectivey and try and pick up clues about just what in the motherly visit or the lunch might have led me to being ill, because it isn’t anything to do with those things. If you ARE going to be detectivey, I would suggest you looking just a little further back to the subtle hints about tickly throats I was dropping a minute ago, but seriously - you really might as well not bother because I’m going to get to the point in a second anyway)

And then my mother left and immediately I announced my intention to nap, and disappeared upstairs - which reminds me, I’ve been meaning to post about society’s divide between bed-naps and sofa-naps, by the way, don’t let me forget - and then slept very heavily apart from the fact I couldn’t breathe without it causing me to go ‘kof! kof kof! kof kof kof!’ - which really isn’t the most condusive sleeping position, as it turns out, and you can’t take sleeping pills for naps, because that way madness lies.

I got up and did some work and, as soon as I had finished that, collapsed in a little pile on the sofa and had a little bit of a cry, as that’s what I do when I am under the weather (or pre-menstrual, tired, jetlagged, anxious, cross, having a depressive episode, watching something even vaguely sad on telly or so many many other things, let’s face it) and then crawled back to bed, where I proceeded to sleep for a good - and unusual - 10 hours. Then woke up coughing.

My beloved had to go into London, so I thought I was going to have to sit around feeling sorry for myself all day, which hardly seemed fair, but then a nice lady with a clipboard knocked on the door and I invited her in to feel sorry for me instead. She said she was from Mori and her name was Judy, and she was very nice. She communed with the cats, and was duly sympathetic every time I coughed loud enough, but she did also insist on asking me lots of pesky questions about doctors and online activity (I was able to answer ‘yes’ to every single thing under the ‘what have you done online in the last month?’ section, thank you very much. Oh, apart from ‘download porn’, but I may have to change that soon, for reasons I will eplain another day, I promise) although never wanted to have a nice conversation about the things she was asking about, she only wanted numbers and degrees of satisfiedness and yeses and noes. She would ask about how many shoes I had bought on eBay recently, but did she want to SEE the shoes? No. Well that’s just rude, I thought.

And then Judy left, and I drank lots of cough medicine and I ate drugs and slept more and read some and had some more small cries and napped and coughed and by tomorrow I’ll be better.

And that is the end of my story.
It wasn’t a very good story but I wanted to post something and I just thought typing - even tired typing - would get that done.

The End.

UPDATE, FRIDAY MORNING:
Yes, I am feeling a lot better.

[Title suggested by LizSara suggested this title when I asked; here]

I do realise that tights are, by far, the least loved of the legwear world. Stockings might be sexy, socks might be sensible, and well, I mean, I’m screwed if I know, all the cool kids may well be rocking pop socks this year. But I care not. Tights are best. Particularly, and I’m not even slightly ashamed of this, so you needn’t think I am - particularly what are technically known as ’suckyinnytights’ - which are terribly good for the confidence, and the line of your dress, and for the arse.

ALSO - and this is a very good thing - it is almost impossible to lose a matching pair of tights, because they are connected at the top.
Perhaps socks should also consider this. Perhaps in some manner like mittens: you know, with a string around the crotch. Or something.

However, all the love for the suckyinnytights shouldn’t be one way. A one way love would be wrong, and bad, especially for something with two legs. Love between things with two legs should be a two-way love. One love per leg.

So, you know, if you are a person, and you are wanting to show love and support for your legwear, there are various ways you can do that.

Putting them in a special drawer is good one, as is making sure you don’t have lots of snagged nails before pulling them on. Not hanging them up in the bathroom in what must be considered a ‘come hither (and rip me to shreds)’ fashion while your two teenaged cats are watching is also a life-prolonging tip to remember.

You could also try buying them flowers. Or talking to them in a soothing voice and saying nice things. That would also be considered reasonably supportive, if a little odd, what with them being tights and all.

I am lost for other things that one could do. However, if you wanted to have music piped into the drawer in which you keep your suckyinnytights, or any other tights, for example, that would be a nice idea, and I would suggest any of the following tracks might be applicable.
1) “I’ll Be There For You, Other Leg” - by The Rembrants, who moved on to making tight-based songs to capitalise on their Friends theme tune success.
2) ‘Good Nylon Sweetheart’ -it’s a be-bop classic.
3) ‘Non-slip Lovin'’ - by some big-haired metal band of the mid eighties.
4) ‘Ladder Me Tender’ by Elvis, though at this point he was really considered completely off his tits.
5) Some other songs.
Which I am too tired to think of.

No, I’m not going anywhere with this. It was a nice title though.

[Title suggested by Rachie]

I keep, as I mentioned in brief while asking for titles to posts, buying things from eBay almost, it must be said, by mistake. However, I will post about that another day. This reminds me that I meant to tell you about my suitcase, and the losing of it that happened when I went to Venice recently.

Many many many stupid things have happened to me while travelling - I am jinxed, but only a little bit jinxed; like ‘missing things’ and ‘things going a bit wrong’ jinxed rather than ‘planes crashing’ and ‘people stabbing me in the face on the train’ jinxed. I am glad we have cleared that up - but surprisingly, until I went to Italy in February, I have never yet had my bag mislaid.

We were going with British Airways.
I should have known what to expect, but without the benefit of foreknowledge, I hadn’t a clue that they were going to be running trial runs of ‘how to lose lots of people’s bags at once and generally being completely inept’ procedure on our weekend break.
Still, I should feel privileged to be part of their practice runs.
You know all those people who were trying to fly through Heathrow Terminal 5 recently, and getting all shouty and cross about BA losing their baggage?
Well, I was totally ahead of the curve. I was doing that WEEKS before.

Checking in just before check in closed, and hearing the woman on the desk complaining to the man on the desk next to her that the conveyor belt was ‘being a bit iffy’ that morning, I remember thinking “My bag’s not going to arrive in Venice” - which is why, probably, I wasn’t that surprised three hours later when the carousel stopped and the shoulders of more than two dozen people standing around the carousel dropped and we turned, as one, and schlumphed off toward a window with three wary-looking Italian women sitting behind some glass.

They spoke English to the extent they needed to, in order to help, which wasn’t very much - though better than my Italian, obviously.

But they couldn’t, as it turned out, do very much to help. They could point out that, according to their computers, our bags hadn’t arrived, which we knew, and they could give us a small bag full of miniature goods with ‘BA - With Compliments’ printed on the side.
They were very calm, and very helpful, and I’m sure if they could have done anything more, they would have.

The remainder of the unhelpfulness, it must be said, was mine. It was mainly my fault, I will admit, that when I buy things, certain things, from places, I tend to go with the more unique or - to me - attractive or interesting things.

And not, say, the more useful or logical or long-lasting or example of the object I could possibly find. But when I find what I want, all sensible thoughts go out of the window

So there I was, standing in front of the glass window, trying to explain to the nice lady that the bag I quite desperately wanted was not, sadly, one of the ones she was encouraging me to point at on the handy photosheet of bags she had. It was a semi-circular gym-bag on wheels in bright blue silk covered in little embroidered flowers like the print of a Chinese dress.
Weirdly enough, she hadn’t got enough English for this, and the constituent parts couldn’t be found anywhere in my phrasebook.

But we shrugged and mugged and grimaced our way through it all, and we got our ‘With Compliments’ bag of goodies from British Airways (thanks, guys!) and I went off the hotel in my good high heeled boots that weren’t really *that* comfortable but I’d brought in case we went out to dinner and because they were too big to pack. And then I walked around in them for 27 hours - not solid, no - until my bag finally showed up.

So the bag that I would look for on eBay, if I was searching for one with some kind of homing device, or a large flashing light that said “DON’T FORGET ME I’M SOMEONE’S BAG” in neon letters, or could move of its own account - like one that had legs and could run after me, or something (I would bid quite highly on that one) - or one that was Very Easy To Explain In Italian. Next time I look for a bag on eBay, it’s bilinguality will be the main point I will look for.

(more…)

I just never bloody Finish anything.

I will, I promise, finish some of these, including the story of how I got brainwashed by an all-powerful government but didn’t get any chocolates, yesterday; my current battle with ebay addiction (and shoes); something about the gym; something about being lonely and making friends as a grown up in a new place; something about letters in local newspapers, and something about why I have decided we might move to Brighton. I think that one be passed it’s sell-by a little, seeing as we’ve been here about two years, and the draft’s been here longer.

But I have serious horrid horrid confidence-related blocky problems at the moment, so wanted to ask for your help.

In the meantime, I would like, if possible, for some titles of posts to be suggested - every post has a title, and I’m ljust thinking that maybe if the titles are given to me, I can get over this really really stupid writer’s block I have at the moment and just write something to fit the title.

They can be as whimsical or as direct or as obscure or as suggestive as they like - I may not do with the title what you intend, of course, but that’s my prerogative - or as silly or as sensible sounding - just titles that I can put at the top of the post and then write about.

So, you know, tiles, anything you like. (Though I’d prefer if they weren’t horrid and mean and things like ‘Why I Used to Be Quite Good At Blogging But Aren’t Any More‘ because that won’t be fun to write).

Would that be ok, do you think? Could you give me a title? Please?