I do not like fixed present-giving days, as anyone among my family and friends will tell you, probably while shaking their head slowly and sighing and looking a bit sad.

It is not that I do not want to give my loved ones presents – I do, very much indeed, and would rather spend money on buying silly things that will make them happy than spend it on anything else in the world.

It is just that I would rather suddenly present them on some random date or other, when they will hardly be expecting it at all, which will therefore a) be automatically more exciting and negate the fact that b) it is nothing they have ever wanted and c) I haven’t given them anything for the last four birthdays.

I think mainly it’s an anxiety thing – I’d rather be completely rubbish than try really hard and fail – but it manifests as a bullheaded stubbornness: that it’s not that I’m failing to send presents because I am thoughtless and mean, but because I refuse to conform to what society and The Man expects me to do. Or at least that’s how *I* think it manifests. Sadly, I think for everyone else it comes across more as the first things.

This year I capitulated to some extent, and somewhere around the 26th of February, my beloved received a mystery package around the size and shape of a rabbit coffin, and I announced that this was the first Valentines gift I had ever bought, and that I probably would buy one again because Valentines Day is stupid, but that I loved him and hoped he would have much fun with it.

And in the month since, I’ve sometimes wondered whether I wouldn’t have been better off just arranging for a dead rabbit to be delivered in the rabbit coffin – for though it might have been smellier, it almost certainly would have been quieter by far…

Than my Beloved’s new ukulele.

The first evening, when he sat and painstakingly learnt one of my favourite songs, serenading me when I arrived home with a flawed but truly touching ukulele version of The Flaming Lips’ Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots (pt 1) was a very good day.

By the next weekend, he’d moved on to George Formby, The Beatles, and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

And through the next week, very bizarrely for a really quite vehemently anti-U2 household, he’d got great swathes of the U2 back catalogue in hand. There must just be something about U2 that’s ideally suited to the uke, I imagine. I knew there was something I distrusted about those Irish fellas.

But it’s not the U2 that’s driving me crazy. Nor the concept of the ukulele on its own.

It’s the fact that he’s a stealth ukulelist, creeping up behind me and suddenly playing ‘Killing Me Softly’ during the critical moment of CSI (if we can take just a moment to pause and consider the aberration that is the ukulele version of ‘Killing Me Softly’, and that that alone should be enough).

It’s the fact that during our weekly house-purge, when I finished hoovering and announced I was going to clean the windows, I came back in after half an hour of tottering on tiptoes, covering myself in windowlene and generally risking my life in the name of the greater good, to find that he was so inspired by my cleanly announcement that he immediately had given up tidying the living room and spent the whole time learning ‘When I’m Cleaning Windows’ and did I want to hear it?

We have reached some compromises. For example, the one where, after two bars and a lot of shouting and emphatic gestures, we decided there was a no-Streets-of-London rule (I have an allergy, I think) which, if broken, would result in toasted ukulele.

I’m really glad that he enjoys it. I really really am. Sometimes I think I’d be happier if he enjoyed it while I was out, or enjoyed it in a soundproof room, but I really am glad that he likes his ukulele. Honestly I am.

I was a bit worried last week when we were going to visit an overexcited friend with a new banjo - for a sudden mid-week holiday - and I heard the words ‘jam session’ mentioned.

Not worried because I wouldn’t enjoy it, because of course I would have, it would have been a joyful event and a Good Thing which made them both Very Happy. No, I was really more worried because I didn’t know the area around my friend’s house very well, and couldn’t ensure I could get away before someone found the bodies.

Unfortunately, when the came time to pack and leave for our friend’s house, the ukulele case couldn’t be found anywhere, so we were unable to take the ukulele, and the promised jam sessions never took place. All because of a mislaid ukulele case.

I have no idea where it could be, and it certainly isn’t under the wardrobe.

Valentine’s day gifts, particularly good ones, are overrated. I will learn from this, and never, ever do it again.
Next year he can have a teddy bear, in March. They’re very quiet.

It was one of the main things people commented upon when I said I was moving house, or those who remembered last time, anyway.
“Well make sure you get your internet connected up quicker this time!”

Of course we haven’t. A cock-up by BT, a lost order on Virgin’s side, a technical fault, a cooling off period, a complete lack of communication and almost five weeks later, and we still haven’t got an internet connection at home.

Which makes blogging a chore, responding to comments very hard (sorry) answering emails unlikely (apologies if I owe you mail, this is why) and the type of relaxed and winsome Live-blogged-TV events I do for not-actually-my-job-kind-of-work occasionally a complete pain in the lady-bollocks. Picture me, waving the laptop around over my head, trying to pick up a signal, any signal, from anywhere, cursing, throwing things around the room, shouting - and all the while trying to watch the thing I’m supposed to be documenting and then tapping out some calm and hopefully witty comments on it. It’s just great.

So there. I’ve told you. That’s why I’m a bit quiet. Because Virgin and BT are ganging up on me to make my life a living tummy-ache, and I hate them all.

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In other news

My favourite word today is ‘twang’, and I keep saying it over and over and over again.

Other favourite words today include:

Boing.
Noodle.
Snub.
Booted.
Usual.
Tingling.
Vent.
Schmooze.
Twang.
Twang!
Grumble.

I was on the train - not last week, I think, the week before. Just pulling into Brighton, I had stood up to pack my things tightly in my laptop satchel and pull my gym bag down from the rack above.

I knelt with one knee on the seat (no shoes, obviously, not being a common train-animal) and happened to look over the top at the next set of four seats behind. And came upon a rather arresting sight. One bored commuter, who had clearly had been having an awful lot of trouble with the London Paper’s easy sudoku (which is not a judgement, for I am crap at them too) had completely given up and, as an alternative way of filling the time, had drawn the studious young man opposite her.

Without thinking - for, if I’d thought about it, I would have thought that taking pictures of random strangers is not something I generally like doing - I whipped my camera out of my open bag, made sure the flash wasn’t on, lifted it quickly above the parapet of the sprickly padded headrest, and captured her capturing him for posterity.

I thought she might know him, or idly assumed that that would be the case. But then, seconds later, as we arrived at the station, she put the newspaper down - picture facing the seat she had placed it on - stood up, and left the train without a word or a second glance at her model, as the train cleaners swept onto the train to clear away her art.

I found the whole thing oddly life affirming. This woman, secretly studying intricately the face of a stranger before putting the moment away and moving on. This man, oblivious to his portrait.

And, as someone commented on my original flickr picture, probably lucky, too, given his rather alarming reading matter…

Another way of filling time on planes, of course, is to read the handy inflight magazine. Luckily, the magazine on the flight to and around Morocco (it was Royal Air, to the Moroccan reader who asked. I have a Moroccan reader! Who knew?!) was the size and consistency of a breezeblock. Of course, it was mainly like that because of complex three-language reasons.

The whole rear half of the magazine – or ‘front’ to non-Arabic readers, I suppose - was in Arabic. The whole front section – or rear, to other people, I think– was half in French, half in English. French mainly on the top of the page or the left, English bottom or right. I’m not complaining – I recoginise my language was at least the third in pecking order, and I’m glad to be entertained at all, thank you.

However. It does lead to a whole lot of secondary/thirdendary-translation issues that make the whole journey lots more fun. [NB: Not that translation is an easy job or one that deserves mockery but, you know, ass-covering etc etc]

There was a page of advertorial about a film-maker’s guide to Morocco. The entire top-half was in French, which I amused myself by picking through, slowly, in my rusty bad-graded-GCSE kind of French. Then I read it in English, and I got confused, because the English version said the same thing, but slightly clumsily. And more extensively. MUCH more extensively.

Toward the end of the book review (in both languages)(and proabably in Arabic too, though I honestly wouldn’t know), the following appeared…

This guide intends to be as exhaustive as possible but it is obliged to be selective as it is limited to 400 pages – quite large enough already. Appendices include the law pursuant to the cinema industry, wage grids, indices, a lexicon, and a filmography

And that was the section with which where the French version had ended. Due to, I suppose, their flowery language as opposed to the English ability to be beautifully concise about everything (see five and a half years worth of archives, right, for disproof of this theory). So, it seemed, the translator had carried on in the same thread, for padding.

With everything you need not to waste time, and to stay focussed, well advised and hopefully successful in your choice of job or prospect…

Which was a well thought out and nicely considered piece of padding. But there was stll a few lines of space left to fill on the page. So more padding had been added, seemingly in a state of panic.

The guide lists all Moroccans operating in Morocco as well as Moroccans residing abroad, in addition to a large section devoted to individuals frequently travelling to Morocco or working with Moroccans.

Blimey. When they said ‘as exhaustive as possible, they weren’t fucking about, were they?

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And someone wanted other ways of filling time on planes when you have the attention span of a gnat (and I do, I really, really do) so I’ve been trying to think of them. Well, trying to think of them inbetween getting distracted by shiny things.

And I was thinking of the sheer volume of terrible films one can watch, guilt-free. Then there’s playing ‘guess the attempted foodstuff’, every time you’re presented with a tray of foil-covered goo. And annoying flight stewards is another way of passing the time, of course, but that probably deserves its own, separate post…

Ooooh! Something shiny! Is it Moroccan?

I do get quite bored on planes. I love planes, I love flying, I even love the concept of aeroplane meals (though that generally wears off quite quickly) - and yes, I know it sounds like I have scant regard for my carbon emmissions, but that’s between me and the duvet. Oh, sorry, we weren’t talking about farting. I mean, I love farting as well, obv, but we’re not talking about that right now. Anyway.

Ever since I got a camera, time passes faster. Or at least more productively, in that I produce an AWFUL lot of very dull photographs of the inside of planes/plane windows/plane food/sick bags etc.

On my recent trip to Morocco, I was very blessed indeed. Not only was the inflight magazine terrible, and there are stll several pages of it stuffed in the back of my diary, waiting to be transcribed, but the air safety cards were just, you know, a bit special.

Though the copyright notice claimed the date of the cards’ introduction as the late nineties, but the brown flares and bubble perms of the illustrated figures said something slightly different.

So, over a period of several flights, I started taking pictures of the air safety cards. To a) stem the boredom and b) because by this stage I was deeply in love with them. There are unsubstantiated rumours that I may have stolen one of them, but since that would be a dreadful, awful thing to do, I think we can all assume I almost certainly wouldn’t have done such a thing. Whatever, it is evident that I became a bit obsessive about them.

You can find some more of them in my dedicated ‘bored on planes’ photoset, but then again, I’ll doubtless be hauling a few of the funnier ones up at some point anyway, and wait, wait, I haven’t got to my point yet, so stay here.

My point is, I think this is quite my favourite.

Anyone who has been on a plane any time in the last six years, or, in fact, read any news stories about increased in-flight security over the last half-dozen years, may well be able to spot the rather glaring problem with this escape plan:

Yes, that’s right, in order to free the life-raft from the plane (which will, of course, surely sink quite quickly, dragging everything attached to it - by, say, rope - down to a watery grave) in order to free the life-raft, you have to CUT IT LOOSE, with the help of your handy neighbourhood MACHETE.

Fucking genius.

Now, given a situation where even in first class you’re probably expected to eat your steak with a blunt spork and the only thing you’re allowed in your luggage is cuddly toys, I’m just not entirely sure how they’re planning for us all to carry our multipurpose machetes onboard…

Or maybe they’re in a break-glass panel by the door.
Yes, that sounds most likely.

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I’m having a few days utterly off. Can I just mention for the record that days off kick arse?
They do. That is all. Thank you.

While away in Morocco recently I worried, of course, about things, and also stuff, and it would have been weird if I didn’t, as that is the activity two thirds of my brain is dedicated to around 98.7% of the time (official figure – reality probably higher). But. But I didn’t worry about stuff anywhere near as much as I could have done, and so therefore, on reflection, must count the trip as a Good Trip during which I Did Well.

There were many things I might have worried about, of course. Murderers, for one. There is always a possibility of murderers, and that chance can only be increased by the foolish notion of tent-sleeping, which is an invitation to murder if ever I saw one. Nevertheless, I managed not to worry about being murdered at all.

Or barely at all, anyway. I think I managed that by, on around the second day, thinking of becoming a murderer myself.

I wasn’t really going to murder anyone, of course, not actually. But the fact of being on a group expedition with a set of people who didn’t apparently know each other at all, thrown together at close quarters comfortably far away from pesky police people did strike me as a fabulous setting for an Agatha Christie style murder mystery. So, while spending long hours with my arm hanging out of a landrover or staring at some canvas wondering what sleep would be like, I started planning complex killings and twisted webs of hidden motives, and really really nasty things to do with tent pegs.

I wasn’t as worried about scorpions and snakes and other nasty bitey things either, much.

Soon after we arrived in desert places proper, I realised that the only scuttling things were the previously pictured Scuttle-bug (I think more formally known as a scarab beetle) and though they did scuttle at you with a certain vigour and grim determination, they didn’t seem to want to do much when they got there.

Scuttling things in general are Very Bad (mice being a notable example, as many will know. But there’s something different about mice, in that they generally like to scuttle UNDER things, such as sideboards, and ON things, like hardwood floors, and for that matter, sideboards, and this makes them infinitely worse, and there weren’t any sideboards at all in the Western Sahara or at least not in the bits I was in)

(I’ve now given myself a serious fear of sideboards, and am starting to seriously panic about that sideboard we’ve been thinking of getting. Nasty, evil, mouse attractors that they are. Am I still in brackets? Yes, I am. Right…), but these scarabby scuttlebug things were alright, becaue they were quite straightforward and unsideboarded about their scuttling, and I respect that.

So I didn’t worry about those.

I did worry about a whole bunch of other things, as previously stated, and, it has to be said, I worried quite a lot about the wildlife wandering around in the night. In particular the tracks of one beast that I spotted when taking pretty pictures of the sun rising over the dunes.

To whit:

See, this is TERRIFYING. There’s only one track! There’s only ONE TRACK, do you see?

This is a whole new world of scary beast.

Is it a desert hare or rabbit? Well, only if it is hopping. And not hopping in the sense of ‘like a rabbit’, hopping in the sense of ‘On One Leg’. WHY?
Is it a desert dog? Possibly, but one who walks very carefully, with one foot just in front of the other, like a supermodel in camel-toe hotpants.
There is only one other choice. It could otherwise be a MUCH LARGER BEAST on a novelty pogo stick.

These are terrifying options, all.

As I sat on the sand and considered the ways I could plausibly die, and which of the terrifying beast-options were the most alarming.

1) A mincing dog.
2) A bouncing lion on a pole.
3) Stinky the one-legged killer desert bunny of doom.

Worst of all, the tracks track led toward the landrovers, and we saw no since of it after that. You know what that means? Whatever it was, It Came With Us.

You know, I haven’t completely unpacked my bag, yet…

Although I should, because at some point, I may need that wrench.

[Yeah, sorry, that was one thing I forgot to mention. When I reached the depths of the sahara, I reached to the bottom of my tightly, well-packed bag and discovered that somehow I’d managed to bring to Morocco a large wrench. From the house-move, I assume. I'd wondered why my bag was so damned heavy.
Still. Could have come in handy with the murderers, eh?

Or the murders, for that matter.]

No.589 in an depressingly frequent series

“You know what’s really good about having the i-sight video camera built into my macbook? It’s really handy for putting make-up on on the train.”

Well done, Anna. I’m sure that’s what those designers and technicians spent years working on it for. They’ll be so pleased.

Is work. Well, kind of. No, it is, really.

Tonight, I’m blogging the events of Comic Relief for the Guardian’s Media Blog. If you happen to be watching Comic Relief with a pooter, then come join us - we’re sponsoring by the comment, and the commenters there don’t bite.
Well, they don’t bite Hard.

*Not neccesarily unique
**Not only through little.red.boat. At all.

I have rarely been so excited. Seriously.

LOOK! It’s a bloody BOOK! Look! Lookit! LookitBOOK! WOOO! WOOOO! etc!

It’s a book. It’s extremely funny, it’s a huge collaborative affair, I’m in it (which is fucking exciting in itself, thankyouverymuch), it’s got a fantastic Lucy Pepper designed cover, and it’s been produced in just SEVEN days.

Since Marvellous Mike first mentioned the idea in the middle of last week, and said, what do you think, Anna? And I said that I thought he was crazy, and that it would never work. But as is usually the case, I was completely wrong. And by the diligence, incredible hard work, passion and organisational powers of Michael and his little team of helper monkeys (of which I was priveleged to be just one), here’s the proof. Though I’ve just been over there and ordered a good many copies, I haven’t actually read the whole thing yet - but i’ve read half of it (Very Hard) and have to tell you that I laughed.

I laughed, I laughed out loud on the train, I laughed so much that I kept annoying my Beloved by poking him awake and saying ‘Hey! Read THIS one!’

And if you would like the same experience - well, then you can’t have it, unless you’re sleeping with my Beloved, which I don’t recommend, as I’ll be there too, and I snore. And it’s a bit weird. The concept, I mean, not… Anyway - then you should go over HERE to Lulu.com (or through the url http://www.shaggyblogstories.co.uk (which is the link you should link to)(and you really should be linking to it) and buy the book.

WHY YOU SHOULD BUY THE BOOK

1) It’s funny. It’s really fucking funny.
2) You’ll find posts from your favourite bloggers, and brand new posts from people you’ve never heard of but will want to go and read immediately.
3) It’s all for charity. Apart from the printing costs, no one to my knowledge is making anything out of this. ALL profits are going to Comic Relief. No one on the editorial side is taking a single penny of it, and Lulu.com (the internet publishy people) have announced they too will be donating their cut to Comic Relief.
4) It’s funny. Really, it is. And I’m in it yay.
5) Yes, I’m hearing objections and yes, you *could* just give ten pounds to charity and then the whole ten pounds would go to charity which is better for the charity etc. But you wouldn’t have a book as well, would you? and books are great.

And that’s it, really.

Oh, and if you’ve come over here thinking you were going to find the post that was included in the book - don’t be silly! What would be the point of buying the book, then? (Apart from it being a great way to donate money to charity AND get a really funny book) - I will only say that it may (or may not) be one of these.

And now to go and studiously ignore Comic Relief as usual.

(Well, apart from tonight, when I’ll be covering it live for work) (Huzzah) (Oh, where they’ll be sponsoring per comment, so, you know, almost worth registering with GU blogs and keeping me company for…)

Number of glasses I wear for VDU use (work only): 2 (well, one pair, so 1)

Time work glasses realised lost: 18.58

Number of colleagues still on desk: 0

Number of minutes spent looking for work glasses: 23

Number of desks searched for glasses: 11

Number of locked cupboards opened, closed and relocked in hunt for glasses: 3

Number of emails sent to close colleagues requesting their alertness to the possibility of stray glasses in area: 1

Number of colleagues cc’ed in email: 17

Number of times top of head patted to check for glasses in normal resting place: 497

Number of trains missed in panic to find lost glasses: 2

Visits to the bathroom to avoid big teary panic over lost glasses: 1

Number of pairs of glasses discovered, via medium of bathroom mirror, to have been on face the entire time:
 
 

1

This is the point, of course, at which a cleverer blogger would have made a large and complex equation taking all the factors into account, and all equalling ‘tired’. Number of formula that I should be putting here: 1
Number I will be putting here: 0

Because I would have done that: but can’t, as I gave up maths as soon as I was legally able to.
Oh, why didn’t I listen when they said algebra was going to come in useful one day?

Well, probably because in all those years, this is the first time it has. And it hasn’t, even then.
Even now? Then? Now?
Now, then.

Also I won’t be doing the complicated formula thing because I am tired.
You may be able to tell.

- On the train this morning, there were a group of women who, all getting on at different stops, were evidently long term associates, and all going somewhere together. Each new woman joining the throng was welcomed with a comment on her outfit, haircut, tan or weight.

Having become not a little obsessed with matters of weight recently, I had never realised how much people talk about these things, having tried hard as hard as I could NOT to get involved in those kind of conversations in the slightest.

One of them got on and was complimented on how healthy she was looking. This can mean either ‘fatter’ or ‘thinner’ depending on the tone.

“Yeah, I lost loads of weight.”

They all cooed and ahhed. This was impressive, I thought. I wondered what she looked like before. ‘Loads of weight’ I generally understand to be between two and four stone, which IS impressive indeed.

“…And then I went away for the weekend and put it all back on again”

Christ ALIVE, where did she go? Bathing in the great fat-lakes of Bavaria? Was she potholing in a mountain of chocolate, with only her hands and teeth to make her way through?

Yes, the weight-loss was impressive.

But my God, that weekend must have been AMAZING.

_________________________________________________

I’m sorry the post below is really boring, as mentioned by a couple of people. I’m having a really quite hairy week at work, freelance work, a couple of other things going on at the same time and then a little reading, proofing, editing, rating and things for a certain fabulous project and, given a tired hour in which to try and get some content for the blog together on the train, I took an old story and wrote it up in a really very dull, overwritten manner. Apologies.

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There’s someone I’m trying not to have a meeting with, and every time they wander the floor, I quite literally hide under my desk. Is this the proper proffessional way of conducting business? Yes. I think so.

_________________________________________________

For those who care even vaguely about the deconstruction of videos/defilement of the memory of the Rat Pack in the person of RAy Bloody Quinn, child star and non-winner of last years X-Factor (I’m guessing I’ve lost all but about 2 of you) my latest video deconstruction column thing is here.

_________________________________________________

My beloved and I are in Marie Claire this month. Do not buy it specially, as it costs several pounds and is mainly adverts for silly trousers. It is a nice thing, but I sound a bit like a big needy loony. He sounds like knight on white charger. He loves this.
Loves it.
Peh.

_________________________________________________

I will be back with other (short) things later on, for I have been terribly bad value for money these last few weeks. Sorry. I will try and reinstate Photo Phursday, if I can bury my way out of this mountain of paper. If only it were a mountain of chocolate instead.
Some fat ladies have all the fun.

The one on the left was some kind of rubber cheese and tomato, as far as I could gather. The central lump contained, I thought, tuna, and on the right was a thing containing that lumpy-moist-matter you get when you grate cheese, add it to spring onion and mayonnaise, stand back and admire your handiwork. I love that stuff. Whatever it is.

I admit I hadn’t been concentrating at the sandwich table, really. It was my first ever professional preview screening, and I was far more concerned with ‘looking like someone who should be at a screening’ than I was with sustenance. This was my first mistake.

I’d hovered around the bar for long enough, wondering whether a real journalist would pick up a diet coke or an elderflower crush, before remembering I’d seen one drinking the former only days beforehand, and deferred, so by the time I got to the sandwich table I was scared of being caught out as an interloper and, excusemeing my way between the only two people in the room who seemed to want to want to talk to each other, I grabbed the first three food objects that came to hand.

Perching on the edge of the scratchy foam sofas that lined the lobby, I looked around.

They all look very serious, I thought, film critics. All similarly perched, plate in one intelligent hand, drink in the talented other, film production notes laid across their journalistic knees and glasses pushed to the ends of their clever noses, they intimidated me silently and wildly as they nibbled on their classy sandwiches and ignored me completely.

The two who deigned to converse could be heard over the other side of the room, monopolising the crisps, horsing away about something impressive, deconstructive and clever. They dropped to a mumble.

Simultaneously, I studied the provided notes, handed to me at the door, and my sandwiches. Within seconds I’d learnt that the director was big in British comedy, the co-star was a keen juggler, the lead actor was very pleased to be reprising his award-winning role, and that the cheese and onion matter seemed to have been put on a very funny bread indeed.

I pulled the plate closer to the famous Pickard schnozz. Yes, those were definitely raisins - but what was the other scent? Cinnamon? That seemed wrong. I poked the bread a little, sending the sandwich scooting to the far side of it’s paper boat. It was rock hard. The movement told me that.

I’ve studied sandwiches for years - but realised I couldn’t get further into the investigation without trying to eat the investigated. Throwing the Diet Coke into my bag, journalistically (still closed, I’ve watched carefully and noticed journalists are clever that way), I picked up the quarry, and bit in.

Ciabatta, I think, is not made to be chopped into bite sized sandwiches. Particularly - though by no means exclusively - stale ciabatta that has been sitting in a warm room for about an hour. With a soft filling.

As my teeth hit the hard, hard bread, they simply brought the edges together, leaving me with a dry mouth full of splinters of crust, nubbles of burnt raisin, and a growing realisation that cheese and onion gloop was engaged in some sort of joyful birthing process on the far size of my (now-wedge-shaped) sandwich.

There was a problem. Professionally speaking, I was now in the perfect position to report that the film had been made on a budget of orange cheddar, and had been filmed in the exclusive spring onions of mayonnaise smear.

Further grapples with my sandwich platter ensured that if anyone ever wanted to know the career details of the leading lady, they would discover that as well as appearing in several leading European comedies, she had also had extensive blobs of tuna and looked forward to working with tomato drop drop drop and an Emmy.

When we were summoned to the screening room and told apologetically that we couldn’t take food in, I almost cried with relief.

An hour and a half of an apparent comedy flickered before the eyes of a room full of clever, stern-faced-critic-types and one hungry blogger.

Several days after I had an out-of-the-blue phone call from a PR.

“HellothisisTracyfromDoobedoomedia?! Just wanted your thoughts on the screening really briefly? Did you like it? Did you not like it?”

Well. I said. I can’t be overly positive, I’m afraid, Trace. Which is a shame, as I’m usually terribly keen on that cheesey-spring-onionny-mayonnaise stuff…

*doop!*

An intentionally calming and regionally-inoffensive woman speaks.

“You have selected option” pause, a man’s voice barks out “THREE” pause, back to the regional nursemaid lady “we’re sorry, all our operators are busy at the moment, you will therefore be on hold for an undisclosable period of time. During this time, we will be playing hold music.

IF you do NOT want to listen to our unidentifiable and generally risible choice of hold music and would rather spend your time on hold in calming silence, even if it Does mean that you get a bit of a nasty shock when someone suddenly says ‘Hellothisisvirginmedia, yourethroughtoSpamface, howcanniyelpyoooo?’ after 27 minutes, once you’d comepletely forgotten you were even holding a phone, please press the star button NOW.

Can someone clever invent it, please? Because I promise all the call centres I have to deal with that you’d find me a much sweeter person to talk to from the off if you’d given me silence as a choice. I would pay for the privilege and I’d be nice as pie. Silence. Pure silence.

Or perhaps the sound of birds, singing.

Or whales. whooing.

Or wind, blowing through autumn leaves. Or rabbits, playing in dewy grass.

Or children, laughing. Or a live feed of the call-centre smoking area. Or perhaps you could just press a button to be patched through to someone else ALSO on hold while you are on hold, so you can have a bit of a whinge about it. You could meet someone. It would be a new, untapped dating market.

Or just birdsong instead.

Or perhaps a guessing game. Or a quiz. Or French lessons.

Yes! You could be offered a choice of different language classes! People would be phoning back hoping to be stuck on hold ALL the time.

That would be great.

Or maybe just nature noises.

‘If you would like to hear the sound of powerful waterfalls, press seven. Once you need to pause your position in the queue to go to the toilet, please press the hash key, repeatedly, and with growing urgency”

The noise of clouds, gently blowing by. The sound of sunrise, or a tree, growing.

A tree growing would have been good on the phone to fucking Virgin Media (internet? No, we have forgotten to set up your internet! Would you mind your internet being set up in about three weeks, instead? We’ll give you a couple of weeks free what with it being entirely our fault and that). A tree growing - real time, obv - would have just about covered the time they kept me on hold.

Silence would have been a perfectly reasonable option.
Well: that or rabbits, playing.

Or hm. What else, I wonder? What else?

But I’m a little drunk, so I will forgive myself for now. Well obviously I will, I’m drunk. I’m a terribly forgiving drunk. What was I writing about? Oh aye, got it.

THE POST BELOW IS FOR STATIONERY OBSESSIVES ONLY. EVERY ONE ELSE PLEASE SKIP

Hello, my fellow stationery-spods. I know you’re out there. Hello.

Now, brothers and sisters, I have a quandry, and I desperately need your help.

As you may know, I’m attached - to the point of fanaticism - to my Moleskine page-a-day diary, but for the last year or so, while I’ve been travelling a lot, I’ve developed a bit of a problem.

See, I’d long ago decided that the best pen for the medium-weight, smooth paper of the moleskine, offering enough diversity in nib size for every occasion, was the Rotring xonox graphic drawing pen. Now, I usually use a 0.1 or 0.2 for the diary (whichever comes out of the bag first) and nothing else, and have other point sizes for other things, but my problem is that though the flow on the pen is beautiful, they’re just too fussy when it comes to temperature and air pressure.

If I’m travelling on a plane, I can’t take them in my hand luggage as they’ll explode when I next try and use them, I assume due to air pressure. If I’m in a situation where I’m in mountains or extreme temperatures, they fuck up equally predictably.

Has anyone had this problem?

Yes, I know I sound like a pen-geek, but I like writing in black ink - not rollerball or biro (then it has to be blue), fibre-tip, but I need a good thin smooth one that won’t spazz out at the slightest provocation.

Can anyone advise?

And can people who are about to hit the comment button and tell me I’m ‘an enormous saddo’ possibly allow for the fact that, you know, I know this already?…

Thank you. Really.