I know, it is unusual for me to put pictures of me up here - even less so pictures of me and my beloved - especially ones where I’m not wearing the most flattering outfit in the world, or any make up at all and all of that vanity.

But I am so very much in love with this picture of me and my best beloved taken by my lovely sister a couple of days before Christmas on Baker Beach, looking over to the Golden Gate Bridge.

Not only is it a great, great picture (as my seeester is an amazing photographer) but it is in one of my favourite places, and we both look just so happy, messing around and just like us, really. He didn’t succeed in throwing me in the water, by the way. Though my feet did get quite soggy indeed.

In a way - and a day early because I’ve still got a post lined up before the year ends -
It is just my way of saying YAY 2008, I suppose.
There’ve been some shitty bits, and some challenges and some disappointments and I haven’t got as far out of the depression-hole as much as I might have hoped I would. But it has been a good year, and I am grateful for all of it, and happy about all of it and overwhelmingly excited to be where I am right now, in all senses of the word.
So YAY!

Sandwiches, right: are brilliant. That is all.

I have always said that about sandwiches, also other people have said it, so it’s not news, exactly - I just thought I should mention it again.

Sandwiches. Are. BRILLIANT.

It is always true, yes, but I remembered that once more this week when, for the first time ever, we had a turkey for Christmas dinner. Really, neither of our families had been that keen on it growing up, but since we were here and suddenly hankering for ALL THE TRIMMINGS and no mistake (ask the poor dear beloved members of my family who had come for what they might have thought was going to have a crazy alternative Californian christmas and then ended up with turkey, mince pies, mulled wine, yorkshire puddings, brandy butter and big round christmas bloody pudding. They’re lucky they didn’t get woken up at 5.00am so they could be up, washed, breakfasted and upstanding for the Queen’s speech, but no, we were homesick, not utterly changed. Or mental).

So we had a Turkey, and the smallest one we could possibly find was about 16lb. Which, as far as I understand it, is about the weight of two human roasting-babies. So we managed to eat half a breast each for Christmas lunch itself - or tried to, mostly failing - and then had to think of things to do with the rest of the turkey.

And I know there are endless things to do with leftovers; curries, soups, pies and all sorts but no. Sandwiches, for me, are like the pinnacle of all foods. They’re endlessly interesting, highly personal and never the same twice. Awesome. Yes, I did just say awesome. I’m not being Californian, I’m just saying it about sandwiches, you see, because Sandwiches. Are. Awesome.

It’s like a magical chemical formula an with an infinite number of components or whatever you have in chemistry. An infinite bunch of chems. You start off with one base element - bread - but many many different kinds of bread or wraps or flatbread or any of those things - and then a main ingredient (let’s say, for argument’s sake, Turkey) and then build from there. And it’s funny, because I was just thinking about writing a post about how great sandwiches are (they’re GREAT) and then I noticed that Clare was thinking exactly the same thing.

Except, Clare was extolling the virtues of the simple sandwich, the ‘eat with one hand’ no faffying, non-fancy sandwich. Now, while those kind of sandwiches have their place, and I fully support her right to, in turn, support them - I cannot agree. The sandwich should take as many different flavours as the eatee can bear, be as wide as the hands can hold and the mouth can stretch (though not bigger than that, that’s just annoying, but that’s why ultimate control for the size of the sandwich must rest in the hands of the eater) and as complex as any favourite meal. Just in a neater package and not needing a knife and fork.

Anyway. This week’s discovery (to me) was the discovery of adding left over stuffing to turkey/ham/WHATEVER the sandwich. I wouldn’t have thought it would work, being mainly made of bread, and this being a bread-in-bread sandwich and therefore a bit weird. But it does. So Turkey, stuffing, lettuce, cranberry sauce, smear of mayonnaise, vegemite, a little peanut butter maybe, and some crisps, All good! Turkey, stuffing, mayonnaise, lettuce, bunch-a-random-whatever’s-in-the-fridge, lime pickle, marmite and, of course, some crisps. Yes. Yes yes yes.

Maybe that doesn’t sound good to you. Maybe it does. But that’s the thing, a sandwich is the open licence to please yourself. Offer people a table spread with whatever you’ve got and two slices of bread, and maybe a toaster if they’re that way inclined (I am, personally, but do not judge)? BINGO. You have a meal! And you have a meal that everyone will like because without much hassle it was made Just For Them.

And by them. I never let anyone make my sandwiches. I know it may be considered rude to say, if someone offers to make you one “No thank you! Though I might make my own in a minute.” Is that rude? It probably is - but what’s the point of them wasting time doing something that is so tailored to individual taste that you won’t like it quite as much as if you had made it yourself in the first place? Seriously?

And that’s why - if I’m ever at your house, and you offer to make you a sandwich, and then I say no, but look a bit sad like I’d secretly LIKE a sandwich but would rather you not make me one I kind of like but don’t like as much as I would like one I made myself, because then you would ask me how my sandwich was and I might say ‘yes very nice’ but I’d secretly be lying a little bit and thinking how much better it would be with some vegemite, some lime pickle or - obviously - some crisps in it - If that happens, and it may, please don’t take offence. It’s only because I like you so much (and I’m very very particular, as we all should be - that’s the point of sandwiches). So forgive me - then hand me the butter knife.

Anyway, so I’ve got rather rambly on the subject because I’m meant to be doing something else and can’t quite remember what and so just kept typing instead.
So.
Um.

In summary:
Sandwiches.
Yes.
Oh dear me yes.

Hello. It is now past midnight in my new home, so breakfast time in my home-home, and it is Christmas. And much as I don’t believe in the whole ‘Virgin Birth’ bit of Christmas - in any way, shape or form - I do very much believe in the ’spirit’ of Christmas, which is, as far as I understand it, usually brandy.

I am of course kidding.

It’s Whisky.
AND brandy.

Not together though, that would be rank. You know what else is rank? Eggnog. Eggnog - for those of you who are sensible and British and never tried it - is a mixture of raw eggs and double cream and nutmeg and other such spices. Yeah, I know.
Anyway - I nogged my first egg tonight, with a good slug of rum to make to just that little less weird and little more palatable - and let me tell you; it’s everything you ever thought raw eggs, double cream and rum would be. JUST like that, in fact.

ANYWAY.

I just wanted to say - whether you celebrate Christmas or not, or just celebrate eating a lot and getting things you never knew you wanted wrapped in paper - HAPPY YAY!

Jingle jingle jingle etc!

It wasn’t, certainly - partly because I’m not used to this tiny lead-up to the event. In the UK we complain about … well, about everything, because it’s such jolly fun, but ALSO about the fact that shops start decorating for Christmas in about September. But here, there’s this domino rally of holidays, and all October the shops and the television and everyone are all focussed on Halloween, and in November it’s all Thanksgiving, and then suddenly, just after Thanksgiving, RIGHT at the beginning of December, THEN all the Christmas decorations arrive.

So I’ve barely had any time to warm up at all. Luckily, I have a few shortcuts to Christmassiness. Tinsel: Have. Mince Pies: Now have. Mulled Wine: You bet your ass.

And the one sure way of doing that, for me, since my friend Peet introduced me to it a good few years ago (or a few. or ‘three’), is to listen several times a day to this version of a Christmas classic from Bahamian outsider artist Joseph Spence. I have the MP3 if any of you need to take it to a party - you should email. Or buy it, obv - but in the meantime, here is a video version of the mumbling king.

SANDY CRAW IS COMMINNNNN …. HURUMNMNMNMNMNMNNNNNNNNN….

So I got all nervous and …. blah blah blah blah …. queue was mercifully short and …. blah blah blah…. turned left …. turned right … that fourway pileup at the school crossing might have been a bit of a boo-boo… blah blah blah manouvre, blah blah blah signal … blah blah mirror …

But really, it was the moment I turned around and saw that my examiner was a DUCK with no opposable thumb and therefore no ability to tick any of the right boxes on the test form that I realised there’s no WAY I could have passed my driving test!!!

A ha ha ha ha ha! SILLY ME!

Etc.

Yeah, so I failed my driving test.

In a couple of weeks, or maybe a week, or maybe tomorrow, or something, it will be a very funny story. I can’t make it one right now.

In the space of the 48 hours around it, I lost my only two money-cards in separate incidents which (and the financial jiggery-pokery I have set up to keep myself organised here is very complicated and silly, so excuse how nonsensical this will all sound) meant that I not only turned up at the checkout at IKEA with a trolley full of things and no way to pay (bar a very nice friend who, thank god, accepts cheques and promises of pizza as payment), but that I can’t move any money from the UK to the US for Christmas here without a lot of fucking about, and can’t buy presents for people back home without the same (cancelled cards etc). Then I failed my test, had a panic attack in rush hour traffic where I kind of fell off my bike, and discovered that an enormous wave of SAD - which I thought I was avoiding but just am not, really, at all - was landing on top of me, all its weight and depth and horror and wah with it. And then I sat and I cried and I tried to write my way out of it and I failed. Again. I failed at lots of things in those 48 hours.

So believe me - I promise you - the failing of my test will turn into a funny, funny story. Or just a story. I promise.

Not today, though.

HOWEVER.

It’s almost holiday time, my darling sister and husband arrive tomorrow, I have origami paper, have a glass of good wine, have found where to buy mincemeat for mince pies - though not mulling spices I am happy with as yet or Christmas Pudding anywhere at all this late, but I’m working on it - and as soon as my sister arrives there’ll be decorating and trees and tinsel and mulled things and pies of all nations and terrible Christmas radio and treats from home and cats going mental and all, all, all of that.

So you mustn’t feel sorry for me, I mean. About the stupid driving test. Because trust me, it’s a very, VERY funny story, and I’ll tell it to you as soon as I can.
I just haven’t told it to myself yet.

A dear friend of mine, the other day, used a phrase I have never really understood and consequently barely ever hear, (let alone use, because it makes the picture in my head go all fuzzy and out of focus and start wanting to think about dinner plans or bees or beaches).

My friend said that she ‘comes‘ (in the sense of orgasms, you understand) ‘like a train‘

We should, of course, be very impressed etc, it is almost certainly a remarkable feat. For her, I mean - but also for the fact that we managed to get as far as her actually saying that to me in conversation; given the choice, I’d rather never speak about my friends genital-lives at all, if I can help it. It doesn’t really go with dinner. Though it depends what you are eating for dinner. If you were eating some kind of testicle stew with dumplings (is that a tautology? whatever), or simply meeting for coffee and vagina-shaped cakes, then I suppose it might naturally crop up in the flow of conversation.

But we weren’t eating anything the shape or consistency of bits. We were just talking on the internet. Or were we? I forget. Anyway. My dear friend, she said: “I come like a train!“. And all I could think to say was “What? twenty minutes late and with a vestibule that smells of piss?”

Which wasn’t, I think, strictly what she meant.
I think I may have spent slightly too long commuting on First Capital Connect in and out of London. I may be forever tainted.

Of course, it’s not the only simile that leads to such literal confusions. Though of course right now, I can’t think of any others.
Apart from people declaring they have been ‘pissing like a race horse’, which always makes me think they’ve been out in the garden urinating on all fours while the queen mother watches.

But, you know, it takes all sorts…
Gosh, it’s nearly Cristmas, isn’t it?

[la la la la la la .... Anna toddles off to think about things much more pleasant and fluffy]

- People I love will never want for anything when around me.

- I will have a driver. In fact, I will have an old fashioned London cab (somehow reconditioned to make it more environmentally shiny, but still with the proper old diesel rumble) and a driver to drive it. Not a typical London cabbie driver though, because no offence, but they’re mainly complete twunts.

- My cats will wear nothing but the finest cat-hats.

- I will drink nothing but expensive wine and the finest squash available to humanity.

- Finally, I will be able to afford to assemble my bee army, train them to be more cuddly than stingish (except on my command) and thereafter take over the world.

- I will pay someone to be chubby for me.

- I will never look at the prices or bad ingredients on a menu and feel bad ever again.

- I will sort out some clever way of allying those last two things.

- My toilets, right, will have solid seats - not completely solid, they’ll have holes in the middle, clearly - and will be bolted to the toilets themselves with bolts of purest titanium that will Never Ever slip around under you while you are sitting on them.

- I will buy the expensive olive oil.

- Fresh flowers will be in my kitchen all the time. And in my living room.

- Everything will be lovely, clearly.

- I will then find something else to worry about.

[PS And obviously I will give lots of money to underprivileged gay blind kids with cancer from developing world countries as well. That goes without saying. I mean no, wait, I already do that, of course, as we all do. But I will give loads more. This list was just of the extra things I may take up AS WELL. Ok?]

This is ridiculous. I’m sitting awake at silly o’clock because I’m fretting about a driving test tomorrow.

The driving test isn’t being taken by me, but the person who IS taking it is sleeping the happy and completely-non-nervous Sleep of the Fine upstairs, snoring happily. I am panicking on his behalf, because panic is not in his vocabulary. I sometimes wonder how two people so polar opposite in so many ways can be so happy together.

But then, we spend an evening together making rough and silly handmade Christmas cards with glitter and marker pens. And too many of them feature zombie jokes than is generally acceptable on these sorts of things, and we both think they’re not only fine but better than any other christmas cards we’ve ever seen. And send them immediately. So maybe not opposites in the slightest.

ANYWAY.

In other news, I have been completely negligent and stupid and remiss at not telling you to go and buy the book or the Christmas cards of Venn That Tune by Salvadore Vincent otherwise known as Andrew Viner now he has a real book out and can’t have silly pseudonyms any more.

Song-title/Venn-diagram mash-ups are big all OVER the interwebs, so you will recognise and love the work of a true master of the form in the shape of this one.

HURRAH.

In other news, I still cannot sleep. I’m going to try the old ’shutting your eyes and thinking about rainbows and unicorns and waves and not even slightly about tax returns and what career you’re planning to hold for the rest of your life in order to remain solvent and also sane (or at least try and become closer to it)’ plan.
Wish me luck.
(Oh, and him, his driving test is in the morrow. If you happen to be driving around Daly City tomorrow, drive well. Or perhaps drive purposefully badly, to put him in perspective as a brilliant driver.)(No, don’t, that’s a terrible idea)(Forget I said anything).

I was just thinking about having a bowl of cereal. And then, several links down the brain-chain later (I think I should keep a record of these chains first, but I never think of it at the time as I’m to busy worriting about something like…) I was thinking that, as accidental ways to die go, drowning in cereal would be a really horrible way.

At first I thought it might be fun, like a big ball pool. But then I realised that with the kind of cereal we have, you would just probably sink down and then, breathing in, the little krispies would fill your lungs and you would drown. And then they would find you, dead and filled with puffed rice at the bottom of dry cereal pool. And they would fill you with embalming fluid and you would go ’snap! crackle! pop!’ and the police medical examiner would make some kind of really undignified wisearse remark about it.

Maybe that wouldn’t happen. Maybe you could frolic in them, I don’t know. I’m not that up on the physics of it all, really. Our living room, however, is a large open thing with a bedroom on a mezzanine floor above that has a handy balcony. So I thought that maybe, maybe, if I asked My Beloved nicely, we could think about possibly filling the entire room up with crisped rice up to the top of the balcony - it would be about 12 foot deep, (I guess, maybe more) then - and then we could test it out.

My Beloved, being a clever fellow with a technically ept brain, did some quick calculations, and worked out that in order to fill the whole room, we would need ’several boxes’. ‘Possibly’ he conjectured, ‘around 190,000′ or more, if we were going to take all the crispies out of the boxes and the bags and just tip them on the floor until they filled the whole room. And we’ve just worked out that at current supermarket prices that would be around half a million dollars - or, as they’re known in this house, “half a million quid-no-wait-American-Quid”, or more recently just ‘half a million American Quid’, because my brain seems to manage getting used to currency conversion but not not having a slag term for it.

And then we thought about how much, therefore, if a living room’s worth of rice krispies - or the poncey brown rice version of such - was worth almost 500,000 American Quid, how much raw money must therefore be passing through the hands of every factory worker at the rice krispie factory? A lot! This stuff is, we worked out, therefore, possibly pound-for-pound more expensive than DIAMONDS. They must put the equivalent of several small countries’ GOP into brightly coloured boxes every day!

After much discussion, My Beloved persuaded me that while interesting as a piece of research, we could possibly find more productive things to do with 500k AmericanQuid.

But imagine it. I mean, I’m not trying to scare you so close to breakfast - but imagine it: sinking into a deep pool of some kind of dry rice-based (or corn based, or, you know whole-grain based if you have some fancy-schmancy health thing going on) and you would try and escape and you wouldn’t be able to because the crispies would be crushing under your feet and the harder you struggled the more they would crush and suck you down into a cereal tomb.

I’m just saying.

Anyway, I’m going to go and have a bowl of cereal now.
I was just thinking.

Most importantly, some of those things I have seen when I remembered I had a camera on me.

Firstly ONE: - Head cloths!

Now please, do not anyone think me mocking - I am a very big fan of bald people. Men, mainly, although bald women are very good too. I’m mainly friends with the male kind though, and I love them, and their hairfree state, and I would never think of mocking them.

I do like that you can get shiny-head-making cloths, though. I like it very much.

Almost as much as I like

TWO

…this advert, which seems to be trying to sell a diet product that will - if the pictures are to be believed - not only help you lose a quite possibly unsafe amount of weight in a ridiculous amount of time; but apparently also change your race.

Yes, why bother with all that faffy photoshopping for your before and after pictures when you could just use two pictures of completely different people instead? It’s so much quicker.

THREE

Did YOU know there was a movie version of John McCain’s life?
Well there is.

That is all.

Actually, to be fair, a good majority of you probably do.

I have a post building in my head about why, exactly, I’ve suddenly developed an idea that I would like to drive, and how actually learning to drive is affecting that whim.

I keep thinking of things to write in the post about my lessons.
I’ve had two lessons now, with a driving school that promises to be ‘fearless’: though after that moment at the end of the first lesson where my concentration lapsed and I forgot which was the brake and which the accelerator in quite a sudden and hair-raising manner - I expect the fearless label applies to the instructors rather than the students.
And certainly rather than to me. I’m fucking terrified.
Seriously, some grumpy woman honked her horn at me for taking too long to do my very first u-turn today, and I may have wept a little through my next 8 lane changes.
But I kept driving! I did! So that showed her!

And my left turns and my right turns are second to none, and my lane changes are award-winning (possibly, I’m trying to find a competition to enter them in) and on my very first lesson I learnt to stop, go, indicate, yield … and then how to drive all the way across the city in rush hour traffic, so you can understand why my concentration might lapse a tiny little bit.

But there’s so much more to it than that. There are mirrors, for a start. And All sorts, and…

I will write up my thoughts on being one anxiety-ridden rather meek English lady in charge of several tons of American metal (actually Japanese, I think, in this case, but it may deaden the sales pitch for this upcoming post a little if we start working out where each car part might have come from) and it will be a sparkling and fun-filled journey from not-even-remotely-interested-in-being-a-driver to driver. And I will explain why, too.

But not today. Because concentrating on a) Not killing anyone and b) Not crashing and c) remembering which is left and right AND which one of only two pedals is which
is a very tiring business. And I’m going to go and sleep very heavily now.
Very
very

snor