People keep saying this: Oh, advertising is down; oh, it is not a sustainable form of media in an internet age; oh, it is a dead tree, floating down the river, never to be seen again.

I say: Booooooooooo.

I realise this is not a stunningly complex media argument but then, if you wanted that you’d go find yourself a stunningly complex media commentator, rather than, say, me.

Instead, you have me. Hello! Anyway. My point is, I will be sad if they do. One of the first things I do on reaching somewhere: the first first, if at all possible, is to pick up a copy of the local newspaper. And then go and find somewhere with a nice cold drink, and read it cover to cover, if there’s time.

Within a few pages - especially by the time you reach the opinion and letters (features are generally interchangeable from place to place - although, of course, they are also Very Important Things and writen by geniuses. Genii. Oh hell.) …

Anyway: by the time you reach most of the way through the front section of the local newspaper, you know what’s going on in the town, what the big stories are, how people feel about it. It’s a way of getting to know a place and its people (without, you know, actually talking to anyone, which tends to be helpful when you are about as shy as me).

So while we were driving around, we picked up quite a few newspapers. And there were some stunning stories in them all, and some brilliantly outraged letters about this or that or the other (though nothing on the ones in the local paper I’ll tell you about next week, she said, making promises she’d almost certainly never live up to) - and then sometimes, if you are very lucky, there will be a police log, detailing all the call outs the local police have taken over the last week or however. None of them are as poetic as the famous Arcata Eye one, but they’re still a good read.

Anyway these two things were just ones I particularly loved from the first couple of papers we picked up, from the village by the Grand Canyon - a paper for there and a couple of other local towns.

LOCAL DOG!

Now, the remarkable thing about this story you can’t really tell how brilliant it is from the headline: though the headline iteself is pretty damned good.

But when you look at the caption, you can see something else: the story about the dog because the dog was looking for three young hikers who’d been swept away and lost in the canyon.

Now, obviously this was a story that had been and gonein the local press but still, I thought: crikey, that’s horrible - how old were these hikers? Were they ever found? What were their names? Were they on a guided hike or just going out on their own.

And you know what, reader? I have NO idea.

I combed though the whole front page paragraphs, flipped over to the page where all the stories continued with large words on the top of their columns to denote which story they were continuations of. “See page 6: DOG” and then I read all the way through that. I knew then name, length and weight of the dog, where it lived, what it ate for dinner, how proud it’s owner was of it, and what it’s favourite toy was (bit of rope).

I mean, I understand the focus of the story here was the local one, and the local thing about the story was the dog, and I know that, sadly, hiking accident stories are quite possibly quite frequent around those parts. And, you know, I have NO news sense whatsoever … But I know what I need as a reader, and what I needed was just one mention of the three dead people and what may possibly have happened to them: and nope. Nothing.

He really likes marrow treats though, if you’re wondering.

This was my other top best most favouritist thing: and it was so simple, just one of those ‘Man on the Street’ type features, asking people what they thought of a certain aspect of current news.

The problem is, with only a small pool of people to ask, including children and those who just don’t give a stuff about current affairs, surely they end up calling on the same people over and over again.

And if they don’t, they surely come across the fact that, overwhelmingly, if you ask people to describe what they think of a current event in a single sentence without giving them a very directed question, you might not get a very newsworthy answer.

For a perfect example of this I give you: “Are YOU worried about coming down with swine flu?”

Which is not really an opinion gatherer as much as a yes or no answer, which might be better for a percentage based poll than a vox pop feature, but anyway - all that is evident in those brilliant answers (well what else would you say?!) given by the featured local opinionites:

“Not really”
“I don’t know. Not really”
“Sounds like regular flu to me” (trans: “not really”)

Brilliant!
I mean, I don’t blame them, because they’re right. Were YOU really worried? Not really, right?
Exactly.

It’s just the fact of deciding

a) this was the right question to ask, then
b) thinking it was STILL the right question to ask when you’d asked the first three people and they’d answered ‘not really’, and then
c) not choosing to ask any more people in case you could find a differing view to present a bit more variation in opinion.

Nonono,just stick with that ‘not really’ verdict. And one from a guy with a breathing hole in his neck!
Brilliant!

YAY!

Hurray for local news!

Do you all know I liveblog things from the telly for work? Well, I do. It is one of the things I do. I like it. Anyway. For very obvious reasons no one much cared for having a blog of the National Spelling Bee, apart from me, not least because of the stupid time zone things that mean it’s already finished by the time I’ll see it anyway.

Anyway, so I thought I would liveblog it here instead. For my own amusement.

(more…)

There are some things I was going to move onto that I’ve been meaning to write up and other bits of my trip I should write up so I never forget them, but I just needed to stick these two pics somewhere and they were never going to fit in anywhere else, unless it’s a post about how I compulsively take pictures of signage, even in places where there are things much more photogenic than signage (I just like signage)

I like this helpful sign explaining why one might not want to get too close to the edge of the canyon.

Although I think it might work better if they didn’t make it look so fun.

WHEEEEEEEE!!!

That is what she is saying. I think.

And the other thing was just one of the many uses of the word RIM around the site. I don’t know whether it’s because it sounds funnier in a British accent, or rude if you say it out loud, or because the word means so many, MANY different things, but I never stopped making nose-explosion noises at signs like this:

A ha ha ha ha ha. Sorry, I’ll write more in a minute.

A ha ha ha. They said ‘rim’. Hee hee hee hee.

Think of the biggest thing you’ve ever seen. And multiply that by the biggest thing you can imagine, and add to that the word ‘BIG’, in mile high shiny letters, riding on the back of an elephant 50 times the normal size of an elephant and wearing a very big hat, you’re still possibly not close to how big the Grand Canyon is.

It’s really big.

And of course I knew that before we got there - I had figured out that ‘Grand’ probably wasn’t much of an overstatement, as it’s a bit too famous to be completely made up. And also when people want to describe something ridiculously large in this country they tend to describe it as ‘filling the Grand Canyon X times over’, which would seem to suggest it’s large on the kind of scale that you can imagine in relation to other things.

But it isn’t.
It’s just ridiculously big.

We drove up from Las Vegas to the south rim of the Canyon - although we were staying outside the National Park, so, as we got there after dark, we didn’t see it that night. Luckily, I was so excited about being on holiday I couldn’t sleep and luckily, due to some assiduous shin-kicking, neither could My Beloved.

And by 7am we were stepping out onto the first viewpoint in the National Park…

…And looking out over the grand canyon.

Which is, as I may have mentioned…

… stupidly big.

I mean, you’re looking across and you can see the other side of the canyon, and it’s probably about ten miles across at that point. And you look down, and it’s just layer after layer of cliffs, and there are canyons within canyons, and you’re staring straight down at a mile of air: because that’s how far the floor is, it’s a mile. And the trees look like tiny specks of green - like the individual buds on a head of baby broccoli - not like a whole floret, like the tiniest bud on the end of the tiniest branch on the tiniest floret - THAT’S what it looks like. But tinier.

And then you slowly start to realise that you’re looking at something very big, but that this bit that you’re looking at is just a little slice of the whole thing. That it goes on for hundreds of miles, and that the cliffs and valleys you can see are only ones among hundreds of thousands of similar cliffs, the tiny broccoli practically goes on forever. You’re standing looking at the opposite side of the canyon, and you wonder if you might just go there … and then you discover that you could go there, but it would involve hundreds of miles and about 5-6 hours of driving.

BIG.

I can’t deny, my reaction to the grand canyon was neither poetic nor profound.

Nor, it must be noted, fitting for a family-friendly blog. (Which this isn’t, by the way. Never has been. I mean, it’s friendly to MY family ((hello little mother! hello uncle john! hello beeeeeg seeeeester!)) and to all people with families and perhaps even to people who might euphemistically say they were ‘family’ when they meant they were actually in the mafia. I just mean this blog is just possibly not what you would put on the required reading list for your kids unless you were hoping they would grow up to be swearword salespeople. Or sailors)

ANYWAY. So this is the Grand Canyon:

And…

(are you ready for purest poetry and deep insight?)

… My first words on seeing it were:

“Oh for fuck’s sake”

Because nothing should be that large.

My words for the next ten minutes mainly revolved around the same theme, generally being a rather disbelieving ‘Seriously? Fuck OFF.’.

Not just for the sake of swearing. But in the same tone of voice you would use if someone tried to tell you they had nine stomachs, or that the pope was made of cream cheese, or that you had just won 187 million pounds, or that the plane you’d just boarded was actually going to the moon.

It was just so BIG.

SO beyond reasonable scope of understanding. SO utterly, insanely awesome and audacious that, to my shame, I couldn’t stop swearing at the bloody thing.

BIG, it was.
Big. Really big.

It was so large, this incredible and improbable thing, that it quickly became too much to take in, all at once. You started increasingly focusing in on little details on the sides of the Grand Canyon, or taking pictures of nice branches on trees NEXT to the Grand Canyon, because those were beautiful yet comprehendable, size-wise. And by doing that your brain could shut down the overload being caused by trying to take in something SO big and SO magnificent all at once, by zooming in on a small part.

Oh course the problem is that you’d do that, then turn around and the Grand Canyon would be standing behind you, waiting to ambush you again, and it would go “BOO!!!!” in its enormous booming silent shouty canyon voice “BOO! I AM THE GRAND CANYON! BOO!” and you would go “Oh, fuck OFF!” out of sheer surprise and disbelief that it managed to sneak up on you again, and then you would sound like a lout, all over again.

And then someone with you might complain that you were getting a little boring with the constant swearing, especially since for all your stubborn pleading, the Grand Canyon didn’t seem to be fucking off, and was, in fact, more likely to stay right where it was than you were. And that the RV-ing pensioners from Idaho sharing the viewing rock with you were starting to look at you a bit funny.

So you might start focussing on other thoughts to amuse yourself and distract yourself, like imagining the first people to come tramping across the plateau just minding their own business, trying to get from A-Z, when they suddenly came out of a grove of trees and found this. And you draw a little cartoon of it in your mind. “Oh bugger” they are saying. And then you amuse yourself by taking pictures of the many signages that employ the word ‘Rim’ somewhich way or another.

But then you forget what you are not looking at, and you turn around once more and BOO!, the sodding Grand Canyon has crept up on you again. But you don’t swear (out loud), instead, you might try very hard to switch it up a bit and replace your nonsensical swearing with something entirely more rational.

“Well that’s just RIDICULOUS” you would find yourself saying, over and over again. “That’s just STUPID.”

As if outraged by the idea of someone having the CHEEK to put that there. The sheer AUDACITY! And did they think they’d have you fooled?!

And then you’d revert to swearing for a while.

I mean, come off it. That’s just fucking insane. Nothing’s that big.

I don’t know if you would react the same if you were a country person, used to bigger scales and wider horizons, or whether you would react differently if your brain didn’t go in quite as much for super-detailed observational overload as mine tends to. And maybe it’s just because I didn’t have any canyon to compare it to, mentally. I don’t think I’ve ever known another canyon. I mean, I think there might have been a log flume called Splash Canyon at Thorpe Park, but not I say that I’m not quite sure, because it sounds like the kind of dreadful euphemism someone would have remarked on even then (Mi<"I took her up the Splash Canyon at the weekend" etc), so maybe I’ve no canyon experince at all.

Anyway. I’m now just being silly because I can’t stand how stupid my sincerity would sound if I tried to describe it to you.

Or how I would even start doing that. It’s just BIG, people. Really: seriously: I knew the Grand Canyon was big. The clue was in the name. I just didn’t realise how big, or how hard that was going to be to take in. Big like you can’t understand unless you’re looking at it. Big like exceptionally, unbelievably big, but so far outside the parameters of normal experience that you can’t think of anything logical to compare it to or measure to describe it.

So when people say “What was the Grand Canyon like?”

All you can think to say is “Big.”

And they say “Obviously. But how big?”
And you say “Really fucking big”
And they look at you like that didn’t help very much, and they’re not sure why you started swearing at them.
And you say. “No. Seriously, it’s just ridiculous. Don’t even get me started.”

I am glad I am not an astronaut, my brain would just explode.

I didn’t buy you a present, I’m afraid - though I honestly thought about buying you this:

Only I couldn’t work out how to get back to you from the flea market in Buttfucknowhere, Colorado without spilling the precious, precious liquid that made up such an essential part of its being.

My surprise holiday was not entirely Colorado based, though. We flew to Las Vegas, and then struck out immediately out of it again, driving over the Hoover Dam into Arizona and arriving near the Grand Canyon in the dark. I will tell you about the Grand Canyon tomorrow. Or maybe Thursday, because tomorrow is a busy work day. In the meantime, I can tell you: it’s pretty good.

And then we went other places, and saw lots of other things, including trees made of precious stones, and holes in the ground made by space. And volcanoes. And ruins. And museums, and diners, and a million gift shops.

And one day - and this is good, because I’m collecting states (I’m actually collecting vintage charm bracelet charms of states, but only ones I have been to. Yes, I have a long way to go) - we woke up in Utah, breakfasted in Colorado, had lunch in New Mexico, and then went to bed in Arizona.

In fact, this is a ‘welcome to’ version of our very condensed holiday roadtrip:

YAY! I love this. At the moment, Because it’s basically all the pictures I’ve managed to put up so far. But also because it was a great - and needed - release of stress and things.

That mosaic isn’t quite right. The two Arizona ones are actually out of order, I just didn’t notice. And of course ‘Nevada’ should be at the beginning there and ‘California’ should be at the end, but these are all the ones we could see from the road. You couldn’t see the other ones from the plane, damn them.

Anyway. It was, in just so many ways, amazing.
Lots of exploring, and sitting in silent places in awe of things. And lots of singing loudly in the car and making memories and shouting ‘HELLO COWS! HELLO!’ every time we passed cows (it is only polite), and lots of talking and lots of new sights and amazement. All my favourite things.

But yes.
Thank you for all your lovely wishes and general wonderfulness.

I will tell you all about more of it when I have the pictures to match.

And I’m so, SO sorry about not getting the spinny bally dry icey thing.
Still, thought that counts, right?
It’s the really random, weirdly ugly yet strangely hypnotic thought that counts.
Right?

I have that over-excitable ‘I’m on holiday’ feeling. I meant to get to my blog earlier this evening, but no, no, work just span itself out till the very last minute. Or I span it out. Because that’s what I do. Whatever.

But I meant to get here and write at least one of the posts that have been sitting on that list that hangs around on the table next to my bed, with memory-prompting phrases like ‘Dick/Gravy’ and ‘This is… theme project’ and ’sex club tree ambulance’ and ‘media/”miracle pill”/poo’, ‘tofu’ and ‘dentist’ and ‘that magazine for elistist scumsuckers that will be first against the wall when the revolution comes’ and other things.

But I will have to write those while I am away. As well as the things about being away.

But first I should just go away.

My Beloved has created the best birthday present in the history of birthdays. Tomorrow I am going away. I don’t quite know where. And we will have some kind of holiday. I know we’re flying somewhere late morning on Thursday, I know that I’ve been allowed to be quite slapdash with the packing, so we may be hiring a car when we get there, I know that I’ve got a wrapped book that I can open on the plane that will explain everything.

And the best thing is I have not had to worry about a single bit of it, nor have I had to worry about whether we’re going at all, we’re just going. And that is the end of it. How lovely is my Best Beloved? Very. He is awesome.

So. Next week I will be back - possibly with all the posts outlined above pre-written - and in the meantime I might be back with a photo or a brief thing or something, once I know where we are and if we have internet once we get there.

In the meantime: YAY!

(Also: sorry if anyone has been having trouble with comments getting modified: I’m not sure if the comments I approve are actually showing up - so if your comment hasn’t shown, please don’t take it personally - the same goes with unanswered email. I have a special pile of nice mail to answer when I reach a day I don’t have any other anxiety to address. It’s kind of been piling up. For maybe a couple years. Sorry.)

Now, however: I go on frikking holiday.
Somewhere.
Hell yes.

I spoke too soon. There was I complaining about my desire to be far away across a continent and across an ocean so I could be with my friends, and I made it sound like I wasn’t grateful for the friends I’ve made here. And I am. Because they’re brilliant.

I turned up at a barbeque on Sunday which, we had decided, was going to be a Happy Mother’s Day (US)/Birthday/Commiserations-On-Your-Laying-Off barbeque for various members of the invited. I had thought that sounded like a good idea, because it was a good way of celebrating with people that I really like without worrying about looking like I was trying to be the centre of attention or worrying that people wouldn’t show up.

Ad so I did turn up, bearing the kind of things that almost-32-year-olds bear, was presented with a birthday balloon by one of my favourite two year olds EVER, and then taken by him into the dining room, where I found this:

Which was just amazing. So thank you Amy, who made that, and who will read this. You are lovely.

So. Now it is my birthday. In fact, if you go by the fact that I was born at about 5.30am GMT, then it was my birthday about an hour ago in Pacific Standard Time, even though it is still technically yesterday here. Or it is if you are in the UK, or reading this tomorrow. If you’re reading this the day after tomorrow it’s not yesterday now, it’s the day before yesterday, and it’s not my birthday there either, unless you’re in China or something, and it is. In which case it isn’t the day after tomorrow, it’s tomorrow, if you’re in the UK. But today, to you, reading this now. If you’re reading this in more than two days time then all of that is void.

But it is my birthday, and I am going to be 32, which is odd, because I used to think I could imagine what 32 would feel like, and it’s just not like that. It’s not like that at all.

It’s just like being 25.
In that you feel like you’re twenty-five, but look at all the other 25-year-olds and wonder why they’re all acting so very young.

Mainly on my birthday I am going to be working, because it’s a Tuesday. I will, however, be taking the afternoon off to do a coupl of hundred miles road trip for a pizza. This is because I happened to be living near here 11 years ago, and spent my 21st birthday in a pizzeria in a small college town 85 miles inland. This is my desired Birthday Tea, and as whatever-you-want birthday tea is a sacred tradition, that is what we will have.

I will spend most of the morning before that, inbetween bouts of work, waving at my computer as I speak to my lovely family on the videothing (it’s like we’re in the future!). And I will open my cards and open some presents, maybe. And I am grateful for all of that. (OOOH. That reminds me, someone asked where my wishlist had gone. It is now here and is filled with things I am meaning to buy at some point when I’ve got some money. But I don’t think you can use it from the UK, whichever nice anonymous person was asking, so thank you, I am grateful for the thought)
And after all that I will probably do some blogging, because it’s important to keep yourself occupied as you reach advanced age.

So yes. IT IS MY BIRTHDAY, and BIRTHDAYS ARE GREAT.

And that is the end of it.

Happy Birthday Me!
Happy Birthday, EVERYONE!

Update: AND my sister made me a birthday animation with a happy seaworm monster!

How blessed (blessed-by-non-specific-non-godlike-forces, obv) am I?
Very, I say.
And I am very grateful for it.

HAPPY BIRThDAY EVERYONE!

(Number something in a series of insert value here)

I really should start a more regular series on the matter, but, along with all the other things that I love very very much about living here, there are also the things that utterly confound me.

These things are almost inevitably edible. Or, strictly speaking, supposedly edible. Edible in name alone, as far as I’m concerned. I need to start marking them down somewhere in a more concerted way. And here has always been ’somewhere’ so…

Loading up for the long winter ahead?

There’s been this advert playing recently for a brand new product from some enormous pizza delivery chain.

if it wasn’t bad enough that they already delivered pasta - huge foil vats of penne, slathered in thick creamy sauces, straight to your door (because for grief, how hard is pasta?!) - they now have moved on to … and I can barely say this without vomiting a bit in my mouth … something called a ‘bread bowl’.

A bread bowl pasta dish. Which looks suspiciously like a pizza, with full puffy crust, covered in a HUGE pile of PASTA, covered in creamy pasta sauce of some kind, and probably some meat, then covered in melty cheese.

Yes. It’s a pasta pizza.

And THAT is my wrongfood of the week.

Congratulations, Pastaroni Pizza!
You’re WRONG.

As you almost certainly won’t have noticed - as it’s a bit much to expect anyone to notice a lack of mentioning of a certain subject, as really no one knows it’s not being mentioned apart from the person who is not mentioning it, it’s rarely something that others would notice until you tell them they haven’t noticed it, at which point they don’t know whether to feel bad or try and pretend they had noticed the lack of it but hadn’t wanted to say anything - but EVEN THOUGH it’s my birthday next week and usually I’d be making quite a big thing of it (like promising to do a project that I then don’t have time to do, or doing exciting ‘things I should do before I turned X age’, or trying to hint enough to make sure enough people paid attention to my amazon wishlist (and you lovely people always have, thank you), or listing all the birthdays I could remember, or other such things). Because I’m quite birthdayish, really.

But this year, I have not been so very birthdayish. Because it’s made me more stupidly, selfishly, suckily homesick than anything else in the last eight months could have. It’s made me want nothing else - NOTHING, but to see my sister, and my mother, and my brother and all of the rest of my family, why not? And my friends in Brighton, and my friends in London, and my friends from the wonderful internet who are spread around in crazy places like Nottingham and Norfolk and Manchester and Paris and Glasgow and … and all my colleagues, just for a pint, just to whine about work, I just want to sit and have a pint with them and have some conversation that reminds us we’re nice people that get on and like each other, and not just people at opposite ends of a working day who need something from each other. I miss them, and that, too.

And I’ve missed all of these people for the last eight months, of course (although because like many shy internetty bloggery types, many of my friendships and conversations continue online, every day, in some form or other, I’m in touch with most of them as ever).

But this is one of the first times I’ve experienced this horrible ache. Where all I’ve wanted to do is sit in a pub garden, and have the people I love around me. And the people who love me. Who love me even though I’m awkward and clumsy and conversationally nowhere near as clear as I am in writing, and possibly the most neurotic thing you could seek to entertain without boxing up your own little pet mad Hatter.

None of which should remove from the fact that I’m lucky enough to meet some very nice people here - and feel lucky enough to call them friends. And they’re lovely. But. but I’ve only known them a while. They don’t owe me anything, and we don’t really have a history - they’re just really nice people who I’m honoured to hang around with.

But you know what it’s like - I’m that scared, and that unsure - that I worry that if I said ‘It’s my birthday I’m having a party!’, how do I know that anyone would come? Or come out of anything other than politeness? (And then I don’t like being the centre of attention, or anyone looking at me and wondering how I am or if I’m having a nice time (and you wonder why I’ve not had a wedding) so the idea of a party is always a bit horrid, but still).

So I’ve been a bit head-in-the-sand about my birthday. And about the fact I’m homesick, because that seems ungrateful. But, you know.

That’s what’s going on. So that’s what I’m writing (until tomorrow, when I will write about the exciting rescue-service action outside my house).

There are OTHER things, of course

- I am celebrating my birthday, have no fear. I wanted, in many ways, to go to the same pizza place I saw in my 21st birthday, as it’s only about 76 miles away, but with our work schedules that day it’s not really possible. I just never thought I’d be living here again. But I’ll go there some time again soon. Favourite American pizza ever. Ever ever.

- And, anyway: birthday: I’ll be spending it with my beloved, which makes it good. ALSO: I know I’ve had to clear my schedule for a few days from a few days after my birthday, all over that weekend. So I know I’m going somewhere, I just don’t know where.

- You know - once, in the national portrait gallery, I saw a portrait of a woman who died of a surfeit of cherries. I always thought your life couldn’t be that bad, if a few too many cherries were what did you in.

So I’m sitting here with a bowl full of cherries - though not too many, I promise - and a glass of wine, and watching a television show I watched all of and knew My Beloved would love, so am watching all of again, while working and writing and things (this is what I do. I audition TV shows for other people. If I know you well enough, I can prescribe you a list of must-see TV even if you think all TV is a waste of space).

- And everything’s lovely. Just, you know. Birthdays, and times when you might expect to see people and then realise you won’t?
They’re harder than you expect them to be.

I am not losing my accent. At all. Yet.
I swear it.

I mean, I’m getting to a point where I can slip it, quite easily, if I want to (if I’m in a restaurant or a shop or ordering something and it’s going to be less hassle and less smalltalky not to have to start answering questions about how long I’m on holiday here for, or how my server once met someone from London and they were called John and did I know them?) but unconsciously slipping? Absolutely not. Just the opposite in fact.

I mean, there are some words that I now get shouted at for using while talking to people at home. But for ‘freeway’, ‘gas station’, ‘highway’, ‘intersection’ and other such things, I’m unrepentant. I’ve never been a car person before, I didn’t grow up in a family with a car, I didn’t spend much time with people with cars, neither I nor my beloved have ever driven in the UK, and we’ve both learnt here (I failed my test and am consumed with anxiety about trying again, and he passed already and is brilliant at it, before you ask), so the fact that these are the words that come naturally now about these things are in ‘Merkin - I don’t feel that that’s wrong.

But I’m not losing my accent. Quite the opposite.

It’s an unexpected thing that no one ever warned me about. The fact was, when I arrived, I felt suddenly shy, in the stupidest situations. I didn’t want to talk loudly in restaurants or shops. When I spoke out loud, my accent sounded obvious and intrusive; it sounded so different to the ones around me that I hated talking in public because it felt like I was ostentatiously trying to draw attention to myself. I felt like a duck in a room full of goats.

It’s not that my accent has changed (it hasn’t, it honestly hasn’t, I promise you) or that everyone else’s has - it’s the fact that hearing the two together has become commonplace.

It’s the fact that I’m now so accustomed to hearing my duck noises in a world full of goats that my brain has become confused about the whole idea of ‘different accents’ - because it just doesn’t sound weird any more.

We all still sound the same: all us ducks and all them goats - it’s just that the idea of it sounding ‘not right’ has changed - so I have trouble hearing what other people might be hearing. The difference.

This leads to some idiot conversations. We’ve both done it, my beloved and I - we’ve found ourselves describing some fact or phenomenon from home, and then qualifying it by saying:

“I’m British, by the way”

And whoever you’re talking about just looks at you and says “Um. Yeah…”, like you’re some kind of crazy patronising idiot, because it’s perfectly obvious to everyone in the whole world that you’re frikkin’ British, because you’ve got such strikingly strong accents that, really, you might as well be the queen, because what’s the difference - so why are you bothering to tell them out loud?

Because I couldn’t hear that they could hear that my accent was different from theirs. That’s why.
That sounds stupid, I know. But it’s true.

I realised this the other day when calling down the aisle that I’d found something stupid; like eggs, or something. I suddenly realised I felt so comfortable that I didn’t feel like I was shouting “Hey, look at me, I’m ostentatiously foreign!” - I was just shouting in my voice. Quacking in the goat supermarket.

And that’s now perfectly normal.

And it’s nice. It’s nice, and also weird. Weird because people said to me that I would lose my accent. They didn’t tell me the opposite might happen: that my accent might not slip an inch: but my brain would spin some-thousand miles.

I realised the other day that everyone was really nice and very sweet when we got the cats, and then when I was talking about moving the cats out here. And then they came out here and I never mention them anymore for fear of becoming a catblog. But, I thought just in case people were interested, and because I spend so much time with them, I should have a little cat update. Now they are 18-months-old or something like.

They arrived in San Francisco the day after us. On British Airways too, the posh gits. We opened the doors into an almost completely empty flat, and they came out, tongues hanging out from hotness and mild dehydration, and we said hello and we showed them water, and showed them food and showed them … you know, things for other important bodily functions that all living creatures have. And they understood all the things we were showing them.

At least, we presumed they understood because they said “MIAOW”, loudly, and repeatedly, to absolutely everything. We presumed - and it made me very upset, I can’t deny it - that it was due to the fact that since they only previously had been known to miaow when they were upset or thought they’d been abandoned or were scared. And they had most likely been stuck in their wooden crates, sound of jets roaring in their tiny ears, miaowing loudly to keep in desperate contact with each other the whole way across an ocean and a continent.

(But then … and this is where I traditionally start defending our decision to drag two small cats a very long way for an unknowable length of time … we had only had them a year … less than a year, in fact, and we had nursed them back to health from cat flu and various other illnesses, and we felt like dumping them off to someone else - and it was going to have to be someone we didn’t know, because everyone we knew who liked cats had cats, and everyone else didn’t want them or couldn’t have them - wasn’t what we wanted to do)

ANYWAY.

This was taken a week after they arrived (and 8 days after we did) and they look fine.

They’re sitting on the only piece of furniture we had at the time. We all were. Me and two cats. My Beloved got a small pile of cushions on the floor. Occasionally we rotated. Me and my Beloved, I mean. The cats sat where they damned well felt like.

Because they’re cats.

So, the slow removal of every single piece of furniture, box of books, shelf and familiar hiding place from our Brighton house (to friends, charity, storage, and recycling) had made them scared of strangers at the door. The doorbell ringing and new voices coming in meant that things would go, and, perhaps, that they would be taken away and stuffed on a plane for eleven hours, so for a long time they were also unsure of the door, and would run, upstairs, to the bedroom on the mezzanine and dive directly - and deeply - under the duvet until the voice went away, or someone came to coax them out.

This, they don’t do anymore either. They are much more laid back, now. They are Californicats. People come, and they ing the doorbell and the cats hang out on the stairs and look at them suspiciously (because they are cats), and then they go back to what they were doing.

Which is usually, when it is hot, is hanging out on the floor, trying to keep as cool as possible. Sometimes, remarkably, in synchronised fashion:

And the rest of the time, they go by their own rhythms. Neither is better than the other (although one cat is always more loved by guests, because she is basically still mainly kitten) but they are both brilliant.

These are their individual peculiarities:

SQUIRREL

Squirrel is otherwise known as ‘Squig’, ‘Skiggles’ and ‘Bigcat’.

She is, due to being the less sickly of the two when a kitten, about twice the weight of the other one, and a lot stronger and more aggressive, when she feels threatened.

This is squirrel, looking alert:

- Squirrel looks alert often - though it shouldn’t be understood that she therefore ALWAYS looks alert.
One of her other favourite positions is lying on the floor of the kitchen, on her back, legs akimbo, big white fluffy underside exposed, just begging to have her tummy tickled.

But I thought that was undignified, so we don’t have any pictures of that right now.

- Squirrel’s favourite toy is a fishing line with a squeaky thing at the end of it. She would run to the ends of the earth if you told her this toy was going to be there. Not that she’d understand what you were saying.
Because she’s a cat.
But if you went to the other end of the earth and jerked it about a bit, sure enough, Squirrel would be there, sooner or later, to impress you with her high jumps, capture it, and run away.

- She would do the same for thinly sliced ham.

- Squirrel still miaows, but only in a couple of very particular situations: when one of us is upstairs on the bedroom mezzanine thing, and she is in the living room (stupid lofts), she will chat away for ages. Granted, it’s not a great conversation, I grant you. It mainly goes like this:
YOU: “Hello Squirrel!”
Squirrel “Yik-ik-ik-ik-ik-ik” (alright, it’s not strictly a miaow)
YOU: “Hello!”
Sqiurrel “Yik-yik-ik-iiiiik!”
YOU: “Yes, I’m up here!”
Squirrel “Yik-ik”
YOU: “What are you doing? you just hanging out?”
Squirrel: “Yiiiiiik-yik-ik-ik-ik”
YOU: “Cool.”

But still.

- The other time she talks is if My Beloved sneezes. This is officially BRILLIANT. It doesn’t matter if she’s asleep, it doesn’t matter if she’s at the other end of the house. It doesn’t matter if he tries to sneeze in a different way, she will immediately make the same kind of protesty noises. Half awake, a floor away, or right next to you.
My Beloved: “CHOO”
Squirrel: “Yik-ak-ik-ikik”
My Beloved: “Sorry, Squirrel”
Squirrel: “ik-ikik.”

If I sneeze? No. Anyone else sneezing? Nothing.
Only my beloved.

Similarly she’ll run to our bed as soon as he goes up, but not when I do, and lie on the bed waiting for some love.

But once he’s got up to feed them in the morning, she’ll go and eat, and ten minutes later, come up to cuddle me.

It is her pattern.

Squirrel is awesome. But she is much more cat than kitten now. Unlike:

WIDGET:

Widget is otherwise known as ‘Widge’, ‘Widgewoo’, ‘Small’ or ‘Littlecat’.

She is half the size of Other Cat, and more less confident about jumping onto high surfaces or attacking people. She was the runt of the litter when we got her: and she had worms, fleas, conjunctivitis, cat flu and several other diseases that are bad for kittens, to boot. So she has come a long way, but is somewhat dented by the whole experience, physically. And perhaps mentally.

She is, however, very trusting. And very, very curious.

That is a very VERY Widget face to pull. She was, I think, at that point, very interested in the wrist strap on the side of my camera, but she’s generally unbelievably interested in everything. Mainly reflected light, bouncing around the apartment, laser pens, and shadows.

If you have ANY of those things (and let’s face it, we all have shadows) you will be her best friend for ever. Her favourite toy is the laser pen. She can hear if you’ve put your hand on it in the drawer, from three rooms away.

- She is, though in a slightly weird way, the most affectionate cat in the world. Just not when you expect her to be.

- She loves us both completely, and unreservedly. She loves My Beloved the most when he is on the phone, mainly for work. He has discovered the joy of working at home with cats most since the moment where widget discovered the best thing EVER was that when he talks (or rather shouts) on the phone, the vibrations are nice to rub against. So as soon as he picks up the handset on a work call, she’s up on the desk, walking backward and forward, purring madly and rubbing her face against his hand, the phone, his chin.

- She loves my feet. She’s not a lap cat, she’s scared of trying to sit on someone’s knee - I presume because that space is generally reserved for laptops, so there’s no point getting comfortable - but when I sit cross legged, she’ll plant herself directly on my feet between my knees. And when I sit with my legs folded or outstretched, there could be a whole sofa there, or a whole lap: but no; it’s on my feet she wants to sit.

- The most regular routine is the night time one. Every single night, this happens.
And it’s funny, because I have sleeping issues (which we will go into another time, because I’m clearly in the mood for sharing, lately) but Widget will wait until the very moment until I’ve finally, FINALLY started to drop off to sleep … and then she will come and sit on my chest and dribble on me.

And she won’t come and sit on my beloved, who falls asleep the moment he decides to, a minute after his head hits the pillow.
And she won’t come and sit on me any sooner, when I’m staring at the ceiling, listening to imaginary scary noises and wanting anything in the world to distract me.
And I can’t stop her from doing it, since My Beloved found us one of those fancy modern flats with lots of space and no titting doors.

And so the second I start to drop off, there she is, pounding her little paws on my chest, rubbing her nose against my nose and eventually settling, with her head on my clavicle, and her arm reaching up to touch my chin with her paw-pads, just to know I am still there….

For about six minutes. After which she suddenly sits up, makes a BrrrrRRRRRup! noise, like she has just remembered she left the gas on, and disappears completely.

But really, and I should stop now, because I could talk about them all day (though I hope anyone not interested in other people’s cats would have stopped at the first sentence, when I announced I was going to be talking about my cats. But no, this is the internet and I will might, for sure, have at least one comment saying ‘who cares, you boring blah blah sweary blah, how dare you take up valuable space on the internet talking about your cats?’ - which is kind of expected these days (although not on this little blog) ((and more of that another day too)) but whatever - I made my catbloggingness intentions clear, muddyfunsters)

But those are my cats. My kittens.
And I wasn’t sure that bringing them all this way was the best thing to do.
But I didn’t know what else to do to make sure they’d be ok. And now? They seem to be ok. Better than, in fact. They are my Californicats.

I just wanted to give those who were interested an update.
The update is: World’s Most Awesome Cats, 2009.
Yay!

Unless it’s an advert for ‘not buying anything from these patronising bunch of cunts ever’, in which case it is.

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while: I’m a bit of a junkie for packaging and adverts and prroducty launchy things, and I’ll probably start a new weekly post on here for one of my main obsessions (bad food advertising, long something I’ve been whining about on my very boring twitter account), but this? This was just something that annoyed me down there, you know?
Down there.
On a kind of girllevel.

Because I was passing quickly through walmart quickly soon after we moved (not the time I wrote about recently), and had to - just HAD to - take a picture of this, because for me personally, it’s just the epitome of crass female marketing:

Look.
It’s pink. It’s all kinds of pink.
It’s “we think you don’t understand anything that isn’t pink” Pink.
It’s “We think you’ll buy anything if we colour it pink” Pink.

And more than that? Worse than that?
They’ve MADE IT in the SHAPE of a rubbercocking HANDBAG.

A handbag. Because what do people with vaginas like more than the colour pink?
Handbags.
ffs.

So there you are.

Don’t buy this product, because you are intelligent, and can read, and can see that the active ingredient in this can be found in things a quarter of the price.

Please, PLEASE don’t reward this lazy packaging twatism with financial gain.
Because really: we’re better than that - aren’t we?

PINK HANDBAGS?