And the dispute in the comments about it (see previous post) - I would like to submit the following as evidence:

YOU SEE?!

You see the kind of build up these little guys get?
And then what do they do? They float. And you CAN’T EVEN RIDE THEM.

I was going to write something, but I can’t remember what it is, so I thought I should rate some aquatic life, because. Well, I know it wasn’t that I was going to write about, so it won’t spoil whatever that was for later.

I think that quite often most sea life gets by with a bit of a free pass from the general public. You tend to think “Oh, that there is a fish”, without questioning how well they are doing at being a fish, or whether they would fall above or below an otter or a sealion in the scheme of things, because they have never been comprehensively ranked. Which is not an issue, exactly - it’s just not very neat and tidy now, is it? And also I want to do this because … well, there isn’t strictly a reason, I’m just trying to reorganise my brain, and this helps. You can insert any other “because I feel like it reasons” in the space below:

[SPACE]

Sorry, you probably couldn’t get much in there because I filled it up with the word ‘SPACE’. I will try harder next time. But not right now, because there are fish that need to be graded, and they’re not going to grade themselves because a) That’s not a very fair system b) They didn’t know it needed doing and c) They’re fish, and their capacity for rational thought is very small.

[These water-creatures, please note, are all marked on the independently verified patent-pending Pickard Fish Grading Scale. And when I say independently verified, I mean the cat has looked over this.
Or over, at me, while I'm writing this. Whatever. It's all in the patent.]

JELLYFISH
B+
Pro: Very beautiful, sometimes glow in the dark, interesting forward propulsion using own string-engine. Reminiscent of other, non-swimming jelly.
Cons: Bad conversationalists; Stingy (in the sense of ’sting a lot’ rather than ‘never buy a round’); Also, they never buy a round. Raise difficult questions: what were they called before the invention of jelly? Were they, in fact, a by product from the creation of jelly, thrown into the sea as waste and turned evil? Has anyone looked into this? The internet needs to know. Actually I’m downgrading Jellyfish to a B- until we’ve resolved this.

TUNA
A
So big, yet so humble. They’re big fish in a … well, in a really big pond, in the sense of the Pacific Ocean - but you never see it go to their heads. No fancy suits or expensive hairdos for the tuna. No hair at all, in fact - they very simply, very humbly, rock it bald-style. Because they are big, and powerful, and tough. And yet humble. They’re all: “No no, really, a small tin’s fine for me, you take the big tin, Mr Tomato, I’m cool with this little one, no worries”. See? Tough, yet humble. Also their blood is made of mayonnaise, which is pretty cool.

CHICKEN
A++
I’m not sure whether chicken is strictly classifiable as a fish, but since one of the biggest tuna brands in this country actually carries the name ‘Chicken Of The Sea’ - that being its name, not even a tagline, or anything. So on that basis, Chicken MAY actually be a breed of tuna. Chicken: The tuna of the land. However, since chicken always gets an A++ from me, whatever situation they’re in, they do so here. IF this ends up meaning they win the battle of the sea-creatures, this could be awkward, but I stand by my decision.
The chicken always gets A++. They’re brilliant. They just wander around, with all this food for me. Like little Taco Trucks with feathers.

SEAHORSES
D
Mainly in defiance of all the radio adverts and billboards in this town trying to lure people on a 300 mile road trip to look at some seahorses on the premise that they are remarkably interesting and sensationalist yet secretive, and willing to divulge their deepest darkest secrets to you if you turn up to see them. They won’t. They’re generally between a few millimetres and a few inches tall, and say NOTHING. They just swim in circles, staring intently ahead of themselves and never at you at all, like they’re acknowledging that they brought you to the aquarium under false pretenses but know that if they don’t catch your eye they might not have to explain it to you.

ALSO, they are not good in movies. There are no races, no riding, no films starring young starlets in floods of tears because their darling seahorse companion has to get sent to the ‘really tiny pots of glue factory’. And if one of your enemies places a decapitated (no, wait, debodiated?) seahorse head in your bed, there’s a fair chance you wouldn’t even notice.

CARP
B+
Carp are well known for their patience. Or for their resilience. Or for tasting nice. Or being intelligent. And kind to the elderly. Or maybe because their name is easily typed wrong.
Whatever: the world is keen on crap, and so am I.
No, wait, carp.

THE ONES WITH TWO EYES ON ONE SIDE
F
That’s a fail, I’m afraid. They’re doing it wrong. That’s my sole reason.

OTTERS
B
It’s a really nice word to say, otter.

CLOWN FISH
A-
Points for being pretty, and for being nowhere near as scary as Clown Nonfish (more popularly known as ‘a clown’) which many people are phobic of. It’s hard to be phobic of a Clownfish. They’re quite small, and can be removed as a threat by judicious use of a small net, or a very small amount of batter. The same cannot be said for the Real Life Big Clown. You’d need more batter.

There are many other kinds of fish. Bass Fish, which are very deep; and presumably Soprano fish as well, who are a lot higher, though not as high as ‘in the air’, because then they’re not strictly fish. They’re birds, or ‘Flying Fish’, which are also a kind of fish. Flying Fish are a kind of fish that fly: so if you ever feel water dripping on you from above, it’s possible that there are a flock of flying fish over your head.

Well, either that or it’s raining.

Actually, now I think of it that rain hypothesis seems more likely.

Anyway, that will have to do for now, because I am required to leave the house and drink beer. Or maybe vodka-beer, because it is less fattening. And also, I was born and bred in the middle of London and though I am clearly very knowledgeable about quite a lot of fish (see above) I have currently run out of fish.

Apart from the MAHI MAHI, which I am giving an A+*+.
Partly because it has a great name which sounds quite excitable if you say it high-pitched and with exclamation marks, and quite a lot like really dirty pillow talk in a foreign language if you say it deeply and low.
Ly.
Lowly. Also because it tastes nice and speaks eight languages and has a doctorate in behavioural sciences and diamonds for eyes. I’m not sure whether those are true, but they probably are, because it got such a very hard grade, so they must be.

As a aside, quickly, while I am waiting for our bus, My Beloved is disputing the seahorse grade and saying it is wrong because they are interesting, and also mentioning that I might want to point out that I like nature, and don’t see it as having been provided merely for me to eat; but it isn’t, they aren’t, I do, but it kind of is, in that order. And I’m kidding. About some of that. Obv.

I have to go and drink vodka-beer now.
Packing our flat up again is doing my head in.

[To make up for the long rambly post below, which you can also read and comment on if you like]

I was wandering in the supermarket yesterday, and had to take a picture of this product.

Before I show it to you, I have to say: it’s not that the product in itself is risible or silly.

It is, indeed, a new and innovative creation that will almost certainly be embraced in the wedding and/or formalwear communities, and in certain parts of New Jersey/the outer reaches of North East London, I am absolutely sure it will be embraced, warmly.
Or at least it would be in the former. Not so much in the latter, at least with current branding.

Because, you see, while to increase the size of something might - yes - be described as it being “bumped” up. If you were used to the idea of bumping things up, and you wanted to enlarge part of your appearance: perhaps your hair, you might use something that would promise the bumping of that particular part.

But the use of this phrase cleverly tuened into a brand name is simply not something that would work for a British audience.

And I know this, because just when I was uploading my pictures of it to flickr, I noticed that my seeeeester had take pictures of the exact same thing. And so she should. Because we’re British.

And all it says to me is: You know that notoriously smelly, hairy, unsexy bit of the human body, the armpit? Well, this is something a bit like that, but with more anal associations. Bumpit: the thing that is really like an armpit; but for your bum.

“Hey, you might want to watch how you bend over, my love: everyone just got an eyeful of your bumpit. And that thing’s HAIRY.”

You see? Now explain why I might want to put the bumpit stick in my hair.
Go on.

No, you see? You can’t.
You just can’t.

“Bloggers’ envy” said my beloved, pulling on my hand to get me and my short legs home before his bladder exploded.
“It’s not bloggers envy, I just said she whinged a lot” I protested - and with due cause: she DID whinge. A lot.
“You’re just jealous…”
“I’m jealous of someone whingy? Oh I disagree, I’m perfectly capable of narcissitically whinging as much as the next person; as long as the next person is also a blogger.”

We were, obviously, coming out of Julie & Julia. I say ‘obviously’ because there aren’t that many mainstream movies around at the moment about someone blogging and being so wildly successful at it that not only does their blog get picked up by the media and turned into a book, but then that book gets turned into a film, with the blogger as character, front and centre, alongside one of the most cherished figures in American cultural and culinary history. And I understand that Julie & Julia isn’t out in the UK yet, but advise seeing it when it is. It has blogging in it, so it must be good, right?

Well, I mean, it is, but despite of the blogging, I’m afraid. Rather than due to it. It’s good because it’s a biography of a powerfully enthusiastic and inspiring woman with an unquenchable joy of life - Julia Child. And the fact that someone happened to write a blog based on her work was kind of, you know, meh. I would have been happy with having the blog as a blog and as a book, and then someone getting Meryl Streep to star in a biographical film called Julia & Julia & The Some More Julia, Because She’s Awesome And Inspiring, and I could go and see that instead.

Which is not to take away from the real life Julie. While the blog of Julie Powell, the blogger whose year-long project’s half-story is half-told in half of Julie & Julia, comes across, in writing, as a warm, witty and interesting person (with flaws, obviously, but who amongst us doesn’t have those?).

But, seeing her up on screen, not sucking the marrow out of life but brutally, sometimes joylessly, seen to be resenting the marrow for having the gall to be suckable, I had to worry. Is that really what bloggers are like? Obsessed? Vicarious? Endlessly self-obsessed, made happy only by an answerphone full of publishers and literary agents, begging for our ever-so-thrilling true-life tale to be told?

No, of course not. But that was the way the hobby best served the film, and how the film wanted to play on parallels of the women’s lives etc etc. It wasn’t, I realised, after thinking about it a while, a universal statement about the narcissistic whinginess about all bloggers … I just liked to take it that way because it allowed us all to concentrate on me for a moment and how woefully the universe treats me.

Not really.

It was good. It was inspiring - more in the way that Julia Child fully embraced life, appeared to love it, and live it in a very present, ‘fully in each moment’ kind of way. I’d like to do that. I’m less clear on the blogger half, which is silly, because I’m more likely to continue being a blogger than I’m going to start being one of the world’s leading television chefs. I have been known to burn salad. But I could do with trying the embracing life, every second of it, wholeheartedly bit. And maybe the idea of a project. A set term project. That would do me good, this next half year, I think. Doing things I’m scared of, perhaps. Or embracing things 100% rather than skating by. Or cooking every recipe in the box of 1970s weighwatchers menu cards I picked up at the charity shop the other week. It inlcuded a quite astounding Hawaiian Hot Dog Pie, if I remember correctly.
And then they would, of course, make a movie about it.
I would like to be played by Meryl Streep. She’s terribly good.

Not really. I will never be so interesting, I think. I have always been wary of people who think I might be more widely interesting than I am. I’ve done ok. Out of blogging, I mean. Not ok enough to be a character in a movie, but then, I’m still shaky on the concept that ‘Someone Typing’ is ever going to create any great dramatic tension in a movie (Look at The Net, for example. Verging on terrible, even THOUGH it stars Sandra Bollocks) I shall do what I do. Let the others be interesting and sensational on my behalf.

Bloggers’ jealousy? Dear god no, I’ve got almost everything in my life through blogging and the rivers of events that have flowed from it. I want to do other things, and I will. And in the things I do do -my version of a career made out of my blog - I’ve had to take a lot of personal abuse: but seeing the abuse that poor Julie has to take in the comments of just the top comments on her blog? I hold my hand out to her, and give her all the moral support I can. Those are not the kind of thing I could take. Not ever. I admire her for that. (And if she could tell me where she purchased that thick skin she seems to wear so well, I’d be very grateful)

- Anyway. That was not my point.

My MAIN point was that I went to see a movie this evening and MY GOD, if it wasn’t full of people EATING and TALKING at the same time.

Chew chew chew “Yes darling, perhaps you should start a …” gratuitous close-up of mouth full of food “… blaaaaaarg” … [Time passes, many people eat and talk, talk and eat, chew and chat, openly and publically masticate, loudly, and talk, while doing it. The coming of Julia Child didn't eradicate the existence of Emily Post, you know ... there's a place for eating AND etiquette in modern society... oh now wait, maybe that's a project for me to take on...] … Crunch chew chew chew “Oh no! No one is reading my blaaaaaaaarg!” Crunch crunch crunch stuff dribble “Really?” Chew chew chew. Pause while mouth so stuffed with food there is no room for words, let alone for closing it, which no one ever bothers doing anyway …. Chew … “Yesh.”

And so that was a bit vile.

- ALSO: I realised how big a movie night Sunday night is in San Francisco. It had never really occured to me. I hate Sunday nights, all of them. They make me itchy. But am more of a matinee girl.
When we have to move home to Brighton, I will institute the Sunday Night Movies as a thing.
That, I believe, will help.

AND - I have discovered that you CAN buy sweet popcorn in US cinemas - they just call it Kettle Corn. Which, as you expect, isn’t really an instinctive leap for a British person to make. I mean, I don’t care, particularly - I’ve always been a salted girl (“No, no butter thank you. I’m. Um. Buttery enough already”). I just have laboured under the misapprehension that the choice between salted and sweet popcorn wasn’t an option here.

Which is, of course insane. EVERY option is an option here. That’s the point.
It just so happens that kettlecorn is a little salty too; as well as sweet.
And if you want really sweet? Why then, you’ll want a bag of caramel corn.

And I could go on …

But I won’t.
Or I will. But another day.

TO SUM UP
Meryl Streep is lovely.
Salty and sweet continues to grow on me as a taste combination, but I’d still like salted, please.
Real life bloggers = brilliant. Bloggers as film characters = Not so much.
Movies are a great way to combat I-don’t-want-to-go-to-school-itis of Sunday nights.
This blog would make an absolutely terrible film.

And I think that’s about it.

My darling little macbook died.

I’m sorry to put it out there, so brusquely, so suddenly. I’m sorry to break it to you with no cushion to break your fall and no builders’ tea to sweeten the shock. but there you have it: my little red macbook died.

Well, she’s not completely dead - more on life-support, and unable to breathe on her own, really. She’s still in there; in that shell (literally, she’s been in a clear red plastic shell since the day I bought her, and she’s still mainly in it). Her memory is intact, she retains control of all her functions, in theory. But since the accident, she’s a mere shadow of what she was.

It seems only a few weeks ago that she was full of life; abounding with energy. We were enjoying Comic-Con together, laughing about how I’d only brought her down as a back up for my other, work-provided Mac; but since my little (older) trooper had twice the memory and therefore staying power of the officially sanctioned machine, I ended up bringing her along for the ride as well. Even though she weighed half a ton.

But then we came home. And, enjoying being home, we bought flowers. The flowers went into a vase. The vase went onto the table. Little Macbook was also on the table. Some time in the night, the cat went on the table. The cat (most likely) tried to eat the flowers. The flowers fell over. The vase fell over. The water in the vase fell out, and over, Little Macbook.

The next day we tried turning her on (not in that way - come on, people, this is a sad story) and nothing happened. We tried plugging her in: everything was fine. When we tried to check how much she needed to charge her battery, she didn’t recognise any battery was there. So it was either a dead battery, or a dead bit somewhere in the computer that connected to the battery: one I could fix at a reasonable price, the other not so much.

And last night I tried her with someone else’s macbook battery … nothing.
She works when plugged in.
But but …

With the economic climate and etc etc, my life is changing a bit. I’ve got a bit more time on my hands than I have done previously. And that’s fine, and I might go into the details of it at some other point - but I’m viewing this as a great opportunity to get a huge amount of concentrated, directed writing done (and no, no one’s given me a book deal, they’ve stopped handing those out; I’m just writing to get my writy-brain back: and if it turns into something bigger, and it may, then that’s ok too). And it will mainly be done in cafes and libraries and on trains, where possible. So a battery-free laptop was not really an option.

And luckily I got paid yesterday. And a good commission came through last night.
(I don’t spend very long on big decisions, no)

So I’m typing this on my brand new pooter, which is also red, but mainly because it came that way (although as soon as I’m sure I’m not taking it back there’ll be stickers all over it, so that barely matters).

New pooter was bought with all the important things in mind:
- Under a certain price
- Full size and comfortable keyboard, since practically the only thing I intend to do on it is write.
- Built-in webcam for talking to friends and family who are far away.
- Nice feeling keyboard that isn’t too loud. I know I basically said that already, but it really was important.
- Being quite light to carry about for the above cafe/library/train reasons.

And, basically, that was about it. I could go into lots of other things about memory and ram etc. But since I’m - seriously - not planning to do architecture, engineering, game-design or run a photography library out of the fucker, and it is, really, just a glorified typewriter (and not that glorified at that) it really was all I was looking for.

Upshot is, I’m having to get to grips with a PC again after two years of not touching one. I used one constantly in my old job, so it’s not a completely unknown quantity, it’s basically just the muscle-memory things of reaching for the wrong key that I’m struggling with. And that’s going to have to be conquered pretty quickly, because I still have my work powerbook, and I’m going to have to switch between them; so I’ll just have to remove some other, less important things from my brain in order to make room for both systems. I was thinking of uninstalling my ‘knowing the names and relationships of all characters of Neighbours from 1986-2000′ brain-programme to make room for it all, but come on, seriously, I AM going to need that at some point.

But yes. It’s not that I *was* a Mac and *now* I’m a PC. I’m both. I swing both ways. I’m Biplatformal. Doesn’t trip off the tongue, I admit it.

I’m not sure which sex the new pooter is yet - I haven’t spent enough time with it, so for the meantime her/his name is Frances/Francis. Or Fran; may at some point become Frank or Fanny.

And what’s more, I don’t know how best to equip her/him.
I’ve downloaded some things already - the things I know to be important to me or have heard good things about; Firefox, Skype, Pidgin (for IM) and Tweetdeck. But I could use advice on other things, if anyone has any favourite things they have on their PC (particularly people who mainly do writing) that would be really great.

Things I’m wondering about already are:

- One of the strongest muscle-memory things for me is the ‘reveal’ function on a Mac, where you touch one corner and see the desktop, touch another and see all your active windows and get to choose between them: does this exist in Windows? At all? If not, why not?

- One of the most lovely pieces of freeware I’ve ever come across for the Mac is a thing called WriteRoom, which allows you to blank out every toolbar, every pop-up, every window, and use the whole screen as a very basic distraction-free word processor. Does anyone know of a similar thing for Windows, at all? For the borderline adult-ADD writers among us, it really, really helps. I know there’s a way of hacking Word that is *quite* like it; but I always find word much heavier to run than other things. So are there any simple distraction-free things that anyone knows of? I promise I’ll include you in the acknowledgments of the book I haven’t written that no one’s asked me to write yet and which no one would buy it being a recession anywayif you come up with a really good one…

And that’s it.
(Actually, I admit it, mainly this was a post to test out how much I like tapping on Fran - and I do. A lot. Dell Studio 14 - good keyboard, as far as I can tell for now)

Any and all PC can’t-do-without applications very welcome, though. We haven’t had anything un-Mac in this household for several years.

And also, as a sidenote: YAY! New pooter!

While my lovely seeeester was here, we did all manner of fun things (which is why I have been quiet, of course) including going to a flea market. I bought several things, of course, because I have a pretty high tolerance for tat - although I drew the line at the three framed toupees someone had proudly on sale. That’s just too far.

But one of the best things I bought - a complete bargain spotted by my sis - was a box of ceramic letters, pure white, with sharp little pins on the back for sticking them into cardboard or cork or such.

They were beautiful; an art deco font, and standing out far enough from whatever they were stuck into to only just cast a dramatic shadow, and, frankly, simply beautiful. There was a note on them saying they were ‘Ceramic letters, $5′ - and I would have gone away thinking that they were $5 each and typical San Francisco overpricing, but I got the confidence up to ask for once, and discovered they were a fiver for the box and just handed it over without question.

Here is squirrel modelling my box of letters. She is helping. Well, I asked for it…

But now I have them, I just have to decide what to do with them. I could write the most beautiful phrase in the English language with them: I just can’t think what that is. And I don’t want to have too many letters left over, so I thought: as some of the most verbose and clever and witty people I know, I should ask some of my little red boat passengers for ideas.

So. In descending order…

I HAVE …

A whole seven E’s. 7 E’s!
Like, I know E is a very important letter, but still, not THAT important. Especially in the lives of two people with only one ‘E’ between their two whole names.

5
O and 5 T’s

4 each of:
I and H

3 of:
A’s and three R’s.
You know, like “the three r’s” of old. But actually three R’s.

2 each of:
B; M or W; S; N

1 each of:
U V F L K G and P.

So. What can I spell, word fans? Apart from Toot? And Whelk? And Poo?

Now, where previously I was grumping about a very particular brand and their usage of the words ‘bath tissue’; this is a much more widespread thing. Because, frankly, everyone has nipples.

And yet if you were to take the word of most mainstream media in the US, you would not think so. In fact, if you were to ask TV in particular you would receive a strong message of “Nipples? No, we do not know these nipples of which you speak. We have heard of people who have bizarre physical abhorrational tiny mountains on their chest, but will not admit to owning, admiring, or even noticing these. Thank you. And never speak of this again. You’re fired.”

You remember the big hoo-ha about Janet Jackson’s nipple appearing during the Superbowl that time? I thought, from far, far away, that that must be something about celebrity or extraordinary and unusual to that situation. But no. I didn’t realise. It was just the nipplyness of it.

It’s the oddest thing, there are reality shows based in tanning salons, strip clubs, in apparently real life situations and in situations nothing like real life: and yet if you watch them, you’ll notice one thing: the big blurry patches where their nipples should be. They can be otherwise almost completely naked - lumps andskin and rounded bits and long limbs everywhere

And it’s not just when they’re out, roaming free range in the open air that they’re a problem, apparently. I was once watching a modelling competition programme where the outfits were too, you know, skimmy, for the producers, and there were huge blurred spots over the tops of the girls dresses and blouses because you could see the outline of the nipple through it.

I’ve seen a thing where a nursing mother had her nipple blurred, and the straw-breaking moment: an advert I saw this week for a bra that includes smoothing nipple patches so that women can “be flawless”. This is where I stop understanding and start being slightly second-wave-feministy-cross about it all: they’re not flaws. They’re nipples.

I understand that in some cases it’s about preserving the modesty of a person, taking something that might be perceived as very sexual and concealing it for their extra-modesty. But this also has the effect of making it MORE sexual and LESS modest than it would have been otherwise.

It’s like bleeping a swearword. The bleeping gives the word more potential damage, more weight, more offence than that whole collection of consonants and nouns would have carried otherwise. It is the censoring that makes it bad.

So with nipples. People are so scared of these little nubbins of flesh - that EVERYONE has, let us not forget - that you can now buy underwear to conceal it not only on the television, but in real life too.

This is, and I hope no one visits their particular culture of enjoyable puritanism upon this statement: stupid. Nipples are something everyone has. In half the population they’re also a means of feeding babies. But everyone has them. They are no more (nor less) sexual than a hip, a mouth, a belly button. They are a part of the human body, and portraying them as inherently dirty places a huge barrier on part of human experience AND part of the human body that doesn’t need to have one. It’s just silly.

And I’m not arguing that there should be topless women bouncing up and down on US network television 24/7 - I don’t think there would be (though it would be a more honest development than the employment of hundreds of clever pixelators they currently have). And neither am I just cross because too much cleavage is frowned upon here (it does seem to be).

I just feel that, you know; we’re not ALL sexual ALL the time, right? We can see a body part without going insane and destroying society. Why should a woman have to hide her nipples to be ‘flawless’? Why should television have to hide those nipples to be ‘proper’?

They’re nipples. People have them. They feed babies and yes, shock horror, happen to provide sexual pleasure as well - but you know what, television? Someone out there finds more other random body parts sexually pleasing as well. Are you going to start blurring ankles?

Sorry. No, that’s facetious. But really. It’s a small reddish nubbin of skin. In every situation, and under clothing, and while feeding a baby, is it going to kill you?

Or is it just going to be there? Hanging out. Like a collection of consonants and vowels. Like something that everyone has, and that is only dirty if you say it is?
Or just like what it is: Like a nipple.
A nipple.

Yes. Nipple.
I said it out loud.
What you going to do, pixelate me?

Can we all just join together, ladies and gentlemen, and say “Toilet”? Say it again. Feel those hard t’s at either end, and that big strong l in the middle there, holding it up like a see saw, tipping you from one side of that word to another.

Toilet.
Tooooooiiii -lllet.
Toilet!

It’s good, right? It’s a good word to say. It’s just a word. Say it with me one more time, brothers and sisters. “TOILET!” Yes indeed.

There is, and please excuse me for my slightly short tempered rant (I don’t mean one that I’ve had, I mean one that I’m about to have, in short grumpy sentences all over this here page) but there is this bear, you see.

I don’t know if the bear has a name, because it’s a bear. It’s also not a real bear, it’s a cartoon bear. A cartoon bear, with a cartoon cub, who live in the woods. And because they are bears, and bears shit in the woods, some enterprising advertising people have chosen this as the scenario for their advertising campaign.

In these advertising the bears talk about various rather personal matters, such as toilet paper, and how it can all break up and get little bits of balled up tissue on your bottom when you wipe: I’m not talking about this from experience, it’s just what they talk about on the advert. I NEVER have little paper dangleberries.

Anyway: They talk about all those things, unflinchingly, and then at the end, the name of the brand comes up and next to it, the description: Bath Tissue. And at that point I always explode.

BATH TISSUE?! What the HELL is “bath tissue” supposed to mean? Bathroom tissue, which I’ve heard a lot: now, that alone is pretty mealy mouthed, but makes sense. They call it the bathroom here, because of, one assumes, some kind of delicacy and that’s fine - I can go along with that. And to say that it is tissue that one finds in the bathroom makes sense. But bath tissue? That doesn’t.

You don’t use tissues in the bath. Who uses tissues in a bath? No one? You put a tissue in the bath, it gets very soggy, and dissolves. Also a large invisible crowd of your ancestors crowd around your head shouting “WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU PUTTING TISSUE IN THE BATH?”, because they are ancestors and sensible like that.
Not sensible enough not to be dead, clearly. But, you know. At least they wouldn’t put their tissues in the bath.

It is TOILET PAPER. They are SPHINCTER-WIPING DISPOSABLE PAPERS. That is just what they are. I’m not asking for too much information; I’m British, for god’s sake, I’m allergic to that rubbish - I’m just asking to call a spade a spade. Don’t call it flowerpot (because that’s something you might find in the same place you find a spade and you can work the rest out from there). Call them whatever you want, but at least call them something that they ARE. You could call them Post-excretion cleaning cloths. Call them sodding Poo’be’Gone-ers, but don’t pretend they’re anything but what they are.

And that’s the thing that annoys me the most. It’s the fact that the rest of the advert break is probably going to be filled with adverts for diuretics, and laxatives (many, many different kinds) and stool-softeners, fibre powders, drinks and gels … and anti-gas tablets and incontinence pads and - let’s face it - the advert itself didn’t hold back in talking about some of the less glamorous sides of wiping your arse. This country is well aware of problems people may have passing the food they eat from their body: why bother calling it sodding BATH tissue?!

Hm?! Why SUDDENLY get puritanical and touchy about one bit? About one word?
Why be so gloriously open and super-sharing about everything in the whole world but hold back on the world ‘toilet’?

Seriously?
What did ‘Toilet’ ever do to hurt you?
Nothing. The toilet is just a place. It’s just a thing. It’s just a word.
Toilet.

“Bath Tissue”
Oooh that makes me cross.

Now you there, at the back, say it loud for me: “TOILET!” Well done, thank you. And if I can just have all the ladies in the audience? You have anything you want to say to me?
“Toilet!”
And once from the choir!
“Toi-oi-oi-oi-oi-leeeeeet!”

Yes sirree. Now THAT’s what I’m talking about.
Now, shall we move on to “Nipples”?

Oh don’t even get me started on nipples.
Or no, I’m cross enough, DO.
We’ll start on the nipples tomorrow.

Today, it’s toilet.
Can you say “toilet”?

Like I said, I had a stupidly busy (good-busy) work weekend - but when I got over that, and the subsequent bastard-flucold it brought me that laid me out for the last week (sorry) - I found some notes that I’d written after we got back to the hotel room that night, after dinner (yeah, I know: “how romantic!” but evenings are a big part of our working days due to the time difference….) so here they are: they’re the bits in boxes. My joinings together are inbetween.

We’d been driving for a few hours when the Madonna Inn, palace of kitsch that I’d been wanting to stay in since the first time I heard about it, a long time ago, suddenly honed into view. I want to make it sound like it rose up, tasteful and looking like a haven of rest in a world of chaos.

But it didn’t. It rose up shortly after a sign promising the world’s best split pea soup in 89 miles time, and stood out like a sore thumb: large pink letters and forest of turrets with rocky outcrops sticking out at unlikely angles. I bounced in my seat because I was just so excited.
Also because I needed a wee.
Because we’d been driving for four hours already. Sorry that’s probably too much information. Whatever: my blog.

So we turned off the freeway, tingling with readiness to arrive at the place right there, right next to the exit.

And after we’d taken three wrong turnings and enjoyed a scenic tour of San Luis Obispo (and damn, that’s one of the most scenic little towns I’ve seen in California so far, even if it DOES have one of the most disgusting local attractions I think I’ve ever seen) we finally arrived.

“Hel-lo! I’m Leah! I’ll be booking you in today, does everything seem to be to your satisfaction so far?”
“Yes, I just walked through the door. Just there. There’s no line, I just walked up here”
“Awesome!”

(Is what I wish I could have said in that situation. I just said “Yesthankyou” instead.
But it is tempting. Because people in service positions in general? They have a habit of checking whether you’ve found the things you’re clearly showing them you’ve found.

If you went into a shop that sold only one object, and you walked up to that object, which was, say, prominently displayed on a single plinth in the middle of the room. If you picked it up, carried it over to the till and placed it there - and they watched you during that WHOLE process: the sales assistant would still say “Hi! Did you find everything ok today?”)

And then we booked into our room, which was super-exciting in itself: and then realised, on the walk up to our room, that a lot of the other themed rooms weren’t taken for the night and, what was more, had their curtains open, along the walkway, with all their rock-cascaded wares on show to the world. Yay to that.

Eventually we got to our room, and opened the door. Merely opening the door, please note, looked like this:

So you can only imagine what the rest looked like.

though to behonestly, mainly you’re going to have to imagine it because every time I tried to take a picture of it my camera threw up.

It’s funny, the rest of the time I have my camera’s colour settings set to ‘vivid’ because that’s how I see the world, and how I want it recorded. This was the one location I have ever been to that defeated the Vivid setting on my camera (and the vivid setting on my brain).

I will say, however: the room we stayed in: Floral Fantasy (which was, as you may have guessed, not terribly manly) was a bunch more tasteful than you might have expected. And, in fact, a bunch more tasteful than their pictures might have suggested.

Certainly, I’m not saying it wasn’t LOUD.
Because it was. It was loud.

It was just quite pleasantly loud, really, while you were in it. if you’re ok with loud. But I liked it. Apart from the pink snakeskin sofa that I possibly could have done without. Anyway. We’d booked into the steakhouse for dinner after a concentrated hour or so of work - so we went in our nicest packed clothes to dinner.

We greeted there by a greeter, a perky young lady who informed us that as we were five minutes early for our table, it wasn’t quite ready yet, but the gift shop was open if we wanted to go there instead? Or, yes, she supposed, the bar was also open as well as the gift shop, but they had an extra special sale on personalised gifts, so … oh all right, the bar’s just round there, yes, your table will be ready in just a few minutes.

A few minutes later - a few minutes spent in the chilly company of a very grumpy barman who was, we decided (in hoarse whispers) actually Walt Disney who had been cryogenically-defrosted and told that the Disney corporation had run out of other cultures’ society-shaping fairy tales and children’s books to stick in the company mangler, and he was going to have to tend bar mid-week at the Madonna Inn to pay the freezer bills instead.

When we returned to the maitre d’ station less than ten minutes later, there had already been a shift-change in the perky-lady department.

“Hi! I’m Jenna! I’ll be your greeter today! Your server will be Jordan! Stephen will show you to the table in just a second”

just a second passes … not even in fact, until

“HI! I’m Stephen, Jordan will be your server today, but let me show you to your table. Here is your table! Mike will be along shortly with some icewadder”

Shortly …

“Hey, folks! I’m Mike. I’ll be assisting your server today, his name is Jordan! Would you like icewadder? Great! Jordan will be assisting you as soon as he is able”

About a minute later, as young man came striding up to the table, purposefully

“Hi I’m …”
“Hi! You must be Jordan, we’ve heard a lot about you.
“..Yes. Jordan”
“Can we get a wine list now?”
“He…?”
Awesome. Thanks, Jordan”

It was a remarkable restaurant. In terms of the decor as much as anything else. A doll in a pouffy dress swings on a child’s swing, attached to the ceiling. Giant pink roses grow from a giant pink rose tree sprouting up in the centre of the room, and spreading its giant glittering boughs over the pink, circular padded booths, mountains of silk flowers and small golden statues.

That’s my beloved and a cherub. I tried to get pictures of more of the room but they just came out like a magic eye picture designed by a focus group of seven-year-old girls.

“Can we share an order of the buffalo wings to start?”
“Ooooooo - kaaaaaaaaaaay but lemmee just warn you guys, they’re kinda haht”
“That’s fine”
“Oooo- kaaaay, but, like, they’re rilly quite haht.”
“Honestly: we’re not normal British people: we know your hot.”

It’s funny, and I’ll go into this another time, I am in no way slighting American food. Nor the British ability to handle Hot. I am British, for example; very, in fact - and I’m a BIG hot-things fan.

But, coming here, there are two very clear interpretations of hot. There’s my preferred one, the British one involving lots of strong curry spices and other mixed empire/smuggling/immigration-inspired spices that get used in British cooking; and the north American one that is less far less complex in flavour (and, they would say, smelly) but has more gradients of ‘HOT’, based on the type and the number of chilli peppers added.

So it’s not that American people and British people can’t get along; it’s just that when you first arrive in America - when I first got here, certainly - you might not understand that ‘HOT’ is a different kind of flavour (or more of a physical sensation than a flavour at all). Oh, we’ll talk about it another time. They just weren’t that hot, that’s all.

Lots of minutes and some wine and food and things pass… “Can I get you anything else?”
“Well, Um. It isn’t our anniversary, or anywhere near it; but everyone else has balloons. And I really like balloons. Do you have any spare bloons?”
I say, before scuttling off to the toilet embarrassed at being a grown-up who finds her spirit bizarrely lifted by having a helium balloon tied around her wrist.

When I come back from the toilet, there are five balloons floating above the table.
“Mike came bearing the promised extra balloon, and wishing us a happy anniversary. I told him that actually, you just really like balloons. So he brought over all the balloons other people had left behind as well.”

Jordan came back, hoping to leave, being the greatest server that ever was just long enough to collect plates, thanks, accolades, and tip.

“Is everything to your satisfaction?”
“Yes.” we say “Everything is brilliant. And We Like Mike.”

And I do like Mike.
I like Mike, and I like it when I ask for a steak rare and it’s not only cooked that way, but a good enough steak to make that worth it (although everything else served around it felt like an afterthought and was horrendously overpriced, but that’s by the by).

I like eating somewhere - staying somewhere - that has clearly prided itself on not having a single inch, stretch, plank, nook, cornice or trivet unattended to.

Yes, it might not be to everyone’s taste; to many people’s taste, perhaps, who pride themselves on having taste - but the glorious thing about the Madonna Inn is just what a labour of love it is. And if not a labour of love then a pure, bloody-minded slog to be the biggest, shiniest, gaudiest bauble in the western world, or the world out west. And all power to them.

I loved it like I love all enthusiasts, and fanatics and over-excitable hobbyists and things.
Doing something to the n degree of crikey just because you love it so: I am your biggest fan. Madonna Inn was just like that for me.

Also, they enabled a morning of work/packing while talking in comedy squeaky helium voices (well, we couldn’t take the balloons in the car for the next 300 miles). It’s all win, all the way.