Anyhoo (yes "anyway" was already taken).

Musical swears: when the music stops the last one to say the most popular swear word loses.

This thought brought to you by letters M and, er, M. Because HWSNBN was aghast that Lily Allen runs to perky swearing, his friends give warnings if a song has a single swear word in one line, and the other M, who is really a Mr M and not an M at all, warned me that lambs swear a lot.

So, through a mix of cajoling and that which kills cats (best described as mostly oh-what-the-hell and a dash of WTF?) on Saturday I found myself in a dungeon. beer cellar. black box theatre, although that's not true as it's got a proscenium arch, actually two of them, except one is also exit stage left. Anyway, a vaulted undercroft type thing.

And in this VUTT we were promised very emphatic silence. By the way, don't sit in the end seat of the front row of the emptier second bay of seating because, while it's got most leg room of anywhere (it would have seemed rude to have them sticking too far on to the stage) it also happens to be one of two exits from the stage. Not only does one have to sit side-saddle whenever the scenes change but that position also benefits from assorted pats and strokes and occasionally outright flirting (complete with a theatrical wink; well, it was in a theatre). I haven't had that much unsolicited contact since I was six (if we ignore the bits where contact came wrapped in Clark's best). And I've still no idea what the thanks were for.

Anyway, I went to see Mooglee in Silence!, the of-the-lambs musical. And now I don't need to watch Silence of the Lambs because I know what happens. Although possibly it might have helped to have seen it before. But I can't know that either way. And wasn't the only person picking it up as it went (the laugh was too).

So in the normal manner of my reviews it was MBTIWWIMB. And Mooglee is much less fearsomely intimidating than I was expecting him to be. Though that's possibly because I equate horrifically talented as meaning it'll have gone to his head. Which I expected to be about 150% of life-size and made of weathered bronze (he does look like he ought to be in some Olympian prequel--Zeus: the Halcyon Days).

Basically the one bit I think they could have improved one probably ought not do (it involves a triangle and an royal attribute of an actor).

Anyway, so now I know Mooglee has many strings to his bow (well, there's a red one, an orange one, a yellow...).

So yeah, nice guy I don't really know.

In other news orders for Christmas cards, um, actually exist. Which is weird. But cool. Somehow managing to have the usual doubts along the lines of "are they only saying 'yes' because I asked them" or "are they only saying yes because a mutual contact mentioned it and they liked the options and no, this is nothing like that much--ok, so 'vaunted' doesn't mean what I've always assumed it to mean--praised word-of-mouth".

Anyway, for the London cohort (i.e. those who won't need things posted*), order this weekend for collection from the 21st. A6, blank inside, 5 for 10GBP or 1.50GBP each for ten or more. What others have already chosen. To order, until I work out how to make a website work, email me the links followed by the number desired of each image, so something like (or leave it in the comments, provided I can trace you):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/anyhoo/379211708/ 6
http://www.flickr.com/photos/anyhoo/2478231673/ 5
http://www.flickr.com/photos/anyhoo/4006688268/ 1

* I can post them on, but given the current state of the system it's probably better by other means, and then there's the ambiguity and irrationality of postage costs (meaning I can't even get a consistent price for a postcard to America let alone anything thicker or heavier. I could just Amazonise it and just say P+P = 5 quid, but that doesn't feel fair).

Oh, and it doesn't just have to be Christmas cards. Basically anything on my branch of Flickr can be made into a card. But clearly Christmas is dominating at the moment.

And in other news I've just noticed the counter at the bottom of my Flickr page shows I've 15,000 images on there. The -th is at the top. But it's only an edit of a previously posted shot because I didn't realise I was near the threshold. Although at least it saves me trying to pick one. Yet it isn't fifteen-thousandth in the stream because it's next to the one it amends. Probably best to just ignore the milestone then, because all it's really celebrating is my indecisiveness, which is more of a millstone.

While on numbers, Mr A-bit-over-a-third [5500] links something I found via Spotify and much like that song from the era of the original, it made me go "ooh".

[Um, can we just pretend I didn't try to check the dates and so find I get lyrics wrong? I think I'll be running away now]

Anyhoo,

"I suppose if you were whiling away time..."

My mother, the woman who refutes any claim that she's constantly critical. The topic was Flickr. You know, that thing I'd kept hidden from her because it was nice to have something beyond the withering realm (and because it shares the name with something else. Hello non-existent people!). She appeared to be complaining that there was any text accompanying the photographs. You know that stuff that explains context and makes the image identifiable and retrievable. The bit that implies I give a damn and am not just dumping the contents of my hard drive. Yep, that's all a complete waste of time. And this from the woman who when wanting to comment on images says which row of search results it was in (and then complains I've moved things).

I can't think why I didn't let her know about it sooner. Unpunctured praise can be very damaging. You wouldn't want to catch an ego, would you?

I probably ought to have pointed out that it's been spread over 5 years, but suspect she wouldn't see that as a good thing.

Woah, 5 years? That's a long time. Um, and this thing here is older isn't it? Oh. Golly. How soon before it learns cursive?

Arylnuo-,

[That's what it looks like when I write it]

PS. Because I've yet to post this I can keep adding to it. The latest was being given permission to leave the house despite not being in her house or her presence. House-point for the first to work out the scenario which lead to that.

Will Obama let America be disliked?

Sorry, wrong page. Particle image velocimetry is also wrong too. As is the bit that might say Brunel or Brunch.

So the Mantaster notes (I travelled coach, which is this case is not American for Economy, so found myself with a long time to fill, hence the notes):
- Sequin Scrunchie. I'm not sure adding more words can better express the concept. I was stuck waiting for the coach to get round to picking us up (but I ran, I took the Tube in the rush hour with luggage to avoid being late [the buses having just not come] and this is how you repay me?). It caught my attention. Along with some hair.
- More beards than a folk festival including two bigger than the heads bearing them. Again not much explanation needed.
- V. tempted to mist up the window and write "Let the train take the strain". Not sure the rest of the M1 would appreciate it though.
- When your live's in a mess. Never could remember which was life and which live. Did get to use it later.
- Plan: Bus-Walk-Coach-Bus. Actual: Wait-Run-Tube-Wait-Coach-Walk. Now even less of a fan of buses than I used to be.
- When did curvy lorries happen? I think they're M&S's. It's odd how simple, reasonable changes can seem so, well, odd. Though I still find it weird that they're no longer called artics because they nearly all are articulated.
- Golly, lorries go slowly, by which I mean they take a hell of a long time to sidle past on the inside.
- Is the toilet sign negative or positive? Lit when available? Or does red mean it's in use? [It turns out that despite displaying the male and female symbols for a loo when lit this means that it is not currently available. So red is the coded indicator. Heaven help the colourblind].
- Where the hell is Gulliver's Land? Though it is illustrated with a drawing of a Houyhnhnm, albeit impaled on a pole.
- [I think we can skip the lorry driver beard scoring section. Equus.pl seem to be winning].
- Star's Horror in Bookshop. Headline across the aisle. Suspect correct response is not does not begin "Ooh, is it the new...".
- Toilet is colour not symbol.
- Pentagon building corrugated, j N of M1 Welcome Break with glazed footbridge (S of Northampton Serv). It seemed interesting at the time; wasn't much else to do.
- Trains don't have seat belts. Maybe they ought to but I'm used to sitting side-saddle due to the whole legs thing. That and it's eroding my neck.
- Food & Drink roundel in Winnatrice Station not a clock not matter how hard you squint. I was running through it late and wanted to how.
- Pimped aisle. It had many blue LEDs.
- Autumn's gothy curse. Although gothy could also by grotty. Or apathy. Write like a prescription (ay-oh way-oh).
- Jacket made out of bar towels; useful in the rain. Across the aisle from me. National-Expressers have different sensibilities.
- Temporary speed restrictions on M6 toll. Kinda defeats the point of having a road how they all used to be. How depressing that I can remember the other.
- Muslim woman swathed in scarves, looks like a nun.
- iPhone in front: "starbucks price", "calories costa", "vegetarian falafel". I stopped reading over her shoulder at this point. She had an underfed bone structure (think retroussé cheekbones on a platter of "in the morning I'll be sober") and copy of a Twilight sequel.
- About as confrontational as his images. Of a Flickrite. I'll let you choose which one. But if you draw a 3x3 grid and colour most of the squares in blue and the middle square of the bottom row in pink (Flickr colours) you'll be somewhere near the right answer.
- Offensive (on the, occasionally verging on the outright). Ditto.
- So much Freudian analysis one wonders if he's related.
[And because I was doing stuff and not quite so bored the notes skip to the return]
- GBH Newsagents. Down the road from He Who Queues.
- Mere Monstrosities. The houses of.
- Anyhoo is in historic Canutesford with a Japanese woman of uncertain age nodding on his shoulder. [Guess who doesn't see the point in paying to tell people via Twitter or Facebook how bored I am IRT]
- Anyhoo is in historic Canutesford counting the grey hairs of the guy in the seat in front (5).
- Anyhoo is on a coach lost in historic Canutesford.
- Anyhoo has found Cranford (in historic Canutesford).
- Why is a weekend away odd? Ooh, 200 miles. I was bemused by the bewilderment that repeatedly greeted the idea than one could travel from Loldom to one of the Loldoms of the North for a single event.
- Anyhoo is on a coach with a [illegible] coach driver who can't read road signs
- [Anyhoo needs to improve his handwriting.]
- Anyhoo has Japanese woman again.
- HWQ: sun trousers comment. I think I'd best leave HWQ to explain this one.
- Anyhoo can see the Red Sea (of lights).
- St George's cross badge on lapel of hideously white second-leg driver - National Express customers = ? [Am I wrong in my assumptions? It's just patriotism does seem very American]
- Anyhoo is, after one-hour-and-twenty-minutes of travel, on a road heading towards Batten Park and Mantaster.
- Decorative Garden Centre (?)
- Anyhoo is travelling back in the right direction (finally covering the roundabout [something] like the sign for one [it was dark by this stage, hence the wonky writing]).
- Not a Christian ([something that looks a bit like 'or'] another ['interest' or 'anti[something'}... Oh, figured it out now. It's meant to read "Not a Christian (on another continent '...or European')". The terms in this context being synonymous (equally euphemistic).
- Takes one to know one. Thus spake the ex-teacher.
- Anyhoo voyeurs. Except that sounds like polished metal brushing past concrete, so clearly I could never have written it.
- LDA (Long Distance Awkwardness. Coined through an inappropriate use of LOL, but strangely fitting of about a third of the interactions with HWQ).
- As Chamberlain said to Hitler. Nicked from a book of Victoria Wood sketches (I was waiting post-party for others to emerge and I'd already done the washing up). the line before it was something like "Look, we're both reasonably intelligent adults, we should be able to solve this".
- Mobiles as torches. The Imperial War Museum of the North, or whatever it's called, turns the lights off repeatedly while they show some son-et-lumière, thus meaning all the blurb on the walls, which actually be more informative than the rumbling vox-pops from above, is legible only by the light of a cameraphone set to shoot negative images. Just think how much quicker some bits of the Crystal Maze would have been if they'd had a phone.
- IDing film of 5-greys (not sure yet). 20s hats [something that looks like 'melon claiming']. Looks French, no subtitles, .
- Needed to flirt with pilot more (at all) to get non-coach means of getting home.
- Teh Building. Having seen assorted building site hoardings with varying degrees of techspeak, txtspk and yootspeek I just wondered how long it will be before there is a building somewhere which includes 'Teh' in its name. Or possibly "O HAI!" on the front doors.
- Lowery light, lowering light. Much the same thing. Damp layered greys with the odd block of red. Mantaster gets it way before Loldom.
- NX hand-drier would.
- The second driver turned the coach into the school bus, via the medium of radio playing unheard-of seventies pop. Possibly bus drivers are the only people in the country to still use AM.
- Streets paved with gold [outside the probation office]. Photographic evidence to Flickr sometime in 2010 probably.
- I [heart] MCR. Official slogan.
- I [heart] MAN. More likely to sell, possibly more likely to be understood.
- I [heart] MEN. Best arena name ever.
- Turned to God because no one else would have them [more previous encounters than any current example].
- Warnings [I can't read this bit].
- Few things cannot be improved by sultanas, although this does move anything un-cake-like in to the category of curry.

And that's it for the notes. All that's missing is the art, the art of cakes, the art of war, the art of hammockery and the traditional Mosh Slide Saturday night entertainment of breaking into a car (declining the neighbour's knowledgeable offers of help. All one needs is a wire coat hanger, a curtain pole and some paper plates).

Oh and watching District 9 (good, though pre-LOTR murder while listening to the Archers work shows). And Die Hard 4.0 with an earnest warning for viewers of a sensitive disposition (I was good and squelched the scathing sarcasm).

And HWQ still hasn't sent me the carrot cake recipe. Or the muffins one.

Anyway, need to go now as much, much later and I'm late for a late lunch.

Anyhoo,

Audience participation time again. Someone's just asked if I do Christmas cards. "Yes, soon" I think the reply current is. So if you can think of something suitable on my Flickr account let me know through email of tagging it something suitable (currently using Christmasable, but the selection was basically anything I can think of that might fit and currently includes repetitions as I edit and tweak format for printing (and then realise it looked better before the edit)).

And if you still haven't done the general non-Christmas cards voting then please do so [starting point?], again either emailing me with the links of those you like or by tagging them yourself with something along the lines of "cardyXXX", where you are the XXX (and the y means 'yes'). Yes, I am of course assuming this is nowhere near popular enough that people chose the same tagging codes, but it's a risk I'm going to have to tolerate.

In other news I need to look up when the next Grand Prix is on because I want to find out if Firefox is really managing more crashes per hour than F1. I would have defected to Chrome by now had Google endangered their revenue stream by encouraging ad-blocking on it.

Oh, and this needs to be read (scroll to the bottom), if only to remind you not to read the original. He manages to make Dan Brown sound like Tolstoy (well, War and Peace went on for ages after the story finished while the author propounded through characters and it had a lot of pointless stuff involving Masons in it too).

Anyhoo,

On the grounds that I've just been accused of being an ex-blogger I suppose I better not be.

*He clicks "Save Now" while he wonders what to write*

So what's happened since last time? In roughly chronological order:
- Saw the Queen of the Desert. 'Twas good, if bombastic.
- Managed to find myself wandering the streets of London with glowsticks. This is not linked to the above although it is linked to a punch made of Irn-Bru (which in terms of wrongness is like Berocca in gin, Irish prairie oysters or a bloody mary [hang on, that last one...]).
- Despatched a friend to Finland (it was the only way I could stop her drunken compliments, though hindsight torrents of praise are occasionally needed).
- Not moved down a floor.
- Taken many illegal photographs of Cheers-Sick House (our international [looking] cluster latching onto a tour helped on the easier-not-to-disrupt front), though I failed to explain to a Italian Catholic in hushed whispers why a Catholic king would be a bad thing ('the king over the water' being an oft repeated phrase in the guide's notes). Many spaces on the ground floor and in the basement have excellent echoes; it's like a maroon going off after each syllable. I managed a twenty-one gun salute just by asking where the loos where.
- Discovered the Masons do a fiendish chocolate pudding (not the Dan Brown-able group, but a pub in Ham's Ted). Do not allow anyone to suggest sharing this as it will not. Now need to figure how to make all of it (I suspect the amaretto ice cream is the easy part).
- Met sundry bloggers. Or ex-bloggers. But I can't tell you who because there's a Net/IRL crossover. Had my first Snog though again I can't tell you with whom (and it's a eyeball-aching creation with fantastic lighting but poor blackberries in Soso).
- Open Housed ineffectually. Ran ten minutes late to meet at the tube station on the Saturday, so arranged to see the friend at the far end. Got to the far end to find the friend had taken the bus, which had broken down, so filled time with a camera. Went to Yeltsin's Hall of the Chicken Satay Kebabs (I'd been to the top before having managed to be unintentionally invited [it's not gatecrashing if your name is on the list] to a Le-Bore Party networking event), which turns pink if polarised, seems to have gained some stick solar-panels since last time (oddly the south-facing glass penthouse tended to get a bit warm), failed to impress Little Miss It's-Not-Italian, scored an excellently gerrymandered 99 on its DEC (100 being the arbitrary boundary for a bad building). Being a much celebrated Aussie-beer building it was meant to be... rather better.

After reflectioning out we went up to Spittleyields for INI to meet a couple of her friends/my acquaintances for lunch. Except the pub had ran out of food after we'd bought drinks, so I then fled west to meet... Mr Green (a recurrent character who I can't name for reasons above) under Freddie. Except I was late (as per usual, but I did have to stumble into London Below to pass the half–oil-drum barbecue), scampering along Hoburn amidst flurried phone calls.

Which is how I came to be drinking in Soso Square with Mr Green, the one with the brave eye-shadow (under the Penguin code it was viewpoints, which is I suppose apt), the spinnaker-clad, and the two cider-bringers. And having failed to follow most of that we parted.

The next day I ambled into the Foreign Office (no queue!), spent an age in there (Gilbert-Scott set to stun is quite fun and they have a certain 10 outside the back door), then went up to Uckle (BTW, are none of the fourth-plinthers learning from each other? Unamplified voice versus taxis idling, flip-charts legible from 3-foot away. Best I've seen was some guy lying down occasionally sticking out a hand or a foot; you could tell he was doing more, it's just we couldn't see it, which probably made it more intriguing) via a still-open-ery to get more alcohol and to assist a suicide. In the quad (it feels so weird not clambering to the top of the steps to get the sun with my free vegan broccoli curry collected while wearing my warmest coat which happens to be leather) Mr Green was waiting with Mr Blue (think airy music). And there was talking. And shrinking, because Mr Green was incredulous that plaid could be back in, having just seen a very plaid-clad clan pass, while I happened to be wearing a checked shirt. And finding my studentiness revoked because I failed to open a bottle of wine with a pencil (having forgotten the instructions I'd been given for buying it), though I did manage to open the pencil. And then I had to flee this (at about the same time others had to to) for a family thing at my brother's (it turns out that if you say seven and they say "oh, any time after six" they actually mean six) at which I arrived only slightly exuberant.

And then came another meeting with Mr Green, Mr Blue and Mr White (I could say Mr Attenborough but that doesn't fit with the theme), who, as one might expect, are all delightful and fearsomely intimidating (clearly I need to work on my overcompensating). And so to the ice crystals growing from my teeth through my cheeks to my eyes.

And then...

Hmm, this is turning into a car-journey list (yesterday I ate an apple, bought a banana, cut a cucumber, disembowelled a doughnut) not a decent post. Sorry, it's hard saying things without saying any of them.

But there's not a lot else to tell. Forgotten how much I haven't blogged. Have I done books recently (I didn't realise I was meant to take notes when Mr Green spoke)? Most recent, which managed to coin the glorious phrase "white knowledge" (sound much like Radio 4?) was my first Gaiman. It was Neverwhere and having had to step round the praise heaped on his books I thought I ought to try. Though I do think the library shouldn't really stamp the name of the villain of the piece on the edge of the book.

Other book news: Is it wrong that I skipped the explanation of the 3-4-5 triangle question at the back of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time? And can I use the excuse of having 500-odd-pages of close-print to finish before they have to go back (don't point the renewing option as that just means I'll be trying to finish it from about the same position in 8-weeks' time)?

That better be it for now.

Anyhoo,

As it's been doing the rounds of Facebook, but think it'll get less judgemental exposure here (what with being accessible to most of the world, rather than only the friendship-and-beyond cluster). Purportedly from the BBC, but a bit weak for that.

Have you read more than 6 of these books?
[Um, it's a list of 100 of the best known of the things; if the answer's "No" then don't worry, big school's not that bad (ok, that's a lie, but it's what adults are meant to do).]

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?
[Seriously? If you're going to publish stats like that you could at least give a list of countries worth fleeing to.]

Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES BLOG. Look at the list and put an 'Yes' after those you have read. Tag other book nerds. Tag me as well so i can see your responses!
[you didn't capitalise yourself, so "no, shan't"]

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - N (but the BBC's version is the same, right?).
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - Y (ploughed through it just before the film came out).
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - Y (at school, loathed).
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - N
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - Y (at school, got told off for reading the whole thing in one sitting because we were only meant to go up to the end of chapter 2).
TOTAL SO FAR: 3

6 The Bible - N (I tried but got lost with all the begatting).
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - Y (at school, not a fan of merry tales of incest).
8 1984 - George Orwell - Y
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - Y
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - N
TOTAL SO FAR: 6

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - N
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy - Y (Guessing Hardy wasn't that keen on women).
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - Y (Gets repetitive).
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - N (is one meant to /read/ these?)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier - N
TOTAL SO FAR: 8

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - N (My father used to read it to us as a bedtime story. There were continuity issues).
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk - Y (Quite good).
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - Y (Think I missed something).
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - N
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot - Y (Stodge).
TOTAL SO FAR: 11

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell - N (It's a book?)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - Y
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens - N
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - Y (Once you get past the triple-layered names it's good, at least until the Masons turn up).
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - Y.
TOTAL SO FAR: 14

26 Tess Of The D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy - Y (I'm taking this to mean 'Far from the madding crowd').
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - N
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck - Y (Brilliant).
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - Y
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - Y (Weren't they a series?)
TOTAL SO FAR: 18

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - N
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens - N
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - Y (Well, most of the collection but it was tedious).
34 Emma - Jane Austen - N
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen - N (right, so that's Austen and Dickens I need to do).
TOTAL SO FAR: 19

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis - Y (Isn't this 3 up?)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein - Y
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres - Y (Why the fuss?)
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden - Y
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne - Y (Was that the name of a book? Anyway, most if not all the series).
TOTAL SO FAR: 24

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell - Y
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - Y (This man teaches English?)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - N
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving - N
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins - N
TOTAL SO FAR: 26

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - N
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy - Y (Except I've already counted this, so this'll be for the 'Mayor of Casterbridge').
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood - N
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding - N
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan - N (but have it ready to read)
TOTAL SO FAR: 27

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel - Y (Superb, even with the printing fault at the end)
52 Dune - Frank Herbert - N
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons - N
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - N
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth - Y (Glorious).
TOTAL SO FAR: 29

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon - N
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - N
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - Y (Death in Puttenham? Whodathunkit?)
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon - N
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - N
TOTAL SO FAR: 30

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - Y
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov - N
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt - N
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold - N
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - N
TOTAL SO FAR: 31

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac - N
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy - N
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding - N
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie - Y (Dull)
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville - Y (Ditto. The best thing to come out of it was the Guinness ad)
TOTAL SO FAR: 33

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - N (But knowing half the songs is the same, surely?)
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker - N (I was about say I started it, but that was Frankenstein).
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - N
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson - Y (Who hasn't?)
75 Ulysses - James Joyce - N
TOTAL SO FAR: 34

76 The Inferno - Dante - N
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome - Y
78 Germinal - Emile Zola - N
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray - N
80 Possession - AS Byatt - N
TOTAL SO FAR: 35

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens - N (Very Dickens-heavy list).
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell - N
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker - Y (at school, hideously patronising)
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro - N
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert - N
TOTAL SO FAR: 36

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry - N
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White - Y (I'd forgotten this).
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom - N
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - N
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton - N (Famous Five & Secret Seven = Y)
TOTAL SO FAR: 37

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - N (Even though it was a present)
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - N
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks - Y
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams - N
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole - N
TOTAL SO FAR: 38

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute - Y
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas - N
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare - N
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - Y
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo - N
TOTAL SO FAR: 40
[Make that 41 by the time I publish this. #59 BTW. Working on #97]

Anyhoo,

Manchester précised:
- Is it wrong to say "Dear God" when lifting a box of bibles?
- Aldi vote UKIP.
- Le chat dans le chap.
- Manc water is.

Basically thems'll be notes for the blogpost that never got written up, and which really ought to have been. So...

Manchester briefly:
The bibles had to come out of the back of the van to make space for the washing machine. Yes, there was a slight degree of do-come-on-a-mini-holiday-and-end-up-shifting-white-goods to it. And it turns out God is comparatively lightweight. Still, there was a good view from Yorkshire or wherever the washing machine used to live. Didn't see any lonely goatherds though.

Aldi don't vote for UKIP, what with being a commercial entity not a citizen, but someone had sprayed on the side of one near the railway to Manchester, and so visible to not only the WCML but to any shopper who came by car, "Vote UKIP". On the side of a German discount chain shop. One which is probably only providing the good denizens of Stokeport with such bargains thanks to EUisation. Either someone has a very keen sense of irony or UKIPpers are a bit beschränkt.

Le chat dans le chap est M. Rufus Wainwright que a s'écrit un opéra, Prima Donna, sur la vie d'une chanteuse d'opéra, Régine St Laurent [Queeny Canadian-River-Designer], qu'espérer faire un comeback. I quite liked it. M. Après-P fell asleep. The set was good. That sounds like faint praise, doesn't it? But the boxes of mute and not-so-mute were effective even if events sometimes managed to include a few cases of "Oh, come on" while not amounting to much. The final line is something along the lines of "That didn't last very long", mais dans le français très simple, naturellement (which, equally naturellement, j'ai oublié), and did sum things up a bit too well.

Did I cry? Did my nipples show interest? Did each follicle become very pleased to see you? Did I find myself sitting to attention [I've just reread this. I meant my posture]? Did my ears try to meet on top of my head? Nope. There was no Zadoking (and yes, I did just put it on and so found out about my ears doing that).

So three weeks or whatever it is later what do I remember? The colour, the plunge of all of a foot-and-a-half and something about Paris not being Picardy (incidentally just finished reading Sebastian Faulks's Birdsong: good, though not helped by interspersing it with chunks of Band of Brothers. At which point I note the alarming proportion of my to-be-reads that are set during wars. Not sure what this means).

It was fun. But clearly I'm used to being able to supplement (or prime) the memory with the soundtrack, because I don't remember the tunes (although perhaps flicking between the surtitles and the sound to work out which words I don't know the French for perhaps was a little distracting, but then how was able to distract myself?).

And there's a lingering tendency to want to describe it as nowhere near as bad as I was worried it might have been. Which is faint praise on the maternal scale.

It's possibly just that I have had no one else to enthuse with and so it's dissipated. I went with one dragged friend, who dozed through parts of it, in a different city where it'll have played to only a very small part of that population. So basically it's just me. So basically square whatever my current opinion is and you'll probably come out with something about right.

And so much for briefly. Anyway, I was only writing about this because I'm off to more singing and faintly faltering glamour tonight, avec Priscilla (actually avec Dan), which I shall be greatly annoyed by if I find myself resorting to describing it as NNABAIWWIMHB.

And having read a couple of reviews of dear old Queeny, how did I miss I the seventies thing? Although I also did that with La Cage aux Folles (aussi avec Dan[don]). And why the seventies?

Anyway, the last thing on the précis list needs no more words, so I'll go off-liste. The Lowry isn't very big, and has quite unfortunate John Lewis Partnership windows (see Flickr in about 2011 given the current rate of degunking-and-uploading), but turns out that he's both more recent than I thought he was (there are cooling towers and a flyover in one Victorian cityscape) and better than I thought he was. The other Lowry has very cheap chocolate, as did I, for a short while. Yet to work out what makes export-strength Creme Eggs export-strength.

What else? Manchester's not very big (ok, it is when you keep having to change buses). And I've clearly got used to TfL making things work.

Oh, and apparently it turns out I'm quite good at German board games. Although this has now led to me playing a German game sold in England with a French name in a Cuban bar (not in Manchester. It was a friend's birthday and her present). And winning by such a margin the final score never got calculated. Clearly going for it's-her-birthday-and-I'll-make-her-cry-if-she-wants-to. Oops.

But there have been a lot of birthdays recently. There was the more than 50% family dinner at somewhere which had live music competing with the ambient soundtrack. there were the birthday drinks with antlers on (a bar full of Scotch so I stuck to G&Ts). There was my ignorefest (if one has to put the age in base-14 to make it sound interesting it's not) concluded with an unvaried Indian takeaway order with my brother and the SIL, a in-my-mind-recent prequel I hadn't seen watched instead of a by-now-old sequel, and TIY Barbie cupcakes. I was bemused by the pink and the glitter and the stars and the hearts (what, no rainbow dolphin-ponies?), and wondered what they were trying to tell me. Turns out they were trying to tell me that they were moving soon and had found the things in a cupboard and so trying to get rid of them. Happy birthday to you too. Except it was. See that comment about greater than fifty-percent. Did I even cover the beginning of the month birthday? Probably not, but it was yet another well-Pimm'sed picnic (with ice cream cake on tap).

And so it came to pass that the getting through things before they move became them moving and... that hurt. It's also going to be odd seeing half of the Working grandparents' house in the wrong place. Said he who diverted a wardrobe and table from there from auction, but childhood bedrooms neutralise more. Come to think of it I'm quite glad the other wardrobes didn't get kept because then I'd have had to haul or heft them up the stairs to the brosil's place.

Anyway, you probably don't really need to know about the SIL's face when that crash from the back of the van came (a pile had the foundation collapse and so Shanghai-buildinged, crystal glasses and all, though other boxes. I now understand why they came in an absurdly big hat-box. Because it gives them braking, not breaking, distance) or the joys of Angle to Angered Monarch in a bit over an hour (caused by someone setting up lights to have pulses of two lanes of traffic round roadworks on Petanqueville Road, instead of a single lane each way. The traffic in one direction thus blocks that coming the other way causing any jams to echo back down the road, and so, through the powers of a one way system, back to where it started, thus making a fun little thing called gridlock, which then petrifies all other roads that touch it, which then... Much fun was had by all, including the wedding limousine [ouch]. But it turns out that bendy-bus drivers have brains. It's just the regular ones who block all three lanes of Grazing Road because they're performing a vital public service of not being able to get anywhere and so making damn sure no one else can. Much like Matchbox cars London buses come in boxes; little yellow ones.

So that was all fun. And brief. And I have to go now.

Anyhoo,