tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57438672024-03-07T22:02:40.842+00:00Anyhoo (yes "anyway" was already taken).Occasional rants, ramblings and incidental (or possibly accidental) wisdom.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger792125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5743867.post-34034871337003821752013-06-26T20:24:00.000+00:002013-06-26T20:24:44.333+00:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/anyhoo/4905023263/"><img src="http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4138/4905023263_4c7afd5548_m.jpg" width="240" height="161" alt="DSC_3890 [psp turq] - Snakes in Ladders" title="I tried to find serpent pictures and got the Serpentine. Click for source." align=right hspace=5></a>Finally got round to installing one of them proximity app things. Flicking through. Dull, dull, ok, hmm, maybe, maybe not, cute, dull, dull, WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?<br />
<br />
I know there's the quirk of art that meant men could be sculptured in loving, form-hugging detail if they're heroically vanquishing a monster, but we don't need to have that pretext to have rippling toplessness now, so why then would anyone think it would be a good thing to show, as their alluring profile picture, them cavorting with a python?<br />
<br />
And while trying to find an image to illustrate this it turns out that, um, I really don't like snakes, hence don't have any pictures of anything vaguely related.<br />
<br />
In other news someone in the next town over has my shirt.<br />
<br />
Anyhoo,<br />
<br />
PS. Oh, and why did I download that app? Just to check I'm not the only one in existence [round here]. If there's hope even here then I ought to be able to remember that there's hope elsewhere.<br />
<br />
PPS. Are you sitting comfortably? Are you alone? Please record your <a href="http://img0.thingbox.net/images/members/3/4/349143/349143_octosex_450w.jpeg">reactions</a> in the comments.<br />
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5743867.post-66870666798929578392013-06-16T13:49:00.000+00:002013-06-17T13:28:39.604+00:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/anyhoo/8000315039/"><img src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8445/8000315039_3796b62b76_m.jpg" width="159" height="240" alt="DSC_2148 [ps] - Yearning for Warmth" title="From beneath. Click for source." align=right hspace=5></a>So it turns out that heads of engagement aren't terribly good at engaging with this head about the previous engagement of a head. But he is head of engagement for the Conservatory Front, so, not only do I have to wash my mouth out with soap, but really I should have seen this coming (rather than... yet things were left unconcluded), except I didn't see any part of the situation coming and while the situation was developing there wasn't a great of forethought going on (I would make someone pun about whore-thought, but not even that was going on).<br />
<br />
Weirdly not broken-hearted. Not devastated. Merely a little embarrassed, although I'm protected by plausible deniability [BTW this is ghost-written fiction] and waiting for he who is without sin to cast the first stone; as at this party some people outright refused to expose how they met the host there could be a wait (and what is this sin of which you speak?).<br />
<br />
So there was a party I wasn't actually invited to and which I was dreading, where it wasn't that bad—excepting some of the karaoke—and where I found myself rather drunker than I'd expected, so dragged into backing up karaoke and thus holding myself upright, and then ended up kissing the guy in the stairwell, with things stirring well, where gin-boosted gravity started winning (and his hands were on the, er, coaxing, side, which had I been more sober I'd normally have rebelled against), and um.<br />
<br />
Yes, that was about the noise.<br />
<br />
We heard somebody come out of the door to the flat. He gallantly, to save us being caught together in-flagrante-de-licked-hole, ran away down the stairs. I opened the door surprising and surprised at the woman beyond.<br />
<br />
Then I pounded my way back in (well, more thrummed, but have you tried knocking on a door beyond which there is karaoke?), grabbed my bag, farewelled the host, and fled, the fellatio and fondling having flooded over my pre-last-train buffer.<br />
<br />
So I ran for the tube in the effortless way of the drunk, then from it and so onto the last train of the night, by a highly efficient margin, where I made it to at least Clackslam Junction before the combined Stilton burgers (who the hell mixes Stilton into mince to make burgers? Who the hell likes Stilton to start with?), birthday cake, awareness, assorted wines, and whatever one could find to dilute the gin by the end of the night made themselves known. Was it the alcohol, was it the kinship with the lactose-intolerant, was it the blithe bounding?<br />
<br />
Whichever the raisin loaf bag came in very useful although most of the raisin loaf didn't get used.<br />
<br />
So that was a day of firsts (which is more incredible?).<br />
<br />
This doesn't sound much like me, does it? Well, except for the drinking to cover uncertainty and finding myself actually 'unused to wine', the act of chundering neatly, the general polite, biddable ineptitude.<br />
<br />
Anyway, for <a href="http://glitterforbrains.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/of-fennel-and-fisting.html">calibration</a>, and for <a href="http://thisiswhyyourefat.tumblr.com/">testing</a>.<br />
<br />
Anyhoo,<br />
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5743867.post-49830087004850423712013-06-12T18:31:00.000+00:002013-06-12T18:31:13.482+00:00These links are from a while ago, so mostly when I was in Australia.<br />
<br />
I want to say how did I never notice that Carraway was <a ="http://www.salon.com/2013/01/09/was_nick_carraway_gay/">that way</a>, except it took me a while to figure that out as for someone about whom I've considered far more words.<br />
<br />
I saved this to blog about, but I think you can probably guess my reactions.<br />
<iframe width="853" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/hC3VTgIPoGU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
<br />
Oh, and I've seen the below in situ now. Unfortunately there wasn't a live demonstration from Mr Brace-Yourself.<br />
<iframe width="853" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/cBlRbrB_Gnc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
<br />
And this is, well, unrelated. Someone's a fan of Lynch.<br />
<iframe width="853" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/P2jn_lxrrPg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
<br />
Whereas this series, <a href="http://www.criminalwisdom.com/hysterical-literature-the-orgasm-as-art/">Hysterical Literature</a>, are surprisingly sweet and oddly beguiling (and quite quick; are such things normally that quick?). <br />
<br />
And now for some slightly less hysterical literature, with a fascinating (and long) look at <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n09/donald-mackenzie/the-magic-lever">banking</a>. It's well worth reading. As is <a href="http://www.themillions.com/2013/05/so-that-if-i-died-it-mattered.html">So That If I Died It Mattered</a>.<br />
<br />
While on next-to-maudlin some people really don't understand the power of images (and some do).<br />
<img src="http://25.media.tumblr.com/79b3c5faf08b232f3a5deb6a82ada457/tumblr_mnqpr3hRfh1ste7qoo1_1280.jpg" width="30%"> <img src="http://24.media.tumblr.com/668cd4fb98fc9ba40c1770e196e08e98/tumblr_mno6e35PC31ste7qoo1_1280.jpg" width="30%"><br />
<br />
And now for something that amuses me.<br />
<iframe width="640" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/FbetTNetB-k" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
<br />
Anyhoo,Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5743867.post-75192521705042203942013-01-14T06:52:00.000+00:002013-01-14T06:52:50.633+00:00<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/anyhoo/8364210030/"><img src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8328/8364210030_8a6313220a_m.jpg" width="159" height="240" alt="DSC_1165 [ps] - Bearing Down" title="Down, um, Over. Click for Source." align=right hspace=5></a>Flown. Australia goes on for a very long time, though it was mostly haze, though you can see the prevailing wind direction in the land. Landed late on New Year's Eve (Abu Dhabi couldn't cope with the traffic, so the queue for security at one terminal started in a different one), collected from the airport, dumped luggage, driven out to quaff champagne and watch the fireworks on the city buildings glittering beautifully in what turned out to be the outflow from the power station.<br />
<br />
The next day was a fair bit of sleeping (going to bed at 3.30 am is great for beating jetlag, because it means you can't tell) and being shown around the city, plus a bike ride round to a convent that was mostly shut (summer hols here).<br />
<br />
Wednesday was heading to the southern suburbs to explore a bit, discover that I wasn't very far from a friend who I hadn't quite contacted before leaving, who was a brilliantly muddled when he stopped trying to walk past me and eventually recognised me. I assumed it would be tea (well, water or juice) and a chat before leaving, instead it became heading out for gelato, wandering round St Kilter (I saw the penguin pier, except it was the wrong time of day) where the conversation ran between the two people who didn't know each other, then heading into town to the market with him, just before they shut, so half price fruit (Australians get gouged on everything, a bowl that costs £12 in John Lewis costs $60 here).<br />
<br />
The next day was... oh, I'm not doing well on remembering. There was giant scrabble in the evening, so most of the day was just prepping for that.<br />
<br />
Oh, I didn't get very far with this and it was actually an email to one half of the audience. It's now a while later.<br />
<br />
Big Scrabble, a last minute Kubb (fun but, er, there are those who score and those who wave sticks about while waving Pimm's) and a barbecue in a taxi, plus assorted meetings of people.<br />
<br />
Friday was more town wandering (in a hairdrier), then dinner at Stairs', featuring an ailing, um, quick blogname, Landing, and a scaredy cat and not so much one (and some annoyingly good food), with Ahab and Jezebel and Omega's other Alpha or Siemens or something to be decided upon. Then out to a pclub to be puzzled by drag acts and then watch burlesque performed by males with predictably punny name, which was not wholly bad, with a remarkably well recovered Landing. We waited until the outside temperature was below body temperature before leaving. We saw the second show.<br />
<br />
Saturday was, well, planned and booked before we knew Friday was happening, so featured getting up a few hours later, driving out into the winelands (and burnt out lands), to be dumped at a winery to sample their range (good to unpleasant) while the driving couple go to be assessed for suitability to adopt a puppy, while I watched swifts picking off midges and an ibis picking through the bins. Lunch at a brewery with a beer sampling thrown in (good to unpalatable; the stout was like drinking a recently quenched fire, complete with grittiness), then a quick dog supplies buying expedition as the woman with the puppies had decided to drop the get-out clause inspection so Jezebab could take him that day. And so off to explore the tree ferns of a place that lies (there are no badgers) and to buy some wine from a weddinged out vineyard and so not.<br />
<br />
Then came puppy. Which didn't seem to go anywhere near as badly as the passengers were expecting.<br />
<br />
And already I've forgotten when things happened. Somewhere there came riding down the coast to a beach near the Queen's beach hut. I'd missed swimming in the sea. And the sea here makes you swim properly, because like Swannidge it has cooler lower layers, but it also has sandbars rising into the knee zone.<br />
<br />
I think the next day I saw Ned Kelly's bucket and read his history wondering why exactly he is so celebrated (bushranger = outlaw) and discovered the turncoat who became Speaker and other fine characters, and that the town was once upon a time know as Batmania.<br />
<br />
What else? I cycled past where I meant to go upriver off the edge of the map and then slowly round via a few detours (oh, hello Ikea, and oh, so those Gardens are actually a shopping centre), from where I got me to a nunnery too late for cake and so headed home in the rush hour over streets where either Apple Maps did the line painting or the tarmac forms bow waves on each tyre.<br />
<br />
Oh yes, cycling here largely seems to work, though am in a fairly inner place (it's scarcely urban yet so much less suburban than further out) with very few hills of note. The trams a bit odd, as they're here's tube, but seem to stop if not every block then every other one, so cars overtake. But it is quite a nice place, if occasionally provincial and outright American in parts (and presumably British in the parts I don't notice as odd).<br />
<br />
Yep, so big cars, big streets, power lines up poles, and charges of jaywalking (yes, I've seen the police do people for it, and yes, people ignore the rules but instead of checking for traffic check for policemen at intersections, you know, because that's safer).<br />
<br />
Anyway, back to the narration. On Saturday One and Doppelganger (he's bizarrely like one of my brother's friends in look, sound and manner) drove us (so mein host Omega, Three Oil or whatever he is, and me) out of town about ninety degrees over from last time up to Mt DefinitelyGreekNotYugoslavianOrIndependent, which is something akin to a hill station, being a cool, leafy hill full of expensive houses, with occasional empty plots with rusting gates, where presumably the insurance didn't cover rebuilding (oh yeah, Alpha's earliest memory is leaving when the fires went through; their house survived but few others did and they decided that was bit too close).<br />
<br />
So we went for a walk though the assorted aged woods at the top, with view back through the mostly smoke haze to the spiky yet tiny city, and had a not quite picnic sitting on overhanging rocks overlooking that fey film featured earlier in this sentence.<br />
<br />
Oh and along with the skinks and forget-me-nots (um, garden escape much?) we also saw an echidna (or two; we came back the same way and saw another but it might have been the same one). Instead of doing what it traditional (and what the first one did) which is to stick its arse in the air and dig into the ground, this one looked up a bit then kept rummaging among the mint being pretty much unperturbed by us, which apparently is really bloody rare (perhaps the mint swamped its sense of smell [though we were upwind] or maybe it's like catnip for monotremes). Um yeah, so basically I had to be dragged away, although the act of dragging prompted the echidna to shuffle off down the hill. And so we walked somewhat more livelyly back to the car, cool nature stuff having trumped the flagging bit.<br />
<br />
And so home to order take away Thai because the Moroccan was closed for four months because it's summer and to play a board game, called Flash Point, in which one has to save people from a burning building (I may have done a dramatic slump at one point during the explanation of the rules, which I suddenly realised I'd done in public). The easy version we managed fine. The intermediate one we made jokes about who would get to rescue the dog, and so who would end up being interviewed on the local news (guess what the penultimate news story on Sunday was?), and killed off too many people including getting blasted out of the house ourselves, so decided to keep going to see what would happen (we managed to kill off the false alarms and rescue the remaining people, though only by fluke and with one damage marker left unused, deployment of which would have also finished the game).<br />
<br />
Sunday was lazier, with brunch with friends of Omega's skipped because they wanted to meet at some ungodly hour (don't they know brunch is basically lunch?), then out for it anyway at some hipster place in the 'Swick (I've no idea what they actually call it, but it won't be the actual full name. Bruinies maybe), with a waiter giving a private dance to one of his friends, the owner commenting on the grammar on my t-shirt, the amusement of some couple bringing a set of parents in, to sit waiting for a table looking and feeling out of place for so long the eventually only the mother was left, and our waiter being the youngest who seemingly had never heard of any of the things we ordered.<br />
<br />
Later we went into town to buy fruit (dalla manga, dalla manga, many dalla manga, al dalla manga) and quibble over names (butternut squash/Japanese pumpkin, mange tout/snow peas, peppers/capsicum, aubergine/eggplant, but if we're doing quirks of food how about a croak mon-sure and eggs flow-rent-eyn?) then head over the carnival at the start of their summer queerfest, which turns out to be some cute guys, some really shouldn't be pulling that face guys and some tents in a dustbowl. We didn't stay long.<br />
<br />
Anyway, better stop now as need to clean things before this evening, oh, and there's a wattlebird a few feet away watching me.<br />
<br />
Anyhoo,Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5743867.post-940851225670291132012-12-23T11:39:00.000+00:002012-12-23T11:39:16.216+00:00Because what has a 12th century tune been missing all these years? A key change.<br />
<br />
<iframe width="853" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/5p-3CdP2YnY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
<br />
Ming the Messiah anyone?<br />
<br />
Anyway, hello, sort of bye, Merry Christmas one and all. And you'd think packing for cold and packing for hot would be two discrete groups, wouldn't you? Turns out it's not quite so and I was meant to have left half-an-hour ago (hence procrastoblogging).<br />
<br />
Love to both,<br />
<br />
Anyhoo,Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5743867.post-58179575147832167862012-12-10T17:36:00.000+00:002012-12-10T17:36:47.039+00:00<iframe width="640" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ksL_7WrhWOc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
<br />
See also waiting for inspiration.<br />
<br />
So snow then (snow then *cigar waggle*?).<br />
<br />
It's not very interesting. It's mostly gone. The delivery they didn't make when I was in yesterday hasn't come today. I need to go into town to get a form to sort out something that the bureaucracy doesn't admit happens (and we're not even talking about the ones who lose things so don't pay anything, then only admit it's missing several months later. If they lose this copy I'll not be impressed), and which I really ought to have sorted out before Austria-et-al.<br />
<br />
Oh, yes, that. A friend, who's so long standing he must have a blogname [Omega? I think], offered once more his farsided hospitality (because it's only been something like eight-years since he first offered), and the only thing better to do I have for Janfeb (those wonderful d months: dismal, damp, dreary, draining, despondent, demoralising, drudge) is it sit in Tweetonshire watching the sleet and regularly asking "am I nearly better yet?".<br />
<br />
And I've recently discovered that Peach Beach (really it should be Peach Stream, except that should be Peach Stone Vessel Or Large Portable Hot Water Unit, except that has to bend the rules, and anyway alliteration) has penguins. How this is not the best known fact about Et-alia, I don't know.<br />
<br />
So I sort of said yes. And then I got an email informing me of my baggage allowance. So that solves that then (the BroSIL said they'd help, because they didn't like the idea of accepting someone else's generosity, although they're mid-move and the SIL just wrote their car off by going round a corner at 20 [onto a large puddle, thence bank with big rocks, thus grating the bottom of the car, but the other side of the road is a bank with big rocks going down into the river, so lesser off two weevils (whose joke was that?)].<br />
<br />
So now it's a lot of wondering what I'm going to do with my time there. And a lot of finding answers and wondering how I'll fit it all in. And a lot of wondering at which point I'll break. Though Tamsin Indiana looks cool (Google seems to show land that no one's ever bothered changing; no roads, no buildings, no clearing, just natural processes beautifully illustrated).<br />
<br />
Oh yeah, helps if I post.<br />
<br />
Anyhoo,Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5743867.post-10084451847685369932012-11-13T23:19:00.000+00:002012-11-13T23:19:50.542+00:00<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/anyhoo/998998451/"><img src="http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1365/998998451_ff93938d28_m.jpg" width="240" height="161" alt="DSC_5353 - One Can But Try" title="You think that'll stop me? Click for source." align=right hspace=5></a>And the prize for backing into the sign at the station goes to...<br />
<br />
I avoided the stone corner of the station building and the bin left in a parking space. And I can't have been the only one to do it because it is a bloody stupid place to stick a pole. Although it was still surprising enough that all the long row of taxi drivers looked about 15 feet above me at presumably the sight of the British Rail logo wobbling.<br />
<br />
And I can't think why I'm not putting this on a real name site (yes, I know there are ways, but shush), although it didn't fall over when I drove away.<br />
<br />
Anyhoo,<br />
<br />
PS. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/anyhoo/1568918812/">Bonus pertinent picture</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5743867.post-31930240809251733052012-11-01T20:51:00.000+00:002012-11-01T20:51:37.794+00:00<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/anyhoo/5711137355/"><img src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3662/5711137355_6de1242c64_m.jpg" width="159" height="240" alt="DSC_8376 [ps] - Viking Helmet" title="Sit still! Click for source." align=right hspace=5></a>Naked men and such.<br />
<br />
So there's a website for the more dysfunctional gay (it currently has a thread titled "Citalopram") and a group on it meets to do arty things and last week they had a meeting to draw people and having chickened out of the big mass party the site had a few weeks earlier and she of whom I'm meant to know little is suggesting that it might be a good idea to go out and do things sometime meant I went almost late with my hastily bought pad and pencils from some glorious poundshop and scurried in to the sex shop somewhat confused and uncertain.<br />
<br />
Oh, yes, this life drawing thing was being held in a sex shop. Not a sex shop of the gigglesome videos type, but one that mostly seems to sell rigging, veterinary supplies, castanets on a pole and props from Dr Who. The were several "... oh!" moments. I'm guessing it's one of the few borrowable spaces that doesn't object to having naked people on the furniture (that and someone knows the owner so it's free).<br />
<br />
Anyway, so I went to something where I didn't know anybody and I didn't faint or die or have conniptions and only pulled off-putting faces at the models for the first half as I was trying to remember how this whole drawing thing goes. I was asked by people looking through my pictures afterwards when I last drew, was it art school? It was for GCSE and I carefully wasn't saying how long ago that was (I'm guessing a chunk of the people there would never have encountered a rotary phone).<br />
<br />
Anyway, just like being in an art gallery, sex shops work quite well at ice breaking because there's always things to comment on, even if the most frequent comment is "How?"<br />
<br />
Basically I did new stuff and the world didn't end, which feels a bit odd. And then I met one of them a week later (thanks to the understanding ways of the ever delightful LD, who basically I'd marry if I fancied him at any level more than slightly-when-drunk, and he was a bit more confident, and fractionally more relaxed, and a few other tweaks. And it's ok to say this here, because he's long since forgotten blogging exists) for a studiously undefined meeting*, whereupon I found he's not much use in a pub quiz (which as he suggested it doesn't impress me greatly), that we're both about as awkward as each other, and that any previous buzz experienced in his presence was because I don't get out much and he plays better to a larger audience.<br />
<br />
*<i>A: are you gearing up to asking me out for a drink sometime?<br />
B: Was that your subtle way of doing precisely that? Deftly done.<br />
A: Ha I just thought if that was what you’re aiming towards I would save you the work.</I><br />
<br />
Still he didn't walk away when I explained recent history, so that's good.<br />
<br />
Oh, and the following day I was supposed to have my last ever therapy session, except we ran out of time so I'm going back tomorrow. Needless to say I shall be utterly cured come four o'clock tomorrow.<br />
<br />
But then the lovely charming ATOS decided that ages ago, when I demonstrably wasn't (I appealed the ESA decision, got seemingly rejected (the money stopped and I couldn't get any information out of them) then a couple of days ago got some dreadfully official HM Courts letter saying the appeal was going ahead and did I have a lawyer? The letter incidentally was sent to an address I hadn't been in for months, despite having told various ATOS and DWPers of my new address).<br />
<br />
So god knows, perhaps.<br />
<br />
Oh, and then the friend who suggested overwintering in Australia suggested it again, with more details.<br />
<br />
Don't know on that score either.<br />
<br />
Anyhoo,Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5743867.post-52804447266636789362012-10-22T19:37:00.000+00:002012-11-01T20:42:38.032+00:00<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/anyhoo/4916057663/"><img src="http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4077/4916057663_67481cfde9_m.jpg" width="240" height="159" alt="DSC_4287 [psp] - Minor Technical Glitch" title="Total mere. Click for source." align=right hspace=5></a>Bechamel!<br />
<br />
Bought aubergines because they were cheap. She who cannot be gracious said she'd make fritters from them. She didn't. She then said we could make moussaka. This of course being her use of "we" covering the past fifteen years, thus meaning "you". So eventually, when they were pretty bloody limp, I made moussaka. I looked up how to make it, checked ingredients and went out specifically for those that were missing (while happening also to fill in the holes I knew about, and the things she who is infuriating had said we needed having denied we needed anything). I then spent about four-and-a-half hours cooking.<br />
<br />
After serving her her first words were "don't you know how to cook spring greens?"<br />
<br />
This did not go done well. I didn't react as much as I could have, or was tempted to. Her reasoning for why they were so inedible that she ate them before having seconds of the moussaka was that I must never have watched her cook them, which given the last thing I remember her cooking in its entirely without having someone else around to help (and take over) was pasta salad when I was about nine, was very probably true but for the reasons she's assuming.<br />
<br />
For the next couple of days she continued to completely miss any of the many points she could have alighted on, criticising me for attempting moussaka in the first place, despite her pretty much commanding me to do so, ditto for making bechamel when she would have had white sauce but "You haven't seen me make a white sauce", except she can't see the point in making a sauce of any description.<br />
<br />
Basically the only reason this stopped was because she found new things to complain about, while writing me off as this erratic, fragile thing she's been having to tend to for months (firstly "tend"?, secondly they flow's been pretty much the other way, even when it might have been useful for it not to be).<br />
<br />
Essentially we were two people in similar boats. I've been bailing out and making for shore, she's been sitting in hers shouting discouragements to me making sure I know where I have been going wrong by her rating.<br />
<br />
Which is why it's so frustrating when I'm needled enough that I want to unleash a broadside on her but know it'll either sink her or more likely miss because she's already so low in the water that there's not much freeboard to aim at.<br />
<br />
She did eventually thank me for cooking, but didn't compliment any of it, instead picking away at the fact I hadn't used a specific set of implements around in her childhood that aren't in the house to prepare the vegetable.<br />
<br />
As she put it "I don't understand".<br />
<br />
And all this from a woman who has never knowingly shut a cupboard and only rarely opens them.<br />
<br />
Oh, and yes, the moussaka was nice, exceptionally so (nutmeg makes everything better).<br />
<br />
And yes, as Little Miss Therapist pointed out it doesn't actually matter, except of course I can't really get my head round it not mattering (or as I just typed it matering. Herr Doktor Freud, bitte). It's just the embodiment of that via-Oppenheimer quote gets wearing.<br />
<br />
That and I can't think of it as pleasant or a minor accomplishment (featuring la roux, not the musician) because I can't now extricate that from she who must maim (and yet it was really nice [mostly from <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2012/apr/05/how-to-cook-perfect-moussaka">here</a>]).<br />
<br />
Anyhoo,Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5743867.post-10290150411660721142012-09-29T12:31:00.000+00:002012-11-01T19:22:04.364+00:00<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/anyhoo/5712805106/"><img src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2729/5712805106_7c175b206e_m.jpg" width="240" height="159" alt="DSC_8588 [ps] - Failed Relevancy 2.0" title="I can probably manage 'cuckoo'. Click for source" align=right hspace=5></a>Yeah, so my cousin, who I've just been chatting to on Twitter has bugger-all humour. Except I've seen him around his mother so I know he is able to laugh at things. I'm guessing that if by the time he gets to the fourth tweet he still hasn't realised that the first statement was not wholly serious then there's not really much point in saying that all the explaining was to do with a joke which has now been embalmed out of existence.<br />
<br />
I was about to blame the parents when I remembered who they are (the more related one takes a while to realise that the slightly odd thing that was just said might not have been completely straight, but does go into that mode when he remembers it exists. The less related one is American).<br />
<br />
But then if he weren't so unaware of other meanings perhaps he'd never post something like the following: <i>Actually quite sore from last night #Manhunt</I><br />
<br />
And no, I don't know if he is (blasted modern youth allowing people the freedom to give potential signs which might not be).<br />
<br />
Anyhoo,Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5743867.post-72206016542032677762012-08-30T19:20:00.000+00:002012-11-01T19:21:27.015+00:00"There's plenty of men to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATvVX_QQ4fc">die you don't</a> jump your turn."<br />
<br />
Anyhoo,Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5743867.post-604229389166793802012-08-09T19:00:00.000+00:002012-08-09T19:00:53.166+00:00<iframe width="640" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/tvPxtkgwOdg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
Can't think why I posted this (it was after our eyes met over Lego).<br />
<br />
Sorry for not posting much. Um, seem to be writing drafts that gather electronic dust, if I write at all.<br />
<br />
Anyway, hello you lot. How are you?<br />
<br />
Anyhoo,Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5743867.post-39629661470249000392012-07-29T22:50:00.000+00:002012-11-01T19:14:55.466+00:00Bond and the Queen (good evening Mr Bond). The echoing of Lord of the Rings (which in turn was a <a href="https://twitter.com/rizmc/status/228929779917807616/photo/1">parable</a> about the corrupting influence of industrialisation). The Heatherwick cauldron.<br />
<br />
[Edit: I got far with this]<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5743867.post-27818069484658310862012-07-23T05:40:00.001+00:002012-08-22T16:06:17.870+00:00And I for one (5).Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5743867.post-25153176024830268482012-07-16T06:14:00.000+00:002012-08-22T16:06:09.392+00:00<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/anyhoo/7510854948/"><img src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8156/7510854948_4539cf0ba8_m.jpg" width="240" height="159" alt="DSC_2704 [ps] - Haunted" title="Facing the the face of the Germans. Click for source." Align=right hspace=5></a>Has anyone lost a coat? It's black with a tweed cap in the pocket. We did return the walking stick we stole from a church.<br />
<br />
And so the Germans came and have gone again. But they only came for three days and that included doing London in three hours.<br />
<br />
And I still haven't finished writing up the German trip, have I? Oh look, up there, no other there, yes, there, oh look, it's a ceiling.<br />
<br />
They arrived in the rain. We shunted them into their rooms, despite last minute panics (um, what do you mean you have two wheelchair users? Um, what do you mean you haven't?). They were overjoyed at the bare bricked university accommodation, complete with keys that didn't work, keys that did but which were for the wrong rooms, oh and the boisterous younglings also staying in the same blocks. That and because it was all catered self-catering there weren't any mugs.<br />
<br />
I'm not sure these factors influenced each other, but some members of the orchestra complained the next morning about the noise, and some clearly had found ways round the nothing to drink from problem.<br />
<br />
Next came a welcome by the mayor before she went to the cricket, a tour of the town and then of a nearby house, where I haven't been since I got a housepoint for writing up the visit on a word processor (as such things used to be called, back in the days before electricity when the Romans and dinosaurs lived). Oddly it was all a lot smaller than I remembered, the Grinling Gibbons bit is still just as dark and woody (and I still like the trompe l'oeil gained from Nonsuch).<br />
<br />
Strange to notice other things, missed as a nine-year-old, like the Queen's bed, working to an inverse Hays code (just narrow enough to count as a single, but with scope for sharing).<br />
<br />
Then out to the garden, for the German-speaking gardener to twinkle ruggedly (strategic mention of family, blast), and for the Germans to lament their lost box, and to remember the quarter moat (they never built the rest) and the suddenly shrunken mulberry tree.<br />
<br />
Then having thanked Mr Inheritance (I remember him as being all charm and diffidence, yet the photographs show his face to be something quite other, but then it's his job to smooth and soothe), I found myself abandoned (good token display of concern when you've already pulled away).<br />
<br />
And so we came to later, at a school, were we sang, they played, doughnocupcakes and fish and chips were had and we decided it was [not] going to be disastrous.<br />
<br />
Then they went home to get up for their do-London-in-a-morning mission, and we didn't.<br />
<br />
And suddenly we're in a church, with the Germans having alcohol withdrawn symptoms (they complained to one of the choir who was a translator, who being Czech, simply said it was these crazy people in this god-forsaken country [some of her earlier translations had, er, edited the content somewhat]; when someone else stepped in to point out that it was a Baptist church and that we'd much rather being selling things with a higher profit margin they realised that it's not the country that's crazy).<br />
<br />
A rehearsal later (a fair bit of pretending things didn't happen) and suddenly we're having seconds from the soup dragons (I've never actually used that name to their faces, but the they'd been delegated soup and bread responsibility).<br />
<br />
Then the public come, including no one I know because they're all at weddings, stag dos, or Parisian concerts.<br />
<br />
Then there's song and the tunes of a dance, but no dancing, unless you count the altos fussing round and creating a wave of instability that nearly sent some of the basses over the edge (may need a bigger a stage).<br />
<br />
Then applause, more applause, totally spontaneous encore (we didn't even leave the stage before it), then people fleeing to catch... well, no Tubes round here, or public transport that late, anyway crowds vanish, we clean up, the Germans depart, someone finds one of their walking sticks, and being the most likely to be able to catch a coach meandering through urbanised lanes I get sent off to return it. I fail, despite maintaining visual contact the whole way to the one way system, always about one-and-a-half coach lengths behind.<br />
<br />
And so to bed, then up early to herd Germans and their instruments through muddy fields and people. Except some of the group decided that that warnings to wear sensible shoes if not boots were a joke, because they are an orchestra and orchestras play in places that require evening dress, so suede high heels really ought be expected.<br />
<br />
We stood. And waited standing. And stood yet further. And perched on the fence. And pestered security guards. And argued amongst ourselves, between languages. And reported the ticket tout. And mocked the organiser. And milled. And gave up waiting for the promised site transport, despite being given the word of the biggest boss in the whole place, because, well, the thing is organised on intimate knowledge and glib reassurance, so coerced some poor volunteer into radioing for permission to drive my mother's car onto the site (well, for my mother to do so, I was giving the vital job of standing in the same place).<br />
<br />
Of course having worked it out for ourselves the site transport did turn up. The minibus turns out to be a battered Transit pick-up, which the frailer members of the orchestra decline to clamber into and the frailer instruments seek alternatives too.<br />
<br />
Heading into the breached double fence the car whinnies in the mud, then pulls away again, super special never normally used lever having been engaged (it has high and low next to it but I've no idea which one it's normally on). The Transit squeals, with orchestra members huffing and puffing against its sides. They give up, claiming their instruments, as we help, guiding them into the tent (wow, it's got grass left in places).<br />
<br />
We warm up and rehearse, largely unable to hear enough of each other thanks to the sound insulation properties of canvas and 20-feet of air being a bit lacking and this being a rock with other bits bunged in festival, oh, and the still shrieking engines outside, the Transit joined by a quadbike trying to tow it out but only creating literal shit-storm around itself. The orchestra really don't like it and break up mid tune several times. The rehearsal starts to blend into the performance, but the audience is basically choir hangers-on who were there from the start of rehearsals, and um, a few more people straggle in and some of them leave again, the tent simply being a route around the site avoiding the worst of the mud.<br />
<br />
So we sing and they play, loudly, and slightly disjointedly because, well, we can't really hear, but then presumably neither can the audience.<br />
<br />
And then that's it and we're clearing the stage for the cider swiggers lounging round the back. We wander off for lunch, leaving a couple to guard instruments, muscles individually calling in sick when faced with the mud, control and power duelling and dwindling.<br />
<br />
We had lunch, the bulk of us each choosing the same Moroccan stall, huddling slightly against the wind, yet hot when the sun fired forth, all locked in haphazard stable positions. We wandered, scaring off the arch-nemeses (there's another choir, a franchise choir, who had the main stage repeatedly throughout the weekend, when we, with an entire orchestra in tow, get the tent that isn't even listed as a venue. And their not even very good but their foundress clearly knows the festival founder [for some values of 'know']. It's just odd that a dull choir—we keep gaining their disillusioned members—can trump one that has a whole sodding orchestra at its disposal), finding little to entertain us, the music too loud or bad or both, the rest too anaemic, and went home early (the only <a href="http://youtu.be/ESFANzZTdYM">person</a> I wanted to see played the night before when we were performing elsewhere, so technically he played support for us [albeit on a different stage and different day]).<br />
<br />
And so to mass producing small fiddly things because my mother thought that was a good idea (what was wrong with flapjack?), which we then took to a borrowed barn thick with scent, cascading garlands of flowers sloughing buckling ribbons of perfume (the Germans were very impressed. I don't think they quite grasped that it was from the wedding the day before).<br />
<br />
Then we danced. The Germans were a little hesitant, as were some of the choir, but the aplomb subsumed them all (well, nearly, the curmudgeonly smokers spent the whole evening at a table outside). Apparently dancing folk dances in a barn is a ceilidh not a barn dance because a 'barn dance' suggests line-dancing, rather than interleaving lines dancing.<br />
<br />
Then food, Germans amazed that we can run to more than a thousand-and-one potato salads (cue comments that they didn't know British food was so nice. I think we largely managed to not say "well, duh", instead commenting that the different season let us use more fresh vegetables [you know, those things you don't have at all except vampiric asparagus]).<br />
<br />
Then presents presented, the only German I saw looking at one of my prints (they all got one, each different) frowned and chucked it to the side while he looked to see whether there was anything good in the bag, the committee, who no longer have committee meetings, get half a dozen bottles of wine to share between, well, a number that isn't 6 (but it's German red, so literally rotwein), and I get a special present to for warping the world (well, for documenting the last trip at my trademark angle) and for replying to an email (but then someone else got given one for using the TfL website).<br />
<br />
Then more dancing-eating-drinking-chatting and suddenly it was time for the Germans to be sent away in chaos, despatched in different cars, hoping we've got them all, and then clearing up, happening to have some of the flowers fall into our hands (it's ok, there's a rumour they're getting thrown away tomorrow), and people fuss about left coats, and walking sticks, and CDs, and plates.<br />
<br />
And suddenly once more I'm left alone, the others having fled, the lift not yet here, the walk carrying so much being probably impossible, while the man from the big house, the owner, inheritor, thereof, comes over to lock up and my mother reappears and does her best to shout through the man who has given us various things they normally charge many thousands for.<br />
<br />
So to bed, and not getting up to wave them off at six.<br />
<br />
Anyhoo,Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5743867.post-47257524371130848792012-06-23T21:57:00.000+00:002012-08-20T18:11:19.757+00:00<iframe width="853" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ZB8UXJE7zps" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
How come they never showed this on some damp bank holiday?<br />
<br />
Found via:<br />
<iframe width="853" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/VOz1uSLXMDM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
How many sources can you identify?<br />
Paris is Burning, Boys in the band, Ru Paul's drag Race, Graham Norton, Queen, Um.<br />
<br />
Anyhoo,Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5743867.post-20319011199117705322012-06-06T06:06:00.000+00:002012-08-20T18:10:37.774+00:00<iframe src="http://embed.vpro.nl/player/?src=urn:vpro:media:group:14261180&skin=3voor12" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
I've no idea if this is actually any good but I've just listened to the whole thing without cringing while Skype-typing (yes, we could turn our cameras on, but then they'd know when we alt-tabbed away). Does get a bit Jackson-like in places, but considering that it's several decades since the stuff it echoes and the guy's dead, some similarity is not unforgivable.<br />
<br />
Ok, I'm talking rubbish, but that's because I stopped talking and am trying to find a way of starting again (the above was in no way influenced by <a href="http://instagr.am/p/Lgg3g9Ig7_/">this</a>).<br />
<br />
Anyway, the Jubilympics. Came up to Laundrette with ma pauvre mère on Friday to borrow the Brosil's flat while they're off doing even more ancient celebrations (which as far as I can tell involves getting drunk because there are stones [well, it is Scotland]).<br />
<br />
Came up on Friday, let them pack, said our goodbyes before bed because they said they were going early to beat the traffic, slunk off sometime later than they meant, got rung a few hours later with the question "By the way, where did you put the keys?"<br />
<br />
Cue quick "oh my god... we'll ring you back".<br />
<br />
And this is how we came to find that there's reasonably cheap petrol just off the motorway by Tamil Tempted (the Shell on the other side is cheaper), and even cheaper petrol in Whatfor (129.9‽ It's 146.9 a few miles away).<br />
<br />
Mother furious, me amused; one of us is going to have a happier life.<br />
<br />
So eventually we got to the RA for the SE with AA (who won't like that description of her, though that generation apply the aged label freely, mockingly, to each other) who'd gone round the Picasso first due to being abandoned alone in La Dun (I did suggest that I could drive to collect the keys, but my mother, well, wasn't that keen to spend time with her sister).<br />
<br />
The Summer Exhibition was the usual, so slightly weaker than I remember it being (it seems old stalwarts have a tendency to die). One year I'll enter my contempt attempt (it involves dots).<br />
<br />
Then from there the National, for dinner and dazzlement. Ok, so the misery Doctor in a moral warning to all comers, Antigone, which is rather like the great many dramas that echo it, is not exactly dazzlement. Was good, if not merry. And my mother is oblivious to cultural references (the Obama war room one? You know, all huddled round anxious? The one with Beatrice's hat in later editions? No? So what would you recognise? A short man swamped by his cloak in the wind as his horse rears? No, not it's not an Old Spice ad).<br />
<br />
And then, because it was a play without ice cream and still light, and not raining, we wandered downstream to see what boats and ships were around for the morrow. Except by the time we got to TWR BRG Moron Londe were shutting the barriers behind us, the rain and wind had increased to a level that would show on film, and the ships beyond were dark hollows in the vileness.<br />
<br />
So came the Armada, and came the not getting up early, and the rain, and miserableness, and the continued glitches that meant I didn't really want to wander far from civilisation, nor stand for hours. So we didn't go, because my mother, despite her propensity to talk to anyone about anything whether or not they want her to, refused to go on her own, and instead cried, screamed, sulked, and eventually fell asleep. She later talked about getting into a state, about being depressed, but promptly forgot that when I suggested she do something about it, something along the lines of talking to a doctor. She also refused to go to the street parallel to where we're staying, which had carefully blotted out the scorching sun with bunting, and announced all were welcome to share their bales (if it's not a daft question, where does one get straw in the middle of the capital?).<br />
<br />
So instead I went shopping for several things, most of which I forgot, and made fairy cakes badly while watching the boats, and bands of rain, sweep down the Thames. There were going to be a patriotic group activity, except the other half of the group was asleep and I forgot the blue food colouring, and the BBC's method for making buttercream is the exact opposite of what is sensible, so didn't work, and then trying to rescue it made it too runny, and then the red streaks ran, so yeah, I made variously pink fairy cakes. Insert own queen based pun here.<br />
<br />
Anyhoo,Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5743867.post-18618704863178765832012-05-18T22:06:00.000+00:002012-05-18T22:06:05.869+00:00<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2012/may/16/twitter-news-map-britain?CMP=twt_gu">Self-selecting, biased and incomplete data</a>, but still interesting demonstration of paper of choice across the country (I'm deep in Guardian country, though that's not what the townsfolk would lead you to believe).<br />
<br />
"Winston? Charisma? Do you think?"<br />
<iframe width="853" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ISg0_-mTLBY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
[Yes, this from a tweet by Edina]<br />
<br />
"There comes a point in your life when you realize who REALLY matters, who NEVER did, and who ALWAYS will." This is from a post that apparently is Hot on Google+ (I've already done that joke about "What's hot on Google<a href="http://t.co/xBV1DN7b">+</a>?" haven't I?), which is either gloriously ironic or a disturbing dabble in post-modernism, and which was by Paris Hilton.<br />
<br />
Oh F...ortuna. It occurs to me that <a href="http://aleclindsay20.blogspot.co.uk/">the youngling</a> was probably born about the time of that song. Oh what a world it seems we live in.<br />
<br />
Anyhoo,Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5743867.post-57122345154364220942012-05-18T22:05:00.002+00:002012-05-18T22:05:52.533+00:00I would prefer <a href="http://gizmodo.com/5910223/how-yahoo-killed-flickr-and-lost-the-internet">this</a> not to be true. I'm still on it, but the tumbleweeds sprouted long ago, after it became apparent the owners saw it as a free stock photography site for them and anyone willing to pay. It just became an endless round of incensed rows over inept and clumsily implemented changes, except unlike Twitter, the fury wasn't against outsiders but the very system itself.<br />
<br />
And in other news:<br />
- Just because, well, the world could have been very different.<br />
<iframe width="640" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/1VIq4oDAfPw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
- The world is more different than you can ever remember.<br />
<iframe width="640" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/g8gJOCwBuFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
- The world is tempting.<br />
<iframe width="853" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/KYHh6VW_8Nc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
I can't decide if the last is the height of suicidal folly or just fun and pretty damn awesome.<br />
<br />
Speaking of which, on Saturday I spent the entire day surrounded by Morris dancers (I was not one). The best bit was the contrast between sides, so those in green tweed gathering beside the steampunk side (wait, run that by me again, not only are there Morris dancers with goggles on their top hats, the Morris world supports enough groups to allow and even drive such diversification?). Though by the end of the day I was suffering a surfeit of capers (and bells, and heys, both shouted and danced) and had to retreat to a toy shop for emergency Lego (ok, so I wandered in and found they label their minifig bags, thus scuppering the official potluck marketing strategy) and had come to the conclusion that the Morris Circle or whatever the archoverlordsofthedance are called really need to allow new additions to the little black book. I managed to walk away from one side dancing one dance down an alley to find another outside Waitrose doing the same dance to the same music. It was like walking having digital on at the same time as terrestrial. And it wasn't quite you've-seen-one-you've-seen-them-all just you've seen half-a-dozen and you've seen most of them.<br />
<br />
And then Sunday was seeing my uncle's family, and I've done this.<br />
<br />
Anyhoo,Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5743867.post-55632670445995240002012-05-14T22:02:00.000+00:002012-05-18T22:04:45.239+00:00<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/anyhoo/2478294857/"><img src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2354/2478294857_04f1b15cfd_m.jpg" width="240" height="155" alt="DSC_4370 [crop] - Through The Ritz Backwards" title="Stunning views of the traffic. Click for source." align=right hspace=5></a>My cousin's on Twitter. Therefore I've rummaged and discovered we have one mutual follow (and no mutual followers, just the same number of them). His stream is all football and swearing (and hangovers) [so what's mine? Weather and flowers and dawn and Carcasonne and politics and musicals and words and quirk and baking and mocking and corporate whorage and actual whorage and juxtaposition. Apparently]. I knew about the football. The swearing's probably the oddest thing. He only ever mumbles, head hanging, mouth open, shoulders hunched forward, and only opens up slightly near his younger sister. Some how it just seems so unlikely that he'd ever say "cunt!"<br />
<br />
So I had a look at who he follows. They included such magnificent bios as "out injuried but still focased on my game" and [gibberish which I've just realised is Blackberry code].<br />
<br />
All of which means we went to theirs yesterday. So BroSIL by Tube, while I drove ma pauvre mère up to nearly the Risk so she could pick up something from Jean le Wis's, while I sat waiting to get onto Piccadillyanydilly and then had to adlib to my uncle's (past Horrids, turn by the cruisy Tesco) because my mother took the A-Z with her (or actually just put it out of sight).<br />
<br />
Driving's quite nice, except for the possess your soul in patience parts, but, well, you just have to be. It's bizarre how similar spring and autumn are in the colours of the trees, the toxins to prevent the new leaves being eaten showing before the chlorophyll forms to swamp them. But most of the trees are already creeping away from raw yellowness.<br />
<br />
So I got to my uncle's at a reasonable time according to the dash, which is on GMT. Mummikins appeared hours later. We sat talking (I have half a brown face), wandered down to the river, sat talking outside, inside, a pub, wandered back losing an aunt along the way (how? You live here, and your children know the route, which sort of suggests it's not the first time they've walked it. Except their father is also largely their mother, though don't quote me on that).<br />
<br />
Then more food and more talking, and Christmas presents.<br />
<br />
By the way, if you don't know what Carcasonne is buy it and play it. Which is the point I decide that arbitrarily including every Tweeted subject would take too long for its arbitrariness level.<br />
<br />
Anyhoo,Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5743867.post-27203718275406437032012-05-06T19:05:00.002+00:002012-05-06T19:05:26.747+00:00I really must go to <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/04/historic-photos-from-the-nyc-municipal-archives/100286/">less than three city</a> sometime.<br />
<br />
And yes, this is quite recognisable, ignoring the lumpiness in parts.<br />
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wBqcRLSyzLE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
<br />
Good read on <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/04/vladimir-putin-mikhail-khodorkovsky-russia">Putin</a>.<br />
<br />
And guess who's been following the French election Twitter and indulging in silly conversations on Facebook?<br />
<iframe width="640" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/DwAkco2A_XE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
[For the muddled, French law forbids publication of any election results before the official announcement, so #radiolondres appeared on Twitter discussing the cost of flights to The Hague and Budapest, or the weather in The Netherlands and the country that lies next to Italy, or the battle between the Rolex and the Flamby]<br />
<br />
Also guess who got nominated yesterday to be the Social Media Nexus Synergising Coordinateur for the choir, and promptly handed 'Twitting' duty to someone with a smart phone (current results for the choir's name: No Tweets. But there is a Facebook page, with a whole one fan. Ooh, I wonder if there's a budget to buy rewards for our FB fans and prompt interaction, and as the foremost, and most recent, fan, and poster, clearly I should be monetarily congratulated).<br />
<br />
So if anyone has any photographs, video, reviews, or anything else of the choir that isn't actually something I've done (I wouldn't want it to appear to be a one man band however much it's a one fan band), do let me know. Because, well, you're more likely to be able to find suitable materials than most of the group. And before you protest your technological illiteracy I have two words for you: "web log".<br />
<br />
Anyhoo,Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5743867.post-31781741344519593852012-04-16T18:36:00.000+00:002012-05-06T18:44:45.180+00:00<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/anyhoo/7102702519/"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7136/7102702519_1babc9a7aa_m.jpg" width="240" height="159" alt="DSC_2512 [ps] - This Tension, This Electricity in the Air" title="Half an hour of darkness was more exciting than the whole of Picardy. Click for source." align=right hspace=5></a>"Is Brideshead Revisited the first one or was there an earlier one?"<br />
<br />
This question did not get answered.<br />
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It's good, as is Pemberley Encountered, which somehow I'd never read (and why did no one mention in amongst the swooning over Darcy that it's actually cruelly funny?).<br />
<br />
So I took two books to Germagne and failed to read either of them, because, well, the postcards that did get written were stuffed into a postbox (yellow! With the Lego post logo!) on the Saturday, which I then realised would only be emptied after we'd left the country. So sorry for not sending any of you lot one, but the choices without words were a view I never saw (time and scaffolding issues) or photographs of his Forcefulness, Pope Palpatine (some of them really were exact copies except for the lightning from the fingers).<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">I spent a few days in the sunniest part of Alleschland, where I encountered Schnee, Regen, Nieselregen, Nebel, Hagel, and zurückbleibend Dunst (ooh, Kirsten has an apt surname). We annoyed our hosts by having umbrellas at the ready, because they don't consider themselves as living somewhere where carrying an umbrella is anything but an affectation. We also found ourselves a bit lustig for one performance through having the planned activity snowed off (we were supposed to be going up the tallest hilltain in the area to stare at the view, as one does, but it was lost to freezing fog).</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Which reminds me, excursions often made me think of this:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">[Minor IT helpdesk break: My mother didn't quite believe that I could unlock her new phone by waving my hand over it and saying "Alakazam". She prefers getting angry to wondering why there's a glowing arrow on screen with a band sweeping across it repeatedly towards the point, even though she's already commented on discovering it's touchscreen. It happened in Deutscherreich too, where breakfast found me solving the technical problems of half the choir (you see this bit saying "No memory card"? Yeah, well, you might want to work on that), they having decided I was nearest thing there to an eleven year old boy, our as one put it "we'll need someone under, ooh, thirty", whereupon the habitual exclamations arose (golly, other people must get really haggard really young if no one ever believes my age)]</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Anyway, quante questi il bel sole or whatever it is (apparently it's Italian, but makes no sense in Italian, or so say some Italians). Much hairpinning, or as the Teuts say, windages. Complete with loggers loading round a blind bend, trunk sticking out far behind the lorry and overhanging the other lane. Cue quick seatbelt test. Even the guides were scandalised by how little warning there was before the strong chance of a log through the windscreen. And then having overtake in the incoming lane when they're coming out of a blind bend too. And this was the main road through the area. It was like being in Wales.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/_z8aLdIejPs" width="480"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Anyway, so we left a long, long time before we arrived, late, and then piled into a hotel that really wasn't set up for such things, and then into the restaurant, upsetting them through being a couple of hours late (as is standard for foreign travel; sailing's dire for it, because the tides are in GMT, the boat BST, and the French Channel Islands, which technically when didn't go to because we didn't go through customs on the mainland, oddly aren't on either, and it didn't help they'd already been muddled by a table for six for eight).</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">It was then that I first tasted Spätzle, which while like someone's description of it as "badly cooked pasta" was found to be something rather more (BCP to me meaning gnocchi the dog won't touch, see the fish floating incident from years ago).</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">And so to bed, sharing a twin room which has one bed with a seam down it wedged between the built-in furniture, with some guy who's six-foot-and-a-half-and-I-mean-half-a-foot, has the usually tempting blue eyes with dark lashes, and a body shape far too reminiscent of my father at his worst (which he's not happy about, the shape, not the similarity he doesn't know about—I'm not that tactless—as given away by him putting on a t-shirt to walk to the bathroom and the pants bought for a past version of him).</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Were it not for the fact he appears to have only marginally more confidence than me (invariably I'm drawn to cocky), that the last person I saw with a body like that died, that I've seen him checking his emails on his phone which suggest either he was looking at his report of his submissions of his female friends on Hotornot or he was being presented with an array of locally available women in all shades of desirability, that he tried making some joke, along with most of the rest of the choir, when someone said they'd lost gay (meaning the note it's sung on), that if I tried tapdancing in glittery red shoes on a rainbow unicorn most people would merely class me as bit odd (why is it that something the bullies always saw the rest of the world never does? Even when I say some people disbelieve, and even argue), that I don't really do adult relationships, I'd be well in there.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">It is odd realising I'm fairly blasé about bodies. Turn your back and get changed. If you've seen someone struggle out of a wetsuit without anything on underneath there's very little mystery left, very little to be threatened by, and very little allure in the vast bulk of cases (but he was pretty [and cocky] and had the cutest little lickable dimples just above his hips in the small of his back, and no I never did get to test lickability).</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Minor digression. Anyway, we were late to breakfast, because, well, he, um, delayed us upstairs. He set his alarm, I didn't set mine because his seemed like a reasonable time. His alarm went, I got up. He struggled to get up and stay up, and while he was in the bathroom I checked my phone, which said it had auto-updated my already updated time, but was an hour ahead of what it should have been. Except the noise outside, including voices I recognised, suggested that maybe, just maybe, it was right and the much more expensive option wasn't.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Run, hear raucosity, run back, shout through door, run again, bounce into restaurant, smile, greet, fail to disguise the "huh?" when confronted with a smorgasbord. Where does one start? Does the garlic sausage come after cold black pudding or before? Is the yoghurt to dip the croissants in or is that the orange thing in that bowl that no one's touching? And how come the basket of brown bread also contains overbaked white rolls too?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Of course eventually I figured it out. Start with fruit juice and muesli, then cold meats and goats' cheese with a roll or hunk of rye, then croissants anglicised with marmalade (the jam was strawberry, and one that was more implied the actual, and anyway the French can't complain, one of the Aires in the Pays d'Ull sold a noisette pain au chocolate which turned out to be made with Nutella, which sort of isn't quite the same thing [Mussolini has a lot to answer for]), then a bowl of fruit salad with raspberry yoghurt on the side (or cherry or blackcurrant or rhubarb), with optional pilfering for later.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">What struck me as odd was the complete absence of bananas. There's freshly cut fruit salad with at least 6 fruits in, but no banana. The platter on the other side has apples, oranges, kiwis, but no bananas. Maybe it was a quirk of the hotel, but thinking of it the stalls in the market all had masses of things (Elstar would appear to be their Cox) but I didn't see notice any bananas, which given I intended to pick some up was odd.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Anyway, we gathered ineptly and then were split into those willing to walk up a hill and those less willing. After a fair bit of Grand Old Duke of Yorking, including two elderly German women scandalised that people would get into a lift with others already it (um, there were two, there are now five, the lifts says it holds eight), and even more shocked when my guide explained we were from England, which garnered the response "No, he's Turkish" (um, I may not be fluent, but the German for Turkish is fairly like the English, so I understood that bit, just as I understood the bit that said I was too black to be English. Golly, the sun on the meadow is summery warm today), we discovered there's quite a view, and quite a brewery, and a McDonaldstor, and that all streams lead to the tower at the base of hill where one valley comes into that of the Rhine.<br />
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And then down for a private tour, as one of the viola players decided to like me—she spoke little English, I less German, it sort of worked with occasional requests for words from the pianist's niece who'd be co-opted into translating for her exuberant uncle (who expected her to translate long monologues in one go)—in which I discovered that once upon a time a man came to by the town, with a heavy cart full of barrels which when opened contain gold coins, well, a layer of gold coins over quite a lot of sand, but there have been worse financial slights of hand (it's called leveraging), that the stream with the concrete crocodile in it used to be the industrial power source and industrial waste system, running through the tanneries and breweries of the town (who knew leder was leather and bier beer?), and the area became a slum (being a bit pungent and beyond the city wall) before becoming a not slum (nightdress for 90 Euro anyone?), still with the water surging through it, including through shops.<br />
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Somewhere along the line we ended up in the shop with a river in it, gathered round a piano, suddenly singing (Youtube for those either in the know or with half a Google), as one does, while the well-heeled hausfraus looked bemusedly on and the shop assistants didn't know what to do (the pianist owns it and sometimes plays there; his wife had forbade him from bringing us in). I'm not sure it counts as a flash mob if you don't know you're about to do it and there's piano at the ready.<br />
<br />
And then along to the McDonaldstor, which apparently they wanted to paint in their colours (but the stone's already red, well, where it's not green). It has another name, but it's got McDonald's in big letters at the base of it. Then up to the main square (there was more tourage, but, it's all a bit muddled now) to wonder round wondering about the practicality of buying plants, discovering that it doesn't seem to matter which wurst one asks for or gets, it's still distinctly on the Frankfurter side of sausagedom, that ethnische waren are the same the world over (oh, I've got that bowl; I got it in Camden. It was cheaper there), that money matters fractionally less when it involves calculations (and you've got money out with the intention of spending it), that retiring for cake is also a common occurrence in German, that café society works better with blankets (we didn't realise until we were nearly leaving, but yes, that does explain how people can happily sit outside all over Europe), that the owner of the café we were at was fastidious about making sure we were all charged the correct amount (er, but every cake has been the same price, and every drink the same and we all had cake and a drink, so, yes, do continue to add each one individually).<br />
<br />
And so we suddenly were allowed to do what we wanted. Being me, therefore armed literally with a camera, I wanted to go further up the hill to get a better view (and more time to take shots). So up we went, meine Mutter und ich, up to the castle's stumps, having turned its guns once too many times on the town and so found guns upon it, up past the war memorials, the glorifying Great War one and the muted Second World War one, bounding up to declare my mother the dirty old rascal, because, well, one simply has to, then following paths wondering where they go, following unknown others ahead, puzzling over the strange symbol on the sign, not knowing what the next says other than it's a warning, up through a wood not perceptibly different to those at home—here too the trees fall down the hill when they get too big—up still, past the outpost on the outcrop accessible only by a collapsed bridge, under more emerging trees, ever upwards until a clearing rises, the symbol suddenly obvious, a modern tower of geometric quirk sweeping past the canopy, diagonal trunks taller than the straight, the curving waist of straight lines.<br />
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What's point of having vertigo if not to occasionally rediscover you have it. The climb wasn't that bad, bouts of contemplation among the spiralling mesh (my mother bailed, giddy), fine until you focus on the distant ground. The main platform wasn't that bad after a brief while; windy, cold, with a slight vibration, but the twisted wood seems to dampen everything (why is wood more trustworthy than metal? Do we just imagine everything stiff to be wood or stone, and know that if stone were as thin as the metal it would crack, but wood that thick might just hold, mightn't it, and metal's more like stone than it is wood, isn't it?).<br />
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And then of course I took the gap between excited children gambolling about it to go up the central spike made of just a spiral staircase. Imagine an unravelling spring. Now imagine standing on the free end. I found it quite hard to take the shots I wanted due to only being able to use one hand on the camera and having to remember to keep my eyes open. Oh, there are more children wanting to be fearless, I suppose I'd better come down to let them up.<br />
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A little galumphing down and I was on a log, with an apple, and a mother, discussing the toddler who crawled up the thing—it's only thirty metres above the ground, over cold, sharp metal with the ground receding through it—and wondering why exactly it is our instant response to being in a new place, with new people, new things to do, to see, to learn, is to run far from the madding crowd (well, most of them) to clamber about abandoned places.</div><br />
Hmm, saving and adding to this text has done weird things under Blogger's new backend. Apologies if this all ends up as one paragraph or spread across a lot of whitespace.<br />
<br />
Also the new thing is really annoying because the text that's being added to sits right at the bottom of the the screen, where two-thirds of the way along it keeps being up-actually-downstaged-or-orchestrapitted by 'TOSHIBA'.<br />
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Anyway, I seem to have skipped the official welcome and blasting the Rathaus with Summertime, a possibly ironic choice. The Rathaus was odd, being repro-Mediaeval (it's not just the foe who did Baedeker raids) with sudden blast of modernism when you scramble off a twisting landing into the neighbouring building just to go to the loo. But the welcome was odd too, with its diversion into assumed political allegiance and slight air of self-embiggening.<br />
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And so it was time to head off for a rehearsal in some borrowed music school. Helpfully we had no local with us to guide us (we were meant to walk following one of the orchestra members, but somehow that became getting the coach with directions). They were surprised we were late.<br />
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It's odd singing with an orchestra, partly because we couldn't hear ourselves, partly because we were following, or not, their conductor and it wasn't quite clear where we were meant to come in (was that flick aimed at the basses, or the pianist who is currently behind us and doing his own thing).<br />
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And then came the smorsgasbuffet, trying not to put desserts on top of bits of pork (hmm, do we think that lumpy white-ish thing is more likely to contain sugar or garlic?) and enforced mingling, which of course meant some tables worked better than others (hello friendly viola player who underwinged me on the tour earlier) depending on linguistic abilities. And wine. Quite a bit of that, served in shot glasses, constantly topped up, occasionally knocked over (I was sitting on the edge of the stage by this stage the monolinguals having nabbed spaces are the more animated courses between tables [quoi? Ed.], and no, I didn't realise the pianist had kicked the drinks left by the piano over, and no, I didn't feel the spreading dampness until I stood). Anyway, after the third helping of cake (I had to try and get a representative sample of Germische baking skill; the dry plain sponge tasted remarkably like my ex-landlord's quatre-quart, which was his piece de resistance at dinners. His friends learnt and starting bringing ice cream and custard when they came. The other cakes were good though).<br />
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Then the clock struck leaving-in-five-minutes (er, wouldn't it have been helpful to tell us earlier?). I, of course, left with a box of chocolates in my hand, having planned to yoink one on the way out and instead had one of the Germans insist I take them all.<br />
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And that is probably enough for this much delayed post.<br />
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Tschüß,<br />
<br />
Anyhoo,<br />
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PS. We got given the shot glasses we'd be drinking from. They celebrated Partnerschafts. Between somewhere in Austreich and somewhere in Germlandy that wasn't Freetown. Which'll come in useful sometime.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5743867.post-87878440966242427252012-04-13T17:29:00.000+00:002012-05-06T18:39:43.656+00:00<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/anyhoo/5175582526/"><img title="It was still a young wine when we passed. Yet to bud. Click for source." align="right" alt="DSC_0436 [psp] - Royale Window" height="159" src="http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4130/5175582526_609cdb94a5_m.jpg" width="240" /></a>What good is a hotel saying it sells stamps to its nigh-on wholly foreign clientèle when they only sell the right ones for second class domestic mail?<br />
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Oh dear, the ever-the-optimist is infectious. As is spending money. Still the German version of Carcassonne was a lot cheaper than at home (yes, I checked one can download English instructions).<br />
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Did I mention I'd be im Wald mit dem Chor? Ich bin jetzt hier. Via a hellalong coach journey across the plains of Outer Belgium (the one where one goes through the departments of Cava-Prosecco et pâté, the quiche one and the less antagonistic dog one, although the one that could do with being screwed up into the big ball was the one which is famous for nothing other than being repeatedly screwed up, so the main local features are the rows of markers impersonating newly planted deer-proofed plantation. That and slag heaps). Turns I'm not a fan of flat. One can't get the illusion of progress somewhere flat. It's like walking up a hill that is all false summits. It's Sisyphus for those scared of heights.<br />
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I did not do this while <a href="http://laughingsquid.com/airplane-lavatory-self-portraits-in-the-flemish-style/">travelling</a>. For a start, it's been done. While on dressing up, this <a href="http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ls7l9bZAta1qearaqo1_r1_1280.jpg">caught me eye</a>. Which are in costume and which just mufti? Because that's quite a range between the four.<br />
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And as you can probably tell, time was there not for blogging, as time was there not for much but being flung round. Less in-situ versions to follow.<br />
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Tschüß (yes, they really say it. And "wunderbar!")<br />
<br />
Anyhoo,Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5743867.post-53601660320368460322012-04-06T19:43:00.001+00:002012-04-09T18:21:01.515+00:00<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/anyhoo/2633127303/"><img src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3255/2633127303_7fdf04f29c_m.jpg" width="240" height="161" alt="DSC_7608 - Some Modernisation Needed" title="It feels a little bit broken now. Click for source." align=right hspace=5></a>When I'm surveyed by the wondrous cross,<br />on whose tongue dreams of glory died,<br />my richest gains do count but loss,<br />she pours contempt on all my strides.<br /><br />She does know how unrelentingly negative she is, doesn't she?<br /><br />And in the category of AALWTFM, my ex-landlord, who booted me out, having decided I was a toothpaste thief, and who told me he had not respect for me, is now following me on Twitter.<br /><br />Presumably this it what modern life is. How long can I decently leave it before I block him? Or in other words how long is his attention span, so how long will he take to forget that he followed me?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5743867.post-55753266677244258532012-04-04T21:54:00.001+00:002012-04-09T18:18:13.308+00:00<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/anyhoo/3225378275/"><img src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3443/3225378275_54704292e1_m.jpg" width="240" height="161" alt="DSC_5751 - Falling Sideways" title="Think of it as waves of probability. Click for source." align=right hspace=5></a><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/opinion/sunday/a-quantum-theory-of-mitt-romney.html?_r=1&hp">Geek and takedown</a>. Yay.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/matthew-todd/gay-marriage-god-forgive-them_b_1400161.html?ref=uk">Some</a> <a href="http://www.danoah.com/2011/11/im-christian-unless-youre-gay.html/3/">other</a> <a href="http://www.danoah.com/2012/04/a-teens-brave-response-to-im-christian-unless-youre-gay.html/3/">reads</a>.<br /><br />And is it a good sign if one's Google Plus account has "Hot on Google+" as the first three items? It's sort of like France suddenly rebranding as Le France Forté, thereby raising the possibility that they're not.<br /><br />Ooh, unfortunate placement: Twitter suggests I follow two accounts. One is Alastair Campbell. The other is [something short and misogynistic, so the very worst word there is, unless you happen to be Welsh, when it becomes slightly milder than bugger] <br /> of the Day.<br /><br />And did you know that going to bed early doesn't quite work if Pride and Prejudice is next to the loo?<br /><br />More thrilling insights soon.<br /><br />Anyhoo,Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3