Last night we were having dinner and I said: can a person make broccoli cheese where instead of a cauliflower you have a broccoli?
And both my parents said yes, and Felix looked quietly confused. I asked him what, and he said "I don't know why you would do that."
And I said well it's because it would be delicious, and then there were a series of I suppose half-questions, the upshot of which was the "revelation" that he thought cauliflower cheese was like a block of cheese that had small pieces of cauliflower in it. "You know how blue cheese has blue in it? Like that," is what he said. The confusion of course now makes sense - cheese with bits of broccoli in would be probably horrible. Although so would a cheese with cauliflower in.
Everyone has those stories where they go: Until I was sixteen or whatever, I thought something adorable, and then I was humiliatingly set straight by my mother/a cashier at Buxtons/etc"
I don't think this is one of those stories though. There will probably never come a point in Felix's life were it will seem ludicrous to him that he ever thought that.

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2009/10/05/091005fi_fiction_saunders

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/08/09/040809fi_fiction

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2010/01/11/100111fi_fiction_egan

a thing I never ever want to forget

Is that Dan's dad has a friend called Bart Simpson.

Felix once told me that a good conversation filler is asking someone what they had for lunch

I'm sure he doesn't remember this, and I'm very very sure that this isn't one of the rules by which he lives his life, but it is a thing I think about quite often. You obviously can't do this to like a stranger, but when there is a lull in a conversation with someone you know well (especially if you have got on their tits, or even more especially if they have got on your tits and you want to make a point of Forgiving And Forgetting)and you can't think of what to say, you just go "So what did you have for lunch?"
It really actually does work, and also it is interesting. I love to find out what people had for lunch.
Another thing that seems like a way to fill a silence but is actually FASCINATING is asking people what their scariest movie is. I asked everyone the other night. My mum said Psycho. Cathy said Silence Of The Lambs. Allan said "Cape Fear. That bit where he hangs on to the bottom of the truck. That's when I thought, Jesus Christ, this guy will stop at NOTHING."
I don't know why that makes me laugh so much.

An experiment that anyone can do is to go into an English supermarket, buy some stuff, and after the cashier is finished beeping your stuff through, ask for a packet.
What will happen is that they will look at you with complete, complete incomprehension. Sometimes they will look angry also, or else a bit frightened, but the thing they will look the most is entirely confused.
"Can I have a packet please?"
"What?"

Like that.
It drove me demented. Mae also. Then you would say, just louder, "Could I have a packet please?" and they would say "I'm sorry, but what did you say?" like you had given them some bad news about their family. And then you mime what a packet looks like (you sort of sketch a circle in the air with a half circle lying on top), and then they say, always, "ohhhhhhhh, you mean a BAG!"
Like all pleased with themselves.
It really does happen every time. Once I asked Dan What The Fuck, and he said "it's because a packet is something different here."
I said, "How different can it possibly be?"
and he said "oooooh, it's just different", and sketched more of a square in the air.
He said "You put your money in a packet"
I said "No you don't you put your money in a wallet I have seen it over and over."
He said "Look, it's just one of those things"

If by one of those things he means "the English tendency to look theatrically bewildered when you don't understand something, in a way that makes the other person feel like they have been actually rude", then yes okay.

Towards the end, I would remember sort of halfway through and say "Can I have a pag, please?"
And they would say "a WHAT?"
and I would just start screaming my head off in the middle of Waitrose.

What I think about when I am at Buxton's

Today I was in the car with my dad, listening to Elton John*,and we drove past this antique shop. I said "They have nice stuff in that shop", and my dad looked at the shop, looked at me, looked scornfully back at the shop and said "I've never gone in there." He said it with such utter conviction that I find it hard to believe he was consciously lying. But in was in fact a total lie. I've been in that shop with him, at least twice, and stood around irritably while he bought a painting. But if me and him were in court, and he said in a Grand Voice, "I have never been into that shop", and I said, "ooooooooooooooooh, yes he has yes he has yes he has he bought a painting and now it is hanging above the piano in the lounge for Christ's sake," the person that the judge would believe would be my dad. Definitely.
Now. Is it because he is a lawyer? Is it because he is a chap? Is it because I am his daughter? I have been thinking about this all day. Because I know that sometimes I will say something with a lot of conviction, like "My worst is to swim" or "my best is to only eat sweets from dawn to dusk", and it will just be total bullshit, but whoever I am talking to will listen, and believe me. And worse, they will remember, and bring it up at some later and humiliating date. Now. Why is this? What does it mean for my Future?
This is what I have been thinking about while walking around Buxton's in a bit of a trance, forgetting to buy half the things on the list.

* Even though I have known this my whole life, it still totally bewilders me that my dad likes Elton John. It's like when I found out that Simon liked Bjork. It made me reevaluate every single thing I knew about him. Sometimes Simon will do or say something a bit sort of different, and when I remember to, I think "this must be the part of him that likes Bjork".

Guess what amount of degrees it is today?

None.

Today for lunch I had peanut butter on crackers and a diet coke

No one in jd salinger ever eats lunch, but that's what they would eat if they did.

"Spotted": yet another not very famous or attractive English actor whose presence nonetheless makes me go all weird

Him. In the Starbucks in Richmond. The thing I am bad at is famous people. I'm the most uncool about it ever in the world. But I can't HELP it. It feels like a LIE. He knows that he is famous. I know that he is famous. It feels like some kind of riddle, to which the solution is, apparently, look at him out the corner of my eye so much that my head starts hurting, and then get up all in a rush cos he saw me STARING, and forget my wallet and the flowers at the table, and have to run back and get them and then drop the wallet and make an extremely, extremely loud rustling noise with the cellophane around the flowers as I walk out the door BACKWARDS. Like a CREEP. Like someone's terrible servant in a PLAY.

Beth's Duncan told me last night that he saw Emma Watson in a pub in Oxford and he stared at her so hard that she left. I can relate completely.

This is one of the nicest self-portraits I know

There are a lot of Panel Shows here

Some people would say too many. I don't say too many. I just say "a very very high amount". I would say that one of English people's defining characteristics is an enduring smugness about "their" facility with the Dry One Liner. I mean that is the thing they are most happy, as a nation, to kind of take possession of. All countries with a strong national identity do this. Obviously now I can't think of a single other example of this that doesn't sound absurdly racist.
All I mean is that English people seem to have the idea that they have cornered the market on "understated and/or satirical humour". I think it's a way for them to still feel good about themselves because America has stolen all the other things that they are meant to be the best at. Like "you may have all the sweet writers and all the sweet musicians, but we have that show called Eight Out Of Ten Cats, headed by that complete weirdo called Jimmy Carr."
I actually have a lot to say about this. But I won't, because it is mean and, now that I am leaving, seems a bit ungrateful.
The main thing I wanted to say is that I love all the panel shows. I love all of them. I watch every single one.

if I was the king of everything

These are some words that would be banned: Fuckstick, rad, fuckbag, douchebag, so rad, whilst, totally rad, vom, fuckery, actually kind of creative use of the eff word would be very frowned upon. Not that I think it is a special word or anything, and GOD KNOWS that language is an ever-changing sea, pulled about This Way And That by the shifting tides of whatever. It's just that I don't like it very much, all this sort of Withnail and I-esque "play" with Curse Words. It's just that I think it is stupid.

When Serious Journalists are trying to be a bit lighthearted and things, they often ask whether the interviewee has a sort of secret talent. And then Charles Saatchi or whoever will go, actually yes, I know all the words to all the songs in Grease, thanks very much. And then everyone goes aaaaah, look, he is a human being after all. And then you wonder if they have cultivated these things. Because it's often the more obviously sinister plotting and scheming ones that have the most adorable secret talents. Like if I were David Cameron's PR person, I would advise him to say that his secret talent was being able to trick a cat into putting smartie tubes on all its legs and making it walk like a robot. Cos it's a bit sort of weird, but also a bit funny, and then you'd imagine him doing it, and then you'd think that he couldn't be really so bad. And it would all be a lie.

The thing that made me think of this is that my secret "talent" (ie not a talent in the traditional sense) is the "ability" (ie not an ability in the traditional sense) to stage an argument with someone entirely within the confines of my own head. I had one just now. It went just exactly, exactly like this:

My mum (tentatively): So, ah, I noticed that you haven't really been writing too much on the blog lately
Me (irritably): What do you mean?
My mum (attempting to be Airy. Failing): Oh you know, just that you haven't been writing as much as you used to.
Me (sitting up REAL STRAIGHT now and kind of plucking edgily at the neck of my fucking lambswool jersey which is now suddenly just the itchiest thing I could ever have imagined): What do you MEAN as much as I USED TO? Do you think I've just STOPPED WRITING? Mmm? Hmm?
My mum (very tired): Oh Pippy, don't get ratty.
Me: I'm not! I'm not ratty! I'm just so BUSY. Okay? I'm just SO FUCKING BUSY.

And So On. Really. I know that, were this argument ever to take place, that this is exactly how it would go. I'm hoping that by imagining it in such unnecessarily vivid detail, I will have sort of cut it off at the pass. I doubt it though.

Imagine if this was a dream diary

Where I just wrote down my dreams every day. I think it is safe to say that not a single person would read it. Not even my mum. Hearing about other people's dreams is the absolute pits. However. The other night I dreamt I was looking after Nick Clegg's baby* in a furniture shop**, and I lost it, and I was terrified, and then I found it after ages sitting right in the middle of a huge chair, like a young prince. If I was a very slightly different person, I would say "Make of that what you will" now. That's the other absolute pits. That sort of pseudo-formal "witty" thing really gets me down.
The other night in Oxford my mum said, "Making friends with someone isn't necessarily bonding over shared likes. More often it's bonding over things you both find terrible." Which is true. I think it is safe to say that I am very likely to make friends with someone who would get kitsched out by a dream blog where every post ended with "Make of that what you will." If they hated this hypothetical dream blog as much as me I would probably marry them.

* I don't know if he has a baby
** Woolworths at the Waterfront, "since you ask", which you DON'T.

My mum is here, and obviously it is the best

When you read that, it seems like it's going to be followed by a "but..." "My mum is here, and obviously it's the best, but actually it's terrible and the worst." Maybe I just think that because there was a thing in the paper yesterday where a Tory MP, as a nice joke, said on Twitter that this journalist should be stoned to death. And everyone, especially the journalist, went Oh My GOD what is the MATTER with you, and he issued this most feeble and half-hearted statement where he went "Obviously, I apologise". And I don't even know what it is about that which makes it seem that actually he doesn't at all apologise. Maybe I am too sensitive to nuance. Not in a way of being smart; more in a way of fault-finding.
ANYWAY.
My mum is here, and obviously it is the best. I'm so pleased to see her. Yesterday we spent a quite long train trip flicking through the newspaper and agreeing about everything, and I just loved it. And then we came home and watched the news and agreed about everything again, both very vehement sitting up real straight on the couch and kicking our little legs with indignation and/or happiness. Today we are going to the British Library and then Ottolenghi and then Hampstead Heath, "weather permitting", which of COURSE it won't.

Isaac is the best thing ever

I have lost the cable that goes from my phone to the computer, so I can't put any pictures up. But if I did put pictures up, they would be of the most perfect looking little sweetie anyone has ever seen. Oh man, and he is incredibly sort of animated for someone who is only a week old. Lots of waving his small arms around and yawning and sneezing and hiccuping. Mae and Dan are so happy, and they love him so much, and neither of them can tear their eyes away from him for even one second. It's really the best.

This is all just so I can tell a very short Bob story at the end

Last night we were talking about the books we've read that have really made an impression on us. This wasn't that conversation called "Which is your best book?" It's more that there are certain books that you read at certain points in your life that leave you sort of suspiciously wondering if it was written particularly for you. And obviously not in the way of it just mirroring your life or whatever. It's more that thing of the writer apparently conspiring with your present set of circumstances to essentially just run you over.

For example: Dan read Seize The Day like a week before Isaac was born, and it completely completely owned him. "I had to go for a drive," is what he said. And the thing is, I read it a while ago and really liked it, and thought about it for a bit, but there are other Saul Bellow books I have got into way more.

One of my ones, for some reason, is All The Pretty Horses. It's very strange, because I don't even so much like Cormac McCarthy, even though lots of people I think are really smart just love him. Like I thought The Road was a real pits and a drag, and that sort of "sparse" "stripped down" thing of "having such a manly uncompromising vision of the future that doesn't cater to our effete sensibilities and sees somehow beyond them into the yawning chasm of what lies ahead, where the only thing that exists is what fucking ever" is my real worst. I think it is foolish.

But All The Pretty Horses just destroyed me. I cried the entire, entire way through. I was just about to go to university and there were all these sort of strange things happening, and horrible breakups and just about everything I did made me feel like I was making some kind of terrible mistake, and there was something about that book that made me feel like it had been written specifically to freak me out. I loved it so much. But I'm scared to read it again, because either I won't love it as much as I did, or else it'll make me feel all weird and sad and doomed again. I could never objectively sort of evaluate how good that book is, because it's so tied to this very tormented time in my little life.

James said his was 100 years of solitude, and painted this quite terrifying picture of him lying in a dark room reading it and becoming just unable to get out of bed for days. And then he told a great Bob story, which is probably not true, but I don't care. I love Bob so much. Basically, Bob hadn't had an acting job in like a million years, and it was winter, and he was tired and poor and had a cold, and was lying in bed reading The Count Of Monte Cristo, and was too Drained to even sit up in bed to turn the pages properly, so he just tore out each page of the book after he'd finished reading it. Just sort of lying in the semi-dark covered with pages torn from a book about revenge. Best ever.

This does sound like bullshit until I remember that my own mum once cut a John Irving book in half because it was too heavy for her little arms to lift while she was lying in bed.

According to this 1950's etiquette guide I found, a hilarious Parlour Game is asking people to name famous Belgians.

The point of the game is that there aren't any. I have:
King Leopold
Tintin

Which is not a great list is it. It's not really much of a game, either. That kind of game is quite fun though, like where you ask people to name all the famous Scottish people they can think of, or the most famous birds, or whatever. I was walking back from getting coffee just now, and thinking about all the celebrity horses I could name. I had:

Seabiscuit
Red Rum
Secretariat
that horse of the Aga Khan's that got kidnapped
Alexander The Great's horse
Dick King's horse called Somerset

There are actually lots. It's a good game. If you play that game, and someone says Secretariat, then you can say, "Did you know that Secretariat's groom was called Eddie Sweat?", and then they can say, "Oh Gross."

It's true. That celebrity horse called Secretariat had a groom named "Eddie Sweat". He is the subject of a book called The Horse God Built: Secretariat, His Groom, Their Legacy.

I would actually LOVE to read this book. I know that I would read the whole thing in like a DAY.

I have a lot of Opinions

A terrible thing is when someone says something racist and then goes "ah WHAT I didn't realise that was racist what are you the thought police." Like of course they knew it was racist.
People are not that dumb; generally they know when they are being shitty and mean. Like I do sort of know, deep down, that it's a bit sexist and ageist of me to wish more than anything that everyone would stop making such a giant fucking deal about what a Total Babe Helen Mirren is. Like at the Oscars last year, or maybe the year before, or some other amount of years ago. It was my absolute worst. There were lots and lots of really extremely beautiful women there , with really seriously amazing dresses, and all anyone talked about was what a just complete sexpot and dreamboat Helen Mirren looked like. Lots of people going "Ah, and if there was an award for Most Beautiful, it would surely go to Helen Mirren." No it would NOT that is PRETEND.

I don't get it. She is quite pretty, it's true, but WHY must everyone keep insisting that, all evidence to the contrary, she is the steamiest woman alive. Why must they do it why why why why it drives me mental.
and every interview with her ever mentions the Naughty Glint in her eye and her frank approach to sexuality. It's so kitsch that she has become the sort of figurehead for that thing called There Is Still Life After Sixty.
Like of COURSE there's still life after sixty, for god's sake. It sucks that anyone ever needs to be "reminded" of that or whatever, because it should go without saying ,but I do understand that there is a need to make a thing out of it, sometimes. It is true that we live in an age-obsessed society with a very rigid idea of what constitutes beauty etc etc etc. OF COURSE THAT IS TRUE. and of course that is shit, and it needs to change. HOWEVER. I don't think the way to effect that change is to insist that what every red-blooded man desperately wants is to sleep with Helen Mirren. I do not think it is the case that every man's secret fantasy is to have Helen Mirren's horrible old lizard eyes staring at them in the dark.
It's not the worst thing in the world, obviously, but it is starting to drive me right up the wall.

Today on the train this violinist started talking to me

He said, "Oh, your computer is really small."
I said, "Yes."
He said, "oooooh, can I lift it?"
Which I thought was a bit strange, but not horrible or weird or anything, so I gave him my laptop to lift up and down a few times. Then he asked me whether I was from South Africa, and I said yes, and then he said something undecipherable in what he must have thought was Afrikaans, and then he asked me whether I was from "Durvin", and I said yes (I didn't want to get into it. It's terrible to correct people).
And THEN he said "oooooh, I know Durvin, we were the first orchestra to play in the city hall after the fall of apartheid." And I wondered if that was a thing now, calling it "the fall of apartheid". It sounds a bit sort of off, I don't know why. And then he told me he was with the London Philharmonic and that he played the violin and the whole time I was going oh wow oh wow this is so dreamy getting chatted up on the train by a violinist while wearing Penny's amazing coat she lent me and all with the wintry sun shining on our faces and the red leaves flashing past the windows etc etc I am in a MOVIE. So I was feeling most tremendously pleased with myself and with life in general, and we were talking nicely, and then I asked him what was his best city to play in. And he said "South Korea. Their hotels are excellent."
Which I thought was just the worst answer anyone could ever have possibly given to that question, ever. There was a thing in the paper the other day where someone described Philip Larkin as having "something of the old bag in him". That is the most old bag answer I can ever imagine. It's terrible to be a fully grown person who is obsessed with their comfort and getting their hideous old three meals a day like that.It's very old-baggish and gross. I was extremely disappointed.

Oh FINALLY

The baby is here! Isaac Quin-Walker. He is very very beautiful and very very new. He has fluffy ears, which is apparently a thing that babies have when they are born, and long fingernails, so he has to wear little mittens until Mae gets a chance to cut them. Obviously this is the best thing ever. He also has: lovely long racehorse legs (Mae's)
dimples (Mae's)
a sense of the ridiculous (Dan's)*
nice big bobbly eyes (Both of theirs)

*you can just tell

Mae is incredibly happy and incredibly tired and totally appalled by what a nightmare the labour was. I sort of expected her to be somehow different, now that she is a Mother, but really she is just the same except with a lovely baby next to her. They look very normal and right together. So do him and Dan. I watched Dan attempt to change his first nappy yesterday, which was very gross. Isaac had a Resigned Expression on his face the whole time. He really is unbelievably sweet and small and my best, and I'm so excited to be his godmother.

I really hate everything about this picture

That sort of "Bawdy" stance is the absolute pits. Really it is my worst. So terrible and whimsical and Frankly Sexual. All with those meaty calves also. The only other person I know in the world who this would make any sense to at all is my dad. I was reading the paper just now and I saw this picture and wished and wished that my dad was here so I could show it to him and go oh GOD, I HATE this. And then he could go YES ME ALSO.

I can't remember where I read this*, but there is a Rule which says that before you submit any piece of writing, you have to read the whole thing out loud in a stupid voice and see if it can stand up to that kind of abuse. If it can't, then you have to go back and start again. My mum just sent me this essay I wrote in my Honours year, which I am probably going to have to resubmit as part of my Master's application, and I have spent the morning reading it to myself in my stupidest voice and I just want to SCREAM. What was wrong with me that I was so smug? And why didn't anyone TELL ME. This is like when you look in the mirror HOURS after you have eaten your dinner and there is a HUGE piece of pepper between your front teeth and you have been talking and talking and talking and then you hate everyone for not telling you.


* I wish I did

This story is one of my bests

https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/ro/www/LiteratureandMedicineInitiative/20080304/bullet.pdf

Speaking of can-carrying invisible pals

James has this flatmate called Bob, who I struggle to believe in. Even though I know he is a real man*, there is something about him that sounds extremely made up. "The fictional-sounding Bob Surname". Bob is a struggling actor who has had sex with over a million women. He is in his early thirties. He is quite sort of vehement and passionate. "The grievance-nursing Bob Surname."**
This is all I know of Bob, and it is quite enough for me to know that a) he is amazing, and b) I never ever want to meet him because it will be a huge letdown.

* Reasons I know this:
1. James is not insane
2. Dan has seen him

** Reason I know this: Sometimes Dan will mention an actor that they both know, or someone they were at drama school with or something, and James will go "ooooooh, Bob hates him. He just hates him."

A few weeks ago in the observer there was this interview with the woman who writes those Charlie and Lola books. The books seem nice and funny, and so does she. I've never looked at any of them, but apparently one of the main things in them is that the little sister, Lola, has an imaginary best friend called Soren Lorenson. The writer of the article referred to him (the imaginary best friend) as "the can-carrying Soren Lorenson", which I just LOVED. I don't know what it is about it. There was an article this morning about Phillip Larkin's letters to his bizarre girlfriend, referred to as "the cricket-loving Monica Jones". "The can-carrying Monica Jones". What is it what is it why do I love it so MUCH.

It's something about them being defined by this slightly odd activity. That Soren Lorenson article was in the paper about three weeks ago, and it's been stuck in my head ever since, really. What I am thinking about when I am thinking about nothing is "the can-carrying Soren Lorenson". It's not necessarily easy or fun or Worthy or anything to try and work out why stuff gets stuck in your head, especially when the answer is inescapably "because you are a bit strange". But it doesn't matter, because walking around the house thinking "the cricket-loving Monica Jones" over and over and LAUGHING makes it worth it.

"Chortling" is TERRIBLE also

Actually, lots of words for laughing.
Snickering
Chortling
Chuckling

I would never be able to be real best pals with someone who used any of those words in Polite Conversation.

I don't mind "guffawing" though. And yesterday James said, "You know I can hear you both cackling from the street", to me and Mae, and I didn't mind that.

Lots of Kingsley Amis is just him figuring out different ways to say that he was wriggling around in embarassment and/or disgust and/or shame

I really like it. Two words that make me feel like I am in a play where the stage directions are, "Look like Kingsley Amis being a bit put off by something he has seen and/or read" are:

snickering
whilst

They are two of my real worsts.

There haven't been any pictures for ages

So here is me looking cross in Bristol. Sneering, almost. Or at least frowning very hard indeed. I don't remember being ratty once this day. I probably was though. One year for my birthday Caitie gave me this notebook with a picture of a small frowning person wearing a red hood on it. She said, "I got this because it looks exactly like you." And she actually was right. A number of people not normally given to those sorts of observations have picked up that notebook over the years and gone, "But this is you." It's terrible to just have a grumpy face. It means you'll age very badly. All that stuff about Getting The Face You Deserve and that.

Fizzy is getting a cat next week and I think she is going to name it after Boris Johnson

That is a much better name for a duck, I would say. Boris Johnson is almost the least feline politician I could ever imagine.
But this is a good game. Like obviously if you had a sad old dog that had been in a hunting accident and was consequently slightly blind and Fierce, but mostly sad and irritating, you would name it after Gordon Brown.
David Cameron: A big fit Guinea pig. Or a thin seal.
Saying you would name your supercilious terrier after Tony Blair is too easy, but it's only easy because it's true.
If you had a muscly little horse with spots on you would name it after Hilary Clinton.
I'm going to be thinking about this all day.

Caitie just reminded me that once I thought I saw a famous man at university, but it turned out to be just my politics lecturer.

I followed him around for a bit because I thought he had recently starred in a movie with Denzel Washington. But then I worked it out. It's because I didn't go to very many lectures. It's because I was in first year and I was so drunk all the time.

Yesterday I felt like I was in a Dr Seuss book called Rosie Loves To Smoke

Like how in Green Eggs and Ham where the one who is not Sam I Am says that he won't eat them on a house or a car or a tree or a train or in a box or with a goat or a mouse or a fox. Everything he sees and does is filtered through a lens called "I Won't Eat Green Eggs And Ham Here." That's how I felt yesterday. Everything I saw and did was just filtered through a lens called "Oh Great Here Is Yet Another Place Where I Cannot Smoke". Of course I am glad I quit smoking, but still I miss it A MILLION. My inner monologue yesterday went: Oh great I can't smoke outside St Pauls, or the Tate, or on the bridge, or with James, or with Simon, or at Beth's, or on the station platform, or outside my window, or fucking ANYWHERE. Quitting smoking has been an actual definitive experience for me. I've obviously led a very sheltered life, if I feel like the fact that I stopped smoking is something that sums me up as a person. But really I do a bit feel like that. Yesterday I thought about how much gum I must have chewed in the last year and got thoroughly nauseated.

Yesterday I went to the Gaugin exhibition and saw someone who I thought was famous

I saw him and went oh oh there is a famous man where is he from where is he from where is he from. He was walking round the exhibition with someone he obviously didn't know very well*. I wouldn't definitely say they were on a date, but they probably were. An exhibition seems like an extraordinarily High Pressure environment to choose for like a first or second date. The worst is having to stand in front of paintings and say things. It's even terrible when it's with someone you know well. The potential for being either incredibly bored or incredibly boring is generally too high.
ANYWAY.
I stared and stared at him and wondered where he was from, and convinced myself that he was extremely famous, and went on about it for ages, and then on the train home I realised that he was the actor who played Brooke Shields's husband on that show called Lipstick Jungle. I can't BELIEVE I remembered that. I can't BELIEVE I worked that out. I can't BELIEVE that some probably very crucial information was turfed out of my brain in order to make room for that. If I was writing a letter now, I would end it by saying
"And meanwhile it dawns on me by degrees that anyone who has ever accused me of caring too much about frivolous NONSENSE was only speaking the truth.
Yours as ever,
Rosie"


* For example: he didn't know that she spoke Spanish, or that she had a brother, or that she had never been to Florence.**
** I know this because I was SPYING.

Here are three questions I asked Simon today

1. Do you ever think "I wish I was jewish"?*
2. Do you ever think "if I was a dog I would just bite everyone's legs all the time"?**
3. Do you ever see something very weird or hear something very weird, and instead of going "that's weird", do you ever think "oh GREAT, I've had a STROKE"?***



* This is because last night Em said she liked Ed Miliband because he was the child of Jewish immigrants.
** This is because I saw a horrible dog scrabbling frantically the wrong way up the escalator last night, and I sort of wriggled past it with my legs TINGLING because they were so sure they were going to be bitten.
*** This is because yesterday I saw this little boy with a fox's head walk past me, and I thought Oh God This Is It. But really it was only a little boy with a horrifically realistic fox mask on.

I saw a fox in someone's garden yesterday and I didn't even break stride

But then this little girl walked past me and I said look it's a fox, and she got all excited, so then I did as well. We looked at it for ages. It was hiding itself, badly, behind some hydrangeas. A Fox In The Hydrangeas sounds like the name of Evelyn Waugh's first book, that he was all embarrassed about later on.

We went to the old Tate yesterday and saw that Coral Reef installation

It is actually quite amazing. It is just exactly like being stuck at some kind of hideous border post at the Mozambique border for hours and hours and nothing goes anywhere and everything looks horrible and sad and you can just hear all these doors opening and closing and feet, but you can't see any people, and everything is a PITS, and you are so pleased to get out. The only way to get out feels like you did it by extremely lucky accident. Simon said, "He can't just troll poor people for a bajillion different rooms in a row" but he didn't mean it. We both thought it was excellent.

oh but the main difference

Is that they have got all the contestants to speak in the present tense when they are doing their little post-Challenge interviews. To make it seem more immediate and things, I think. It sounds ALL WRONG though. Like you know they are talking about it waaaaaaaaaaay after it's happened, because they aren't all sweaty and frightened anymore, but still they are saying: "He's already cut the pig's head off, and I look down at my station, and all I have is some fennel tops, and I am terrified. I am freaking out."
Like that.

Here's the main judge. That's just a normal picture from the Australian Masterchef website. He looks like he is counting the seconds til you get eaten by the snakes wriggling around the cage he has trapped you in.

Simon sent me a text saying didn't I think David Miliband looked like McNulty from The Wire?

And I said YES.

Australian Masterchef is an ENTIRELY different beast to just normal old Masterchef

It's much more jazzy and flash and they make more of a big deal about how high the Stakes are and that. Also there are about a million people in it, and you see them all the time.
Here are some of the differences I have noted:

1. Australian Masterchef has not two judges but THREE.
2. I don't love any of the judges as much as I love John Torode.
3. However, I must concede that the producers of Australian Masterchef have done a fucking excellent job in finding judges who are just as bewildering and sort of Off in a fundamental way as the English ones, if not more so.
4. It would be so easy to do a drawing of the main judge on Australian Masterchef. He is one of those people were even if you did a Hyper Realist portait of him, it would look like a caricature. He just has that face. He looks like the baddie in an olden-times Disney Movie, or else the baddie in a James Bond movie aimed at children.
4. In Australian Masterchef, they don't mind showing the contestants just constantly sweating right into the food they are making, and then they further don't mind showing the judges eating that same sweaty food.
5. Everyone in Australian Masterchef is much more friends.
6. I have only watched two episodes so far, so that's all.

This eye thing is No Joke

I'm really enjoying it. Every article about Ed Miliband published in the last few days is guaranteed to contain two things.
1. A worried aside about his huge bonkers staring eyes.*
2. Some sort of biblical reference to brothers**

Also, they will call him Red Ed at least once, either in inverted commas or not. Which is obviously LUDICROUS, and I don't think the guardian is helping by having a photo of him on the front page where he is just totally all red, on a red background, like he is in some kind of darkroom. Maybe it's so you can't see his demented eyes.



* My best was a thing where they said he is better than Gordon Brown because he has not one mad eye, but two.

** The cartoon in the guardian this morning was Ed on a horse jumping backwards out a grave and the caption said "Yes We Cain". This is Pushing It, I think.

a thing I have noticed about English chaps

Is that they feel this moral obligation to chat you up. Like they think of it as being polite, so that you won't feel lonely or something.

People have to stop whingeing about Hipsters at once

It's so BORING. it's so WEIRD and VENOMOUS and DATED. that blog called lookatthisfuckinghipster is NOT FUNNY.

This guy Pete has a thing on his facebook saying "I can't work out which Miliband has the creepier eyes"

It's Ed. The answer is so obviously Ed. You can see some terrible recently-hired advisor has told him to open them REAL WIDE. As a symbol of his Vision For The Future. It's a huge mistake.

Oh, perfect. Oh, typical.

On Tuesday, the Guardian had all these recipes for students. The new term is starting in a few days, so there has been loads of stuff in the papers about How To Survive Student Life and Oh What You're All So Fucked Your Student Loan Is Going To Destroy Your Life, and things about how to eat and that, and how binge drinking is the cancer that is killing Britain* and everything.
All of which is very boring and what you would expect. The only good thing that has come out of this are the nice recipes in the Guardian, you would think. Well, you would be wrong, pal. Here are some of the best letters in the paper this morning about it.

They start off very irritating but sort of all right, really:

"The cardinal rule for student recipes must surely be that the meals are cheap to make."

"The article makes bizarre assumptions about students' budgets."

OH BUT LOOK AT THIS ONE:

"What class of student would arise to a breakfast of salmon bagels, followed by sprout and apple slaw with lemon dressing for luncheon? Perhaps the author had recently read Brideshead Revisited."

OH CHRIST SHUT UP SHUT UP JUST BE QUIET, "PAUL" FROM SUFFOLK.

Okay and now here is the best one ever. This one has everything. The terrible and smug and overblown sarcasm, especially. Look, look:

"Your Student Cookbook caused me alarm as I realised the inadequacy ofthe box of groceries given to my son as we packed him off to university last week. For sure, he would be fine for broad beans, extra virgin olive oill and puy lentils but I simply couldn't remember about the provision of thyme sprigs, goat's cheese, or galangal paste. I tried several times to phone him during the day to alert him about this, but was unable to get a response until about 3pm. Like many of his Guardian-reading friends, the poor boy had become exhausted in his attempt to source ingredients. You have a lot to answer for."

you see. you see. It's my real worst. Stop being so proud of what a smug drip you are, Roger.

*See also: Broken Britain

"I had this virus last year in Halls and it was pretty bad"

"I couldn't even leave my room I was just pooing and sicking the whole time."

That's Jack, talking about this time that he got this bug. Some people just say things better than other people.

Last night I sat and half listened to Jack call his pal in order to read out hundreds of knock knock jokes to him

Some of them were terrible. Actually most of them were. The only one I can immediately remember goes:
"Knock knock"
"Who's there?"
"Formosa"
"Formosa who?"
"Formosa the holiday I was skiing in Switzerland."
This is a terrible joke. I don't even know what a Formosa is.*

After he read out all the knock knock jokes, he started on those ones where they go "What do you call a man who lives in the ground?" and the answer is Warren or something. I can't remember any of the ones Jack read out. That's not because some of them weren't funny, it's just because I am very very very bad at remembering any jokes of any description. It's easier to remember these ones, where they follow a very distinct pattern, but still I find it just about impossible. There is something very appealing about following a formula though. Lately I have been playing this game a lot where I imagine myself in a press conference, standing up and asking a lot of very aggressively phrased questions. And the questions always follow the exact same formula.This one:
"I'm sorry, but are you some kind of (x)?"
Like if you were at a press conference given by a python, you would stand up and say "I'm sorry, but are you some kind of non-venomous boa?"
It's funny! It is! I don't know why!
"I'm sorry, but are you some kind of land mammal?"
"I'm sorry, but are you some kind of tree surgeon?"
"I'm sorry, but are you some kind of part-time zookeeper?"
"I'm sorry, but are you some kind of old wizard?"
It makes me laugh and laugh and laugh. The other day, me and Mae were in the kitchen at Mahdis's, and I found these sort of dried soya bean snack things. They are Mae's best and they are
delicious. We were doing lots of exclaiming about how nice they are, and Mae said, "I don’t want to give these to Dan. He’ll just go 'are you a bird?'"

And then I said: “I’m sorry, but are you some kind of bird?”

And then she said: “Let me just stop you right there and ask you if you are a bird”

And then I said: “Let me just stop you right there and ask the question that’s been on the tip of everybody’s tongue: are you some kind of bird?”

And then I got the bus to Stoke Newington and laughed about it the whole way. On that same bus trip, I heard this nice middle aged lady call her slightly useless looking teenage son a chief. He said he was getting off the bus earlier than she thought was a good idea, and she said "Why would you do that, you chief?" She gave him a really hard time about it, and all her friends laughed at him, and he climbed off the bus in a huge sulk. His mum sat back all complacently and said "He'll be waiting for me at the right stop when I get off." I bet he was, too.
Obviously, if he was holding a press conference, it would only have been a matter of minutes before someone stood up and asked him straight to his face if he was some kind of chief.

* Now I do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan**

** The joke is now even more extra terrible. Answering "Taiwan" when someone asks you who is there doesn't make any sense.

Simon took this from the top of a hill near Norma and Spec's

An interesting and ominous thing is that every single English person I have shown this picture to has said "Oh Jesus, look how sunny it is." It's like they are looking at pictures of a once happy couple that recently went through a terrible divorce. All, "You've got absolutely no idea what's headed your way, pal." It makes me frightened for winter.

One of my best things about Mae and Dan as a couple is their ability to remember huge chunks of that movie called Sexy Beast off by heart

Especially that bit where Gal goes, "I'm going to have to turn this opportunity down," and Don goes, "No, you're going to have to turn this opportunity YES."

Poll time

Poll on my still invisible radio show time.
So just about every week in the Observer there is some ratty letter from "Mark" or something in Northumberland or somewhere, that basically says:
"So Nigella Lawson wants us to rustle up a dinner made out of cream and quail's eggs and caviar and pieces of actual gold, does she? It's All Right For Some I Suppose. I shall remember that the next time I have the Hunt Ball over to my house for a "kitchen supper", shall I?"
Every week they have one of these. Every week. The levels of "withering" sarcasm tend to vary, but basically it's the same letter every time.

Now.
Do you think:
a) Fair enough. You shouldn't get too Marie Antoinettish with recipes and things.
OR
b) SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP. If that recipe gets on your tits, then do not make it, and also STOP WRITING INTO THE PAPER AT ONCE.

* Too many inverted commas. But I can't think of the right way to emphasize that the main feeling you get from these letters is that the writers are just THRILLED with their Coruscating Shower Of Wit. They are thoroughly pleased with their apparent ability to just whip the wind right out of anyone's sails.

A picture my mum sent me

"Ice breaking exercises" always felt like a thing that was made up in the nineties. I mean that it feels like there was a time before it became an accepted part of almost all social interactions that someone would feel awkward and spastic and shy. It does actually feel like Social Awkwardness as a problem and then as an excuse for all kinds of bizarre behaviour was invented in the nineties. The other night I was talking to this guy at Jessie's birthday party about the books most sold in second hand South African bookshops*, and he said "and this is all based on your own informal research is it. This was not a poll taken under the auspices of any sort of official anything am I right."**** And I said yes you are right.
Similarly, my Social Awkwardness Was Invented In The Nineties theory has never really been backed up by science or anything like that, and has been based mostly on my own Informal Research, which in this case has been gathered entirely from my thoughts. It would be hard even to do a poll about this on my invisible radio show about this, because all you could say is -
"Yes or no: social awkwardness was invented in the early nineties, coinciding with the rise of grunge?"

AND ANYWAY. This picture has proved me wrong. This picture of a nice ice breaking exercise where everyone sits on each other's laps and then doesn't feel shy anymore was taken in 1984. So. The idea of ice breaking exercises as a necessity dates back to the year I was born, at least. "Back to the drawing board."





*1. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
2. I CAN'T REMEMBER**
3. The Go Between


** I was drunk. For the first time in months. I forgot how fun it was. Also my body's many cries for cigarettes*** never got any louder than a sort of thin wail, possibly coming from another room.

*** http://www.amazon.co.uk/Your-Bodys-Many-Cries-Water/dp/095309216X (apparently the author says that water can cure AIDS.)

**** Paraphrased. A lot of this is a blur. I was quite drunk.

I want everyone to like that librarians album called present passed as much as me

CONFIRMED

http://gawker.com/5137643/michael-chabons-wife-had-way-more-inaugural-fun-than-you/gallery/

One of my parents (I don't know which one because they rarely identify themselves in they emails) showed me this. You see she is terrible. So smug with such little legs moving so fast!

My absolute worst is when people say that the middle of Durban is like daahntaahn Lagos.

Racist things said in Sassy Durbs are the real pits.

I helped a person called "Byron Lumpkin" with his essay today

"Byron Lumpkin".
If Martin Amis was writing a Coruscating Account Of What Is Wrong With America Today, that would be the name of one of the minor characters who ran a computer shop in a satellite suburb of LA and was bewildered by the sharp decline in the quality of his marriage to his much-smarter-than-him Puerto Rican wife.

Norma and Spec have a flat near Musgrave Centre

And living in that flat is a man named Vic Jagger.* His best pal is Don Lennon. No that's not true; I don't know any of his friends. But it's true that he is called Vic Jagger. That bit is true. Norm and Spec sort of put my dad in charge of looking after the flat-ish. Being a kind of satellite landlord, I suppose. And once my dad and Lee went over to the flat to listen to Vic Jagger have a whinge about the furniture, and they came back, and I said, "Well, what's he like then?" And Lee shook his head a bit and said: "He's like a...he's like an Ultra Human."
And I said: "Explain this."
And he said: "You know those people who when they are making toast, they are MAKING TOAST. Like that is all they are doing. Those people who you can see their inner monologue just says 'The thing I am doing now is MAKING SOME TOAST'".
And I said: "Oh God that's brilliant."

Because I understood what he meant immediately. And really that is the absolute perfect way to describe people like that. Because it's not that dumb people are Ultras. It's just that they have a way of engaging with whatever they are doing to the exclusion of just about everything else. I suppose the nice way to say it is that they are people that Live In The Moment. Basically an Ultra Human is someone who is always totally preoccupied with the minute to minute business of being a human, like how a cheetah or whatever is totally preoccupied with hunting and then feeding its cheetah babies and then finding a tree to sleep in and then digging its claws in the branch so it doesn't fall out and then making that horrible noise that cheetahs make for whatever reason they make it ETCETERA.

David Beckham seems like a real Ultra Human to me. Look at him. Look at his little face. Like you can see that what he is thinking is "I'm confused by what is going on here."

A thing to do a poll about on my invisible radio show would be:
Does any of this make any sense to you at all?

*This reminds me of the beginning of Fantastic Mr Fox**. Me and Lee had it on tape book when we were small, and for reasons that I can't really work out now, the opening lines used to TERRIFY us both. It starts something like "In the middle of the wood there was a tree, and at the bottom of the tree there was a hole..." I think. It used to give me the most awful creeps. I like it in the movie of Fantastic Mr Fox where he says "I don't like living in a hole, it makes me feel poor."

** The secretary of state for defence here is called Liam Fox. Which is what my brother would be called if he was a fox, of course. Equally obvious are the number of headlines in the guardian that have something about NOT SO FANTASTIC MR FOX in them.

This is just to remind myself that this is real (ii)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture-specific_syndrome

I love this kind of thing

http://www.ivy-style.com/protestant-deformation-neurotic-wasps-1990.html

Norman Mailer ran for mayor in 1969

This is a poster from his campaign. He wanted to make New York City the 51st state. Whatever you think of Norman Mailer, you must at least admit that this is interesting and weird.

Michael Chabon's wife seems a bit terrible

It's so sad, but she does. I REALLY would like to think she is great. But I can't.

Pleased that he is still going to be on that show

Not pleased that Tracy Jordan's wife got pregnant from saying hello to him.

I'm so pleased about this

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/26/matt-damon-sherri-shepher_n_695902.html

OH but the WORST thing to say in Sassy Durbs

is "That's so random."
"Thet's sah rendom."
That's the worst. That's the one.

Here are some words that give me the creeps.

Sometimes you'll read something or hear something, and you'll think "Now there is a thing that I would just never ever say." And sometimes it's the content, but very often it's the form. Mae told me the other day about this conversation she overheard where one of the people said "I saw you crossing the road and I said to myself, I said you'll know what I'll do, I'll just give her a call."
And there it's definitely not the content (although the content is not great. It's not a great story that this person was telling), it's how the person said it.
And there are LOTS of things like that. Another thing I know that I would never do is call someone "girl" or "my girl". Not in a way of being a feminist, obviously, but just because it sounds so kitsch. Like if there was a choice between having a stern chat with someone that started, "Listen, my girl, it's time for you to pull your socks up..." or just not having the talk at all, I would choose silence. "Child..." is even worse. It's much worse, actually.
A lot of it has to do with the voice I do in my head when I imagine these things. It's a very very thick sassy Durban accent, and it makes EVERYTHING sound terrible, but there are a few real killers.
"That made me chuckle" is one of my worsts. I can't even think of the word "chuckle" without feeling all sad and embarrassed. "Comical" instead of "funny" is terrible. "Chubby" is a word that I don't think ever said in my life. Another terrible one that really requires you to say it in Sassy Durbs before you get the full picture is "No Offense But...".
My dad has loads. Sometimes he comes home from work laughing scornfully about them. And NOT in the way of being like a "snob" or something. The point is that everyone has words that just get their backs up, and you can't even always explain why. It's something I am doing a poll about on my invisible radio show at this very minute.

This is only really to remind myself that this is a real thing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_Behind

63 million copies sold. Thanks.

This is only really for my mum

It's always a bit hard getting ready to go out if my mum is the only person that I can ask whether I look all right, because she always just says that of course I look beautiful. And even if we both know that this is clearly not the case, she will never admit. And sometimes I give up, and other times I sort of press her and try get her to confirm my suspicions about my little outfit. Like I'll ask her if I look like a swimmer, and she'll say noooooo, or I'll ask her if I look like a Durban academic, and she'll say Christ No. And even though I never really get anywhere, at least I can see that she knows basically what I am driving at. But the question that I ask probably the most, which is "Do I look like a nice pig in high heels?" is only ever met with this totally, totally baffled expression. Like not only would she never concede that I could EVER look like a pig in high heels, she actually has no idea what even I mean. She always just says "what?" in the most incredulous way imaginable, as if I'd suddenly just stopped speaking English or something.
So. This is what I mean. This is just exactly what I mean. This is What We Talk About When We Talk About Looking Like A Pig In High Heels.

Last poll for the day

What in this picture do you see first?

a) The man taking the picture
b) The little girl and the lady pointing at the camera
c) The one going through the other one's legs.

The lady and the little girl are my granny and her daughter Heidi. I don't know who the legs ones are. I don't know who the picture man is, but I suspect it's Uncle Dicky of Dancing Like John Cleese On The Lawn Fame. I love every single thing about this picture.

ELEVEN. it's ELEVEN DAYS NOW.

There is a traffic jam in China that has been going on for nine days

NINE DAYS.

if I was doing a Poll about this, my question would be:
At what point would you abandon your car?
a) after six hours
b) after a day
c) after three days
d) never I would still be there thanks

The other day Caitie said I should be a DJ

which made me laugh for AGES. And when I said oh WHAT caitie I would be the worst DJ in the world, she said "You're lying. I know you agree with me. Just imagine! All your pals could phone in and have very important and compelling chats for your listeners and then you could play a nice song. and just think you could do lots of polls."
And I thought ohhhhhhhhhh THAT kind of DJ. Imagining being that kind of DJ makes more sense than being the other kind. But still I would be completely rubbish at it. There is an amazing David Foster Wallace article on a Glenn Beck style person, where he says:

"Hosting talk radio is an exotic, high-pressure gig that not many people are fit for, and being truly good at it requires skills so specialized that many of them don't have names.

To appreciate these skills and some of the difficulties involved, you might wish to do an experiment. Try sitting alone in a room with a clock, turning on a tape recorder, and starting to speak into it. Speak about anything you want—with the proviso that your topic, and your opinions on it, must be of interest to some group of strangers who you imagine will be listening to the tape. Naturally, in order to be even minimally interesting, your remarks should be intelligible and their reasoning sequential—a listener will have to be able to follow the logic of what you're saying—which means that you will have to know enough about your topic to organize your statements in a coherent way. (But you cannot do much of this organizing beforehand; it has to occur at the same time you're speaking.) Plus, ideally, what you're saying should be not just comprehensible and interesting but compelling, stimulating, which means that your remarks have to provoke and sustain some kind of emotional reaction in the listeners, which in turn will require you to construct some kind of identifiable persona for yourself—your comments will need to strike the listener as coming from an actual human being, someone with a real personality and real feelings about whatever it is you're discussing. And it gets even trickier: You're trying to communicate in real time with someone you cannot see or hear responses from; and though you're communicating in speech, your remarks cannot have any of the fragmentary, repetitive, garbled qualities of real interhuman speech, or speech's ticcy unconscious "umm"s or "you know"s, or false starts or stutters or long pauses while you try to think of how to phrase what you want to say next. You're also, of course, denied the physical inflections that are so much a part of spoken English—the facial expressions, changes in posture, and symphony of little gestures that accompany and buttress real talking. Everything unspoken about you, your topic, and how you feel about it has to be conveyed through pitch, volume, tone, and pacing. The pacing is especially important: it can't be too slow, since that's low-energy and dull, but it can't be too rushed or it will sound like babbling. And so you have somehow to keep all these different imperatives and structures in mind at the same time, while also filling exactly, say, eleven minutes, with no dead air and no going over, such that at 10:46 you have wound things up neatly and are in a position to say, "KFI is the station with the most frequent traffic reports. Alan LaGreen is in the KFI Traffic Center" (which, to be honest, Mr. Z. sometimes leaves himself only three or even two seconds for and has to say extremely fast, which he can always do without a flub). So then, ready: go."

I would be the worst at that. Really. BUT. The thing about the polls would be amazing. I wish wish wish I could have a job where I could just do lots of interesting polls all the time. The trick I spose would be to make the results of your poll relevant or useful to whoever is paying you to do this. That's the hard bit.
However.
If I was hosting my talk radio show today, the polls I would be doing are:
1) What do you think of Ray Mears style people who know how to get water out of the ground in the desert? In other words, what do you think of a person who goes out of their way to acquire the kind of knowledge that would enable them to survive in The Wild? Creepy and childish and wasting their lives? Or noble and manly and we will all be thanking them when the apocalypse comes?
2) Does everyone know who their parents' best friend was when they were small?

Not that I am a person of Curiosities, like someone who is really into Emily Strange or fox furs with the horrible heads and claws still on

I mean like there is most certainly a type of girl who is very into All Things Dark, and is very pleased about it. Like a bit too sort of triumphantly idiosyncratic. A bit too yes I am a woman of both the beautiful dresses and the interest in taxidermy, and both the sun and the moon rise and set within me.

I hope I am not like that, but I must say that I was very drawn to this when I went to the British Museum with Simon. Those things are hummingbirds' heads set in gold. I've been thinking about it all day because it reminds me of that spider's eyes. That's the most moody I Have A Thing About Victorian Torture Instruments sentence I ever wrote.

I saw a most terrible spider in the shower this morning

and then the TV was on upstairs, and David Attenborough joyfully told me about this one. A "Himalayan Jumping Spider".
I don't think I'm being silly when I say that it's one of the most horrible things I ever saw. The name of it is terrifying as well. It tells you that it can just climb all over you.

Other names of venomous spiders:
Brazilian Wandering Spider (very scary) also known as The Armed Spider (less scary) also known as The Banana Spider (either not scary, or most sinister of all).
The Wolf Spider (quite frightening)
The Violin Spider (most frightening, because it sounds sophisticated and therefore more cruel)

It won't let me put a link to the article underneath the photograph of Clive

So here it is:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/aug/20/reggie-kray-paintings-letters-auction

"Though he is no Oscar Wilde, Kray's 'Hello Clive' letters provide a fascinating insight into his time in jail."

This is so easily the best thing I've read in ages. Imagine stumbling on Reggie Kray's "Hello Clive" letters. Like those were the letters your grandfather had kept in a box under his bed, along with those lovely paintings. My best is when he says: "Hello Clive, So hows things going at the new place*. Same old shit here mate."
I love the Kray Twins. I feel like they are a lie created to make me pleased. JD Salinger said that thing about being "a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.” It sounds a bit twee and Joyfully Childlike, but I always like that he said that, especially when you think about what a miserable old hermit he was meant to be, and it does perfectly sum up my feelings about the Krays. It's terrible to say, but an article like this makes it hard to believe that the world doesn't revolve around me. There are so many things in it that are so entirely up my street that I find it hard to believe that it wasn't written with me, specifically, in mind. An article like this makes it hard to believe that I'm not in the Truman Show.

It's nice that Clive is described as Reggie Kray's "gopher". I like to think of Clive as his batman. I mean a batman like the sort of slave upper class soldiers had in the First World War.
JRR Tolkien "famously" had one. I'm sure lots of other people did as well, like Wilfred Owen and things, but you can't really look up anything about batmans on google without trawling through a whole lot of stuff about The Dark Knight.

The other thing I like to think of is Keith Talent's alsatian called Clive in that book called London Fields. Especially that bit when he wants to name his new baby (a girl) either "Keithina" or "Clive". I hope the character of that dog was actually written in homage to Reggie Kray's batman. Keith Talent and Reggie Kray are right off the same conveyor belt, obviously.

So to sum up: the plan called Make Rosie Laugh For A Bit On The 21st August 2010 (concocted by Martin Amis, Wilfred Owen, Reggie Kray and the criminal underclass of 1960s London, alsatians, The Lord Of The Rings, and a famous London auction house) has worked. Congratulations to everyone involved.

*Clive's new prison.

This is what I am thinking about today instead of doing my work

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generations#List_of_generations

"Generation Y" doesn't sound quite as dreamy as "the Lost Generation", although obviously it's much better to be a member of shitty old Generation Y than to live in a time where everyone you knew was getting killed in WWI.

Also, at least Generation Y sounds better than "Generation Z" also known as "Generation I", also known as "The Digital Natives" which sounds the most like a terrible drum and bass party at Fiction. I actually struggle to believe that it isn't. I can picture the poster so perfectly.

Simon just reminded me of the best one of all of them

ANYTHING to do with poor old awful old Captain Scott makes a person feel a bit better about whatever straitened circumstances they happen to be in.

Me and Em and Nick have been having a very self-consciously English sort of a time

Like if you wanted to show an alien what English People do when they are at leisure, you would show them a little film reel of the last few days. Obviously this isn't what actual English people do. A bad thing is when horrible old men who make a big deal out of maintaining a stiff upper lip in all other situations allow themselves to get all maudlin and sentimental about the England of Days Gone By. That is not a real thing to get upset about. It's like people who don't give a shit about beggars and orphans but get all wobbly and worked up about abused cart horses.
HOWEVER.
The fact remains that we have been having a very cartoonishly English time of it lately, and it has been great. You feel a bit like Peter Rabbit after a while. The other day we went blackberry picking, and then came back and made blackberry pie. And yesterday we went and got a whole lot of stuff for a picnic and went to Leigh Woods, which is full of beech trees and cows and earnest looking people pulling out weeds while wearing big purple tshirts that say NATIONAL TRUST VOLUNTEER, and sat and ate cheese and bread and tomatoes in a field. And then we came back and all had to have cold showers because the boiler packed up, which is quite English in an I Capture The Castle sort of a way.
I Capture The Castle is the book I read when I want to feel a bit better about being such a mouse in a box. She makes being poor feel quite fun and glamorous. It isn't really, but you can almost believe it while you are reading.

Other Books to make you feel better about being such a small scruffs mouse in such a tired old box:
1. City of Thieves (Siege of Leningrad)
2. Cellist of Sarajevo (Siege of Sarajevo)
3. Siege of Krishnapur
4. There must be so many more books about sieges that I can't think of now.

I watched a very strange documentary about The Wire last night

It was by the people who made the show, and it was strange because it was making a number of Important Political Points, but it was interspersed with various very pointed remarks made by the narrator (David Simon, who directs the wire) which were clearly directed towards specific people he hated when he was working as a journalist. And not like politicans or any other public figures, like other journalists and news editors and things. It was a bit of an Uneasy Mixture. Saying all these very NB things about the failure of the public school system in America, and the failure of the war on drugs, and the decline of journalism, and what terrible baddies the Bush administration were, and then going "BUT CLEARLY THE REAL VILLAIN WAS YOU, MAN I USED TO WORK WITH ON THE BALTIMORE SUN OVER TEN YEARS AGO." It was a good example of what happens when people let their "private grievances" spill over into other aspects of their lives. ANYWAY, there was one bit in the documentary where David Simon was talking about someone he actually did like, and he said "Ed Burns has the imagination of at least three men."
This sounds pretty feeble when you first hear it, like quite a rubbish compliment, but actually it is quite a thing to say about someone. I have been thinking about it a lot since I heard it because I am trying frantically to work out What Happens Next in this story I am writing, and I have come to the conclusion that I have absolutely no imagination whatsoever. I don't even have the imagination of half a man.
And THEN I was thinking about writers who have the imagination of lots of men, and obviously all the brilliant ones have the imagination of a whole bus full of people, but the one I was thinking about this specifically this morning was JD Salinger, and specifically that story called The Laughing Man. I think about that story all the time.
Here it is:
http://derosaworld.typepad.com/derosaworld/2010/01/jd-salinger-the-laughing-man.html
(It's quite amazing that it comes from a blog called DeRosaWorld, which is of course the name of my theme park.)

Here is my grandfather trying on some Christmas present pants

I find it hard to believe that this picture was taken in 1980, and yet it was. My mum sent me this as well. Things she pointed out:
1. The record player
2. My cousin's HIGHLY POLISHED leather shoes
3. The picture of Table Bay from Reader's Digest

I don't know what else could happen in this picture that would make me love it more

I like to think that even if a lot of the people in this picture weren't related to me, it would still make me scream with laughter and joy. This is my mum's Uncle Dicky, he of the v. long legs and flat caps and racist remarks. My mum sent me this photo with the caption "Dicky dancing like John Cleese". It's true that he is dancing like John Cleese, but he is also doing so much more than that. And I have so many questions. Why are they all dancing on the lawn like this? Why is it the day time? Why are two of them wearing funny hats? How come there are only old people, except for that little girl? Who is that little girl?
In a way, I almost wish I didn't know the people in this picture, because there is a part of me that would be happy to endlessly speculate on what the hell it is they think they are all doing.

Also for Jason in Prague

I really don't like the way this woman reads, but sometimes Americans are more generous about things like this. It's a nice story though.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/2010/05/17/100517on_audio_ali

A podcast for Jason to listen to as he swans around Prague and that WITHOUT ME

http://www.newyorker.com/online/2008/10/13/081013on_audio_shteyngart

http://www.newyorker.com/online/2008/04/14/080414on_audio_erdrich

A podcast for my mum to listen to if she feels like picturing me getting all weepy in the mccormack kitchen as I rattily chop vegetables for mine and simon's dinner later and listen to this story.

a podcast for my dad to listen to while he is having a break from lolita

http://www.newyorker.com/online/2008/02/11/080211on_audio_boyle

This is one of my best short stories ever. It's a bit grim in some bits, but in a very straightforward way. Which will make a nice change for a Humbert Humbert aged man who is reading Lolita for the first time. My dad is completely freaked out by it. I asked him what bit he was up to, and he sent me an email that said: "Im up to the bit where he is on the sofa in his hideous green silk dressing gown and she has put her legs over his lap. Oh God."

a thing that makes me Cringe (iv)

is when people say "I'm an unashamed (x) snob."

WHEN REALLY WHAT THEY SHOULD EXACTLY BE IS ASHAMED.

A thing I would subscribe to

Is a service called Well What Would You Have Said Then? There have been a quite high number of situations lately where something very strange has happened, and I've "dealt" with it in a half-hearted and ineffectual way, and afterwards gone, "I definitely did that wrong. One day I will look back on that and think: my response to that was just all over the place."

So what would be nice is a thing where you could choose the five people whose moral compass or whatever you most trust, and then you could make it so whenever something a bit off happens to you where you don't know how the hell you are meant to respond, an alarm would go off above those five people's beds, and a LOUD VOICE would tell them exactly what was happening, and then they would quickly have to Sketch Out a response telling you what they would do, and then you would at least have some different perspectives.

There are a number of problems with this, obviously. But still.

Delia = my best

http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/cuisine/european/spanish/tortilla-spanish-omelette.html

she just seems very reliable and trustworthy to me. and i made this the other day for mine and rom's lunch, except without the potato (cos I didn't have any) and with mushrooms and courgettes (cos I did), and it was delicious.

I was reading a Nigel Slater recipe book last night, and normally I love him, but there was this long breezy passage about making Exquisite Rice that infuriated me so much I had to stop reading. I HATE to make rice. It's my worst. Even reading the directions on the back of the packet make me want to kill myself. And people like Nigel Slater get all jolly and cavalier in their rice-making directions, but you start to read it, and you realise that it's actually like 40 steps and everything is taking things off the stove and then putting it back on with some water but NOT TOO MUCH and then some things with strainers and I just hate it.
I bet Delia has the best rice making directions though. I bet she takes it seriously and doesn't participate in that fiction called Making Rice Is Easy.

I do seriously hate it though

a thing that makes me Cringe (iii)

Is how so many people seem to be going through the motions of embracing that show called Glee in a way of whole-hearted and unironic and What-I-Just-Like-The-Singing enjoyment.
I think this says more about me than anything. That I can't believe that anyone would just like something like that. But they do. Normal people do. And that is fine and I need to get over it. I HATE it. And that is fine also.

I got really owned in an argument* the other night and it is still getting me down

Not that I am unfamiliar with losing arguments. I have lost a billion arguments in my life, and normally I don't care at all. But this was different, for a number of reasons. I think mostly it was because I was trying to defend something I never ever thought I would ever have to defend. Like how you sort of go: "a position I will never have to defend is my decision not to own a slave." But but but. You also think: "If I ever found myself in an argument where someone was asking me to explain why I don't want to have a slave, I would able to have a pretty good go at it." Like you wouldn't walk away from the slave-owning argument feeling all wrong-footed and dumb. Because you would KNOW THAT YOU ARE RIGHT and PLUS IT IS ILLEGAL and you would think at the very least that just naked conviction would see you through.
However.
We were having nice dinner on Friday night, and Dan's friend James said, basically: "Saying that you like music is bullshit. Talking about music is bullshit. Saying that music affects people on a basic level is REAL bullshit."
He then went on to very ferociously defend all of this. And I was just totally bowled over. Because I do agree that people who use their taste in music as a hook to hang their personalities on are losers. But that's all. I FUNDAMENTALLY disagree with every single other thing he said, and the worst part is I couldn't say anything except "But but but you're wrong."
Really I never ever thought I would have to defend liking music.
But also, the pre-last Friday me would have said: "If I was called upon to defend music as a thing, I would do an EXCELLENT JOB."
And I just didn't. I did a terrible job. I feel like I need to apologise to someone.



*It wasn't really an argument. It was a very loud and animated chat.

I saw a fox do a wee on the lawn at Niel and Lizzie's!

A real fox. I got very excited and tried to take a photo of it with my phone, but the other thing i was doing with my phone was listening to music. So what I ended up doing in all the ensuing Excitement was wrenching my headphones out of my ears, then out of the phone, which makes the music start playing straight from the phone, and sticking my hand out the window in order to play quite loud classical music to the fox. It hated it and ran away. I didn't even come close to being able to take a picture. But that's okay. Foxes are everywhere these days.
What is quite weird is how long it took me to work out that it was a fox. Like there is that ridiculous Lie that says that when Christopher Columbus's ships hoved to on the horizon, the indians who lived on whatever island it was couldn't actually see them, because they had no frame of reference for them. So the idea is that they just saw nothing, because they couldn't understand what they were seeing. Obviously this isnt true, but I remember it making sense to me when I first heard it. And it makes sense again now. Because I looked out the window and saw the fox, and went:
1. oh look at that thin orange dog.
2. that's definitely not a dog.
3. look at that huge, huge cat.
4. I don't think that's a huge cat.
5. look at that terracotta pot running across the lawn and weeing on it.
6. oh its a fox.

I hope I see lots more, and get used to recognising them instantly.

There have been some things in the news lately

One of them was that during the Raoul Moat Manhunt, the police enlisted the help of that celebrity survivalist called Ray Mears. I don't know how to take all this. I do just sort of think: what. Ray Mears. But he's on TV! Eating old bits of snakes in the jungle! I don't think of him as a real man. And of course the whole case was terrible, it really was, but if one good thing has come out of it, it's me imagining Ray Mears's pleased little pink face when Scotland Yard called him.

the other thing was that during the Raoul Moat Standoff, that celebrity alcoholic and footballer called Paul Gascoigne arrived at where the police were baying into their megaphones and doing negotiation things. He arrived fresh from an "all day wake" for someone, and said he was a friend of Raoul Moat's (he knew him from when he was a bouncer) and that all he had to do was walk around on the moors shouting, "Moaty, it's Gazza", and everything would be fine. He brought some supplies with him also. They were:
1. a can of lager.
2. some chicken drumsticks.
3. a fishing rod.
4. a cellphone.
5. a dressing gown.

2 and 5 are my bests. But really they are all just something else. This is all true. It's gone very underreported, I guess because of the just amazing amount of lols attached to it, and the whole thing is still very Raw and No Laughing Matter etc. And it is terrible. But also quite incredible.

7. his water wings

Mae asked me to be the godmother of The Boy With No Name!

It's all right that they haven't thought of a name yet*, because the baby is only being born in October. Also, emma m was telling me the other day about someone she knows whose baby is a month old and who still doesn't have a name. Also, when we were horrible teenagers we knew this guy called Aaron who was only named that when he was two. Before that he was just called The Baby. It's terrible that after all that, his mum clearly just opened the baby name book and chose the first name in there.

so it's going to be the best thing ever being the godmother. I bought him some tiny stripy pants the other day with pockets in. Me and Roms had nice chats about what could go in them.

1. His money
2. His little plastic spoon.
3. His own little fists.
4. His spade
5. His chicken drumstick
6. His magazines

The last two are evidence based. From our experience of ourselves and of other babies we have seen in our lives, we have concluded that a baby's best things are chicken drumsticks and tearing up magazines. I'm so excited to test this out on my own godson.





* They have actually thought of and then scornfully and swiftly rejected MILLIONS. Everyone is still playing that name where you go through the baby name book and go oh god imagine naming your baby this. You could call it anything in the whole world and yet you settled on Gus.

My dad just emailed me

He says, "And by the way, I HAVE read a book by a woman, and it was one of the best books I ever read - Possession. You really must read it. I also read one or two by margaret atwood , but I got over it."

yesterday we were talking about the deadly business of raising a child

and Dan was talking about his terror of the ocean. He is really not at all keen on the sea, and he was talking about his Worry that, in some kind of Hypothetical certainly not going to happen future, him and mae and their children would live by the sea in South Africa, and their kid would go into that same sea, and be be eaten by a shark.
"South Africa is their Disneyland," is what he said. At first I thought he meant that South Africa is a child's Disneyland, but really he was referring to Great Whites.
When asked how to get around this problem, he said, "well, it's very easy, I just won't ever let it go into the sea."
Then Mae said, "oh PLEASE, there are hundreds of things in South Africa that can kill you.Just before she came here, Rosie nearly stood on a puff adder, and she CERTAINLY would have died."*

and then we both looked at him like YA YOU SEE. and he just looked bewildered and said, "Well I just won't let it go there then either."
Mae said, "it's not that simple, Dan."
and he just looked bewildered again and said, "But why not?"
I spose i can see his point, when you look at it like that.

This is a photo of the scene of the crime. That whole path is just teeming with puff adders.



* this is not true. I did nearly stand on one, but there's no way I would have even come close to dying. I just would have been a person who had been bitten by a puff adder, which would be pretty grim, but not the worst. Their wikipedia entry says that they can "bite through soft leather", like that's the scariest thing you ever heard. It is quite scary, I spose, but it's a snake. As far as Terrible Things An Animal Can Do go, that's really not so bad.