Ask

Good lord, I'm flagging. I have RBSI (repetitive blogging strain injury.) My brain has turned to marmalade. Help me, I beg you, please ask me a question, anything, go on, I double dare you, I'll do my best to answer.(It doesn't have to be a question about me. It can be about anything you like. Except sport. Anything but that. Though questions on Thierry Henry will be accepted.)

Boy with the thorn in his side

Maybe it's generalising but... it seems a fatal flaw in women, that we do like a wounded soldier. Until you realise that in fact there's not much you can do for them - they're always going to be angry, dark, bitter and twisted, and they are going to do your head in before you'll ever mellow them out. When I was younger I found them attractive, but these days I run for the hills. Give me someone happy any day...

Is it me or...

is there something sinister about Facebook?

(joinus! oneofus! oneofus!)

ASCII art

Old School Stylee, or , I feel all pixilated.

















You can see it in its full glory here. Remember getting them done in shopping centres in the 70s? Turning your photos into text was as sexy as technology could get. It was the heighth of sophistication!

You can get yours done right here (via Photojojo)

(I wish I could upload it to Flickr, but it's in Notepad. It prints off on too many pages too.)

Fodder

This is a meme seen at Greavsie's. He was tagged by the girl who dates, who evidently frequents classy joints like Locanda Locatelli. I tend to frequent 'Best Roman Cafe' and am a connoisseur of greasy spoons, but have occasionally been to posher places:

New Piccadilly -
This is a glorious and beautiful cafe tucked away just off Shaftesbury Avenue. The fittings have not changed since the fifties, you get white-jacketed waiters serving your spaghetti bolognaise or egg and chips, the proprietor is totally charming and the till is one of those old-fashioned ones - go there quick before the rent increases close it down & it's turned into a Starbucks.

Busaba Eathai
A Thai place on Wardour Street. It gets busy on the weekend, sometimes there's a line outside but it moves quickly. The prices would probably make our Tim in Bangkok laugh, but they do a lovely green curry.

Ottolenghi
This is on Upper Street, and is too Islington for words. The staff seem like they were hired for looks and snootiness - the food looks almost too pretty to eat (check out the meringues they have piled up in the window) but the food, mama mia! Especially for veges like me, (yes yes I know) even a simple salad is a taste explosion...

Mangal
Beautiful Turkish food in Stoke Newington. Cheap but lovely. We saw Gilbert and George in here. (I also saw them in Pellici's in Bethnal Green High Road - they really are always together, it's not just an act.)

Kulu Kulu
Conveyor belt sushi place on Brewer Street, not as neon-lit and tacky as Yo Sushi - sushi aficionados probably would turn their noses up but I thought it was fabulous - it gets dangerously addictive because you want to try EVERYTHING coming past you on the conveyor belt - ooh look, we haven't had that one yet - and the bill can mount up fast.

New River Cafe - no no no, not that one - this one is a very nice, low-key cafe just opposite Clissold Park which has got absolutely lovely staff and is a respite from the very Stokey cafes in Church Street (it also had a very gorgeous waiter last time we went - now he works in the cafe in Clissold Park - but this has not influenced my choice at all.)

Posh places which I have been to by some random fluke-

The Ivy - it was for a book launch, (not my book - I gatecrashed) in an upstairs room.

Joe Allen's - Joe Allen is not that posh but apparently famous luvvies of the stage and screen like to hang out there. I went there for a work do shortly after joining and did not endear myself to my new American bosses by nipping out for cigarettes.

Woz - Antony Worrall Thompson is not that posh either but still a proper chef to give him his due. Again, we went for a book launch. The publishers had hired a routemaster and driven everyone around London in it, plying them with champagne all the while. Trouble was when we finally got there, and Antony Worrall Thompson opened the door with a welcoming smile only to see 120 of the book industry's finest troup off the bus and stampede past him to head for the toilets, just as if his lovely Holland Park restaurant was some motorway service station pit stop. His expression was indescribable.

Momo - not your actual Momos, it was the concession in Selfridges, but still good food, and sexy waiters. Hmm, a theme is developing here.

The Savoy - it was faaaaaabulous. And part of a package deal with Beauty and the Beast which someone twisted my arm to go to. The Savoy, and Derek Griffiths as a singing candlestick, all in one day. That was a day to remember.

Leave your recommendations in the box, do.

Simulation

from Hackney Today 21 May 2007

Hit it or quit it

I'm talking to an old college friend of L's who I've met once or twice before. He is beautiful, interesting, easy to talk to - and what is rare, nice and unaware or unbothered by his good looks. We're talking away, about Spain where he also lived, and East London where he used to live, and about buying houses - he bought a flat with his girlfriend recently - it's all so easy, conversation flowing...
'Do you want another drink?'
'Nooooo!' I say, standing up suddenly. (I'm a bit tipsy after drinking Hoegardens on an empty stomach.) Why's it so easy talking to him, Mr Good-looking-got-a-girlfriend? Why is it always the good ones that are taken? 'It's a school night, can't get pissed, I can't face them with a hangover.' I practically leg it out the pub.

Afterwards I'm wandering around Tesco Metro putting random items in the basket and wondering why I cut short this conversation which was pretty harmless, even if he was spoken for. It just seemed like a waste of time, like an act of masochism. It reminded me of when I was at a party with my friend Donna, we were talking to this cute boy when he said something about 'my girlfriend' - as soon as the words left his mouth, Donna walked off, even though he was mid-sentence. She was pissed and I don't think she realised she did it, but the raw honesty of it made me laugh. Life's too short - cut to the chase... *



* on the other hand it does make me kind of sad that my contact with men as friends seems to be drifting further and further away, it's like they're on another island or something. Either they're not interested, in which case they can't be bothered with you, or they are interested, & have a secret agenda, or they've got girlfriends who view you with all the benevolence of a sabre toothed tiger protecting her cubs.

Fugly

Men, look away now. This post will bore you into a coma, or else make your eyes melt down your face in tedium (like in Raiders of the Lost Ark when they open the ark and the Holy Ghost comes out.)

Ladies, I have a shoe dilemma - I bought a 'vintage' dress for lovely SparkleyC's wedding in August and now I cannot find the right shoe, I have a Platonic vision of the shoe but I cannot find the shoe in reality. It is red suede with a heel, very possibly a wedge, possibly a sandal. But it is nowhere to be found. And in my search I came across the fugliest shoe I have ever seen. Here, I will share this vision of fugliness with you: (look quickly, it might hurt your eyes) - here it is. Whatever happened to Red or Dead? I used to like them.

Schmoozing *

GSE has had a splendid idea with her new Halp! blog - using the 6 degrees of separation principle to a) find an eligible date and b) sort out all your problems via the power of blogs to network...

Also, Timbo is running Big Blogger - I missed this last time round so will be intrigued to see how it works this time - get over and nominate someone, or yourself (not entirely clear how this whole deal works.)

(* Schmoozing, according to most Yiddish websites, apparently means simply to network - in our family it had a different meaning, tending to imply 'sweet-talking someone to get something out of them' - my grandad would say to me 'go and schmooze your nana' when he wanted her to make him a cup of tea. To which she would respond, 'Schmoozer'.)

Want 2 chat?

God I'm bored, stuck at home writing 30 school reports on software which keeps crashing, and trying to think of 30 different ways to write 'has made good progress.'

Nobody else is home on Saturday are they? You're all out at a big garden party without me. No doubt having sex with good-looking people. On rollerskates. Whilst drinking champagne.

*sigh*

Pros & cons of hitchhiking

More memory lane.

We had a brief craze for hitch-hiking (maybe influenced by the Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, and Roger Waters' angst-fest, The Pros and Cons of Hitch-Hiking -check out the 'tasteful' album cover.)

But for some reason we only ever went to Wales. Apart from its outstanding natural beauty, and its rumoured -to-be-easily-available-magic-mushrooms, I think it was mostly because it was the only place we knew how to get onto the start of the motorway.)

So every weekend or so saw us standing forlornly by the roadside in West London, thumbs aloft, on our way to a damp and chilly weekend of getting rained on/getting stoned/getting rained on intermittently.

We used to pair up & have races to see who could get there first. I was with Peter and hid him behind a tree once or twice to fool the punters(motorists thinking; 2 girls - good; girl & boy - dubious.) We used to while away the hours by scribbling childish made-up tour graffitti on any available surfaces to take the piss out of the Goths' ardent supporters & their tour graffitti 'The Mission 87' 'Sisters of Mercy 87' - Elkie Brooks Live '87 was one I can recall.

One time Peter and I got a lift with a couple of long distance lorry drivers on the way back to London. They seemed mightily amused by the pair of us.
'So what are you, students?'
We admitted shamefacedly that we were. 'So what do you study?'
'History of ArtEnglish andSociology' I muttered very quickly.
'Ology!' they both crowed. 'It 'ad to be an 'ology.'
The driver wound down the window and shouted abuse at any passing women drivers he felt were driving too slowly.
'Look at her, driving down the central lane, endangering life and limb. You study sociology, what makes her do that?'
'Um' I said, put under pressure. 'Well, I guess you could say it's deviant behaviour...'
He loved this. 'Oy! You! You fackin' DEVIANT!' I groaned inwardly, clearly I'd provided him with a new term of abuse for luckless woman motorists.

The lorry was carrying steel girders.
'We have to make sure they're tied up right - if we had to stop suddenly, they'd smash through the back of the cab and slice your heads right off...'
'Ow!' I said.
'Well, cos if they're not tied up, they could smash through the back of the cab and cut your heads off...'
'No, I meant ow,ow, as in ouch, that would hurt.'

They'd been driving all night, and had probably picked us up to help keep them awake. It wasn't a bad job, but you did get backache from sitting so long.
'His missus-in-law gives him a massage when he gets in. With mayonnaise.' Peter and I mused on this insight into other people's private lives in silence. Things were quiet for a moment. Suddenly one of them slapped the driver one on the arm.
'You fell asleep then, didn't you?' 'No. I just closed my eyes for a moment...'

I miss it sometimes. But sometimes I'm kind of glad that these days I can afford train fare.

Suggestible

Just heard someone say on the telly 'Enjoy alcohol responsibly.'

Alcohol! I thought. (Just off the antibiotics - time to celebrate.)

I'm off to get pissed. Chin chin.

Munter of the week **

Aargh. I have just had a passport photo done for a part-time holiday job in a museum. In it I look like the mutant cockeyed halfwit love-child of someone off Prisoner Cell Block H and the Elephant Man. I look like one of those Victorian phrenology pictures of 'The Criminal Type', like Mr Hyde's twin sister, like Marty Feldman in an Afro wig with a sex change. To sum up, it's not pretty. Thank God it's not for my actual passport, I couldn't live with it for another ten years.

The new passport photo machines would make Kate Moss look like a gargoyle (I tell myself)- they seem to zoom in closer on your face than anyone not doing a medical procedure on you has a right to go, plus you are no longer allowed to hide behind your hair or smile or show teeth or something.

There's nothing worse than seeing a highly unflattering photo of yourself (you know, apart from homelessness, war, disease & famine, etc.) It made me down-hearted all the way home, til I had the idea that maybe I should start up a Flickr group called My Passport Shame and post it, and share the misery. There's far too many shiny good-looking people already on the internet, they want to make room for some of us ugly bastards... *




* Update - no longer a possibility, as it's now in the bin. I'm not vain, but it just had to go. Still thinking about the Flickr group, though. I can see it taking off like Uglydress.com.

** See RoMo's Munterspace for elaboration

Giving up and going home

Another one of those depressingly good, 'why do I bother' posts from newly discovered Overnight Editor. This is an example of how, in the right hands, something as mundane as getting pissed and buying a burger from a van can be elevated to the status of high art.

*sigh*

I vant to be alone *

I have shared houses with various people since I was 18, I've lost count how many places I've lived in since then. Now I'm 35, and I think if I don't have my own place soon, there will be murder. I've had it hasta la nariz, as the Spaniards say. That's all I'm saying.

If you do live alone, do you like it? Half of me thinks that I would be running around the place naked, laughing gleefully like a loon. Half of me thinks I would be talking to the walls, then banging my head against them. But you've got to try it...

*actually she didn't say that, she said 'I vant to be left alone', which is different.

Oh my God! Look at this referrer!!*

Quick everyone, look intelligent.



















(*admittedly, they were only looking for pictures of The Big Easy, not my insightful and intelligent posts on Eurovision and googly eyes.)

Bah

Ukraine were robbed.

On the other hand, it's cheering that a Serbian lesbian torch song carried the day.

PS Bad Sarah hated Bulgaria's effort, but I think it rocks. Seriously.

It's all the government's fault

Private Eye used to do an occasional "9/11 watch" column, noting when journos would make spurious links with the Twin Towers disaster = eg "the pyramid jewellery-selling business has never been the same since 9/11" "people are wary of buying holiday homes on the Costa del Sol ever since 9/11".

Well, you know I never do politics (frankly, because I find it hard to care) but I think you could do a similar thing with just how much is ALL THE GOVERNMENT'S FAULT.

A prime example of what I mean is Alexis Petridis' Observer article on What Happened To Rock Under Blair? I didn't even read it, to be honest. I know Blair made a lot of mistakes, and you can blame him for a lot of things - the whole mess of Iraq, the continuing dismantlement of the NHS - but can we really blame him for Coldplay and Snow Patrol?

Cutting room floor

Sorry, the movie stars on my link list have got to go. I can't remember who I called what, and it's driving me mad. As soon as I can be faffed, I will change them.

Plus I can't think of any more cool movie stars - most of the stars of today lack colour - for my new faces on the link list; welcome to Ben Locker,(formerly of Hackney Lookout), and Claptonian (Dave Hill from Temperama and Comment is Free) and Bowleserised of Berlin, and Timbo of Brighton, and Arabella of Texas. Phew.

Late and stoned

In our teens, one of our number decamped from North to East London. He went to Leytonstone Sixth Form College, and thus began the Leytonstone Years. We seemed to spend an awful lot of time on the Central Line, high-tailing it over to East London - mainly because he had an awful lot of cute friends (this might have had something to do with the fact that most of us went to all-girl schools at the time - I can't believe it's taken me 20 years to cotton on to the appeal of an otherwise pretty ordinary suburb.) At first we circled round each other a bit territorially, like cats, but did some major bonding over cider and magic mushrooms at Glastonbury one year.

I'll always be fond of David Beckham, nanny-shagging, Golden Balls, vanity, dodgy haircuts and all, because his accent reminds me so strongly of that momentous meeting, the brief but beautiful coming-together of the North London girls and the Leytonstone boys. They were pretty fierce at imposing their musical tastes on us - my first memory of one Mr Austin was us playing My Bloody Valentine on the tape deck (remember those?) and him saying 'What's this crap then?' Their preferences were as follows:
The Meters
Otis Redding
Jimi Hendrix
Otis Redding
The Neville Brothers
Otis Redding
Sam & Dave
Otis Redding
Funkadelic
Otis Redding

Like that. It could have been worse.

I know for at least one of my readers, the following tune will be like Proust and his madeleine in musical form, but even if not, please clickety click - this is some funky music.

Public Service Announcement

London Burlesque Festival. Miss it at your peril.

Masterchef

You must watch it, as my dear friend Holly has a place on it. I used to live with her and my cooking was for a brief period quite edible, due to her passionately foodie influence.

(Met Holly for the first time the day we moved in. I was chatting to her in my bedroom, with a glass of red wine in my hand - I gestured as I was talking and threw red wine all over the [white] bedroom wall. Afterwards she said 'At that moment, I knew we'd get on.')

Where you been?

Sometimes I don't thrill you
Sometimes I think I'll kill you
Just don't let me fuck up, will you
'Cause when I need a friend, it's still you
Freak Scene

This slacker anthem was by Dinosaur Jr, some while before a certain Seattle trio arrived on the scene, and it provided something of a soundtrack and catchphrase for our teen years. I loved Dinosaur Jr, especially J Mascis, the mournful Eeyore of rock, and his groaning, whining, apathetic voice (that made Neil Young sound like Barry White), and his absolutely spectacular guitar playing that made the guitar solo seem not like an obsolete art-form but a thing of beauty.

And particularly with an album called 'Where You Been' which (if this is not a debased term) was a kind of concept album, inspired by the death of his dad. It raised their game considerably higher. 'I know you're out there... I know you're gone' he groans/sings and it's an exquisitely painful experience listening to it. (They did have a sense of humour too - their version of The Cure's 'Just Like Heaven' stomps over quite a fey little pop tune with big heavy metal boots. It is funny. )

Despite my love for them, I always managed to miss them in the 80s. But Last FM has a handy little feature, which shows which bands on your playlists are currently touring.

'Wow, Dinosaur Jr have re-formed and are playing in London! I must go! When is it?'

A horrible thought struck me. Hadn't I actually bought a ticket for it a month ago?
Yes, I had. I checked frantically amongst the millions of bits of papers on my desk. There it was. When was it on? Um, now. In Hammersmith. The other side of London. I'd missed them again, even though this time I'd actually got a ticket. Doh! Stupid, stupid, stupid! And again, stupid!

Still, they've just released a new one, and surely will be touring here again. Do me a favour, and email me, text me, leave comments if you see they're playing, just remind me or I'll forget to go again.

Celeb spot of the day

which the Curve and bad Sarah's other half may especially appreciate - Kevin Rowlands, trying on trilby hats in Rockit in Brick Lane.

'Kevin! Geno is one of my favourite ever tunes & a work of genius, unfairly overshadowed by Come On Eileen, which I find somewhat irritating,' (I nearly said, but didn't, in case he thought I was trying to pick him up.)

In other news, shortly before spotting Kevin, I saw some goats, chickens (and a cock), guinea pigs, donkeys, sheep and a pig today. For those of you in the countryside this is probably just your average day, but it's a rare thing in the middle of the City. Huzzah!

cute kids...

Through A Glass Darkly

'It is really strange, what you do. I don't know why you'd want to do it.'
'How can I explain it to you? Until you do it yourself, I can see that it looks strange. But in maybe five years, it will seem no stranger than having an email account. Maybe sooner.'

I can't explain the appeal. Sometimes it seems normal and other times I wonder what I'm doing and whether to stop. What is strange to me is the amorphous nature of this. People drop in, they drop out.They invent personas and pseudonyms and icons. You picture them just through the words they write. You feel like you know someone and they disappear and you have no idea why, and new people arrive and take their place...

I'm celebrating, because through the miracle of Technorati I found someone who linked to me who writes so beautifully, who (I think) might be someone from my links who had gone very quiet... I can't be sure though, because the old blog was a fictional character, and the new blog is anonymous, and slightly different in style - all I've got to go on is literary guess-work. So here I am being enchanted by the anonymous work of a mystery person who exists out there somewhere in the real world - it really needs a Paul Auster to do it justice.