In love

with Mattias Inks.

(Slideshow here. website here. ) Enjoy!

When it's alright to lie

So I was at the doctors', and in due course she asked me 'What exercise do you do?'
'Oh, swimming, yoga, jogging...' the lies pour out, fluently.
'And you're a non-smoker.'
'Oh yes...'
Generally I 'm quite truthful, but I always seem to lie to doctors, what's that all about? They don't really care, do they? Is it just me?

In other news, after careful consideration, weighing up manifestos, reasoned political strategic thinking, I believe I have made my choice:

Boris - stupid hair, ridiculous voice. (And he's a Tory.)
Ken - arrogant, ridiculous voice.
Brian - he's alright, but
Sian - is a woman, and thus beats him.

Vote Green, y'all!

Lowbrow movie quiz

Updated... click on comments if you can't be bothered to watch the clips. Alda, I'm glad you didn't know them... I'm a bit ashamed of my lack of cutting-edge movie knowledge...

Who said:

1.) You are my density.
1 point to Broke in Berlin. Brilliant line.


2.) What the hell are we supposed to use man, harsh language?
1 point to the lovely Emordino. A line spoken by a tough-as-nails marine who suddenly realises he can't use his gun. (Here's another clue before you click through... 'They mostly come at night. Mostly.')

3.) I'm really a timid person, I was beaten up by Quakers.
Billy and Tim got this one, 'A love story about two people who hate each other, two hundred years in the future.' From the days when the maestro used to make good, funny films, as opposed to serious, shit films. Tim - Terry Gilliam is Jewish? Hurrah!


4.) He knows nothing of the potential of the microchip or the silicon revolution. Look how he spends his time: forty-three species of parrots! Nipples for men!
LC got this one, but he doesn't get any points. He's cocky enough as it is. It is from one of my favouritist films ever, spoken by the brilliant David Warner, who goes on to demonstrate that digital watches are harbingers of EVIL.

5.) There's too much testosterone here.
Nobody got this. This is Tyler, GF of Keanu, you have to admit she has a point, what with people jumping out of planes with no parachutes and all.

6.) You Freud, me Jane?
Nobody got this one either. One of those icy blonde heroines fighting back against the hero...


7.) I'm tired of being a flag. I want to be a bull again.
Tim gets a second point for this, from the best film of all time. I was looking for a good line but every one is a a winner. (This was clearly before he got engaged to Osgood.)


8.) You're just a tourist with a typewriter. I live here.
Tim gets his third point with this one! Tim, you're on fire! ( I was torn between this and 'I'll show you the life of the mind!'

9.) Until mankind is peaceful enough not to have violence on the news, there's no point in taking it out of shows that need it for entertainment value.
Nul points for nobody on this one. You need to watch more chick flicks.


10.) Forget about those, they ain't nothing but trouble.
Del guessed correctly which bear spoke this line. Sorry about the clip, this was the only English language version of it.

Result: Tim is the winner with 3 whole points! Tim, you'll get square eyes.


No Googling now, or we will have words.

Advice

Give it to me.

Striking

Today I'll mostly be on strike.

Wish us luck. Back tomorrow.

In the meantime, watch This is not the Daily Show. Thanks to Adrian for drawing my attention to it. If only teachers were as good as writers with teh funny...

This is the sea

Last year I went to one of these social club nights, not speed dating, just a mixer event. The friend I was going with never showed, so I was wandering around this bar in Piccadilly alone, beer bottle in hand, trying to gear myself up to talk to people. They all looked pretty cosy and settled though, like they all knew each other already.

Suddenly I realised the social was being held separately, in a room upstairs. I went cold. They all looked like they knew each, because they did know each other. They were regular groups of friends and colleagues, out for a Friday night drink after work, and I narrowly missed being the random nutter who tried to barge in on their conversation.

The horror! The social shame, my dears! (If you are reading this from elsewhere, you are no doubt baffled at this - I've heard tell that up north, for example, people do chat to strangers. Cannot emphasize enough that Londoners do not. They think it is a sign of psychosis, and striking up a conversation with a stranger tends to earn you deep distaste and opprobium. Social suicide - unless you happen to be a foreign.)

Does it ever seem to you that life gets narrower and your options start closing off as you get older? You make this choice, you make that choice, it all seems pretty random but eventually those choices have brought you to one place in particular, and you wonder 'how did I end up here?'

When I was younger I liked 'This Is The Sea' by the Waterboys, it always seemed apposite at any stage in life - the idea that everything was wide open before you, and that was frightening just because freedom is, but also exhilarating. Now it feels less & less that there are limitless choices open to you. Time was, every time you left the house you'd meet new people and have adventures. Now I only see the hardcore faithful few, and meet less and less people, and know what I'm going to be doing on any given day. It takes the relish out of things, I find.

(Ironically I *know* a lot more online people these days than RL people , but it's just not the same if you wouldn't even recognise each other if you passed in the street.) Everyone seems to have shaken down into these tight little crews, there's no movement or change anymore.

What am I trying to say with this post? I guess I'm just using meeting new people as an example of things getting narrower - maybe it could apply equally to what job you do, or even what clothes you choose to wear, or what food you choose to cook, or your systems of belief, or what kind of life you choose to lead.

With all the free will in the world, how does it get so routine?

Writers we like

Hey, let's start a bookclub.

Michael Chabon is a wicked writer. Sometimes I go into bookshops and get consumer fatigue - all these titles and genres and glossy covers shouting at you, but there's nothing you want to pick up and then you drift out again and have nothing to read and have to read Cherry again.

But the other day I passed a bookshop window filled with his latest - it has a great cover and an irresistible title - The Yiddish Policemen's Union, plus he is one of those authors whose books I'd buy straight away without knowing anything about it.

The man can write. (He's pretty cute too. ) If you like Raymond Carver ("She was a blonde who'd make a Bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window"), and Paul Auster, and thrillers, and Jewish wit and fine prose, you'll really, really like it.

I found him when working as a book buyer and getting proofs was one of the few perks of the job. (Missed that original Harry Potter Bloomsbury proof, goddamit! Who'd want to read some lame children's book about wizards and boarding school, I thought?)

The book was called The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and the blurb contained some trigger words for me - New York, 40s, comic books... enough to make me pick it up and take it home.

And he'd thought up this brilliant conceit - at a time when the Jews were being persecuted in Europe, two young Jewish comic book writers invent this invincible Nazi-fighting superhero who'll save the world. A modern version of the Golem in the Warsaw ghetto.It is pure wish-fulfillment - one of them has just escaped from Prague, and doesn't know what's happened to his family.

He also wrote the slacker comedy The Wonder Boys, made into a film with Michael Douglas, Hollywood's most punchable actor (though he's not bad in it, to be fair.) And the short stories in Werewolves in their Youth really pack a punch - one, Son of the Wolfman, is about a couple trying for a baby unsuccessfully, when the woman is raped and gets pregnant. Told from the husband's point of view, it was really bold and beautiful writing, going where most people don't dare (or can't bear) to go...

(Have also been reading Tim Guest's excellent Second Lives, which I reckon Tim and Patroclus would like a lot . If you'd like to read it, drop me a line and I'll send it to you.)

Who should run London?

Phew. Was a bit anxious for a moment that I might have chosen all Boris' policies.

I like Ken, but it's probably time for a change. But Brian Paddick is just not going to get in. What to do? *

Try the interactive quiz here.



* Hmm, maybe go here. Food for thought, thanks to Girl with a One Track Mind's link.

Happy Go Lucky

A review.

Usually I steer clear of Mike Leigh, because his habit of casting ultra middle class actors to improvise their lines, spoken in what they fondly imagine are bona fide estuary accents (or worse, apple-me-pears corblimey love-a-duck cockney) sets my teeth on edge. Writers should write, and actors should act, unless they're Sam Shepherd. Give actors free reign and they'll try for pathos and dive straight into bathos, they can't help it, sorry it's harsh but true. [Brenda Blethyn, you might well hang your head in shame.] And rather than 'dark' or 'moving' or any of those adjectives that get bandied around, I find his films wildly irritating.

But I couldn't help but see this one, seeing as it has a primary school teacher as a heroine. It's also more chirpy and positive than, say, Naked or Secrets and Lies. So It still does differ from RL considerably - it's not Hollywood, but being a film, couldn't help but tidy up those rough edges a bit, and I couldn't help but compare:

Film: London (specifically Finsbury Park and Camden) is a picturesque, clean, sunshiny sort of place.

RL: Dog shit, pigeon shit, fast food containers and plastic bags litter streets under a leaden sky while acid rain pisses down on the miserable residents.

Film: Camden Market is a quaint little place at which you browse in peace at colourful stalls.

RL: Camden Market is hell on earth filled with Spanish goths.


Film: When a little lad seem troubled and angry, Poppy speaks straight away to the head.

RL: The head is in meetings with auditors and/or governors for the next 5 years, and isn't actually sure who you are, let alone one of the kids.

Film: A social worker turns up to talk to the child.

RL: The child will have grown up and left home and probably be in a young offenders' institution by the time they have gone through the long slow process of referrals.

Film: The social worker is a gorgeous young man.

RL: The social worker is a knackered middle aged woman.

Film: Poppy spends her weekend doing careful research and making lovely resources for her class.

RL: Monday morning - fuck fuck fuck, where are the fucking numberlines? Why the fuck can't people put things back in the right place? Arsehole fucking bastards.

All in all though, it's pretty feelgood & gets the nod from me.

On strike

Long incoherent ranting, be warned...

It’s naïve I know, but I found the press coverage for the strike depressingly negative.

Greedy teachers, moany teachers, poor patient police and nurses who can’t or won’t strike… Even the other union is being wishy-washy about it, claiming that actually we’re not that badly off in terms of pay, mustn’t grumble… (though they wouldn’t turn down any rises in salary gained by strike action, you bet.)

Logic was never my strong suit, but tell me, is it logical to say ‘Other people are paid worse’ and consider your argument won? I don’t want the nurses and the police to be badly paid – how is my not striking going to help them? If we all striked (struck?) together, which is what the NUT was hoping for, a General Strike, imagine that, how much more powerful would it be? That’s why they call them unions – you know, people being UNITED, showing their strength in numbers.

The dishonesty of spin never ceases to amaze me. One of the old-school Marxist firebrand teachers I saw at a union meeting nailed it for me. She said the real determinant factor in a child’s experience of education was poverty. Rich kids do well, poor kids struggle, simple as that.

The strike is against poverty, it’s not just for us soft bourgeois middle-class moaners, but in solidarity with members of Unison, for example, the support staff, who do an immensely vital job for a shockingly poor salary. People working in public sector jobs have kids, families, mortgages, bills and rent to pay - but they're expected to do this essential work and be poor and dedicated and keep their mouths shut.

("What I really can't believe is that, when private sector pay rises are 4 per cent, a rise of 2.5 per cent for the public sector is inflationary" Martin Weale, director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.)

Time was when the teaching assistants would put up displays, sort out your stock and sharpen pencils – now they are given more and more work - they are being asked to teach, they have sneaked in teaching responsibilities by the back door, but they’re not being paid at all for it.

This government (and I suspect, all governments) pay lip service to the importance of education, but they don’t really really really believe in it. (Why else would they cut the budget for special needs? Couldn't they like, save a few pennies by laying off a few hundred spin doctors? What is more essential?) They think you can run schools like any other business, but education doesn’t work like that.

It’s not a simple case of input/output, of watching your bottom line, of slavishly following your stats. Like everyone, I have a phenomenal amount of paperwork, phenomenal. All the data I have to enter every term gets sent to the borough. The borough sends it to the government. The government publishes it as evidence of how schools are doing.

But I know in fact it’s all cock, because the statistics I enter don’t tell anything like the whole story. So what can they prove?

Like so much in politics, it’s what they are being seen to do and not what they are actually doing that matters to them – I give you league tables, SATS, etc. Raising expectations is not the same as raising standards, setting the bar too high for children is setting up a culture of failure.

Someone I know asked what their son’s Level 3 meant on a SATS test – well, precisely. What does it mean?

They changed the objectives in the National Numeracy Strategy so that my 5 and 6 years olds are now expected to know things that last year were not introduced until 7 and 8 years old – why? They’re not ready for it. Who does it benefit? Why do they want to make them run before they can walk? So that they can compete with other schools in other countries?

(One of the objectives was about making quarter turns clockwise and anti-clockwise, and knowing left and right. I took them into the hall to try it out. You should have seen the chaos that ensued. It was hilarious, but revelatory.)

They’re pushing them too hard too early to achieve a level in the tests, so that they can publish stories about how well our children are doing in their SATS, and therefore what a great handle this government has on education come election time. Is that about education, or about winning elections? When a visiting Norwegian teacher observed the 7 year olds doing SATS test, she said ‘In Norway, we’d consider this child cruelty.’

'A strike will only serve to disrupt children's learning, inconvenience parents and place a burden on fellow teachers.' A DCSF spin doctor.

Um, had the concept of 'striking' been fully explained to this person?

Anyway, onto business. What should our banner say?

'Pay peanuts, get monkeys'?


Oy, I'm no good at this. Help me out here.

Poor people are rubbish

At the hygienist (a motherly, somewhat sinister older lady):

Hygienist: Have you had that cap a long time?
Annie: Yes [Answering with difficulty as an instrument of torture is in her mouth. It was the legacy of an evil supply teacher in primary school who made us play leap-frog. My partner fell over, I landed face first and knocked a front tooth out.]
Hygienist: It doesn't really match does it?
Annie: No, but it's expensive to replace.
Hygienist: Well it does its job, but it's a shame it's such a rubbish colour. [laughing merrily.] Maybe you'll get a big pay rise, then you can replace it!

On the phone to the estate agent:

Estate agent: I've got a 2 bed in London Fields for £3 million and a 1 bed in Shoreditch for £2.5 million.
Annie: They're a bit out of my budget.
Estate agent: What about the flat I showed you in ___ Road? It's been reduced.
Annie: It was on the ground floor and everyone could see in the bedroom walking past.
Estate agent: (Impatiently) You're going to find it very, very difficult with your budget...
Annie: I know. It's just, there's not much that I can do about my budget. I can't magic money out of the air...

Here we see the interesting modern phenomenon of people working in service industry jobs telling the customer that they are RUBBISH BECAUSE THEY DON'T HAVE ENOUGH MONEY...

Accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone

The rain in Spain falls mainly on me.

Malaga's very pretty - I can recommend it as gorgeous, authentically Spanish, with character, not too expensive, not touristy (either they go to cheap Torremolinos or expensive Marbella once out the airport).

Clicky here to see a slideshow of my recent tripette. Honestly, it's worth it, you can view it at a fast speed and it looks 10 times better against a black slideshow background.

These photos were taken in a brief, brief pause between the TORRENTIAL RAIN WHICH DID NOT STOP FROM THE MOMENT I STEPPED FOOT ON THE TARMAC TO MY ARRIVAL BACK AT THE AIRPORT 3 DAYS LATER (when the sun came out again).

After the biblical floods of San Sebastian and the rainy days in Barca, I thought I'd be safe in sunny Andalucia. Recklessly I gambled on the Costa del Sol having some, well, sol. Clearly, God doesn't wish me to holiday in Spain.

Magic G - the saga continues

So, I bet you thought I'd forgotten all about our little fanzine?

Well, it's all ready to print, but I've just got a quote from our friendly local co-operative printers, and 50 copies will cost £450. No matter how many times I calculate it, it always seems to come out at £9.00 a pop, which I somehow doubt people will go for.

So I was thinking, maybe I could just post the PDFs on a MySpace page or something (is this possible?) and you could download it and self-assemble it for free, like. (In the meantime I could print up a few hard copies on my home printer to sell in Rough Trade and the groovy shops around Brick Lane. Not too many, as it uses up ink like nobody's business.) It seems a shame to let it languish, when it's so lovely and everyone worked hard on it.

Fashion victim

Usually I tune advertising out, but I saw a picture of Chloe Sevigny in a Uniqlo campaign and the thought arrived fully formed in my brain, as if dictated by God, I MUST HAVE THAT T-SHIRT (it's the one she's wearing currently on the front page of their website, holding her hands on her head like horns.)

I like it, I like it, I like it a lot. I'm too old to wear cartoons across my chest but I don't care. I will not go gentle into that good night. (If you want to see my mutton in a Japanese graphic t-shirt look, click here - I'm a bit shy of posting pictures on my blog anymore, because one day someone from work will stumble across it and then it'll all be over.)

Anyway, the t-shirt came with a veritable essay on life, love, design and philosophy on the label - apparently it is "Astroboy" by Hiroaki Ohya. (And made in China, I just noticed, no doubt by the nimble fingers of an 8 year old, guilt guilt. I still like it.) If you like t-shirts, graphics, robots, graffitti, Japanese cartoons etc, they've got a good thing going on a Uniqlo at the moment. And it comes in a tube, which feels all modern and space-age.

(thanks to Adrian for sending me the picture)

Je ne m'ennuie pas

*Cough* photo *cough*

Temple of Love

Blog crisis? What blog crisis? The number of people linking to this post suggests that I've inadvertently opened up a vast gaping vortex, some kind of hellish portal or abyss, threatening to suck into it all life, laughter and happiness which (if we're not very careful) will swallow the entire blogosphere into a black hole. It was only a harmless little list of ways to spring-clean my blog. Hang in there, my little cauliflowers! Be strong! Pull your socks up! Chin up and don't panic. Keep calm and carry on...


Anyway, I wasn't a very successful Goth. I crazy-coloured my hair black, but it was pretty close to my natural colour anyway and in those pre-straighteners days, my semi-fro was not the smooth sheet of black satin which we aimed for. I tried to wear a crucifix earring home once, but my mum hit the roof.
'It doesn't mean anything' I said, attempting defiance. 'But we're Jewish...' She shamed me into disposing of it. (A Star of David just didn't have the same gloomy, melodramatic, cemetery associations... I think I wore an ankh later, that flew under the parental radar. )

Anyway, I'm left with a residual fondness for the dozy buggers, dry ice, black eyeliner, white face paint and all.* But I've been a bit flexible with my definition of the tunes, in a way that purists will probably hate, because the music was a bit crap really, wasn't it?

*Goths are excellent for taking the piss out of. In their 80s heyday, there was a long-running series in one of the music papers taking the piss out of the hapless drummer, Nod, in the Fields of the Nephilim. He took it in good part. Even the bands took the piss. Andrew Eldritch from the Sisters of Mercy was fairly merciless, with utter contempt for his fans. One of my bookshop pals saw them, he said there was an enormous Goth girl down the front of the stage wearing a purple cloak. Andrew Eldritch leaned down with his microphone to ask her 'And what have you come as?' She burst into tears.

Another story - one of my friends Chris had been in exile from London in Norwich when his parents had thoughtlessly relocated. He began a correspondence with a Goth club promoter called Malice In Wonderland in London - might the club have been called the Limelight, or the Batcave? Something like that anyway. One day he got an invite to stay over in London at Malice's place, and all excited, he hopped on the train to London, only to find out that Malice, this hot Goth chick was in fact... a bloke. Crushed.



Anyway, do give it a listen. Whilst doing that mystical windmill thing with your arms. Remember, ' Life is short and love is always over in the morning...'



Image of Death (a Goth, natch) courtesy of the Sandman.

AWOL

Get it? Oh, please yourselves.




Hasta pronto, muchachos. I'll bring you back a straw donkey, leave duty free requests in the comments box.

History lesson

some time in the early 1990s.

The Government: Oh noes! We don't has enough teachers! Nobody wants to work with the smelly children for pitiful wages! Especially in London, the most expensive city in the universe! What can we do?!

the Teachers: Pay us more money

The Government: Okay! Have £6000 to study. Have £18,000 to work in a school and train. Have a bit more money in your take home pay.

2000

The Government: Hurrah! We has enough teachers.

A bit later

The Government: We are paying these teachers too much money. Let's give them less money than what we said we would.

2008

The Government: Oh noes! We don't has enough teachers!* (repeat ad infinitum.)


*Recruitment and retention fact - 50% of newly qualified teachers leave within 3 years.

(I'm in my 3rd year...)

Spring blogging resolutions

NB: Update - Reports of my ennui have been greatly exaggerated. It wasn't me that said it! It was Wyndham! Blame Wyndham!

Less posts
More quality
No naming actual people, events or places I know (- I always get in trouble over it.)
Removal of site meter (honestly, who cares? I was in ignorant bliss before I installed the damn thing.)
Finding more I like to replace our fallen colleagues.

That is all.