More witty and intelligent content

Right, I cannot put it off any longer. The agent's coming around tomorrow and I must do some hoovering. I think I last hoovered in November. I think the carpet might be cream. As Quentin Crisp said about housework, after the first 6 years the dust doesn't get any worse. (The great thing about living alone is that you can be a total lazy slut and no one can nag you about it.) It's also a good excuse not to crack on with the reports.

Good music to hoover to?

Twitter

What I made when I should have been writing 34 end of year reports. God, I'm bored.

Asian footballers

There, that surprised you, didn't it? She's all about the clothes and the shoes, you thought.

Why are there no Asian footballers?

I asked K, our PE co-ordinator, who is brilliant and gets the little inner-city kids fencing and learning judo and cricket and rugby (famous rugby player visited us, the male and female teachers were goggling in awe for widely different reasons) and competing in stuff all over East London, in the face of extreme parental indifference to any sport or exercise. Thank god for him.

He was talking about one of our kids with natural talent, who pretty much was a one man team in a game against another school with players in the West Ham junior club... Why don't our kids play for the junior clubs, I ask? How do scouts spot them? They don't come to the schools to talent spot, he said, they will go to tournaments... but this kid is pretty much too old now, they start between 6 and 9 and he's past it at 11. And the parents don't know or don't care about the junior clubs.

I'm spitting feathers. 'So the clubs don't go out there... and the parents aren't interested... And all these kids' talents and skills are going to waste... Why doesn't the FA do something about it? Some positive discrimination?'

'It's a cultural thing' chips in someone. They don't want them to be footballers. They're not interested... in the 70s all the black kids wanted to be footballers, because they saw the few black players out there and said 'I'm going to be like him...' They don't think they can do it, because they don't see it. If the parents could see someone succeeding, it might make them consider it for their children.

It's a vicious circle isn't it? K said things were getting better. But think of this... they've been in the UK since the 70s. That's 40 odd years of wasted talent. It's a tragedy.

Corset

This is what I want for my birthday. I think being unable to breathe would be a small price to pay for it.

Guilty liberals

I'm walking near Brick Lane when a man stops me. He has no front teeth and looks, well, rough.
'Sorry to stop you love' he's not quite looking at me 'I need 70p, I'm trying to get money to get a cab to Homerton Hospital, I came off my bike...' he rolls up his sleeve and holy shit, there is a chunk, a complete chunk of flesh been taken out of his forearm, and blood is running down his hand. 'Oh God' I say involuntarily. He rubs his leg as I find my wallet and give him a couple of quid. We part without saying anything to each other. I'm thinking about it. It had the feel of a sting, a scam, (why get a cab? You could get a bus from Hackney Road straight there, or call an ambulance? And why 70p?) and I'm left feeling like I've been scammed, but anyone desperate enough to damage themselves like that in order to beg needs the money more than me, surely?

I stopped giving money to people a few years ago. I'm not sure why. Maybe because there's so many people begging now. Something to do with it not changing the status quo. Something to do with feeling angry, then feeling guilty about feeling angry when I'm so lucky. Guilt's the price you pay for feeling privileged and lucky, I guess it's a small price but there is no way to live without shame.

Guilty liberals. In a play we saw the other night, England People Very Nice, which lampoons every group that's moved through the east end, from Huguenots, to Irish, to Jews, to Bangladeshis and finally Yuppies, one character chides another for being a liberal. 'Only a liberal would blame themselves for being mugged.' I asked a friend more radical than me, a girl who had worked in sexual health clinics in Nairobi and did Development Studies, why liberal was a dirty word. Didn't liberal people have good intentions? 'They don't look at causes, they just want to paper over the cracks. They don't go far enough. They're not interested in cause and effect.'

She was bang on, describing me. I wanted to help, and I didn't want to get involved, he was counting on that when he rolled up his bloody sleeve. No interfering and no questions asked...

One for the girls

Okay, which shoes with the dress?

Does this mean they want to eat you?

"Researchers set up four situations to see what men find hot; two variables made the guys feel financially insecure while the other two variables tested them when they were physically hungry. The men who felt financially insecure chose women who were about two pounds heavier than those chosen by men who felt financially stable. And hungry guys tended to go for women who were about three pounds heavier than those chosen by men who were full."

Further musings on the recession. Click here for the full story

hahaha! Excellent! I've no idea how they set up these 'variables', but anything that increases my chances of pulling is jolly good.

Buy less live longer

Buy less live longer, originally uploaded by Slaminsky.

How are you coping with the recession?

Not now, Bernard

I've been thinking about children's books, specifically about making a children's book (nothing fancy, just a rhyming counting book) and you know, it's really not as easy as it looks. In fact good children's books are much harder than writing an adult novel, where you have the luxury of banging on at your leisure for a few hundred pages.

For example, some children's books have to be read and enjoyed by adults as well as kids, especially if your kid takes a fancy to it and wants to be read the same book 80 thousand times over for a couple of months. ('You read it again' commanded 3 year old Orli every time I finished a story when in New York. There's just no way you can say no to her, especially with such a cute little New York accent.) Simple enough to read, condensed, but at the same time engaging. It's only then, when you see what he does with a limited vocabulary of words like cat, sat and mat you realise what an utter genius is Dr Seuss.

But I was reading Not Now, Bernard with one of my struggling readers the other day, and it's definitely in the top 10 of greatest children's books ever. By the god-like David McKee (also the creator of Mr Ben - 'As if by magic, the shop-keeper appeared...' and Elmer the psychedelic patchwork elephant who knows what it's like to be DIFFERENT and stand out from all the other grey elephants.)

I'm trying to analyse exactly what makes it such an evergreen book, and came up with this:

Tragi-comic. For those who don't know the story, Bernard keeps trying to get his mum and dad's attention, but they keep saying 'Not now, Bernard.' Eventually he gets eaten up by a monster in the garden. Parental neglect, but somehow hilarious funny.

Boldness. Most grownup books wouldn't dare to kill their heros off in the first couple of pages.

World turned upside down. The monster is baffled when they send him up to bed after TV and supper.

Fantastic 70s style illustrations, complete with psychedelic wallpaper and Japanese paper lantern decor.

Right, it's something to aspire to...