Ring ring

I went to the theatre last night. I'm always amused when the mobile phone announcement goes off at the beginning. Not by the people who go scrabbling for their handsets, but by the ones who sit back and look around them with smug, superior expressions. Pre-switching off of the mobile phone identifies a self-satisfied regular theatre-goer as surely as a bookcase categorised by colour tells you you've got a hipster on your hands.

An important difference

When plugging your destination into an online journey planner, it's important to realise that substituting 'Avenue' for 'Road' is a sub-optimal mistake, and will probably lead to your father having to drive halfway across Romford to collect you. Take note.

Things that make me smile no.88

I've finally finished my Christmas shopping, and I've done it without a single "That'll do". You know, the feeling when you're shopping for someone, and you don't know what to get them, so you just grab something impersonal and pointless and say "That'll do"? I can't stand that feeling. I would rather buy someone a present in July for no reason other than that I saw it and knew they would love it, than know that I absolutely must buy them something in December and end up giving them something they don't want. Naturally there remains the possibility that my friends and family will still hate everything I'm giving them this year, but at least I know that I've tried, even if I've got it wrong.

Also my manager gave me a chocolate selection box today. I haven't had one of these since I was a child, and it has given me my first little twinge of festive feeling this year. Who wouldn't smile at that?

Squelch

I trod on a wobbly pavement slab this morning, and recoiled in horror as the underlying reservoir of icy water was forced up the sides of the stone and over my foot. A passing lady laughed at me and then said "Oh well. At least you've only got one wet foot". Well yes, I thought, this is technically true. Glass half full and all that. But up until thirty seconds ago I had no wet feet, and that was infinitely preferable. Soggy tights and the subsequent toe freeze are not an ideal start to the day.

The lord giveth and he taketh away

I emerged from the lift to find a group of men waiting on the other side of the doors. As I walked away, I was privy to the following as they passed by:

Man 1: Pretty girl!
Man 2: You always like the fat ones.....

Toe twister

I ordered a pair of tights online; big thick woolly ones for that snuggly Winter feeling as you skip through crisp November breezes, laughing at the shivering souls in their flimsy nylons, and for that sticky, sweaty feeling on overcrowded tube trains as you gaze enviously at the sensible souls in breathable nylons. Yesterday the tights arrived, and I excitedly tore open the packet. So woolly! So warm! Oh look, turned heels! Wait a minute........that doesn't look quite right. The heels were turned so that the feet pointed in opposite directions. Were I to contort my legs into the position dictated by the ergonomic structure of these tights, any attempts to walk would result in me turning in sad little circles, like a cat treading out a nest in a duvet.

Life lessons

Today I have learned that if you put into the tumble drier an item of clothing which is covered with little stick-on diamantes, this will no longer be the case upon removal, while everything which accompanied it in there will have achieved a state of spangly adornment.

It's so unfair

I now have both internet and TV in the new flat. It's been several weeks without them, so it's nice to be reconnected.

The very efficient engineer who came to set up to these things kept referring to my new tivo box as a him. "He's just updating now, so don't switch him off for an hour or so". I think it was just a language thing, as he wasn't a native English speaker, but I now find myself thinking of the box as a him. He's quite friendly, suggesting things he thinks I might want to watch.

Update......I just tried to put on a recorded program, and he's asking me for a PIN to watch it because it's before 9pm. He's not friendly at all. It was all an act. He's actually an overbearing parent. I don't have a PIN and I don't need one! I'm 27 years old and I just want to watch Hellboy!

Dulce et Decorum est.....

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest 

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est

Pro patria mori.
                               Wilfred Owen

This is always a contentious issue, and I may struggle to make myself clear here, so bear with me.

On a simple level, I consider myself a pacifist. On a more complicated level I recognise that sometimes it is necessary to fight, and I will do so to protect myself or a friend. Taking that to a global scale, 'protecting one's friends' means (to me at least) fighting for those who are suffering under tyranny or oppression, and whose basic human rights are violated on a daily basis. However, I do not concede that this is the reason for the involvement of this country in all of the wars it is currently or recently engaged in. To my, admittedly limited, understanding, a lot of the fighting our army does seems to be less about 'protecting our friends' and more about 'knocking down the kid with the glasses and nicking his lunch money'. When power and money are stronger factors than freedom and democracy, I cannot bring myself to back the war. Still, I wear my poppy, and I observed the minute's silence today, because I give my support and my respect to those who fight for the right reasons, and to the dwindling number who had no choice but to fight. If that necessitates allowing the bullies and the oil-grubbers to believe that they share in that respect then so be it. It's worth it to pay tribute to those who have lost their lives, their health or their loved ones in pursuit of the greater good.

At long last!

I moved house. These may be some of the nicest words I ever been able to type. After all the hassle leading up to the move, I am so relieved to be there at last. Of course there is still a lot of work to be done. How one person has managed to accumulate the sheer volume of stuff that I have is a mystery, and it's all crammed into the seeming hundreds of cardboard boxes which currently comprise the dominant decorative statement of my new pad. The fact that a goodly number of these boxes are labelled with such concise descriptions as 'clothes stuff', 'stuff' and 'little boxes of stuff' will probably not help the unpacking project. However, I already have a guest booked in for a few nights in the near future, so I have to try and enforce a little order!


Tonight will be my first night alone in the flat, now that my poor exhausted parents have escaped the weekend-long gulag experience that is helping their fretful and incompetent daughter to move house. I'm excited about coming back to what is now my home and starting my new routine. Also to pottering about over the next few weeks and making it feel like mine; all the little things like organising my kitchen cupboards the way I want them, and spreading my ever-present array of pretty but pointless knick-knacks throughout the space.

Of course, I'm fairly exhausted from such joys as the freshly smashed window over the front door, having to remove half of a different door frame to get the sofa in, and the cat catching a baby mouse in the flat on my first morning there, so it's entirely possible that I'll get home, look at the boxes and make an executive decision to just go to bed. No........I can see my mother's headteacher stare......the one that so strongly influenced my finely honed and terrifying librarian stare, and firmly declares that I must have discipline. I hereby promise I will unpack one box before dinner, another before my evening G&T, and a third before I go to bed. This way organisation lies!