Googlemas

A happy and safe Christmas to you all. Especially to Google for using kangaroos in their holiday icon today. Be safe.

Because I am a proud Australian

Q. What do Geraint Jones and Michael Jackson have in common?
A. They both wear gloves for no apparent reason

Astoundingly original and imaginative content

Because that's what you come here for, right? I aim to please.

Christmas meme

1. Hot Chocolate or Egg Nog?
Egg nog, but only at Christmas. Gingerbread lattes are preferable.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree?
Well, he doesn’t usually wrap bicycles.

3. Coloured lights on tree/house or white?
White. Small.

4. Do you hang mistletoe?
No, kisses aren’t in short supply in our house.

5. When do you put your decorations up?
Well, I wasn’t going to at all this year, but put up our tiny tree on Sunday.

6. What is your favourite Christmas dish?
Roast chicken. But since moving to the UK I have become very partial to mince pies.

7. Favourite Christmas memory?
Sitting around my aunt’s huge country table on their verandah, with the whole extended family, when I was a kid in Australia. The food was endless and the presents were fantastic.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?
When I was watching an episode of The Sullivans with my mum at the age of about 12, and two of the adult characters were saying how sad it was that Santa wouldn’t be coming to little Johnny that year. I asked mum why not. We were staying on the Sunshine Coast and she took me for a walk on the beach to explain. I was devastated, and fiercely determined that none of my younger siblings would find out. Actually…. if we were staying at the Sunshine Coast it was probably just before Christmas – what a nightmare time to find out!

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?
No.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree?
I’ve tried to start a tradition of buying one special ornament each year, and I have a couple of ornaments my nephew has given me, but we also have garish tinsel. It’s a cheerful tree.

11. Snow! Love it or dread it?
I wish we would have a white Christmas in London. Snow is still a novelty to me and the only time London looks clean (until people start walking in it).

12.Can you ice skate?
Never tried. My balance is not great so it’s probably just as well.

13. Do you remember your favourite gift?
One year the poet gave me a handmade book of all the poems he’d written for me. It must be time for an updated version! Of course, I think I was more excited the year Santa brought me a Barbie Townhouse, or maybe the Barbie Campervan… or the Barbie Beauty Salon. Those tiny curlers were so cute.

14. What’s the most important thing?
Kindness, and sparing a thought for the original Christmas and those less fortunate.

15. What is your favourite Christmas Dessert?
I hate Christmas pudding. Is there anything else?

16. What is your favourite Christmas tradition?
After Christmas Eve mass, my parents would gather us all around the piano to sing Christmas carols and hymns. I miss that.

17. What tops your tree?
A beautiful red, glittery and feathered bird I bought in Brisbane last year.

18. Which do you prefer: giving or receiving?
Giving is fun. Getting is also fun.

19. What is your favourite Christmas Song?
O Little Town of Bethlehem

20. Candy canes, yuck or yum?
Too sweet!

Gingerly

Apologies for the lack of posts. I've been busy making gingerbread people.

This fellow was an experiment using some linseed/sunflower seed/almond meal mix in the standard recipe and he and his cohort are a resounding if fattening success! Strangely good with Stilton.

And so it ends

Yesterday was a great day, more about that later

Last post for NaBloPoMo and it's a cop-out picture post, with thanks to our livingroom window sill.

Every November these plants excel themselves and shamefully I have no idea what they're called. Winter flowers are always so unexpected, and so very appreciated.

Happy Booffitaire*

Today is the poet's birthday. Today is the day he reasserts his 12-years-older-than-me-ness, after 48 days of being only 11 years older. I'm sure he's very relieved. That's far more exciting than presents.

Curiously, the number of poems in the collection he has just finished is the same as the age he will be tomorrow.

I've taken the day off work and we're heading into central London for a day of hopefully happy and cultured activities befitting a poet and his wife. First off we're going to hit the half price ticket booth in Leicester Square, to see if there's any chance of a cheap matinee musical - Les Miserables is his preference - then it's time for lunch. After lunch, If the musical doesn't pan out, we'll make our way to the National Gallery for the Velasquez exhibition. Then I'm sure we'll be hungry again, by which time we can walk over to the South Bank for dinner and Waves, a multimedia production based around Virginia Woolf's 'The Waves'.

I've taken Thursday off too. After all that culture I may need to sleep in.

Happy Booffitaire, my poet!

* 'booffitaire' = birthday, courtesy of the poet's mum's Italian accent.

Spit on this

Why do people spit on the street? Never in Australia, except maybe for a random teenage boy trying to look tough, have I seen people spitting on the streets the way they do in London. I am beyond disgusted by this.

Today, within the space of a minute, on a small side street in Camden Town, I was graced with the presence of not one but two spitters. Thankfully only one was preceded by a loud, drawn-out and juicy hawking. It took all my presence of mind not to grab the spitting idiots and promise that I would hunt them down when the flu pandemic hits because they will be guilty of malicious infection-spreading behaviour, and I hope you don't have TB because that's a really nice thing to spread too. Ok, I'm too much of a wuss to actually do it, and I'm probably just making the flu and TB things up because I'm so grossed out, but I want to every time.

Apparently this is not unusual in some Asian cities. Years ago a friend visited Hong Kong and, as well as the spitting, was stunned to see a business-suited gent lean over and calmly vomit into the gutter on his way to work. At least he used the gutter. I don't know whether to be proud or ashamed that while camping on Moreton Island in the 90's, I made my drunken stumbling way to our hole-in-the-ground toilet before I threw up. The brown snake killed not far from that spot the next day was not a happy surprise.

But I digress. Spitting is one area where the internet cannot possibly annoy me as much as real life. Internet people may use the word cliche incorrectly. They don't spray their slimy bodily fluids, accompanied by disgusting noises, over the places I want to walk.

Day 27 and counting

Blog fatigue is setting in.

This is slightly late for Thanksgiving, but I am so thankful we do not have a television right now, because every year around this time my ire is significantly raised by all the newspaper and magazine, not to mention radio, coverage of I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. Blah blah z-list celebrities blah blah witchetty grub smoothies blah blah insects blah blah ooh! a snake! blah blah jungle. Excuse me? Jungle? What jungle?

In Australia, in terms of treed spaces we have the bush, and we have the rainforest. We also have the black stump, but that's a story for another day. We have scrub. We have national forests. What is this 'jungle'? We have no jungle in Australia*. I guess to the poor little British celebs anything that doesn't come enclosed by garden walls is pretty scary and may seem jungle-like, but come on, Jason Donovan is in there this year. I know he's no Aussie pin up (anymore), but doesn't he have the balls to stand up and say, 'NO, Ant and Dec, you freaky freaksters, as an Australian I know not of this jungle you are forever mentioning. We are in the bush, dudes!'

Imagine how annoyed I'd be if I actually watched the show.

* I don't care what the actual definition of a jungle is and whether it matches the Australian environment in which this show is filmed. All I know is that I have never ever heard an Australian describe any part of Australia as jungle.

Web writing nag number 1

People, you cannot say that something is ‘cliché’. Cliché is a noun. Either say that it is ‘a cliché’, or that it is ‘clichéd’.
I thank you.

Blog to die for

http://cupcakeblog.com/

With photography to match. Yum!

Un-PC

I get a completely inappropriate buzz from writing notes on post-its emblazoned with the name of an antipsychotic.

The Hello Project

My hometown is Brisbane, the capital city of Queensland, Australia. Also known as Brisvegas, Brisboring and Brisneyland. When I worked in advertising in Brisbane, colleagues from the ‘big smokes’ of Sydney and Melbourne would sometimes comment that it was more like a big country town than a city. Certainly from the vantage point of having lived in London for 8.5 years, I can see their point. We have skyscrapers and busy streets in Brisbane, but the ambience is not that of a big city. Thank goodness.

One of the things I love about Brisbane is that people say hello to and smile at strangers. Not just in the suburbs, but in the heart of the CBD too. Not all the time and not everywhere, but it happens. It’s one of the things I miss most about home – the friendliness. I really enjoy walking through the streets of the centre of town and smiling and saying hello to random people, it gives me a real buzz and makes me feel connected. Maybe if I lived in a small community like a village in the UK it might be similar, but the big city vibe of London is certainly not friendly, and rather isolationist.

Which is why I started to say hello to strangers here, on the streets of North London (even I’m not masochistic enough to try it on Oxford Street, on the rare occasions I venture into that hellhole). I’ve had many and varied reactions – from surprise, a quick smile and muttered ‘hello’, through complete shock and a look of disgust, to blank looks and being completely ignored. I invariably walk away with a broad smile – sometimes because of the look on the face of the person I’ve just so completely discombobulated, other times because they’ve responded in kind. I persevere, if only because it amuses me to make some people realise that the figures passing them on the street are real live human beings who might (shock!) actually want to interact with them.

Hence the Hello Project. My most successful venture so far has been saying hello to a little old guy I used to see almost every weekday morning on the way to the train station. He’d be coming back from the corner shop with his newspaper, and I’d be walking to catch the train for work. That first morning, just before he passed me, I said ‘hello’ and smiled. He was completely taken aback and kind of choked, staring at me. I smiled to myself and kept walking. The next morning, I did it again, and he tentatively murmured ‘hello’. I kept at it for weeks, occasionally using the rather more British ‘good morning’, and before long I could see him registering my presence from the end of the street: he straightened up and a little bounce came into his step. He would say ‘hello’ cheerfully with a big smile in response to my greeting, and we would both continue with our day, at least one of us (me) heartened by our contact. I haven’t seen him for over a year now, and I miss our ‘hello’s’.

The poet and I are so close to booking our flights to Australia for 2007. I can’t wait to be back in the land where not one person gives you a dirty look for smiling at them.

Perks

One of the perks of being married to a poet is getting to work and finding in my bag a framed poem, written to me while I lay sleeping early this morning.

Autonono

What is it with the rash of relative youngsters writing ‘autobiographies’? I’m 36, and while I may not be a celebrity or have a jetsetting life, I know that it would be a rare person my age who could write a decent autobiography. Even someone who’s been kept hostage by aliens in a cave for 5 years - that could be a good book, but it wouldn’t necessarily be an autobiography.

We have the likes of Billie Piper, Jordan and Kerry Katona, none of whom has reached the ripe old age of 30, cluttering up the bookstores with their 'autobiographies' while I can imagine there are scores of older, better writers who are hard pressed to get their work published. David Beckham, Jade Goody and Gary Barlow - what exactly am I meant to take away from their recounting of their lives so far? And that's just the UK. Damn this celebrity-obsessed culture, and a publishing world dictated by marketing.

The best autobiographies I've read were written by those in their 60’s, 70’s, 80’s or older. In my opinion, Sharon Osbourne should have waited another 20 years, although I'm sure her book is entertaining. I want to read books by people who have actually lived, have seen the world change, have maybe had children, grandchildren, changed careers…. People who have had the time to look back and reflect on their life, not just write a retrospective diary. Or, even better, have it ghost-written. And yet Wayne bloody Rooney gets £5 million for a five-book deal. He’s, what, 21?

So, youngish celebrities, listen up. If you must share your stories, and the tabloid mags won’t interview you often enough, write a blog. Charge for it if money is an incentive – your fans will pay. You’ll save so many trees and with all that writing practice you might even write a decent autobiography in 50 years time.

I'll let Lucie Cave, ghostwriter of Jade Goody's book, have the (almost) last word:

All of these people who emerge from shows like Big Brother now know just how much they can sell their first interview for. They're far more clued-up than ever before. The celebrity autobiography is a natural extension of that. It's become the must-have accessory for anyone who's reached a certain level of fame.

Maybe that's my gripe. I don't want to read an accessory.

Day Twenty

I guess if I had done Nanowrimo, I might have 2/3 of a novel sitting in front of me right now. 2/3 of a very bad and completely unpublishable novel, that is. At least my blog amuses me.

Read this article in the Guardian yesterday. I find it hard to believe (but also strangely plausible) that in some parts of child-soccer-playing America, parents and coaches are not allowed to keep score. Nobody wins or loses.

There's also a school district where, in gym class, the children are jumping rope for exercise - but without a rope. They don't want the kids who trip over the rope to feel bad and lose precious self-esteem. By removing the actual rope, kids can simply pretend to jump rope, and no kid gets embarrassed.

Or every kid gets embarrassed.

Dweck found that in America, 85% of parents think that telling your kids "you're so smart" was an important thing to say and did it daily. Unwittingly, they were depriving their children of what really mattered - the conviction that an industrious work ethic will bring them success. Confidence might breed success, but artificial confidence doesn't. It actually lowers ambition.

Of course if every kid in the class gets a gold star, gold stars won't mean anything. And no one is going to feel good about themselves for getting a gold star, not even the kids who have done well. In fact, the kid with the best self esteem in that class might just be the one who got the smiley face sticker when the teacher (omg disaster!) ran out of gold stars. Because she's obviously special. Right? Smiley stickers will be coveted.

How can people start out with the best intentions and get it so wrong? I've been reading this excellent book and I really like the author's take on how we've gone wrong with self-esteem.

Our schools today are full of ... programs that reward kids with everything from gold stars on up for what are really minor or insignificant achievements. Today's parents are cautioned not to be critical of their children under any circumstances; the message is that unconditional love and acceptance build self-esteem. But the flaw in this logic is obvious. True self-esteem requires an accurate appraisal of one's own abilities in comparison to those of others. With a healthy sense of self, you can accept your weaknesses... There are real differences in abilities, which are rewarded differentially by life. Unconditional acceptance seeks to deny those differences and build a phony self-esteem, vulnerable to puncture by life's experiences. (Richard O'Connor, Ph.D.)

Praise our kids, yes. But don't praise them for every little thing and for everything equally so that they never learn the value of their efforts.

From the Guardian article again:

Generation Zero was raised in this culture, with Dr Frankenstein's results. Case in point: today, 94% of high school seniors believe they are going to college. That's their plan, their ambition. But only 63% of them will actually enrol. That gap between their plan and reality has never been wider. And 64% believe they will have a career as a "working professional," when just less than 20% will.

They've been given inflated ambitions, without being taught the necessity of effort. They are unequipped to respond to failure.

Phew, I've never been so glad to be a Generation Xer. My self-esteem might be a little low at times, but it's mostly realistic.

Ever been given the evil eye by a goldfish? Me neither, until today.

I swear I fed him as usual.

Autumn days

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
(Albert Camus)

10 things about me

(From a meme from Adri)

1) I adore stationery shops, expecially the ones with art supplies and myriad colours and textures of paper. I could spend hours, and thousands of pounds, in a good one.

2) I am irritated by and feel sad for people who spend their entire journey on public transport glued to their mobile phones. Serial callers who hang up from one call and immediately dial someone else, as though they cannot bear to be alone (or in public) in silence. I don't have a mobile phone, it would interrupt my reading.

3) The best mobile phone ringtone I have ever heard was the very realistic croaking of a frog. I was sure that guy was going to pull a frog out of his bag.

4) I don't pay enough notice to expiration and best before dates. The poet, however, will hunt for the latest date, but this is not about him.

5) I am perturbed by the fact that we only have one original copy of our marriage certificate. I envision scenes at Heathrow Customs, desperately trying to prove that I am married to a British citizen and entitled to live here, even if they took back my indefinite leave to remain visa.

6) I have a hot water bottle at work. I also used to keep one at work in Brisbane, where the semi-tropical climate made me look a real weirdo.

7) I've only been drunk on gin once and I will never touch the stuff again. Too many tears.

8) I started adding raw garlic slices to my sandwiches a couple of weeks ago to combat a nagging cold. Now I can't stop. Sandwiches taste too bland without it.

9) I don't suffer martyrs gladly.

10) I loved calculus at school. Now all I remember is enough to help me work out exchange rates.

Call me Germaine *

Apparently I have a limp.

One of the girls at work today asked me if my leg was hurting, because she noticed me limping. My leg wasn't hurting, and I didn't know I was limping**, although come to think of it, my thighs felt rather tight. In a not-good way as opposed to lean, toned thighs. I think I used to have some of those.

But then I am the queen of tight muscles - the muscles in the side of my calves are so tight that I can sprain a ligament in my foot just by stretching it the wrong way. Go me! I discovered this a couple of weeks ago after my foot felt a bit funny and 'stuck' one afternoon, and gradually became more and more painful until I couldn't walk on it and almost fainted in the Indian takeaway after I limped there in search of spicy comfort. (Curry, in case you were wondering. As opposed to Asian porn.) One emergency trip to the osteopath that night (thanks to my brother-in-law for driving me), the pain diminishing even in the waiting room, a diagnosis of slightly sprained ligaments***, and by the next morning I could walk again. This was a bonus as the previous night I had resorted to crawling up the stairs and coming down them on my bottom. I had hoped to not have to do that at work.

So, limping. Another friend at work asked me some time ago whether I was limping one day as we walked somewhere together. I hadn't been aware of it, but I sure am now.

Anyway, here's hoping it's only slight, otherwise how have I got to the age of 36 without anyone telling me I have a limp?!

* Germaine Greer has a limp. But then I wouldn't have noticed, considering I didn't even know I have one.

** Limp is a very strange word/part of a word. Especially when it's used as many times as I have used it in this post. Do you get that with words - look at the same word often enough in a short period of time and it just looks all wrong?

*** This year has seen me injure my feet an incredible 4 times. Two 'broken' toes (didn't have xrays but medical opinion seemed to think so), one badly sprained ligament that didn't heal for about 10 weeks (caused by stubbing my toe! wtf?) and now this latest fleeting sprain. Which hurt like hell and had me whimpering and clutching at my foot when I wasn't crawling home from the Indian takeaway. It wasn't agony, like the ovarian cyst pain I've had, but it was intense. And then it wasn't.

I need to work on relaxing my calves to help with the ligament issues, but apart from incredibly painful massage, there seem to be no exercises that really stretch those muscles. Any ideas?

It's in the bag

... because you all care so much, this is what is in my handbag today.

Various lipsticks
Lipbalm
Body Shop perfume roll-on
Eyeliner x 2
Mascara
Gum and gum wrappers
A post- it note emblazoned with 'Collect Master'
Watch with broken strap
Monthly travelcard
NHS ID
Earplugs!
Sunglasses wallet
Keys with personal alarm keychain that invariably goes off when I yank my key from my bag
Cinema tickets for The Grudge 2 and Scenes of a Sexual Nature
Mirror broken off from a used-up compact - classy
And my purse (wallet), which is a whole other world of junk.

Toilet paper

Sorry, but I need to disagree with H. Champ's toilet paper protocol. The 'tongue' should always be on the outside. Aesthetically this pleases me, because it doesn't look as though the toilet paper is trying to hide. Why is it trying to hide from me?! What evilness lurks behind the roll?! I do not trust my toilet paper, so it must always be in this more visible position. I feel so strongly about this that I take the toilet roll off and put it back on if the poet does it the wrong way. Blame my superstitious nature.

Also, please note that the tags and hems on towels should always be folded inside the towel, when the towel is being stored, or if it is folded on a towel rail. You should dry yourself with the inside of the towel, i.e. the side the tag is sewn into, the side the hems are exposed on. Unless you are just drying your face in passing, in which case it is fine to use the outside of the towel. Teatowels should also be folded with their hems inside. This is very important and the fate of small countries depends on your following the rule correctly. And, it's neater!

(Yes, I have just been flicking through Nobody Cares What You Had For Lunch in search of blogspiration. I did not make up the towel bit just to fit in.)

Ha!

I knew I should have gone to an event with free wine on Saturday night rather than one with cups of tea where you have to wash your own cup afterwards!

I missed NaDruWriNi.

(thanks to M. Kennedy at Fussy for pointing to it)

I am dead of brain after a 7am start and a day of sitting on reception at an event organised by our trust. I think eating two danishes this morning may have made things worse.

So, why don't you have a look at Cristina's blog. She's an amazing artist and illustrator.

How do you like them apples?

The best thing about having an apple tree that leans into your back garden so that half of it is on your property, is that you do nothing, and end up with all of these delicious apples for free. Then again, the people who actually own it don’t need to water or fertilise or spray it either. The birds get some, but so what. The tree does all the work and we reap the benefits of crisp, sweet apples for several months a year. If it was on my side of the fence I’d hug it.

Winter is starting to settle in, now that the clocks have gone back and days are shorter. We’ve had mostly bright blue-sky days of late, which is heartening. At this time of year, I’m always trying to hold on to the warmer, brighter weather, in whatever way I can. I try to smell every garden rose I see, ignoring the faint scent of decay that is beginning to creep in, breathing in every particle of fragrance that still lingers in the cold petals. Honeysuckle, one of my favourite flowers since I was a child (mainly because it tastes so good!) is still blooming in a park I pass on my way to work, and each day I pluck a flower. The flowers are, amazingly to me, still sweet.

Last night we went to a local Italian restaurant to celebrate the poet’s mother’s 84^th birthday. She’s the only person I know who will seriously admonish anyone who buys her a gift.

Tonight I’m completing a week of fairly arty social outings – the private view, Rilke reading – with the Perdika Press launch. Perdika was created by a couple of the poet’s literary friends, and the poet, as an independent small poetry press to publish quality poetry. The launch tonight is at Salisbury House in Enfield, a short bus ride from our house. I hope there’s a good turnout, and they sell plenty of books, or rather, pamphlets, which are shorter than books and less expensively produced. But most of all, I hope it lives up to the other events this week and has free wine! When we visited the real Perdika, last year on the Greek island of Aegina, the wine was particularly special.

Oh (she says, prompted by Google's logo), looks like I forgot it was Remembrance Day today. At 11am this morning I was at the hairdresser. I want to say something like 'oops' but what is there that doesn't sound flip and disrespectful?

The Big Bad Book

Remind me not to read any more James Patterson books. When I'm ill (like with this cold that I've struggled against now for over two weeks) I tend to raid the library for easy to read thrillers - my favourites are Patricia Cornwell, and lately Tess Gerritsen. Serial killers, police, FBI, forensics, bring it on. I find Stephen King books quite relaxing too, particularly the older ones.

And yet James Patterson... I seem to forget every time how crap a writer he actually is. Somehow he manages to keep a story going, keep me interested, throw in enough of the vaguely interesting detective work and crime-fighting jargon at the same time as I'm retching at his prose. I mean how are these sentences even published?:

I sat there very quietly, and I held in a primal scream that would have shattered all the glass in the office.

The golden rule of writing, Show, don't tell obviously means nothing to this guy.

I can't find the quote now, but he uses the word 'de-spirited'. The word is dispirited, James.

I noticed that in recent years he's co-written several books (I hesitate to call them novels, although in this month of Nanowrimo I guess anything goes), maybe the quality of those is better?

James Patterson is such a prolific writer, and Alex Cross is such a familiar character, that fans, and those new to this series, are bound to enjoy the latest addition to the Alex Cross/Will Lee novels.

Yeah, because we all know the more prolific a writer, the better. Right?

This review snippet from Amazon's German site says it better than I have:

James Patterson is the literary equivalent to a five-course dinner at your local fast-food restaurant. Meaning: it probably won't kill you, but there are certainly better ways to enjoy yourself. Patterson novels come in small bites. There are 121 chapters in 2nd Chance, each of them rarely more than two pages long. So, the book consists of a surprising amount of empty and half-empty pages. This might agree with readers afflicted with a short attention span. They won't have a problem finding the page where they fell asleep the night before. It is rather irritating to readers who are used to regarding a novel's division into chapters...as part of the story's construction. Between the empty pages there is regrettably a lot of mediocre if not bad writing. " Political correct " cartoon characters and dialogue that seems to come straight from " Writing by Numbers " are quite annoying.

Not that I'm necessarily opposed to a bit of bad but strangely engaging fiction once in a while. I've read a fair number of Patterson's books, each time wondering why. As opposed to all the Buffy the Vampire Slayer books I read a couple of years ago when I was anxious and depressed. Literary valium. Highly recommended.

So who else is married to a poet?

I decided to google ‘married to a poet’, to see what other people might be writing on the subject and get some ideas for posts.

The first hit was http://baconandehs.blogspot.com/2004/08/im-married-to-poet.html. An ode to a stye. Interesting, but not compelling, and obviously not particularly representative of that particular blog. Onwards to Sylvia Plath, that most famous (among feminists at least) of poet’s wives, a phenomenal poet herself - an unsurprising find. Plath and her husband Ted Hughes make many appearances in my little google-trawl. Alice Notley married a poet. When he died, she married another poet. She also wrote poetry, and one of her collections is titled Waltzing Matilda, which endears her to this Australian blogger immediately.

Maybe ‘how to marry a poet’ might yield more interesting results? Yes, we have a news article from 2004 about some woman planning to marry a dead French poet, a poem (what else) entitled I think that I shall marry a poet, and a ballet, La Esmeralda, where Esmeralda consents to marry the poet Gringoire to save him from death. Much like my situation really.

And finally, the definitive site I was looking for - Yahoo Answers on ‘would you marry a mathematician or a poet?’ (I managed a physicist and a poet, in the same marriage). I wonder if these people (12 year olds no doubt) actually know any real poets?

Poet, they tend to be more gentle, and caring

i would marry the poet, because well he would be writing me poetry

in my opinion poet. it means he's romantic and has a softer side

From their answers, I’m thinking not. Not that I haven’t had poems written for me, but these answers just scream of poet clichés – romantic, caring, gentle. Poets are people. They’re angry, cheerful, sad, jealous, bitchy, loving, sullen, funny and sometimes boring, just like the rest of us.

Rilke

I would like to step out of my heart and go walking beneath the enormous sky.

When I first started reading poetry, long before I met the poet, this line by Rainer Maria Rilke, the German poet, caught at my heart. During a particularly melancholy period I decided on this line as my epitaph. These days I’m not so focused on the grave all the time!

Tonight we went to a reading and launch for one of the poet’s friends who has just published a translation of Rilke’s The Duino Elegies. The reading was held in a wonderful independent bookshop, Crockatt and Powell, near Waterloo station, a bookseller of the kind that is sadly becoming increasingly rare thanks to the empires of Borders, Waterstones and Amazon. My favourite quirky touch was the assortment of intriguing and beautiful bookmarks scattered through the shelves and tables of books. And they have a blog!

We read in the tube and the bus on the way home, delving into the very accessible introduction by a German scholar, becoming absorbed in the elegies, and I wondered why I had never really followed up that first Rilke moment, why I had read bits and pieces over the years but never a whole book. This is changing as I write, I’ll be carrying this book around with me for some time. Rilke’s poetry is breathtaking, and this is a fine translation, as you might expect from a fine poet like Martyn. Even though my knowledge of German is fairly rudimentary, having the German text facing means I can both entertain myself and get a sense of the rhythm the poet intended, reading aloud on the bus like your average German-speaking literate London loony.

And how bewildered is any creature
that is womb-born and yet has to fly.
As if frightened of itself, it must hurtle
through the air the way a crack goes
through a tea-cup – so a bat’s track
streaks through the porcelain of evening. (Eighth Elegy)

Spent tonight at a private view of a new show by Suzanne Treister in Chelsea. I have an artist friend from Australia who's staying in London for a few months thanks to winning an residency from the Australia Council. Suzanne is a friend of a friend of this friend so we all went along together, had some free wine and ate good Cypriot food afterwards.

In 1995 Suzanne Treister created the fictional alter ego Rosalind Brodsky, a delusional time traveller who believes herself to be working at the Institute of Militronics and Advanced Time Interventionality (IMATI) in the twenty-first century.

HEXEN2039 charts Brodsky's scientific research towards the development of new mind control technologies for the British Military. This work uncovers or constructs links between conspiracy theories, occult groups, Chernobyl, witchcraft, the US film industry, British Intelligence agencies, Soviet brainwashing, behaviour control experiments of the US Army and recent practices of its Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command (PSYOP), in light of alarming new research in contemporary neuroscience...

Lots of intricate and interconnecting drawings and sketches, tiny handwriting and the overwhelming sense that this was just the tip of the iceberg of a really quite interesting and involved conspiracy theory about the involvement of the occult in the military. There must be some kind of written thesis somewhere, because the detail is phenomenal. Or maybe a whole library of theses.

(ok, I didn't actually post this until Wed morning, which is bad and wrong, but I swear it was written in my head and I didn't get the chance to physically post until the morning after)

I read recently that Amazon are selling a book by Jim Crace which he hasn't actually written. Nor is he planning to write it, although if he chose to, they could tell him how many pages to aim for (224). He's ordered a copy and is eagerly awaiting what arrives in the post. And oh look - you can buy it too. Might be a rather long wait for that particular pre-order.

After a couple of mind-numbing hours poring over tiny complicated figures in Excel spreadsheets we can no longer pretend to understand, helping the poet prepare his tax for his accountant, I've got nothing for you but relief that we didn't argue like we usually do when using the computer (he doesn't get multi-tasking).

Also, my feet are frozen. When I first came to the UK from semi-tropical Queensland I believed the myth that central heating means you wear skimpy clothes all year round, because it's warm! Inside! But no, not for you the eternal indoor sunshine, not unless you can afford huge gas bills. So it's sexy thick socks and hot water bottles for me when I'm on the net, and now time to have a bath. With a shower afterwards, because it is impossible for me to be clean when I am sitting in the water my dirt has washed off in. Not that I'm dirty. But I'm all for the rinsing.

When Harry met Matthew

My favourite little boy in the world met his new cousin (and my new nephew, born last Sunday) today. As always, I wish I could have been there as I'm not going to see either of the little blighters until May.

The poet and I are going slightly mad under the exploding skies, and after having seen Borat this afternoon we're heading back to the cinema, freshly roasted chestnuts in our pockets, to watch The Grudge 2. I expect nothing wonderful, just the presence of Sarah Michelle Gellar is enough to render it worthy of my attention.

Skyfire

Tonight the cold skies over London are a battlefield - explosions, whizzing, shrieking coloured lights. Guy Fawkes night. And over all a pall of thick grey smoke. That's the worst thing about being out on a night like this, not the noise, or the threat of marauding teens brandishing firecrackers, but the chemical soup that passes for air. It's a clear night, but there are no stars.

The poet's mother was a refugee in wartime Italy, her village and the surrounding countryside decimated by the Allies and the Germans, who holed up in the monastery at Montecassino. One day a shell exploded in a cooking pot next to her, and she saw too many civilians blown to pieces. On nights like these I wonder whether, holed up in her cosy living room, she's taken back to that time, if the explosions in the sky frighten her the way they freak the neighbourhood cats and dogs. Even our goldfish is hiding in his glass jar within the aquarium.

I much prefer fireworks in Australia, where you have to have a permit, and so generally the only fireworks you see are big organised, orchestrated extravaganzas like Brisbane's Riverfire. Amazing spectacles, the best fireworks set to music and handled by experts. Safely. Here, anyone over a certain age can legally buy as many fireworks as they like, and so you get kids throwing firecrackers at each other and passersby, little raggedy 'displays' in every second back garden, and as far as I can see, there's no real excitement about the wonder of these beautiful explosions. They're so readily available (new shops open up at this time every year just to sell fireworks and then close down once the season's over) that they're not special. People start with the fireworks some time in August (Diwali?) and you're not guaranteed a quiet night until after New Year's Eve. And then there's the safety issue - people are injured and blinded by fireworks every year.

As a child at Brisbane's Ekka (the yearly Royal National Show), I was awed by the sparkling, fizzing lights in the nightly firework show. I still feel that way when I see a good fireworks display. I look up into tonight's sky, with the occasional unfolding sparkling flower, or glittering tower of light, but mostly just a lot of bangs and nothing to see through the smoke, and all I feel is irritation at the pollution and annoyance at the noise. Bah humbug!

Two sugars, optional 'please'

I work as a personal assistant in the NHS (National Health Service). Without a doubt it's the busiest job I've ever had, but I also work with some incredibly caring people, many of whom are nurses, and overall they're the best group of people I've ever worked with.

I've been unwell for the last week and a bit, culminating in my taking yesterday off work as a virus wreaked its worst on me. I was back in my office today, croaky-voiced and coughing, One of the directors I work for popped her head in to say sympathetically how terrible I looked.

I was caught completely unaware when, in the same breath, she asked "any chance of a cup of tea?" So much for sympathy.

Sophie who?

Those generally sensible people at The Guardian have, in their infinite journalistic wisdom, seen fit to give over a quarter of a page each week in the Weekend magazine to a 'story' from Sophie Dahl.

You may know of Miss Dahl as the British model most famous for being rather larger than the average fashion model, size 14 or something and rightly praised for her curves. Until of course she decided to become rather skinny after all and now just looks like any model.

But wait, all is not lost for the girl who apparently inspired the character of Sophie (the giant's helper) in her grandfather Roald Dahl's book The BFG. She published a novella in 2003, which I have not read, and it seems that this, and having a grandfather who was a good writer is reason enough for the Guardian to commission her to fill a quarter page each week with frankly average prose. Or could I be cynical enough to think that the reason her novella found a publisher was due to, I don't know, her name? I don't know whether these 'stories' have been cut for length and that is why they are not actually stories but scenes, but I am disappointed that despite the wealth of good short prose writers in Britain, many of them unknown to the general public, The Guardian has spotlighted the writing of someone seemingly for who they are rather than how they write.

Indeed, why publish the same writer each week? - why not give us a taste of someone different in every issue. There is certainly no shortage of writers out there. Many of whom could come up with a better, cliche-free sentence than "James and Bee ran to the front door, eliciting a volley of laughter from the doorman of the next-door building." Or "Lola looked down, feigning shyness, but in her bones she already felt Fortune's smile."

She's not a bad writer. She's just not very good. Like any writer, she needs to work hard to become good. Unfortunately for her, with a grandfather like Roald Dahl, she's always going to have her work judged against his. Except, it seems, by The Guardian.

Viral nostalgia

Well, my blog's not on the list over at NaBloPoMo yet, but I promise I emailed last week.

I have been fighting an evil cold since last Thursday and am currently drugged up on paracetamol, sudafed, vitamin c and garlic. I'll be safe from vampires, if they even wanted my virus-laden blood. I've been missing my hometown over the last few days, as my sister gave birth to her first baby and my second nephew there on Sunday, but I'm thinking they wouldn't let me near a newborn baby anyway so it's just as well I'm safely thousands of miles away.

I like to eat garlic sandwiches when I have a cold (not at work, even I have a modicum of sense); I need something with a strong taste to power through my sluggish tastebuds as well as giving my immune system a boost. But I only realised my garlic consumption (even sans virus) was impressive when the poet's Italian mother, when given home-grown garlic by a friend, said 'I'll give most of this to (the poet), his girlfriend really likes garlic.' For an Italian to say that.... Strangely, I haven't noticed garlic breath the way I used to when I didn't eat much. Maybe my body's become better at processing it, or, more likely, my olfactory gland was overloaded and I stink. Whatever. I still manage a social life and a marriage.

Saw 'The History Boys' last night and thoroughly enjoyed it - the 80's music, the scenes in Hector's classroom, and most of all the educational nostalgia. Sure, I used to make myself sick over exams and had a persistent mild bully, but otherwise it was just so easy - all we needed to do well was to work hard. Everything was mapped out for us and there was just so much to learn, so many wonderful books and new experiences. I don't know that I've since matched the satisfaction of working out a complex mathematical proof (not that I was great at maths, just methodical). It was all so safe.

Time is a great one for rose-coloured glasses.

Fiendish

The really scary thing about The Devil Wears Prada?

There are people out there who empathise more with the character of Emily than with Andy.

I think I sat next to one in the cinema.

NaBloPoMo

Thanks to Eden over at Fussy, I've signed up for NaBloPoMo (well, I've emailed saying I want in). It makes more sense to me to commit to posting once every day in November than it does to attempt to write an entire novel over the same time period. Must be the perfectionist in me, but I don't want to write a novel unless it's good, and it won't be good if I write it in four weeks.

Say what?

Ah, the intelligence of our local discount retailers. Maybe they're targeting the very niche market of Mary and Joseph?

Xenophobic christmas cake

Favourite things for autumn

A.M. Homes' novels.
Green Wing - funniest television show ever! This year.*
Winter-weight duvets.
Secretly planting masses of tulip bulbs, hoping to surprise the poet, who warned that tulips are difficult to grow. **

Not so favourite:

* Against my better judgement, I have a slight crush on Guy.
** Fending off bulb-nibbling squirrels.

Cutest slightly gross photo ever

Complete with hardworking green finger.

Not remotely interested

I just realised that the poet and I do not have a single remote control in our house. We don't have a television - we watch DVDs on my pc, and the tv's usually on when we visit his family, so we don't totally escape - and our several stereos are all remote-free. I'm not sure what other appliances even have remote controls.

And just to make us seem too completely out of touch with the modern world to be real, neither of us have mobile phones either. This was a choice, we don't actually need them, and someone's got to keep BT's payphones in business. Also, I am slightly paranoid about the whole radiation-brain thing.

The no television though, that was a bone of contention when the poet first asked me to move in with him. I didn't think I could handle not having a television, even just for 'company' when I was reading or writing, and I did miss Buffy intensely for about the first year. My mother encouraged me to buy a small set and keep it hidden in a cupboard when he was around. My mother! The women who rationed my siblings' and my viewing so fiercely when we were youngsters and wouldn't let us watch The Goodies.

Since then, though, I love not having a television in the house. I love that the focal points in our living room are (a) the aquarium and (b) a well-stocked bookcase. I really enjoy reading rather than sinking in front of the set and turning my brain off. Also, and this is probably the reason for the ban in the first place - the poet is a bit of a television junkie in that his eyes glaze over and he becomes deaf if he's watching it. I like him better when he's not like that. Actually, we can thank his choice of profession for our lack of domestic television - he said that when you put down a book and start writing, you're coming from a completely different, and more useful for his kind of writing, place than if you've just switched off the box after a hard session of Eastenders or Coronation Street. Speaking of which, what is it about British soaps that they have to be so grim and dreary and everyone is so unattractive? Learn from Australia, chaps, Neighbours and Home & Away might have the same crappy storylines, but the characters are young (mostly)! And good looking (mostly)! And there are beaches! They leave you with a good feeling, whereas a dose of British soap, leaves me wondering why I ever thought I could be happy in the UK when clearly no one else is.

Besides, watching television series on DVD is far more satisfying. When everyone else was complaining that Lost was boring and frustrating because nothing ever happens, I was quite content because if you're watching one episode after another in a short space of time, LOTS of things happen.

Fall, so called

If you happen to be in North London and you see a female someone in pigtails (or not) meandering crazily but with purpose down the footpath, it's probably me. Not drunk, not stoned, not having balance issues, just indulging my love of stomping on dry brown crunchy autumn leaves. Set me free to run down the Mall to dear old Buckingham Palace on a sunny day in October and I am in heaven.

And the drunken yet purposeful look? Autumn leaves don't tend to fall in straight lines where I live.

Not falling on my head

England, I am liking you at the moment.

This new thing you're doing with the weather, where it rains hard and thunderstorms at night, and then doesn't rain during the daytime? Is kind of warm and sometimes even sunny during the daytime? In autumn?

Why haven't you thought of this before?

Missing

I've spent about four days with the poet in the last month. All but one was a work day, so that would be four brief mornings while I scrambled to get ready for work and he tried to pretend it wasn't time to get up, and three evenings (me being otherwise engaged in therapeutic matters on Thursdays). Ah, and the sleeping time - remind me not to get too used to having the bed to myself next time he goes away. All those elbows and knees in my space, dammit!

Add to these brief interludes the fact that his usual poet workaholic-busyness was at a peak due to the time away from his desk (I should mention that the poet doesn't only write poetry, he also writes articles and essays and does a lot of teaching, so a desk is necessary for some of those activities), and you get a slightly disgruntled new wife who misses her new husband. It is of course completely irrelevant that we lived together for 6 years before we got married...

His mercy dash to Italy where his mum was taken ill (she's fine now after surgery for a hernia) took him away for two weeks and a day, not that I was counting, and then a few days later he headed off to Spain for seven days, teaching on a residential creative writing workshop. To be fair, it's harder on him than on me, he's putting the finishing touches to his latest book and it all keeps getting delayed further. Poor thing, and now he's having to put up with all that sun and sangria.

I have rediscovered the wimpy, unreconstructed needy chick in me though. Seriously, two days of not hearing from him due to phones not being available at the right time, my calling just after he left for somewhere etc etc and I am verging on weepy. One little call, one dose of his voice, and things are rosy again. I am so ashamed.

Still, there have been laughs. Like the time I called his aunt's house (the poet's family's house does not have a phone as it's only occupied a couple of weeks a year) to speak with him and the only person home was his (curiously attractive) 70-odd-year-old uncle. Who does not speak English. Not one word. And while I did do a night course in Italian a while back, it didn't really take. Thank goodness 'ok' seems to be universally understood.

And I did love the way the poet answered the phone (when he knew it was me) with 'hello'. In an Italian accent.

Come home soon poet. And stay a while. I promise not to kick you too many times when I'm trying to get comfortable and you are taking up the entire bed...

Lucky

We Western types may find more than enough to gripe and moan about on our little internet soapboxes, but I'll be so bold as to venture that we're not likely to see a headline reading

Torture fear for blogger

about an American, British or Commonwealth web writer any time soon.

Unlike the poor souls in Syria.

You learn something new every day

Found outside Tesco today. I wasn't aware there was a precious metals aisle?

Evil?

The tabloid press in this country disgust me.

Yesterday's Daily Mirror headline: Living Dead: Ian Huntley looks out at the world, dazed and drugged but still with evil in his eyes.

[Ian Huntley is the killer of two little girls in the 'Soham murders', who recently made a second suicide bid in jail]

Evil in his eyes? Oh yeah? If he was evil, why would he try to kill himself - surely he'd just be sitting in his cell going Mu-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah, My evil shall not be foiled by mere prison walls... He did a terrible thing, and I'm all for his incarceration for life, but I don't purport to be able to see evil in someone's eyes, particularly in a photograph. Yet the Daily Mirror does. I find it insulting that readers are meant to look at this picture, read the headline and go ooh, yeah, look how evil. And that so many of them will.

It's beyond frightening that so many people buy these papers as an actual source of news, and seem incapable of thinking for themselves. Witness: this and of course the ever-growing Islamophobia.

And where was The Sun in all of this, I hear you ask. Far more civilised, of course. Short and sweet: Better Luck Next Time.

Overheard

One London Underground employee to another:

That's what I'm trying to tell you - no two trains are the same. Not even the same train stays the same.

Big up my biscuit!

We take snacks to their limit! boasts Pimp That Snack. Take your average everyday chocolate bar or biscuit and pump up the volume. Not to mention the heart disease.

Current pimping projects include the Scone Fit for Elton John (take the ingredients for 160 normal scones..... add jam and cream), and The Mother of All [blue] Smarties, weighing in at 2kg.

Or maybe you're more of an Oreo type?

R.I.P.

It’s not often that the death of a public figure really hits me. I remember where I was when I heard about River Phoenix, and Kurt Cobain (the bathroom, both times). And of course Princess Diana (at a picnic at Brisbane's Southbank). Somehow, when it’s an Australian, it hits harder. This morning I received an email from my mother saying that Steve Irwin died today.

Steve found fame as the Crocodile Hunter, in the television series of the same name, and ran Australia Zoo on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, where the poet and I shared an enormous ‘Crikey’ sundae and patted wallabies three years ago

I thought he was great, not afraid to be a bit of a dag (caring more about what he did than how he looked), passionate about the animals he helped, and totally in love with his wife and kids. A really decent guy. And bloody funny on television.

And the irony of the way he died, not wrestling a crocodile or teasing a snake, but a freak accident while snorkelling - he got a bit too close to a normally docile stingray and its barb went straight into his heart. He was apparently taking a break from his own filming to get some footage for his little daughter’s show.

Maybe he shouldn’t have taken the kinds of risks he did when he had small children, and maybe he has toned it down since he became a father. That’s his and his wife’s business. He could have retired from the hands-on conservation work and died in a car accident.

Someone else from Brisbane said it all: It's very sad and we are very upset. Australia just lost a bloody good bloke.