Gratuitous Anya post

Yes, I am actually a 14 year old girl living in 2003. And proud of it.

The Buffy Project - part 2

The poet is still addicted (less so than me, he gets bored with the non-fighty episodes) and I am starting to get sad because we have only one more disc to watch of the entire series. Three, maybe four episodes and it's all over. Is it just me, or when you really enjoy a television series, does it become like an alternative universe to you - the characters you love or hate do actually exist out there somewhere?

Sigh. Soon, no more Anya to adore from the wrong side of the DVD player. No more Buffy's clothes to study and sometimes covet. No more camp Andrew - how amused am I that he's become a regular character? No more occasionally irritating Willow and increasingly chubby Xander. No more Giles.... but wait! Do I detect the stirrings of a BBC television film (please let it be a series) in the wings? Or will I be reduced to starting the whole process over again with the Angel series, in hopes that Buffy characters will make regular visits, or that Cordelia will remind me of Anya?

And my lovely lovely favourite character dies, apparently. This is the problem with watching series years after they ended. The internet knows these things and tells you when you're not ready to know.

However, despite my fantastic ability to suspend disbelief, and in an attempt to distract myself from the upcoming series finale, I'd like to highlight two Buffy anomalies for the record:

1. All vampires turn to dust when staked, even those who only died very recently. It's a great visual effect, but surely only those who died so long ago that their original bodies would actually be dust should dust? Of course, that would mean that the very term 'dusting' would have to be reconsidered.

2. Vampires with souls, i.e. Angel and Spike (much prefer Spike, btw) feel remorse for their killings and cannot kill humans due to the emotional pain. However, humans, who supposedly had souls all along and are demon-free - kill all the time and some of them don't seem to feel much remorse. So does the reintroduction of a soul into a soulless creature make them better than human? Or was it just not thought through very well.

You get what you give

This song has always had the strangest and most lovely effect on me - both saddening and uplifting. Now it also makes me homesick. I think I might have heard it for the first time in Australia (although it was released the year I came to London) and there's something about being twenty-seven in a bright climate in a young country that is so bittersweet now.

I still think it's slightly too slow-paced, but I can overlook that. The singer is kind of geekily endearing. Like a cute younger brother.

Frightening a little mouse under her chair

The poet is going to London to visit the Queen for National Poetry Day tomorrow.

He has threatened* to misbehave but is of course the epitome of a professional always.

We're just back from a fantastic weekend at Orta in northern Italy. Lakes, islands, poetry and new friends, a wonderful way to spend my 37th birthday weekend.


*Hmm, I wonder if a blog post with 'threat' and 'Queen' in close proximity is flagged up by the security services?

Right Brain/Left Brain Freakiness

So I'm obviously a right-brainer, but it freaks me out that the poet and I saw her going in opposite directions at the same time! And that you can change her direction by concentrating.

Click here for the weird whirling woman

We're off to Lake Orta in Italy for the Poetry on the Lake festival and for the poet to collect a prize. Four star hotel on a lake, poetry and Italian weather for my birthday sounds pretty good. If only I didn't have a sneaking suspicion that London's weather is going to be even better over the weekend - but then has the BBC's forecasting ever been accurate?

Weeping guitars

I love this version of George Harrison's 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps'. (And the way the video makes you think Nyjon plays the guitar...)



And I promise this is my last Nyjon post. But one last little thing, if any of you are interested in hearing the song the poet wrote for me with Nyjon, go to the cdbaby link a few entries earlier and click on 'First Love, Last Love'.

Useful site for UK ebayers

fatfingers.co.uk finds items on ebay (UK) that might get missed and not snapped up because the seller has mispelled the item description. Not that I'm encouraging ebay addiction or anything.

More Nyjon

Must. Stop. Looking. On. Youtube. For. Videos. That. Make. Me. Homesick.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oV_gY156LOQ&mode=related&search=

Must. Go. To. Bed. Now.

Music man

I keep forgetting to post about the debut album of a friend, Nyjon. He's a medical doctor (also trained as a naturopath) who runs a clinic on Harley Street (the prestigious medical location in England) using herbal medicine and diet to help people with cancer, and he's set up a charity (Chart) to raise money for people who can't afford this complementary medicine. And he sings, and writes songs, sometimes with the poet. I'm a bit too excited about the fact that the song 'First Love, Last Love' is one that the poet wrote for me with Nyjon, before the married days.

To use words not my own, [the album's] inventive blend of pop, funk and R&B carries a powerful and enduring message, spanning themes from responsibility and honesty in love to ecology and social reality. If only Al Gore would listen, I'm sure he'd snap up 'Lover Earth' (cowritten with the poet) as an environmental campaign song. Nyjon and the poet have just done another environmental song - Blue - which you can hear here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/DrNyjonEccles

You can listen to tracks, download them or purchase the CD from: http://cdbaby.com/cd/nyjon

His cover of George Harrison's 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' is pretty special too. It's not on the album but is a fundraiser for Chart. To get the single, simply make a donation via their website.

The Buffy Project - part 1

When we got back from Australia at the end of May, and life in London seemed dismal and drab, as it often does, but PARTICULARLY WHEN THERE WAS NO SUMMER IN SIGHT, I decided it was time to finish something that was set in motion some years ago.

I was a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan. When I first moved to London in 1998 I stayed in on Friday nights to watch Buffy on Sky One. I watched Angel too, because it was on afterwards, but it never grabbed me so much. When I moved in with the poet in mid 2000, much of my concern at living in a house without a television was that I wouldn't be getting my regular fix of Buffy. I wasn't sure I could do it, and my mother was convinced I had a secret television hidden in a cupboard somewhere, but I grew to appreciate and enjoy not having a television. Buffy got left behind, and it was ok.

My brother had a couple of seasons on DVD which I watched back to back one December I was in Brisbane, when it was too hot to move and the rest of the city languished inside with their air conditioning. It was the last time I saw my father, and he watched many of the episodes with me. Somehow it became a bit of a bonding experience for us, not that you could have predicted my dad enjoying a show about a teenage vampire slayer.

But otherwise my life was Buffy-free. Perhaps it was the lack of sun turning my thoughts towards those who dwell in darkness, or maybe it was just silliness, but I decided to watch the entire series of Buffy this year - seasons 1-7 - to see what I had missed out on. It helped that the poet and I had just bought a portable DVD player so we could watch films (my pc was pretty old and slow and mangled most DVD viewing experiences).

And so began the great Buffy Project of 2007.

To be continued...

Silly as a bum-full of Smarties

I've just come back from the cinema, watching Kenny. What a guy. The film made me homesick for Australia, for the kind of guy I've met nowhere else in the world - completely down to earth and patient and decent, a bit rough and maybe not the smartest, but you'd trust him with your life. Not that people like that are peculiar to Australia, of course they're not, but there's a particular Australian breed of them. Fair dinkum types.

The kind of man who peppers his speech with 'he's serious as a heart attack, mate' and 'busy as a one-armed bricklayer in Baghdad'. Who has an unironic 'Advance Australia Fair ' singalong in the car with his little boy. Who looks out of his window in Nashville Tennessee on his first ever trip out of Australia, sees snow and says, 'Look at that, that's lovely. Good on 'em.'

Maybe I wouldn't want to marry him, but I sure as hell would want him for a brother-in-law or friend. Come to think of it, my Aussie brother-in-law is not far off. A good bloke.

'Useless as tits on a bull' got a big laugh from rest of the (British of course) audience, whereas the phrase just sounds normal to me. I guess I haven't lost all trace of Australian-ness, thank goodness. Even if I apparently sound like a Pom.

Who would have thought that finally getting broadband (now that I have a pc that can handle it) would be so satisfying?

Who would have thought the poet would ever be able to access his email quickly and efficiently, in a way that didn't bring despair to the entire household?

Thank you Tiscali.

Ire

How sad would it be for me to start carrying around my digital camera, just so that I would be able to gather photographic evidence of the blatant disregard for law that seems endemic in the UK today? Laws that are meant to protect the public.

e.g. two perfect opportunities from today

1. A van driving the wrong way down a one way street and nearly running me over. If I hadn't chanced to look in that direction just in case of idiots (a cyclist nearly mowed me down on the same street doing the same thing), it would not have been a pretty sight.

2. A man driving along while using his mobile phone. No hands free kit even.

I fantastised as I walked about getting clear photos showing the crime and the registration plate and sending them to the police, but who am I kidding?

It seems that too many people just want to do what they want to do, regardless of whether it might harm someone else. They obviously didn't have the same parenting I did. Which probably means they didn't get drummed into them that 'fooling leads to fighting' either. It does, it really really does!

Pasta - it's not just for people

(just back from Italy - more to come)

What tube tickets should look like

Thanks to serif publishing

London is a city of people that just want to get home on time

http://nostrich.net/archives/delays-on-the-underground/

I couldn't have said it better myself *. There's no panic on the Underground, no commuter terror as the threat level climbs to critical and then back to severe. I don't know whether it's the much-claimed Blitz spirit, or whether it's a big city mentality, but I seem to have lived here long enough to just get on with things, like everyone else. I do like seeing extra police on the streets and in the stations though.

* Oh, who am I kidding, the pedant in me would have said 'who' not 'that'.

Perfect

In one of the comments on the BBC Have Your Say Forum the other day:

This is the UK. We only have two seasons -
rainy and August.

Revelling in Croxley

On Saturday I went with some friends to the Croxley Revels - a big village fair that's been held annually for hundreds of years. There were lots of stalls for worthy causes, selling the usual range of weird and tacky but sometimes strangely useful items (I picked up a book stand for the poet's readings). Lots of plants, including a stall from the local allotment-holders, and apparently cakes, although I missed those. A milkshake stand making chocolate-bar-flavoured milkshakes, candy floss galore and at least three face-painting stalls. And three women wandering about covered in wooden clothespegs - hedgehogs, apparently.

It was fun, and what really impressed me was the sense of community: families and pensioners and young couples standing outside their houses (glasses of wine and cans of lager optional) watching the parade of Brownies, dancers, policemen and Noah's Ark (populated with very cute little lions and tigers) before all trooping behind in the street with their revelling shoes on and their cake and plant money in their pockets. I lost my camera, and someone handed it in. Call me cynical but I can't see that happening in London.

As well as the stalls (I bought a sage plant and a fuchsia - and I will not let the snails have them!), there was the central arena where one could watch 'dancers' aged 4-15. The baby cheerleaders were pretty cute.

And then the piece de resistance - Brownies dancing around the maypole.

After the brownies did their maypoling, rather impressively not once getting tangled up, ending with the creation of a 'spiderweb'...

there was some nonsense with local schools and an enormous ball as the grand finale.

Right on cue the rain bucketed down and we ran for cover into a local pub. Entirely appropriate that an English celebration of midsummer should conclude with a freezing deluge.

In and around a poet's house, chapter 1

We are not a Buddhist household. (Luckily for me, as last night I stomped about 25 snails. Not without regret and guilt, but it was them or my sunflower seedlings. Frankly, I have had to abandon my friendlier, less murderous practice of throwing snails into the nether regions of the garden because the little bastards keep coming back. Which is why last night at 1am I was confronted by an army of shelled leaf-munchers, of all sizes. And hence the stomping. Today I bought beer baits, but I think the stomping may be kinder than slow dissolving in salty beer - or is that just me?)

So we are not Buddhist. Some of us are. however, dipping our toes into the learning of Kabbalah. But this is ok, because in Kabbalism there is reincarnation, but there is no reincarnation as insects. Unless they just haven't got around to telling me that bit yet?

Monday

I miss natural spaces I can get lost in. Too much time spent underground and in busy London saps my spirit.

And oh! How I've missed my daily blog fix. I have a lot of catching up to do.

Oh, the love

Now I have two very convincing reasons to be in Australia.

The elder asked why the poet couldn't live in England and I live in Australia. When I explained my silly adult reasons, he looked calmly at me and issued an ultimatum: 'Live here!'

His baby cousin just grinned and tried to eat my hair.

We went to Australia

Sadly, we had to return to London and the joy of January temperatures, wind and rain in late May.

'If you set out on a search or a journey, because you are made to, because you sense something calling from within, some voice which may be still and small but will not let you rest until you pay it heed. Something that tells you you are in fact free to act in a different manner however impossible it might seem, well... if you set out on such a journey... you will be met.

You will be met.'

What Happens Now, Jeremy Dyson

Photographic Proof of my Amazing Paranoia (TM)

Last week I had a little operation to remove a polyp in my uterus. Filling out forms with the registrar beforehand, I come to the consent form, and the section where I say yes, ok, I've been told about the things that may go wrong while you're cutting and scraping and poking cameras into places cameras shouldn't go and you may do what you need to if you mess up or my body messes up for you. Fun things like a perforated uterus or accidental injury to other parts.

Was hysterectomy on that list? No.

Was hysterectomy a realistic potential risk of the particular procedure they were carrying out on my anaesthetised body? No.

Was I sitting there in my flimsy gown and disposable pants, clutching a pillow and thinking, oh my god if I don't put 'hysterectomy' down and something goes badly wrong and they can't stop the bleeding* and they have to take everything out and I wake up sans reproductive organs I am going to be so pissed that I wasn't paranoid enough to say 'you guys have to wake me up if you're going to remove things other than the polyp and ask me if it's okay, ok?'

One guess.

(* my last, major, operation did entail that risk, and I was warned an emergency hysterectomy was possible if that happened)

Happy Easter

Hope you have a happy and safe day.

(And hooray for the secret tulips which have really brightened our previously blue (irises, bluebells, hyacinths) garden.)

The Long Good Friday

If I had grown up in England, I don’t think there is any chance I would have continued to attend Sunday mass until the age of 20, as I did in Brisbane. I’ve only attended a handful of masses here in London, and I’ve never felt the spiritual life and joy I knew in my church in Brisbane. The hymns, for one thing, are so slow in comparison; even the same hymns sung in Australia are sung so slowly that for me they lose a lot of their spirit.

When I was a kid we had one priest, Father Dennis, who looked as I imagined Jesus must have, and was so kind and loving and playful, again as I imagined Jesus then. He had longish black hair and a big bushy black beard, bright laughing blue eyes, and after mass all the kids and young people would gather around him. He was just good to be around. I've never met another priest like him, but the priest who married us had a some of the same playfulness.

Today being Good Friday, I decided to go to the Stations of the Cross, or the ‘Celebration of the Lord’s Passion’ as our local Catholic church, the one the poet and I were married in, calls it. I have fond memories of attending the Stations in our church in Brisbane, a moving service where the priest took the cross to each ‘station’ around the walls of the church and we heard about the different parts of Christ’s journey carrying his cross to Golgotha, where he was crucified and died.

Today was rather different. The church was completely packed out when I arrived at about five minutes to three (the hour Jesus is supposed to have died) and some of us were shepherded to a side room, with a large glass window opening onto the altar.

After the readings and the gospel, after the priest’s homily and some rather drawn out sung prayers and responses, stertorously delivered by one of the priests, (to my mind, sung prayers only really work if the singer has a beautiful or at least tuneful voice, and they’re not very very slow, otherwise they are just as or more effective being spoken) there was the veneration of the cross. After various prayers, the congregation, all fifty-seven thousand of us, were invited to show our respects to the cross, by genuflecting or kissing it. Meanwhile, in our little side room, two little boys raced around an unfurnished space, playing war with imaginary guns and bombs, their parents sitting some distance away, either worshipfully oblivious or pretending not to know them.

I prayed for a while, and the choir sang hymns for a very long time, but then there was an interminable silence where nothing seemed to be happening in the part of the church we could see from our fishbowl window. This was punctuated by a tiny girl whimpering ‘my jeans are hurt-in me mommy,’ over and over. Her mother sat behind me staring straight ahead. Finally the priest brought the Eucharist to the altar.

I made an escape after communion. I’m glad I went, because I wanted to remember what Good Friday is really about. Things have been difficult for me lately and I wanted to be in the company of a sorrow greater than my own – someone who suffered tremendously and was humiliated and killed. Someone who had to believe the promise that his death wouldn’t be final, as in a much smaller way I have to believe that things will get easier. Next time, though, unless I’m in Australia, I’ll just stay home and use my little Stations of the Cross book to pray by myself.

I imagine it’s sacrilege to poke fun at typos in church literature, but this hymn…

His dying crimson like a robe,
spreads o’er his body on the tree;
then I am dead to all the globe,
and all the glove is dead to me.

Poor unloved glove.

Icy

Janetta's icecream (in St Andrews) deserves a post of its own.

Not a patch on D'ella Palma in Rome (and New York, apparently), but rather delicious all the same.

StAnza

A couple of weekends ago the poet and I went to the St Andrews Poetry Festival. It was a working weekend for him, he was reading and taking part in a discussion about the film based on his Chernobyl book, which was show twice and sold out both times. For me, it was a chance to enjoy a six-hour train journey, spent mostly snoozing, reading and watching the countryside wend its way past, while the poet chatted with a couple of women on their way to a hen night in Edinburgh, and then a couple of nights in a very cozy bed and breakfast, with two days wandering from event to meal to icecream (dutch chocolate and walnut & maple, from Janetta's, an experience I'd been advised not to miss) to brisk walk. Walking was necessarily brisk as it was absolutely freezing.

It seems the rest of the UK had fairly hellish, windy, snowy weather that weekend, but we were well-sheltered in St Andrews, and only glimpsed a few little snowflakes on the morning we left.

I had two chances to talk to to Gwyneth Lewis, author of Sunbathing in the Rain, which I read and found immensely helpful earlier this year and thank her for the book, but the first time I didn't want to interrupt her when she was eating and talking with friends, and the second time I was unsure whether the woman bending over a bag outside the 100 Poets reading (definitely very mixed quality there!) was actually here or just had similar hair. Kicking myself now.

Being so close to the poet and reading a reasonable amount of contemporary poetry over the years myself, has given me a fairly critical ear for what works and what doesn't. Regardless of whether I actually like it. There is a lot of underworked, or just not good enough, poetry out there - winning prizes and getting acclaim seemingly only because of the name of the poet - and it's frustrating when despite the quality of his work (and the number of prizes his work has won), the poet doesn't make the 'upper tier' of poetry in this country. More reason to move to Australia, I say!

The secret tulips

They're almost here!

St Anza... literary festival... poetry... geddit?

This weekend the poet and I are going to the St Andrews Literary Festival aka StAnza. He’s doing a couple of readings and the film of his Chernobyl poem will be shown twice, once with a discussion session.

I’ll be wandering around between his events, checking out some of the other events and probably spending too much money on books. Because they can be signed! By the actual authors! I’ll probably be wearing my Fussy tshirt – where better to wear clothing emblazoned with ‘Writing well is the best revenge’ than a literary festival?

I can’t wait for the long train journey – potential rail strikes and people who may have to be reprimanded for iPod abuse notwithstanding – time to read and sleep and gaze out the window at the countryside. Working on the Queensland Rail account in my deep dark Australian advertising past really sucked me into the romance of the rail. Or maybe it’s genetic, my granddad worked on building many of the state’s railways. I’ll be fighting the poet for the seat facing backwards because I believe you really do see more that way. When you’re facing in the direction of travel it all goes by too fast, I like to let the country unravel behind me.

Kids these days

Somehow, starting his first year at school has got my nephew so excited that he's channelling John Travolta. I fear for his social standing with the other 5 year olds. Is he too young for an intervention?

Things the UK hasn’t got right yet #1

When I was at the cinema today to see ‘Freedom Writers’ (pretty good, if you like ‘teacher inspires wayward teens and changes their lives’ films like Dangerous Minds, with a smattering of the Holocaust. Also, when did Hilary Swank become such a babe?), I noticed that there was a new drink on sale:Frozen Fanta.

Great, so the UK’s cinemas finally get slushy-type drinks that aren’t blue, and the best they can come up with is Fanta??

Give me my Frozen Coke!

Note to self

Stop writing blog entries in your head while lazing in bed on Sunday mornings and then not actually typing them and posting them!

And another...

Perhaps all dragons in our lives are really princesses, just waiting to see us just once being beautiful and ourageous. Perhaps everything fearful is basically helplessness that seeks our help.

Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

As someone who has spent far too much of her life being fearful, this appeals.

I have no idea where I have stored the current volume of the 'quote journal' I've been keeping for about fifteen years. Until I find it, I have random scraps of paper piling up on my desk.

Speaking of piles of paper, I had to move more than a few yesterday when I vaccuumed the entire house*. I think the last time I did such a thorough job may have been just before my mother visited for the wedding. I hate vacuuming. Actually, vacuuming a simple square empty room I quite enjoy, vacuuming a room with minimal furniture I don't mind, but moving everything, including rugs and mats to vaccum underneath is a real pain. Almost but not quite worth the satisfaction afterward. Also, I have a dust allergy, and while this is not a problem anymore since I was 'desensitised' at 17-18, I miss the days of not being allowed to vacuum because it stirs the dust up and aggravates allergies. And oh! I'd almost forgotten being let off housework altogether sometimes because it seriously makes me feel sick. All that bending down and straightening up does me in.

When we were kids, our mother would pretend the vaccuum cleaner was a crocodile, and we would (well, I would, my younger siblings probably scoffed at my immaturity from the safety of the kitchen) jump out of reach onto the lounge (in American/British, the sofa), occasionally dangling little feet daringly close to the fearsome metal creature's maw. I remember the abject terror if Mum raised the sucker end and came after our feet, or if I was just a bit too slow in lifting my ankles and the cold metal pushed into them. Imagination is a wondrous thing.

However, vaccuming is not quite so much fun when there's only me and the fish safe in his glass box and a poet absorbed in his work who's liable to brain me if I go near his study. And then there's the stairs. Bane of my vacuum-wielding life. Usually I give up and relegate them to 'next time', picking up any obvious bits of fluff to assuage my conscience but yesterday I took a deep breath, attached the tiny little vacuum head to the end of the hose and painstakingly vacuumed each furry green surface of every bloody stair. All the while balancing the body of the vacuum cleaner against my legs as it threatened to drag me down the stairs because the cord is too short to go all the way upstairs if plugged in downstairs.

Between times, the poet occasionally runs his hand several times over the carpet and triumphantly comes up with a tangled swirl of girl-hair that seems to be unpickupable by vaccum. I on the other hand take pains never to run my hands over the carpet, as what I don't know can't make me feel guilty.

* I lie. I didn't vaccum the spare room. But seriously, there's like a square foot of rarely trodden bare carpet in there.

Wise words

But you yourself will always be the worst enemy you can encounter; you yourself lie in wait for yourself in caves and forests.

Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

Dreamtalk

This morning I was lying drowsing, having just woken from a dream, when the poet started to talk in his sleep. The words I caught coming from his mouth were sentences from the dream I'd just had! Of course, the actual words have been completely erased from my memory, but wow.

p.s. I can heartily recommend being married to a poet on Valentine's Day.

Save our hospital

My local hospital, Chase Farm, has been threatened for some time with cuts and closures of various services, the most frightening of which is the potential closure of the Accident and Emergency department. This would mean that in an emergency, people would have to go to North Middlesex Hospital or Barnet Hospital. Chase Farm is far easier for me to get to by public transport, far quicker in an ambulance (which I've had to do twice thanks to ovarian cysts) whereas North Middlesex is already overstretched, and I don't even know where Barnet Hospital is!

Purely selfishly, I want A&E to stay, and judging by the public outcry so do lots of other people. If you happen to live in Enfield or its environs, and Chase Farm Hospital is one you use or might potentially need to use, please sign the petition at http://www.handsoffourhospital.org/canwe.php

(Cristina, this means you! ;) )

Baggage

I have this little green rucksack I take everywhere with me. And I do mean pretty much everywhere.

Originally it was the 'day pack' belonging to the big backpack that was my leaving gift from the advertising agency I worked for in Brisbane, when I was made redundant and decided to try my luck in London. It zips onto the front of the backpack for travelling and then detaches for day use. I still have the backpack too, with the Australian flag I sewed onto the pocket for easy identification and patriotism, languishing in a cupboard in the spare room with blankets and pillows. I never actually went backpacking, but it served as my suitcase for a couple of months while I travelled (with my mother! on coach tours!) around Britain and Europe before settling in London.

But this rucksack. It's so handy. It accomodates my bottle of water, my book(s), my journal, my umbrella (woe betide the fool who goes anywhere in the UK without an umbrella), an emergency stash of pills and herbal remedies, pens, a hairbrush, handcream and other things besides. I take it to work, to the library, grocery shopping, to the movies, pretty much everywhere. It carries books as happily as it does apples and grapes.

I love backpacks. My shoulders start to scream in pain if either of them is singled out for load-bearing responsibilities, but they're happy to share the weight using a backpack. My green bag has a largish pocket at the front which is perfect for keeping a few small essentials, and a wonderful open pocket at the back which lies snug against my back - ideal for magazines or maps or plastic bags or anything flat which needs to be got at quickly. I can't imagine a bag more suited to carrying around my daily life.

I need to get a new one, I know, a smarter one, one that's more business like, less...... green. But I am so loathe to get rid of it. That's why when the zip broke I pinned it together and somehow made it work again. Why when it broke again I just re-zipped it every time (every day) it came apart. Why I ignore the fact that the lining has almost completely flaked off and leaves traces of itself on any clothing I might carry in it (probably because when the bag gets a bit grubby (as is normal for anything that travels on the tube) I throw it in the washing machine). Why I finally, last week, sewed up the zip partway so it had more strength.

I tell myself I'm being environmentally sound, reusing rather than replacing, mending and making do. But it's more than that - in some way it's a talisman, a symbol of my survival in this cold and often unfriendly city, of almost nine years of living here. It's one of the only things I brought from Australia with me and still use. I think it's got a few more years in it.

Reading

(nicked from Confessions of an Author)

Miles Kington in How Many Books Are You Reading At The Moment? reckons we're all reading about 10 books at once these days, and challenges us to go and look at the tottering piles on our bedside tables. He has a point. He says:

'Go to your bedside table and honestly tell me what books are there. All of them. Not just the books you would like people to think you were reading'

ok...

• Just started Cell by Stephen King today. Always good to read something that justifies my decision not to get a mobile phone. I've had a bad cold and King is a great convalescent read.
• Cave in the Snow by Vicki Mackenzie. The story of Tenzin Palmo,a British Buddhist nun. Inspirational, her example has taught me a lot about mindfulness and has unearthed a slight yearning towards Buddhism. I originally bought this book a few years ago when it was mentioned in another book written by an Australian journalist (Holy Cow!)
  
• Philosophy in 30 Days by Dominique Janicaud. Dipping into this one occasionally.
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. Started this some years back and recently rescued it from my bookshelf. Haven't actually opened it again yet.
• Sunstroke and other stories by Tessa Hadley. I've read some good reviews of this collection and am always on the look out for good short stories. Our library didn't have any of her books on the shelves and I'm impatient so treated myself to the paperback. This is the book I'm carrying everywhere in my backpack, usually along with at least one other.
  
• Undoing Depression: What Therapy Doesn't Teach You and Medication Can't Give You by Richard O'Connor. Have been reading this sporadically over the last several months. Mostly when depressed. Not sure it holds the miracle answer promised by the title, but it's sound stuff.
• More, Now, Again by Elizabeth Wurtzel. I think this is my third reading. I find her writing strangely comforting, especially when I'm not feeling so happy myself.

I've just finished reading Sylvia Brownrigg's The Delivery Room. Achingly beautiful. And any book which involves psychotherapy can usually pique my interest.

Foodies alert

Confused about what to eat for a healthy body and life? Conflicting advice from doctors and food companies and nutritionists?

We finally have the definitive answer:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Now you can't say you haven't been told.

Snow day

I cleverly managed to take two days annual leave to coincide with the second and biggest snowfall in London this year. Hooray for lying in bed and watching fat flakes fall.

I'm perturbed by the fact that our goldfish will never know what it is like to be warm, being a cold water creature who would die if his water increased much in temperature. But never to know the feeling of cosiness? How terribly sad.

So many posts I have part-composed in my head, so slack since NaPoBloMo. Have faith in me.

Sneezing

Sneezes are the best thing ever when I’m feeling anxious. Or sick. Except, you know, if the sneezes are chain-sneezes, non-stop and exhausting. That’s not fun for anyone.

I could have really done without an hour’s worth of police helicopter flying above our back gardens at 4.30 this morning.

Today was probably the official most depressing day of the year, given that the official day was Monday 23rd last year. Glad that’s out of the way. Onward and upward.

Conservatory days

Yesterday and today have been my idea of perfect winter days - clear blue sky with a few wind-whipped thin clouds, bright sunshine. Ideal for walking in the park, and sitting down on a bench to read. Except the cold seeps through all my layers until after a few chapters I'm chilled to the bone and have to get up.

This is where a conservatory would come in handy. Nice glass walls and roof to let in the bright and keep out the cold. An armchair instead of a wooden bench. Easy access to herbal tea and necessary sweet things. Will have to work on the poet. I wonder whether the council would let me build a conservatory in the middle of the park.

Spring is hastening. The little clump of purple crocus has budded in the centre of our lawn, and walking through St Pancras park on the way to work, there are eager splashes of yellow and white already open.

Watching

Small boy and mother, suburban London street:

“So you want a dog then?”

“Yes.”

“What colour?”

The colour of friendship, of scrabbling paws late at night, of a floppy ear to lift and whisper into, of never being alone. The colour of breathless chasing and tug-of-war with a slimy rope, of sticks and parks and balls and mud, of cold footpads and warm paws, of hugging and wrestling and dog hair all over. Of slobbering and cold noses and a heavy warmth at the end of the bed.

The colour of always having someone to talk to.

pod People

We have to do something about the iPod people.

It’s for their own good really. Not only are they driving fellow train, bus and tube passengers barmy by having their music so loud it can be heard by their commuting neighbours despite the noise of the tube/train which is not insignificant, but they’re making themselves deaf, the silly kiddies. And we all know what that means – they’ll be turning the volume up even louder.

I’m not a morning person. I’m a very-small-window -in-the-late-evening person.. Every morning I have to spend around 12 minutes on a train and 15 minutes on the tube. People, I want to sleep! Or close my eyes and listen to ambient noise, not your distorted ‘music.

So, some ideas:

Buses and trucks are speedlimited, why not set maximum volume limits on iPods. Limits set by people who know what volume will damage your hearing. Preferably scientists who like silence.

And! How about headphones that don’t allow sound-leakage i.e. that allow the wearer to listen without anyone around them being subjected to the thumping bass or whiny rhythm of their musical choices.

Or how about some training by iPod users who don’t have the volume up so loud. They do exist.

And while we’re at it, let’s try to tackle.the younger cousin of the iPod person – the young kids who think it’s ok to blast music from their mobile phones wherever they are. Do it on the street if you must but don’t do it on my bus or train please! I’d ask you to turn it down (and I have) but sometimes living in London makes me just a wee bit too perturbed about whether you might be carrying a knife.

Books I read in 2006

You could probably say I read pretty much anything, although I do try to read literary fiction that will educate me about writing, and every so often I like a trashy thriller. I often read too fast.

I have absolutely no memory of reading some of these books.

Prep - Curtis Sittenfeld
(I was disappointed by this book after all the glowing reviews. She has a new one out now, I might give her work a second chance.)

Piranha to Scurfy - Ruth Rendell
(Rendell relaxes me, which is weird, considering all the murder. This is a very readable book of short stories.)

The World According to Clarkson - Jeremy Clarkson
(I'm amazed I find him funny, but I do.)

Undercurrents - Martha Manning

Dry - Augusten Burroughs
(I like this guy's work. I'm always drawn in by stories of addiction and recovery - evidenced by the fact that (a) I still think A Million Little Pieces is a good book - who cares if it's fiction. It actually gave me hope. And (b) even though Elizabeth Wurtzel is truly annoying, I love her books.)

The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion
(Recommended to my by my writing mentor. Very moving and eloquent.)

Various Miracles - Carol Shields
(I'm not a big fan of Shields, but there's no doubt that she wrote well.)

Life After Darkness - Cathy Wield (harrowing book about the author's severe treatment-resistant depression, and her experiences in the UK's mental health system. I read this one partly out of curiosity and partly due to my work in that very same system.)

Rage - Richard Bachman (aka Stephen King)
(Like thrillers and serial killer fiction, King's work is like literary valium for me. As well as being very well written, it's always a good standby if I'm not feeling great.)

The Long Walk - Richard Bachman
(Ditto.)

Groundswell - The Diva Book of Short Stories 2 - Helen Sandler (ed)
(Love love love short story anthologies. Strangely, particularly lesbian short stories.)

Not the End of the World - Kate Atkinson
(These short stories didn't quite work for me. The myths seemed tacked-on rather than integral.)

ice cream - Helen Dunmore
(Seen by many as a master of the short story. I struggle with some of her work.)

Unholy Ghost - Writers on Depression - Neil Casey (ed)
(I eat books on depression, especially ones written by professional writers.)

The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things - JT Leroy
(I'd read so much about this guy I was curious. Is he for real? Nice stories.)

Always the Sun - Neil Cross
(I remember this book, but don't have much to say about it.)

When I was Five I Killed Myself - Howard Buten
(Interesting, the title hooked me.)

Tender at the Bone - Ruth Reichl

Skeleton Crew - Stephen King
(Classic King short fiction.)

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian - Marina Lewycka
(Loved this book. I laughed out loud on the tube as I read the last page and it left me with a huge grin all the way home.)

Velocity - Dean Koontz
(Not as good as King, but ok in a pinch. I get a bit disappointed each time by the overt 'message' of his books.)

The Minotaur - Barbara Vine
(aka Ruth Rendell)

No Place Like Home - Mary Higgins Clark

Yes Man - Danny Wallace
(What happens when the author decides to say yes to everything. I liked it.)

New Writing 10 and 12
(anthologies)

Join Me - Danny Wallace
(The yes man starts a cult. Amusing.)

The Ninth Life of Louis Drax - Liz Jensen
( I loved this book, what a fabulous concept. I just wish I could find another book by Jensen that I like.)

Claudine's House - Colette
(Wonderful images from childhood.)

Runaway - Alice Munro
(Her latest short story collection. It's funny, despite the setting of these stories being so alien to me, I can really relate to the characters.)

Tooth and Claw - TC Crombie
(Another book I loved, but can't find anything else by the author I like.)

Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
(Topical, not outstanding)

The History of Love - Nicole Krauss
(Beautiful novel, I would love to eavesdrop on her literary conversations with husband Safran Foer - their books blow me away.)

Furthermore - Susie Maguire

The Position - Meg Wolitzer
(There's a certain kind of American fiction that really keeps me reading. This is one example.)

The Accidental - Ali Smith
(Yes!)

Music For Torching - AM Homes
(And the great 2006 AM Homes readathon begins. I love this woman. Write more, write more!)

The Wife - Meg Wolitzer
(Also enjoyable.)

Body Double - Tess Gerritsen
(Could it be I have discovered another source of forensic thrillers?)

In A Country of Mothers - AM Homes
(This book disappointed me - maybe I was expecting more fiction like Torching instead of a pseudo-thriller. Or given the subject of therapist-client relationship, perhaps I was expecting something more psychological.)

The End of Alice - AM Homes
(Brilliant, and disturbing to enter the mind of a paedophile and share his love for a while. Interesting premise, and fantastic title.)

This Book Will Save Your Life - AM Homes
(This is where I realised that I have read Homes before, but only her short stories.)

Jack - AM Homes

The Surgeon - Tess Gerritsen
(Why yes, after two books I do believe this is my next source of trash. She certainly writes a hell of a lot better than James Patterson.)

Vanish - Tess Gerritsen

Life Support - Tess Gerritsen

Big Bad Wolf - James Patterson
(I don't know why I keep giving him a second chance!)

A Disorder Peculiar to the Country - Ken Kalfus
(Really interesting, a couple's marriage disintegrates as 9/11 and its aftermath happen. Kind of surreal to read about a version of the Afghanistan war that could have been, I'm so used to fiction which stays true to fact when it comes to world events.)

The Devil's Larder - Jim Crace
(Delicious, freaky short fiction on food.)

Operating Instructions - Anne Lamott
(I bought this for my sister, who is a new mother, but couldn't resist reading it first. Emotional, real and funny.)

My Latest Grievance - Elinor Lipman
(Delightful.)

I am so excited that Heather McGowan, author of the beautifully written stream-of-consciousness Schooling, has a new novel out this year.

Sorry English cricket fans

But what a fantastic Ashes series was that?

Guess you'll have to keep going on about how brilliant the English team were in the last series after all.

Gingerbread has many disguises

I can't stop making the bloody stuff!

Winter buttercup

i.e. poor deluded little flower who should only bloom in summer but has instead decided to be the one bright light in our winter garden. For which it is applauded, and feared as a tiny harbinger of climatic doom.

Blizzards are predicted for next week. In London.

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.