This journal is not a private diary, it is more like an occasional, imaginary column. Therefore, most of it is on public display. However, if you want to read my occasional attempts at creative writing, my Caution Elf tells me I should only show that stuff to my friends. You know what to do. :-)

NB: If you add me in an unsolicited fashion, please introduce yourself. Otherwise I will probably ignore you. ;-)

...hot cross buns! :-)



( Sugar and spice and all things nice... )

It's food round-up time. ^_^ I've been enjoying cooking recently (as usual!) and thought I'd share the fruits of my labours - a virtual feast with no washing-up. ;-)

( Are you hungry? )

I've been having a lovely weekend. Very lovely.

( Slip into sunshine... )

Weekend Snapshot: Saturday morning saw me AROUSED BY A COCK at ten minutes to six.

(pause)

Actually there were several...

(pause) (blink)

...several ROOSTERS, people, roosters. About 4 of 'em. All competing for my attention, with occasional percussion from a pheasant, and backing harmonies from numerous little chirpy birds. Conclusion: AAARGH. I think, given the attendant sleep deprivation, a poor joke is forgivable! >.<

( Cock-a-doodle-DON'T )

There are few pleasures so hard to categorise as the sheer, subtle joy of a not-very-good-book. I am not talking about a book 'so bad it's good'. Nor do I mean a book that is simply bad, and irksome with it. What I mean is, one of those books that somehow, whilst being certifiably mediocre, manages to be ridiculously entertaining.

I have found a rich seam of the confusingly-enjoyable of late. I can't call it a guilty pleasure, for no amount of Surreptitious Reader's Shame could mar the glee with which I dote upon this happy piffle. No: it orter be groanworthy (and perhaps binworthy, also) but the 'Aelric' series of historical novels by one 'Richard Blake' (it is not his real name) is entertaining me most heartily, and I am thankful for it.

( Here Be Silliness! )

Silent No Longer: no excuses, no apologies, just a return to form, fillin' yer screen with Verdant Verbiage, freshly sprouted from a fertile mind...

Spring is boinging and - out of character, this - I am liking it. Normally I detest Spring: season of bumptious jocondry and disappointingly damp weather. It is also the time when one is forced to witness early sightings of that blot on the British landscape, the Shirtless Moron. But here in the country, with daffodils a-blooming, birds singing and lighter mornings dawning (no more feeling my way towards the railway station in the semi-gloom!), the unfurling green is more evident and more freshly savoury than the drizzly, sweaty, shouldn'a-worn-my-cardigan feel of an urban Spring. (And there have been no impromptu torso-unveilings as yet!)

The only wen in an otherwise green and pleasant dayscape: hurriedly shaving my legs this morning, I gouged my ankle good and proper. Ouch. Moral: Never buy cheap disposable razors!

Aaaaanywayzie, what have I been up to lately?

( Of Curious Creatures, Crazy Cross-beats and Coquettish Costumes... )

Recently I had an outing to London to go and see the Magic Band live in concert - it was a lovely experience, but that's not the subject of this post (maybe another time!). Instead, let me tell you of my journey home.

A man boarded the train at Paddington with... a parrot on his shoulder! :-) The parrot wasn't totally loose, there was a soft cord tied around one of its feet, the other end being attached to the man's collar. It was a lovely green parrot with a red beak, fairly small, and it sat there very happily, occasionally preening its owner's hair and eyebrows. The man said the parrot's name was Vincent, that he was extremely tame and enjoyed travelling, and that he wasn't really a talker. He didn't seem to be, making an occasional chirrupping noise, but staying quiet other than that.

It was a charming encounter, and I have to say that the bird seemed very contented and interested in the world! How lovely to walk around with a parrot! :-)

Fast forward to today. I had to go to the pet shop to buy some silly presents for my sister in law's dog, cat and new puppy. In the pet shop they have some lovely birds. They have a white cockatoo who I think is the shop's mascot, as he spends most of his time outside his cage. Next door to him is a beautiful galah cockatoo. I'd not seen one before - it's ever so pretty, in pastel shades of pink and grey. This one is for sale (not cheap either, although I hear they are common in their native Australia). The notice said it was a friendly hand-reared bird that enjoys an affectionate tickle! I ventured to stroke it through the cage bars and goodness me, how very soft its feathers were. It half-closed its eyes and leaned its head back like a cat being stroked! How unutterably cute! It didn't 'say' anything but did whistle tunefully and make a 'kiss' sound! :-) In general it seemed very keen on human attention and responsive to my and the other customers' cooing over it. ^_^

...I think I would love to have a parrot one day, if I could keep it in the style to which it would no doubt like to become accustomed. ^_^ Perhaps a nice big aviary at one end of a large conservatory...

In the meantime, here is a picture of a galah cockatoo. What a charming creature!

Testing... LJ just ate what I wrote! Will this work...?

Aaaanyway... let's try again, shall we?!

What I said was, my film choice would be 'Meet Me In St Louis'. ^_^

And, But, Also: In Other News, I am Alive, and (--touch wood, and swallow Echinacea--) Well. I am liking my job, enjoying the bookshop, and looking forward to the holidays. Not in a Christmassy way, as such - as usual, I am excited about gift-giving (I am a good chooser, if I do say so myself!), but ignoring the tinsel. Buying some things online and making the rest is the way forward, methinks! Anyway, what I mean is, I'm looking forward to some time off with D. He really needs a break, and I intend to make sure he has a good one!

Bonus Typical Scene From The Domestic Life Of M: I have been glued to the unfolding drama in my bathroom between my two friends Spider and Woodlouse. ^_^ Spider, a nervy, mobile arachnid, lives in a crevice by the door frame; Woodlouse, a placid, static crustacean, has parked himself between the bath and the lavatory. I am hoping that Woodlouse (who, whilst certainly alive, has disdained to move from his current position for several days) will muster the will to trundle off to some safe haven, rather than fall prey to Spider. I am fond of Spider but would rather he ate flies, because I don't like flies. ^_^ Ah, the folly of a biased biped! >_<

And on that weirdly unfestive note, I wish all who read this a Merry Penguinmas! (Even naughty Ugg boot selling spammers!)

I hope to write more soon; I have been reading. :-)

...Ok, this is it, folks: Festive Foolishness is officially upon us.  It starts about now, and only, ahem, 'snowballs' (groan!) from here onwards.  We are not yet at the stage of irritating adverts in which plastic-looking people sit around on logs, grinning inanely and giving each other sweaters, while fake snow falls to a soundtrack of Phil Spector's Christmas album, but... you know it's coming. ;-)

Anyway, I Think I Have Found It: officially, the worst, stupidest, most pointless Christmas-related object I have ever seen.  Here it is, people: the Brussels Sprout Wreath.

I'll let that sink in for a moment...

...Yes, it's a wreath, for your door, made from Brussels Sprouts.  (Well, they're not actually real sprouts, but even so... sprouts!)

Here is a picture of it:



It Can Be Yours, my friends, for the princely sum of £29.  That's right: twenty-nine of your finest Earth-pounds.  £29!! o__O

I can't imagine the manufacturers have done more than attach the fake sprouts to a circular base with some wire and added a red ribbon.  Is that really worth £29 to anyone?!  I mean, if you really wanted a sprout wreath couldn't you just... buy some sprouts and attach them to a wire coathanger that you'd manhandled into a circle, and have done with it...?

What really perturbs me is the 49 customer reviews, only FOUR of which were in any way negative, with two out of those four being neutral or mixed rather than outright damning.  Forty-five people think that spending £29 on a Brussels Sprout Wreath was a jolly good wheeze!  Am I wrong to find that weird and baffling...?

Anyway, if you don't like brussels sprouts but still want to hang something stupid on your door, or if you just can't quite run to £29 for your seasonal entrance decor needs, how about this classy object, available from the same company:

The Handmade Newspaper Wreath!



This lovely thing costs £15.  Seriously, fifteen pounds for some old bits of newspaper (the description calls it 'recycled' so I'm assuming the manufacturers just raided the wastepaper basket...) threaded on to some wire.  It's a brand new product so there are no reviews yet, but I can imagine that soon enough, numerous idiots will be singing the praises of this confection of garbage. :-\  (I like how the picture is showing the would-be idiot exactly how to set fire to the hideous thing, by hanging it directly over a lit candle. ^_^)

I think we'll be staying with the traditional holly wreath this year - might even half-inch some from the big tree in the churchyard and make my own! :-)

Well now, I'm curious to know if anyone out there has seen anything similarly heinous, or perhaps worse. >.<  Over to you... :-)

Dear me, my poor ole brain! >.<  I think it has been taken over by rogue hormones.  Explanation required?  Ok then...

Last night we we were watching a documentary about early experiments with electricity.  I'm sorry, Professor Jim Al-Khalili, but if you're going to stand there announcing, with a totally straight face, "...he charged up a glass rod with a silk handkerchief..." - whilst demonstrating this with authentic props and a deft, wristy manoeuvre...  Well, I'm sorry, but all you are going to get from me is a resounding "Ooh, Matron!" ;-)

And afterwards, here you are with a replica of some weird, kinky looking apparatus that some bloke had made in seventeen-hundred-and-something.  Apparatus in Q. comprises a double swing suspended on silken ropes.  Apparently, yon bloke borrowed an orphaned youth, positioned him face down on the said swing and applied an electrical charge to the boy's body as he swung there, lying on his stomach.  Bits of gold leaf were sprinkled upon the flagstones beneath the youth and when the electrical charge was applied, the gold leaf flew up, attracted by mysterious forces to the boy's outsretched hand.  At this point in the anecdote I began to feel that this was less a sober documentary on the history of science and more an hommage to middle-period Fellini. o__O

My dear husband works with electricity in his research, but as far as I know, the nearest he gets to silken ropes, gold leaf and charging up his rod is the occasional mishap with faulty wiring, leading to nothing more exciting than a brief ouch and having to reset all the equipment.  A brief diversion was enjoyed, I hear, when one of his PhD students left a valve half open and allowed a vast quantity of helium to escape overnight, leading yrs trly to imagine a lot of cross scientists complaining in high-pitched voices, but other than that...

...As I say, this is as far as I know.  Maybe a surprise visit to the lab is in order, just out of wifely curiosity! >.<

In dream-related news, I have had no further visitations from Beyond the Fringe. ;-)  I did, however, dream last night about a house where some wag had gone about removing the bottom steps from all the staircases, of which there were several; there was also a developmentally-disabled young man trying to sell apples and sliced onions to the passengers on a high-speed train (which, with typical dreamlike non-logic appeared to be inside the house); and at the end, we were all of us (me and all the other now-mostly-forgotten dream people who thronged the house suspecting each other of being the staircase-saboteur) forced to watch a video in Japanese about the juicings of kombucha fruits - which may or may not be a thing in the real world?!  [Edited to Add: I think there may have been a horse present at some point, too. ^_^]

Yes, quite; and yet I have the bare-bummed cheek to complain about the Fellini-esque peccadillos of Al-Khalili...  I know, the hypocrisy is astounding, innit?!  In conclusion, I offer you a well-turned Gallic shrug, a dark-lashed wink, and a half-hearted, salt-soiled almost-promise to Do Better Tomorrow. ^_^

...And how are you this morning? :-)

It's been one of my odder days, as days go.

Last night, there was a power cut at a little after 8 p.m.  We sat there with torches and a candle and talked awhile, listening to distant owls and the campanology practice that was going on in the next village, until (as is my wont) I became so ultra-sleepy I had to put myself to bed.  I respond well to such circadian stimuli as light and dark; not civilised at all, really; just a mammal, after all...

I woke from a dream at about 4.45 a.m.  I can't remember much about it except that it was sort-of the late 1960s (in that annoying, imprecise way of dreams - it had a certain stylistic overlay of late-1960s, but could well have included other time periods simultaneously...); there was a house, large and contemporary and rather brown, that had some important role in a part of the dream that I can't remember, and it was late afternoon, and I was sort-of there (or emerged into being there, or was there in the guise of a dream-character whom I can't remember... ack!), and was sitting on the deep-green slightly-daisied velvety lawn in a group with some other people (can't remember the individuals...) and in the last moment of the dream I was sitting there observing - of all people - Peter Cook.  He sat there looking extremely melancholy, almost empty really, and it was sad and worrying to see.  Then he realised I was looking and turned on me an effulgently-saucy smile that beamed out to merge with the nostalgic glow of the late afternoon sun and I was just appreciating the knowing shimmer that welled up from between his excellent eyelashes when I... woke up.

Outside, the wind was futterin' abaht uneasily and inside, my arm had gone to sleep and the light was on on the landing.  I was thirsty and curious to know when the power had come back on, so I tiptoed downstairs to the kitchen.  The oven clock was flashing 3:21 - so we had been submerged in the Medieval dark right up until about 1.20 a.m.!  That's an unusually long power cut for these times.  I wonder what the reason was?

Anyway, having fetched myself some water and camomile tea I returned to bed, savouring the luxury of electricity.  If ever I wake in the wee hours and can't sleep, I usually listen to the radio for a bit.  If you can find something tedious and restful, it is much better than reading for getting you back to the Land of Nod.  To read, you have to sit up and put the light on, and at least semi-think, which tends to induce alertness, in my experience.  But for the radio, you can just lie there in the dark with headphones on as some World Service wallah drones on about the economy or what-have-you, which is generally an excellent soporific.  This would have worked, I'm sure, on this occasion, if I hadn't started Thinking About Stuff and also realising that at 6.30 we'd have to wake up anyway, so in the end I simply lay there and occasionally changed the channel on the radio when one station ceased to please me.

Eventually I ended up with Radio 4 Extra, which first of all served me up some obscure comedy from (I don't know) the 1990s (?) about two sisters running a guest house, which was pretty feeble; then an episode of Paul Temple from (guessing again!) c. 1950-something in which the accents displayed enough cut glass for a Waterford concession; I mean, I'm graced with a 'newsreader's voice' (apparently!) but honestly, even I can't conceive of a world in which people really spoke 'lake thet'!

Over the closing credits the announcer told me "You have been listening to episode [whatever] of Paul Temple and the [Something or Other].  Paul Temple was played by Peter Cook..."

Not THAT Peter Cook, obviously, but it gave me A Moment nonetheless.  I was instantly, mentally, back on that lawn with those eyelashes.  Most Peculiar as coincidences go!

Later, much later, I was in the kitchen doing the washing up and I put the radio on and that set is tuned to Radio 4 and what did I hear but another episode of a different Paul Temple adventure (and the accents were rather more neutral so it must have been a more recent one).  Cue eyelashes!  It turned out that this time, Temple was played not by a Peter Cook but by some other actor I'd never heard of this time, but still...

...And there we have it: a chain of pointless coincidences that look even more pointless once you type them out.  Heigh-ho!  Nonetheless, they have charmed my tired brain.

This evening, the campanologists are in our village church.  I shall post this and then listen to them dingle-dongling (as we call it in this house) for a while.  Tonight, shall I dream again of such tall and twinkling lovely shades...?  Watch This Space, I guess...

Good evening to you!

Egad, I shelved SO much self-help doo-doo today, during my bookshop shift. :-\  You Can Heal This That And T'Other Thing, Fumbling About With Crystals, Pilates for the Infirm, The No-Calorie Diet, The Pig Out On Swill Diet, Sexual Exercises For Women*, Flirt Like A Drunk Aunt, Comprende Jargon Yah?, Pretending To Care, Massage Your Dog, Of Course You're Not a Sociopath, What The Bleedin' Heck Is Wrong With You Anyway, You Sad, Sad Loser?!

[*This one was actually real.  Of course I perused it. XD  It could have kept a 14-year-old amused for hours with all its blurry watercolour diagrams of how to, y'know, amuse oneself!  Currently I am undecided as to whether it will sell tomorrow or be culled in four weeks' time and sent to the Depot Of Doom, where the unwanted books get their last chance to not be pulped...]

The common theme of these publications seems to be to try and make you feel like you're not only living your life all wrong, but thinking your own thoughts wrong and feeling your own feelings wrong!  (Or feelin' yer own undercarriage wrong, in certain cases! XP)  "You can choose whether or not to get angry" says one guy.  "Never suppress anger - express it by sticking pins in a voodoo doll of your ex-wife" says another.  (That one is not made up either - last week I was thumbing through a book of exercises for therapists to hand out to clients, and that one was the first one in the book.  Apparently it allows one to "seperate feelings from actions" and torturing the doll helps one to refrain from torturing one's significant other...  One is not convinced, frankly!)

Some of 'em attempt to disassemble our anxieties by applying logic - always the jolly, unadorned logic of the naturally calm and happy individual.  "Why worry?  What's the worst that could happen?!"  Uh, excuse me while I tell you, in excruciating detail... or not, because I hate to bore. ;-)  I read their optimistic, rosy-fingered statements and still end up with the conclusion that a real champion worrier would demolish their gibbering platitudes in five seconds flat.

Meanwhile, many of these hacks feel we should re-connect with our inner child, soothing its hurts and reassuring it.  Others tut at that and believe we should focus on the here and now, and re-wire our brains for better behaviour rather than constantly asking "Why?"  Personally, I like "Why?"; the answers are always so interesting.  They may not help you towards happiness or better moral fitness, and of course, there can be too much "Why?", but still... to ignore that stuff seems short-sighted to me.  On the other hand, my inner child is a pretty precocious little madam.  As self-reliant and suspicious of outside influence as a feral cat.  Not one for nurturing, really...

I felt rather dizzy when I shelved a book entitled 'EAT FAT' (a sort of embrace-your-lard manifesto) next to 'You Can Drop A Dress Size In Six Weeks!!!'  Well, I suppose my adding that copy of 'Beating Bulimia' to the display may have gone some way towards bridging the doctrinal schism?!

The writers of these pamphlets of piffle are confused.  We are all confused.  Confusion is the natural state of the human.  Without confusion we would never think, say or do anything of note.  We would all be sitting around being serene on cushions.  My (least) favourite self-help moment is the one when the author, playing on this natural confusion, points out how rubbish and valueless all those other self-help books are - how they will have you chasing your own tail for eternity, implausibly seeking enlightenment up yer own sit-upon.  Then, of course, they go on to tell you how their book is better.  Their book is the bestest, the most bestifulously bestificatory bestibular bookling in the bookshop.  (And gosh, don't words like 'bestibular' and 'bestificatory' make it all look so sciencey!)  They have the secret to fulfilment and satisfaction!  Well, yes; yes, they do.  It goes a little something like this: Write yourself a big old self-help book and sell it to numerous chumps.  Make a lot of cash and choose not to acknowledge your niggling conscience (or perhaps just Pretend To Care?).

Anyway, in conclusion I can say without doubt that an out-of-date self-help book is about the most depressing thing you will ever see in a charity bookshop.  Oh... except for when you have in your hand a novelisation of 'Strictly Come Dancing' in which a humble production assistant is thrust into the sequin-speckled limelight (as if that plotline was not old when they filmed '42nd Street'!); you groan and grimace at the pointlessness and tackiness of it (is it better or worse than a Katie Price opus?)... and then realise there is another copy already there on the shelf!!

Well, yes, let's just remind ourselves that the only self-help that works is deciding what you want to do, and then doing it.  Thank you and goodnight...! ;-P

...I can't be the only person who finds this whole rigmarole completely stupid. o__O I think we should have "Talk Like a Person Who Speaks Good-but-Non-Pedantic English, in a Clear Accent (any region or social class is fine), Only Swearing When Toes Are Stubbed etc., With a Decent Effort At Euphony, Humour and Musicality Day".

I'm not even joking!! XD

I struck gold in Oxfam yesterday, in the form of a stack of vintage magazines. ^_^  So fascinating, especially the advertisements!  They are all copies of 'Housewife' magazine, some dating from 1939 - 1941 and a couple from 1950.  There were more for sale, but those ones looked the most interesting.  Two of the issues are just pre-Second World War, giving one a glimpse of the dying embers of an innocent age, one of servants, shopping at sales and choosing a suitable breed of miniature dog for your flat. :-)

The wartime editions are, predictably, replete with disgusting recipes (the one for 'mock fish' made my eyes water, and as for the milkshakes containing 'home-made cream', which is an emulsification of milk and margarine... - well, eww!!), hints and tips on mending, and how to deal with bringing up your child in someone else's home (presumably because your own home has been blitzed to smithereens).

One might presume that these old publications would be filled with unpleasant glimpses of a less-enlightened world.  I'll admit that a piece on decoration advice, which blithely described a shade of furnishing fabric as 'n****r-brown' gave me a nauseous moment!  However, there are surprising hints that not everyone was a casual bigot, and also that some of the ideas we take for granted about the past probably weren't as starkly drawn as all that.

( Gay Girls From The Mothercraft... )

You can't really call it an English Summer if you haven't been to an agricultural show! ;-)

Yesterday it was the North Devon Show and I was treated to a fine day out there by the lovely David. ^_^  When we went last year, it was raining, but this time it was a blazing hot day.  I even managed to get sunburnt (oops.  More suncream required...).  D. didn't get burnt at all, and he's at least as fair as I am - sometimes the weather gods pick and choose their victims, I guess! >.<

Lots of pictures etc. under the cut - some of them will be easier to see if you 'click to enlarge'. ^_^

( MANY PICTURES AND MUCH CUTENESS! ;-) )

I saw this recently, and fell slightly in love:



That is Peter Cook bedazzling up a storm there. ^_^  I've never been that enamoured of Peter Cook, he always comes across as being too clever by half and a bit... I dunno... hard-hearted. :-\  But here, he demonstrates how alluring aloofness can be!  Is anyone else swooning...?

Mustn't forget, though, that Dudley Moore composed the score.  All the music is great, from start to finish.

The whole film (Bedazzled) is really good, much better by far than the remake.  Even though it's funny and the humour is quite silly in places (trampolining nuns, anyone?!), it has a melancholy quality to it, too.  I suppose even in the super-optimistic 60s, not everybody felt that the times they were a-changin' for the better.  We may have grand ideas and noble aims in this life, but what if all the involuntary, petty, split-second moments of anger, cruelty, venality and greed that pepper our larger strivings add up to damnation?  If not perhaps in any kind of afterlife, they probably do in this one...  If the road to Hell really is paved with good intentions, this film puts that across really well - be careful (and very precise about) what you wish for, folks! ;-)

And in the meantime, distracting oneself with amusing films and clever musical parodies is as soothing a balm as I have yet found. ^_^

And now... holiday photo-dump time! >.<

Here is a little travelogue of our trip to Falmouth.  It's PHOTO-HEAVY but light on loquacity, so hopefully an easy read! ;-P


( On the Sea Shore... )

Hello!  I interrupt your peaceful LJ-grazing simply to barge into your personal space, plonk my well-upholstered rear down next to you upon your bijou sofa, and gabble at you incoherently in an effort to recommend this book:


(Well now, aren't you glad that this is an online acquaintanceship and not a face-to-face one?!)

First, a story.

( Of Waistbands, Amongst Others... )

TL;DR: read this book, it's great. ^_^  Or, if you don't like reading, have the TV documentary version! :-D

Hello hello. ^_^

Partly to continue my efforts to actually update this journal and partly for my own reference, here is some Stuff About Food.

(I guess this post roughly equates to Option C as offered in my last entry - although it's not only 'Adventures in Experimental Cake Batter'! >_<)

This will probably be less than thrilling for anyone but me to read, but here it is anyway!

( Food for thought... )

...Permit Me To Rearrange Them For You! [Ah me; overheard, mayhap, in a tailor's fitting room...?]

Well, no, overheard in my kitchen, actually!  For yesterday I made an Experimental Upside-Down Plum Cake (like the pineapple kind, but... yes... WITH PLUMS!  Don't ever say I don't push the boundaries!! ;-P)

( Sugarissimo! )