Friday, February 28
what are you wearing?'You're looking smart today,' my boss just said to me. 'Are you going for a job interview?' I love working for a company whose dress code is so slack that my showing up at work in a top with buttons and a collar arouses suspicion. Or maybe it's just her way of telling me that I normally dress like a bum.
It's sort of like that time about ten years ago when (for various reasons too tedious to recount) I stopped eating for three months and became haggard and ill, and people kept saying things like 'Oh Heather, you look so good, now that you've lost weight!' Least I know I'd make a great-lookin' corpse. more bath-time fun with Heather and Jack
Bath was a stately setting in which to meander around hand in hand musing dreamily on three happy years of marriage. ('How the fuck did happen?' was a phrase that mused across my mind a couple of times.) Photos will appear as soon as I finish the next roll of film. The double Roman Baths/Museum of Costume ticket is worthwhile (for one thing it allows you to do them on different days, avoiding that boiled brain-in-a-bag feeling you get from a surfeit of museums). We arrived at the Baths early enough to be able to sneer, three hours later, on emerging, at the queue waiting to be let in. Don't worry, karma was working that day and our heedless derision of our fellow tourists was repaid when we visited the nearby Abbey: our visit consisted of 'donating' a fiver, going in, looking up, exclaiming 'Cor! A fan-vaulted ceiling!' and then being summarily ejected when religious worship broke out. (Jack was too polite to try to get his fiver back.) Still, the Baths were worth a long linger and we shuffled through, audio guides pressed to our ears, listening to some fruity English actor urge us to imagine the Baths in full-on Roman-style action - Flavius the sock merchant reclining in an alcove schmoozing some toga-clad client while in another a Roman matron has her armpit hairs plucked individually out by slaves (what, they didn't have wax in Roman Britain?) I reckon said actor was Stephen Fry but J wouldn't believe me, leading to much whispered debate and consequent rewinding of audio tracks to listen to the bits we'd bickered over the top of. Afterwards we went to the Pump Room to take the waters - a mere 50p for a draught of clear, tepid water that smelled like eggs had been boiled in it, but tasted far worse. Apparently it's very good for you - during the nineteenth century the rich and dyspeptic used to imbibe it by the litre as a form of instant detox.
Eep - lunchtime's almost over so I'd better wind this up. Erm, several thumbs up for Bath as a mellow weekend destination, especially if you enjoy strolling around admiring architecture, or live in a very flat place and miss hills. If you go to the Salamander pub, try some of the Bath ales, especially the Barnstormer.
Finished our visit in style on the train back to London - it was packed, with people standing in the aisles, so we did a DIY upgrade, since the three or four first class carriages were deserted. Eventually the ticket guy came into our carriage and asked, without much hope, if any of the occupants were actually meant to be there. Much pink-faced mumbling and averting of eyes of occupants, but the carriage was re-designated a pleb zone and I got to keep my comfy seat. Hmmm, must try this trick next time I fly to NZ.
Tuesday, February 25
i can't believe we were the only people who brought ducksWent to the Lemon Jelly gig at the Junction last night (with Lisa, Chris, Helen, Alex and Martyn.) It was excellent - jolly atmosphere, a crush of happy smiley bouncing people high on life plus sundry substances (side effect of the pervasive dope smoke was that it sorted out the nausea I'd been feeling all day). The lads played a variety of instruments, swapping between cello, chimes, bongos, various guitars, keyboards and twiddling away at their sequencers, which only went out of sequence once, resulting in a weird multi-chord pile-up during 'His Majesty King Raam'. Occasionally they paused to banter with/chuck handfuls of jellybabies into the merry throng. Our little plastic ducks drew many covetous glances, especially when we waved them in the air, lighter-style, during 'Nice Weather for Ducks'. I bounced and bounced until I could bounce no more, and today I am very sore and stiff. But I now have an 'I [Heart] Lemon Jelly' badge pinned to my little hemp backpack, so I am still cool, if faintly decrepit.
Friday, February 7
oh the humanityOne of my favourite web sites is Etiquette Hell. I first came across this site when Jack and I were engaged and planning our wedding. It's grotesquely fascinating and was a welcome relief from the innumerable sugar-coated (and utterly useless) Wedding Industry sites on offer (remind me to rant about the evils of the Wedding Industry at some point). It also gave me enough nightmare material to last our entire engagement and beyond. (Yep, I had wedding angst nightmares after we were hitched. Mind you I had a particularly paranoid thesis defense nightmare the other night, and it's been over nine months already.) Anyway, Etiquette Hell has just been updated with more value-added grotesquerie, as well as a 'Burn my Bridesmaid Dress in Etiquette Hell' competition. Go there today, especially if you're planning a wedding.
Tuesday, February 4
global warming, my arseCool. It's snowing again. Someone better ring up the local authority: 'Hey guys, remember all that cold white stuff that fell out of the sky last week? Well it's doing it again. No really, look out the window! Reckon you're going to get the grit trucks out this time? Cheers.'
Ah hell, I'll do it myself.
