Wednesday, April 30
things my husband and i argue aboutJ: (trying to change the subject): Look dear, a rainbow! It symbolises our Love.
H:(turning around to the window): That's two rainbows next to each other. You've got another woman, haven't you?
J: (dryly) No dear. The other rainbow represents your bike.
Friday, April 11
more matterWe went to see Mark Thomas last night. He was surprisingly subdued - the last gig we'd been to, a couple of years back, was decidedly more spittle-drenched. That time was during his Dambusters tour, about the campaign against the Ilisu Dam project in Turkey, and his performance culminated in a spectacular (and, unfortunately, increasingly incoherent) rant about atrocities committed against Kurds, after which a panting, shaking Mark stalked off the stage leaving the audience (well, me) feeling stunned and culpable. This one was (relatively) mild-mannered, even allowing for the anti-war diatribes, some of which I felt like joining in (I'm glad someone else thought that the Marines helping fifty Iraqis in a city of 5 million pull over a statue of Saddam while many, many more of their concitoyens were, as Radio Four's Andrew Gilligan so elegantly put it the other day "engaged in frenzied looting" was a contrived, transparently media-conscious stunt. Symbolic moment my arse. A statue's a symbol, right, so by definition it must be a bloody symbolic moment, but that doesn't actually confer meaning on it, does it? Quite frankly I'm surprised that, off camera, they weren't issuing the Iraqis with garlands of flowers to fling gratefully back at them.)
Anyway (deep, cleansing breath) the show mostly consisted of a string of anecotes that verged on a one-man dramatisation of Mark's life as a professional shit-stirrer. The cast of recurring comic characters included vowel-manglingly plummy editors, stroppy Quaker grandmothers and a gruff, chainsmoking fifty-something who, after several hours chained to an Esso petrol pump, decided to light up a fag. Mark's wife Jenny became part of a running gag of her own, confronting him at the end of each day's activism with the ominous question "What have you done?" while Mark quaked and shuffled and muttered about offering the house as surety on the court costs of attempting to arraign Messrs Blair, Straw et al for war crimes. As an illustration of the importance of public dissent it was hilarious and persuasive. And at the beginning of the second half we all sang 'Happy Birthday' - he's forty today. Happy Birthday, Mark!
Before the gig we met up with Chris, Melanie and mates in the pub. One of them, whom I was meeting for the first time, was a young woman legendary for her lunatic dietary practices. She's a rawtarian (rawatarian? rawetarian?) Anyway she doesn't eat anything cooked. She seemed healthy enough, mind. Until she opened her mouth that is. No sooner had my arse hit the chair when she was telling me how gratified she had been at a recent party when every male in the place had spent the evening gazed slack-jawed at her breasts. 'Oh really?' I replied, in my long-practised "No - please don't tell me any more about yourself. In fact, please stop speaking entirely" tone of voice that, sadly, never seems to have the desired effect. Oh yes, she continued brightly. In fact, she explained, she'd been listening to a CD that, even as you slept, would make your breasts grow larger. "You mean it produces some sort of subconscious effect on your endocrine system?" I asked, in spite of myself. "Oh yes", she repeated delightedly. 'I mean, before, they were pathetic, but now ...' She broke off, and gestured proudly across her newly-expanded decolletage. Which, if I am to be brutally honest, did not seem to be all that expansive, really. So there you have it. The power of suggestion. I wonder if they do a CD for growing a bigger brain?
Thursday, April 10
happinessMy birthday came early on Saturday when Jack bought me a new bike. It's wonderful. It's a thing of joy and beauty. It's small and shiny and swift and sexy and I want to shag it. It has front suspension and a fourteen-inch, aluminium, women's-specific frame. When I first saw it in the shop, dwarfed by all the boys bikes, I thought it would be too small. But it turns out that the eighteen-inch boys bike I've been riding around on for the last two and a half years is way too big for me (as well as being a clanking, cumbersome lump of iron). Tried out the new one and found it amazingly light and manipulable - the short top tube took the strain off my arms and back (and arse, and other tender parts) and made tight manoeuvres much easier. After a short, doomed struggle with the part of my brain that tells me I shouldn't be doing this sort of thing, I admitted that I was smitten, and Jack bought it for me. Joy! Took it out on Sunday and tried it on a couple of hills - gear changes are small and subtle and smooth and I'm even looking forward to the hills on the London-Cambridge ride in July. Thanks babe.
Friday, April 4
how to write a profile of a Contemporary Children’s AuthorThe Author writes cutting-edge, gritty, urban novels about the real, urban lives of real-life urban teenagers, who come face to face on a Daily Basis with real-life issues such as heroin addiction, incest, homelessness and abortion. (And swearing.) (Do any contemporary teenagers, fictional or otherwise, manage to avoid becoming pregnant dumpster-diving inebriate crackheads? I mean, I don’t know about you, but I consider I was a pretty real-life teenager and no-one offered me so much as a cider until I was twenty-three). Anyhow the books are loved and avidly devoured by the Kids, whose Youth and therefore Moral Purity (in spite of all the heroin and shop-lifting) clearly makes them the superior judges of what makes a book into a Valuable Educational Resource. And what’s more, the Author is singularly responsible for re-introducing an entire generation of Gameboy-obsessed and alienated Youth to the morally uplifting practice of Reading Books (which will presumably distract them from all the drug-taking and under-age sex). So nyah. What does it matter if the Books are reviled by parents, educators and other wowser authority figures? So long as parents, authority figures and school libraries keep shelling out for them, and the Author collects a mantelpieceful of awards sponsored by manufacturers of junk food.
The Author is married to somebody and lives on their Gloucestershire farm with their pet chinchilla, Marcus.
Thursday, April 3
very like a whaleVirtually every woman at my work under about sixty (apart from me) is pregnant at the moment, and to my mind there is nothing more likely to deter your average, reasonably healthy, reasonably sane, reasonably active thirty-something woman from procreation than being surrounded by blissfully and vocally pregnant people. The highs. The lows. The drama. The cravings. The nausea (mine, mostly). The mood swings (well, quite). The endless quest for carbohydrates. The endless quest for chocolate. The endless quest for things you're actually allowed to eat. The endless quest for maternity clothes. The descriptions of nipples, blood tests, urine samples, swollen veins, inverted belly-buttons, intestinal gases, insomnia. The blow-by-blow accounts of every foetal kick and hiccup. The crowding around monitors to coo at blurry ultrasound images. The descriptions of the ultrasound exam. The descriptions of employment law pertaining to maternity leave. The endless debates about names. The endless debates about whether or not to find out the sex. The endless debates about what colour to paint the nursery wall. I feel as though I have lived vicariously though a hundred, nay, a thousand pregnancies. Can I have a puppy now please?
Actually, from what I remember from working in the health service, the worst ones for extremely vocal pregnancies were female doctors, who invariably get a) technical and b) competitive: "Oh, with my first I had pre-eclamptic fitting" - "Oh really? Well I was in labour for three days!" - "Ha! Only three days? I was in labour for a WEEK!" &c &c
result II
At Pilates last night I managed, for the first time, to perform a full side lift with straight legs supported on straight arm (rather than elbow/shoulder). Am elite fitness Goddess-type person.
Ah, hubris. We revel in it.
