interval

There will be a short break in broadcast while Kumquat gets her head straight after the detenation of a life-bomb.

Normal service will be resumed shortly.

history lesson

Probably first used in the latter half of the sixteenth century, Netsuke are miniature Japanese sculptures

dating from the Meiji period.

Without pockets in kimonos, the Japanese would carry money, medication or other small items in sagemono pouches threaded through their obi, or kimono sash.

Netsuke were used as a toggle at the end of the obi and

would hang down below the waist.

They were originally made from natural materials such as wood, gourd or stone.

Later, ivory and bone was used.

Many of them are hateful looking pieces of kitsch

reminiscent of pottery whimsies.

Others are grotesquely erotic or faintly sickening, sentimental disney-like creatures with big eyes but enough of them are beautifully crafted for them to have caught my eye.

Whisky

Sat down and watched some world cinema with mini-me this evening. It was very funny in parts but mostly bleak and touching. I thought it wasn't bad but when I asked mini-me at the end he replied; 'honestly? ... I thought it was pants."

london town

...and so on to another day in the big smoke. hob-nobbing with the very highest at leadenhall market for lunch before whizzing over to euston to discuss company branding. (it will be introduced for absenteeism initially!)

a very funky outfit where the staff all look happy and relaxed swirling across the rubberised floors in their swivel chairs. sitting up to groovy clover leaf tables, mooching around their macs and generally playing with colours and words. in one fell swoop looking to all the world as if they own your soul but still want to be friends.

nice to see you again phillie. was flattered gill asked my advice. hope tomorrow with 'he-who-is-not-JR' goes well. you'll be fine, just have a top 40 promo stuffed in your back pocket and name drop. it'll be a breeze!

oh and phillie, explain to gill that cut and paste doesn't actually mean scissors and glue ;) heh heh.

my first regional meeting!!!!!

YAWN

That about says it all. I thought it was going to be a hotbed of radical ideas and burgeoning new thinking and I was bitterly disappointed. (snort!)

216 kept running out to throw up and got greyer by the minute,

poor chap.

everything by comparison was crushingly pedestrian.

given the absence of all things 'touchy feely', the whole experience was rather cold and intimidating.

but drinks afterwards put paid to that. even so, no gossip of any weight to feedback. even the boy wonder at 429 seems to be improving.

'no ships nor nobody drownded, fact nothing to laugh at, at all!'

Did you know that the sign '&' is called an ampersand? This is the kind of revelation that keeps geeks like myself happy for hours.

So anyway...

Here's a question to which I need a wholeheartedly

English, eccentric response.

It has come to my attention that those who are really getting on in my company have something in common. A decidedly outr hobby. Clearly I need one.

Your suggestions please.

It can be anything as long as it isn't going to cost me an arm, a leg, a marriage or a spell in prison! Although something with a risk element wouldn't be beyond my consideration.

Do your worst.

My destiny is in your hands.

reasons why I always (feel the need to) win

If it hadn't been for the fact that Mr K landed on 'free parking' 5 times and collected millions of pounds, I would have won Monopoly. Technically then I think you can say that I won. At least the moral victory is mine and has nothing to do with Nicci being too sleepy to buy property and mini-me being an air head and spending more time counting his money than noticing when he should be collecting rent. No connection at all. Ergo, I win. Right?

what goes 'bing boingg bingg boinggg'? This isn't a joke! We think it must be frogs indigenous to Manton Heights only where they can be heard binging and boinging at night all through the summer.

Had a fab BBQ with Scotty and Nicci where the evenings highlights were seeing 3 lads in a freezing cold pool giggling like a bunch of girls at how cold it was, painting the decking while the grub was a-cooking and oh what was the other thing...ah yes, winning at monopoly.






Technically.

quote of the night

last night cont'd/...

"...the novel is real it's not just a work of.....fiction"

(much laughter)

Last night was a lot of fun and thanks to Mrs B driving we got MreadB uproariously drunk. Three cheers for that lady. Many an inappropriate word was uttered regarding what you can smell on Saxon Way, what his nibs in the CO would do with the power of 'show emulator', the exquisite company of someone's sister, grass embedded in bracelets and what was nearly a leaving present but.....ANYway.....!!!

Today was a laugh a minute as you'd expect. Although there was one highpoint when Krispy Kremes gave out boxes of donoughts to anyone who works at c:mk.

Thank you for your comments Anon. Get yourself a nickname and join in!

happy sad evening

some unknown drunk said to me at the bar 'paint my eyes and call me curly'.

another drunk said to me later in the evening:

"he has a body in his garden, he sent me a picture, she's got leaves all over her face"

i can't believe he's leaving. for the record, i'm gutted.

close one

sinner to saint in 0.1 seconds.

crouch is a *£%"!$^& one minute and a legend the next.

something of a first

the first strawberry i've ever grown.

thanks for the plants JJ.

tasted great!

stranger danger!!

Read the caption and look at the product...?!?!

Yeah cos you cadge a backie off one of these guys and they'll just put their foot down and who knows what will become of you.

power junky

M IS FOR MEGLOMANIA

I have been working on the whole world domination plan today and everything seems to be coming together nicely. 'obi wan' and i had a chat about my future in the rebel alliance and all looks well.

poxy film. you see how i have prostrated myself for the sake of an extended metaphor?

la belle ball game (sans merci)

francophile i may be. french cricket star i am not. did i want to play rounders after that? no chance.

...not since the time i was playing rounders and someone threw a wellie at me instead of a ball and everyone laughed as i swung, terrified, at this huge black thing flying through the air at me.

but the therapy has been wonderful and i've got my uncontrollable fits of anger down to less than once a week now.




>twitch, twitch<

Summer soiree

Just back in from the soiree which was unbelieveable! Fantastic hog roast with some incredible salads I'd never heard of before, bar, coffee machine etc
And two sessions of an auction of promises to raise money for charity. I made a few bids but was waay out of my league! I bid on the whiskey tasting evening for 8 people but I think it went for about £200 in the end. Similarly the 3 course dinner party delivered to the door, box of home made cookies, swim party including barbeque, setting up a website with 6 months maintenance, weekend holiday in Devon, trampolining lessons, portraits...wow, the list goes on. People were really generous with their promises. (language tuition sessions, babysitting, cleaning & ironing, lifts to the airport, golf lesson, fashion consultancy with free lunch...) A group of us clubbed together to get a session at a 'high ropes' activity centre in Irthlingborough so I can't waaiit for that! They must have raised thousands to help the homeless.
One of the best evenings I've had for a very long time. The place was decorated fabulously. Great big stands with twisted branches tied to them full of lights and ribbons, huge drapes with original prints covering the walls. Stunning.

not a football free site

yesterday i picked out japan and ARGENTINA from the work world cup sweep stake. c:mk are showing matches on a big screen directly outside work which is good i suppose...but it makes the whole world cup thing even more frustrating because i can see 2/3 of what is going on because of a pillar in the way. i do like my footie and i will scream with the best of them when we score but i can't drink in the middle of the day when it's boiling hot outside so i'm going to be ordering pints of orange juice and lemonade at the bar when everyone else is throwing down pints like mad dogs and englishmen.

planet earth is beautiful

I took these pictures on the way to and from work today.

i had 0141439564 of my 0752877607 but it seems 0385605870 has caused enormous 0099592312 and is making me 0340837098.

O if for ODIFEROUS

bubbling substance!

had a call from 216 today asking me if they could shut because there were only 2 of them there. pft...fat chance! bricks without straw mate. (evil cackle)

and while i'm on the phone i get regailed with an event hitting the Bedford headlines. there is a barrel of "bubbling substance" out the back that the police have cordoned off and are thinking of blowing up. now to my mind, blowing up something that bubbles is just gunna cause a nasty case of splash back but what do i know?!

place your bets!! huge prizes not at stake!!

ok so i nicked the idea from auster. thanks for the management training, work, it didn't go to waste. we are effectively "networking" some fabulously cheesy blog ideas from each other. guess the titles.

medication for meditation

ZEE IS FOR ZEN, KIDS!

beware the evils of piriton! i have been incapacitated all day after taking my first hayfever tablet of the season which is weird cos i took them last year and was fine with them.
if you saw me at the back of church this morning with my head back, tongue lolling out indecently, sending up zeds, i was in fact in a deeper level of meditation that you can ever hope to achieve. went to bed this afternoon for about 3 hours. managed to drag myself to a barbeque this afternoon still feeling pretty spaced. am now back to sneezing merrily and can focus on the screen again. all is not lost, me and my computer are reunited.

M IS FOR MEDICATION

i remember something else that eejit of an interviewer asked; 'coming from an english lit background, i have to ask, are you just really trying to annoy people by having eight pages of pi in the middle?' Well let's spell this out with claps shall we? i-r-o-n-y. it was one of the funniest parts in the novel. i laughed and laughed. it's an email that one pod member sends to everyone else. there's one digit incorrect in these pages of pi and the first one to get spot it wins the opportunity to get him to sing something karaoke for them. it's a whole black humoured thing of spam emails, the fact that they compete, the fact that a canonical author can give over that space to numbers (he's part of the modern canon right?). i just loved the double irony that there is a character called Kam in there who has zero sense of humour or understanding of irony. uh huh. ooh i'm spotting a modern day parallel! shall i stop obsessing about this guy now.

mole, don't laugh but he taught on arvon!!

I get to meet the man!!

lovely loughboroughites

a nice man from loughborough found my phone on the train and is sending it back to me :)

the good, the bad & the ugly

and in reverse order...

The ugly

Mother of pearl, that interviewer was awful. (we're talking the douglas coupland reading and interview in nottingham this evening) Rules of interviewing must surely include not trying to wangle your own achievements into a conversation with someone who outclasses you. also, pulling your interviewee up on little details so you look cleverer is also not a great trick. best not to look confused when given an answer you don't think suited your question and then following it up with 'yes but the question i asked was...' He made too much of himself (as you mentioned i am an author too i didn't notice it being mentioned apart from by himself), he tried to make in jokes (don't you think it would be a good idea to explain what jpod is) and he also called the audience stupid at one point. i think it was about his references to pi but i'm not entirely sure. also he name dropped some other Canadian author and told Doug to 'tell the audience about them cos i'm sure they won't know anything about him'. He was a disaster of an interviewer and hopelessly smug after he'd asked every question that he obviously thought was an absolute corker. "I have to ask Doug, what do you think of the latest Morrisey album" the reason we discover he 'had' to ask that question was to get in that he had burnt a copy of it for Doug. >gag<

By the way the latest Morrisey album is great.

the bad

i lost my phone at some point today. so if you're reading this and you're a usual texter then i'm sorry i have no idea where it is and i'm really cross with myself. someone has found it for sure because as soon as i got in i gave it a call and it had been switched off. thankfully i'd just erased all my text messages the day before. but all my photos on there..... man, there are some i can never get back... the explosion at Buncefield, Bryan Robson signing at work, parties, people i worked with years ago. Not to mention all those numbers i have to find again. grr.

the good

well, here was going to go a picture of me and Doug but I've tried twice and blogger doesn't wanna know so i'll try again later.
Anyway, he was surprisingly nervy. Apparantly the last time he came he sat in the green room then ran away he was too nervous! At least this time he came out. He obviously does this a lot and told us he loved doing it but he didn't seem a natural public speaker. He was funny and likeable though and manoeuvred his way through a minefield of questions already detailed above. He read quite a lot from JPod which was enjoyable even though I had just finished it on the train up. He ambled through his talk, getting distracted along the way and picking up where he left off which was fun. I'm sure I'll add more soon but I'm getting fed up with the pictures not working now so here I post...

boing boing

and i also got to meet bryan robson today which was pretty cool. nice chap. had an abrupt introduction when his publicist hands me her mobile and says 'he needs directions'. so i'm talking to bryan robson with everyone (staff, crowds, manager, book rep etc etc) looking eagerly at me to be the first to know where he is and how long he'll be. as for me, i'm thinking, i know nothing about giving directions to where we are if you're gunna say i'm on the A54321xyz and i've come to a roundabout. as some point he mentions a landmark i know and we're in business.

it was a fun afternoon. only one lunatic shouting BRYAN ROBSON!! in his face to get him to look and have his picture taken. and one woman who said 'i've waited 20 years to kiss you' and planted a smacker on him! lots of people with shirts and old football programmes for him to sign. then he sat in my chair in the office signing a load more stock.

just as we're calming down after the fun, harlen coben walks in and offers to sign stock for us. not bad eh?

but tomorrow it will be my turn to be the token nutter shouting DOUGLAS COUPLAND!!! I'VE WAITED 20 YEARS TO MEET YOU!!!

life after Doug

i'm going to meet my favourite living author tomorrow and i'm beyond ecstatic.

computer ill

so far can still get online but excuse me if i disappear for no reason while we try and get rid of some nasty bugs.

nom de plant

i named my bromeliad, Percival.

he is my office plant.

something old something new

this is why i wanted the job so badly: my boss promises a meeting where we can sit down and plan how i'm going to make my next grand move towards world domination, he is giving me mountains of work to do and last but not least, he is rude to me. only yesterday he was on the phone to someone at another branch moaning about how i never made him coffee and he wished he hadn't employed me.

so much stuff is going on at this place i love it!!

and tomorrow i get to go to jj's party!! woo hooo. i will presume a bottle of something is an acceptable entrance fee unless i hear otherwise...

double vision

My improbable alliance with a Canadian (all the way from Canadia) professor of film who I met online, code name double vision, has just left after spending the weekend with us.

He was very polite about the dog, the mess, the rowdy dinner guests and my off kilter family! I hope he enjoyed himself even half as much as we enjoyed having him. It's not often you can walk in the pouring rain having a conversation about uncannily omniscient cats.

What an all round nice chap. He even went so far as to get British Citizenship last time he was here just so he could fit in. Slowly but surely he's learning how to be English. Under the careful tutelage of Esther and myself he can now passably scorn the Welsh.

best of time, worst of times

-

mr k's uncle died this week from an almost identical tumour to the one his father died of two years ago

mr k's cousin has been told, after recovering very well from an operation to remove a cancerous tumour on his kidney, that he has a very rare form of cancer to which there is no cure and there is nothing else the medical profession can offer him

+

tomorrow, i have my friend doublevision from canada coming to stay overnight and hang out with us for a while. really excited about seeing him and having him in our home.

i am on two days off before the new job starts and am looking forward to making a big meal for 8 of us tomorrow night.

i spent far too much on more new books today but i can look forward to some penguin epics, new david mitchell and more cooking with gordon.

i have made a stack of new mates at my new church and it feels very exciting to be with people who go out of their way to make you feel part of the group.

AND NOW i'm going to bed with the astringent fumes of floor varnish wafting up from downstairs. i should have vivid dreams tonight.

lunch

had a house mixed salad and tagliatelle crema at http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~vilarosa/index.htm Very good. Shame their website hasn't been updated for nearly 8 years!!

travelling wilberry

have start date for new location. a week tomorrow. should be interesting.

oOo

"My girlfriend doesn't really drink very much. Only when I go down to see her."

(The Boy Wonder)

egads!

wet weekend

A few months ago my garden was a tiny rectangle of concrete, uneven concrete at that. A few pots and lots of rubbish. Now look!

No time at all since JJ and I were pushing in roots of things we didn't know would spread.

And of course a few obligatory purchases to get things going, like this willow and three climbers that are loving the rain we're having.

Before you know it the place is full of colour and texture. I go out every morning before work to see how much further the shoots have grown or how the tendrils are curling round the support wires.

I've had fun reclaiming some old tiles from a table we once had and getting bargains on left overs. It took a bit of courage to stick them up on the walls but I think they look quite cool. The plan is that the plants will grow over them and you'll just catch glimpses of them.

And it's not just me looking forward to the better weather!

the root of all fun

retail therapy is a shallow, vacuous and utimately hollow experience.

unless you got the gorgeous 'long' shorts i bought from monsoon today.

am experiencing ennui. inexplicable. maybe it's the late nights, excessive carbohydrates and petrol fumes of the M1 at 10 mph every day. or just your run of the mill existential angst.

bran something. what's that cereal called? not bran flakes but the one that comes in shreds. was imagining a bowl of them but couldn't think what they were called. bran something.

:)

got it

lousy

Sent a grouchy text to Mr K telling him I was waiting to find out if he'd collected my prescription as I felt awful. Mysteriously got a text back from Lotus telling me he thought I might have sent it to the wrong person. haha! oops. Anyway, I'm fine really!

No-one cashed up yesterday so I spent hours sorting out two days worth of properly messed up tills and petty annoyances which boil down to people being a bit shoddy. But of course I was waiting for interview results so petty annoyance quickly turned to general irritation at everything.

So. No phone call. No result. Strange, cos "M" is startlingly efficient. They must be negotiating my payrise. (ie...will they bother giving me one!)

Finished reading 'Republic of Trees'. Very good but ends quite chillingly in the last 50 pages or so. You can pretty much see it coming but it's still disturbing. Deciding what to read next. Probably another Everitt cos the last one I read by him I loved with a passion. Although the mantlepiece in the bedroom should be bowing under the weight of yet to reads.

Need to sleep. The alarm goes off in 6 hours.

random

I've seen this before elsewhere but I kinda like it:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you



Posts, and rails, and old cautions to trespassers, and backs of mean houses, and patches of wretched vegetation, stared it out of countenance.

wake up call.

The night before last I lay in a half sleep for what seemed like an hour but probably was only 20 minutes. You know how it is. There was enough noise being made outside for me to be conscious of it but I was hoping it would ease off and I wouldn't have to make my way up to the surface of full consciousness. Nice idea. I thought I heard some racist abuse being shouted, loud music then enormous crashes. I was awake and at the window...just in time to see the streaker. Ye gods, half three in the morning and a big, fat, pasty and frankly, unimpressivly endowed male is running up and down the road with his hands in the air. More racist rantings, more shouting, more music, more throwing of wheelie bins. I'm assuming there's an unforgiving mix of alcohol and student involved in this unsightly performance.
7 am sees me up for work and banging the hell out of their front door in the hope of really, really getting on the wrong side of them and pointing out how irritating it is being woken up. Sadly they were dead to the world. Or preferably just dead.
When they eventually surfaced, they would have found a letter on their mat telling them to keep their naked bodies and racist abuse inside the house. I wish I could have seen their faces when they realised there had been an audience. On the other hand, I think I've seen more than enough of their faces and everywhere else to last me.

2 hours!

The interview lasted 2 hours in a tiny room with 2 interviewers and a temperature beyond legal working conditions! It was a tough one that made me very glad I'd done my prep, albeit having been completed in the car on the way there.
I find out on Monday if I have the job or not. I am really very keen to get this one. I was pretty pleased with how I performed so even if I don't get it I'm satisfied with how I did on the day. Though of course they'd be fools not to give me the job.
For those of you not in the know, the position is for assistant manager (wot i am now), in the same company but at a bigger store with lots more exciting things going on. Like people buying books. I worked at this branch last year for 5 months in a lower position. It was an altogether excellent experience so I'm dying to get the AM job there. I now know there's only one other person going for this job and she's pretty good too so it's no walk over.
Now let this be our little secret. I think I said before that I ran into the RM a week ago and drained him of information. This proved to be most useful as I was able to tell the manager things about his budget that made his eyes pop out and ask me where I got my insider information from. That was "sweeeet."
I would like to thank Mole for a) being an all round nice kind of chappy but also b) being useful to name as an 'outside contact'. 'Oh and I do have a friend who runs his own company as a management consultant...' Tralaa.
Also Phillie who gave me lots ideas that I nicked for the 8 month business plan I needed to compile for for the interview.

Anyway, I don't wanna count my chickens etc but I think it went pretty well and I'll post again on Monday once I know the sentence!

alternative decor

am beginning to think i could paper the walls of a small room in my house with the letters i'm getting back from school telling me mini-me is failing to hand in homework, failing to attend detentions, is being disruptive in class or has been issued sanctions. maybe i should start collecting them for his best man's speech.

day off

so this week i really *do* have that postponed interview. that makes 3 weeks on the trot preparing for interviews! a good number of people have helped me prep so thank you very much.

today i started listening to a cd of 'haunted' by Palahniuk which is reputed to be so vile some people have actually thrown up reading it. so far we've had a lad misbehaving at the bottom of a swimming pool and subsequently having his intenstine sucked out of his rear by the pool filter. pretty graphic. maybe i have underdeveloped sensitivities to the gruesome but i'm not feeling nauseous yet. or maybe there's much worse to come.

or maybe i was immunised by ->

hedge backwards

don't be scared. it's only temporary.

now where are my straighteners???

resolve

have run twice this week now! just back from jogging round the marina with Mr K on his kitchen ... er I mean, bike ;) and Monty the wild critter.

this is all training for the race for life this summer. does anyone from round here know how far it is round the marina? i could do with an idea and if any of you know off the tops of your heads, well, frankly, it'll save me having to do the research!

in the meantime you can all look forward to get emails from me in the near future begging for money for a good cause ie...seeing me half dead.

what a lovely day it is and the flowers in my garden are fab.

happy weekends all.

bored

have completed nine seventeenths of my holiday tasks and have lost motivation!

so i texted mole and had lunch out with him knowing that my crucial interview was postponed until next friday.

fortuitously, who should walk round the corner, as we are sat outside waiting for our meals to arrive, but the regional manager. (carrying his motivational stick!) so i forced him into an armlock and drained him of all information i could to enhance my chances of saying the right thing next week. nice man! then mole paid for my lunch. nice man! and gave me two moleskines as a gift. wonderful man!

walked the hound out on the 'fairway'. (not a fairway at all, just looks like it and is thus named in our house). he splashed through very rank, smelly puddle. i threw him in the river. we're square.

have discovered http://weboggle.shackworks.com/game.html and i urge you not to look if you have a penchant for words, a tendancy to waste lots of time in front of a computer and too much else to do. i blame daveybot.

Chilterns?

Are the Barton Hills the chilterns? I think so. Anyway, me and alimal went there yesterday to climb trees and get out of puff going up steep slopes.

I hope she doesn't mind me posting this picture of her. It's rather a nice one. Isn't she beautiful??!!

And here's the base of the gnarly old tree we shinned up. Anyone recognise what type it is? It's a proper climber.

One of my best holiday days.