Sunday

planned to have a beautiful clean and tidy house by the end of the day but all good intentions went awry.

today i did church as per usual then took MIL out for dinner. was heartily disappointed by my 'smash' potatoes and MIL's lamb and mushroom pie that had no lamb in it. also am turning into an old woman who gets riled by loud mouthed crass idiots shouting, f-ing and blinding about people getting smacked in and throwing up with all the sound effects to go with it. rahhhh.

talked to MIL about how I plan to put aside some extra money for emergencies such as the washing machine breaking down.

Got home. the washing machine broke down. spooky.

Spent two hours round MIL's with our washing.

Cocktails to walking up and down castle road in my pyjamas (oh did i not mention that?!) ... really quite a weekend. See? THIS is why work is such a pleasure!

Saturday

Worked all day and had a great one. Roberta Taylor did a signing which was modest but fun. Did exciting-to-me and dull-to-you things like whooping budget ass and working with new team members.
Got home at half seven to be upbraided by Mr K for leaving my mobile at work and told to hurry up we had to leave in 5 minutes.
Off to fireworks at Smudgers. Really amazing generosity. Fireworks went on and on and on, enough beef and pork for 200 (?) people to get right royally stuffed and my mate Flow's band playing. Marvelloush. Took our own drink, as requested, and I nursed a bottle of chianti all night. I was outrageously drunk by the end but I only had to get up once in the night to throw up...! (eek)

friday

had a crazy fun hilarious day with digger. essentially wandered round oxford drinking, eating and giggling. mighty good fun. actually had some cool deep mind food discussions as well which is always a good thing. learnt some interesting stuff about that thar digga. in brief, she's as bright as my shoes. she learnt a lot about me. in brief, i have 364 sensible days a year where i am mostly normal, coherant, professional and organised and 1 day when i become the antithesis of all things logical. guess which day she got?
so, i get onto the oxford park and ride and text that i'm arriving. only i don't have her mobile number in my phone. no problem, she emailed it to me so i'll find an internet cafe and get it. only, i seem to have deleted it when i get there. no problem, i'll just panic. always a good back up plan. i know, i'll post notes highlighting my stupidity on every website i know she visits. someone else will have her number and get back to me. only, they don't. but life saver Mr Self has her work number. no problem. I'll just ring her work place and ask them to disclose personal contact details of one of their colleagues with absolutely no reference point as to who I might be. So, that worked! Eventually met up at midday, though I should say I got lost trying to find her even once we had made phone contact.
I didn't stop there though. oh no. i came out with a volley of stupidity all day long. "oh i want one of those, what are they?" ... "wow, what's this unmarked book, oh, it's actually a divider on the shelf" ... "oh, i forgot i was meant to tell my son he's sleeping over at a friends house tonight and i'm two counties away" ...
I'm sure there were more. Feel free to chip in Digger, it's open season here today!
But what a fantastic fun day. It would appear that, with the exception of my idiocy, Digger and I are in fact the same person. Too many times we both talked about quirky stuff we both do or think or love to hate etc.
Wonderful mezze at Jericho Cafe, incredible cocktails at the QI bar, extravagant sausages and stories at The Big Bang.
This was a must repeat day.... unless Digger has decided I'm a full time loon.

(this post had to be red, obviously)

) wanna meet up some time?
( yeah sure, where d'you fancy?
] oxford?
[ sounds good to me.

tomorrow i'm going to be shown round some of the coolest locations in oxford by a girl who boasts the epithet of being as bright as her shoes.

today was surprisingly good considering I went to a funeral. don't take me for an entirely heartless wench but even though the day was solemn, it was really good to see people and chat about allsorts.

This evening we watched a very odd film. Kung Fu Hustle, I think it was called. Some very random stuffing going on there but funny as well.

today's colour

+ dark red +

against my better judgment

this is how it begins:

"The circle of black paving slabs lay at his feet, flat and glossy after the recent shock of rain. His rough blonde hair still held the painstaking look of careless coiffure. In his left hand dangled a cocktail glass and spilling out of his pockets were Imogen’s tights and the damp contents of a discharged party popper."

Gruffalo at work!!

following instructions on keeping posts cheerful;

2 days to nano.

the cat that left came back again.

i'm making jamie oliver meatballs for dinner.

the house smells of garlic.

i have a new jumper and necklace.

we kicked budget ass over the weekend.

i have new pillows.

i'm meeting 'digger' in oggsford this week. (small BDO)

what possessed me?

So, with 3 days to go, I decide my NANO idea is unworkable and boring. I'm back to having one character and I know precious little about him but he's kinda cute and *I'd* follow him home so that's alright isn't it?

jack o'lantern

Had a lovely evening with friends eating pumpkin soup and other yumminess.

Mixed bag

I try to keep things on this blog fairly light hearted (thinks back to dog knitting, hang man, cat buckaroo etc). So bear with me if I use this space today to splurge out what a rubbish day yesterday was.
My new boss rang to tell me that two of my colleagues were involved in a nasty car crash. One guy, who has moved from the MK branch with me to be our cash office lovely, is in hospital with a fractured collar bone and the other, his mother, who was the cash office lovely at MK, died. It is truly shocking and I find myself lapsing straight into those ridiculously irrational sentiments that you can only understand when you've experienced it first hand; I don't want it to be true, I'm sure I'll see her next time I go into the branch, perhaps if I wish hard enough and sincerely enough it won't be true after all, maybe someone got the wrong message. She was good fun to work with, excellent at her job and will be badly missed. The whole language of death is a cliche but it's all I can say at the moment.
But this is called a mixed bag and some fun stuff has happened too.
I've had my first week at the new job and it's going well. If it had a time lapse camera on it the shopfloor would have gone something like this; dark with black empty shelves, some people wandering about pointing at things, 1000 crates arriving, a bit of lighting here and there, an explosion of stock over tables and zipping across shelves, general mess, lots of people waving their arms or huddled into groups scratching and shaking heads, stock disappearing from the floor, crates leaving and people moving stock from one shelf to another and pushing tables about. That's how I left it Thursday night. By Monday we should be putting up POS and putting in the Christmas campaign. It's beginning to look like a bookshop now but outside is still a hard hat site. We're due to open Thursday!! Anyone in the area??
Other news. Sorry if this is sounding like a family Christmas newsletter. Ick, I have a horror of them!
Mini-me has his girlfriend staying down this weekend which is a new experience for me and Mr K. It's very sweet to see how Mr K responds to them. Hee hee. Trying his best to embarrass them by threatening to go out to the pictures with them in my hi-vi. (high visibility vest that I have to wear when crossing the building site! Must include a picture some time!)
Last night our errant mog returned home. We hadn't seen her for 2-3 weeks and we thought she had shuffled off her mortal coil. She is a tiny scrap of a cat and last night you could almost put your hand round her back bone and meet in the middle she was so skinny :( We fed her and fussed her as you can imagine. This morning she's nowhere to be seen again.
And now I'm going off to meet the kids in town and buy them lunch.

Unbelievable.

If you were to follow the link from one of the spammers on a previous thread, and why would you when the only temptation is a link called 'private road constuction'(?), you would find yourself at the home of The Interim Monetary System of Heaven on Earth. Scrolling past the offer of 100,000,000.00 Credon Barter Dollars (hmm, that sounds like real currency), you would find another link. This time to Normism and the Declaration of Heaven on Earth. I suspect this is an example of someone trying to start their own religion. The logic goes something like this: there are lots of religions and that proves that god will give us whatever we want. Maybe I'm being overly critical but something doesn't ring true there. Apparantly the ideal age for asking for, well, anything, is 40 but this is not a religion without generosity:

After some brief discussion with Norm and Jesus we reached the conclusion (upon my request) that it is ok for anyone who accepts this declaration to receive immortality and peace in life right away.

So don't tell me I never give you anything!!!!!!

Long overdue pics from the peaks

induction day

I got to meet my new team today at an induction day in London. Interesting, fun, enlightening, encouraging. Looking forward to Monday now.

i hope...

...i've made the right decision.

Of course I have but I am seriously going to miss the bods at MK. They're all great and some of them are particularly yumptious. It's been tough saying goodbye to them this evening.

guess what?

Guess what I've just signed up to again? Am I a complete

numbskull? NANO time again. Another November where

likeminded idiots around the globe attempt to write 50,000

words in 30 days. This year, because of other commitments, I'm aiming for

30,000 words instead. If I get to 30K I'll be delighted, anything beyond that is

a miracle.

Who would have thought?

My money was on Ishiguro but John Banville it was and didn't he look a sweetie?
I thought K.I would grab it because the theme has such a current feel but after the reviews this evening I have to say I'm drawn to JB (not Julian!)
I thought Ali Smith looked far too self confident looking to camera all the time and smirking pretend shyly.
Anyone read any of the short listers? Anyone going to buy the winner after this evening? I'm tempted but I have about half a dozen on the go or waiting in my urgent pile.

'Birdy', I got about 20 pages into then had to pause because of a billion things going on at work but I'll get back to it ASAP. I picked up Guillani's 'Leadership' and think it's brilliant so far. Also reading a book whose title eludes me...(enchanting? enthralling?) and plodding through Ackryod's 'Albion (fantastic). Vonnegut and Murakami sit on the shelf up here, looking delicious and tempting. I have an interesting one co-written by a Palestinian and a Jew downstairs. And don't even get me started on the proofs I have!

fit of the giggles

It's been a long week, feeling torn between two jobs & two bosses. Maybe I've had more than my average dose of stress recently but all it took was this one enquiry at work today and tears of near hysterical laughter were pouring down my face as I try and keep up a semblance of professionalism.
First my customer asks for 'Knitting for Dogs'. This is enough. My face is contorted in an effort to stifle my laughter as I regrettably tell them that this gem is not in store:

So after they have left I call upstairs to our resident knitting knut and tell her I have an ISBN she needs to check out. We have a laugh but then comes the clincher. She outdoes the unspeakable horror of pet dressing:
Yes indeed folks, this book will teach you how to take dog hair, weave it and then knit it into snug items to keep you warm during the long winter months. Just think! Spaniel scarves, Golden Retriever gloves, Jack Russell jeans and Poodle pants. Contact your local dog groomer to start up your own business!

Botswana

http://www9.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/wildcamafrica/wildcam.html

This has to be the most amazing link I've ever seen! It's a webcam onto a pond in Botswana. Don't forget to turn up the volume. I sit for 15 minutes every night watching this before I go to bed. Things at the pond are livlier during the day but I've seen an elephant washing itself and some kind of deer creatures walking around in the evening. In the day I've seen these massive birds chasing each other about. I wish I knew what they all were. It's compulsive viewing! Hope you enjoy it as much as I am.

At last!

The news is finally official and out in the open. I have a new job. (yeah, another one, i know!) I've only been at MK for 4 months but I've been offered an assistant managership that I'd be stupid to turn down. So I didn't. Two more weeks at MK before heading south to HH.
Recruitment for two branches simultaneously is a challenge! Arriving at 7 a.m after an hour's drive to let the cleaning lady in is something I just can't wait for either. But it's a brand new store so I get to be Book Fuhrer from the word go. It's all good.
One of guys at work responded with 'Good, I never liked you anyway', which was momentarily unnerving. I manoeuvred that one then he came back with 'how soon are you leaving?' Touching.

nothing dramatic

...just to say i'm back. work is frenetic and brilliant. the animals are crazy. the humans are competing on that front. interesting work news that i can't divulge to the world for perhaps another week but it's good. had my hair cut. bought new red shoes. went to the peak district for a weekend. that *is* about all that's happened in the last fortnight.

back online!

Monty chewed through the cable. I'm back online now though! (rolls eyes)

Thanks for your contributions.

Computer is still doing odd things. Must be some remnants of doggy saliva somewhere.

crazy day

without giving step by step instructions to the universe at large about how to break into my house, i had to do just that this morning after i locked myself out. the break in process involved climbing a wall, lying full length in mud and climbing down a ramshackle piece of trellis. i had to buy a loaf of bread so i had change to use the phone to ring mr K to find out he was miles away and couldn't help. which reminds me, that loaf of bread is still in a plastic bag in someone else's back garden where i left it as i hacked my way through nettles to get to the crumbling brick wall i was to scale. (i just ate the last slice tonight so maybe i could get minime to go fetch for breakfast!!)
then i get to work, amazingly only 10 minutes late, to be faced with news that some wacko has gone straight to the MD because he didn't have staff bow to his every whim when he last came in.
then at the end of the day i realise i can't shut the back door at work so have to call out security to do a bit of man handling of the locks to get the place secure.
i get home after nine from a late shift, eat a bowl of beans for tea and now i'm going to bed.

good job the coffee was strong

yesterday i took a 70 mile round trip for a cup of coffee. or so it felt. decided to drop in to the Hemel branch of a certain bookshop unnamed for legal reasons (!) It's a new shop in which I might be having some kind of involvement in the future. What I discovered...after timing the journey, noting the miles, researching the parking facilities and getting my bearings...was that the shop was so new it hadn't yet been built.
Thought I'd give you all a laugh at my expense on a Sunday afternoon.

is it just me

or does it seem less than satisfactory when a hospital consultant tells you to go home and find out how to get better by surfing the internet?

first day back...

...at work after 2 weeks off.

A pleasant evening with rocket dog shoe-wearing friend round to see greyhound wannabe rocket dog, Monty.

Minime has first day at upper school tomorrow which pretty much freaks me out as it doesn't seem that long since it was my first day at upper school. My form room was the metal work room so it was smelly and there was nowhere to sit. I'm sure minime will get a better deal tomorrow!

Beautiful south

A couple of pleasant days in Bournemouth,

trying to get a weeks worth of sea & sun into

a couple of afternoons!

Got to swim in the sea,

run crazy round on the sandy with loopy lurcher here

& write embarrassing messages in the sand about mini me

liking barbie dolls. Ha ha ha. Such an easy wind up!!!

Had an amusing moment in a shop where i picked up the vilest looking

hair accessory, stuck it in my hair and went up to my sister in law to make her laugh. 'It really suits you' she says. 'Oh thanks a lot!' I reply, bothered that the pinkest, featheryest, ribboniest thing in the shop "suits me". Then I look in the mirror. The damn thing looks great. I end up buying it!

Don't mention the (war) garden.

Still nothing done and the place looks like a WWI reenactment. The mortar was runny (day 1), runny (day 2) and a 2 tonne brick (day 3). Patience an increasingly rare commodity round these parts.

It's a dog-eat-chocolate-drop world

today I took Monty out for a long walk and watched him outrace every other hound at the marina. I also spent a long time lavishing him with attention. Chocolate drops seems to be the way forward for housetraining purposes.

After the horrifying discovery that our son had never heard of the A-team, despite our repeated and frankly tiresome prompts with the theme music, we borrowed some old editions from a mate and gave the boy an education.

The building work in the garden did not take place as planned today because the mortar was too runny and will have to wait til tomorrow.

minx!

Monty went a.w.o.l this morning after *someone* accidentally left the front door open. 2 hours later we got him back. grief! live and learn eh?

New family member!

Introducing MONTY!!

We picked up this beautiful lurcher X from a rescue home

today. With more bounce than the average hound, Monty is

part of our family now :)

His foster home thought he may be crossed with Pharaoh's Hound -->

but he definitely has lurcher lines to him -->

So far he seems very friendly, very quiet but very bouncy!

Had a fun trip out to a local maze. Small but still very
easy to get completely lost in!

Of course, smarty pants here gets to the middle first
and has to give me directions!


In the afternoon I loitered round the Reclamation Yard in
the hope of happening across a lost national treasure. This
monstrosity made for an interesting second best.

Am now sated on the fruits of someone else's hard work; rhubarb
crumble from the allotment. Cheers JJ.

Yah boo

This is where we ain't going...

...cos Mr K is too ill to travel.

Waaaaahhhhhhhhhh.

Due to go away the day after tomorrow but another
sudden hospital trip last night meant I had to cancel.

not to mention

...drinking til the smlal hours and cylcing hoem ina perambulatryo fashion. hee hee hee

what are friends for...

...if not to dig trenches in your back garden for wall footings, painting brickwork and mixing up concrete?

hurrah to the nice people i know. whenever you want the favour returning be sure to ring. there are a number of excellent building companies in this town. calls here are to be restricted to demands for dinners, drinks, nights out and heart to hearts. anything manual or technical is someone else's domain. which is why we asked you round today, duh!

So thanks for making my garden looks like a bomb site. Give it a month and I'll have a grin like the proverbial Cheshire Cat.

"Was it good for you? Read my blog."

awol in norfolk

this week, mini-me is away with grandparents. i miss the lil blighter.

twisted fire starter

should have posted this a few days ago.
just as impressive now though!

bright city lights

There's something loveable about these cranky old lights in
the storm porch of a Fleet Street shop.

Had a day in London for my fast track course so it seemed
reasonable to take a picture of tracks.

fresh raspberries

my parents are pretty cool folks. they sent me home with fresh raspberries, apples and rhubarb.
Not a show stopping entry tonight but a kind of online knowing smile, nod and happy sigh.

comp

What do all these words have in common?

PROFILE
BOILIE
POD
WAGGLER
CAT
P.B
SNOT
COMMON

Big, big prizes not up for grabs!!

london evening

After a day of no natural light and hours of meetings it was time to step out into loveable London. Man, I love this place. Drinks at The Cock where the bar has these groovy little swinging windows that you speak through to place your order and tables outside just made for booksellers to sit round and word process the day. Then a short step down to Soho Square, arriving just as the bells struck six to meet my good friend Joe. Drinks in the George Orwell bar and more discussions of Swedish playwrights and personal attempts at creativity and tardiness. Dinner and more drinks at the I.C.A with many fascinating questions each way about our characters, fictional and otherwise. Midnight came too quickly.

hang man

" A / L I T T L E / L E A R N I N G / I S / A / D A N G E R O U S / T H I N G;

D R I N K / D E E P / O R / T A S T E / N O T / T H E / P I E R I A N / S P R I N G:

T H E R E / S H A L L O W / D R A U G H T S / I N T O X I C A T E / T H E / B R A I N

A N D / D R I N K I N G / L A R G E L Y / S O B E R S / U S / A G A I N . "

ying yang

In contrast to yesterday, today I did not have a man breathing fire in my back garden. In fact, I sat in an office all day typing numbers into a computer and spending virtual money on thousands of books. Not a bad way to spend a day but somewhat less memorable than swirling firebrands.

I did have very good African Peanut Soup for lunch though.

And I'm spending tomorrow night swinging round Soho.

Mustn't grumble.

Is that ying yang or karma? Or swings and roundabouts?

dragonian measures

Today I had a man eating fire in my back garden. Weird huh? What's more, he kept doing it over and over, drinking white spirits, fire breathing and generally being my mate P, all round crazy man who jumps out of planes and takes impromptu trips to venezuela and the arctic circle when he isn't dicing with death. Or a burnt face at least.

The best we could offer in return was an afternoon kiting. With no wind. And too many glasses of wine and hunks of home made carrot cake.

As soon as this stupid thing allows me to put photos up again, I'll show you the type of insanity that visits me from time to time.

thspeeking funny

...my dentist.

Just had my head excavated and didn't feel a thing. The echoing has stopped at last. Have had more pain from getting my nails done or going to the hairdressers than I did having a drill in my head spitting out enamel across the surgery floor.

and then there were 3

whittled our dinner party down to three and had fun at the pub after writing beer mat postcards. Something I initiated and hadn't done since the olden days when i were a lass.

Can't beat an evening that starts discussing slug psychology and ends with promises of more fine dining with best mates.

this blog entry comes with uncharacteristic sentimental hugs for all the people i know who are the stuff of happily anticipated evenings and days out.

very full...cant'move....must....stop

It was a modest little 6 course affair and my guests actually turned down the 4th . Can you believe that?

First course - avocado crisps, chilli crisps, olives, hummus and cucumber dip.

Second course - Stuffed vine leaves with hot tomato sauce and falafels.

Third course - Spanakopita, tabbouleh and mixed bean salad.

Fourth course - Marrakesh vegetable curry, filo tarts with pine nuts and Iranian rice.

Fifth course - Strawberries, raspberries, vanilla bean Green & Blacks ice-cream with single cream and creme fraiche.

Sixth course - tea, coffee and a slab of white and milk chocolate swirl with dried raspberries from Hotel Chocolat.

Various wines.

Celebrating nothing other than having good friends we want to spoil with good food and punish with our company.

ick

i stood on a slug in only my socks. brrrrr

reading again

after spending weeks on, the promising yet ultimately unfulfilling not to mention downright dull, dante club, i am 2/3 of the way through something i only picked up today. 'Strangers' by Yamada. Spooky as hell, jittery and unnerving. What fun!

So I made it!! 30 degrees out and further than i've run before.
I made £266 pounds for Cancer Research so it's well worth the effort.
The first 4k were easy enough but the last kilometre was a killer. Felt
pretty nauseous and done in by then. I just kept thinking I could never
face having to say 'I ran most of the way' so I kept going. The picture is
of me at 3.5k feeling pretty confident...by the end of the road I was wondering
where I was and what would happen if I collapsed. Quite a day!

HP6

back in from a 6:30 a.m start at work having comprehensively out reserved the competitors and refused to drop to their levels of (unsuccessful) queue pinching at midnight. made lots of kiddos and i'll-have-read-it-by-tomorrow adults happy.

i think i'm going to curl up in the corner for the rest of the weekend and sleep. on second thoughts, i think i'll do a 5k run.

i got it :)

well that was fun

Nice evening out with friends, new and new but seem like old.

Drinks at nice pub, chat, laugh, drink, slur, giggle, drink, interesting urinals, drink, strange foam tandoori pigeon poo on the wall, laugh, drink, not nice pub, rude people, swig, stagger, lurch, laugh, drunken heart to hearts, drink, slump, laugh, pizza, talk, where did dil go, taxi, noyoucantwalkmehome, slate very late, roundandroundaroundabout, dizzy, nothisroadnotthatone, hereyeshere, thank you, hello, dirty stop out, giggle, yeah well, all black, mmmm.

070705

What can anyone say after a day like today?

I'm glad to report that both of my brothers who were on duty in London today are well. One of them was very close to the scene and heard some pretty grim things from colleagues who had been down in the tunnel.

I hope everyone you know in London was safe.

yum

why are all my friends veggie when i start discovering amazing dishes with meat in and i can't share them?!

chorizo soup with chick peas and spinach, garlic, tomatoes, onions etc. spicy and tasty. three cheers for jamie oliver and tupperware boxes.

humph

feeling grouchy that i can't make saturday 16th festivities with mates in london because of running the next day but it's all for a good cause and i'd only be drinking, laughing, flirting and having an absolute blast if i was out in the capital for the night. who would choose london night life when you can stay in the provinces and torture yourself by running with several thousand other people in front of half the town who'll be out to point and laugh. just at me.

lbs

2 weeks til my 'race for life', i keep running and yet....i weigh more than i did when i started. no-one gimme that stuff about muscle weighing more. yadda yadda yadda. it's marks and sparks cheese scones but i can't live without them.

999

Am having quite a week with the emergency services.

On Sunday I had a phone conversation with my son that went something like this.

'Hi Mum, can you come and pick me up?'
'Well no, you're on your bike. You can cycle home.'
'Well, you're going to have to really.'
'Why?'
'I have to go down to the police station to make a statement.'

Of course it was a conversation milked for it's last drop of drama by mini-me, so full points there. Actually some brattish thug had pushed him off his bike, ridden off with it, jumped up and down on it for a bit then noticed a police car hurtling across the grass and wondered if there might be a connection. Anyway, he was arrested and we have the bike back. Two buckled wheels and a knackered derailleur.

Tonight, it was hospital for Mr Kumquat. Heavy duty painkillers and a dose of anit-emetics later and he's sleeping off a nightmare migrane. You know the sort where you spend most of the evening making sypathetic noises and emptying buckets of puke.

Don't anyone let me near matches tomorrow.

leaving. again.

another leaving 'do' back with the old branch chums. yes, the leaving do that they had that was a joint one with mine but ... they get another one. hmmm. sounds good to me! lovely chinese meal out and driving home in the incredible thunder and lightning.
coffee back chez nous with all the lights out and the french windows open watching the spectacle.

You've been blogged!

Last night we had a splendid nosh up chez Jamie Oliver's restaurant "15". Fabulous food, very good service and reasonably priced considering it was central London and has a big name attached to the place. Jamie failed to put in an appearance but the wine was so good we might not have noticed if he'd been the girl serving extra bread!

After the meal we staggered out, feeling excessively full, and headed into Islington to add decandence to indulgence. We sat for a long time at the organic bar putting the world to rights.

Heading back down into the underground we watched, with bemused horror, a young man lose his step on the escalator, twist 90 degrees, fall down several unforgiving metal steps and grind to a halt, legs showing ten to two. He said 'Ouch' in a overly controlled manner which made the whole episode absolutely hilarious. Gallant Mr Kumquat ran to see if he was ok but once he had dusted himself off and scuttled round the corner to hide his embarrassment, we all fell about.

Got home some time after 2. Great evening out. Must do more of this kind of thing.

visit

a good mate wandered past work today which was a complete surprise now i'm 20 miles away from home. as usual i was standing with a furrowed brow and a piece of paper.

still ploughing through 'the dante club'. the writing is not great and the characters are rather dull and 2d but a couple of people have been murdered so i'll keep reading it just to find out whodunnit.

bought up a stack of penguin 70's yesterday and lined them up on a kitchen shelf so i can read while i cook. i anticipate the quality of our meals plummeting.

and now i'm off for two days in a row (gasp) with exciting plans for tomorrow evening, two friends, a large amount of money and the vain hope of seeing a celebrity with only the hope of copious amounts of alcohol to keep our spirits up.

join us, after the break.

under the stars

So hot last night I camped out under the stars in the back garden in a sleeping bag on a bed chair. Brilliant!

nb

it's hot.
i've discovered t'chai latte.
i have an interview on monday.
it's very hot.
i watched batman begins this evening.
i have a party to go to tomorrow.
que calor!

kumquat's blog

not a great deal to report. working at the new job and liking it enormously.

running whenever i can to train for my 5K. can regularly run about 2/3 of that so shouldn't be tooo much trouble on the day to keep going a bit further.

rip van winkle

last night i slept for 11 1/2 hours, woke up exhausted, dragged myself through the day only to collapse asleep on the sofa for at least an hour this afternoon.

phone call

i have just had the weirdest call ever!

we get inundated with calls from people trying to sell us new kitchens and double glazing but today was a call unlike any other.

the girl said what sounded like 'hello is that miss ***?',
'yes.',
'do you love me? i'd like to let you know that your house has been selected as a possible trial home for a new kitchen. can i ask you how old your kitchen is?'

i thought i MUST have heard wrong so i gave my usual line;

'thank you but i don't want to pursue this.'

to which she replied;

'yes but do you love me?'

i asked who was calling and she said something like never mind and hung up.

has anyone else had this???? does this person know me do you think? she sounded really quiet and upset, not like someone doing it for a dare. weird huh?

this week

new job fab.

hayfever reducing me to a self pitying wreck outside of air-conditioned rooms.

day 5

Visited the Secession building which is about 2 minutes from our apartment. Really beautiful place done in what the non art student would recognise as art nouveau but is in fact, Secession! There was a pile of tat on the first floor that made me feel middle aged and grouchy. Call this art? There was a muddy puddle, for instance. How many puddles do you think they created before the artist cried out with relief 'yes, YES, this is the definitive muddy puddle, my life has been building to this moment of clarity'? There was also a video of a girl riding a bike backwards and a squashed ant on top of a Conan Doyle novel. Thankfully, the Beethoven Frieze was downstairs to make up for the fraudulent trash upstairs. Klimt is my favourite artist and Ive wanted to see his stuff for a long time. I got to see some in Venice last year but Vienna has the bulk of it because he was based here and it was from here that the whole fin de siecle thing began and ended. So I was blown away by the Beethoven Freize and felt awful knowing that as I left I may never get to see it again.
After that we went to the Leopold Museum where we saw lots more Klimt and Scheiler too. Some of the Scheiler was great but generally you could see why the police busted his house and chucked him in prison for having young girls visiting. Who knows the truth.
In the afternoon we wandered round and happened across the Town Hall and got escorted off the premises of the Leichenstein Palace. Long story.
After eating, we went to the cinema at 10:55pm to see The Third Man. It was superb. A first for me and it was so interesting to see Vienna at war and of course anything taken from a Greene novel is a delight.

day 4

another 'what a day' day.

took the 930 train back from budapest and met up with a really interesting retired guy living in lichenstein. talked about a load of cool things hes got up to in the past... herding cattle in wyoming on horseback, skiing marathons in st moritz etc... Got off the train in vienna and had a drink with him for half an hour or so while he waited for a train to switzerland.
in the afternoon we made good from having spent a night without toothbrushes and deodorant!
Shopped again in the afternoon at the huge food market for our dinner.
This evening we went to the Vienna opera to see Verdi`s Don Carlos! Stunning. Of course it was wonderful quality but the coolest thing happened in the middle. We went for the first interval and there was a woman wandering round with a microphone so wherever you were in the building you could hear her. There were cameramen following her and projecting what she was saying onto a huge screen in the foyer. She was announcing the arrival of King Phillip and other members of the cast due to appear in the second half. The camera also scoured the audience having their drinks and watching the screen and chatting among themselves so we looked like extras in the opera waiting for the king to arrive! Then I noticed on the screen that the cast was back on stage so I ran over to look out of one of the boxes (not our seats!!) to see what was going on. Half of the act 2 scene I was taking place on stage and the rest was taking place in different places over the building. Wherever you were you could follow the story. Suddenly a gang of policemen were storming through the bar with a group of prisoners in chains! I was running from the box to the bar and back to try and work it all out!! If you didnt see it first hand it was on the screens. Finally the king and his entourage walked through everybody slowly gathering in the main auditorium surrounded by journalists with flashes going off everwhere. It was a real spectacle.
We came home on a real high, ate my seared tuna steaks in mustard marinade with avocado and lemongrass salad and drank coffee.

day 3 cont'd/...

As you will have gathered, we took a train to Hungary yesterday. Budapest is a really beautiful city. Its made up of two parts. Buda, and yes you guessed it, Pest, with the Danube flowing through the middle. We spent most of our time on the Buda half seeing the Fishermans Bastion, the Church of our Lady (which was like no other church i have ever seen. breathtaking) and the national art gallery.
Dinner was in Pest and I think I would have travelled to Hungary just for this restaurant. We were given free starters of bread with apple pickle, dijon wholegrain mustard and piquant tomato sauce for starters. I had a beef tagine with vegetables in an amazing sauce. The meat was perfectly tender and the sauce was rich with a touch of sweetness. The couscous was amazingly light. Margaret had smoked chicken with honied pineapple and it was really tasty too. I had chocolate soup for dessert which I had never tried before and I could taste cinnamon and cardamon in there. Plus it came with fresh strawberries. Margaret had dark chocolate souffle with candied orange, morello cherry compote and ice cream. The souffle was so light really, you could hardly feel it in your mouth.
As you can see, Budapest is a city to visit!
We missed our return train by ten minutes so had to find accommodation. We stayed in a nice little apartment 15 minutes from the station rented by this older guy who told us about his daughter in Florida and showed us pictures of her winning tennis competitions! Quite an adventure.
Before bed we drank at a jazz bar and decided we were glad to have missed our train back to Western Europe!

day 3

all i am saying at this stage is that i missed the last train back into austria so i am staying overnight in budapest!!

check in tomorrow for further details!!!!!!!!!!!!!

day 2

This morning we went to the Albertina gallery in the hope of catching some Klimt. There were three very simple pieces of his there but a host of other interesting artists including Bonnard, Picasso, Rembrandt, Monet, Mondriaan and Fuselli. My favourite piece was the Fuselli called something like A Shepherds Dream (?). Very much like some of Blakes illustrations. Interestingly there was also a painting by Victor Hugo. It wasnt so great but I never knew he painted.
Schnitzel for dinner set us going for an afternoon of walking around the Hofburg complex. After half an hour of looking at case after case of King someone or others cutlery, I was beginning to wonder why Id paid E9.50 to admire his silverware. Thankfully we moved on and saw some very cool art in the Imperial Apartments next to the Spanish Riding School.
After a foray into the cultural experience that is apfelstrudel, we took the ´scenic route´to the main train station to buy tickets for our trip tomorrow. Youll have to check in tomorrow to see what we have planned!
This evening I made a pretty good salad to go with our pizza and an unidentified baking object is in the oven. It looks like it might have chocolate in the middle but we may yet be eating minced beef patties for pudding.

wien

so my apartment has free internet access. life is sweet.

sat on the tarmac at heathrow for an hour which was a delight as you can imagine. of course, the air con had failed at that point and its been pretty much the hottest spell of the year so far. eventually took off and enjoyed turbulence a lot of the way there, but whats hurtling through the air if you dont notice how close you are to death every few minutes, right?

the apartment looked liked a dive from the outside and as finding accomodation was entirely my remit, i was nervous. inside, the place is lovely. really modern and clean, lots of beech wood and with free internet access!

i should say im here with my travel bud, margaret, that i met about 18 months ago on a trip to the states. off the cuff we thought it might be a crack to travel together so last may we spent a week in venice and now here we are in vienna. so although ive only known her for about 2 weeks in total face to face contact time, we will be travelling like this most years i think.

excuse the lack of punctuation, this keyboard is unfathomable.

ä ö ü § ß

so for the first time in weeks, my blog actually has something to say! watch this space for more kumquat adventures!!!

how far?

something distinctly odd happened to me this morning. I woke up early and felt like running. I got up. I ran. Two miles! I didn't feel like tagging on another 24 just to keep up with my marathon running pals but this is the furthest I've run before. Try not to laugh! Here starteth the training for my Race for Life sponsored run.

tarra

So I left.

I got book vouchers and a miniature bottle of champagne. The champagne is still unopened but the vouchers went straight away! I bought Persepolis and Persepolis 2. Graphic novels about Iran. They look great.

The heat is ridiculous and I've promised to make moussaka for two friends to celebrate the new job.
Off to find the cinnamon and turn up Carmen on the c.d player....

Race for Life

I did a silly thing. Agreed to run 5k. Anway, I took the plunge so perhaps you'd like to do the same, only into your wallets! Please sponsor me online to raise money for Cancer Research or I'll flood your email with sob stories about sick children. ha ha ha ha.....

http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/puttingdownmybook

Leaving do was fun. Mini me was down one end of the table entertaining the troops with full scale inter-planetary war complete with horrific bloodshed, staggering casualties and personal tragedies enacted with only his hands and an impressive repetoire of sound effects.
One place round was my best friend (ex colleague) doing her best to encourage him in aforementioned military endeavour whilst getting him to try anchovies and bruschetta.
Three of us are leaving within a month of each other so we had a joint knees up eating far too much, drinking far too much and attempting to scale trees on the way home. Two of our number ended up in the gutter, one had to leave early they were so hammered and for once neither of them were in my immediate family!!
It was great. I should leave work more often.

fool of a touk!

slight oversight on my part re: impending vienna trip. seems i'm a night short at the hotel. and just as i was thinking i was omnipotent.

leaving

looking forward to my joint leaving do at work tomorrow evening. still can't properly compute that i'm moving to another branch and leaving everyone behind. i'm sure they'll negotiate the change effortlessly!!

paris

On the champs elysees, this guy was offering to cut out your silhouette for 2 euros in one minute. We watched for a while, very impressed that all he had was a piece of black paper and a pair of scissors. Then of course we parted with our cash and enjoyed being tourists.

In the Sacre Coeur we sat watching the constant stream of visitors pouring in to stress out the attendant at the door. He made more noise telling everyone to shush and move along than the visitors themselves. Just as we were beginning to be irritated, eight nuns appeared at the front and sang the most amazing, haunting piece. It was a special moment.

At the bar, a German couple couldn't get the waiter to understand that they wanted him to make a recommendation from the menu. Eventually I couldn't stand it any longer and offered to help. They were all smiles and thank yous. It was most gratifying until the waiter, whose linguistic problem clearly wasn't limited to foreign languages, proceeded to translate the menu instead of recommend.

back home

...but only two weeks til Vienna!

the obligatory snap of the eiffel tower.

l'arc de triomphe staircase.

je suis de retour

spent a fab weekend doing this http://www.flickr.com/photos/87781832@N00/

paree

demain je serais a paris, forcement, je ne serais pas ici. essayez-vous de ne pas vous inquieter trop. je suis bientot de retour. si vous voulez une carte-postale, envoyez moi votre address, si vous preferez un cadeau, envoyez moi cinq euros, si vous voulez une vrai surprise donnez moi votre numero de carte et je vous promet de ne jamais t'inquieter plus.

palimp bdo

Well that was a rather splendid day. A couple of token gestures towards art and literature then the rest of the day drinking ourselves garrulous in London pubs. When else can you go out with people called Wav, Col, Gil, Bak & Digger?
Eleven of us from the www.palimpsest.org.uk site met up today. Everyone seemed younger than their avatars suggested and we even enjoyed the disembodied presence of Mr Self via photo messaging.
All agreed after the first three drinks that we were all smashing and special. 'Special' came to mean different things by the end of the day! Some people were 'awww', some 'heeeee' and still others a combination of 'whaa?' and 'yes but i mean why er what .....?'
Roll on the next Big Day Out.

eyeball

Gone are the days of 1-2, 1-2 do you copy, are you up for an eyeball.

Today I'm off to meet up with a bunch of random individuals I only know through a highbrow internet site. If they turn out to be serial killers and I never appear again, let me say now that if I am to perish at the cruel hands of strangers then take comfort from the thought that they were at least well spoken and my last moments were probably taken up discussing literature and art. It's not a bad way to go.

culinary trimuphhhsplat

made the famous african peanut soup this evening followed by the promisingly delicious lemon tart by gordon ramsay. but the lemon didn't set so we ended up having savoury soup then sweet soup. the pastry was good and the lemon sauce ... unconventional but tasty.

this is not a criticism of gordon ramsay. don't sue me. i just can't get his lemon tart to firm up. this also is not a veiled insult to the man.

i ate two pieces as consolation and now i feel rather bloated.

a lemon yellow day.

it takes a girl

Thank goodness I arrived at the boys bonfire and BBQ to take charge. They had the cooking under control but gee whizz, they didn't know how to keep a bonfire going ;)

After a day working without any natural light it's great to sit by a lake in the evening with mates, eating BBQ, gathering sticks from the woods, drinking beer and waiting for the rod tip to move.

today's colour chart

pale blue all day then a dark purple evening.

special mention

special mention to boyf of borrower who bought us a rather splendid indian nosh last night. fanks mate. welcome to the piratha elite.

"which was nice"

seems i have a new job. didn't see that coming a week ago. nothing exciting for the outside blog reader - internal transfer blah blah blah - but a pretty big change for me and rather exciting too.

culkin roadshow

watched 'igby goes down' this evening. granted, i had to suffer it with a settee full of girls talking the whole way through but even so it was a disappointment. got back to read one rave review on amazon. hmm. well, the main character could have had so much more depth. he was an interesting idea but not half as raw as he should of been if they were trying to portray a really rebellious young man. my 13 year old has more attitude than him and we were meant to be convinced he was a drop out from a string of schools and dealt drugs. no he was too preppy by far. the estranged, mentally ill father figure could have been so interesting as well but guess what, they kicked him out after the first scene and shove him in an institute. there's a slight twist at the end when you discover the 'murder' was assisted euthanasia. not really enough to turn it round!

rent something else.

Marsh Arabs

Call me a lightweight but I've never really tried travel writing before and I always feel slightly unnerved when I read non-fiction. For some reason I think I'm going to tire of real life in a way that fiction continues to grip me. Anyway, no need to worry with Wilfred Thesiger. Really good. I haven't finished yet but I am really glad I picked this one up. After seeing his photos at the Natural History Museum in Oxford last week I knew I had to read this book. I suppose he's the last of the explorers. I'm entranced by the way these people build homes from reeds. Not only protection against the elements, as you often see in the 'mut hut' approach to foreign travel, but beautiful structures that look Arabian even though they are essentially a bunch of weeds a la three little pigs. http://www.public.iastate.edu/~mariposa/images/11-Mudhif.jpg These Arabs live in Iraq and, from what I've read so far, seem to be entirely uninfluenced by the outside world. Does anyone know what has happened to these people since Thesiger wrote about them in the 50's?

Kitchen

have just finished 'kitchen' by banana yoshimoto which has a short story, 'moonlight shadow', at the end. They both gave me a similar feeling to Murakami even though the themes were quite different. They are quietly impacting. Not a lot seems to happen but after you've closed the last page you think how that was actually a very touching and enduring read. I would recommend them both but don't expect action.

Small Island

Finished reading the prize-winning Levy novel this evening. By half way I really could not put it down. It's essentially about two couples, one pair black, the other white, whose lives are shaped by the second world war and racial issues. This is not a simplistic colonial read though as each of them have their own barriers to overcome. Their lives draw you into the story and you wish you were able to follow their story beyond the final page. A really well crafted and utterly human story.

I'm away two days and you're bickering already! heh heh
Just had an ace weekend with the people whose wedding we went to in the states a year past christmas. I had met the bride online in a literary discussion group about the writings of Iris Murdoch. We are firm life long friends now I'm sure :) She is not only about to graduate from med school, specialising in neurology but she also retains the most amazing knowledge about everything. We went to Pitts River museum as recommended by borrower, thank you (!), and she had comments on so many exhibits. Oh these are the....did you hear the story about.... I read about this once.... etc. I really have to read more non fiction and get myself an(other) education. Oh and she runs marathons as if being a junior doctor wasn't enough pressure!
In the evening we had a pudding soiree which pretty much was what it says on the can. I made ye famous kumquat special - pear and almond tarte. Also cream teas, trifle, peanut butter cookies courtesy of mini me and drinks-a-plenty. How rare to sit in a room full of eloquent people discussing politics and making social comments in a reasoned manner. Of course I only listened!!
Monday, we went to Oxford as an Iris Murdoch pilgrimage. I bet we are the only ones to yell out on the top of a bus when we saw St. Anne's College! The pub clientelle over there is another breed - bow ties, tank tops and immaculate shirts tucked into chinos. The afternoon was the museum trip which included a "bunch" of natural history. Of course I was thrilled by the heaps of bones and unidentifiable mishmash of curiosities whose labels shed no light but there was a stuffed cheetah in the entrance which i rather took to and he didn't object to being tickled under the chin and rubbed on his belly. Whole lives may be passed over by a careless reader (im) but whole millenia can be passed over in a museum. We saw the photographs of William Thesiger which were stunning. They were about the Marsh Arabs which is also the title of one of his better known travel books. I bought the book today and can't wait to get into it.
One life isn't enough. 5 years of lit study is one thing but now i need some other lives to dedicate one to science, one to art....