Long December

Earthy socks

2009-12-28T13:57:00.004Z

Pattern: Plain socks
Needle: 2.5 mm
Yarn: Crazy Zauberball, and gift from the wonderful Ru

This is my usual pattern for plain socks that are dyed in such a way that the colour changes are interesting enough on their own.

Cachoeira

2009-12-15T21:49:00.003Z

Pattern: Cachoeira
Needles: 2.5mm
Yarn: Yarn Pirate Merino sock yarn, in a colourway that I've lost the tag for
Photoshoot: Opposite Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, across the Thames from St Paul's Cathedral. All pictures taken by my long-suffering boyfriend, who found being stared at by the tourists a novel experience.

I really, really enjoyed knitting these.

I cast them on while away from the majority of my knitting stuff, and had simply grabbed my usual sock needles - 2.5mm circulars - along with the pattern and the yarn. 72 stitches around is waaaay too much for my legs and feet on 2.5s, so I decided to decrease down to 64 stitches around over the course of three pattern repeats on the leg. I really liked the end result, with the 'waves' on the sides of the leg for the last three pattern repeats just touching at the end.

This was also my first attempt at something I'm planning to make a theme for the next year, which is to actually photograph my knitting in an interesting manner. Whether that means an interesting backdrop, or simply making the effort to take proper pictures of the finished object, it makes no difference - I just want to get them photographed!

So, last weekend, while I was down near Borough Market on the Southbank, I directed my boyfriend in taking these. I think they're a pretty good start.

Personal ad

2009-06-30T21:14:00.003+01:00

I'm taking a page out of the amazing and inspirational Havi, and writing a personal ad for something that I really want in my life: a bike.

Tired of the Tube

Outgoing, energetic woman looking for a bicycle to form a lasting mutually beneficial partnership with.

Me? I'll take care of you, make sure you have regular check-ups with someone who knows way more than me about the way you work, I'll keep you in a safe indoor place at night and while I'm at work, take you out at least three days a week, and I'll continue to take you out in all weathers and year-round. You won't languish through the winter with me!

You: High enough for me (I'm quite tall), in perfect or near perfect working order. Not too expensive, hopefully under £100 - but I'm willing to spend a bit more to find the perfect match.

Ideally you'll be located near my flat or my office, so that I don't have to go to far to meet you for the first time. And hopefully you're already on the radar of someone that I know, who just hasn't told me about you yet. I'd love if you were the old-fashioned kind that lets me sit more upright, but I know that whatever you look like, being the right one for me is the most important thing.

No drama please - this includes chains that for some reason don't want to stay in place, wonky pedals or seats, and brakes that are, at best, iffy. Also, it would be helpful if your frame was quite sturdy or of very good quality. I'd like to have you around for a while, and this will really help.

If this is you, please have someone get in touch! I can't wait to meet you.

The things we love

2009-06-22T21:32:00.004+01:00

It's pretty impressive, sometimes, that we forget to listen to ourselves.

I think that most people, by the time they're in their mid-twenties, probably know themselves fairly well - or rather, they know what they like, some of the things they don't, and a bit of what makes them happy. So why, knowing these things, would someone just stop doing something that makes them happy?

I barely touched my knitting needles between the end of March and the beginning of June. I didn't finish a single project, I started a project I could care less about and still need to frog, and somehow - somehow I forgot about why I did this incredible thing with sticks and string.

Knitting grounds me. The familiar feel of needles in my hands and the slight friction of yarn over my left index finger relaxes me like nothing else. I can't even remember what I did before I started knitting, to have down time at the end of the day. To compose my thoughts and sort out the thoughts in my head. How did I forget this thing that makes me a calm and reasonable person? That means I can face my day without going mad?

I picked up my needles again on the 6th of June, and started the Luna Moth Shawl from Elann.com using some beautiful fingering weight 100 percent alpaca in a gorgeous grey-brown that one of my younger sisters had gotten me for last Christmas. As I watched the repeats get longer and the bulk of the yarn go from the centre-pull ball into the mess that is lace, I could feel myself finding my centre again.

The shawl is drying next door, on the spare bed in my flat.

Moth wings, drying on the bed

It's beautiful, and better pictures will follow to show just how lovely; the yarn is perfect for showcasing the pattern, and I'm really proud of this one. It's for me, to wrap myself in on cold winter nights and to keep the chill off in the changeable English summer. It's to remind myself not to forget the things I know keep me sane.

I couldn't leave if I wanted to

2009-06-08T22:15:00.002+01:00

When a song captures my attention, if it's the right kind of song, I'll listen to it over and over and over again. The first time I heard 405 by Death Cab for Cutie, I think I listened to it on repeat my entire way to work. Which was about 45 minutes at the time. As the song is only about three minutes long...well. That's a lot of the same song back to back.

It's like I've got to absorb the music, take it into my blood and indelibly sketch the lyrics into my memory so that I can instantly conjure up the melody at will. Sometimes it's because the song means something to me, like Alien by Bush. I can't even count the number of times I lay in the dark, listening to that song with my heart breaking. Or Best of What's Around, by Dave Matthews Band - a song which will forever send me straight back to MarketSpice and mopping floors, with Chelsea yelling at me to turn the damn cd off already, we've listened to it three times today and for the love of god put something else on or she's going to kill me and Si and Ryan laughing like idiots.

A few days ago, California by Stroke 9 (version off Rip it Off) came on while I was on the Tube to work. Sometimes, it's the feel of a song. Sometimes it's the way the vocalist sings, sometimes it's the way a bridge is played, and sometimes it's a single line or two.

'I was raised and I was born here, couldn't leave California if I tried to.'

No matter where I go or how old I get, I think that I will always expect to live in a green city, surrounded by mountains with the skyscrapers caught in cloud most of the year. Anywhere else is just a substitute.

8am assult course

2009-06-02T21:09:00.002+01:00

I woke up late this morning, which is fairly unusual. Normally, I'm awake the second my alarm goes off, if not before. I think my new-found ability to sleep through the incessant beeping might just have something to do with sleeping in a bed for more than one consecutive night for the first time in two months.

However, I woke up late. I'd done a load of washing last night and took full advantage of the balcony with the clothesline at my new flat (rarely do you have a tumble dryer over here, for those of you State-side). I happily hung up my clothes and went to bed with the expectation of being able to wear some of them to work this morning.

So at about 7.07 (I usually leave around 7.20), I bolted out of bed, threw myself into the shower and furiously did everything necessary. I ran around, dropping things, managed to get moisturiser everywhere, and ran to the door to the balcony.

Which was locked.

Spotting a key in the bowl that holds the clothespins, I put in into the keyhole. It fits! Awesome!

I turn the key. Nothing happens.

Jiggle the handle. Nothing happens. Try turning while lifting the handle. Nothing. I then proceed to, for the next several minutes try everything I can think of to get the door open.

Nothing.

I'm swearing under by breath in despair - I wore the only thing that I didn't wash that I can wear to work yesterday, and there's no way that I can wear it two days in a row. I glance around.

There's a window. A window that might open enough despite the shelf on the wall outside that might allow me to get out.

So this morning, I started my day by climbing out a window in my flat in my fuzzy maroon bathrobe to get my clothes.

How do these things happen to me?!

A few spares would be nice

2009-05-28T12:27:00.001+01:00

On one of the that I’ve recently started reading, the author posted a link to a heart factory.

A little factory that makes hearts.

Something about the creator’s description, “If you are lacking a heart or tired of your heart being broken it would be wise to invest in your own tiny heart factory”, just. Well.

I’m certainly not lacking a heart, but somehow, in the past 27 years, I haven’t figured out how to protect mine enough. Yes, of course, you can’t entirely protect yourself – but when you build the big stone walls, with towers on four sides and archers stationed along the parapets, and then the deep moat with spikes at the bottom and man-eating sharks swimming around, and you even remembered to put a guard on the secret entrance because you’ve read too many books to be unaware that that’s the way they always get in… You at least expect something.

So a heart factory. I think I could use one of those, these days.

A guide to profile pictures for online dating websites

2009-05-13T16:02:00.002+01:00

Dear gentlemen and rakes,

There are a few things you should probably keep in mind when selecting a photo. Ideally, you’d want one that actually looks like you do (that’s now, not ten years ago when you were two stone lighter), you’re smiling, and your friends have said that you look nice in.

However, any of the following, including horrific combinations of the following, are more likely to have me wince and look away than click on your profile:

If you look like a serial killer. Really, you have to have at least one friend that can tell you why this is a bad idea.
If you are nothing more than a vague pixelated blur and appear to have no discernible features.
If you are an out-of-focus bright spot on an otherwise completely dark background. I’m sure it’s very artistic, but you might want to forgo that this time.
If you are holding a random small child/baby, but indicate absolutely no where in your profile who the child belongs to. This is strangely important to most women.
If you are, in any way, appearing to kiss any sort of animal. If I do think you’re cute, and there is a possibility that we may, in the future, lock lips in a meaningful way, I would prefer that I know that your lips have also kissed a snail/small dog/iguana when that happens.
If you are so clearly off your face that it makes me surprised that my computer hasn’t started to emit alcohol fumes or spontaneously playing hard house
If you are wearing something stupid on your head. This is including, but not limited to: that hat you got on holiday in Oz with the little corks hanging off string along the brim, anything that looks like it should be worn by the bride on a hen do, pint/shot glasses, small stuffed animals, or, honestly, any sort of hat. Unless several people have confirmed that yes, you look good in the hat, not like an idiot.

As an extra bonus, I’ll also point out that when, on one side of the picture, you can clearly see a woman’s breasts and you’re making an idiotic expression (usually involving something obscene with your tongue)? Yeah, that’s a no too.

Summer? Yes?

2009-04-22T10:52:00.000+01:00

Dear London,

Hey, you know this lovely warm weather you’ve been having? Where there is the possibility of it being over 20’C for more than a day, and I can take my jumper off on the way to the station in the morning? I think that you’ve found a groove that could be fun for the summer, babe, and you should stick with it.

People are smiling, occasionally at each other, even, and someone even moved out of my way on the Tube this morning without me asking. I’ve been wearing my sunglasses (you know, the ones I bought in Brighton in the hope that I’d actually be able to use them) and frankly it’s been wonderful.

It’s just…well. Last year you did this for three weeks in April and then sort of…stopped. The rest of the summer wasn’t even summer – most people refer to it as the not-summer. I’ll be really disappointed if you pull this on me again, and honestly I’m not sure if our relationship can survive another disappointment of that magnitude. Especially as I don’t even get to have that little fling with Greece this year that we discussed. So keep things together, London. I don’t want to have to find another city to love!

Hopeful kisses,
B

Random Wednesday

2009-04-08T11:26:00.000+01:00

Wednesdays are for random lists, so here’s another fun instalment.

1. In the last 10 days, I have bought seven bottles of wine. Off-license up the road that has the special on the Italian stuff for 2 for £5, I heart you!

2. Two of these seven bottles are left, but don’t let that fool you. Wine in my house does not belong to the person who bought it, you buy wine ‘for the house’. (The house is an alcoholic that might need a 12-step programme soon.) Total house wine consumption in the 10 days stands roughly at 14 bottles, and three out of four people were gone Friday and Saturday night.

3. I’m not knitting as much since I moved. Part of it is that when I drink, I don’t knit (drunken knitting is always a bad idea), part of it is that there isn’t enough light in the sitting room and people smoke in there, and part of it is that hey, when you actually want to talk to the people you live with, you get easily distracted.

4. I’m now walking almost four miles daily, to the tube station and back. It’s a lovely way to begin and end the day, especially if it’s nice out, but it took me this long to connect that I was tired with that I’m walking double what I used to. I can haz brane now, kai?

5. I am without internet at home, and this is driving me up the bloody wall.

Mov'ed

2009-04-02T16:13:00.000+01:00

I recently moved house, both to in order to save money (I had ignored that what I was paying at my old flat was ludicrous for entirely too long) and because, frankly, my old flatmate, as lovely as she was, was sending me down the line of poking a pencil in my eye to escape.

So, a new place. I’m living with friends, which is great – it’s been a very long time since I actively looked forward to going home in addition to hoping that people would be there instead of out for the evening – but it’s also a very interesting situation as there are, essentially, four people currently living in a two-bedroom flat. (The story behind this is long and arduous, and not entirely bloggable.)

There are some things I’ve noticed though:

1. My roommate’s alarm clock goes off sometime after 6am and sometime before 6.15am. I’m not sure when, exactly, because the clock is running on time of its own imagining. The alarm clock has the intended effect…on me. Being terrified out of sleep by the radio coming on halfway through ACDC’s Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock and Roll) actually turns out to be a fantastic way to start your day. Although I could do with less terror. It’s also nice to have a radio station playing music I like, instead of music I want to throttle to make cease, playing in the morning. It has, however, had the effect of making songs stick in my head all day. All day.

2. I’ve never properly lived with people who smokes in their house. I’ve dated smokers, but they always smoked outside. I’ve been at parties where people smoked inside, and I used to go to nightclubs where the air was full of smoke. I even smoked for a while (although never in the house/flat/room I was living in).

I do not like it. I think that I can handle it for a while – hopefully it won’t be long until we move to a house like we’d planned, and at that point the smoking inside will cease. If we’re where we are for more than a month though, I’m going to have to say something. I am the minority, as out of the four of us I am the only one who doesn’t smoke, but don’t know how long I can live in perpetual smog. And smelling of said smog.

All together though, I’m much happier sleeping on an air mattress on the floor in a room I’m sharing with someone than I was before – which is always a good thing.

...

2009-03-24T20:17:00.002Z

It's surprising, sometimes, how quickly someone can integrate themselves into your life. You're just swimming along, perfectly fine, and suddenly you're thinking that you really need to tell x about that funny thing you saw earlier on your way to work, and wanting to hear about the inconsequentialities of their days. They've managed to slot in, quietly, while you weren't looking, and you realise one day that you don't want to not have that.

And then they tell you that they're going away. And you won't get to see them before they go. No, they're not sure when they're coming back. Yes, you understand that it's a brilliant opportunity, and you really are genuinely happy for them. Of course, it's early days and it's not an earth-shattering thing. We'll obviously keep in touch.

So you hang up the phone. Set it down gently. Go into your room, shut the door, and cry into a pillow. You don't want to have to explain to your flatmate why you sound like your heart's been broken.

A single moment

2009-03-18T19:09:00.002Z

I'm standing at the edge of the Victoria line (northbound) platform at Kings Cross, precisely aligned so that when the second-to-last set of doors open I will be just enough to the left of the doors that I shouldn't have to step back to let people off the train but obviously in the way enough to be the first on. (This is a journey that I have taken quite possibly over a thousand times, and I know where to stand on each platform on this particular journey to minimise the time it takes to get between lines.) People are queuing up either side of me - I walked on to the platform just as the previous train was pulling away, so I got the good spot - and they, too, know where to stand.

Shortly before the train arrives in the station, you can feel the wind blowing down the tunnel. Turning my head towards the direction the wind is blowing from, I narrow my eyes slightly. There is an astounding amount of dust on the Tube system. Right before the train rounds the bend to the platform, you can see the headlights reflected against the wall.

The train rounds the bend, and I close my eyes as my hair flies back from my face and the sound hits me.

For just a moment, I want to turn around and walk away. Get on to any other train, go in any other direction, and to disappear into this city and these millions of people and see where I end up. Go to the airport and get on the first plane going to any destination, anywhere in the world. Leave everything I know, and simply...disappear.

The train stops, the doors open, and I open my eyes.

I'll be home in about 20 minutes. I think pick up a bottle of wine at that Oddbins across the road to go with dinner.

Blogging is hard

2009-03-10T20:31:00.002Z

Dudes, seriously. Blogging is hard work. There are so many days where I don't feel like I've got anything interesting to say at all, nothing that anyone would be interested in is happening in my strange little life.

I mean, really. So yet again, you're going to get a list of random things.

1. I'm sorry, but what? You, someone who dumped my ass, really think that a) I am tempted to come round for a booty call? Really? and b) that you get to have any opinion about who I date? I am now tempted to jump him in front of you just to prove a point.

2. Why do crap things always happen together? I have to stay late at work and all my lines are running with delays, so I have to punch people out of the way to get on.

3. Veganomicon arrived. I want to hug it to my chest and grin for several hours. Now all I have to do is be able to afford something other than just the vegetables for the recipes.

Once

2009-02-18T23:53:00.003Z

Just once:

I would like blink - you're the most amazing thing in the world to happen at the same time.

For the same song to be in both our heads.

For you to realise what it is you're saying no to.

To not wonder what you're doing right now.

To walk away from an evening knowing that it was more than great.

To know that, once, would be enough.

We apologise for any inconvenience

2009-02-16T19:08:00.001Z

Sign in Kings Cross Station:

"Due to the footie, you may be asked to exit up the stairs opposite. This is a vain attempt to keep the station open."

When this city's transport isn't driving me insane, it really makes me laugh.

Not a snow day

2009-02-06T19:15:00.002Z

As I walked out my front door this morning, it was snowing. Hard. Really, properly snowing. As my bus inched down Crouch Hill towards Finsbury Park station, I contemplated - admittedly with a fair amount of excitement - that if the snow continued for more than an hour or so I'd really have to go home from work because who knew if my bus would continue to run.

Go home after an hour's work on a Friday. That would really have sucked.

Alas, it didn't happen. The snow turned to rain, then nothing, and then as I was making my way home from the office to snow once more.

So instead of having a day at home surfing the net, I spent a day at work surfing the net. Home is more comfortable, with better clothes and tea.

----------------------------------

In honour of the seasonal insanity next weekend in the shapes of little red hearts, I present you with the following:

Nihilist Love Poem
Alamir

You looked pleasing like girls often do,
Does it matter why I approached you?
It could have been the weather
or just the way I grew up.
But if our personalities can be tolerated
...And you're on the pill
We should both have sex
Before we both end up dead,
and regret not doing so.

Random Wednesday

2009-02-04T15:23:00.000Z

1. There are men drilling up the pavement outside my office. They have been doing this for several weeks. I’m finally beginning to get a headache.

2. I am slowly becoming addicted to the spicy peas with peanuts from Tescos. However, both my boss and I agree that some weeks (sadly, we go through at least two bags of these a week if not more) the peas are spicier than others. We always agree when they are spicy or not as spicy on a given week and really can’t figure out why. Our current theory is different batches, but because it’s a mass produced product it should always taste the same.

3. I have become addicted to Stumble Upon, and have been ‘stumbling’ around for two days now. I am not yet bored of this.

4. I recently started a new pair of socks, the Hourglass socks in some absolutely gorgeous 50/50 silk/merino my sister got me from Lambspun of Colorado. It’s a lovely semi-solid pink, and I’m hoping that the socks are going to look very nice indeed in it. Actually, I know they are – I started them on 2.5mm circs, but then decided after about three inches that I really needed to go down a size as 70 stitches around is simply way too big for me on 2.5mm. I’m now using 2mm, and the needles feel positively tiny in my hands.

5. I recently did a ’25 Things about Yourself’ meme on Facebook, and now keep thinking of more things to add.

6. The net brings a whole new aspect to the relationships that you have with others. For instance, when you like someone you can now read all the back entries on their blog and look at their Flickr photostream to stave off the desire to call/text/email them. It’s a bit strange.

An unexpected extension to the weekend

2009-02-02T08:38:00.004Z

Well now.

This is what it looks like outside my bedroom window at the moment.

This is outside the kitchen.

Since all the buses in London have been shut down, the second of the two Underground lines that I take to work is completely not running, I think that this:

Pretty much sums up what I'm going to be doing with my day today.

Reading in public

2009-01-30T13:22:00.000Z

On London’s transport network, you read over people’s shoulders. Everyone does it, you’re packed too closely together not to read the interesting-looking story about the two criminals who were escaping while hand-cuffed together, went either side of a pole and then slammed face-first into eachother (not the smartest tools in the shed). Or you’re trying to figure out name and author of the book you’ve now read four pages of between Kings Cross and Edgeware Road because you now care what happens to one of the characters. Or there are the other things. Reports, someone’s email about dinner off their Blackberry (because you don’t really want to read it, but can’t look away because there is no where else to look unless you’re staring at someone, and that’s not allowed).

And then, then there are mornings like this one, where you casually sweep your eyes across what the guy in front of you is reading, and realise that it’s a letter.

It’s at least several pages long, as the woman (and you know it’s a woman, the handwriting has loops and just looks feminine) has considerately numbered the pages, at the top, with each number in a small circle so it is clearly visible and so that the reader can easily keep them in order. Because this isn’t just any letter, it’s one of those letters.

The letter where you’re saying all the things that you can’t say in person, that hurt too much, or you simply can’t get out, or you think that saying it in writing will somehow make what you’re saying easier to bear for the person reading it. Or maybe you’ve just written it in a letter because you can’t watch the face of the person you wrote the letter for crumble or morph into fury or remain indifferent one more time.

It’s like a train wreck. I know that it’s intensely personal, as he turns the pages his hand is visibly beginning to shake (or maybe that’s because I’ve been watching him for a while now), but I’m now caught up and can’t look away. There are phrases like ‘I’ve tried to explain’, ‘I’m sorry, but’, and ‘I just can’t do this anymore’.

He’s reading this on the Tube. Surrounded by hundreds of people. He’s got to know that someone is reading it as well as him, he can’t have lived in this city and taken the Tube every day and not know that someone around him is reading this letter along with him. Maybe he’s doing it because if he reads it in public he won’t allow himself to fall apart, and he has a whole work day to get through before he can do that. Or maybe he just needs to not feel completely alone at the end, where she says that she’s not going to be there any more. I keep glancing from the letter to the sliver I can see of his face, straining to see his reflection in the window of the carriage.

He reaches the end, carefully reorders the pages, and painstakingly folds it and gently puts it back into the envelope it came in before tucking it into his bag. Then he leans his head against the window, for just a second, and it’s like in that one second he’s trying to shove it all down inside him, because when you get a letter like that you simply can’t leave it until later – and that’s really why he was reading it on the Tube. His entire body is tense. Then his shoulders slump, his head comes back up, he’s blinking furiously, and he disappears into the crowds at Kings Cross.

Ugggg.

2009-01-26T20:40:00.003Z

Things I dislike about this Monday:

1. I have not had a weekend where I was not busy in almost two full months. Last weekend was no exception.
2. It was dark out when I got up this morning. It is almost Imbolc, I feel like it should be spring. I know it's coming but...
3. ...my flatmate has a job now, and has a habit of turning off lights that I am still using. This is even worse when I'm used to having the mornings quiet and to myself, without anyone getting in my way, turning off my lights or humming.
4. I did not get paid last Friday (because payday is not until this Friday).
5. I had to work instead of knit on either my no purl monkeys or my Mrs. Darcy cardigan. Either way, it would have had a better day.
6. I am having a bit of a throwback to my teenage years, and angsting over something. I'm not used to it, and I'm irritated at myself.

Stupidness

2009-01-22T08:39:00.001Z

Have you ever noticed that, on the one day that you’d like your hair to actually listen to you and look nice in a week, it instead acts like an angsty teenager that’s just discovered Rage Against The Machine and walks around screaming ‘Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me?’

Yeah. That sucks.

The most depressing day of the year

2009-01-19T20:46:00.002Z

Today is, apparently, the most depressing day of the year. Admittedly, it didn't start out well - I woke up to pissing down rain thrashing wildly against my window. However...

Reasons to be cheerful:

1. We've passed the Solstice, the days are getting longer and soon it will not be dark both to and from my way to work.

2. I got to go for long walks on the beach this last weekend, and there is nothing to make you feel serene like listening to the waves break on the shore.

3. I don't think I've ever felt more optimistic going into a new year.

4. My knitting is going wonderfully, and I have yarn I want to snuggle up to and call pet names.

5. This month, I'll have gotten to see almost all of my favourite people - something fantastically difficult when half of them are on different continents. This is amazing, and I want it to happen more often.

6. I don't know how else to say it, but I'm just... happy. Generally happy. Overall.

Random Wednesday, a day late.

2009-01-15T08:50:00.000Z

Random things, following a theme. Except the last one.

1. I always read the ‘missing connections’ bit in the London Paper, when I get one (they don’t hand them out by my Tube stop, so it’s a hit-and-miss thing), just on the chance that one will be about me. I also write them, but never send them in. I don’t know what I’d do if one actually was about me, but I read them just in case.

2. This is currently my favourite comic. Right now, this particular strip has been giving me food for thought, and now I have the urge to go up to random people and ask if they like flying kites. Alternatively, and much more in keeping with the taboo of talking to strangers in public, I was thinking of making two buttons to stick on my bag. One that says ‘xkcd’ and the second saying ‘Do you like kites?’

3. One minute, three seconds.

Pumpkin soup for world travellers

2009-01-04T03:46:00.003Z

If you ever (as I have this morning) find yourself awake at 3.44 am due to not being able to sleep after an international flight, I highly recommend the following:

1. Search desperately in your cupboards, trying to find something you can cook out of a truly bizarre combination of ingredient that will also not a) wake your flatmate, and b) require too much effort on your part. After all, it's 3.44 am.

2. Resign yourself to popcorn and likely waking your flatmate.

3. Notice that the tins of pumpkin you bought to make pumpkin pie last year, thinking that they were pumpkin pie mix, are actually just tinned pumpkin. Pause.

4. Realise you also have a tin of coconut milk. Become very excited. Begin searching frantically for the Bart's Red Thai Curry Paste you think you have. Find three jars of green curry paste, but no red. (Really? Why three? When was the last time you actually made Thai green curry?)

5. Finally find it, buried at the back of your deceptively empty refrigerator. Attempt to remember when you opened it. Decide it doesn't matter.

6. Combine the tinned pumpkin, remainder of the red curry paste, the coconut milk and a mug of vegetable stock on the stove, staring impatiently at it until it's actually hot enough to eat.

7. Eat in sitting room, while playing Viva Pinata on your 360 until your controller dies and you realise that you have no more batteries.

Rock music on the radio

2008-12-24T17:41:00.002Z

Things I have noticed being back this time:

- I now look at things like I am a foreigner. You know when you go into a supermarket in a different country, and everything looks totally different and the only things you really recognise are the fruit, vegetables, and meat? But everything else is different? Yeah, it's like that.

- Rock music on the radio. Real rock music. Some of it involves screaming, but it's real rock music. I miss this greatly.

- Portions are really, actually, huge. The bagels my Mum bought at the store the other day are about double the size that they are back home.

- You really can't walk anywhere unless you live in a city. My parents don't. I've been in a car more in the last week than I have in the last year.

- Do they add sugar to everything??

The disconnect

2008-12-18T19:36:00.002Z

Whenever I come home, one of the things that strikes me about America is the massive disconnect the average American seems to have from the rest of the world. The lack of international news coverage is striking - the Metro (a free daily magazine distributed on London's transport network) has more international coverage than most American newspapers.

I'd woken up at 5.30 am this morning (jetlag is always so much fun) and was sitting in my parent's sitting room watching the morning 'news'.

It's currently snowing in Seattle and the surrounding area. They kept going on about something called a 'convergence zone' and how this was causing the snow. Now, it doesn't snow very often in Seattle, and when it does, I'll agree that everything tends to go to hell. People can't drive, cars slide off the road, everything shuts down.

However.

For two and a half hours, all the news talked about was the snow.

After an hour, I was getting a bit pissed listening to people talk about TEH SNO. Which was the worst snow ever. Ever to exist. The maw of hell was opening, and it was happening in Seattle, in the form of TEH SNO.

After another hour of TEH SNO (which clearly signaled the end of the world), a little bit of rage was developing. So far, we had covered TEH SNO, a guy getting married for the fifth time, and about thirty seconds of the conviction of one of the men behind the Rwandian genocide in 1994. But mostly we were covering TEH SNO.

It really worries me, this total lack of coverage of things happening in the rest of the world. I'd imagine that the 'average' American has no idea about what's happening with the Canadian parliment, the cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe, or anything other than their own back yard.

This can't be healthy for a country that, simply, thinks they have a righteous fight to wage in this world. I don't know how to change it, fix it, or try to focus more of America's attention outward, but it needs to happen.

Otherwise, I think the world is going to be in trouble.

A breath

2008-12-08T20:53:00.002Z

I went up north this weekend, to visit some friends.

Occasionally, it's really nice to get out of London and be reminded that my entire life doesn't revolve around five square miles. It can be really hard to remember that sometimes, especially as London really is the epicentre of Britain. It's where all the jobs are, it's were a huge amount of the culture is - it's the one place that tourists make sure not to miss.

I love the light in northern England in the winter. It slants so sharply across the landscape; it either blinds you entirely or you're walking outlined with your shadow stretched far in front of you. This weekend was beautiful. The weather's been bad lately, and it's been freezing and raining. Walking around, in a town where you can actually smell the difference in the air, just makes you pause for a moment. Look at the way the light hits a footbridge. Squint down at your feet, and see the way each tiny dip in the pavement and pebble casts its own shadow. Feel the warm air on your face as you open the door to a coffee shop with the most amazing smell that comes with it.

It was a very good weekend.

Take it all off, baby

2008-12-03T09:26:00.000Z

I finally sucked it up and admitted that I needed to get several pairs of shoes re-heeled recently, something that I’d been putting off for quite some time (mostly because I’ve never had anything re-heeled in my entire life thus far, and was paralysed about the possible cost. Also, getting me to don a coat and wander around looking for a shoe repair place on my lunch break, using up possible knitting time, is very similar to trying to tell a drunk to leave a bar when he’s standing there with a full pint even though it is 20 minutes past closing time. That second reason should maybe have gone first.)

Pleasantly surprised at the relative cost – it will cost me about the price of a new pair to get all five pairs that need doing done – I got the two worst offenders fixed and went on my merry way.

This morning, while going to work wearing the boots that I’d picked up from the repair place yesterday, I began to notice something a bit strange.

People were staring. More specifically, men. At my knees.

Now, I am willing to admit that I have fairly good legs. As Amy Gardner in The West Wing says, ‘I have legs that go all the way to the floor, my friend,’ but today I’m wearing boots that are about four inches from my knee and a skirt that, when standing, is around two inches above my knee. So grand total of skin on display is around six inches. (This might sound like a lot. It’s not. Let’s just say that mini-skirts look very, very short indeed on me.) This doesn’t merit the guy who did a double take, then did not take his eyes off my knees for three stops this morning.

I think it has to do with the scarcity. In the summer, women walk around in sundresses that are glorified bikinis. Men wear shorts, women short skirts, shoes that are barely more than a bit of something between the ground and your feet. In the winter, giant coats, voluminous scarves, hats, tights, boots, and women especially (as, sadly, I have not yet noticed a predominance of men in kilts at any time of year) wear more trousers. So that six inches between my skirt and the tops of my boots suddenly becomes the equivalent of seeing a lady’s ankles in Victorian England.

Now all I need to is harness this power, and I can take over the world.

Alive together

2008-11-28T16:08:00.001Z

Alive Together, by Lisel Mueller

Speaking of marvels, I am alive
together with you, when I might have been
alive with anyone under the sun,
when I might have been Abelard's woman
or the whore of a Renaissance pop
eor a peasant wife with not enough food
and not enough love, with my children
dead of the plague. I might have slept
in an alcove next to the man
with the golden nose, who poked it
into the business of stars,
or sewn a starry flag
for a general with wooden teeth.
I might have been the exemplary Pocahonta
sor a woman without a name
weeping in Master's bed
for my husband, exchanged for a mule,
my daughter, lost in a drunken bet.
I might have been stretched on a totem pole
to appease a vindictive god
or left, a useless girl-child,
to die on a cliff. I like to think
I might have been Mary Shelley
in love with a wrong-headed angel,
or Mary's friend. I might have been you.
This poem is endless, the odds against us are endless,
our chances of being alive together
statistically nonexistent;
still we have made it, alive in a time
when rationalists in square hats
and hatless Jehovah's Witnesses
agree it is almost over,
alive with our lively children
who--but for endless ifs--might have missed out on being alive
together with marvels and follies
and longings and lies and wishes
and error and humor and mercy
and journeys and voices and faces
and colors and summers and mornings
and knowledge and tears and chance.

This week that I am having

2008-11-27T19:46:00.003Z

Well, I have to say.

When the universe wants to screw with you, it certain excels at making everything happen at the same time.

After my fun-filled journey home on Tuesday, King's Cross Station was helpfully closed again yesterday night. Apparently, I am not allowed to get home before approximately 19.30. This is enjoyable for me, especially on days like today when my boss called in sick and I'm on deadline. Meaning that there are four different people who think that I should be concentration exclusively on their publication.

The lowest point of the day was when I was standing in front of the photocopier, after having pressed the 'print' button for the fifth time, and a small voice at the back of my head started screaming 'I will CUT you!' I thought that it might be an idea to go home and just start drinking.

So, on the Thursday of this week I am having, that is what I have done. Assisted by the purchase (by someone else, because as per usual I have approximately 23p to my name until payday) of pizza and an excellent bottle of Beaujolie, I am well and truly on my way to starting the weekend.

Thank god.

That was a record, even for you

2008-11-25T19:57:00.001Z

Dear TfL,

Very rarely while living in this hugely crowded city do I have the urge to just start screaming ‘FUCK!’ over again over again at the top of my lungs in a public place, but you’ve managed it again. Really, you’ve got a rare talent.

Somehow, the two hours it took me to get home today just seem to be getting to me a bit.

I was fine with the severe delays on the Hammersmith and City line, even though yesterday there had been severe delays on the Victoria line (Because nothing is as fun for me as standing at an awkward angle for ten minutes while being told that we’re being held on the platform and you think the guy sat in front of you is imagining what you look like without your clothes on). I was fine, standing out on the platform in the freezing cold for 20 minutes, waiting. I was even okay for the first two stops, until that guy stood behind me started grabbing my ass in as casual a way as he could manage.

And then, Tfl, we arrived at King’s Cross. Now usually this is a clusterfuck of epic proportions anyway, but today, oh, today was special. Today, we got routed out of the station back up to the main entrance, and had to go around for some reason that, as per the usual, was not told to us. Then, bouncing off each other like thousands of balls trying to fit through a space that only allows five balls through at a time, I shuffled towards the barriers in an attempt to have my ass grabbed on the Victoria line.

However, it was at this point that the lights started flashing and the lovely automated voice came on the speaker telling everyone to leave the station immediately due to a state of emergency. So, the thousands of balls turned around and tried to quickly fit through an opening that let out 20 balls at a time instead of five. I have full confidence that if there really was an emergency, I’d be blown to bits in the time that it took me to traverse the approximately 100 feet to get out of the station.

From there, Tfl, it was a hop, skip and a jump home – if you count the four buses I couldn’t get on, because everyone who usually takes the Tube was trying to take a bus, and then the one I had to claw my way on to that was actually going to the right place, the 30 minutes bus ride, fighting my way through the Arsenal supporters because I needed to get to the other side of Finsbury Park station and there was a match on, and then standing in the longest queue I have ever seen in the last 11 months for the W7 as a hop, skip and a jump.

I am going to go and drink my gin and tonic, which is at least half gin, now, because if I don’t I might just walk straight up to you in the less than 12 hours I have before I have to use your insane services again and set you on fire.

Sincere Regards,
B

If everything happens that can't be done

2008-11-24T14:53:00.000Z

I had an idea for a post. It was thoughtful, and considered, and as it’s been ages (again) since I posted, it was going to be pretty long. Instead you get this, because I read it. Then read it again. Then sent it to certain people, because how could I not share it? And now I’m posting it here, because sometimes poetry does exactly what it’s supposed to do – take your breath away.

if everything happens that can't be done
e.e. cummings

if everything happens that can't be done
(and anything's righter
than books
could plan)
the stupidest teacher will almost guess
(with a run
skip
around we go yes)
there's nothing as something as one

one hasn't a why or because or although
(and buds know better
than books
don't grow)
one's anything old being everything new
(with a what
which
around we come who)
one's everyanything so

so world is a leaf so a tree is a bough
(and birds sing sweeter
than books
tell how)
so here is away and so your is a my
(with a down
up
around again fly)
forever was never till now

now i love you and you love me
(and books are shuter
than books
can be)
and deep in the high that does nothing but fall
(with a shout
each
around we go all)
there's somebody calling who's we

we're anything brighter than even the sun
(we're everything greater
than books
might mean)
we're everyanything more than believe
(with a spin
leap
alive we're alive)
we're wonderful one times one

A chance to change the world

2008-11-04T12:55:00.000Z

I am sitting at work, staring at my computer. I’m on the net, restlessly jumping from story to story about Obama’s expected win, how he is perceived to have a massive lead over McCain in all the key territories. Mostly, on the British media sites I’m reading, there the the sense that this is it, this is America’s last chance to show the world that it’s not a country of ideological, fanatical isolationists but a country truly worthy of being the world’s superpower. The last chance America, as a country, has of regaining the respect of a world that it lost through a comical puppet of a President

I feel sick.

It will, in 12 minutes, be 9 am on the East Coast, and I can’t stop jumping from story to story. I have hope – an overwhelming, desperate hope, that is burning a hole in my gut and making it hard for me to breathe. Hope that the country that I am from is not as blinded as I am afraid it is, hope that my country will be somewhere that I want to return to instead of stay away from. And I am terrified that once again, everything will fall apart through lying, cheating and deception.

I believe that America is a better nation that it has been in the last eight years. I know that the American people are proud, patriotic (whether I believe in their beliefs or not) and kind. I believe that America has so much more to offer the world than it has so far, and that its star can continue to shine.

But not if we have a continuation of the hate, fear, and war-mongering that has happened over the last eight years. Not if we continue to bomb countries instead of talk to them. Not when the American public is lied to and deceived to drag the nation into conflict it had no business being part of.

For everything you hold dear in this world, get off your ass and go vote today if you live in America.

One minute.

Here we go.

Two things

2008-10-28T23:00:00.001Z

Two things, people.

1. It is snowing. Not just a little bit, but it's been snowing for at least the last 2 hours in London.
2. This doesn't happen. IT DOESN'T HAPPEN!!!!

It's that time of year again

2008-10-16T20:31:00.002+01:00

This morning, I woke up and it was gray and dark. I went out of my flat to wait for the bus, and it was gray and dark. I got to Finsbury Park, and it was still gray and dark. Got off at Royal Oak: gray and dark. I've written about the British winter before, but I don't ever thing I'll stop being surprised by just quite how dark and how gray it gets in a city that is normally depressingly gray and dark.

Now I've got six months of this crap to look forward to. Joy.

Drunken blogging

2008-10-14T22:37:00.003+01:00

You know, this is always a bad idea.

Drunken blogging, that is. You end up either saying something stupid, or completely making an idiot of yourself. Luckily, I will at least spell everything correctly as its now almost impossible for me to mis-spell anything. In British English, at least. Who knows about the American English.

Mostly, in the last few weeks, I've discovered that men are useless. Seriously guys, if you're going to cancel at the last minute at least do it more than two hours before we're meant to meet up. Or if you do, at least give me a reason instead of... well, nothing. Things like this make me want to get cats and name them stupid things.

Other things I've realised this week are:
1. why you stay in contact with certain people
2. why you walk away from other people

The insight is astounding.

I really wish I was funnier when I did things like this. I was once promised that I'd get funnier as I got older. I completely think he was wrong.

P.S. Song for you tonight: Which One of Them, by Garth Brooks

The past never seems to rest

2008-10-12T20:16:00.003+01:00

Sometimes, your past comes back to hit you in the back of the head, like it can't help itself. Then you can't decide between hitting it in the face with a brick until it bleeds to death, or just not caring.

-----------------------

She tells her love

She tells her love while half asleep
In the dark hours,
with half-words whispered low:
As Earth stirs in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow,
Despite the falling snow.

by Robert Graves.

-------------

A few random things

1. I have absolutely no work clothes that actually fit me. They're all too big.
2. If you have a girlfriend/boyfriend, you should really wear a sign.
3. I will never, regardless of circumstance, be able to purchase a yarn called 'Mystic Purple'. Ever. Really.

Songs from the mix CD that I'll never send you

2008-10-06T20:06:00.002+01:00

In no particular order.

Paper Bag, Fiona Apple
Not Pretty Enough, Kasey Chambers
Give Me A Reason, Portishead
Motorcycle Drive By, Third Eye Blind
Mama You Been On My Mind, The Beatles
Trying, Lifehouse
Float, Flogging Molly
Tail of the Sun, Stroke 9
Heaven, Sarah McLaughlin

Good things

2008-09-10T20:39:00.004+01:00

So, I'm kind of into food blogs. I like eating good food, I like making good food, and I like reading about people making and eating good food. There are two problems with this.

The first is that I have to be careful about when I read them. There's nothing like reading about someone's wonderful spanish chorizo stew at eleven in the morning - just when you're starting to think about what you want to have for lunch, but a bit to early to actually have a break.

The second is that right now, I barely have enough cash for the cheap Tesco own-brand things at the moment, much less expensive high-quality ingredients.

I'd always wondered just how much of a difference good-quality ingredients made when cooking. After all, growing up in a society where you're trained to think that the cheaper something is, the better value it is means that you're generally on the look-out for a bargain. But listening to all these food bloggers rave on about their favourite olive oil finally got the better of me. So, about a month and a half ago I took myself off to Whiteleys, near my office, and selected a £12.50 bottle of olive oil. After all, it was (supposedly) summer, and there was quite a bit of salad knocking around my fridge.

I got home, did the salad dance of washing and ripping up leaves, chopping veggies, and putting everything in a bit bowl. Then I poured this on top, along with some balsamic syrup I'd gotten on a trip to Borough Market, and took a bite.

I now understand why people buy good olive oil.

Burning embers

2008-09-08T20:17:00.003+01:00

There's been some knitting going on over here. Quite a bit, actually. I seem to have gotten into a knitting zone, where I'm burning through projects that I've been working on for ages. These are a pair of socks, my own pattern, that were made as a birthday gift for someone... who will be getting them over six months late, when I'm back in the States for Christmas.

The yarn is Colinette Jitterbug in the Sahara colourway, and I loved knitting with it. I'm definitely going to get more when I have the chance, and would highly recommend it.

Becoming my mother

2008-09-02T21:57:00.002+01:00

Saturday was the first nice day we've had in... well, the month of August, really. I'm getting ready to go out, and getting together all the bits I usually take with me - wallet, book, iPod, keys, water bottle, extra book, jumper, umbrella - and trying to find my sunglasses. Something I haven't tried to do in quite some time. I'm moving bits of paper around my room, looking in drawers, and throwing things onto my bed.

Giving up, I shove some of the bits on my bed to the side and sit down.

Crack.

Standing up, I reach under the shirt I'd sat on and see my sunglasses. By sitting on them, I'd broken one of the arms of the glasses off. Holding the glasses in one hand, and the arm in the other, I look back and forth between them. I've finally become my mother.

A choice

2008-07-28T21:12:00.000+01:00

This is disturbing. I’ve been trying to formulate my opinion of both candidates for this year’s presidential election, and by default (I simply can’t support any party that willingly and deliberately tried to get The Shrubbery elected as the leader of my country.) I’ll likely be voting Democrat. If only because I can’t agree with most of the Republican party’s ideas. Well. Probably all of them. But that is disturbing.

Why would we want someone as our leader that calls women names? Someone who is unable to see that abstinence-only policies simply spread disease and up the number of teen pregnancies? That’s consistently voted against policies that would improve health care for women? So, ladies, tell your friends about this. He’s clearly not talking about many of his policies so that women are confused on these issues. For the sake of our health and our family’s health, we need to know.

Random Wednesday

2008-07-23T21:30:00.002+01:00

1. "We are having Hot Lesbian Sex. And by 'lesbian sex' we mean tea. But it is still hot." I saw this today, and I laughed so hard my tea almost came out of my nose.

2. At 7.34 exactly this evening, I remembered why taking two weeks off from the gym is a bad idea.

3. I made myself a lovely dinner, with a salad and some stir-fried noodles with veggies. I am watching an Indian cooking show, and now I am starving again.

4. Speaking of that, I really want fried chicken.

5. No, I am definitely not pregnant.

6. I've been formulating a theory about the Hammersmith & City Line. They use it to train new staff during rush hour. There is no other explination for why, on my way home today, it was like being in a car with a teenager learning to drive a stick shift.

7. I have been knitting like mad, but can't put any pictures up because they're all presents. It is also irritating that everyone seems to have their birthdays very close (in my knitting time, anyway) to each other.

Growing up

2008-07-21T16:49:00.002+01:00

I remember being about 14 or so, and thinking that being a grown-up would be great; you get to do whatever you like, whenever you like, and you know what's going on and have everything figured out.

I've been wrong about many things, in my brief time here on this planet, but I think that was probably the most wrong I've ever been about anything, ever.

I doubt that I'll ever be able to do whatever I like whenever I'd like to do it, and I'm certain that the likelihood of me knowing what's going on and having everything all figured out is about the same as little green men showing up on Mars with signs that say 'Hi! What took you so long?'. And if that's the case, how can I be 'grown up'?

Right now, I think it happens in stages. I think that at certain points in your life, something happens and it changes the way you think about yourself, or the world around you. It's something so profound, a very change in the fabric of your reality and you think that the world should just stop to take a breath, in and out, before it settles with a jarring thud back into place. A little different than it was before. A little more tarnished, and little more resigned to the fact that things aren't the way you really, honestly, believed they were. Or should have been.

At the heart of it all, I think that what we call growing up is about sadness. Accepting that something will never be, or that you can't do something, or change an event - and then learning to live with that. It's almost never easy, and for many people it takes years and years and years of fighting against the truth that they desperately want to avoid. But we all grow up. And I don't think that we ever stop growing.

So that's the reason for the long silence. I've been growing up. Being forced to shift my reality slightly, and dealing with the metallic shriek that it it scraping out of its previous position. I'm sure that eventually, I'll get used to the new reality. At the moment though, the sharp edges are digging into me a bit too hard.

27

2008-06-26T11:06:00.003+01:00

There are two times of the year that I tend to get very thoughtful, and rather depressed; the Christmas/New Year week, and around my birthday. Time seems to be passing faster, these days, than it did ten years ago, and every time my birthday rolls around I’m surprised.

I don’t know what being 27 is supposed to feel like, but I’m pretty sure that it’s not supposed to feel like 17, but with more responsibilities and less free time. I remember being 15, and thinking that I couldn’t imagine being 30, that it was just so old I couldn’t even conceive of what being 30 would be like. Now that I’m looking it in the face, albeit at a slight distance still, it’s an entirely different matter. Instead of not being able to conceive what it will be like to be 30, I’m having difficulty wrapping my head around the fact that I’ll actually be 30 in a few years. How did this happen? And not only that, but what the hell am I supposed to act like?

So far this year, I’ve gone to see more live music than I ever have in my life. Regardless of the past 9 years of drinking, I’ve still managed, on one or two occasions, to wake up the next morning, attempt the recall the night before, and winced. I recently bought a skirt that I’m fairly certain my mother wouldn’t approve of, and wore it out of the house. The only differences I can really see in myself from ten years ago, at 17, are that I’m less trusting, more cynical, don’t get a summer vacation, wear more make-up and high heels, have less money and less time, and have lived in a different country for the majority of the last ten years. Yes, there are differences – but certainly not enough that I feel like I should be 27.

So. Getting older. I vote ‘no’. The song below is from one of my current favourite bands, out of Australia, Powderfinger. I’ve been listening to it quite a bit lately.

These Days

It's coming round again
The slowly creeping hand
Of time and its command
Soon enough it comes
and settles in its place
Its shadow in my face
Puts pressure in my day

This life well it's slipping right through my hands
These days turned out nothing like I had planned

It's coming round again
The slowly creeping hand
Of time and its demands
It settles in its place
Its shadow in my face
Undignified and lame

This life well it's slipping right through my hands
These days turned out nothing like I had planned
Control well it's slipping right through my hands
These days turned out nothing like I had planned

Soon enough it comes
Soon enough it comes
To tie us down

Hmm.

2008-06-20T11:33:00.001+01:00

Dear Victoria Line,

What the fuck was up with you last night? Seriously, we’re going to have to begin re-evaluating our relationship if this is the way you continue to behave.

I’ve been understanding since February, when we started seeing each other on a regular basis. I’ve understood your need for upgrades, and have backed off and found other lines to take on those weekends that you just needed time for yourself. I’ve wrapped my head around your early nights from Monday to Thursday, because you’ve been feeling a little bit off lately. I even know that you’ve been seeing other people on those nights and weekends that we’re not together, and I’m not upset. I know that you just need something that I can’t give you.

But yesterday, not only was there a signal failure in the morning but then, then you had a broken rail during the evening rush hour. A signalling failure is no ones fault, it happens to all the other lines too, but a broken rail? What have you been doing all this time, with your evenings and weekends? I thought we agreed to this break so that you could sort out your problems, and come back to me more put together and dependable? I ended up on that tourist-loving Piccadilly Line, man-whore that it is, smashed into the armpit of someone that desperately needed a bath and trying not to gag. Is that really how you want to end things between us?

I’m sorry to say this to you, but if this behaviour continues… I don’t know what I’m going to do. Please, for the sake of both of us, get your act together.

More than a bit tired of it,
me

Obsession

2008-06-18T12:21:00.000+01:00

Recently, I joined a gym (it’s going well. I haven’t yet had an episode where I do the cross-trainer for 15 minutes and then have to go sit on the bathroom floor for half a hour trying not to be ill into the toilet. [This is what usually happens after I start doing exercise again after a long time]). I’m aiming to go a minimum of three days a week, and a maximum of five, although I’ve decided that if I want to do yoga on the weekend that doesn’t count towards my gym visits.

So recently, on days when I don’t have anything else planned, I’ve been heading down to the gym straight after work. I’m now getting ‘home’ (as I have to go home to change into my workout clothes – the gym is less than five minutes walk from my flat) between 7:30 and 8 at night. This isn’t really a problem – I have time to shower, throw something together to eat, although my meals are becoming much less inspired, and then sit and knit for an hour or so while watching TV or a dvd.

The key activity that’s been mentioned in that above paragraph is the knitting.

I’m going to a 60s fancy dress party (costume party, for those across the pond) on Friday and need something vaguely hippy-themed to wear. I found out about the party on Sunday, but didn’t have time to go and look for a costume as I had other plans. I dragged myself out on my lunch on Monday (I usually knit on my lunch break) to look in charity shops for something I could turn into a hippy outfit, and found a shirt – in size 8. It was perfect, but clearly some modifications would need to be made as it’s unlikely – barring some sort of body swap – that I’ll ever be a size 8 again.

I didn’t have any time Monday night to start making modifications to this top, so finally got a chance to sit down last night to begin work on it. I’d gone out yet again on my lunch (no knitting) to hunt for white thread, and so had all the things I needed to be able to change this top. Some snipping, some sewing, some trying on and two hours later I have an almost-completed top that I should look vaguely hippy-ish in, especially combined with the lovely necklaces I found at the same shop.

I noticed last night that I was feeling a bit resentful about the top. It was going to look pretty good (and hopefully fairly sexy when finished, as this party is taking place at a bar), but I was a bit angry with it. I couldn’t figure out why I was walking around for the past few days feeling slightly antsy and on edge, like I didn’t have enough time to do the things that I wanted to do and I was having a hard time figuring out why I was feeling this way.

Then, today, I read the Yarn Harlot’s post from yesterday and it hit me – I’ve barely gotten to knit in the last three days. Sunday, I was busy all day. Monday, I didn’t get my usual hour in at lunch, and then was busy all evening. Yesterday I again devoted my lunch hour to the hippy-top and spent my evening free time working on it. No. Knitting.

This was a bit of a surprise to me. I know the knitting has become a big part of my life since April last year when I picked up my sticks and strings and really started making things, properly (as opposed to the year at uni when I made scarves for Christmas, and then walked away). It just didn’t occur to me that it had become so…necessary. It’s how I relax, now. I don’t need to think, much, when I’m doing it. It’s active meditation, a time when I can just look at my hands and be no where else but where I am in that moment. After all, it’s hard to think about work, or money, or stress when you’re being amazed at how the blue is changing into the yellow is merging with the purple to make that really lovely colour as the yarn flows through your fingers.

Clearly, it’s moved into my life in ways I wasn’t expecting. And you know what? I’m pretty okay with that.

Ways to tell it’s June in London

2008-06-13T14:48:00.002+01:00

1. The weather wildly fluctuates between around 26’ (I think that’s around 78F) and 10’ (maybe around 50?).

2. It’s inadvisable to leave your house without all of the following:
- Jumper/light coat
- Umbrella
- Water bottle in case tube is warm
- Sunscreen
Should you leave any of these at home, the weather will change depending on which you forgot. No umbrella? It’ll pour down rain. No jumper or coat? The wind will blow as though a hurricane is about to hit.

3. Blindingly white legs at every turn.

4. The second the sun emerges, the parks will instantly be filled by overweight, middle-aged men without shirts and women who have bodies you want to kill them for wearing bikinis.

5. Sunglasses. Regardless of actual sun. It’s summer, and therefore sunglasses must be worn.

6. People beginning to express a confused desire to drink Pimm’s and lemonade.

7. The profound fight my body has with pollen, wherein my body always loses. I think it gives up to easily. We’re not currently talking.

----------------------------------

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

- ee cummings

These days

2008-06-10T16:43:00.001+01:00

Today is not my best day ever. I’ve had a rather emotionally fraught year thus far, and this week several things have sort of broadsided me. This morning, I was surprised by something that completely threw me. It wasn’t at all expected, either the surprise or my reaction to it, and I now feel like I’m on the edge of something that is going to make me either hide in my flat for weeks or do something spontaneous and idiotic – like randomly deciding that the place I most need to be in the entire world is Vietnam.

I don’t know how to handle this. And I don’t know how to talk about it here.

This is an aspect of blogging that I find difficult to balance – talking about what’s happening, happened, or my version of events, what I’m feeling and thinking, and at the same time not saying something that will hurt anyone (whether I mean it to or not), not really talk about matters that someone might not consider fit for public consumption. I like blogging, it’s like a diary that I don’t have to actually write in (because almost everyone can type faster than they write). It’s also a diary that anyone can read, including the people that are involved in my life. And as they’re involved in my life, it’s likely that they’ll make their way on to the blog at some point.

So I’m working on it. I’m trying not to name names that aren’t already in the blog-verse, I’m trying not to be too emotional out loud here in this space. I’m trying to hold my shit together, and not have it rain all over things, because sometimes talking about it doesn’t help it just makes things worse. It’s just getting harder to do.

F*ckin awesome.

2008-05-31T23:41:00.003+01:00

Flogging Molly concert at the Astoria. F*cking awesome. I now need to go and wash the sweat of 10,000 shirtless rockers off my skin.

Random Friday

2008-05-30T17:55:00.004+01:00

1. New job + longer commute + longer hours = less blog posting

2. I spent at least ten minutes today laughing because of toilet paper.

Every morning at my new office, when I go into the loos, there is a new giant roll of toilet paper in the dispenser thingy. You know, the ones that look like a tire? That's a lot of toilet paper. Although there are quite a few women at my office, there's no way that we can go through two of those things a day, so... what do they do with the not-all-the-way-used-up rolls? Build houses with them? Give them away as toilet paper hand-me-downs? "Here, have this. It's perfectly good, it's just... not good enough for us"?

And what does it say about me that this thought kept me occupied for at least ten minutes.

3. I have been knitting things.

These beautiful socks (The Firestarter, by Yarnissima), which I love, adore and wish that it wasn't going into the sticky months because they have alpaca content and my feet get hot very quickly. I also finished them almost a month ago now, and have managed to not wear them before I took a picture. This is Progress.

And this is the lovely Rusted Root, which I'm knitting out of the Rowan Calmer I was originally going to knit Fifi out of (the pattern just didn't appeal in the end). I am totally not getting gauge, but have been trying it on throughout. This has meant some small modifications to the pattern that probably wouldn't have been necessary had I swatched and was actually getting gauge, but it really doesn't bother me at all. I'm so very excited about finishing this one!

4. Poetry Friday

When You are Old

When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

--William Butler Yeats

Lunches

2008-05-20T20:33:00.003+01:00

In a lot of ways, things have been hard recently. It took me a long, frustrating time to find a job - not just a job that I liked, or that paid me enough, but just a job. As I'd moved into somewhere in March that, with my optimism, I was pretty positive that I'd certainly be able to afford when I got my new job, and surely, that wouldn't be more than a few weeks, right?, money has been...lacking. When I finally did get a new job, my previous job screwed me over in a fairly massive and unexpected fashion. Which really, I should have expected, seeing as they've been underpaying me and generally being totally unappreciative for the last year. This screwing over didn't really help. Sometimes I think about that Sheryl Crow song, No One Said It Would Be Easy. Some things are good, and generally things are beginning to very much look up again - I've got some amazing people in my life, my new job is going well - but money is still stupidly tight.

I've done this before, in that I know that I can live off $20 or less a week. It's a bit more of a challenge now though, as before I could go and steal as much food as possible from my Mom whenever I went home. Now I'm living off about £10 a week - and £7.50 of that goes on the fresh vegetable box that my flatmate and I get delivered. When you're seriously pushing the limits like this, and still trying to eat a fairly healthy and well balanced diet (hence the large spend on vegetables), it can get really difficult to come up with anything that isn't a soup or some kind of roasted vegetable. Especially when it comes to lunch.

I'm already eating miso soup for breakfast - it tastes fantastic, it's really good for you, it's got loads of vitamins in, and I can get over three weeks worth for £3.30. I love Japanese food anyway, and although my co-workers think that I'm a bit odd, it really works for me. Another bit of inspiration I've taken is from the Japanese is the bento lunch.

This is what I had today.

On the top are two yaki onigiri (grilled rice balls), one with fish furikake and the other mixed with cooked broccoli, a Babybel cheese, and three cherry tomatoes, and on the bottom is a mini-burger with teriyaki sauce, three more cherry tomatoes, and two-thirds of an orange. All in all, this meal probably cost me around £1.

This type of lunch is generally what I'm making these days - it's mostly rice and vegetables in some sort of way, but it's healthy, has loads of vegetables in it, and I'm still getting enough protein in my diet. It's working out well although I have to say, I'm really missing chocolate!

Distracted

2008-05-06T12:45:00.002+01:00

Bank holiday weekends always throw me. Having that expected day off, one where you're not calling in sick because you simply can't be bothered to go to work but are actually getting paid to lounge around and do nothing, seems to make the rest of the week unbalanced.

This one was particularly bad, as it felt like I started drinking at noon on Saturday and didn't stop until this morning when I woke up. First there was the Reading Beer Festival, at which I drank some excellent British ale in very good company and ate entirely too many pork scratchings (strangely addicting). A Quick Minute had a gig in Kilburn that evening, which was dutifully attended and many new people were met - the bar was also open until 4 a.m., and this fact was very much taken advantage of. Sunday I got out of bed stupidly early for not falling asleep until 4 a.m., and a gin-soaked 4 a.m. at that, to trek (and I really do mean trek) across London for the Grand Designs Home Show which was more than cool. Even if the thing that I remember the most and am planning to invest in was the Thunder Toffee Vodka table. Sunday night, the plan was to sit around and watch some telly and eat some food. Instead, we ended up at the Belushi's in Shepard's Bush beginning at about six, as there was more live music. Then closed the bar. Monday afternoon (because, let's face it, there wasn't any way I was getting up early after the previous two nights) was spent watching 'Night at the Museum' with Ben Stiller (surprisingly good film, actually) and then, surprise, going down to a pub to both drink more and listen to more live music.

Fantastic weekend. Now I'll just need several days to recover from it.

The funniest thing I said all day

2008-04-30T15:22:00.002+01:00

How English men hit on you:

"Ummm, ah...I was...um...thinking...ah...perhaps...maybe...would you....um...I HAVE COFFEE!!!!!

THERE IS COFFEE UPSTAIRS!!!! MAYBE YOU WOULD LIKE TO DRINK SOME!!!"

28.04.08

2008-04-28T15:30:00.002+01:00

Sitting on a park bench
paper spread across my legs
the wind ruffles the page.

Looking up,
cherry petals drift off the tree
falling softly across
my upturned face.

- b

Dirty, dirty knots

2008-04-24T10:27:00.002+01:00

I've recently been knitting some manly-type socks out of my single manly-type colourway (navy blue, with very small and subtle flecks of other colours). I'm using Trekking (XXL) for the first time, and all the way through the first sock I was very impressed. The yarn is not splitty, it doesn't get caught on my very pointy needles (KnitPicks circulars), it runs perfectly through my fingers onto my needles - I was happy. I was thinking that I'd definitely be buying it again, especially as I like using superwash wool for socks I'm making as gifts. After all, I know that I'll hand wash anything I make for myself (I think my flatmate is getting used to seeing wooly goodness dry in our bathroom) but other people tend to just throw things in the washer.

So. Happily knitting along, and finish sock one. I start sock two, and after no more than five rows (and possibly less) there is a knot. Oh well, one knot in a skein, that's no problem. Bad placement, really, five rows in, but I'm in a waste-not-want-not kind of place and so I do the starting-new-ball jig and continue on. Then, horror of horrors. There is a second knot. And this time, it's not in the best place ever. It's just as I'm about to start turning the heel. I've done the starting-new-ball jig again, but with the starting position where it is I'm a bit worried about how the join is going to wear.

To be honest, I'm a bit irritated now. The yarn is lovely, it is a squishy as ever, but two knots in a skein? I know I haven't been knitting for decades, but I've never had two knots in a skein before. It just seems...well. Like I've gotten the end bits of something. Like my skein is the pieced together remnants of several other skeins that they just didn't want to throw away. It's not horrible, just irritating. And means more weaving in at the end, which is my least favourite part.

I think we should start a coalition for no-knots.

The Mountain

2008-04-21T14:54:00.002+01:00

I missed poetry Friday last week, due to a fantastically hectic few days (I got a new job. Squee!). So, today is both a late poetry Friday and also a few thoughts on something that every person living outside the country they grew up in feels.

Most days, living in Britain, are fine. I react mostly like an English person these days; I stand in my one-person-queue at bus stops, I refuse to remove my coat on the Tube even when sweat is running down my face because the temperature outside the Tube is still artic, I find it vaugely disconcerting when people talk to me outside of bars in public places and am slightly awkward in social situations that do not involve alcohol. Nonetheless, I'm not English.

On Saturday, I got into a discussion with an Aussie girl about what it's like to live in another country for any lenght of time that isn't your own. Today's poem perfectly describes, to me, what those days that aren't fine are like.

The Exile's Lament

Beneath the golden balm
Settling on the fields
Evening steals in calm
And farmers count their yields.

The bee is in lavender,
The honey fills teh comb,
But here a rain falls never-ending
And I am far from home.

- Jacqueline Carey

And right now, this is what I miss the most.

Stopping time

2008-04-17T09:59:00.002+01:00

Music has been a large part of my life for as long as I can remember. Certain songs bring back memories of Christmas or Easter, my senior year of high school or WWU, and specific people or relationships (Both good and bad. Let's just say that the person who gets Back to Black by Amy Winehouse? Probably shouldn't be happy about that one.). Take It Easy by the Eagles will always make me remember driving to work at Southcenter Mall on a hot summer afternoon with the windows rolled down, singing at the top of my lungs, and the guy in the car next to me in traffic looking over, laughing, and then starting to sing along too.

Most songs that hold meaning make you smile, or sigh, and then half-listen to them as they play. Sometimes you'll barely register that they've come on, if you're in the middle of something or distracted. But there are some songs that, when they come on, the world seems to shift slightly. You stop whatever you're doing because you simply can't continue really focusing on anything else (with the exception of things like driving, for instance) because this moment of perfection has dropped into your day and it would be almost sacrilegious if you didn't give it the consideration it deserves.

Ave Maria is one of those songs. It doesn't matter how many times I hear it - every time it comes on, things are slightly different. It's like the song makes me take a deep breath, let it out slowly, and realised that eventually everything will be alright. Listening to it transforms my usual slog through people at Finsbury Park station and on the Tube to work in the morning something different. I look up. I see people's faces instead of their shoes or the book they're reading.

This is what music should be, this beautiful transforming thing that makes the world change. When did the noise pollution in our ears make that change?

Good timing

2008-04-11T14:10:00.004+01:00

One of the bloggers I read posted a poem on her website on Wednesday, but being in the UK I didn't read it until Thursday. And it was exactly what I needed to hear, when I needed to hear it. So, instead of posting her poem here, I'll direct you to her site.

A love note to you

Shameless plug for cash

2008-04-08T11:27:00.002+01:00

And it's not for me. This is pretty inspiring, and shows just how much difference one person can make to a community. Or rather, will be able to make, with our help.

This is one of those cases where even a £1 or a $1 will help, so if that's all you can afford then that's more than enough. Pass this on to your friends, post it on your blog, and lets see if we can make a dent in what they've got left to raise, shall we?

After all - we can make a difference too.

Snow day

2008-04-06T23:31:00.003+01:00

This is what I saw out my kitchen window this morning, after being awoken by a text that read 'SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW!! Go look out your window!'.

Can I just say that this view is normally much less white and snow covered? Very nice way to be woken up though, much nicer than irritatingly chipper bird. However, because the tree outside my bedroom window looked like this,

I am now concerned for irritating chipper bird's health. It does not snow this much in London, ever. Ever, ever. There was at least six inches piled up on the cars, and although it was melting on the streets it was still wonderful to see. I walked to Finsbury Park Station in the snow, and for the first time I can remember in London almost everyone I passed smiled at me and some of them even said hello. It might have been because it was still early enough on a Sunday that most people were still in bed, but it was such a lovely feeling to walk though streets that are usually full of people staring fixedly at the pavement and instead see some of the people I live beside.

However.

It is April. Um...isn't it supposed to be spring? It was over 17' on Friday, warm enough that I thought about wearing a jumper instead of my winter coat out in the evening. I rather desperately need this country to have a summer this year after the abysmal lack of one last year, and this does not bode well people. It does not bode well at all.

RUM BAR!!

2008-03-28T09:54:00.003Z

1. I was in France last week. I miss France. I promise you will get picture heavy posts shortly, and they will also be word-filled.

2. Amy Winehouse's cd, Back to Black, is seriously good. Seriously. Really. Good. I've been listening to it non-stop for the last week, especially the title track - Back to Black.

3. Thinking is bad for me. I end up taking 20km hikes without trying to. The worst bit of it is when you finally look up and try to figure out where you are, and then you realize how far you have to walk back.

4. I did not wake up slightly dehydrated/a bit hungover today. This is the first time in several months this has happened. I do not think my brain is enjoying the experience.

5. I have discovered Twitter. It's addictive. Now, I'm able to share my deep and soulful thoughts with the world. Such as "Hey. How did she look in the mirror this morning and think 'Yeah! This looks great!' before leaving the house?"

6. I'm going to the frozen north (Sheffield) this weekend. My brain will get to marinate in a bathtub full of gin. It's looking forward to it.

----------------------------

Fools Errand

Alone, like a feather in the air,
An occasional sadness the weather knows
Comes to earth as a bend in the road.

The winter is at its most instructive
As other sadnesses fall
Across the democracy of objects.

Those that aren't shy
Introduce themselves—
Fool's Errand, Clowns of Anguish—

The Equitation of Beautiful Young Girls
Is an exemplary sadness,
As is The Whale's Parasol.

I want to part company
With linear extent,
Congenital heartbreak,

Where the raven goes and snow comes from.
I want distance washed clean,
Unencumbered by facts;

The red cactus flower
To slip into my shirt at dusk
And be the heart's boat.

I want Clowns of Anguish to raise the sail,
And a white handkerchief
Waving from shore.

- James Galvin

Drowning

2008-03-21T12:41:00.002Z

Things have been a bit crazy the last few weeks. I'm in France at the moment, spending some time with the most important person in my life and having unexpected (but very nice) things happen daily. As I'm in France, I thought that I should stay with the theme of this last week or so (and no, the theme is not 'As much wine as you can possibly consume', although it certainly feels like it is).

----------

I Live, I Die, I Burn, I Drown

I live, I die, I burn, I drown
I endure at once chill and cold
Life is at once too soft and too hard
I have sore troubles mingled with joys

Suddenly I laugh and at the same time cry
And in pleasure many a grief endure
My happiness wanes and yet it lasts unchanged
All at once I dry up and grow green

Thus I suffer love's inconstancies
And when I think the pain is most intense
Without thinking, it is gone again.

Then when I feel my joys certain
And my hour of greatest delight arrived
I find my pain beginning all over once again.

by Louise Labe

Back with a vengence

2008-03-10T13:34:00.002Z

Winter has returned.

It came back at around 2 am when the very large tree (usually containing irritatingly chipper bird) slammed against my bedroom window, causing me to sit bolt upright in bed and shriek. Then the heavens opened, and all I heard for the next four hours while attempting desperately to sleep was someone clearly throwing bucket after bucket of water against my window. The tree also felt the need to say hello, to make sure that I knew it was there, always just as I was finally getting back to sleep. Then, right before my alarm was due to go off, irritatingly chipper bird decided that he really, seriously, needed to greet the day. In gale force winds. In the pouring down rain.

Well. At least one of us was excited when it went from blackish-gray to lighter-gray.

Spring

2008-03-07T11:46:00.003Z

Why, oh why, do people run for the W7 in Finsbury Park? I can understand if it's 2.30 am and it's the last bloody one because the other bus took too damn long from central London and OH MY GOD it's taken you two hours to get from Piccadilly to Finsbury Park, but at 5.45 pm on a Thursday? When there is a queue of four, not just one bus but four buses, why is there a need to shove me out of your way to sprint for the bus? There are FOUR OF THEM! You will make it home before the wolves come out to hunt you!

----------------------------------

who knows if the moon's
a balloon, coming out of a keen city
in the sky--filled with pretty people?
(and if you and i should

get into it, if they
should take me and take you into their balloon,
why then
we'd go up higher with all the pretty people

than houses and steeples and clouds:
go sailing
away and away sailing into a keen
city which nobody's ever visited, where

always
it's
Spring)and everyone's
in love and flowers pick themselves

- e. e. cummings

Mine.

2008-03-05T13:11:00.002Z

I have space again.

Space of my own, to decorate however I wish. If I wanted to I could plaster giant fluffy pink bunnies on my walls (not that I would, of course). I can buy a bookshelf that has yarn in mind. I can put the wardrobe wherever I like. I don't have to, at any point, take into account the desires or wants of anyone other than myself.

This is a new experience.

I woke up this morning and, since I'm now on the second floor (third floor to you in North America), sunlight was streaming through my window. There is a tree with a (very annoying) bird outside that started singing at an inappropriately early hour. But right now? I love that bird. It's my bird, that sings inappropriately in my tree, outside my flat with huge windows. If I'd wanted to (or, more realistically, if I'd managed to force myself out of bed early enough) I could have had a cup of tea before work while sitting in my lounge in the sun. It's beautiful.

Hitting my head against a wall

2008-02-26T12:11:00.002Z

I'm frustrated. Fantastically, hugely, immensely frustrated.

I've been doing the job-searching dance for over a month now, and nothing's come of it. I've had a few interviews - the best one of which was when my interviewer told me that he'd hire me right then if he didn't have several other interviews later that week...and then I didn't get the position. It's starting to become horrible, and soul destroying, to keep up the energy required to constantly ring and email my recruiters to see if they have anything new, and I'm losing confidence in their ability to get me something.

I know that something will come along, and I'll get out of the place where I'm not appreciated or paid enough, it's just...frustrating. And disheartening. And when I'm sat staring at the screen at a job I'm becoming increasing hateful of, it's hard to summon the motivation to get out of bed in the mornings.

Poetry Friday

2008-02-22T09:33:00.003Z

I've decided to try something over here in December-land. I've written poetry since I was young, and although much of it was the whinging of a fairly-angsty adolecent, some of it wasn't horrible. Poetry, good poetry, is beautiful. So, I'm going to start posting poetry - other people's to start, but maybe mine at some point too.

Hope is the thing with feathers
by Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Marshmallows

2008-02-20T16:26:00.002Z

Part of my noticing nature more around me, specifically in the changing of the seasons, is that I'm really, really excited when flowers start blooming. I think there's a part of my brain that shuts down in mid-October, and only kickstarts back to life when I start seeing the crocouses and daffodils popping up under trees and in parks. The only part of living in Wales that I genuinely, truly liked was when all the daffodils shot up in the spring. (It's the Welsh national flower. There were lots of daffodils.) I just get this feeling of so much more hope, and it's easier to get up in the morning. I feel like I'm taking deeper breaths and walking faster with my head up instead of down. It's a nice feeling.

ps. This made everyone in my office stare at me like I was a loon. Incidently, in Britain they pronounce it marsh-mal-low, instead of marsh-mel-low like my family does.

Life gets in the way

2008-02-18T13:50:00.002Z

Things have been happening recently. Fairly momentous things, for me.

Over a year ago, I blogged something that I felt. Not necessarily strongly about, but I was trying to put more effort into my blogging, so after the event I sat down while it was still fresh in my mind and wrote down what I was thinking and feeling. The next day, I put it up on my blog after going over it to see if I wanted to change things. So I posted it. And then the firestorm began. That one post, about how I was feeling at the time, provoked more comments (not necessarily on the blog) than anything I'd ever written before - and not really in a good way.

This has made me very hesitant to post about actual events that I have any sort of emotional reaction to, whatsoever. I learned from that experience that you never know who's reading, and that putting things out there for the world to see can have unintended effects on the people around you. At the same time...

This is my space. My voice, no one else's, and part of me thinks that not saying what I'm thinking and feeling is worse than saying the wrong thing. So, I guess I'm trying to say that I'm going to start talking. I'm not trying to hurt anyone, or say that the way I'm seeing something is the way it actually is (because really, if I were in charge of reality it would be Very Different), but this is me. This is what I'm thinking. And I guess I'll just have to deal with that, too.

Scottish attack squirrel of death

2008-02-11T09:46:00.000Z

Something to make Monday a little easier.

A second waking up

2008-02-06T16:04:00.000Z

Wake to screech of alarm in my ear. Manage get out of bed before current flatmate's alarm goes off (5 minutes before I need to leave). Huge improvement on yesterday. Shower, eyes closed against the spray. Drop contacts while trying to put them in. Can't find my book, flatmate re-arranged sitting room. Bastard. Stumble into kitchen, notice that it's not raining. Feel happy about this until looking in fridge. Cold pizza has been replaced by beer. Beer is not allowed for breakfast on workdays. Crap. Remember to put phone, knitting, and newly-charged iPod into bag before leaving flat. Leave flat. Drop newly-charged iPod down flight of concrete stairs. iPod is fine. Shuffle to bus stop, yawning. Miss first bus, but actually get seat on second next to girl that thinks seat next to her is for her paper, not me. Turn up rock music, glance sideways to see if she noticed. No. Bus barely manages to climb Crouch Hill. Hits the top and...

the most amazing morning light that has ever existed on the face of the planet fills the top of the bus. It's shooting out from the horizon, from under a mostly cloudy sky, bright orange and yellow and bright and pink, reflecting off buildings. Downtown London and Canary Wharf shine out of the light, hazy and distinct all at the same time. Blink, and feel like I've just woken up.

Boozy booze booze

2008-02-04T15:04:00.000Z

What I have had to drink this weekend:

One bottle red wine
Two glasses white wine
Four-fifths large bottle of Absolute Citron mixed with soda water
1 bottle Negra Modelo
2 bottles Grolsh
4 pints at The Ship
3 pints at The King's Head

I think that someone could lick my arm and come away drunk at this point. Certain persons are now offically 'A Bad Influence' on me.

The next station is!! Russell Square!!

2008-02-01T10:09:00.000Z

Getting out of work yesterday after an almost entirely horrible day, I mentally prepared myself for the crazy that is the Tube during rush hour. Getting on at Holborn, my iPod was helpfully playing 'How Much Difference' by Pearl Jam. If you ever want to be so depressed by the time you get down the many escalators that you want to commit suicide on the tracks, listen to this song while being on the Tube after a crappy day.

I know it's because London is so large, and there are just so many people crammed into a tiny space (especially on public transport), but no one sees anyone else here. There's a particular etiquette in London that probably only exists in large cities. I can practially be kissing someone on the Tube, making Dirty Dancing look like a church picnic, and absolutely no eye contact will be made. An occasional mumbled 'Sorry' might spontaneously erupt from anyone in this situation (after all, they are British), but everyone just brushes it off. It's crazy.

The entire day was redeemed when, after cramming myself into the six inches of space free, I looked up at the scrolling sign that says what station is next. It was malfunctioning. It made me laugh, for some unknown reason. Yay, London.

Public Intimacy

2008-01-30T08:52:00.000Z

Dear Cute Guy, wearing a brown coat, denim shirt and grey jumper on the Piccidilly Line last night (beginning at Holborn),

I'd like to take this opportunity to apologise. You looked quite happy reading your book in the two inches of space in front of you. I'm sure it was a very good read.

Unfortunately the fat guy behind me was completely oblivious to the fact that, during this particular time of day, only three people are allowed on the train through each door at Holborn station. He clearly thought that the people who have to duck their heads back into the carriage every time the doors close and almost fall out every time the doors open had more than enough space to themselves.

Sadly for everyone else in the carriage, this created a situation resembling a pile of American football players all face-down on the pitch. I know that my head practically resting on your shoulder while we both desperately tried to maintain a millimeter's space was excruciatingly uncomfortable, but believe me, it could have been worse. At least the back of my head protected your face from the tall guy with the pointy elbows for four stops.

Four jolting, slam-to-a-halt-in-the-station stops.

At any rate, I hope you enjoyed the rest of your journey after the train finally cleared out significantly at Finsbury Park, and were spared the unplanned attentions of the several new people around you.

Hopefully never again,
B

First week back at work

2008-01-23T11:29:00.000Z

Things would would have been exceptionally helpful for you to do in my absence:

1. Any of the things you actually said you were going to do. The definition of 'doing' them includes any of the following: accomplishing a task, setting it up for me to do when I got back, delegating it to someone else to do if you could not, or making any visible effort whatsoever to accomplish a task. It does not include: leaving several unlabeled piles of similar things on my desk and then expecting me to know exactly what's happening with all of them, hiding more work in odd and random places so that I stumble across it while looking for the pens you stole from my desk, and deciding that, for the three days after I get back, to bombard me with emails asking if I know what is happening with (insert something here). I do not. You are supposed to.

2. Not attempt to barricade my desk in with boxes of delivered magazines. I know that I archive them, and you have no idea of the system. This is why I told you you were not allowed to go into that room. This does not mean that you should place them around my desk in such a way that I can now repel the invading Mongul hordes from my computer.

3. Follow any of the instructions, in any way, I carefully walked you through before I left. Yes, I did give you those for a reason. No, the reason was not for you to write your grocery list on (which you have done). Perhaps if you'd followed the instructions, much of the screamy phone calls you received would not have occurred.

4. Along similar lines of number three, that detailed colour-coded chart? That's used so that nothing gets missed on deadline day. Yes, you probably should have followed it. No, I'm not fixing it for you.

5. Not piss anyone off, so that they complain to me for days. I know this is not your best area, but it would have been helpful not to insult them.

Next time, I'll install some sort of machine that zaps you when you're being an idiot. I know that I'd arrive back, and you'd have no hair, but this is not my problem.

Go Sens, and not those other guys

2008-01-14T15:36:00.000Z

Things I have learned while visiting Canada:

1. Bring more wool. It is cold. Next time, travel with the whole stash.
2. What a 2-4 is, and that one is not enough for four people during a serious night of drinking.
3. There is no way on earth that I can match the Canadian men I know when drinking. Trying is a bad idea.
4. That the Sens (Ottawa Senators) are the best hockey team, ever, on this earth, and should I indicate otherwise by narrowing my eyes in the wrong way or other possible signals, the world will end.
5. The loo is now called 'the washroom', which means that I am even more confused.

The addiction's reaching new heights

2008-01-13T03:46:00.000Z

I recently discovered the 'radar' bit on the forums on Ravelry, and it's going to take over my life. I think I've joined about 5 new groups in the last 30 minutes. Ah well, it'll give me more to do at work to distract myself now that the bastards have taken away my Pandora...

Oh Canada...

2008-01-10T00:55:00.000Z

For the last week or so (10 days, to be precise), I've been staying with M's cousins in Canada. Strangely, for someone that lived several hours south of the Canadian border for most of my early life, the entirety of my time in Canada before this consisted of jumping the border while at WWU for cheap all-you-can-eat pasta and legal drinking on Tuesday nights.

The following picture sums up most of the last 10 days:

Those are stairs. Covered by at least a foot, but probably more, of snow. It is cold. Very, very cold. M's cousin took us downtown (they apparently live in the sticks) last Friday, and it was so cold I actually had to buy long-johns to wear under my jeans because I could no longer feel the front of my legs. I could feel the back just fine, but not the front.

Canada is a peculiar mix of America and Britain, to me. Looking at the chocolate selection at cornershops, and they've got the Aeros, Cadbury, and other familiar brands. Stores carry digestive biscuits, and other really strange things are oddly British. The accent is close to America (although I can certainly hear a difference that I wouldn't have been able to five years ago), and much of the television is the same. The same ideas about driving (a must) and the space is familiar, in that no-one-walks-anywhere way.

It's enough that I think I could feel comfortable here, in a way that I don't in the States anymore and I'm not sure I do in England. I'm going to have to spend some more time in this country when it's not freezing cold and see if I think I could live here.

Expressions of love

2008-01-08T00:01:00.000Z

Well, I finished my Grandmother's shawl for her 90th birthday well in time for the event. I say well in time, but actually it was a bit of a struggle. It needed to be done, blocked and dry, for packing on the 23 of December as it was also a Christmas present. I managed, but barely and with serious effort. Here it is though, and I'm pretty impressed with myself, to be honest.

This shawl took me a month and a half of knitting around 3-5 hours a night. (That's me outside my Grandma's place in Colorado, on December 27th - it was a bit chilly.) It was my first large project that succeeded, even a little bit, and is beautiful. I know there are mistakes in it, but this is the first thing that I've made that I've looked at and gone 'Wow.'

Pattern is Mountain Peaks Shawl by MimKnits, and it's a fantastic pattern that has been very well written. I used Handmaiden SeaSilk in Woodland, which was a wonderful yarn. As a side note though, the colours were much darker than they appeared on my screen when I was ordering - something I'm definitely going to keep in mind for next time. All in all though, I really enjoyed my first proper lace knitting experience, and can't wait to start something else.

My Grandma really loved it as well - she sat staring at it for a few moments and then disappeared into her room where there was much blowing of the nose.

So this is the New Year...

2008-01-04T17:55:00.000Z

Hi. Wow. It's been a rather long time, hasn't it?

We're now a few days into 2008, and I feel very much like that kid who's new at the pool. You know, the one that has the water wings on her arms, and has had a few swimming lessons but isn't confident yet, and who certainly wouldn't jump in the deep end. Just dipping her toe in the water, and waving it around a bit.

2007 was pretty awful. I had the alien in my throat, I had surgery to get rid of the alien in my throat, I had weird energy and mood swings, and in general it was a pretty awful year. But, as ever at this time of year, it's been a long december and there's reason to believe that maybe this year will be better than the last.

So. What do I want to do this year?

Stand on my own two feet, and know that no one can push me over. Live well, and within my own means. Find a job that challenges me, and that pays me what I think I'm worth. Make a plan about where I think I want to be, location-wise, in five years and what I might need to do to make that happen.

I've got a good feeling about this one. I think it'll be a good year.

This is not my best day ever

2007-11-30T10:26:00.000Z

You know that a day is starting off badly when you hit the snooze button three times before dragging yourself out of bed.

Then, when you're playing Freecell at 10 am because it's a Friday, you walked to work in the never-ending twilight that life seems to be in the winter, you're doing two months worth of work at once because you're going on holiday and no one can be trusted not to screw things up when you're gone, and all you want is to go home - that's when you just give up and decide to search Etsy all day.

Nervous twitches

2007-11-29T14:43:00.000Z

I finally, after thinking about it for about forever, got around to updating my sidebar links. This isn't shake-the-earth kind of stuff, but it now reflects the majority of sites that I absolutely must read on a daily basis, or my world will end without meaning. Well, not entirely, but hey - we all need something to do at work.

Also...I'm nervous. I told someone about the blog, and if I were the kind of person to be wringing my hands or to have a nervous twitch, I would be wringing and twitching away now.

So.

Everybody say hi to my Mom. Hi Mom!

I wanna name my stuffed moose Jesus

2007-11-26T16:40:00.000Z

Today, the first day that I have gotten out of bed and felt like a human in a long time, you were all going to get a Very Excited Post about my new camera. Then I thought that maybe instead I'd talk about my frustration with Blue Dragon on the 360.

Instead you get this.

I like to think that I'm a fairly open-minded individual. I really am more a 'whatever floats your boat' kind of gal. But this?

Now. I could understand if the woman had dressed the bear up in traditional Islamic robes, put a halo or some such on the bear, and started calling the bear 'Prophet Muhammad'. At that point, that becomes an insult and I can understand that. However. She didn't. As far as I'm aware, and as the story says, Muhammad is a common name and there were other names that the children could pick. Twenty of them chose their favourite name, Muhammad. Does this mean that every single person whose name is Muhammad should be arrested, as they're mocking the Prophet? Will they all go to hell?

Good job, Sudan. I certainly have much more respect for you as a country now. And certainly, with this article my impressions of Islam (which I honestly do not know very much about, although I am learning more as time goes by) are glowing with cheer and goodwill.

I mean, come on. It's a stuffed bear.

Ah, there's that winter I know and... well... hate, actually

2007-11-19T18:10:00.000Z

It's raining. In that stupid way, with the wind, that it only does in Britain in the winter. I hate it. Grrrr at the rain.

Pumpkin pie. LOTS of pumpkin pie.

2007-11-14T12:54:00.000Z

Thanksgiving is next week, and I'm going to be missing it yet again. It was never one of those holidays that I got completely jazzed up for - not like Christmas with the building excitement of watching the Advent calendar count down, or Easter when I got to dye eggs, or even the 4th of July when it's summer and hot and you get to bar-b-que with friends and drink beer. Thanksgiving was more of a chore. A 'great, we've got a long weekend, but I have to be nice to who for how long?' kind of event. There was lots of good food, but I usually had to wear 'nice' clothes, and sit at the table longer than I usually wanted to, and there would usually be a moment of embarassing story told by the parents in an attempt to make me turn as red as physically possible.

Having lived over here though, for over five years, I find it's the one holiday that I miss more than any other. Probably because I get up, and go to work, and I'll be going to work on the Friday too, and there are no autumnal colours in the shops (we're in full Christmas swing in the UK, and I'm already wanting to hurt anyone who plays Christmas carols at me) or any turkey or yams with marshmallows or pumpkin pie. And that's what I really miss most about it, to be honest, is the pumpkin pie.

Pumpkin pie, with Miracle-Whip that my Mom's pulled out of the freezer that morning so that it can soften. Potato rolls from the bag heated up in the oven, or those flakey Pillsbury Doughboy ones (you know what I'm talking about, all of you). Green beans with flaked toasted almonds, cranberry sauce (served in my Mom's special dish that I have only ever seen used for cranberry sauce) from a can, spreadable cheese from Wisconsin that my Grandmother sent us as a treat and Ritz crackers. Sparkling cider, and cheap wine from boxes. The losing battle my mother is fighting with her daughters and jeans at holiday meals.

I'm a bit nervous, because this year Matt has decided that we will be doing something special for the day, and there's a restaurant in Covent Garden that has a special Thanksgiving menu which was helpfully pointed out in the American Embassy newsletter last month for us expats. So he's made a reservation, and next Thursday we'll be making our way down there after work and sitting down to what does sound like a fantastic meal.

But... There will be no sisters arguing over olives. And who gets what roll. And why can she have wine/beer/anything and I can't? And I won't be sat down with my family, eating off the good china in our dining room at the cherry-wood table my parents bought when we were in Virginia. I don't know if I can have a Thanksgiving without those things. Without those people around me. They're what make the holiday have meaning; otherwise it's just another nice meal at a restaurant in London.

And everything turns to winter

2007-11-05T12:53:00.000Z

There's a specific kind of light in England. A kind of slanted, sideways light that never hits anything full on, drifting through the branches of trees, across grass and up against buildings. It's why, when you see all those old paintings of fields and sheep and church spires rising up out of a dip in the landscape, nothing seems sharp and clear.

This light is most obvious in late autumn, winter, and early spring. The sun rarely hits this small island from over head, but it's in this time of year when it seems too lazy to rise properly in the morning. I walked to work this morning in this kind of light - the mist rising up off the grass in Lincoln's Inn Fields and drifting like fog into the soft spills of weak sunlight between the branches of the towering horse-chestnut trees. The world seems fragile on mornings like this, as though reality doesn't have the hold it usually does.

Eating lunch alone

2007-11-01T15:35:00.000Z

After a fairly substantial breakfast this morning, I wasn't ravenous at 1 p.m. This is the time that the entire British nation decided is Time For Lunch, and so is usually a rather insane affair of desperately trying to simultaneously keep a place in the queue to purchase your sandwich and leave as many of your possessions as possible somewhere to sit.

Instead, I was so absorbed in my fascinating work of adding bullet points in places where Quark ate them in my layout that by the time I looked up it was already past two. So I gathered my things, and headed to Eat, which is my usual choice when I've neglected to bring my lunch with me to work. (Get the pie. It is always good.) I wandered into the shop, and instead of the usual pushing and dodging and grabbing-before-someone-else, I stood there and contemplated my choices in relative solitude. There was a distinct lack of choice (two kinds of baguette were left, neither of which I'd actually wanted), but there was no shortage of seats. As I read my paper, the music blaring strangely loud without the usual numbers of people to soak up the noise, I noticed something a bit strange.

Every single customer in the shop was eating alone. The guy beside me had a laptop, and was working away with the occasional glance over to see the headlines. Another man sat at his table with his head in his hands staring at the floor for 45 minutes before eating the soup he'd gotten almost an hour ago and leaving. He made me want to give him a hug, and tell him that everything was going to be okay. Is there something about 2 p.m. that means everyone eating at that hour has no friends? Or at least, no friends to have lunch with that day. It was nice though. Quiet. Just what I needed today. I think I'll be eating lunch alone again.

Not all of these components are measurable using currently available metrological techniques.

2007-10-22T16:26:00.000+01:00

I don't think that there is enough coffee in the world to ensure that I am kept awake through more than one paragraph of text as written above. Where do people come up with these things? Yes, using big words makes you sound smart, but using only big words makes people want to slap you and fall asleep simultaneously. Preferably after a great deal of alcohol.

Sorry for the silence. It's been fraught over here recently.

All the leaves are brown/ and the sky is gray

2007-10-12T15:14:00.000+01:00

Recently, I've noticed the seasons more. In the last few years, I've found myself hyper-attuned to winter mellowing to spring, summer blowing in, autumn creeping up, and winter shutting everything down.

I don't remember being this aware of the seasons as a kid. They just seemed to appear one day, fully in swing, with almost no transition from one to another. Now, as autumn follows an almost non-existant summer in London, I find myself looking around and saying 'Oh, the leaves can't be falling yet. Surely, it's not time for them to. And the drizzle. We've got at least another month before the never-ending drizzle starts again.'

Strangely, the aspect where this becomes most obvious to me is in my knitting. Now, I've only really been knitting since April this year. But as spring turned to summer, I found myself attracted to bright, bold yellows and reds. Deep clear blues, vibrant greens, and luscious purples were also noticed, but it was mostly the yellows and reds and oranges that caught my eye, begging to be made into sometime that would encapsulate summer.

Now that autumn's come around again, I find myself being drawn towards muted oranges, raspberries, and browns like walking through a forest on a clear day when the leaves are turning all around you. Like Indian Summer, from Cherry Tree Hill. I'm making a pair of the ubiquitous Monkey Socks by Cookie A. out of a skein and every time I pull them out to work on I marvel at the colours. There have been days that I've been so enamoured of the colourway that I've sat it on my desk at work (to the derision of my co-workers) just so that I can look over at it. It makes my day better.

One toothbrush

2007-10-08T23:16:00.000+01:00

Matt went away this weekend, some for business and some for visiting friends, and left me all on my lonesome. This is unique in alot of ways, but each of us doing our own thing is something that's fairly unique in my relationship with him in a lot of ways. When we got together, we both abhorred our school. We didn't like our courses, we didn't like our rooms, and shortly after getting together we both pretty much stopped going out or doing anything and stayed in watching tv and playing computer games. After that, every time we started to get settled somewhere and start getting to know people that we liked to spend time with, we'd move. So pretty much, until now, we haven't stayed in one place for over a year. We did everything together.

So it's unusual for him, or me, to go somewhere for a weekend without the other coming along. I didn't really think about it until I got home from work on Friday and looked at where all our toiletries are kept. The shelf was fairly bare, but what really hit me was my toothbrush. It was all on its own. Usually the two of them are one-on-top-of-the-other, or tangled up with the toothpaste. But it just sat there. Alone.

I do not know how people in long-distance relationships survive. I missed Matt this weekend, and he was gone for a total of just over 48 hours. I can't even imagine having to go weeks or months without seeing my sweetie, without a hug, or a kiss, or that way that he always touches across my back when he walks by me. I'm happy that I don't have to, but my respect for people who can deal with that situation has skyrocketed.

Notes from a small island, take 2

2007-10-01T15:24:00.000+01:00

I realized this last weekend that I’ve now been over here for five years. That’s almost a fifth of my life. Living in this country has been both infuriating (Nothing is open on a Sunday in the countryside. NOTHING. Me being, well, me, I found this out the difficult way. Oh yes. And Bill Bryson? His book is so right, in ways that make you want to cry.) and wonderful (Matt, most specifically. Also, cool accents, old things, more beer than you can shake your fist at, cheese I didn’t know existed, and more old things.).

When I left Seattle on September 11^th, 2002 (my mother really didn’t like my choice of dates, but it was cheap) I never thought that I’d be gone this long. Like so many large decisions in my life, I made a snap decision. I wanted to get away from Seattle, away from my family and the people there, and see who I was somewhere else. At the time, I couldn’t tell you why I was really leaving, except that I’d always wanted to live abroad and I saw this as my one, and possibly only, chance to do so.

So, in looking back, here’s how arriving here really was for me, five years ago, despite the fact that I told people it was wonderful and I loved it.

After a horrible flight and three great days in London, I found myself alone and on a bus to Wales. There was a guy selling sandwiches and potato chips and soda with a Welsh accent that was so thick that I couldn’t understand a word he said. When we arrived at my stop he helped me get my baggage out of the storage compartment on the bus, and turned to me with a hopeful smile and yet another sentence I couldn’t decipher. His face fell as I shook my head and apologised, saying that I hadn’t understood anything for the last three hours.

Getting off the bus, I’d arrived in the town my university was ‘in’ only to discover that the school was a 20 minute drive outside of the actual town. I got a taxi from the bus stop to the campus, and tried to tip the cab driver. He looked at it, said ‘I think that you’ve miscounted, love,’ and shoved his tip back into my hand. I dragged my suitcases all over campus, trying to find the people I was supposed to talk to so that they could show me my room. The place was deserted, except for a few security guards that stopped talking each of the three times that I walked past them. After about 45 minutes of walking between different buildings, carrying a huge backpack and smaller backpack and dragging a wheeled piece of luggage, I finally found the person that could take me to my room. They took me to a small, dark and dingy room in an ugly building, with fluorescent lighting and a shower that, if you hit one of the walls wrong, let out a cloud of mold spores. I almost started crying.

For the next week, it was just the international students on campus. There was me, a girl from North Carolina, two guys from Norway, and about 50 men from India who thought that being American meant being easy and constantly on the lookout for the next person we were going to sleep with. The lovely girl from North Carolina and I spent most of the week trying to find such things as: sheets! A supermarket that sold more than frozen dinners! How to take the bus into town! We also spent most of the week getting drunk with the Norweigians every night. We’d found the corner store, which over here sells all kinds of alcohol, the first night.

When everyone else moved in, it wasn’t that much better. My flatmates consisted of older woman from the north that complained constantly about the noise and from who’s room clouds of pot smoke billowed almost continuely, a very, very young girl who was having an affair with a married man 30 years her senior who eventually got her pregnant, a guy from India who liked doing strange and loud exercises at three in the morning while playing Indian pop music at ear-splitting volumes, and another guy from India who thought the unwashed kitchen countertops were a perfect place to cut raw chicken. It was an absolute nightmare.

I hated the university, I wasn’t very impressed with my classes (what there was of them, which wasn’t very much), and I didn’t like Wales. At all. But damned if I was leaving, as that would only prove my mother right when she told me that it wasn’t the best decision. The only good thing to come out of Wales was Matt, who I’ll have been with for five years in about two weeks.

It was an interesting beginning to life in the UK.

Toe-may-toe and to-mah-toe

2007-09-27T13:42:00.000+01:00

After five years of saving every single bit of paper with my or Matt's name on it that arrives in the post, I'm finally applying for my indefinite leave visa. What this means is that, basically, I pay the immigration people an extortionate amount of money (see 'Why I won't be in Seattle for Christmas', exhibit 1.) to look through about 40 pieces of paper with my address on it and go 'Heh. Look at that. She quit the gym 5 months after joining.' At then end of this, they hopefully tell me I'm allowed to stay here.

Part of this was taking the wholly and completely idiotic Life in the UK test. I had to buy a book (£10) and pay the fee (£35) in addition to the extortion of applying for the visa in the first place. All to answer such riveting questions as 'When you take your dog into a public place, must the dog be wearing a collar with an identification tag?' and 'Which two out of the four ministers, two of whom aren't even ministers, are in the government?'

Wow guys. I don't know how I could exist in British society without knowing the answers to these. I mean, obviously, living here and having gotten my degree from a UK university totally does not show my ability to use the English language. And I never would have known which ministers are in the Cabinet if I hadn't taken the test because it is clear that I a) do not speak English, b) cannot read a newspaper, and c) don't know what this 'tee-vee' is. My life is impossibly better knowing which saint's crosses make up the British flag (in case you care, the Welsh get stiffed again in this).

So. Go immigration! We love the Home Office! Now, as per usual, I'll wait three months for anything to happen even though it's supposed to take 3 weeks. ::sigh:: These Europeans.

The never ending fountain of socks

2007-09-24T15:26:00.000+01:00

Due to the deadly enabling efforts of Lime & Violet, earlier this year I finally couldn't resist any longer and subscribed to the Hill Country Yarns sock yarn club. This was back in that hazy time known as 'summer', that lasted for about five seconds this year in London before being eaten by clouds. Since those five seconds, I'd totally forgotten about signing up for the sock club.

Saturday, I dragged my very tired self out of bed. There's never any food in the flat by the weekend, so Matt and I usually head out for breakfast pretty early. Passing by the ledge our post gets shoved onto, I saw the package and grabbed it.

No package can possibly be bad.

Opening it, I discovered the most beautiful, squishy periwinkle-blue yarn. Which I then carried around with me, and squished every now and then through the entirity of breakfast. It completely made my Saturday, especially as from now through Christmas there's absolutely no way I can afford to buy any yarn for myself - it's all going to be for presents. I think I might have to remember this for next year - buy presents for yourself in June that get delivered between September and December. And anyway, I can always use more yarn.

Like a record baby, right round right round

2007-09-21T15:02:00.000+01:00

Music has been a major part of my life for the majority of it. I distinctly remember a particular birthday when I was about 12 or 13, when one of my friends gave me a cassette single (yes, I’m old. I know this. Be quiet.) of Salt’n’Peppa’s and I rather anxiously put it on in the car on the way to school one day. I was old enough to get that they were maybe talking about more ‘adult’ subjects, but still too young to quite know what they were actually talking about. My mother listened for the first minute or so, her knuckles getting whiter and whiter on the steering wheel before jabbing her finger several times at the eject button before the song finally stopped. The cassette disappeared, never again appearing.

High school brought new music into my life in the form of grunge – after all, this was the 90s, and I was in Seattle. I fell in love with Pearl Jam and Blind Melon. Long December, by the Counting Crows, arrived on a radio station compliation cd a close friend of mine had, and became a theme for my Decembers. When I was angry at my parents, I played two songs from the Batman Forever soundtrack on my crap little cd player – Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me by U2 and Smash It Up by the Offspring because my mother hated both of them. I also finally understood the stations my Dad listened to, and Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles, Steve Miller Band, and many more groups from the 60s and 70s joined my ever-expanding cd collection.

My freshman year at Western, there was this fantastic noise coming from a room on the guys floor, and when I stuck my head in to see who it was I made a friend that I still talk to. In addition to being introduced to Dave Matthews Band, of course. Pink Floyd’s Division Bell became the background noise at the parties I went to (well, it was Western). These were also the years that I started getting into techno in all its many forms, and none of my friends could understand how I could study French while Rabbit in the Moon pulsed through my dorm room. Techno music was the first I could actually dance to, and I threw myself into the Seattle rave scene hard.

Moving to Wales in 2002 changed things. Almost every radio station in the country plays pop, of the sugary-sweet kind, and my huge collection of cds and downloaded music was what I listened to exclusively. It’s only been in the last year or so that I’ve started getting an influx of new music again, and it surprised me how much I missed it.

I’ve been discovering new bands, with new songs, and I’m loving it. I’m also rediscovering bands that I wasn’t very aware of when they were big, and getting to appreciate them more than I would have before. My youngest sister has surprisingly good taste (most of the time) and, although it makes me feel old to have a 15 year old point out bands I should be listening to, am enjoying having something in common with her for the first time I can remember.

I’ve noticed that the songs I like on particular cds seem to evolve with me – there were some that I loved when I was 16 that I’m not a big fan of now, and other songs that have taken on an entirely new meaning with experience. I’m looking forward to finding a new soundtrack.

A day late

2007-09-12T16:21:00.000+01:00

One of the things that occasionally whacks me in the ass about living overseas is dates. I have no idea when Labor Day is, the 4th of July slides by in the haze another frantic work week, and Thanksgiving ambushes me when I'm getting frustrated trying to call someone in the States. Most of the time, I have to look at a calendar, do some counting, and go 'Oh. Well. That would be why they're not picking up then.' It's slightly disconcerting, like if the sky was suddenly lavender, and everyone around you was saying that it was still blue. It's not much of a difference, but still. It's not the same.

So about yesterday. The day my brain went, 'Wait, I think there's something I'm supposed to mention here...um...well...penguins?' I never know what to say on September 11th. Or about it. I'm sure it's supposed to be this uber-patriotic day, with flag waving and sadness for the loss of life and all, but it's difficult to be patriotic when you're living in a different country (or this could just be me).

Living over here has given me a very different view of the States than I had before. I see the broken bits, the tarnished parts that America tries to cover up, the school-yard bully aspects of my native culture. Most of what you hear about America when you're living outside it is...not good. The rest world doesn't really like us, like how you didn't like your idiotic, brainless younger sister when all she could talk about was boys and GOD GET AN OPINION OF YOUR OWN ALREADY. I know there are good bits, shining examples of humanity and caring in there too, but you don't get to see them when you're not living there. You just hear about the screw-ups, the meanness, the stupidity of our nation's leaders, and the mistakes made.

No one deserved to die, on those planes or in New York in 2001. What those people did was wrong, and misguided. I will never be able to understand why they did it, or how anyone could consider doing sometime like that in any circumstances, at any point in time.

But the rest of the world can't dislike us just because. There's a reason there, whether we agree with it or not. So maybe we should start trying to find out about it.

The smallest space in the world

2007-09-11T11:17:00.000+01:00

My flat in London is small. I don't think that I can describe just how small it actually is, without drawing the layout and the possible use of photographs. My camera died and I haven't been able to get my new one yet, so here is my attempt to explain why asking to stay at my place for any length of time is just...well, not the best idea in the world if you don't want to go insane.

This is my flat:It is not to scale, as I'm a crappy drawer in Paint. The green bits are all doors, with the one on the top left being how we get in. The two right next to each other on the right are sort-of French doors leading to a small, paved hole in the ground that is our 'garden'. The one in the upper right is the door to a small closet. All the brown bits are furniture or fixed objects that we can't move because they are all in the only space that they will fit in, like in the L-shaped bit sticking off the top of the main room - that's our kitchen. It has a stove with 2 hobs, and an oven that you can't use if you're using both hobs. That tiny blue thing is our shower (the toilet is outside the flat, in the hallway. We share it with our neighbor.) Black is the pointless radiator that is in the worst possible place, and the purple is our bed.

Now. I share a basement studio flat with my boyfriend. In this flat, the furniture consists of a bed (purple), bookshelf (top left), fixed wardrobe (bottom left), 'entertainment centre' (upper middle), and desk for computer (lower right). The bed is a sofa-bed that folds up so we can, you know, move around. When the bed is down there is about 2 feet of space on the right hand side by the bookshelf, and maybe 3 on the side with the desk. There is just enough space to squeeze by, carefully, between the corner of the bed and the telly. 2 people in the kitchen is a no-no, especially as that apparently clear space against the wall is actually full of things like rubbish bins, and ironing board, and the drying racks for our clothes. We don't have a washer or dryer, we have a fun total of 2 whole cupboards and one drawer for all food and food-related items (pots and pans and such).

At this point I should probably mention that Matt and I are not tidy people. We're clean, certainly, but not tidy. It's not uncommon for piles of paper, books, or clothes to build up at various places in this room. Recently he's been fiddling with the computer, so there is electrical-ness exploded in the desk area. I knit, and yarn takes up space. There is enough stuff on top of the bookshelf to require another bookshelf, but we don't have the space.

Does anyone see any room for two people in this space, much less more? I love you, my wonderful friends. I miss you. I want to see you.

However.

No, you cannot stay with me. No, not even just for a weekend. One night, if you're arriving at stupid-o'clock, yes. Because I miss you. But seriously guys. Look at the place. It's just not gonna work out.

The life which bounced

2007-09-07T21:48:00.000+01:00

In my new-found bento obsession, I've been eating a lot of rice. And when I say that, I really mean that white sticky rice has begun to dominate my lunches. Onigiri, or rice balls, with all sorts of fillings, fluffy rice pressed into the bottom of a container and then covered with flavoured sprinkles both make up the majority of my lunch these days. Along with some miso soup, the occasional hard-boiled egg (sometimes a tea egg) and some vegetables or fruit, my lunch has become one of my favourite parts of the day. Strangely, I've never felt better. It's great - I'm never hungry until about 7 or 8 at night now. I used to come home absolutely starving after having eaten at least one packet of biscuits at work. So the bento-style lunches are definitely a winner. ^_^

The obsession with them is also growing in leaps and bounds. Last weekend, while dragging a friend from Cardiff two the two Japanese-food markets that are within walking distance of my flat, I saw that they were having an odd sort of yard sale (odd, because it was really kind of a sidewalk sale. In Piccadilly Circus. Where there is barely space to walk to begin with.) in front of the Japan Centre. Walking up, my eye was immediately caught by the four small-looking bento boxes they had for £2.99. My inner Japanese 5-year-old kicked in, I grabbed the hot pink box, and clutched it to my chest while digging in my bag for my cash. I felt like running home to immediately make lunch, just so I could put it in the box and then eat it. I also bought a pair of small chopsticks with penguins on them. They are not pink, and they also do not fit into the chopstick holder in the bento box. It was a very sad moment. I've been rubberbanding them to the top, which is working well.

Now all I need is to start cutting out star shapes, and hearts, and making faces on my eggs, and I'll be full-fledged into the obsession. Maybe I can knit a holder for my bento box?

Hmmm...this will take planning...

Gonna be a bright, bright sunshiney day

2007-09-03T11:05:00.000+01:00

I woke up slightly before my alarm this morning. For most people, this might not be unusual. After all, when your alarms always goes off at the same time every day you start just waking up then. However due to the earlier presence and now absence of the alien in my throat, this is something that hasn't happened to me. At least in the last year or so.

For the last few months especially, I have been tired. Not the kind of tired that a few extra hours of sleep on the weekend can cure either. Tired like you haven't slept in three days, and you've been out dancing every night, and you think that if you have to stay awake and try to function any more you might actually fall over dead because you just can't do it. So life has involved a lot of me making excuses to friends because I just don't have the energy to meet up for a coffee, or a chat, or go to my Saturday dnd sessions. And it sucks ass.

Waking up today, I felt...okay. I felt awake, as you should do after a good night's sleep. I didn't feel like getting out of bed was trying to extract myself from the stickiest substance available. And I remembered that this was what waking up in the morning used to be like. It didn't used to be a struggle of epic proportions to wake up early enough to take a shower, make my lunch, and have breakfast. I used to have the energy to meet up with people, and maybe do some exercise (if I was feeling really ambitious), and not walk through my day missing things because my brain just wasn't functioning properly.

I miss this. It feels fragile, like it's going to disappear any second. And I don't want to go back to the bone-numbing tiredness. I don't know what to do.