A day in the life

I'm about to spend yet another Saturday night camped out at home, one flatmate down with what appears to be swine flu - she's nice enough to hole up in her room rather than share the germs - the other having trotted off in a shower of complaints to a barbecue. I was invited to the barbie but declined, having a fairly large dislike of the host who has insulted meat least once every time I've seen him. I don't accept the apology of "That's just the way he is with everyone". Rudeness is still rudeness, even if it's unthinking. Sure, I gave as good, if not better, than I got on each occasion, but I'm not going to head along to his place and ask for it. Especially not when he passes comment on my lack of funds in the invite, then demands that we bring along food. Having compared notes with other invitees, it appears that he is merely responsible for the venue and the guest list. So I'm here, instead, a sad sack with a packet of chocolate coated raisins that I'm not allowed to eat any more of, and yet another bottle of full-sugar coke beside me and fading resolutions to eat healthily.

It's been a busy day. There was the conversation with Mum and Dad that took about an hour and a half. There was the trip to get some Norwegian money for my trip next weekend - unproductive, as it happened, but it was fun watching the girl in the booth take fifteen minutes to realise that with 3 $10 notes, 4 $5 notes and a collection of $1 she wasn't going to be able to make up the US$75 that someone was asking for. There was the bit where I gave up all hope of rain falling and saving Australia in the Ashes and started contemplating what sort of ear plugs I'd use to drown out the sound of the crowd on Monday, if it makes it that far. The incredibly satisfying moment when I found out that L and I would be getting the full bond back on our last flat, following my angry email which was so effective that the landlady emailed me, and called Liz rather than speak to me directly. The momentous decision to dye my hair a new and different colour - described on the box as hazelnut - and the wish that I'd been a little more brave and gone a little darker. And now we've reached this, Saturday night, and I'm here blogging.

So much for adventure.

One of those days

Considering that it's a Friday and I've got the entire weekend stretching in front of me, today has been one of the worse days I've sat through this week. Sure, I wasn't tired when I woke up. It was 6:30, though, a full half hour before I was due to wake up for my first alarm (so I've got three set at 15 minute intervals...I wake up dead, OK? It takes a few tries) and I wasn't able to get back to sleep. I eventually got up and struggled to get anything right for the rest of the day. It's almost like the mozzies I was swatting last night put some sort of curse on me as they died. Or maybe they were just the start of the curse? Who knows...

There was public transport dramas, having already been made later than planned by the discovery of an unexplained cut on my foot right where my shoe touched. Naturally, I had no band aids to put on it, and Tesco had a woman doing her weekly shop in the express store. One of those Murphy moments. The English cricket supporters were out in force as I went past the pub at a time closer to 10 than the 9:30 start time I'm supposed to make it for. They were fairly quiet for the morning, though, thanks to a reasonable start by the Australian cricket team. A decent start that collapsed at the first hint of rain - a downpour that coincided with me leaving the building at lunchtime, incidentally, and only lasting the duration of my lunch break, down to the second. But I wasn't paying too much attention to the abysmal batting performance of my national team, in spite of the increasingly loud cheers coming from the stands at the Oval, because I was researching things other than work.

It has been noted that I've been angry lately. It's a fair observation. I've been more prickly than a porcupine, to tell the truth, and I have to admire my housemates for putting up with the lashing of nastiness I've been dishing out when not holed up in my room so I don't lacerate them with my tongue. So what made my former landlord decide that now, after weeks of promising our bond would be returned for our old flat, was the time to tell us they were withholding money for a professional clean that we think was unnecessary, and doubt if it ever happened anyway. So I've been searching for precedence. And it seems that they're supposed to return the bond within 10 days of our request. Or at least let us know they're holding some back, and why, so we can argue our case. They mistakenly gave me a target for unleashing a little justified vitriol. I'm wishing I'd had as much angry eloquence - not to mention so many experts to refer to in support of my arguments - when I was dealing with Virgin screw ups last year. Whatever, my landlord and the agent are both in receipt of an email that will hopefully shake loose the entirety of our deposit.

Which is more than can be said for the poor unfortunate client I was supposed to be issuing a door schedule for this afternoon. I was so fired up with my righteous anger that I lost track of the limited hours available to me for work. So I was forced to call up the project architect and admit my failure after he'd gone in to bat for me and given me a glowing review that helped me to keep my job earlier this month. I hate letting him down, because it seems to happen with disturbing regularity, but he's such a nice guy he actually consoles me before he goes to beard the lion (client) in his den every time I miss a deadline.

And that's the thing with a Jonah day like today. It's not just me that's affected by the run of outs, until I concede defeat and go hole up in my room out of the way of other people. Doesn't mean I'm not still clutching my Deposit Protection Certificate and muttering phrases like 'alternative dispute resolution' or 'notification of a deposit complaint' or, most shockingly, 'small claims court'. Seriously, having a crack at the deranged angry woman who's already having a bad day, week, month? Might as well just start poking a bear in the butt with a stick. You're less likely to get your head ripped off, as far as I can tell.

Not your average

As part of my healthy eating program, I've been trying to stay away from all things fattening. Sadly, most snacks come under that heading, so I've been rediscovering the joys of dried fruit - the snack you're kind of forced to eat in moderation, or risk suffering very unpleasant side effects. Overindulging in sultanas is the kind of thing you only really do once.

My current fruit of choice is the apricot, so tonight I had a packet beside me for grazing opportunities while I was finishing a sewing job (I've been taken on as a charity case by Flatmate L's workmates. They rummage around for all their sewing needs, then pay me good rates to do them. I can't complain, although it does feel a little work-for-the-dole-ish). As I was putting them away afterwards, I noticed something a little odd about the packaging. I've had this brand before and never noticed it, but then again, I've never looked too far beyond the bit that says ' Dried Apricots', so maybe it's been there all along and I just didn't notice. Because apparently - brace yourself for the shock - this particular packet of dried fruit is suitable for vegetarians. Curious, I looked a little closer.

I'm never looking at food labels again after this though. I always just chose a random brand, I don't think it was even based on price, more that the packet was the first one that came to hand when I remembered that I wanted to buy dried apricots. Except that these aren't just dried apricots. They also include acidity regulators, sulphur dioxide and preservatives. So if they have to advertise that this packet of fruit is suitable for vegetarians, does that mean that somewhere out there is at least one packet with so much other stuff added to it that it isn't? And what about vegans? Don't get me wrong, I think that particular diet system is deeply flawed (did anyone ever see a vegan and think, "That person looks truly happy, and has such a healthy glow about them"? No. It's more along the lines of, "Wow, that person has an eating disorder and needs to get more sunlight, not to mention anti-depressants"). But maybe there are vegans out there who are feeling the unnatural high of chemical additives, and not understanding that it is caused by some animal derivative that was added to their dried fruit in order to increase its shelf life. And if the real fruit in that snack section is only occasionally suitable for vegetarians, what the hell sort of situation is the processed fruit in? No wonder little kiddies get hyperactive at the thought of a fruit bar. Hmm, I wonder if they work into the diet plan? I could use some red food colouring right now...

Back in the day

Flatmate C has been going on a lot of internet dates lately. Around two a week seems to be her average, some good, some average, none truly appalling yet. She's trying to convince me to get involved, telling me that it's fun. It offered a good excuse for some shopping on the weekend - I didn't have any date clothes before, but I do now. All I need is to find the date.

Part of her argument was a discussion about how impossible it is to meet a guy these days. We sounded just like our parents must have sounded when we first started going out to pubs, clubs and bars, saying that it was no way to meet someone. I conveniently ignored my friends who met their now husbands in just that way. But the nostalgia did get me going as I remembered what it was like when I had just turned 18, in the days before you could slip a mobile phone in your pocket, and when you had to pay cash at the bar or go thirsty.

Back in the dark ages - the late nineties, at any rate - I owned a mobile phone, but it was too big to fit into the tiny bags we all carried. And the outfits we wore out to the local bar, involving a short skirt, strappy shoes and a nice t-shirt, didn't exactly allow for stashing anything in pockets. A big night out with the girls was the only time I ever carried a bag, though. And not once did I ever pile it on top of my friends bags as we danced around it. In fact, I have vivid memories of laughing at the people who did that; they were old, they had to be almost thirty, what were they doing still going out? Now, of course, I understand more.

It was pretty much a given that by the end of the night, at least one of us would have caught the eye of some eligible hottie (in pub lighting, on a dance floor or propped ever-so-coolly against the bar, they all looked hot). And so a ritual would commence. After chatting for a while, friends would decide it was time to go and numbers would be exchanged. It was far more involved then, of course. We couldn't just whip out mobile phones and dial each other's number. We could give false numbers without fear of caller ID dobbing us in. But in order to do the deed at all, we required pen and paper. Somewhere at home there is a box of torn off scraps of paper, coasters, any available writing surface, with a boy's name scrawled above a number. Some of them don't even start with the '0' of a mobile number. And if he was hassling you, or you decided you didn't want to see him again, the number you wrote down for him was a digit or two off what your real number was. Or, like Elaine from Seinfeld, you spelled out things. Elaine's spelt "no Elaine" - I always wanted something like that, but the best I could come up with was switching the zeroes for sixes, and changing my name. Somewhere out there are some guys who think they met a girl called Katie. A few more think they met Anna.

It was a simpler time, in some ways, but I wouldn't be without caller ID or my mobile phone, or even email, for all that. The ability to screen is too precious!

Just keeps on giving

Although it doesn't in any way compare with last night, this week has managed to come up with another winner - a night that starts out OK, and ends up not quite so OK. It all started with a tripped fuse at about 6:30 tonight. I was sitting downstairs, happily playing with my laptop when I heard Flatmate C cursing upstairs. The loss of the radio had passed me by. I checked and re-set all the fuses, but still no joy. Not a lot I could do though, because I was off to see The Proposal - good movie, by the way, and don't let anyone, least of all a hoity-toity proto-feminist critic tell you different. Left instructions for C on how to approach the problem, she having never had Flatmate L's and my history of run-ins with things utilities related. That was my first mistake. Or rather my second, as it turns out.

So I trotted off to the movie, enjoyed myself reasonably well once I stopped either seething about the seating arrangements (dinner took longer than expected, so in spite of having our tickets 45 minutes in advance, we were in the very front row, with rowdy teenagers behind us), or getting a bit weepy over the emotional grandmother scenes, I enjoyed myself quite a lot. Rather unseemly, perhaps, but there you have it. Light hearted rom-com was just what the doctor ordered. Then I arrived home to find C sitting virtually in the dark, strumming her guitar, having been unable to get any help from the power company. Perhaps it would have helped if she'd been calling the right power company. It also would have helped if she was about a foot taller, and could see if the meters were ticking over or not. As it happens, though, none of the above happened. So, a couple of phone calls later, L having climbed on a chair to check the meters, and we were waiting for the lovely men from the energy company to come and fix our problems.

It was fairly good fun, for a while. C played her guitar, L and I sang along. All we needed were some marshmallows to roast over either our candles, or the gas jets in the kitchen. Eventually, L drifted off to sleep on the floor, it now being well after midnight, and C and I lit more candles to be able to read. In the spirit of the Blitz, true London style, we soldiered on in the face of adversity, refusing to be daunted. And trying desperately not to fall asleep. When the electricians eventually arrived, however, we were in for another story. The reality check of being 3 women in the face to 2 tradesmen, automatically reduced to "Girlie" status, and doomed to be patronised.

Which we duly were, when he took one look in the fuse box and said, "Oh God." The mains switch was in the "Off" position. So we got talked through Fuse Boxes 101, the do's and don't's, and why it was off. He flicked the switch and, miracle of miracles, everything came back on. We were back in the twenty first century while he made various checks to ensure that there was nothing seriously wrong, talking down to us the whole while. Or at least he was, until everything went unexpectedly black again and we were vindicated. It seems there is a fault with our wiring. The fact that I am able to be on the internet should tell you that we have some power again. Just not on the upstairs lighting is all. And somewhere in Walthamstowe, East London, around about now there's a person being patronised by a rather rotund electrician and his aging apprentice for whatever problem they've had to cause an electrical fire. I hope they too are vindicated.

Vale

I don't want to blog this, but I have to do something other than what I'm up to, which is crying and reminiscing about someone that almost nobody in the UK has ever met or heard of. I had a call from my mother - a not unexpected call, but sad all the same - to tell me that Grandma, her mother, had passed away during the night in Australia. And now I'm both swamped with memories of the strong, quiet woman who my imp of a grandfather referred to as "my Genie" - always in the I Dream of sense, even as she told him off for teaching his grandchildren dirty jokes.

I remember the woman who, following what must have been a long and boring night of music recitals by school children, presented a much smaller me with a box of embroidered handkerchiefs that I was too young and stupid to appreciate, if only for the formal but kind thought behind the gesture. The way she would always refer to our family dog, Boofa, as Woofer, stubbornly refusing to hear the 'B' for years, then continuing out of habit. The sudden burst of her laughter, not heard for a long time.

I said that it was not a surprise to get the phone call. No, this should be seen more as a release from the pain and indignity of her life for the past few years. But it still hard to say goodbye. It is perhaps made more so by the fact that I can't do it properly. I'm here in London. I can't get back to Melbourne. Even if I could get away from work, I don't have the cash to pay for a flight. I'm not even sure I can justify taking a day off work to deal with the grieving process. What would I do with the day? Sit and mope? I learnt that lesson once before. As different as this is from what happened almost three years back with my friend Joel, it's still difficult. I'm in a dilemma. I would love to bring forward my trip home. I fly out in just over a month. But my ticket cannot be changed, and I don't even know when the funeral will be. Would I even make it in time? I'm stuck here, and I don't know what to do about it. How do you grieve for someone when you can barely comprehend the loss?

Jean Mary Hayes
b February 2, 1918
d August 12, 2009

Britney moment

I can't believe it. I had a brilliant post written. I was slating Stephenie Meyer, of Twilight fame, for being a plagiarist, implying, with brilliantly subtle writing and literary insights*, that she knocked off Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse novels when she was coming up with her series. I cited evidence of plot similarities. I even worked in post-modernism and feminism. It was worthy of a literary journal, assuming I could persuade one of those lofty publications to lower their standards by printing something about lowly popular fiction, and sci-fi fantasy popular fiction at that.


Now I know I have my moments on here, usually when I'm at work, and I claim that Pulitzer prize winning posts have been lost through the genius of web filtering. That was not the case this time. I have nobody to blame except myself, I suppose. Myself and my inability to double check my own work. Because there was a fault on the posting page. Thinking I knew how to save the day, I quickly copied the text I had in the box. Or at least I thought I had. What I found when I pasted it into the refreshed page, however, was less than half of what I'd typed in the first place. So my moment of brilliance is lost, just like so many other posts of mine. Or so I thought. Because I had a flash of brilliance that exceeded all my other flashes. I spotted the "Save Now" button. I had a back up.

Which is more than I can say for my life outside of blogging. I've just survived another round of redundancies at work. My margin for error has all but vanished now though. My salary is a fraction of what it was a year ago. My colleagues have dwindled. In fact, of the team of ten that I was working with this time last year, I'm the only one left. As of next month, there will be three people sitting in the same room as me. At it's peak, there were about 15 there. The things that made the company great are disappearing and I'm left with an even greater realisation that I live without a safety net. If the axe falls on my job, as it threatens to every couple of months, my back up position is a retreat back to my parents. Much as I love them, I can't cope with living with them permanently again. So, rather than dwell in misery for whatever time as an employed person remains to me - and surely it can't be long given that there are no new projects in the office once the current crop cycle down - I will be Marie Antoinette. I will eat cake. Just like I did tonight in celebration. Well, apple pie and ice cream, anyway. You have to love flatmates who are glad they don't need to find a new person to fill your room. It makes for a far better celebration when everyone has a reason to be happy.

*For anyone who read the post before this one, Monkey See..., I'm sure this was not the post I wrote. The one I had was far more intelligent and didn't involve any references to checking out men. Honest.

Monkey see...

I've been indulging in a little relaxation lately, which might have been seen by the subjects I've been blogging about. This will be no exception. My current fascination has moved on from crappy sequels (although I have discovered that Princess Diaries 2 will be on TV next week and was tempted to mark it in my diary). Now I'm onto vampire-related television. The current fang-fest of choice for many is True Blood, based on the Sookie Stackhouse novels. I figured it was time I checked out what all the fuss was about after seeing an advertising poster on the Northern line platform at Waterloo station every morning for the past couple of weeks.



Getting past the point that the lead character is called Sookie - I'm still expecting some childish voice to call out, "Sookie, sookie, la la" (trust me, if you're Australian, you will have been called this at some point when you were being a 'fraidy cat or a whiner) when she gets scared of everything - there are good points to be observed in the show, for anyone who is a fan of B-grade slasher films especially. It has all the hallmarks. Loads of fairly explicit sex, for a mainstream television program. Plenty of blood and guts. A brooding anti-hero or two. A virginal blond. Oh, and of course, a former Home and Away actor. But something seemed familiar beyond that.



Let me see...a pretty innocent girl meets and falls for a brooding vampire who, against public perceptions of his kind, is a nice if slightly dark guy. She alone is not scared of him. A main character is telepathic, but can't read the mind of his/her romantic interest, something that they find fascinating. Her friend is also in love with her; at crucial moment friend turns out to be a shape shifter who takes the form of a dog. Girl's life is placed in danger because of her relationship with vampire. There's a fight, she just survives, and all seems happily ever after until the next rock looms on the horizon. So far so familiar. So, where have I heard these things before? Oh, that's right. The Twilight series.



Thinking that someone was cashing in on Stephenie Meyer's popular books, and a little annoyed that people could play with my expectations that way, I did a little googling about the books True Blood is based on. Thie first of Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse series was first published in 2001, some 4 years before Meyer released Twilight, the first of her novels about the teenage Bella and vampire Edward. A little further investigation (yes, I typed some more words into Google) revealed that I wasn't the only one to have drawn the comparison. Sure the target audience is different - Bella is 17, Sookie 25 - but the overlap in narrative can't be written off as a mistake. Even more worrying is that Meyer has reportedly been sued by an author other than Harris over plagiarism in the fourth and final title of the series, while a third person has claimed that the initial idea for Twlight came from a short story written at university where she was Meyer's room mate.



So what constitutes plagiarism? There are no shortage of vampire tales out there, many of them borrowing from and distorting each other. Let's face it, it's not the world's most original theme. The modern take usually seems to derail many of the themes of earlier Dracula-style tales where women are often portrayed as temptresses and harlots preying upon the men folk. University study of literature did me no favours when it pointed out the many analogies used in horror fiction and the way they denigrated women. More recent incarnations show a strong woman who falls at the feet of a vampire - Buffy included in this interpretation, given that even the Slayer fell for not just one vamp, but 2.



Guessing I'm going to come across as a big fan of vampirism from this post. It's not entirely true. Sure, I watched Buffy. I could argue that it was for the post modern irony of the dialogue, the feminist themes, the cutting edge of sarcasm not often found in American television. I'd be lying. I watched it because it was great to see a tiny girl kicking the collective butt of both the establishment - who could forget the evil head master at Sunnydale High? - and of various insanely ugly looking monsters. That and the hot men who seemed to line up for a chance to be smashed to a pulp on a weekly basis. And yes, I've read the Twilight books in my own time and marvelled that something so badly written - and this from a fan of chick lit - could be so un-put-downable. But that's about the limit of my exposure. I don't count checking out Brad Pitt and Christian Slater in Interview with a Vampire, and I only saw Keanu Reeves in Dracula when I had to study it for university. So I'm not an afficionado. But even I could spot the similarities. How has Stephenie Meyer not been openly called to account yet? Well, perhaps because not enough people really give a damn that she ripped off someone else's plot line and re-fashioned it into her own multi-million dollar empire. Or perhaps they're all too busy drooling over Robert Pattinson and the various picturesque men from True Blood to really give a toss what the plot line is, let alone where it came from in the first place.

A sprig of wattle in my hand

As thoughts drift to the passing of yet another English summer with a whimper that pretended it was hot weather, I cast my eyes north to Leeds and Headingly, where the fourth test in the Ashes series is about to unfold. Yes, cricket. It wouldn't be summer without it, as far as I'm concerned, so given that this is my first summer in the UK with a team I care about doing the rounds, perhaps that's why it seems that it's also the first season I could even vaguely recognise as "summer".

Cricket brings with it all manner of associations, for me. Most of them are not appropriate over here. There won't be any sitting around watching the commentary of Richie Benaud and co - in their wisdom, the broadcasters over here have decided to air the Ashes tests on pay TV, not free-to-air. There won't be an MCG, SCG, Gabba or WACA, not to mention the Adelaide Oval. And that means that there's no Yobs Hill, Bay 13 (or what used to be a single bay, but now seems to extend to the whole lower deck of the Great Southern Stand). There's no VB-swilling blokes in Chesty Bond singlets. What I see instead, from my vantage points of living near Lords and working right by the Oval, are men in suits. Men in England shirts. Men on corporate days out that start in the pub at 9am and don't finish until 7pm. In between, they flood into every available lunch spot in a way that is unknown to visitors at the MCG. Drinking in Australian venues is tightly controlled, in an attempt to encourage a family environment. In the UK, it seems to be encouraged, with every patron at Lords allowed to take in their own bottle of wine and then top up with purchased bevies inside.

It is, undoubtedly, a strange sport. It takes 5 days to get through a match, in it's purest form, and at the end of that there may still be no result because they've run out of time. During those 5 days, the teams take it in turns to stand around in the field. The Australians are often criticised for their ungentlemanly approach to the game (being masters of the art of sledging, if nothing else) and, in my experience, there are few things more satisfying than being able to boast a clean sweep in the five test series against the English. Few things can be more annoying - to me, anyway - than the gloating that happens when the Australians lose, especially when it's as spectacular as the lose that let England take a 1-0 lead in the series. So as I type this, I have one eye resting on the scoreboard, hoping for another English wicket or four to drop, ideally before the home side makes it to a lead that...Oh, dreams do come true, another wicket tumbles.
Instead of eying off the scoreboard, I might just begin some sort of anti-rain dance - a sun dance.

Or maybe just a run dance. Because I have a theory that it's the unrecognisable summer weather that has the Australians so off balance so far in this series. Sure, after so long I'm used to overcast humidity and downpours, where the sun's position - or existence - can only be guessed at. But the Ashes rookies brought over in the Australian squad aren't at all used to it. Oh, hang it all, I'm really just hoping for at the least a tied series. Because I don't think I could stand to sit at my desk and hear the roars of a victorious England crowd. Come on Aussie, come on...

Take 2

For some reason unknown to mankind, I've been going through a movie phase. Not just sitting down to watch more movies than usual - although that's kind of true too - but rather a sitting down to watch a particular type of movie. The crappy sequel to a crappy movie. There is much enjoyment to be found in these films, but I think most of it comes from things that the move makers weren't entirely anticipating.

Heard of a movie called The Prince and Me? The original has Julia Stiles and Luke Mably essentially re-enacting an American version of the courtship between Australian commoner Mary Donaldson and Danish Crown Prince Frederick. Sure, they change details - lawyer Mary from Tasmania becomes pre-med university student Paige from Wisconsin, while Prince Frederick becomes Eddie, Prince and soon to be King - but the essential story remains the same. It wasn't intended to be a happy-ever-after chick flick, originally. The ending was altered after audience testing showed people preferred the happy version. The franchise has since produced two further films to create a series. The catch is that Mably was the only one they could convince to come back for the second one, and even he fell by the wayside with the third. The revised Paige was so different from Stiles's character that she was almost unrecognisable. It wasn't just her looks - although going from dress-down casual brunette to glossy glamour blond was a stretch - it was the loss of her sassy edge and drive. The story got the full Disney treatment, complete with the introduction of bad guys plotting against the fairy tale couple. It became predictable and cliched. And funny - but only where the acting was so atrocious. Light hearted fluff as the first film was, it still had something to offer. The sequels had...well, they were good to look at, for the most part.

What about Centrestage, the tale of a wanna-be ballerina who enrols at a prestigious school, only to find herself struggling to make the grade? Not the greatest plot line in history, and hardly original, but still entertaining enough and, if you're into dancing, featuring some good sequences, especially in the knowledge that some of the actors have since gone on to become principals in major dance troupes. They would be the ones who didn't return for the sequel. Given the school setting, however, it was to be expected that there would be a turn over of students, so the premise was good enough to hook people in. But there were differences. The first movie focuses on the ballet, with outside influences only coming in to allow the students to blow off steam. The personal rivalries, sacrifices and jealousies drive what plot there is. The second film, telling the story of a gifted but technically lacking self-taught dancer is almost entirely outside the school, due to the failure of school directors to recognise her talent. The acting was not up there with the first film - which, given how many of the cast were dancers rather than actors is a fairly harsh criticism - but the dancing was certainly thereabouts to the lay person like myself. There was less ballet and more street styles, like break dancing, hip hop, the works. Characters expressed their emotions through the dancing, we are led to believe. A final competition has a predictable outcome, but it's satisfying to see.

Set in different countries, different communities and with supposedly different characters, the sequels all seem to have something in common. Their basic plot lines are the same - outsider coming in, makes a friend but there is someone undermining them that only they can see. Outsider makes good and bad guy is exposed to the world in all their ugliness. As a formula, it works, sure. But it's predictable. So why do I like watching them so much?

I'm known by my flatmates and certain friends for my liking of crap movies. It's no secret that I'm into what many people supposedly in the know would call the lowest forms of pop culture, whether it is books, music, movies or art. I even have a term for the stuff that is crap but enjoyable - quality crap. It's low stress, light on story line, but still entertaining as hell. It's this band that too many sequels fall into. But when, as above, the original movie falls into this category, where does the sequel land? Somewhere below that level, sure, but does that mean it's less worth me checking out? Sometimes, yes. But generally? They may be dull, boring, uninspired or derivative...but I can't look away, all the same.

This post ended up a whole lot more serious than I intended it to. Maybe, much like the writers of sequels, the entertaining side of my brain took a holiday today. Or maybe the vaguely essay-like quality that seems to have come out to play today is a reminder that I ought to be studying. Oh well...More sequels to watch instead!

Oh the shame of it...

A friend described some of my recent posts as sounding like I was ready to wield an axe. Point taken. I've been a little - or rather a whole lot - moody of late. And I think I've finally identified the source of the spite that had taken control of my keyboard. See, I've been on a health kick for the past few weeks. And part of that health kick involved dropping things like Coke from my diet. And with that went my primary source of not only sugar, but caffeine as well. I'm one of the strange people who drink neither tea or coffee. Coke and chocolate were my vices, and I've cut them almost completely.

And there we have the problem. It was resolved yesterday when the tiredness just got to be too much and I caved in. When the caffeine started coursing through my veins once again, suddenly I was a much happier person. Not more alert, necessarily, but happier. Not quite as likely to send people running away from me in tears. It was only when I had another hit this morning that I became alert enough to put the two together. Because I've fallen off the wagon properly now.

My Coke addiction goes back to the final days of high school, when year 12s were allowed to leave the school grounds at lunchtime, provided we signed out. Queue the race to the local strip of shops, home to such delicacies as Brumbies bakery, an IGA supermarket, an optometrist and a hand bag shop that was a favourite with my grandmother. I always had a packed lunch, so the food option was out, but there was always a way to spend my bus money that didn't involve eating - Coca Cola. Cheap enough that I could still pull my profit making fare evasion on the way home from school (I had a 10 trip bus ticket that lasted me for 4 years...all I had to do was sweeten the deal for the driver by slipping him the princely sum of 50 cents), but cool enough that I did it once a week. And then I went to university.

I was not the most diligent of students, shall we say. I struggled to get through. Part of that struggle was spending my days hanging out with friends in any one of the 60-odd pubs within a kilometre of the architecture building. So I needed to find ways of staying awake at night. And I discovered the wonderful combination of Coke and Mars bars. By the time I was putting together my final folio (2 weeks, 10 hours of sleep, 5 minutes of presentation, one very near accident on the drive home afterwards that made me have to pull over and cry, and three weeks of arguing that I should be allowed to pass after they screwed up my paperwork requesting special consideration) I was on a litre a day habit. I'd kicked the chocolate, but the caffeine had me firmly in it's grasp.

Since then, I've gone cold turkey many times, but it always lures me back. I go for months without having any of it. Then someone will say let's go for a drink, and hand me something harsh, softened with Coke. The backsliding will begin. I'll have a Coke zero a week, a can only. It's OK if it's only a can. But I'll gradually work my way back to the hard stuff - the bottles of full sugar, full caffeine that will end up causing me all sorts of pain if I don't stop it properly, I'm sure.
Right now, I'm teetering on the brink. I know I'm more pleasant to be around when I'm drinking the stuff, but after a few weeks off, it's back to tasting slightly vile in my mouth. I don't want to rot my stomach, my teeth, my brain. I want to be healthy. But I also want to be happy. I don't want withdrawal. So I'm stuck in catch 22. Damned if I do and damned if I don't. There's a nicotine patch out there for people with smoking addictions. There are programs for alcoholics, treatment for food addicts. But where is the help for the caffeine buzzed among us? It isn't even accepted as a serious problem. When you say you've got a Coke habit, the dark liquid gold isn't usually the first thing that springs to mind as an addictive substance, even to those who share the dirty, shameful secret.

So, in the interests of promoting honesty and healing - how many steps are there, and how many of them are appropriate to someone who is far from loving organised religion? - onto my second confession in as many days.

Hi, my name is Killi, and I'm addicted to Coca Cola. It's been 3 hours since my last drink.

You know you're a geek when...

Let me set the scene. It's a Tuesday night. It's been a long day. The dishes are done, the washing is folded, the rubbish is out. Now, it's 11:30, and there's just a couple more things to do before turning out the lights for the night. One of them is checking in to see what you've missed on Twitter while you've been busily talking to your mother to find out the best way to attach curtain tape to curtains (desperate times, desperate measures; cash in hand employment is always welcome!). Another involves plugging in your various techno toys so they're all charged up and ready to go in the morning; this takes at least 3 power cords every night. And finally, you update your blog, because you check your visitor stats and suddenly there's a spike that's threatening to enter double figures and you're worried that if you don't capitalise on the traffic that's being fed to you from your friend's far more popular site (check it out, by the way... http://www.treadonme.co.uk/. Well worth the look), you'll miss out on the chance of ever building an audience. And then it hits you.

You're a geek. A certified, paid up member of the chess club. You may not have spent your lunchtimes getting your head flushed in the toilets - after all, refined girls schools don't go in for that sort of thing - but somewhere along the line you became a card carrying nerd.

How, you ask yourself. How did this happen to me? I don't generally require glasses - only when I'm really tired! I work in design, for crying out loud, and only own 2 cardigans - the uber trendy ones that ... Uber trendy? Cardigan? Designer? Oh dear god. The light clicks on in a spark of inspiration. You know when it started. Back at that school for refined young ladies, the geeks were among the first to discover the true use of the internet. Way back in 1995, it was the chat room, the place where you would chat away to people all over the world, blissfully unaware of the fact that they were potentially priming you for something potentially illegal. Then it was ICQ, where the sexual innuendo was a little less innuendo and a little more in your face instead, but you could still chat away to people quite merrily without necessarily knowing who the hell they were in the real world. MSN, Facebook, Twitter, blogs. Things you're familiar with even if you don't know how to write programming code (you're a geek yes, but you're not yet one of the kings of geeks. You leave that to your friends. By the way, Jones, can you show me how to do the whole click-a-word-link thing? Ta...)

Somewhere along the way, you became hooked. Back when your school friend would talk to her computer, threatening it with all sorts of dire threats if it didn't speed up to its full 28.8kbps potential ("if you don't hurry up I'll tell you how much I love Stephen") you and your friends slid sideways into the world of geek. You became Eugene from Grease, instead of the Rizzo that you always thought you could have been. And you know you're a geek when your knowledge of your friends lives comes not from hearing their voices tell you, or seeing it with your own eyes, but from reading tweets and status updates.

Hi everyone. My name is Killi, and I'm a geek. It has been around 24 hours since my last tweet.

If you don't mind

I made a trip to the doctor this morning, in an effort to find out why I'm getting exhausted just from walking up the stairs from my bedroom to the kitchen lately. I know I'm unfit, but it's reached the point of ridiculous. So off I trotted, only to discover that there are certain thoughts a doctor should hide behind a better mask than the one my GP was sporting this morning.

When I walked in, sat down, and waited for him to go over my case notes (surely something he should have done before calling me in? Just for form sake?), I tried not to think about how many visits I have had there for seemingly meaningless things in the past six months. There was the bit where I was getting dizzy all the time - no result, but it seemed to pass. The eczema that was driving me crazy - prescription, steroids; cure, moisturiser. The constant headaches and migraines that are the bane of my existence - no cure offered, just told not to take too many paracetamol, which I already knew. So I was fairly certain that I wasn't going to get a result this morning either. But you can't blame me for trying.

After answering all the questions a male doctor seems to feel the need to race through at the start of any consultation in the UK (How's your period? When was your last smear test? Are you on the pill?) like they're the source of all illness in women, he took my blood pressure and, when that came out normal, lined me up for a blood test. He's testing me for everything, you see, but it was obvious that he thought he knew what was causing my exhaustion.

"We've got to eliminate all the serious things, and then we can look at the mental causes." Yes, that's right, my doctor thinks I'm a hypochondriac. He also seems to think that I'm obese. Alright, I'm overweight, no denials there, that's why I've been dieting. But the word obese conjures images of John Candy, of Mimi from The Drew Carey Show, of my year 12 maths teacher who we christened Barney (as in the dinosaur...she had an unfortunate liking for purple in a woman her size and shape. What can I say? Teenage girls are cruel). I explained the diet situation, and suddenly, he was my best friend, offering me all sorts of help in my quest to lose weight. The help was of the pill variety, the ones that are advertised everywhere at the moment as the dieter's best friend - provided the dieter in question sticks to a carefully controlled diet and doesn't mind being what I'd call a bit of a guinea pig for new technology. Thanks, but no.

So basically, what my doctor revealed to me this morning is that he thinks I have two problems causing my exhaustion. The reason why standing over the stove cooking my dinner tonight left me a quivering, jelly-like mess feeling like I had just done a marathon is because I'm a fat arsed nut job. I'm so glad I went to consult a health care professional for that particular carefully unconcealed opinion. If I go back to him, I'll no doubt need therapy. God only knows what they'd say to me.

Damocles be damned

I'm yet again under threat of losing my job. Nothing really new there, I guess, given that I'm pretty much up for review every two months anyway and have been for the past year and a bit, but I'm looking for something new now. Losing a third of my pay cheque in about six months has hit me fairly hard. Even worse, it's knocked a fairly large hole in my plans for the next year. Hell, I might not be able to keep up my plans of a trip a month, after September. In fact, September, with my flight home, may just be a one way trip if things don't improve soon.

I know, I gripe about this a lot. Well, not just about this. But with the cheerful whistling coming from C's room next door as she strums her guitar, it occurs to me that not only is this constant fear of losing only the second job I've had for more than two years not healthy, it ought not to be necessary. I'm fairly sure that a teacher with a similar level of professional confidence and competence to me would not be having anxiety attacks because of fear that they won't be able to afford rent if things keep up. I'm also pretty certain that when they try to take matters in hand and head for the job ads, they don't get told by every single one that there are no jobs out there for a person of their experience, when they've got about five years post-grad experience under their belts. How many people can say that they've spent seven years at university to come out without being fully qualified, and not having failed a subject? Mind you, how many then go straight back for part time study because they didn't exactly enjoy those seven years?

I feel like I'm in an old Billy Joel song I remember hearing once. The graduation does hang on the wall, sort of, but if anything, it's made me unemployable for anything else. I even got an email rejecting me from a job as a PA in an architects office, because they didn't want someone in the role who would be looking to move to anything else. Another rejection told me I wouldn't be considered because my experience was all wrong. It was a secretarial/admin role, both sides of which I can and do perform on a daily basis. But the four degrees in the qualifications heading seem to make people think I'd be too bored to stick to a job like that. What they fail to understand is that I spend half my working life bored to tears anyway; have you ever done research on the technical specifications of an aluminium panel? Ever read a building regulation? It's not all glamour in the world of architecture, let me tell you. Clearly, people either don't read the bit on my CV where I explain what my jobs have involved, or they don't believe me when I mention the mundane, daily tasks.

Maybe it's more like a Bruce Springsteen song than a Billy Joel. After all, Billy Joel's hero was always looking for something better, an up-town girl; he was wondering why Allentown was dying. Springsteen's don't look forward. They look back to the glory days, the times when they were running free and the point where it all went wrong. They reminisce about the times when they didn't have a dull, boring fate hanging above their heads. I remember a time when going to university was going to get me a better life than my grandparents, none of whom finished high school, could have dreamt of. Where did going to university and getting myself a decent qualification go so bloody wrong?

There's a Greek legend about Damocles, a courtier who swaps places with his king, Dionysus, for a night, to enjoy the power of his position. It's only as he is sitting in the place of honour at the banquet that he notices the great sword hanging over his head by a single horse hair. Well, I swapped places with an educated person for a night. Now I've got to deal with the enormous bloody sword hanging over my job. Well personally, given the choice, I know what I'd tell Dionysus to do with his sword, and it isn't to hang it by a hair.

Mad, Bad and Dangerous

Sometimes there is something undeniably, inexplicably satisfying in being just a teensy bit nasty. I'm not sure what it is. According to a conversation I had with Flatmate, it's this enjoyment of being rude that makes me scary sometimes. It gives an edge to my tongue, apparently, that makes people a little wary of getting on my wrong side. I don't see that myself, of course. As far as I'm concerned, I'm a pussy cat with occasional bouts of temper. Unless there's something a little bit nasty going on.

I know I'm not alone in this, so why I'm any more terrifying than the next person I wouldn't know. For instance, when it was discovered that the annoying girl on my Scotland tour, conveniently called Caroline, hated the Neil Diamond song 'Sweet Caroline', I was far from being the only person joining in on the bah bah bah's while the girl herself seethed. I also stopped after the second chorus, more than can be said for many others. But somehow, I'm the one with the reputation.

It has to be more than a verbal thing, as well. When I was in something of a mood the other day walking - OK, hurrying - through the tube tunnels against the flow of traffic, there was obviously something going on when, without me saying a word, or even looking directly at them, people would move out of my path in a hurry. In fact, one person had such a look of terror on her face that we were laughing about it for a good ten minutes after she scurried out of my way like someone dodging a car on the footpath in a b-grade movie. I know I'm tall, and that I have a look of death that has made grown men almost cry (true...he was wearing black acid wash jeans, a black AC/DC t-shirt, and had just spilled beer down my leg. He couldn't apologise fast enough), but seriously, what can be so bad? And why is it so much fun to know that out there somewhere are people who have been genuinely terrified of me? And why can I never produce it on command?

I'm yet to be able to get rid of the people who hang around me on a daily basis, so clearly I can't be too scary. From the genuine innit geezer at work who comes to visit my team several times a day, to the succession of friends-of-friends who just don't take a hint (how many months of being hung up on does it take for some people to realise I'm-just-looking-for-friends was the clue I'm not interested???), I have quite a few people I would love to be able to terrify. For now though, I just have to live with the satisfaction of being snide and sarcastic. It's just as well I enjoy it so much then, really.

Poetic License

Following on from my grand Scottish highlands adventure, I felt compelled to watch Braveheart. It's been a while since I watched Mel Gibson strut around in a skirt doing a grave disservice to historical fact and paraphrasing Shakespeare's St Crispin's Day speech, so it was clearly time to dust it off. Whatever else it may be, it's a well told story that needed more time spent on it before it came out in the cinemas. Some of the time should have been allocated to editing the three hour monster. More of it should have been given over to testing Mel Gibson's accent.

It never ceases to amaze me the way movies gloss over the speech patterns of big name actors. Personally, I think unless the poor accent is for comic effect (witness, Peter Sellers' famous Inspector Clousseau and his discovery of a "berm"), they'd be better off skipping the big name actor for the one who can actually convince me that they're really from that place. And Mel? Well, he might pass in Hollywood, but to anyone who's ever met an actual Scot, his accent is appalling. Not quite as bad as casting Michael Caine to play a German (funniest thing ever to hear a cockney pretending to be German...but not really trying very hard), but really, not too far off from the tragic effect of casting Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman as Irish in Far and Away.

Why do they think that they can get away with not only moving the location of a story from its original landscape (has anyone seen Stirling where the first Braveheart battle takes place? No? How about Bells Beach, where the final scenes of Point Break are supposed to happen, then?), but that they can have unconvincing people cast just for their name? I'm not saying all actors are incapable of accents. Meryl Streep does a great impression of Lindy Chamberlain, to mention one example, but why on earth don't they either screen test them, or at the very least get some proper coaching for them? I'm fine with them using true stories as inspiration - that's hardly a new thing - and distorting the portrayal of certain characters to suit the narrative. That sort of thing has been going on for centuries. But a little consistency elsewhere, please. I'm begging. Because I don't know how many more films I can sit through where the lead is played by someone who seems to have never heard the accent he or she is supposed to be doing.

Perhaps I'd better watch Mel, once more, just to check. Or maybe I'll have to check out Brad Pitt's bad Irish accent in The Devil's Own. It's all research, you understand. I'm willing to put myself through a couple of hours of Brad in the name of research. Now, how to find a copy of that one...

The soup or the burger?

I'm just back from a whirlwind tour of the Scottish Highlands. 5 days, a few castles, hundreds of mountains, waterfalls, wild flowers (that strangely always seem to be purple in the highlands...what's with that?) and one very large reason to...Well, whatever I say there is going to seem harsh to any who weren't on the same bus as me, so perhaps I'd best explain.
See, I was travelling on a tour, organised to the nth degree and generally pretty well run. The group were mostly 20-something, travelling around Europe and making the most of their time, knowing that they were sharing 5 days but, in most cases, would never see each other again once the tour was over. And for most, that was fine; good friends for now, but not forever. Some were thrilled to be tracing their heritage. The descendants of the Campbells and Macdonalds discovered why their clans hated each other. A MacKenzie learned about the downfall of her clan. And somewhere along the way, 23 tourists found a reason for 3 centuries of hatred directed at the Campbells to end; if all the MacDonalds were like our example, it was fair enough that after 2 weeks of sheltering with them during hideous weather you'd want to kill them in their sleep. There's a fairly good chance that sleep would have been the only thing to still their overly loud and energetic tongues.
See, one bad apple can spoil the entire barrel. Or it can unite the rest of the good apples in loathing. If the Campbells had two weeks of hearing the intimate details of the MacDonald's cousin's lives, of being one-upped in every story they told, of having every conversation they had among themselves not only eavesdropped on, but butted into...if they were having a quiet moment to themselves only to have someone stalking their privacy...If the voice that cut through the solitude managed to combine shrill with nasal...Well, I think I can understand why the Campbells banded together to slaughter the MacDonalds at Glencoe.
Certain aspects of what has happened since lends credence to the story. I much the same way that my refusal to loan my hairdryer to the person who burst into my room just as I was re-packing my bag earned me freedom from the promised catch-up back in London (after the tumbleweeds stopped rolling through the gap between the request for a catch up and my answer, that is), I can see why the hatred of several other clans might have seemed worth it to the poor put-upon Campbells. They would never have to deal with another MacDonald. It must have been an attractive dream. It probably all started with sleep talking. The straw that broke the camel's back. Sure the MacDonalds still bitch and moan about it, still ban Campbells from their lands and haunts (signs in bars saying "Dogs welcome, Campbells not", etc) but let's be honest here, if the MacDonalds were all like this descendant of theirs (a person who advocated clubbing seals to death during the Canadian seal hunt, because it is a tradition and has always been done that way), I expect they were fairly happy with the situation. Hell, they probably sell the trees planted in Glencoe that are a symbol of the hatred (the Campbells won't be forgiven for as long as there are trees in Glencoe). If I'd had an axe handy a couple of times, I'm pretty sure I would have used it.
As for the rest of my trip, well, Scotland is a beautiful country, there's no doubt about it. Even the grating annoyance of a fly in the ointment couldn't keep me from enjoying it. But next time, I'm leaving the buzzing creatures to themselves. Either that, or carrying a very large sword in my bedroll. Hey, it worked for the Campbells...

Optimism shmoptimism

It hasn't been the best of weeks, in some ways. Sure, I booked the bargain flight of a lifetime the other day. I finally got back into swing dancing properly. I'm off to Scotland tonight for some relaxation and touring of tourist haunts...but there was more bad stuff than good.

It may not seem like it from what I write here, but I'm generally optimistic. I always, always expect things to fall into place in a way that suits me. They often don't, but at least I will have had the fun of planning for the positive alternative. Even when faced with disaster, I can never quite believe that the perfect solution isn't just coming around the corner. I'd rather be an occasionally disappointed optimist than an always on the money pessimist. But it seems I'm feeling a little negative today, in spite of spending last night cracking up once more about Team America: World Police with C, my newest flatmate ("Har-roh"..."Matt Damon"...too many giggles). So here we go, a catalogue of my woes, if only to make others feel a little bit better about themselves.

As of Wednesday (about 6 hours after booking my return flight home), we're up to round 5 in the redundancy season at work. It's a choice of 2 evils that we face. Either we lose our job and are forced out into perhaps the worst job seeking environment for architects since...well, since before the working life of anyone I know began, or we take yet another pay cut. The bonus this time isn't reducing our hours (although I am hoping that when things turn around, the 4:30 finish on a Friday keeps rolling). It's an extra 5 days of paid leave every 6 months. What if we don't want the leave? Can we take the pay instead? Doubt it's an option, somehow. So now I'm trawling the job ads.There are none for people with my qualifications, apparently, so I'm looking at secretarial work and wondering how people could possibly survive in London on £8 an hour.

Coming as it did just after I'd arrange 2 weeks of unpaid leave, this news was...unwelcome. To say that I was not happy would be to do a grave disservice to miserable people. Same goes with angry. I think it's the fact that everything is so far out of our own control on this one. And if there's one thing I like, it's control. So onto Thursday's disasters.

My plan for the Scotland trip was to fly up to Edinburgh tonight, then spend a leisurely night in a hotel and wander to the start of the tour tomorrow morning. It was a good plan. I booked a flight, a hotel, I was all set. Or so I thought. Now, I'm keeping this one to myself a little...or at least from Flatmate. Because she screwed up booking our return flights from Belfast earlier this year and didn't actually realise until we'd gotten to the airport, already check in online, and trying to get through security to board a flight that wasn't scheduled to leave until the next day. I'm not that bad. I realised what I'd done as I checked in online. I'd booked my flight for 8am instead of 8pm. I don't quite know how I did it. I'm still convinced it was down to an accident somewhere along the way. But whatever it was, I can't get my money back and can't change flights without spending more money than the rest of the trip combined. So now I'm catching a bus overnight in order to join a bus tour for five days. I'm going to be seeing a lot of buses.

But Thursday wasn't done with me yet. Nor were British Airways, apparently. I'm booked to fly to New York over the Christmas/New Year period. Except now I'm not booked to fly back to London, because they cancelled my flight. Nothing major in the scheme of things (in fact, given precarious job situation, may be blessing - there's that silver lining, right there), but annoying, just the same.

I've taken all the skin off a knuckle, and I have no idea how I did it.

I left home on time this morning, but arrived at work 20 minutes late to find the office HR manager standing by reception as I walked/ran/tripped into the building.

It was weigh-in day for my diet and I'm exactly - EXACTLY the same as last week.

I'm in the process of missing a deadline today.

I haven't yet won the lottery. Of course, I haven't yet bought a ticket either, but that's irrelevant if fate decides to take a hand. That waitress who got half first prize when someone tipped her with a share of his ticket never bought one, either.

Last night, I was dancing with someone who announced that they have swine flu, going on to explain that it's no different to any other flu, so it's fine for them to be out and about infecting everyone. No, it's not. I know swine flu is just like any other flu. But I don't want to catch any other kind of flu either. Flu is bad at anytime, but I don't have the time to be sick anyway. I don't care that you think you're not contagious anymore. I don't care that you're not feeling too terrible anymore. I don't care if it's not flu, just a mild headache caused by something contagious. If you're sick, keep your germs to yourself. God knows I get enough of them just from public transport every day.

So with all of that in mind, I'm bracing myself for a catastrophe. Previous efforts have been spectacular, and the worst of them involve physical comedy moments and public transport (how many others have not only done the splits getting off a bus on icy streets, but tripped themselves over and headbutted a train as well? Fallen down stairs in a crowded nightclub while stone-cold sober and been helped out in a wheel chair? Am I alone there?) So, if anyone is nearby when the disaster that is due strikes, I recommend filming it. It's guaranteed to win you money on some home movie competition. And I figure a 50-50 split is about right. Because if these slips get any worse, I'm going to need to cover hospital bills. And without a job, that could be tricky.

Critics and Singalongs

Last night was the first performance of the new show Dreamboats and Petticoats. It was a preview show, so whilst there was a full house, a large portion of the audience seemed to be carrying notebooks and scribbling furiously. Some were media, no doubt, there to review, but others were there because they were producers, directors, choreographers, all closely linked to the production. It was interesting to watch how uncomfortable one of the behind the scenes movers and shakers became when he was not only recognised, but asked to sign a program (I'm still not certain of exactly who he was - there were no head shots of backstage people in the program, I suspect for precisely this reason).

The show itself was jammed with the sort of nostalgia that will reel in the baby-boomers. There seems to have been a glut of these in London recently, with the likes of Jersey Boys, Shout, and Grease opening within the past couple of years. There is clearly a strong market still, in spite of financial woes. Perhaps they're all harking back to a time when, as one of the stars of the show observes, people looked up to bankers. By the beginning of the second act, the enthusiastic performers, who are so young that even their parents would barely remember the 1961 setting of the story, had created something of a stir in the audience. It started as a sigh about halfway through the first act. A hint of humming could be heard. It was like feedback in the early stages of the second act, and by the end, the performers could have played rock stars and held the microphones over the audience for singalong practice, without needing to open their own mouths for the lyrics to be heard clearly. The all-singing-all-dancing finale had everybody, even the most staid and prosaic of reviewers out of their seats.

Along the way, it wasn't just the music that got everything going, though. There were moments of genuine humour. Some of it was, admittedly, the trite sort of thing you'd expect from such shows - with characters named Donna, Sue, Laura and Bobby, there's serious musical fodder, although a teenage boy taunting his sister by singing Bobby's Girl in a high falsetto rang fairly true. But there were other moments which had everyone laughing openly. When a teenage boy, about to be found with a girl in his room, shoves her out the window only to hear her crash to the ground below, it seemed not only appropriate, but hilairious that he would turn to the audience and launch into a song, earning the biggest laugh of the night, other than the banker line.
So, what do I think the verdict of the critics will be, if I am to offer a prediction? I think it will probably be caned, to be honest. Sure, it was fun, it was boppy, it captured a moment in time perfectly, it was entertaining and some of the young actors had superb singing voices. But it also appeals to the lowest common denominator. In short, it's the type of show I love. Something that entertains without making you think. The sort of show that is needed when you're a bit down. But, like romantic comedies and smash-'em-up movies, never the sort of thing that the serious-minded theatre critic would admit to enjoying. But I know better. I saw them dancing in the aisles along with everyone else.

Darcy vs Grant

What is it about Mr Darcy that makes him so...fanciable? I've been doing more chick lit reading than I care to admit over the past year (all in the name of research for thesis, of course) and it seems that the Darcy profile is one that has been copied by authors ever since. But I don't get it, really I don't. Sure it would be nice in theory to have a rich, handsome man telling that in spite of the many negative aspects of a potential union, he can't live without you. In reality, though, he's a smug prejudiced git who can't get over class prejudices until he meets someone who, through force of personality, makes him figure she's just been born in the wrong family. His own family leaves just as much to be desired as the worst elements of the Bennetts. He's opinionated, brooding, and set in his ways. There is no evidence of a sense of humour. About the best that could be said of him, besides the handsome and rich part of course, is that he seems intelligent enough. He domineers and controls his friends and is contemptuous of many. Whilst he may be a good landlord, he wants to keep the feudal status quo.

Personally, I'm not sure I wouldn't take Lizzie's first response and run with it.

And what about Hugh Grant? The sweet but spineless heroes he plays are also fodder for the daydreams of many. How many women have sat glued to the screen watching his wiggling butt in Love Actually as he proves a Prime Minister may be able to mix it with Billy Bob Thornton's smarmy president in defence of all things British (the speech he gives is, in my opinion, one of the better screen political moments that doesn't involve Martin Sheen) but he is still painfully, annoyingly both unable to dance and unable to act in his private life without a swift kick up the behind - or in the case of Love Actually, a letter that all but declares someone is in love with him.
So, in the immortal words of - I can't remember, who was it? - where have all the good men gone, where are all the gods? If the above are anything to go by, they were never truly a part of fiction in the first place. Or at least not in any form that you could live with in the real world.

So not a morning person...

This morning on the way to work, I was attacked. Several missiles were thrown at me. Most missed instead hitting the car I was walking past, but one connected hard enough to leave a mark. Turns out it's not the best idea to walk under a cherry tree on a windy day. The tree will attack, much like magpies during swooping season but far less discriminating.
In fact, today is so far shaping up as a day when I should have just gone back to bed. I brought my ipod into work with me, as usual, but the headphones are still attached to my laptop after late night Spooks watching. My secret birthday surprise visit for my Mum is no longer secret or surprise, because it turns out that my Dad is the worst person in the world to tell a secret to - he didn't even last 12 hours, as far as I can tell. And to add insult to injury, I'm doing door schedules for my current project. For the uninitiated, that means that I have to go through the plans of the as-yet unbuilt building, number each door and fill its details into a spreadsheet. It's tedious enough to be mind numbing, but crucial that I get it right. Given my current state of woolly-headedness, not likely.
But I think I have the perfect antidote. Tonight I'm off to see what promises to be the corniest show I've heard about in a long time. Dreamboats and Petticoats. It's all early rock'n'roll....I'm hoping for comedy gold whether it's intentional or not. If I progress far enough on the road to merriment, I may even find myself singing along, or swaying in my seat. A healthy drink or two with dinner would get me well on the way to that point, I think. Here's hoping.

The Brave

In an effort to placate the gods of Blog, I've just scarfed my lunch (big mistake) in order to take time to write another post. Two in two days. Best be careful though. This sort of behaviour is habit forming, I've been told. Lunch was, to say the least, entertaining. Anyone who's following me on Twitter (that's you, Jones, you and some lovely people who want to help me make money from home) will know that it went badly. Never, ever mistake the amount of mustard you are preparing to put on your Ryvita with ham and salad. Did you know that mustard, when chewed and swallowed, can waft up the back of the nose and cause a sensation of your nasal hair being on fire? No, I didn't know that until today either. I always thought that the mustard gas used in the First World War was named for it's colour. I never realised it was made from actual Dijon mustard.

I was having such a healthy lunch because I'm on a diet. I'm trying to lose the multiple Heathrow injections I've received since arriving here in lovely grimy London town. I'm not entirely certain why, because I actually exercise more here, and eat about the same, but it requires more effort to budge a single gram off my weight here than it ever did at home. So I've sold my soul to the evil empire and signed up for Tesco Diets. And so far it's working. Of course, today should see me lose a little more weight, given that I now have no nasal passages left, but as a general rule, yes, I have lost weight in the four weeks I've been doing this. In fact, I'm about 15% of my way to my 'target weight' (which is considerably lower than the point at which I expect to fall off the wagon and start launching myself at chocolate). I'm rather proud of myself. I'm only about 5kg above what I was when I arrived, all two and a half years (and many times through Heathrow) ago.

So why am I writing about a bloody diet that is clearly causing me pain? Because I can see problems looming on the horizon is why. Many of my friends are on diets. They're often supportive, and we arrange to go out to places where the salads are appetising, the food is cheap, and we can enjoy ourselves without counting either calories or pennies. But I'm about to enter a realm of deep fried mars bars, fast food, and offal for breakfast. That's right. I'm off to the culinary delights of Scotland. And nobody knows how I will escape weight gain, except by malnutrition - because there is surely no goodness in the sort of food you can buy in the places I will be heading. No more healthy salads, freshly steamed fish. It will be survival of the fittest, based on past experience of the budget holiday in Scotland. Except in this context, fittest means able to consume the most fried food without any of it coming back up before you chug some alcohol to deaden your senses.

Perhaps I'm being harsh. But either way, this is the surest test of my dieting resolve yet faced. And I think I'm going to wilt before the onslaught like a 2 week old lettuce leaf.

Genius meets Imbecile

Had a post, in accordance with Sarah's demands for an update. And then I clicked post, forgetting that I was at work and that it had taken me more than 10 minutes to type it all in. It was brilliant. There was humour, wit, pathos. It was the Pulitzer Prize winner of blog posts. I was guaranteed fame, fortune and good grammar, all off the back of this one post. I was, for one shining moment, the most brilliant person to frame a sentence since Oscar Wilde declared "Either that wallpaper goes or I do." Of course, the next moment, I was faced with a screen telling me that Websense was filtering personal sites and could not fulfill my request unless I clicked for an additional 10 minutes of my 120 minute allowance of quota time. I clicked...but too late. My genius will just have to be taken for granted now, without the proof that was in that post. You'll all just have to take my word for it. And I would never stoop to low as to talk myself up. Even in blog form.

Even the brightest among us must have a flaw, it appears. It's not the first time I've had this problem with the web filters here at work. I'm sure it won't be the last. But I have to wonder at the stupidity of it. They're quite happy to allow me access to all number of websites in 10 minute chunks, during my lunch hour. 2 minutes after the clock ticks over, and I'm barred from the lot. But why chose the 10 minute barrier? It seems fairly arbitrary. And it's fine if you're just checking the status of your friends on Facebook, but for writing a literary masterpiece, much like the Lost Blog, it's not enough. There seem to be many offices where filtering is a haphazard affair. Here, for instance, I can't get into Hotmail at any time. I can, however, access Gmail and Yahoo mail. Believe me, I've tried all three (yes...I have that many email accounts. More actually, because there are 2 on some of those servers). I sent an email to a friend a few weeks back that had information about breast cancer in it. It was blocked by their mail filter for profanity. As far as I can tell, it was simply because the word breast appeared in it, along with 'sex' (it wasn't even in that sense of the word - it was talking about gender). It was scientific, health related, but she accused me of sending her porn.

So, creators of web filters of the world, see if you can help me, and others with my level of obviously superior intelligence, given that I can spot the flaws in your system even if I can't fix them. Design a web filter that is intuitive. One that can see the intent of the author. Either that, or get rid of all the bloody censorship and trust to the honest sensibility of your staff to not be looking at anything they shouldn't. Personally, I had always assumed an open plan office was a fairly good solution to the problem. You can never be sure who can see what's on your screen at any given time. A tad big brother-ish, but really, no worse than the parental-style screening process that goes on in here. Such a clever idea, but so...stupid. Damn, kind of like me, in the end, isn't it.

What might have been

For a brief few days last week, life was perfect. The sun was shining, the weather was warm, I had money in my bank and ideas on just how I was going to score brilliant marks in my latest uni essay. I had two great flatmates sorting out the logisitics of getting ourselves into a new flat. I was getting messages from my Mum asking what goodies I wanted her to bring over next week. Kiwi was having a birthday, so I had a legitimate excuse to shop. For those few days, all was well in the world. And then, my life slowly reverted to the series of disasters that it always is.

See, I have the theory that my life is more like a chick lit book than I like to think. Yes, this theory might be partly inspired by my current focus on my thesis topic (although which came first, I wonder, the thesis, or my life as inspiration for it?). I am a middle class twenty something woman who still tends to think of herself more as girl than woman. I am one of the professional classes, really but am neither deeply in love with nor terribly good at my job. I am a mess with money and have a deep love of shopping that I rarely get to indulge - which is perhaps the reason why I love the guilty pleasure when I am allowed to unleash the plastic. I have supportive parents who are willing to talk me through any of life's dramas, but often choose not to confide in them due to need to assert my own independence. Moving to the other side of the world didn't hurt my ability to fit into the chick-lit category either; chick lit heroines are often isolated from their families, meaning they need to face up to their problems on their own, essentially. Until recently, I had no love life to speak of. Kiwi is fast approaching the point of being the longest relationship I've ever had. I have a small collection of good friends scattered around the globe. And, like Bridget, Becky, Carrie - hell, Lizzie Bennett, Evelina, you name her - I have wanted more but been unable to put my finger on just what it was.

But with the return of disaster to my life, I have some inkling of what it might be that I want. It's a short, simple list. In no particular order, I want sunshine during summer and a little snow during winter, with neither season invading the other. I want flowers but not hayfever. I want showers that don't leak. I want a bank account that doesn't leak, as well, but think that may be asking a little much in the present climate. I want to be able to turn on the radio, the TV, open a newspaper, without being assaulted by a barrage of disasters. I want to be able to perform brilliant analyses effortlessly during study, and to design and detail buildings that would put the Franks (Lloyd Wright and Gehry), Zaha Hadid, Corb, Mies, Foster, and all the other arhictectural heroes, to shame.

Hang it all, what I really want is a holiday. Thank god it's a long weekend coming up.

Missing

Lost: One attention span. It is only short but is much missed. Since it vanished have been unable to work or study, so any information on its whereabouts would be much appreciated. Last seen some time before Easter running off into the long weekend. If found please return to my desk - either at home or at work.

Pride and Prejudice

Flatmate and I have started the horrendous task of finding a new flat - preferably before we have to leave our current situation, and even better if we can be moved in before my parents come for their visit at the end of next month, so they have somewhere to doss (incidentally, how wrong does it sound to say that my parents, a pair of sixty-plusers who have qualified for senior citizens discounts for a few years now, are dossing?). The chances of this happening are looking increasingly slim.

The London housing market is in something of a slump. In fact, the London everything is in something of a slump, hence the need to move. However, my new revised, run-through-the-dryer-in-spite-of-washing-instructions budget doesn't stretch very far around the area I live now. I always new it was expensive. It's been a stretch the whole time I've been here, given my complete inability to save money (surely it's there for spending, no?). So I'm confronted with the task of finding somewhere suitably cheap and cheerful. But there is a catch. Flatmate is very attached to this area. In fact, I think it will take a bulldozer to get her out, no matter how much she hates out current flat. Based on recent forays onto internet sites, she's willing to either live in the worst flat in north west London, provided it's within half a mile of our present location (with restrictions, of course), or, it seems, to subsidise my rent to a ludicrous degree. It's not that she's ever visited many of the places that she has written off. In fact, some of them she's never heard of. It's more that she has a prejudice against any postcode that doesn't start NW but isn't within 10 minutes of at least 2 of the major London parks. 

Don't get me wrong here, I love the area too. There's the parks, there are bars, restaurants, and amazing transport locations. But there are also rents higher than the GDP of many African countries. And that's when you combine those GDPs together. I'm also realistic enough to figure that if I struggle on my current salary, when the pay-cut kicks in, I'm going to be drowning in debt in a hurry. 

But I also have my pride. I am willing to live in a nice enough but not over-posh part of London, to the east, to the south, to the north and my only prejudice against the west is that it's far from friends. I am not willing to sacrifice the quality of my living premises though. I draw the line at a single room, sharing a room with a stranger, or living without a lounge room. As far as flatmate is concerned, these seem like reasonable sacrifices to make in order to stay in the area. For me, they would be a year of torment, knowing that if I had been able to convince her, I could have had an enormous room in the docklands, potentially with my own bathroom and bills thrown in. I could have lived without having to borrow money. I could have still accepted invitations out. I wouldn't have Kiwi paying all the time when we go out.

So now, my pride runs up against her prejudice. Any physicists out there? What happens when two imovable forces collide? I think the outcome may be quite catastrophic. So I've been looking into flat shares within my budget all over London, and lining up viewings of flats in areas I can afford. She has been contacting agents about flats so far out of my budget that if I was to pay what I've told her I can afford, her rent would not be reduced at all on what she pays now. The question of who wins - or which estate agent does, at any rate - has yet to be resolved. Stay tuned, sports fans.

Ew, gross

This morning on the tube I had the joy of seeing one of those moments that makes you want to rush for disinfectant. I usually have a fairly high tolerance, compared to flatmate's OCD tendancies. I can make it from home to work withot reaching for the hand sanitizer. In fact, I don't actually carry any. Nor do I carry wet wipes in any form. I do, however, find that it's best to find some soap after getting off any form of public transport. This morning's effort just reinforced the lesson drilled into me by my mother.

It started out as an ordinary black-snot-inducing day. I was chatting to a friend the other day who had thought that his mother was referring to steam trains when she warmed him that taking the train in London would make his snot black. He laughed and told her that steam trains didn't run in the UK anymore. He still believed that until he travelled on the Northern line. Now he uderstands.

But it wasn't the colour of anyone's snot, black, green or otherwise, that had my stomach turning over this morning. It was the man who decided that sitting in a full carriage during peak time was the perfect opportunity to investigate just what was inside his nose. He carried out an in depth inspection, delving for gold for the entire journey between London Bridge and Oval. He might not have stopped at Oval, for all I know, it's just that I got off there. What I do know for sure is that, once his inspection of each fingernail-full was carried out, he rolled the discoveries up and flicked them away from him. 

For all the disgustingness of his actions though, there was a part of me that desperately wanted to giggle as I remembered one of the vile parodies of Heman's 'Casabianca' poem that could be found in my primary school playground:

The boy stood on the burning deck

Picking his nose like mad.

Rolled it into little balls

And flicked them at his dad.

And for that moment, I was back in the library reading Alright Vegemite, Far Out Brussel Sprout, or a similar collection of silly rhymes, with all the other grade fours and rolling on the floor laughing. And for that fact alone, I almost forgave the nose-picker.Almost. Doesn't mean I didn't go straight to wash my hands when I got to the office, though.

High Drama

There has been a whole lot going on lately. That's my excuse for not posting in over a month. So here's the quick rundown on everything. I (once again) promise to post more regularly. Scout's honour. Does it matter if I was never a scout?

I've survived yet another round of redundancies at work, although I have been forced to take a pay cut - still a better option than trying to find a new job when I know there are people out there who have ben unsuccessfully lookng for months now. It feels slightly wrong to be celebrating the fact that someone else lost their job instead of me. It's like survivors guilt. We never know why we were spared, only that we were. The feeling when hearing that my job was safe was almost enough to make me turn to religion, at the time. It was a pretty big thing, given that if I had been made redundant, I would most likely have had to head home. And now is not a good time for that. So instead, I just have to find a new, cheaper home, and bid a very fond farewell to my lovely garden flat. Such a shame I didn't really get to use the garden terribly often. But the idea was there...

Parties have started up in London again. There were no Christmas parties last year. Or none thrown by the companies that we deal with at work, anyway. Everybody was edgy and dull. Now, it's the end of the financial year and they all seem to be either launching a new showroom (I was at one the other night that looked like a night club. Apparently, they do fabrics. Not sure where they hid it. Canapes were great, though), or just spending whatever was left in the kitty before the tax man claims it. And fair enough too. So I've had a couple of weeks where I've hardly been home.

Of course, there has been another reason for not being home. He lives in East London, and shall henceforth be known as Kiwi. A little too tempted to put a smiley face in there. I've been indulging in a little too much text speak lately. But, the short version of it is that Kiwi is tall - at last, a tall guy over here! - a kiwi, obviously, and very sweet. Breaking all the traditional roles in relationships, he's the romantic demonstrative one. I'm just along for the ride. Almost put a smiley again. Best move on.

I'm studying again. This time I have to write a thesis, to finish the honours part of my degree. Two years, many many words. I've finally picked a title for it though - Portrayals of fulfilment in Chick Lit. It's the perfect excuse to re-read all my favourite down time authors. And the best part is that it won't even involve me going out and buying any books, because I already have them. Genius, or what? Now I just need the time to sit down and do the work that I'm supposed to be updating my supervisor on...

Part of the reason that my team think we saved our jobs is that the associate who oversees our department is heading back to Australia to get married at the end of next month and not coming back, meaning we will be a team of 3. Well, 2, really, since I'm already back doing architectural work rather than interiors. Last night was the associate's hen do. In a fit of budget consciousness, I decided I couldn't afford the first part of the planned outting, a trip to the races, meaning that when I caught up with them at the restaurant later, most of them were...let's go with merry. Raucous could also be used. It was an entertaining dinner, with plans for karaoke to follow. Just as we were getting sorted with the bill, however, smoke started to billow out of the ventilation system. Quickly gathering all of our things together, we got out of the building in a hurry. We did pretty well, I think. With about 20 at least partially drunk people (I'm averaging it out here) we only lost one jacket and one phone. Most of us had the forethought to pick up the cash that we were about to put in kitty (although one girl claims to have left a £1 trillion note on the table. Good luck getting that one back!). But we did get separated when the fire truck arrived. There were tears and hugs when the other hal of our group was found, and a lesson was learnt by all. It doesn't matter that a tipsy mother followed her daughter out of the building and was seen standing next to her when the fire truck pulled up. When she can't find her five minutes after that, she will get frantic and assume said daughter is still in the building. It was more than a little disconcerting to see the amount of smoke pouring from the windows at the floor we had been sitting on. If I think of it, I'll post a photo on here later to illustrate the drama. It all happened very quickly. We eventually wandered off to our karaoke booking, not a small percentage of us singing "The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire". The rest were indulging in a little Gloria Gaynor survival. Had to warm our vocal chords up somehow, I suppose.

And that's it. That's my life and times for the past month. Now I have to go and deal with the roaring headache that I seem to have picked up somewhere between the fire and getting up this morning. Now where did that come from, I wonder? 

Battle lines

My incredible shrinking office is at war.



In spite of the much-reduced number of people working in the office, it seems that one microwave is not enough to deal with everybody's lunches. Nor is the cooktop an option for heating soup, it seems. Because every day sees a new skirmish in the battle for kitchen supremacy that HR is waging on the rest of the company, with specific reference to my team.



See, we know that the line for the microwave still gets out of hand. So rather than waste precious lunchtime minutes, we tend to head kitchen-wards a little early. We're there every day except Friday, in some way shape or form. And now, so is HR. It's becoming ridiculous. We know that she hears us head into the kitchen. And then she pounces. But it's not to tell us off for jumping the gun on lunch - although we have a feeling that if she wasn't carrying a tin of soup in her hand she'd like to. It's to complain about the fact that we have yet again beaten her to the microwave. She sits within 10 metres of the kitchen. We sit in another building. How we 'beat her' remains a mystery to all of us. Today, she beat us to it. Perhaps she's finally snapped and has put CCTV cameras in our area.



Tomorrow, however, it's a new round. We will fight her in the kitchen. We shall never surrender our right to use the microwave as and when we see fit. It is not the beginning of the end, merely the end of the beginning. The battle has been lost today, but tomorrow the war rages on. And next week, we're moving back into the main building, where we won't be walking past her desk to get to the kitchen. Then, my friends, then we shall see who the true victor will be.

Yes, I've been taking too much cold medication. I will stop. I promise.