archives

February 2004

February 28th, 2004. Diversity

Filling in job application forms gets a little bit repetitive. There's only so many ways to try and tell the world how great you are. Only so many times you can write out the address of your last two workplaces without getting bored.

All the forms, of course, have a separate Equal Opportunities section, where you have to fill in your race with a promise that if they do read it, they'll do it with their eyes closed, then burn the form and erase the memories of anyone who went near it. Most of these just have two questions - race and disability - but one I came across a few weeks ago was a bit more complex. It included:

"Sexuality. Do you consider your sexuality to be:

I was sorely tempted to write in "Anyone (I'm desperate)." Well, it would have been truthful, if slightly redundant.

11:34 Link Comments (4)

February 26th, 2004. Sudden

In the pub, the other night:

"You remember N from work, who was at our party the other month?"

"A bit of a stoner?" I replied. "Black hair, straggly beard, looks a bit like Che Guevara, drank a lot then collapsed in your hedge?"

"Yes, him. He's dead."

"He's dead?"

"He killed himself at the weekend."

I have to admit, I feel slightly shocked, even though I only met the man once. He was quiet, brooding, and somewhat less than lucid. I've never really had deaths close to me - apart from my grandparents - and I'm not entirely sure how I should be reacting to deaths on the fringes of my circle of friends.

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February 24th, 2004. Comedy

I've not been paying that much attention to the BBC's 'Britain's Best Sitcom' series. I can see the point of a TV show to find the most popular person in British history, and maybe even one to find the country's most popular book. Sitcom, though, is pushing it. And did anyone else think it was a bit suspicious that 10 BBC shows made up the top ten?

But anyway. On Saturday, I wasn't doing much, and did watch the programme about Porridge, presented by former drug dealer and ex-convict Johnny Vaughan. I wondered whether he'd try for the whole "this show is great because it's so realistic - and believe me, I know" angle, and wasn't really surprised that he didn't. Because, this is how I imagine the BBC's planning meeting went...

Producer A: "I've had a great idea. Let's get Johnny Vaughan to host the Porridge show! He's ideal - he's not only a BBC celebrity, he's been in prison himself!"

Producer B: "Exactly! He can do the whole 'it's great because it's true' speech. Lower the voice, serious look, 'And I know ... I've been there.' Perfect!"

Television Centre (in unison): "Huzzah!"

...because, of course, all TV producers speak with lots and lots of exclamation marks. And then, of course, they call his agent:

Producer A: "We want Johnny for our show about Porridge - he's perfect! He's got real-life experience! He's ideal!"

Agent: "He'll do it, of course. But: no mentioning the prison thing."

Producer A: "But... it's about a sitcom set in a prison?"

Agent: "Well, duh. But Johnny doesn't do anything that might remind people he's an ex-con, or anything about the whole drug-dealing thing. Sorry. He'll still do the show for you, though."

Television Centre (in unison): "Bugger!"

As I've mentioned before, a school classmate of mine is currently in prison for drug dealing. When she gets out, maybe she'll also become a highly-paid telly presenter. It sounds unlikely, but you never know.

11:36 Link Comments (2)

February 22nd, 2004. Down, Not Across

Where do you stand on ethical shopping? Do you shop at particular shops, or boycott others, because you do or don't agree with their management? If so, do you care that there might be some places you do shop whose owners are just as unethical, but manage to keep quiet about it?

I started thinking about this after seeing all the adverts for The Co-Op on the telly, going on about their various ranges of fair-trade products. "Ooh, I should at least look at the price on their fair-trade coffee," I thought. And, after all, there's a Co-Op only just up the street from my normal supermarket. The betting is, though, that next time I need to get a jar of coffee I'll have forgotten all about it. So, the only area where I do shop ethically is in not buying anything from Microsoft.

One arena, though, in which I would like to shop ethically but can't, is in travel. When I travel I travel by train, because I don't have a car and I'm not usually travelling far enough for it to be worth getting a plane. And, when I travel by train, I try as far as possible to avoid travelling by Virgin. Not because their trains are often late, or crowded, or expensive, but because one of their major shareholders is a nasty, nasty man who spent a large amount of his own money campaigning against gay rights. The problem is, if you travel by train it's impossible to avoid giving them money.

Take a journey from here to Glasgow, for example. Nearly everyone who travels from here to Glasgow will go by Scotrail, because they're the quickest and most frequent route. Nonetheless, when you buy a ticket, some of the money will go to Virgin, because they also operate a few Edinburgh-Glasgow trains. Even with a £3 local ticket to Burntisland or Kirkcaldy, some of your money goes to Virgin. If you buy an open ticket to London, your money gets split between virtually every train company in England, because there's a myriad different routes you could take. So, in short, even if you deliberately try to avoid them it's very difficult to travel by train at all without giving your money to a company owned by a homophobic bigot. And that irks me.

11:31 Link Comments (11)

February 20th, 2004. Meta-territory

On Wednesday afternoon, I climbed up Arthur's Seat with Owen. Whilst sitting on rocks and admiring the view, we got talking about what we wanted to do, and sooner or later I ended up bringing blogging into the conversation:

Owen: I'd like to try travel writing, but I think it's a very specialised skill.

Me: I've got a feeling that sometimes, when I'm writing some of the posts for the blog, that I'm essentially producing travel writing without going anywhere.

Discuss, if you like.

10:42 Link Comments (3)

February 18th, 2004. Earth mystery

If you know much about Earth Mysteries - ley lines, and whatnot - then you've probably heard of the Glastonbury Zodiac, 'discovered' in the 1930s, when it was found that if you take high-detail maps of the Glastonbury area and draw along the right roads and field boundaries (and even, in one case, the edge of a railway line), then you can draw a picture of the zodiac, albeit with unusual symbols for some of the signs. Since then, similar landscape zodiacs have been discovered at other places, such as around Pendle Hill in Lancashire. Some people say these things are evidence of holy sites from millennia ago, and some say it's all just seeing-shapes-in-the-clouds stuff.

Well - see, this is all just a long, tedious introduction to a link I've found - in the modern day world, we have something even better. The Glastonbury Zodiac of the modern age: Animals On The Underground.

(link via greenfairydotcom.)

Incidentally - to completely change the subject - congratulations to Zed for leaving the 900th comment on this site yesterday. Woo!

10:19 Link Comments (3)

February 17th, 2004. Saturday night (part two)

Normally, I don't wear very much makeup. I very rarely go out with full makeup on, and Saturday night reminded me why. It all just makes me worry too much about my appearence. I get an itch; I dare not scratch it. A hair drifts across my face and tickles awfully; I dare not brush it away. All night, I end up thinking "Eeek, I'm smudged! Eeek, I'm smudged!"

I was sitting at the side of the club and grinning at random gothic dancing, when Helen came and sat down next to me. "I'm so cold," she said, "and so many people have been trying to make eye contact with me."

"Mostly men?" I asked, trying not to point out that she was wearing not much more than a corset and a PVC micro-mini, so it might be kind of expected.

"Mostly," she replied, "but there were a couple of girls. They looked a bit lesbian, though."

As it was far too loud to speak, Katie switched to using sign language. There was a slight problem with this, though:

Katie: [long sequence of rapid signing]

Me: "Um, I'm sorry, I have no idea what any of that meant."

The only sign language I know comes from a Belle and Sebastian video, so we switched to a mixture of sign language and writing notes on the back of flyers. "Problem with signing when drunk," she wrote, "is injuries," after hitting herself in the face with a particularly expressive sentence.

11:14 Link Comments (3)

February 15th, 2004. Night out - so, more random drunk people

"You've got pretty hair," he said.

"Um, thank you."

"I bet you've got a Livejournal. What's your Livejournal name? I want to add you to my Friends List as well."

I told him.

"I'll put you on my Friends List, and then you can put me on yours too. Well, if you like. You don't have to. I mean, I'm just some random drunk bloke in a club. You do have pretty hair, though." I suspected he couldn't think of any other vaguely-true compliments.

Yes, this was the promised Goth Night Out, on Saturday, at a rather skanky club down the back of the railway station. I was slightly surprised, to be honest. Yes, the upstairs part of the club was - as I had been led to believe - full of pale, pale makeup, black PVC, and tight corsets. Downstairs, though, was mostly boys in hoodies and men who were trying to look like the lead singer of The Darkness; and the music was mostly 1980s hair rock.

I wasn't drunk, but I kind of enjoyed sitting at the side, upstairs, watching everyone and their outfits. A beardy man in a long black cape swept from side to side of the dancefloor, marking out space with big, sweeping movements. I tried to amuse myself by spotting record-attempts: Tightest Corset, Shortest Skirt, Most Visible Thigh Cellulite.

(more on this later in the week, when my headache goes away a bit.)

13:29 Link Comments (2)

February 13th, 2004. I think it was the sport, not the nationality

Walking home at about half-eleven last night, I was stopped on Clerk St by a drunk old man waving a half-full pint glass around.

"All right? You're no fae New Zealand, are ye? You're no a Kiwi?"

"Um, no."

"[unintellgible] New Zealand boys up the street, going on about the rugby, [unintelligible] right through the pub window. Glass all over the place."

(pantomime concerned look) "Oooh, no!"

"You watch out for them Kiwi boys, you know? Look after yersel'." He shook my hand. "Look after yersel'" I don't really think it was New Zealanders I should have been looking out for; just rugby supporters.

Something I noticed yesterday: in the window of Marks & Spencer, a woman laid back on a deep red chaise-longue strewn with petals, wearing nothing save expensive lingerie. Another woman, her back to the window, was painting her portrait; although the sketched-out painting showed her in a completely different pose to the one she was doing. When I walked back again the other way, they had gone.

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February 12th, 2004. Food, culture and uncovering the darkness within

Despite my general inability in the kitchen, I managed to cook lunch for people yesterday. I made pasta - a Nigel Slater recipe that was in The Observer a few weeks back - for Owen and Hannah, just to generally say thankyou to them for all the things I've forgotten to thank them for. To my amazement, it tasted pretty good, and made rather large portions. It was at their house, though, because the last time someone who isn't me ate at my house, they were rather ill for several days.

This has been another of those weeks where various things happen that make me think: "oh, must remember that and blog it." Of course, I then forget all about them. Bah. We haven't even won any pub quizzes this week. On Saturday, though, there's a chance I'll be going out to a goth club, with Ben and people. Ben isn't a goth, but he wants to give it a try (and to wear a black t-shirt wih flashing lights on it). I'm not a goth either, but trying to look like one might be fun.

One thing I have been thinking about; I'm mentioning it here because there seems to be quite a few people who read this that are in the Edinburgh area but don't know me in real life. I'm thinking about setting up some sort of combined book group and creative writing group. It's all very vague at the moment, but if you'd be at all interested in coming along, or if you've got any suggestions as to how it could be run and organised, please get in touch.

10:54 Link Comments (4)

February 9th, 2004. Hey, Sweetie

The other good thing about last week's trip to IKEA was being able to stock up on salt licorice. Mmmm, salt licorice. Mmmm.

The great benefit of salt licorice, compared to other sweets, is that it is both very very tasty *and* horribly vile at the same time. I'm not quite sure how that's true, but it is. Hence, it is self-limiting. If I sit down with a bag of, say, Jelly Babies, or Allsorts, I sit constantly thinking "Mmm, just one more ... Mmm, just one more ... Mmm, just one more..." and scarf the whole lot in one go, putting another inch on my waistline. With salt licorice, I can't have more than a couple without thinking "Hmm, licorice tasty - but must get rid of horrible salty taste." And, so a) I don't get fat as quickly b) the packet lasts a lot, lot longer. Win all round!

10:28 Link Comments (3)

February 8th, 2004. Serious post for the month

As I said, last weekend I almost wrote a letter to The Guardian to complain about one of their articles. I was pleased to see, on opening my paper yesterday, that they had printed a letter from Nine complaining about the same thing. Wow! Someone I know has a letter in the paper!*

Whilst I'm feeling in a serious mood: I was thinking, recently, about the various issues surrounding the Hutton Report, and the BBC reaction to it. I don't want to write about that, partly because many people - Vaughan, for example - have said much more interesting things about it than I ever could. There's one thing, though, that I do want to mention because I've not seen it brought up much.

Everyone, I assume, knows the basic outline of what happened: journalist writes arguably dodgy story; man involved in it kills himself; official investigation says the story was wrong; chairman and chief executive forced to resign. And justice is done, blah blah, resignations definitely the right thing, yadda yadda and so on.

Are resignations always the right response, though? Clearly, there are some people that don't think so. For example, there was another news story about the Iraq war which had several parallels to the one which sparked off the Hutton Inquiry. Back in March, Sky News** produced a news report for the war reporters' pool, which claimed to have been filmed on board a British submarine on active service in the Persian Gulf, and claimed to show the submarine's crew firing missiles at targets in Iraq. In actual fact, the submarine had been in dock at the time, and the report was cobbled together with archive footage to make it look as if missiles were being fired. After the BBC exposed the fakery, the reporter responsible resigned. A few months later, he killed himself. Sky were later fined £50,000 for misleading reporting. Oddly enough, though, there were no high-level resignations at Sky (although its chief executive had already left for other reasons before the company was fined). Strange, I think, that what was appropriate for the BBC doesn't seem to be appropriate for them.

* There's a man called Tim Mickleburgh, of Scartho Road, Grimsby, who has had letters published in, I think, just about every magazine and newspaper that I've ever read. He doesn't count, though, because I've only met him once and we didn't even speak to each other.

** Note for Americans: one of Fox's British sister channels.

12:13 Link Comments (2)

February 7th, 2004. Tedious details of daily life

Thursday, we did the IKEA adventure, which tends to happen whenever The Parents visit. In the café, we ended up sat next to an elderly man, whose birthday had been the day before mine. He told us all about his life in the 1950s RAF (he trained in Lincolnshire, of course), and then his other life as an expert on Celtic symbolism, mythology, and so on. I enjoyed watching my parents' faces, and spotting which parts of his accent were too thick for them to understand.

I love IKEA, because I love any shop which is so big it has its own signposts and traffic lanes. It makes a visit seem awfully exciting, for some reason. My favourite discovery inside the store: IKEA dolls' houses, full of tiny IKEA furniture. Afterwards, we did a raid on Borders, and bought:

Friday: the buffet lunch at China China, on Antigua St. I'd heard about this place via Peter, and it really is very good and very cheap. Afterwards, The Parents persuaded me to upgrade my phone (they've been complaining that because my old one hardly works they can never get hold of me), and I finally gave in. Have been spending most of my time since using the phone to take pictures of the cat.

* I have no idea how his name is pronounced; I've never heard anyone talking about him. Does anyone have any idea? Toe-mine? Tom-inn-ey? Toe-meen-ah? I'm sure that Laura, for one, must know.

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February 5th, 2004. Do it by numbers

Took The Parents to Monster Mash, the café on Forrest Road that tries to emulate a classic British greasy-spoon caff. They work hard on the details: squeezy plastic sauce bottles, paper-wrapped pairs of sugar cubes, menus in vinyl-covered burgundy folders. Shepherd's pie is served up in the sort of blue-rimmed enamel dishes that my Nanns used to use as ovenware, and the vegetables had that genuine pale, washed-out look that comes from the English tradition of boiling them for hours to remove all taste. We took the window table; I noticed Dad flicking his eyes to the street whenever women in short skirts walked past.

Despite the details, they just can't recreate that greasy atmosphere. The staff were friendly and stylish; they should have been either surly or old, with fags in their mouths. They sold half-decent Italian coffee. The decor was just a bit too style-bar, and the whole place was just too clean to be authentic. None of the customers were senile old women constantly muttering to themselves. Of course, if it did have the whole British seaside café atmosphere, no one who could afford their prices would go there.

Afterwards, we visited the National Gallery, and a small exhibition of watercolour landscapes by Edward Lear, mostly of scenes in the Greek islands. Most seemed like brief sketches, the artist's pencil notes showing through the paint. Bare notes on colour: "pink" (sand), "gray" (sic, a cliff-face), "pale blue" (the distant sea). In the foreground he would note the ground cover: "grass", "acanthus", "wild artichokes". The plants, though, were never painted in, just shown with a solid block of colour. Almost as if Lear was going out with his sketchbook and constructing his own paint-by-numbers set to work on back in the studio. Maybe he did paint in all the details in in large, over-detailed oil version; but none of those were shown, so there was no way to tell. The watercolours struck a chord with me, though: the desire, when you see a scene you love, to preserve it in as simple, fresh and delicate a way as you can.

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February 4th, 2004. It's that day again

Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday to me-ee,
Happy birthday to me!

The Parents: "We can tell you're getting old. We've heard some of those bands that you like on Radio 2."

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February 2nd, 2004. Participant Observation

Nearly wrote a letter to The Guardian at the weekend, about one column which just made me feel angry and insulted. Lots of people, though, will probably write in and complain much more eloquently than I would.

There haven't been any people-watching entries here for a while. So here's one from last night:

She was sat on her own, in the busy pub. We were in the corner along from her, being our usual brash, arrogant pub-quiz selves. She was on her own, not participating, sitting with one knee up towards her chin, her hand round one ankle. She sipped what looked like gin and tonic.

We wondered where she might be from. Her clothes didn't look British; three-quarter-length jeans, big grey socks and some kind of lumberjack shirt. North American, possibly, or maybe German. She bought another drink, and sipped it still on her own. Occasionally, she looked towards us in the corner, arguing about actors' names and song titles. When this drink was gone, she looked at her phone and then left.

I felt a little guilty. It's not good sitting on your own in a pub you don't know. We should have asked her to join us. We should at least have said hello, tried to be friendly. More than just occasionally exchanging eye contact, at least. We might have been able to make her a little less lonely.

11:58 Link Comments (6)

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