GUEST POST! Catherine Anne's Opinions and Observations, Part 2! Which Craft...

Which Craft.

First off, I knit. I also sew, both by hand and machine, and have been known, in moments of hippy abandonment, to get out the crochet. Over the years my single-minded pursuit of the perfect big woolly jumper, or particular lace pattern has earned me withering scorn. “Knitting!!!’’ people shriek, ‘’urgh, that’s what GRANNIES do!!!’’. Except it isn’t now (well, not exclusively). Now it’s fashionable. Now it’s ‘in’. A casual trawl through the web can throw out any amount of bright young things clacking furiously away with the needles, and it’s even being recommended as a form of therapy (although that smacks a bit of institutionalised basket weaving to me). I should be happy. I should be skipping from one end of the yard to the other singing ‘knit one purl one tra lalalaaaaa’.

Instead, I find myself up against something I consider a bit sinister, if not outright rude. You see, I’m not the right kind of knitter. Quite who decides these things I’m not sure, but having engaged in a conversation with a bunch of ladies who’ve become converts to the noble art, I find that because I’m not knitting a cowl using kettle dyed recycled yak hair gleaned by hand from the dirt floors of weaving sheds in Peru I’m not ‘doing it right’. Unless I spend the equivalent of a month’s wages on rag yarn created in an artistic space by a vegan existentialist using his feet, I’m just playing at it. Forget that I’ve got a fantastic big Aran jumper on the go, that will not only keep me warm but looks rather spiffy as well - because it hasn’t been knitted by someone in a commune in gdansk it doesn’t count. I really REALLY like the idea that people are realising that they can make something beautiful by themselves, but I’m mogadored by the price, both financial and effort wise, that’s suddenly become the norm.

Our local library did (might still do for all I know) a “stitch and bitch’’ morning, where you could take your knitting (or whatever) and have a coffee and a natter with other creatives on the comfy sofas in the DVD section. I lasted one session, but was deemed unworthy as I was knitting a hottie cover using ‘just Aran’ - as in “eeww, it’s JUST ARAN’’ (pronounced with the same tone of voice that the queen might employ to say ‘eeww, it’s a Bolshevik’). I was happy to let that one go, but it dawned on me that my lack of roving woven from bat fur wasn’t going to cut it, so I left. I’m much more comfortable sitting cross legged on the sofa, cabling away like a demon whilst watching something lurid and horrific on TV (my woollies are known by whatever I was watching at the time, hence the CSI socks, or the Walking Dead hot water bottle cover). My current item will be known as the Lie To Me woollybeast owing to a bout of temporary insanity that has led me to binge watch Tim Roth.

Anything becoming fashionable automatically ups the price tag, so the current trend for knitting - or any other craft that grabs your fancy - whilst fab, is also likely to put people off after the first mad flush of convert-enthusiasm dies off, unless they realise that there are perfectly good wool shops out there, selling lovely yarn at prices that won’t induce a panic attack, and that knitting with rope is ok if that’s what you want to do (I’m not kidding. I know someone who’s trying to knit a hammock), but it’s not compulsory. Meanwhile me and my ‘just Aran’ will be over in the corner, going goggle eyed at the prices on Etsy for a three foot long scarf created from dryer fluff and twine.

Update on Those Pesky Resolutions (with footnotes on 80's bonkbusting novels and an important feminist book!)

I thought it was time to have a quick look at those rather pesky resolutions I instituted at the tail end of 2011, when in the grips of euphoric optimism.  It’s strange, but a whiff of any change nearby or soon to come and I feel a sense of such spaciousness in my thinking, that I feel my possibilities are greatly enlarged.  Life seems to be offering so much more; or I am suddenly feeling capable of actually grasping more – that’s more likely it.  I get out of my own way[1].

And then the New Year actually starts, and I am as crowded in the head as usual, and my attempts to make change are either stymied, or deeply compromised.  Partly by myself and my way of looking at things; partly by sheer time constraints.  And money.  Those are the Big Three of my Downfall (to be dramatic about it, as you know I do like to be!)

So, I’m going to flick through those ideas I had, and see how far I actually got with them, so far – never forgetting the year is a work in progress.  The bits I said before will be in bold, then my recoup on them.

I will spend less out, pay off more of loans and debts, and actually start to save (no matter how hard this seems).  This is going to plan – except its not working!  Isn’t that the funniest statement?!  I am saving – so far got £36  (a pound here and a pound there) in a small building society Christmas Account (i.e. I CAN’T touch it all year, until 1^st December, or I disturb the small interest).  This suits me well – it’s separate form the rest of my banking which is all lumped together, and I have to set money aside separately for that.  THAT is working.  The other 2 savings accounts I set up, with my existing bank are not going so well at all.  I set up one for Family Birthdays (for presents), and one for Treats and Learning (i.e. books I can’t resist, and anything educational I see).  The problem is…that everything really does still seem to be going up in price (electricity, gas, food, the rent, this year – to name only the ones that have bugged me most obviously so far…) so that the Housekeeping money Stanley gives me is staying the same, and not coping.  And his pay hasn’t risen, so he can’t afford to give me any more.  As it is, we never go out, even for coffee, let alone lunch, anymore…no cinema (I get taken by Fry who pays out of his dole money, once every 2 months if he can afford it).  There’s no outings or expeditions of any kind: it’s just rent, travel, food, Fluffhead stuffs.  That’s it.  And what we have is barely scraping by.  So I keep dipping into what I have saved.  Any part time work I look into is, so far, either the wrong hours (i.e. no babysitting available), or so poorly paid it really would make very little difference when you consider how tired I’d be after and how this would impact on taking care of the Perennial Fluffhead.  And the Rob Peter To Pay Paul continues – I pay off the credit card minimum each month and a bit extra – but the bit extra is always deeply necessary again by the week before payday, for basic groceries…So!  Doom! Doom! DOOM!  On that resolution – so far.  You can only scrape the butter so thin before you really are just eating dry toast, you know?  But onto the next thing, to see if I’m doing any better…

I have this vague poorly thought out Master Plan idea of being the Queen of Bargains, Coupons and Discounts next year.  Now, this is going rather better.  I am being eagle-eyed and very awake indeed where this is concerned.  I am paying attention to all ‘3 for 2’s and seeing if its things I actually would use/do use – and more importantly, can I actually afford the outlay of extra ones right that minute.  The annoying thing about this, is that sometimes I can’t.  But I comfort myself with the fact that I am at least trying my best here – I am weighing up all the options.  I have so far saved, I calculated yesterday (with the aid of a calculator, and no doubt my tongue out the corner of my mouth, as I am nothing if not crap at maths), a grand total of £52 since 1^st January!  That is Not Bad At All.  When you are busy taking advantage of offers (with always the proviso that they ARE things you actually need) you often lose sight of the receipts and what you actually save.  I was so encouraged by this totting up I did, I will carry on doing it, I think.  It included all these funny little Boots receipts where you get extra points on their advantage card for spending , say, £10 on vitamins or toiletries, and then me using those points to buy Fluffhead’s growing up milk, nappies etc (which was then a saving, as Boots points are 1 point = 1p, so that 100 points is literally a free £1.  It included all the Tesco and Waitrose offers where I got a discount or a free extra something, or the usual 3 for 2.  It included looking at the packaging of things and then giving limited details to a website (ticking the ‘no offers from 3^rd parties’ section – always look for that) and being sent a coupon that then got me a whole or partially free thing I needed (and because Googlemail has a very good spam filter, then not being bothered by the subsequent email crap sent through, unless I chose to be).  So satisfactory progress there, I report!

Also, a Charity Shop Queen next year.  Now, I will say this one is also going very well indeed; but it’s very frustrating.  After that at length moan I had about the Charity Shops back in Paddington, I have to say that the ones here are the most helpful and cheerful places.  The prices are so LOW at the moment, that if I had sufficient money I could BoHo my entire wardrobe and have it busting with good quality and unusual colourful things for about £150, at the moment.  That’s why I’m frustrated.  I keep trying to get my books in there (and the library – where I am true to my word – they now know my name and regularly take the £1.10 fee for having reserved and sourced my loan books from elsewhere; I’m in there about 3 times a week).  You know, the books I feel I MUST buy, because I will want to re-read them, or refer to them again.  I have a very stringent book policy at the moment: Layer 1 – try and read what you have.  Ehem.  And then, layer 2 – for all popular books I might want to read, get or reserve at the library before thinking of buying.  Layer 3 – get at a charity shop if will need to re-read, as said.  I only get things from Amazon (who I am convinced, I have single-handedly saved from the pitfalls of the recession for many years now – why don’t I have a plaque or something, somewhere; a medal, praising me for supporting business?), or other online or high street shops, if they are unavailable at library or charity shops (like so many of the magic books, sewing books, history books and oddly, biographies and old blockbusting novels from the eighties[2], that I tend to read).  This means that I have spent on Amazon, so far this year £12 only (and £5 of that was a gift voucher left over from Christmas).  This IS hurting, I have to say.  My appetite for books is rapacious.  Unlike my father, who also had a bone deep need for books – he used to like to collect them and admire them and look at them.  He was always reading something, but he had thousands of books that never quite got his ‘needing a bookmark’ attention.  I always say: books call to me to be bought; then they have to call again to be read – the gap between can be years.  But they will get read.  And if they haven’t called after 5 years, they get sold on; or given away.  As do all the ones I won’t re-read.  Hence my Amazon sales.  Which are also doing ok, especially for this time of year and economic downturn.  (But since the entire profits are going into propping up the Housekeeping money, rather than buying me a life, or some more books [!!!], or paying off the credit card, it all feels a bit circular and counter productive.  But I’m not moaning about it!!  I moan about plenty, but not this.  I just wish things were ‘easier, less of a constant one step forward two steps back struggle’ as Stanley said the other day, after listening to me moan for a champion one solid hour.  His poor face at the end.) 

I want to rehabilitate my sewing machine.  And get my needles and threads out.  As I can’t really afford any news clothes (of any kind from anywhere) currently, I am getting lurid dreams when I lay in bed at night, of cannibalising my old clothes. Yes, well.  Due to one thing and another, I have had 4 days less where I could have had a couple of hours babysitting, since January, so I’m running behind.  And the prioritising goes like this: write, read, housework, nap, sew – when I get any spare time at all.  So what I have accomplished here is the readying of 5 separate cannibalisation projects: you know, as I said, tops with sleeves too short and bottoms too short are going to be lengthened in both these areas with complimentary coloured other tops.  My sewing machine still gathers dust.  Troubadour recently reunited me with most of my patterns, by large parcel post, so that the trickier jobs I can now refer to a pattern to make sure I cut right.  But I have yet to make time for it.  Which is difficult, as writing and reading are sedentary, and while sewing is too, it’s a different kind of creating – it’s more physical.  I do need to make time for this kind of variety; and for the feeling of satisfaction I would get.  If only I didn’t crave to read and write as I do.  It’s definitely like food.  I NEED to do both, regularly.  So sewing is at present languishing.

Spirituality.  I read a lot of it.  I do think on it.  I do rituals here and there.  I say to myself that my life is too full of Fluffhead and Stanley and Saint Mum and Fry and reading books and replying very late to emails from friends and trying to write stories and DOING THIS (which does take about 2 or 3 hours a time then more to add links if I am going to, and check for typos etc etc etc), to actually be properly organised about it.  Then I go around, complaining to myself that I don’t FEEL very connected to the earth, to my own Best Me, and to that intangible whatsity thing I have a notion I have felt before several times, and experienced another several, the effects of.  I need to plan things to do, regularly.  Mmmmmmmm.  Never a truer word.  Did you notice how in that priorities list above, I didn’t mention meditating, or doing altar work, or even reading spirituality?  I’m not doing very well here either, so I am still suffering exactly the same problems as I listed above there.  I still have ideas for what to plan, but my tiny little time spots get eaten by reading, writing and housework.  And exhaustion from the constant noise that comes with a Fluffhead.  The other sillier thing to note here is: I need to meditate to calm down.  Yet I feel I need to be calmed down in order to meditate successfully.  Otherwise I am just crossly (not at all unattachedly) listening to myself think thoughts, endlessly.  It’s a battle – when I know I am sposed to be just regarding each though kindly, patting it on the head and sending it on its way, like leaves floating off down an autumn stream.  Just 5 minutes – I tell myself.  And almost without exception, find myself falling asleep while sitting up, which then proves very restful indeed!  I persist, I persist.  But so far…very little joy here.  And this is due to my own lack of prioritising.  I think I feel that reading and writing propel me into another state of mind and another world, with utmost quickness and immediacy.  With my time problem, this is vital.  Taking the time to mellow into a meaningful and not just ‘going through the motions till the next thing’ spiritual practice is hard for me.  I’ll get back to you.  I’m not giving up.

I have this awful sensation of TIME’S AWASTIN’ all the time!  I find it really difficult to do nothing and just meditate, or rest.   This is a new thing, since the birth of Fluffhead.  Since I did that at late 30s, and am now 40, I have this terrible feeling of hurtling toward the Rest Of My Life, which I feel will be shorter than the bit I just did.  So that this problem still exists too.  Even when I have some time off – and my goodness, IT FLIES by, which terrifies me, making my intervals of Me Time feel seconds long; compared to the rest of my ‘shifts’ which are from the instant I get up to the instant I sleep and beyond, as Fluffhead and I wake in the night several times…Time too, is still a constant problem.  I will here mention that the creativity coach and general psychological thinker, Eric Maisel, has done some very interesting work on the problem some of us have with time.  In the Van Gogh Blues, he specifically did a chapter on this.  The horrible ‘time’s getting away, and what the hell am I doing with it?’ feeling.  He made an interesting suggestion that a lot of depressions and anxieties around this subject are the result of a loss of personal meaning in your life, which you need to recreate for yourself, daily, moment by moment, and to keep reminding yourself of.  The only way to avoid this feeling of being stuck in futility is to create your own meaning that encompasses what you do with the time you do have – the boring bits and the good bits.  I find this idea comforting and helpful – though I must say, my meaning slippage is daily, and I am never quite satisfied (as yet) with those I have created…I further mention this as he is going to do a guest post here, in April (fingers crossed, in case all goes arse over tit – he’s agreed so far).  So be excited, and interested etc.

So the routine next year will be Iyengar yoga (to add to the Hatha yoga I’ve done for a few years with varying regularity), some pilates and other stretching, and some basic beginner cardiovascular bounce about in the living room stuffs – as I am so unfit since Fluffhead.  Oh the ignominious failure of it!!  Yes, I am still overly curvaceous, and as you will note (sigh) I didn’t prioritise this on my list of what to do with a spare 10 minutes, either, did I?!  There is the fact I keep moving while hanging out with Fluffhead, for an hour at a time, just skipping about, or doing lunges (yes, look through my living room window and laugh), or basic aerobics steps.  Every day.  I time how long I am able to keep doing it before I have to sit down and help with the numbers board or the block stacking, or reading to him…And the daily walks down the hill to town and back again are unchanged.  Because the town is tiny, there isn’t far too go before you hit another hill, and if you think I am going to spend all day toiling up and down hills with Fluffhead in his tank-like pushchair and 4 pints of milk and assorted tins under in the basket…you are mistaking me for my friend Alias Indie, who regularly does Iron Man events for charity, and is the very vision of slenderliness…and she smokes 20 a day, and has exceptional taste in books and film.  What a woman!  She’s most excellent.

Ahhh….on this note of abject stinking failure I will slink away.  No summary of thoughts, to tell you that there is a moral to all this.  Only to say, hopefully, well – it’s only February, hey?  I still have time!  Change is always possible, and I didn’t fail at all these goals so far, and any of them can be modified.  Except I like them as they are, I just think I need more time.  (That is my current thinking anyway.)

No…my only and last word will be…Tomorrow will be the first ever guest post, by my Damn Good Friend and Floppy Haired Nonsense Angel, Mr.  Frank Key, of the legendary Hooting Yard.  I’m not going to link it today as I don’t want you nipping off there and seeing the exact post he said I could borrow, as he only wrote it yesterday!  Besides which, ehem, it’s on the Blogroll.  But anyway – do look forward to this, as I have selected one of his best Rhapsodies on the Improbable for you.  It made me laugh out loud, and you need to read it to brighten your day. 

No!  That’ll be my last word: there’s no such thing as Failure (with New Year’s Resolutions at any rate), there’s only Success As Yet Improbably Disguised!  On that thought of little dubious close scrutiny, I go.

---

[1] Alias Troubadour used to be very fond of saying, about my downer moods and phases: just because you hold up your hands and cover your eyes, or hold something up and place it between you and the sun, doesn’t mean the light isn’t still there, shining as strong as ever.  You just can’t see it, and have to take down the obstruction.  Yourself.  One of many rather good things Troubadour was wont to come out with.  (Of course, in a downery mood, it’s as useless as collecting salt in a sieve.  You aren’t at that point capable of seeing HOW to take down the obstruction; the basic logic of the idea is therefore lost on you.)

[2] Blockbusting novels from the ‘80s, hmmm…after honey, that nectar of the Gods, my next obsession this year (I am nothing if not relentlessly obsessive – I think its to do with being unable to cope with the Real World as I find it, and retreating into a Big Study of something or other, that keeps me then, relatively free from anxiety…or…you could just say I get faddy and study something to death, suck it dry, have some info in my head, and then move on to the next thing that catches my attention; without the psycho-babble, and with me a less sad seeming person.  Merely an Information Craving Person.)  Anywaaaaaaaaaaaaaay…I am knee deep in the oeuvre’s of Judith Krantz (‘Princess Daisy’ et al), Pamela Townley (little known English bonkbuster writer of same period, more famous for marrying one of the Hawkwind lads; my personal favourite being ‘Rogan’s Moor’: she's underrated!), Shirley Conran (yes, ‘Lace’, of course), Barbara Taylor Bradford (‘A Woman of Substance’ and lord knows how many more, tons!) and June Flaum Singer (‘The Debutantes’ as well as many others – she is the cruellest author of the lot, though beguiling and moreish; and oddly unlinked on the net).  It’s interesting, as this odd obsession – of re-creating my 14^th year in terms of beach reading at Westgate, Littlehampton and Margate on the annueal family holiday to The Seaside started just after I read some Truly Scary and Very Depressing and Yet Full of Fight feminism – the brilliant and important Living Dolls, by Natasha Walter.  READ IT!  It’s about men too, and not in a cross way.  It’s about humanity and how we are all treating each other.  Foremost – it’s about Choice: and how some choices are being fed to women as free when they are anything but.  A choice is only a choice if you genuinely are placed between at least 2 and preferably more options, and that one of them is not tipped ludicrously at you, forced like a stage magicians card trick.  And the other options then made to seem futile and isolationist…or even not mentioned to you at all.  It’s also about the worrying trend of Biological Determinism sweeping through our society today, with regard to gender roles.  Backed up by some VERY poor scientific method – by those respected as much as say, Steven Pinker.  It’s shocking and very worrying.  So I think my brain went on a severe hibernation holiday in order to process all this new info, and retreated to a place where I previously had more choice: that is – when I was growing up, all seemed possible, and all was before me; I wasn’t yet in my life, I was still regarding what might be made of it.  And oddly enough – we remember all these blockbusting 500 page doorstop novels with affectionate disdain now, 20-30 years later..but there’s plenty female self determination in those too.  It’s just (annoyingly) muddied by a constant reference to the beauty of the heroines, and a lot of what happens to them is predicated on that – the commodification of the women is relentless in these books as a result…but, especially in the case of Judith Krantz, she comments on it all the time, within the stories.  It’s a puzzle…they knew what was going on, they played on it and with it…Though I have to say: the feeling I get at the end of zipping through each one, is one of overwhelming Go Getting Optimism, if tempered by the knowledge I will not at anytime soon be a Russian Princess, or starting my own modelling agency, or crossly asking a lot of guilty looking men I took an entire book to get in one room, ‘which one of you bastards is my father?’  I doubt there’s much high drama for me, in the immediate future at any rate.)

What I Have Amused Myself With in January: Books and TV, Film

I haven't had any babysitting for the last 100 years.  (Warning:  I suspect I am going to be full of exaggerations today, bear with me.)  Hence, the 2 posts I have been trying very hard to write (My Favourite 5 Films and Why Aren't They Yours Too?!, and On The Magnificence of Peter Wyngarde) have been delayed.  Apologies, faithful four readers and the Russian people who are still coming by (hello!), as well as the sudden regular newcomer from Indonesia.  They will be with you soon, I hope. 

I could tell you all about Fluffhead's birthday last week, and about the wonderful crunchy frozen earth in the garden and baby magpies (or whatever the are, tiny cute things) I keep seeing there.  And my first ever hedgehog, snuffling about.  But this will take a while, and I haven't got a while.  So I shall tell you instead what I have been reading and watching, and what I thought about them, at a bit of rambly length (I snaffled this from my diary - the only thing I have had time to keep more or less up to date...but alas, all I've been noting is what I read and watch - my endless and relentless days are lost to history...)  Off we go, then...

Reading:

1. The Immigrant, by Manju Kapur (2009)
   (Excellent.  Started a little stilted, but I persisted and it became an unputdownable story of people not so different from me at all, and how they got married and then it collapsed.  All within the feelings and sensations of being in a new country with a culture and weather very obviously different, and the effects this has on your unfolding sense of self.  It ended oddly, suddenly, and I felt like there was a whole ‘nother book I would have been happy to read about Nina and Ananda’s further lives, separately. Interesting sense of Canada.)
2. One Small Step Can Change Your Life, by Robert Maurer (2004)
   (Maybe the best mis-characterised 'self help' book I’ve read in ages.  Described how to get on with change when you really need or want to do it, but are terrified and very resistant.  The idea of tiny, beyond bitesize steps, as a way to circumnavigate your worried brain and get a new habit in place without such despair and inner criticism and the constant failure.  Small actions, small questions, small adjustments, working up to bigger ones.  It gave me the idea to exercise in the living room just by marching on the spot, no need to put any DVDs on and annoy Fluffhead – keep moving, so that while I know I am eating too much as I am bored and often lonely – at least I am exercising more to compensate.  I will see how it goes, but I think this is an approach I can really use to my benefit, in a lot of areas of life.  Though the book didn’t need to be so long – this wonderful tidbit could have been gotten across by a good essay.)
3. How I Escaped My Certain Fate: The Life and Deaths of a Stand Up Comedian, by Stewart Lee (2010)
   (One of my favourite deconstruction of comedy comedians.  I was very struck that the cover had a quote from the Times, saying this book was 'wise', as well as funny.  This was unfortunate, as I kept waiting for the wisdom all the way through.  I laughed out loud many times; agreed with him about lots of things, and disagreed with him about others.  I was educated on several different points of view, and learned more about obscure and not-so comedians than I ever did previously.  And I loved the massively long footnotes.  And the complexity of his character, which contradicted itself in places, and tried very hard to hide while still being present.  But I didn’t find any actual ‘wisdom’.  I think this may be semantic, though – I think the Times has a different definition of wisdom to me.)
4. Who Will Run The Frog Hospital?, by Lorrie Moore (1994)
   (An extremely well written book. Almost self indulgent in its love of words.  I was envious at the ease of it – especially the change in register of her voice between middle age and teenage. Very vivid teenage.  About a friendship, and why it was and how it was, and where it went.  And a marriage, and how we change over time.  I enjoyed this a lot, in a strange In It but also Observing It sort of way.  Lorrie Moore is one of those authors who automatically gets bought whenever she writes anything, as I like her changing style so much.)
5. Just For The Frill of It, by Sonya Nimri (2007)
   (Bought to enable me to poach techniques and ideas, rather than lift sewing alteration projects wholesale.  In line with my plans for sewing set out in my resolutions post before the New Year.  Will serve its purpose, and has given me several ideas to modify.  Also enjoyed its good illustrations and its sassy, amusing tone.  And enjoyed laughing at the somewhat privileged upbringing of the girl who wrote it [its there in the tone of her commentaries to the pieces] - for her, the sewing was obviously about art and being clever and making things extra girly and pretty; rather than a real financial need to alter, and 'make do and mend', as it is in my case.  Far too much emphasis on making bolero cardigans out of sweaters [we don't all have tiny boobs and little waists and will look a bit like a sack shrunk on us if we wear boleros, you twentysomething girl I am clearly jealous of!]  and adding lace and ribbons to things though – a complication of things rather than a simplification of them. Still worthy, however, and I will definitely be referring to it.)
6. Subversive Seamster, by Melissa Alvarado, Hope Meng and Melissa Rannels (2007)
   (Again, bought to poach for techniques and ideas for clothes alterations.  Enjoyed this one also – good pictures, good ideas, and more emphasis on wholesale alteration and rejigging than the last: a skirt from a winter coat, a beautiful peasant blouse from a long housedress.  Some very good ideas and will help me to look at things with a more imaginative eye – which was what I wanted.  I am full of vague creativeness, but often lack specific ideas; looking at other people’s things always makes me think ‘oh, I could do that better, if I…’ – cue changing it and making it mine.  So another good buy, and a good techniques section.)

And watching (you'll note I seem to have solidly watched TV through all January, if this list is anything to go by....What I will say is, its been bloody cold and Fluffhead was getting over his respiratory infection so was sectioned against cold air; so more staying in than usual.  Also, all the Dr Who on this list is because of him [like father, like son] - you should SEE the hysterical joy I get when I announce we are about to watch some!  And lastly, you can have TV on in the background while doing a 100 other things; reading takes proper concentration, so there's less of that than this...):

1. Quarantine 2: Terminal (the American Remake)
   (With Fry.  Quite good.  I’d like to see the Spanish original.  Had some actual characterisation in it, which I enjoyed and is relatively rare for a modern horror.)
2. Reginald D. Hunter Live
   (Disappointing - and I was very much expecting to like it, as I have liked all his panel show appearences I have seen.  Some jokes and stories and their callbacks were excellent.  Some just relied on stereotyping and a very poor understanding of women – cheap gags. But then, as Fry said: I would say that, as a woman.  Which leaves us nowhere…)
3. Raven (70's kids drama)
   (Xmas present to me from Stanley.  I really liked it: the Arthurian theme – Arthurs’ save the land from environmental disasters, there's more than one of them; the silly and irrelevant usage of the zodiac; Phil Daniels as a teenager: inspired casting.  The way I gathered at the end that he was looking for the Merlin bird again to go on his next mission.  All implied, not told - TV is not like this anymore, and how great to see this then, as a visual artifact!  Very un-neat and very ambiguous altogether.  Liked that.)
4. Mad and Bad: History of Science on TV, documentary
   (Educational, despite Stanley pointing out a number of huge gaffes in the reportage.  Robert Webb was ill picked for narration of this, I thought.  His tone was too trivial.  I liked the point that writers of TV and film always pick the doomy side of science to report, robots gone crazy; viruses out of control etc, as its better drama.  It makes you think twice about drama inculcated attitudes to science.  Which have influenced alot of my own doominess on the subject.  So food for thought here.)
5. Whistle and I’ll Come To You (John Hurt remake)
   (I'm doing this back to front, because I didn't watch the original yet and will have to report back on that later.  Very spacious feel to this.  The hands under the door from kneeling position scared Fluffhead - who wasn't really watching it till that moment.  So a marked point in his development - have to be careful what iput on in front of him now.  Since I have yet to watch the original, so I don’t know how well they have captured the spirit of it or the story it was taken from; and whether that stuff about his wife was telegraphed too obviously or even just added for this adaptation.  If so, a good idea, but heavy handedly done.  Otherwise enjoyed this a lot – had good atmosphere.  John Hurt excellent.  Lesley Sharp strangely miscast and portentous: wasted.  But maybe the cast her because she was so good in Afterlife, and they wanted that vibe?)
6. The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh
   (This film surprised me: everyone was out to get Edwige Fenech – the plot ended up really complicated!  There was an essay in one of the extras that used a term to describe this kind of giallo that I can’t remember now, and despite looking it up, it escapes me – its when the characters are in a sort of love triangle and the action is all about sexual and emotional turmoil.  Being Italian, they had a handy little phrase for it.  Wish I could remember.  Interesting and very enjoyable film.  Her character reminded me of a lot of women of the kind I used to know – ones that define themselves to a large degree, by their relations with their men, mostly or even only.  They seem to need a man about.  Lordy – maybe I’m even one of them in the back of my head…then again...if I only looked like Edwige it might be an option!)
7. Almost Human
   (This giallo also surprised me – what an incredibly good thriller!  And Tomas Milian – bloody hell – what a great actor, so nasty and low and ratlike!  Very good study in some people and their morals – well shot, well acted, and totally absorbing.  Apparently this is a sub genre of giallo, called Poliziotteschi.  Fascinating stuff, may try and find more of them.  Also loved the detective actor – Henry Silva, what a great face.)
8. Children of the Stones, 70's children's drama
   (Hmm. Good atmosphere, intriguing idea….and really silly ill conceived confusing finale, which took in ammonia molecules, time traps, black holes, ‘pagan leyline centres of psychic power’, people inexplicably turning to stone, history re-writing itself and the main characters strangely sanguine about the whole thing.  It was really good and really quite execrable, all at the same time.  Most odd combination.)
9. Intruder
   (Without lil' Fluffhead!.  This was one of the funnest horror films I’ve ever seen.  Just the perfect mix of 80’s characters and cheese, likeable people, excellent music both orchestral and synthy; and done by the Evil Dead people – even sang the same song – what is that song, ‘after all the songs we’ve sung together’?  Excellent – humour and inventive grisliness.  10/10.)
10. Dr Who, Peter Davison – Four to Doomsday
    ( Not bad!)
11.  Dr Who, Peter Davison – Kinda
    (Rather enjoyed.)
12. The Silent House, horror
    (The gimmick of the one continuous shot all the way through the whole film was a good idea, but…the girl’s character was odd: and Fry swears she couldn’t have killed the dad as he was definitely upstairs while we saw her downstairs…and since he wouldn’t let me rewind to check as he had become bored, we were left as befuddled as a cinema goer would have been. A very interesting idea imperfectly executed, but worth watching IMO.)
13.  Doctor Who: Visitation
    (Good. Quite clever I thought – and loved the Pudding Lane bit at the end.  Very good time setting and atmosphere.  The best historical Dr Who so far, in my opinion, for me.  Also, whatsisname from On The Buses, was MAGNIFICENT.)
14.  Doctor Who: Black Orchid
    (Also good, if rather oddly short.  Looked lovely.  Beautiful Pierrot costume.)
15. Doctor Who: Earth Shock
    (Snore.  Got very bored of the Cybermen, very quickly.  Villains who keep saying ‘destroy them’ tend to make me doze. Beryl Reid notwithstanding; though in leather – interesting!  Best thing about this one was the end – I was very shocked about Adric, even though I knew in advance it was going to happen.  Fluffhead thought the TV was broken when there was no music at the end, and gave me the remote with a stricken face…)
16. Doctor Who: Time Flight
    (Not bad at all.  Good idea for the characters to have that discussion at the beginning about why they couldn’t go back in time and save Adric with the Tardis.  Enjoyed the planes and the pilots.)
17. Doctor Who: Arc of Infinity
    (Oh dear oh dear.  No need of Amsterdam and generally rather poo.  Why was The Master in disguise???  I saw no reason for it, just a cheap plot device.)
18. Downton Abbey, Series 1
    (Lent to me generously by my esteemed FB friend and human companion of Ruler of the World, Edward Cat: Alias Daisy Ginn.  Well, well.  I see exactly what the fuss was about: good and bad.  The bad was that yes, the historical details aren’t always accurate, and there are sometimes mistakes with modern details in the background peeping through quite clearly [yellow lines on roads, and such].  Also, it is so modern with its Edwardian characters as to be a bit dubious as to whether this was actually so at the time – but then, it’s a work of historical fiction, not straight historical drama.  Which brings us to the last bad thing – its a soap more than a drama, which is apparent from all the hating and worrying I found myself doing while watching it, and the tenterhooks about the next episode.   
    
    As to the good things about it: marvellous Maggie Smith, marvellous sets and locations, amazingly beautiful clothes, man did I want to alter and make all that – and utterly addictive.  I was umming and ahhing through the first episode about whether I was going to enjoy this, but by the end of the second one, and after having said ‘oh what a cow’ rather a lot to the screen, I found I was unable to stop watching it, and subjected Fluffhead to it as well.  He liked it, also a plus point – though he did keep screeching [a new lately thing] during softly spoken bits, which was most annoying.  So…I eventually found out what the stoic Bates’s secret was, I saw the unravelling of proud Mary and her suitor, I felt what she did to overlooked Edith at the end was awful no matter that I saw why, I watched  'the cow' O’Brien actually get some guilt for her behaviour [another excellent character], and I wondered when suffragette Sybil would start having an affair with the chauffeur.  Like Dallas, but without oil, and only one American so far, and very cliché English!  Most enjoyable.) 
19.  Apparitions, recent supernatural drama series
    (Now, now now!  The BBC should be ASHAMED of themselves for putting their names on this.  It does sound – to me, anyway – like a brilliant idea to think of The Exorcist, and then decide to bring it up to date and make a serial of it and set it in the UK – roving exorcist fighting evil.  Etc.  Since I believe – yes BELIEVE, one of my very few, and definitely more childlike and intuitive beliefs – in the idea of disembodied... thingies out there that may be unkind and possibly bad and upset and of the mind to possess you and hurt you [this is why I still find the Evil Dead so scary, despite the plasticine scene at the end), I thought this series sounded fun to scare myself with.  Then I watched it. 
    
    Very watchable and well made is the best thing I can say for it.  Good production values etc. 
    
    But what a MOUNTAIN of Catholic [specifically] propaganda I haven’t encountered in the last hundred years!  It was like that annoying woman you see on Sunday morning politics debate shows from The Catholic Herald got together with William Peter Blatty and wrote this.  Obviously these spirits are demons, and anti the Christian God, specifically the Catholic idea of the Christian God.  And so there are some very interesting discussions between the exorcist and the priest [Martin Shaw, what were you thinking, and producing it too], of the like I haven’t experienced since I used to chat often with a brilliant Jesuit priest by the name of Father Tracy, many moons ago.  I love the twisty and sophistic logic of Jesuits.  Father Tracy was a lovely man, I adored his brain.  But this series…every single criticism that the Catholic church has had thrown at it since we became a more or less secular state here in the UK, appeared and was refuted in the most simplistic terms here.  The first episode alone made out atheists as possible agents of the devil, and ripe for possession, with their ‘anger at god’.  Shockingly, a little girl character showed the priest what she considered as the signs of her father being possessed: a copy of the God Delusion by Dawkins, a copy of God Is Not Great by the late and great fun Hitchens, a recording of the Jerry Springer opera [‘so you got yourself crucified, give yourself a biscuit’ played in the background…confusing the blasphemy of demons with the mockery of rationalism….later in the same episode, all comedians were wiped out with the line, ‘mockery and ridicule are its first line of defence’ or something very similar, don’t make me go and rewind to find it, please!…]  Doubt about some aspects of Mother Theresa’s work, doubts about the Pope’s efficacy during WWII – all the sorts of things the Catholic Church has had troubles with, all were disposed of simply and quickly, and overwhelmingly…falsely, in the face of actual verifiable real world facts.  Very odd, such an amazingly partisan piece of work getting the BBC stamp, I thought.  Then again, I’m sure their showing of the Jerry Springer opera got exactly the same reaction from the other side of shocked indignation, so…
    
    But I was left open mouthed that such an otherwise well made drama had such LIES in it!!  Took all the fun out of it.  And then again, again [!], the clash between modern secular rationalism, individualism, and this updated Catholic superheroness made a bit of a mockery of my own belief in disembodied thingies looking to possess people…I don’t think I had them as Christian in my head as such, though I definitely got the idea from there, from my upbringing…but…I think I see them as universal, everywhere and nowhere.  I will definitely have to think about this irrational belief of mine more now it has bumped up against modernity and a lot of the other things I definitely do think in such a jarring way.  So I can thank this odd and flawed series for making me thoughtful.  Though it didn’t scare me, which was what I had wanted! 
    
    Actually, in all the conversations between the priest and the demons, I kept finding myself consistently siding with the demon – as it had a brain and was using it.  The priest kept saying: ‘We do not talk with demons, we reject them unconditionally’, and when it asked him a question about something uncomfortable and difficult: ‘we do not question God, we trust Him unconditionally’.  Well.  If you don’t allow yourself to THINK, at all, that way, you are just a puppet…The old, outgoing Head Exorcist said to Martin Shaw’s new exorcist: ‘Don’t listen to them, your faith will be weakened,’ about a hundred times.  My own brain may serve me badly, and often does, but at least I try and think with what I have!  I will not be a puppet.  Question everything – even if it makes you miserable, is what I say.  Use the brain in your head; that’s what it’s for.  Humpf.)

So!  That's what I have been doing while washing up, cleaning, playing peekaboo, feeding Fluffhead (not the scary things anymore though!), tidying up and so on and so forth.  And now I'm off to check my lottery numbers and look forward to a life of much more leisure time, during which I will blog every day and eat many truffle chocolates....

2012: The Year I'll Be Queen of Everything. Yup.

So here I am, pondering my New Year’s Resolutions already.  I have that coming to the end of the year feeling.  I can feel things tapering off and down, slowing.  I can feel a sense of new things, new starts, fresh chances.  I like this feeling, since I have always ballsed up in some way or other, spectacular or small, with any manner of things in the past year.  Always a fresh chance.  (Bit like Monday’s too; only they lose that lovely fresh feeling due to slippage – being associated with the start of a working week, rushing, tube travelling and being crushed, having a very boring/stressful job etc – it clouds over the wonderful possibilities that all Monday’s COULD represent.  Since New Year is a day a lot of us can take off work and actually have a think with (if we choose), then it’s more likely to be useful.

All the presents are now wrapped.  (I have discovered that Stanley is going to hate one of his, due to a segment on breakfast TV this morning involving one half of the two people in one of the DVDs I got him.  Oops.  Well.  This is what happens when he will insist on some surprises; they may be wrong!  I shall watch it, even if he doesn’t.)  The tree is up (more baubles, more tinsel, than a small plastic tree should ever have to bear, poor tiny now very gaudy thing).  The Christmas cards are blu-tacked to the wall, and Fluffhead imperiously demands picking up every few minutes to have the pictures labelled again: reindeer, Christmas tree, other Xmas tree composed of Australian animals (he accepts this as completely normal), camel and sun, Santa Claus, different reindeer, frozen pine trees with snow, Christmas tree with carollers….and back to the beginning again.  For a while.

So there’s a tidy feeling of waiting for one thing, with a sort of void before it happens.  Hence, am reminded of New Year, as after Christmas has that same void of nothing following lots of anticipation and excess, also.  (And though I bought less presents than usual this year and had to watch my money a lot, it really felt like excess anyway, as all that money could have gone elsewhere.  But hey, I love to give presents, so there.)

Resolutions then.  What do I want to change about 2012, for me, that I can do myself.  (Don’t expect anything terribly profound or earth-shattering here.)

I will spend less out, pay off more of loans and debts, and actually start to save (no matter how hard this seems).  This involves shopping in a more wide awake way, not buying pre prepared food things unless they are on special offer, or really will save the time they are s’posed to (as its convenience you pay for there, the time saving – so it’s a worthy deal some of the time).  It involves NOT buying so many or hardly any books.  (I don’t think I can buy none, unless we are suddenly peasants again and the currency is eggs and piglets and honey[1]; in which case let’s hope I get a knock to the head and forget how to read as well, as I’d be a bit miserable with nothing to read if I was capable…)  It involves getting to the end of the month and realising I am not skint due to astonishingly organised and unrelentingly discerning financial management; and resisting the urge to then buy (a) more expensive food, or (b) treats like …books or DVDs.  I can see myself doing that hammy horror film thing, yelling and pulling out my own hair and fighting with my own arm, ululating in grief as I force myself to pay more off a credit card (I don’t have one of my own, I have one Stanley lets me look after as though it were my own), or add money to a savings account.  For a rainy day, no…it seems we are already engaged in a bit of a financial Rainy Year, as a country and a continent.  No – for birthdays, for Christmas next year, and for …ill defined emergencies.  I shall try and get a higher interest savings account maybe.  (I am only allowed the most basic of financial things in banks and building societies as I am a past naughty person; a terrible risk.  Funnily enough, this applies to savings accounts as well as credit – people are worried at the idea of you saving with them though there is no borrowing involved.  How weird.)

I have this vague poorly thought out Master Plan idea of being the Queen of Bargains, Coupons and Discounts next year.  Not in the sense I will signing up to a million corporate internet sites that promise to send me free samples of things.  Nope, not that into the idea of discounts and freeness.  Hate spam mail, and the encroaching tide of endless data gathering about my shopping ‘habits’.  That Annoys Me.  Nope, I just mean: I will try and pay attention to my receipts at Boots and Tescos and those little coupon things disguised as another receipt.  I caught hold of one 2 weeks ago and it promised a pound off a packet of nappies if I went back and bought them before a certain time frame.  It was the ones I usually get, I saw no imminent end of Fluffhead’s need to pee in his pants, so I used the coupon next time I was there.  Or the one that said I could have £3 off if I bought more than £10 of vitamins, which I was about to do anyway, so again, actually useful.  Sometimes I ignore these, but not anymore.  I will pay attention to vouchers and coupons and such that cross my path, and see if its economic to use them (as getting caught into buying something you didn’t need is dumb, regardless of how cheap it suddenly is).  I will be lithe and awake and watchful for times when these offers apply to me.  Since the price of fresh fruit and vegetables in particular, has gone up (round here) by definitely a third over the last year.

Also, a Charity Shop Queen next year.  There was a worrying time, for about 10 years before last year, when it stopped being cheaper for me to get clothes in charity shops, and I switched to supermarkets.  This was because of 2 things.  Firstly, said charity shops raised clothes prices, almost to a one.  When I used to live in Paddington, I queried this in several shops.  I said to them that they were pricing out of their shops the people who really needed to shop there: people on benefits, part time workers with no benefits from their jobs, students, and the elderly on state pensions.  They were, to a one, completely unsympathetic (except in platitude terms), and replied that it is a Charity and Needs To Make Money.  Which really Annoyed Me.  So who is going to shop with you if you carry on this way, I said?  Those ultra middle class people, who will be the ones left able to afford you?  They are more likely to go to a proper ‘vintage’ labelled shop…not a charity shop, where some of the clothes aren’t washed before selling, and you can tell.  Heh.  Anyway – I argued a bit with some of them (and stopped giving them my excess books).  Secondly, the supermarkets in particular got incredibly cheap in their own brand clothes lines (George at Asda, Florence and Fred and Tesco, TU at Sainsburys [my favourite, that one] etc).  Massively cheap.  I hate to think what blind children were stitching these cheap clothes in sweatshops somewhere.  But this has ended.  The supermarkets are still cheap, but not AS cheap as they were.  And charity shops, due to everything else getting so expensive, are now looking cheaper as options again.  Which means I shall go back to them.  Am in a different area now, and like to think the rude volunteers at some of the shops in Paddington were simply bad ambassadors for their charities (its not like I got organized enough to email anyone at Head Offices for a proper explanation of price increases, other than the obvious, like rent).  Plus, I always loved the seeking for treasure element of charity shops.  You might go in there with a strong need for a pair of jeans, but come out with a brilliant jacket or two thick winter tops for under a tenner.  (I do miss jumble sales, two thick winter tops for 20p…)

Following on from this, I want to rehabilitate my sewing machine.  And get my needles and threads out.  As I can’t really afford any news clothes (of any kind from anywhere) currently, I am getting lurid dreams when I lay in bed at night, of cannibalising my old clothes.  I have, f’rinstance, a khaki green jersey top, V neck.  With those annoying three quarter length sleeves that finish at the mid forearm.  How cold I get when I wear this is an irritation to me.  I have lots of tops like this, as they were very in for a while and it was almost impossible on my budget to find a proper length of sleeve![2]  I also have a very impractical similarly stupidly sleeved top with loads of colours and bubbles on, a wild pattern.  A nice green in there too, that matches the other top.  What if I extend the sleeves of the first top with the sleeves of the second one, and then they will be the proper full length?  It’ll be all patchworky and bright and happy and gypsyish – cool!!!  I can extend the bottom too, as I find lots of tops are too short, they shrink up in the wash.  It will also then be a one off, and all exclusive to me!  (Uhuh, or a massive sewing disaster whereby I lose 2 tops!  LOL.  Well – we’ll have to see, eh?)  Imagine, I could do loads of stuff like that.  It’ll be like Pretty in Pink, where Molly Ringwald was a sewing goddess, and the bitchy girls at school laughed at her putting lace on everything….but who got Andrew McCarthy at the end????? (Swoon, still, after all these years.  Still love him in St Elmo’s Fire[3], looking to the camera with those eyes, after being asked how he was by Ally Sheedy, who he loves in secret as she’s with Judd Nelson...yes, anyway, and he says: ‘Me?  It ain’t easy being me…’ and slides those liquid brown eyes away…ahhhhhhhhh.  Anyhoooooow…..)

Speaking of goddesses, sewing or any other, here’s the next resolution.  Spirituality.  I read a lot of it.  I do think on it.  I do rituals here and there.  I say to myself that my life is too full of Fluffhead and Stanley and Saint Mum and Fry and reading books and replying very late to emails from friends and trying to write stories and DOING THIS (which does take about 2 or 3 hours a time then more to add links if I am going to, and check for typos etc etc etc), to actually be properly organised about it.  Then I go around, complaining to myself that I don’t FEEL very connected to the earth, to my own Best Me, and to that intangible whatsity thing I have a notion I have felt before several times, and experienced another several, the effects of.  I need to plan things to do, regularly.  Regularly meditate, just for 5 or 10 minutes, cos that’s actually doable.  Light my candles and sit before my regularly cleaned and seasonally organised altar and just do nothing but be there with it.  See – this is the main problem.  I have this awful sensation of TIME’S AWASTIN’ all the time!  I find it really difficult to do nothing and just meditate, or rest. 

This is a new thing, since the birth of Fluffhead.  Since I did that at late 30s, and am now 40, I have this terrible feeling of hurtling toward the Rest Of My Life, which I feel will be shorter than the bit I just did.  I used to be capable of say, taking a day off work for mental health (where I said I was sick physically of course, as people don’t get that your brain will explode if you see them again for another day and you must Be Alone for 12 hours), and just…Sleep for 5 hours, and then reading a book.  Staring quietly out of the window for an hour at nothing in particular was easily doable also.  I was sliding into a feeling of peaceful nothingness, calm.  Mental quiet.  Nowadays I get no time like that; and when I get a couple of hours I choose to try and do nothing with, my brain yells at me the entire time.  STRIVING for mental quiet is no way to get it!  Sliding into it, that’s how you do it.  Distract self like toddler.  (I have so much sympathy with Fluffhead; the amount of times I have watched his reactions to things and thought that I am still at that same exact stage of mental development.  I want it now!)  But I won’t get there if I don’t make time for it.  I used to do this brilliant thing with Open University exams, told to me by a brilliant counsellor there once.  She advised me, when I told her that I panic in exams and then freak out about the time I’m wasting that I won’t get back and it all feeds itself, etc etc…she said to simply make an exam plan with times, and factor in the panic.  Like this: Turn over exam paper.  Panic without being able to even read the questions (10 minutes).  Read questions slowly and thoughtfully (5 minutes).  The 2 essay questions (30 mins each + 5 mins for plan, which you do not strike through at the end, you leave it clear, so it will also be marked.  In the plan, you just put the very simplest phrases of what goes in each paragraph of the essay – so the examiner can see your thought process and know you know the stuffage, even if you never get to complete the essay…etc).  I need to be that regimented with my spiritual stuffs.  As I have deadlines and tiny times.  And factor in the yelling brain, the desperate ‘but there isn’t enough time!’ feeling.  Just factor it in, and move along with the plan. 

Having recently gone vegetarian again (after having done it twice before, each time for 2 years), I have all these healthy eating ideas for next year too.  I’ve been reading my recipe books and marking the recipes easy to do, quick to do, and above all, cheap to do.  I’ve looked out all my exercise DVDs, and sold the ones that won’t do, and accumulated a few extra ones (2^nd hand, cheap cheap cheap!).  So the routine next year will be Iyengar yoga (to add to the Hatha yoga I’ve done for a few years with varying regularity), some pilates and other stretching, and some basic beginner cardiovascular bounce about in the living room stuffs – as I am so unfit since Fluffhead.  (Unless you count the massive biceps I have from carrying him about?!)

I’m hoping all these things will tally together: I’ll be happier and calmer from knowing I am doing the best I can with the housekeeping money I get (I am managing on less than Fry gets on Jobseekers Allowance per month, and I’m taking care of 3 people’s entire food, medicine, toiletries, clothes, babyfood and nappies on this; and any travel I may do).  I’ll feel virtuous and slightly buoyed by knowing I am building up savings for emergencies and birthdays/occasions etc – a safety net is always a good feeling.  It will be very small, but even trying is worthy.  And obviously, being fitter will help health and mind; being vegetarian will  (hopefully) make me as slim and as clear in the head as it did last time (careful of the cheese though, when I’m Sherbet…).  And I’ll feel calmer and more ALIVE from prioritising spiritual things, and connectedness work.  It’ll basically be like Eat Pray Love without the international travel, money, superbly conversational writing skills, people to chat to and acquiring of new squeeze. (Note to Stanley, who never reads this, but just in case:  very happy with you as my squeeze!)

Discipline.  That’s actually the key to all this.  Organization and Discipline.  I am going to become my old acupuncturist, the German Joska!  He was great.  A model of everything I am listing here that I would like to be.  (Except sewing; but hey – he could do acupuncture, he had skills!)  He was slender, fit, spiritually connected to his idea of Everything, intelligent to a scary degree, and powerfully vegan (and had the best smelling breath of anyone who ever breathed on me – that’s HEALTH for you).

So that’s the plan!  Best laid plans and all that.  Care to accompany me through the Romp of Whatever Reality Turns Out To Be, next year?!!  I could do with the company…come on, you know you want to hear about how I might slip up and eat too much oily pizza which I really couldn’t afford to pay for, while I relax watching soul suppurating Lewis on a DVD I shouldn’t have bought because I twisted my ankle exercising after all this time on the very first go because I was all over enthusiastic?  You know you wanna…

---

[1] …like in Survivors, the proper 70s one, when they got the barter economy going.  If you haven’t seen it, its very good, try to see it.  SO many thought provoking topics in it, not least the one in the last series where Ian McCulloch (that staple of 70s horror, here captured just before he went off to be the Euro-horror god with Fulci and others that he was to become) became a sort of king figure to the remaining peoples of Europe, as they went beyond local societies and started trying to re-start an infrastructure country and pan Europe wide.  Oh, the theoretical arguments Stanley and I had during those series’….We often had to pause the DVDs so I could argue with him at length.  (He was always wrong, of course!  I said there should be no king figure it was a retrograde step; he saw why it was needed as a morale booster, a figurehead.  I said they should keep their new communities small, as globalisation had created so many problems, let the rot come in its own time, I said…he disagreed, pointing out the many good things that had indeed come with globalisation, eventually.)  If you fancy heavy late night arguments about politics and economics and farming methods with your spouse – by all means invest in this brilliantly well thought out original.  ESCHEW the crappy remake!!!

[2] I apologise to anyone reading this who is now bored – first money, then charity shops, now sewing…or anyone who has money, and finds all this talk of squirming round the edges of things because of money tacky.  Or do I apologise?  Do I just say get lost and go and read a different blog?! Or the FT – check your investments!  Ok, that last was tongue in cheek; I WISH I had investments – I have a dream of opening a bank account with The Co-Operative Bank and doing ethical shares and stocks, and having a ‘portfolio’.  But only the ethical stuff.  No gambling with people’s lives for me, that’s cruel, irresponsible - immoral.  And I don’t say that about many things.

[3] Yes, St Elmo’s Fire WAS a good film, shut up!