Queen of Wands

Memory from an early 70s childhood

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:13:55 GMT

I was lying in my parents bed next to my mum after dad had gone to work one cold morning in our little terraced house in Old Swan, bored because I wanted to get up and mum wanted to sleep. My space hopper rolled in front of the one-bar electric fire and promptly exploded, waking mum up for good.

I still remember its sad little deflated face.

An uncharacteristic 'writing about what is going on in my life' moment

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:14:28 GMT

I should be packing for Whitby so of course I am here instead.

It has been a busy few days. Thursday night was a trip to the Magistrate's Court with anadel1976. We stayed much longer than planned (seeing a mock trial where the audience was considerably more lenient than the magistrates was a surprise to all the court staff). I now have a Probation Service balloon, a Witness Protection Programme pen and an Inside Justice week cloth bag. Why is it so hard to stop yourself collecting this stuff you don't need, just cos it is free? There was a strange age range too - almost exclusively *either* over 50s *or* under 20s.

After that, we needed sustenance, so we went to Fiesta Mehicana for some food and a long and fascinating conversation about art.

Saturday was Katherine's formal(ish) birthday party at the local Hotel du Vin. After a little hitch with the dress which was ably sorted out by ms_siobhan and planet_andy we headed over there and had a great time - the venue was lovely as was the company and Katherine looked very elegant indeed. It was particularly good to have the chance to chat to people who aren't in York much (and especially to gossip with childeric who is always just the right side of indiscreet while telling you exactly what you want to know :-)

People were taking pictures as the night progressed so there is copious evidence of 'vampire mouth' from the red wine. I'm sure there's something you can do with vaseline to keep your dignity but who ever thinks of these things before the awful moment you're looking in the mirror realising that you've been grinning like a medieval witch and talking nonsense for at least the last hour. Sometimes it is SO traumatic, darlings, not liking champagne.

As a result most of Sunday was spent on the sofa but in the evening I went to meet Cathy WINOLJ to see the Illuminating York installation at King's Manor. Beautiful and atmospheric and a lovely way to start the evening (and it's on for most of this coming week). We got some food and had a bit of a gossip and then it was off to the pub for wendels birthday drinks.

It's been a funny few weeks and a lot of people have been having a hard time of it. Let's hope it eases up a bit between now and Christmas.

In the meantime, it's late and I'm going to see if I can beat my 'pack for Whitby in 45 minutes' record.

Inside Justice week

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 11:13:53 GMT

Not sure if this is national or a Yorkshire thing, but one of the Inside Justice Week events is an open evening at the Magistrate's Court (Clifford Street). I might see if there are any places on the lunchtime guided tour as well.

Anyone else fancy it?

It's what he would have wanted

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:02:35 GMT

Today is the anniversary of the death of blue_condition.

Pete was a man of wide interests. Anyone who knew him will probably have heard his views on the importance of women wearing decent quality lingerie, especially for those of us who require firm uplift. I have a distinct memory of him telling me off for wearing a bra that was definitively past its useful life (apparently) and estimating my bra size through my clothes.

He saw this issue partly as an engineering problem and could expound for hours on the subject, giving it an alarming degree of thought. (Scroll down for the full exposition.)

So in his honour (and with foxy76's advice) I've bought a new bra. This seems like a fitting tribute. It is underwired and lacy, but tasteful, and I'm sure he would have approved.

puritypersimmon and I are going out for a drink tonight and will raise a glass of whisky in his memory. Cheers Pete, you are missed.

Hero

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 10:05:18 GMT

This person gets my vote as the nicest person in Britain, today.

Donation-y stuff

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:06:21 GMT

Some good news and and a pat on the back for the Trust - most of this work is down to our amazing Chair but it's always good to have compliments.

And the NGDT blog - not a blog in the true sense but there's still some interesting stuff on there. If you're interested in that kind of thing of course.

There've been big changes in the law this year - waiting to see how that plays out.

I was going to write about other things, but they have decided they were not interested enough to stay in my head long enough for me to write them down, so that's that for now.

Ultravox vs Adam and the Ants

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:25:28 GMT

I can't decide whether this is great or a hideous mangling of two good songs.

Either way, it's an excuse to listen to Midge Ure's divine voice.

Florence

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:54:21 GMT

Mum: (tossing aside ludicrously expensive copy of Daily Fail) I've run out of things to read.
K: Why don't you read one of my books?
Mum: What have you got?
K: 'A short history of tractors in Ukrainian'.
Mum: What? What on earth are you reading something like that for?
K: But it's good!
Mum: Why would I be interested - it's really not my kind of thing. Honestly!

For anyone who might be interested, or to pass on: Web jobs at York. Happy to chat about the work if you'd like.

Crumbs!

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:58:24 GMT

The Daily Telegraph recently published an article on people who'd had biscuit-related injuries, and it doesn't half make you think some people are quite feckless.

View Poll: #1455723

Pete Fenelon Memorial Fund

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:02:55 GMT

The Pete Fenelon Memorial Fund website has now been established - there are more details on R's recent blog post.

I like the idea of encouraging someone to be more like Pete. Please donate if you can.

Distance learning providers

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 19:06:09 GMT

I'm thinking of studying AS sociology by distance over the next year (not available near me as a face to face taught class unfortunately). Can anyone recommend a good distance learning provider?

You love nature don't you?

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 23:00:21 GMT

My dating technique is not destined to be remediated, at least not this month. The session was cancelled (they are apparently developing a distance learning course instead), but as a single woman in possession of an already-paid-for return rail ticket to London, I was definitely in want of a good time. firedraken, Mark, and three very nice bottles of red wine were a much better option.

On Saturday firedraken wanted to go to the RA to see the Waterhouse exhibition. I have very mixed feelings about Waterhouse. Mum used to love him and kept a print of Hylas and the Nymphs above our fireplace for years. I'm sure I read somewhere that the woman who was the model for that picture died of pneumonia from being made to stand in ponds for hours on end.*

The bloody pre-Raphs are the curse of all redheads. I consider them directly responsible for the many hours I had to spend, as a child, sitting still in one position while mum practised her life drawing. It was a blessing when we got lost on the way to the RA and ended up having Chinese on Carnaby St, ogling shoes in Irregular Choice and jewellery in that expensive but cool place where Katherine gets her rings, eating patisserie in Paul and finally playing Pirates of the Caribbean pinball at an arcade Mark had discovered in Soho which had a solitary working machine.

View Poll: #1453719

* I've never been able to verify this, but it sounds entirely reasonable to me, given my personal experience of what artist's models have to put up with

Because being a leftie and mousing with your rh is apparently weird

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 11:50:23 GMT

View Poll: #1450082

Marcus Brigstocke at the WYP

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 10:05:21 GMT

Who wants to come along to see Marcus Brigstocke doing stand up at the WYP?

View Poll: Sick sense of humour

I could only stare in disbelief as the crowds all left

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 23:22:59 GMT

I was idly wondering today just how many cover versions there have been of Shadowplay by Joy Division - the answer is loads. Have a listen and see what you think.

View Poll: #1444770

I've spent a lot of this weekend listening to old Siouxsie, Jam and Undertones tracks - all sparked off by hearing the original version of The Last Beat of my Heart. Apparently the Undertones are playing at the Bingley Festival on Friday 4th September... not even headlining. The first 45 I ever bought was My Perfect Cousin; the person who told me they were playing hadn't even heard of them.

Added to that was finding out (old news) that Bruce Foxton's wife died a few months ago and that since then he and Paul Weller have made it up - enough for Bruce to attend Paul's dad's funeral which was also earlier this year.

Facebooking

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:37:38 GMT

People complain about the vacuous nature of Twitter and Facebook status updates, and how you never really get to know anything meaningful or interesting about people's lives from the occasional update announcing that they are making a cup of tea.

It struck me the other day that, actually, that kind of thing is small talk, and as such is exactly the kind of thing that steer keeps telling me I should learn how to do better. Apparently it's a crucially important part of human communication, all this apparently vacuous chatter about nothing much.

What you get from a Facebook status update is more or less what you'd get if you saw someone fairly regularly... all the mundane details of someone's life that you chat about idly when you have nothing really to say (but which apparently make a person feel loved and wanted *snort*). I would love the ability to have face to face conversations which consisted simply of this:

Person: I'm having a cup of tea
K: *likes*
Person: *feels loved and wanted*

Sometimes that's the only level of conversation you want with some people, or need to have to maintain some semblance of staying in touch. I like the idea that Facebook is small talk for introverts. It makes it possible to build up a closer friendship at some stage, instead of having the yawning gap of years of no contact at all, by which point it's much harder to know where to start.

I think we should pick a day when everyone changes their status update to record the fact that they're having a cup of tea, or alternatively, *insert beverage of your choice*.

In lieu of any content

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 00:09:03 GMT

Love this beautiful cover.

Maybe thieves just have standards?

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:54:15 GMT

With apologies for linking to an article in the Daily Fail: here's a story about how long it takes to have a bike nicked if you leave it unlocked in a city centre - Liverpool came out best. Still not great, as it was pinched anyway, and 'Liverpudlians not as quick off the mark as London bike thieves' is hardly a selling point.

Years ago when my uncle was living in Belfast, he tried to have his car pinched because it was a complete wreck and he couldn't afford to have it mended. He left it unlocked on the Falls Road, assuming that with its fearsome local reputation for pilfering and vandalism the car would be gone in a matter of hours. Three days, it took, for his car to be pinched and burned out somewhere.

Happy solstice!

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 21:10:48 GMT

noctulita and I went to Kilnsea (near Spurn Point, on the north bank of the mouth of the Humber) to watch the sun rise over the sea. It's a long journey and we made it with only a few minutes to spare. Well worth it though, the sunrise was stunning, with just enough space between the horizon and a thick bank of cloud above the sea to watch the sun rise for ten minutes before it disappeared again.

We then took a rather tortuous route back through the Wolds and Howardian Hills to Husthwaite (near Thirsk) to have breakfast with my aunt before finally getting back to York soon after 9am. This part of the trip took us through Wetwang (in memory of Richard Whiteley) and past the Cittie of Troy turf labyrinth near Brandsby. It was beautiful.

Written in the stars

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:19:24 GMT

What are the chances of steer and this boy being related?

Tonight at noon

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:26:08 GMT

I've been watching Come Dine With Me recently (due to the pernicious influence of themeanestcat :-) One thing that's really struck me is how one person's negativity and manipulative behaviour can change the outcome of the whole competition.

In one set of episodes, one of the competitors responded to being threatened by the woman he perceived to be his closest rival with a nasty personal attack, at the dinner table in front of the other competitors. This reduced the woman, who was hostess for the evening, to tears, in her own kitchen, all because she was apparently pretentious. She was indeed pretentious, but knew a lot about food and made a nice job of what she cooked for the evening. She didn't stand up to the arrogance and rudeness of this person and neither did anyone else. I should say that he'd already done his evening and received his marks and presumably considered himself 'safe' provided none of the other competitors came up to his own high idea of himself. Actually I think he was annoyed that she did 'pretentious' a lot better than he did!

Her cooking was marked down, partly because of the unpleasant atmosphere this man created by his persistent nasty comments, and partly (I suspect) because the other competitors agreed with it and wanted to take her down a peg or two, but didn't want to say so to her face. He won the competition, she came second.

In the second example, one of the competitors ran her own cafe and was married to a chef at a high-class restaurant in their town. Another of the competitors constantly put her down from the very beginning of the competition, openly said that he thought her husband had done all the cooking for her (he clearly hadn't, as she was filmed doing the lot herself), said that as their home was full of cookery books they must all be his. It made me angry - partly because it undermined her confidence, and she let it get to her. Partly because again nobody else called him on it, yet he was blatantly manipulating the situation to undermine her - again he'd already done his evening by the time she did hers. He won, she came third.

Are people too stupid to see when they're being manipulated like this, or is it somehow human nature to get behind someone who's being a shit if they're saying thing you don't have the balls to say for yourself?

It seems like undermining your closest competitor with could-be-true accusations, regardless of your own failings, really works as a winning strategy.

I thought of that again when listening to David Cameron recently, calmly insisting that as the Labour Party is so corrupt, the refuge for the moral majority is the Tory Party. Someone who can claim that his party is 'clean' despite recent, public and lengthy evidence to the contrary (Caroline Spelman, Robert Atkins, Douglas Hogg, Julie Kirkbride, Andrew MacKay, James Gray, Michael Spicer, James Arbuthnot, David Davis, Michael Ancram, Alan Haselhurst, Stewart Jackson, David Heathcoat-Amery, Derek Conway, Peter Viggers, Anthony Steen, Nicholas and Ann Winterton, Christopher Fraser... ) is quite coldly making political capital out of the fact that the disaffected will support him while knowing perfectly well he's not telling the truth. And it pisses me off, if anything, more, that the bystanders who know he's lying are going along with it anyway.

Blood isn't always red, apparently

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 20:13:53 GMT

I discovered that I'm anaemic again after being sent away from the blood donation centre last week with stern instructions to eat iron tablets like smarties and not darken their door for a year. Bah. On the plus side, at least it explains the inability to concentrate or exercise for the last couple of months.

More seriously - to me - is that it means I have to ration drinking tea to more than an hour before or after taking iron supplements or meals. That means pretty much not drinking tea, as you get better absorbtion from iron tablets by drinking them with orange juice on an empty stomach. I drink tea so weak that you wouldn't think it would have an effect... but still... can't be doing with this. This report says that if you drink tea all the time your body gets used to it and it doesn't make you anaemic. Hopefully this is true. But it looks like hearty amounts of broccoli and orange juice from now on.

Thank you to whoever bought me my anonymous present from February - it arrived today and I'm really looking forward to reading it.

I was at a meeting in London first thing on Friday which meant catching an early train. It was a hot day and I was sitting on the sunny side of the train on the way back, reading a biography of Dirk Bogarde (long, but good). I fell asleep and woke with a start to find the person opposite, who was a rather cute young man, smiling at me. It was only later I realised it was probably because I'd woken myself up snoring. Just not one of life's natural Ladies I guess.

Who does this shit?

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 23:02:11 GMT

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/north_yorkshire/7972165.stm

Scamming bastards.

Meme from Siobhan

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 14:32:18 GMT

Baking cakes

Something I usually do for other people. I have no particular talent for this, just follow the recipe ;-) Actually, it's hard to find the motivation to cook at all unless it's for someone else too. If only the cat liked curry.

Patience

ms_siobhan</lj>seems to think I'm gifted with extraordinary patience given the situation with my cat Vienna. (The long slow path to taming him is still going on after 3 years.) In daily life I'm extremely impatient a lot of the time, though.

Corsets

Love them. I think I was first introduced to them by firedraken</lj>many years ago, and bought my first corset for one of my first trips to Whitby perhaps in 2000. They are beautiful, comfortable and look great, and one day I'll finish that one I started making 3 years ago :-)

Feminism

My family wasn't especially sexist for the 1970s but I did get into feminism at a young age mainly through observing the way family dynamics worked, and seeing how it worked at school later on. Some things are so glaring that it would take a fool not to realise they're discrimination.

I think what annoys me most about sexism is that it's so stupid. So bloody stupid. There are occasions where distinguishing between genders is legitimate and appropriate, but most of the distinctions, certainly that existed at the time, were utterly pointless irrelevances.

Cumbria

Hmm... not sure I want to talk about that really! I lived in Cumbria from the ages of 5-18. It left me with an intense hatred of small, insular communities and the realisation that it is easy to feel social exclusion even if you have some kind of status within a community. My dad was a village junior school head teacher so everyone in the villages we lived in knew me and my brother. We were included in lots of ways, but I never really felt like I belonged. It's a very, very white place in a way which never felt entirely natural.

Going to university was both a massive revelation and a relief - I finally met loads and loads of people I had things in common with. Certainly moving to somewhere where people don't know your business and only your acquaintances can be bothered to gossip about it has improved my state of mind hugely. My brother loves the place and would never leave, so perhaps it's about personalities too.
I discovered yesterday that the best way to get across a busy road at rush hour is to wear a short skirt. Who'd have thought it *laughs*

Happy international women's day!

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 21:17:12 GMT

A couple of months ago I offered to help out one of the organisers of the local International Women's Week York events (programme here). She asked me why I didn't volunteer to do something and the answer is that I don't really have a lot to offer in terms of running an event or putting on a play or whatever.

But... then it struck me I could lay out a goddess labyrinth, which would be in keeping with the theme of the year. So with sterling help from sprezzatoura and noctulita that's what we did this morning.

Huge thanks to them both, and a big thanks also to wendels for checking workings and advising on ratios ;-)

It doesn't look too exciting I know, particularly since some miscommunication happened and we have no signage till tomorrow, but just having done something symbolic to mark the day makes me happy. The bonding experience with women friends (wrangling long strips of cotton sheet in the wind and working out how to translate a labyrinth map into actual lines on the ground) was pretty good in the end too.