Back in a bit
I suppose this is it. I'm aware that my updating of this blog has been pretty sporadic this year, and this will continue for the forseeable future. I am now heavily pregnant: all I want to do is sleep. It's like my body is shutting itself down in advance of the main event. Fair enough too. We are as ready as we'll ever be for our new arrival, as far as it's possible to be ready for a new human being...it's bewildering but it's also an adventure.
Giving up work was wonderful. Since then I've seen
Lol and Baby Freya,
Bee,
DL, The Wandering Ms Doyle (all the way from the Antipodes)
and
Lucy.
We are due to see
TL and his lovely girlfriend tomorrow. I've been doing
a lot of laundry.
While I'll still be functioning on Twitter and email until the birth, I'll be back to this once D-Day has been and gone.
Labels: byeeee
Stood by the bus stop with a felt pen
We have moved. I was very sad to leave the flat, but I am adjusting to our new home pretty quickly and all seems to be well. There is plenty of DIY to be getting on with, none of which I can actually do, so poor old
JJ has his work cut out.
In the meantime, London appears to have gone back in time to 1981. I am not very coherent on social and political matters at the best of times (echoing what
The Man Who Fell Asleep just said on Twitter: "I am swinging violently between knee-jerk right-wing anger and wet-blanket, liberal empathy. I will probably settle somewhere in the middle"). However, talk of rioters being "feral rats" makes me uncomfortable.
I think we are probably reaping the whirlwind of underfunding youth services for years. A contributing factor is surely the consumer revolution that has taken place in the last fifteen years or so: we are seemingly obsessed with designer goods and gadgetry. Hence, seeing a shop, kicking the windows in and and taking the fancy stuff you want for free seems in some way justifiable.
Having said the above, I am keen not to excuse the actions of the people who have been smashing up our towns and cities (and lest we forget,
killing people). Let's not forget that the riots began when a peaceful demonstration about a man's death in Tottenham was highjacked on Saturday. I was furious to see some of our town's finest heading into Kingston on the 371 with empty holdalls on Tuesday night, hoping, I suppose, for a bumper haul. I suspect the only thing they came back from town with was a thick ear, given the heavy police presence. Some of those kids couldn't have even been 13.
Where was it said that we are generally 20 years behind America? It's getting on for 20 years since the LA riots, which at least seemed to be actually
about something rather than just wholesale smash and grab.
That's enough of that. Like I said, rarely coherent.
Labels: riots
Honey, let my ghost linger
More time off. This is because I didn't want to swamp the blog with talk of the pregnancy. But we've been through all this before, of course. I have been genuinely busy - I've far too much to do for someone so slow and large, in fact.
I will say this, on the pregnancy front. The baby goes mental for sugar. It had a rave in there when I ate some Reeses Peanut Butter Cups a few days ago. I imagined it was like Bez, lolloping about with a pair of tiny maracas and a blissed-out look on. Anyway.
We are moving in a week and a half. We've been living in this flat for almost ten years, so I have mixed feelings about going. This was our first home, and it is a lovely place. We have good neighbours, it's accessible (but not so accessible that it is expensive) and I get to use the PC while looking out onto trees.
However, it's just no longer practical. It's not a great spot for a small human. The rooms are bitterly cold in the winter, unbearably hot in summer. We are two flights up, which is killing me when I get home every evening, and I have ten weeks (maybe more) to go of lugging my peanut butter'n'chocolate-loving hitcher about.
We are moving to a house. It has a couple more rooms than we are used to. It's less than a mile away, a bit closer to the Thames. I'm looking forward to it, but not, all at the same time. Possibly this is because it's all happening when I am so slow and large.
Life meanders along, heavily and deliberately. My Mum's birthday came and went, and while there was a moment or two of sadness, I treated it as a day like any other. I was spared the weeping and wailing, which was appreciated. We went to a family BBQ. We attended a glamorous wedding reception in Chelsea at which we danced to
our favourite Northern number ever. We saw
Bridesmaids, which was funny but also sweetly sad.
So there you have it. [And not a word about the hacking scandal either. Oops!]
Beyond the sea
Another gap.
We've returned from a week in Dorset. It was utterly peaceful, with nothing to fill the days but eating cakes and scones from
Leakers Bakery and watching the brilliant
Homes Under the Hammer (I mean that sincerely: it's addictive viewing). We even got to see
The World's Greatest Dog (and her accompanying human), which was a special treat. We laughed our arses off when a wave splashed her, which was rather cruel of us...she spent the rest of the walk casting a wary eye at the sea.
I also filled my head with many things
Fey: her autobiography, Baby Mama and 30 Rock season 4. While we're on the subject, I happened upon this today: someone has transcribed
every single line that Tracy Jordan has ever said in the series (eg, “Frank, for all your hard work, please accept this set of solid gold nunchuks.”)
Other stuff is happening. There's a move on the cards (subject to contracts), and a heck of a pile of attendant paperwork to complete. On the baby front, I'm growing steadily larger and each morning brings another frustrating rifle through the one drawer of clothes I fit into. My back pain seems to have gone, which may be because of the acupuncture I've been having, or maybe not. I'm hanging in there.
The next few weeks are busy. More
electronic music/Jarvis, another wedding reception, a weekend away, a couple of catch-ups with some notables, and
GEORGE CLINTON speaking at the British Library. No, I didn't dream that. It really is happening.
Labels: 30 rock, dog, holidays, moving house, my ever-increasing gut
I see your picture, it's the same old frame...we meet again
This evening, I'm going to type a few words about my mother.
It's a year ago today since she died, and tomorrow is the official anniversary. It's not been a great week. But you know - I don't want to feel sad all the time. I'd like to remember my mum at her sarcastic, witty best, and not be weeping and wailing. That does nobody any good, after all. Letting misery define you is not the best idea (I wish I could go back in time and tell the 17 year old me this) .
Anyway, I'm sure she would be pleased to hear that the baby is doing well (my 20 week scan was this afternoon), and that I don't intend to lie face down on the carpet all day tomorrow, weeping. The first anniversary was always going to be the toughest. But life continues on, as well it should.
You've taken the fun out of everything
I'm aware it's been a little while. Thing is, I don't want to do that whole "I'm pregnant, this is what's happening to me
in minute detail" thing. Just as the wedding happened largely offstage, I think that the whole baby thing shall too. No-one really wants to hear about my physiological curiosities, how large I'm getting, and how often my sleep gets interrupted by weird dreams/shooting pains. That's what Twitter is for. [Joke.]
The hayfever has been plaguing me again, and I can't take anything for it (apart from a nasal spray). This has been a pain, and it has also stopped me from doing stuff.
However, we did spend last weekend with the family in Devon. We had a lovely time. It was nice to see everyone, but it was bloody exhausting, and I came back needing more time off to recover from the time off.
Dog bulletin: Bella has taken to jealously guarding the tortoise (little Daphne) on her first trips into the garden. The footage of the dog snapping and snarling at anyone who approached the tortoise pen was both funny and faintly disturbing - as was the video of her trying to pick Daphne up in her mouth. Not ideal for Daphne. Yet again, Bella is confused about what puppies actually look like. I can't quite believe that she thinks hard shells are regular attire for canines, but hey ho.
Labels: dog, tortoise
Round the Horne and into the stratosphere
Bit of a review-type post.
Last week we saw the last in the run of the Horne Section at the Lyric on Shaftesbury Avenue. We enjoyed ourselves so much at the first one that we wanted to go again, and this time, the line-up was too good to miss.
We got to see that dangerous idiot Tim Key once more, with a couple of different poems this time (including one about a milkmaid crapping in a cemetery. Lovely). He also did a duet/lousy dance routine with Alex Horne on How do you like your eggs in the morning? and a loungey version of the Leningrad song that he closed with last time around. There was also some plate spinning (strangely mesmeric) and some outstanding beatboxing from a guy called Shlomo.
Two other acts appeared. Tom Basden was first on after the interval, and I wasn’t prepared for how sweet he was (or indeed, how handsome). He did a couple of fun, light little songs. I am officially a fan. The main event of the evening was Harry Hill, though. I haven’t seen him live since 1992, at a comedy night at university. He was unlike anyone else I’d ever seen do stand up. He did a routine of non-sequiteurs and running gags, jokes that meandered about going nowhere that made sense about half an hour after the set had finished…he was great.
He opened his set with a Smiths classic, which segued into Ernie by Benny Hill – a near perfect marriage of both style and tone of songs. Again, the running gags were in evidence (*holds mike cable up to front row audience member* “Go on, Jaws! Bite the cable! Put us out of our misery!”). The set was a blur, all I can really remember is being bent double with laughter, the tears rolling down my face. He ended the set by doing a number on his ukulele. It was a fantastic end to the evening, and indeed the run.
On Friday night we went to see Will Gregory’s new opera Piccard in Space. We saw bits of this debuted last year. It's about a physicist who goes to the stratosphere in a balloon (true story). It suffered a bit of a mauling from some critics on the Friday morning, but I avoided the reviews and went along with relatively low expectations.
It wasn’t all brilliant - it had patchy moments - but on the whole it was fun, endearingly daft, with lovely orchestration and some engaging turns from the leads. Put it this way, at £15 a ticket you can’t really go wrong, and the Queen Elizabeth Hall is a supremely comfortable and well-appointed venue. As our companion Mr Herriett pointed out – how on earth do you break even with a production like that, when you have to pay a full concert orchestra, conductor, choir and six leads? It’s surely impossible. But of course, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. Why should the pursuit of art be about the pursuit of money?
I salute Will Gregory for having the brass neck to try it, and to the Southbank Centre for bothering to put the show on in the first place. We are extremely lucky to have such an establishment in this country, and we should make the very best use of it before our esteemed government decide to pick it to bits.
Labels: harry hill, horne section, piccard in space, southbank centre, tim key, tom basden, will gregory
