The Mayor and Voting and Stuff

I don't live in London, and I think Boris Johnson is funny on the telly, but I'm gutted that he's been voted in as mayor.

Politics runs in my family. My paternal grandfather was a labour MP who was on the Jarrow March, and I've several Mayors in my lineage, as well as trees planted and streets named.

I believe passionately, and (ask anyone) quite boringly, that everyone who can, should vote. I hound people, badger them to get out on voting day. These days more and more I hear the line - 'but they're all as bad as each other', 'I don't want any of them to win'. In which case I tell people to get out and make the effort and, at the very least, spectacularly spoil their paper instead.

I believe that an additional box should be added to every voting paper. It should come after all the candidates and be called - 'None of the Above'. In this way, people who want to protest can be counted like everyone else. There will always be people who spoil their papers by accident, but those who do it deliberately ought to be counted too, how else will people feel that their voice is being heard, and how else will the system be able to be changed to reflect the strength of feeling? But it will also place responsibility back with the individual. It is your right, it is your privilege, and it isn't irrelevant. Get out and vote.

So, back to my preferences. I can't help but vote Labour. I realise the party isn't what it once was. But apart from anything else I can't bear to vote Tory. And I can't help but feel that the Lib Dems are just a bit wet. It's not that I don't agree with some of their policies, and they've definitely had the best leaders (Paddy and Charles), but since they sacked Charles Kennedy, they've just got a whole load more boring in my book. But I think it goes beyond the rational. I think that with me it's probably a genetic thing. A bit like supporting a football team that repeatedly lets you down. You just keep on supporting with blind faith, knowing, hoping, that one day they'll pull round and deliver the goods for you, the long suffering believer.

The thing is that Red Ken is (in my book anyway) a proper politician. He stands for something, and it's a personal, passionate thing with him. It's taken him into difficult places, it's alienated him from the party and vice versa, but he's stayed firm and drawn a line and refused to cross it. And whether I agree with the things he's done (bendy buses et al) or not, I admire and respect him. Boris is a character as well, but I think he's been put up by the Tories as a 'celebrity' candidate, someone people might vote for because he's been on the telly, and as such, someone who might topple Ken.

Well, now he has, and Ken's leaving speech was a dignified and inspiring thing. I hope it made more than a few of the idiot Boris voters think that they might just have made a terrible mistake. So now we wait, we wait to see what BJ will do to the London that Ken has made great. Enjoy, BJ voters, this is all your fault...!

I'm Sorry...

...but I just wanted to say:

May the fourth be with you!

(had to be done)

Happy Bloggiversary To Me

Yep, it's one year today since I started this blog, since I started blogging. I had grand plans for a long retrospective, a round up of my first year. My hopes, dreams and aspirations, a literature round up with a top five book list. All manner of delightful self-indulgent things.

Instead, after work I went to my friend's and we went for a pint. And now I'm too tired to do it justice. This high-flying executive nonsense is exhausting. In at 8, out at 6, lunch at my desk, yada, yada, yada.

Any hoo, this weekend is a bank holiday and it's set to rain non stop, so plenty of time to catch you up then. and remind me to tell you about the upsetting incident of the news editor and my big mouth...

The First Sunburn of the Year

I was in London yesterday, at a conference for my new job. It was important to do it for all sorts of reasons, but inside I was gutted. It was the loveliest, sunniest day of 2008 so far and after a long hard week in my old job, my first acting up to cover Mutton, all I wanted to do was be on the allotment getting some seeds in the ground. Still, I did my duty and finally got away at about 6pm.

The journey back through London to the station was brilliant, the tube was stuffed with people who had obviously trawled through their wardrobes, shaking the mothballs out of their summer clothes. During the day the sun was powerful, but by 6pm they all looked slightly under dressed and a bit chilly. There were flip flops, tiny hotpants, Elvis-like sunglasses, hats, caps and titchy vest tops. There had also been some sporting events taking place, so there were tribal clutches of fans, faces painted, scarves held high, chanting loudly - and many drunk.

Almost all of them had been blessed with the first sunburn of the year and were clearly unaware of the fact. It increased my envy, I imagined them running towards the sun, shedding clothes and inhibitions on the way - exactly what I would have done given half a chance. The white silhouettes (can you have a white silhouette?) where sunglasses had sat were funny, the red necks and bald spots too. Lopsided women who had been sitting side on to the sun with one red side and one still pasty white.

The joy was short-lived as the train home was packed with smelly, snoring football fans.

And today, my only day off for 11 days and the first chance to get to the allotment in weeks, it's pouring with rain. Sigh.

Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier

Hmmm. I like Tracy Chevalier, I particularly enjoyed The Girl With A Pearl Earring. I was intrigued by this as it was a move away from art and over to literature, taking William Blake as its subject.

According to the Daily Express it's "an ambitious, impressively researched novel" and I feel sure it was, the bibliography would seem to testify to this at least. However, there was disappointingly little Blake it in.

I learned a lot about Dorset button styles, mustard factories and chair making, I also learned a bit about the attitudes in London at the time towards the French Revolution. But, I didn't really understand what William Blake had to do with it all.

He was the neighbour of the main protagonists and did appear in the story, but it seemed almost too token to make much difference. He may have been the original inspiration for the novel, but I felt he ended up as an incidental character, almost an unnecessary aside to the rest of the plot.

Maybe I'm being too harsh. Maybe Blake is a notoriously difficult character to research as so little is known about him. Maybe what Tracy Chevalier has done is breathe life into a hitherto shady 2 dimensional character. However, I suspect not.

By far the most interesting thing for me in this whole flimsy and rather unnecessary tale was the depiction of London in the late 1700s. I love the thought of living in Lambeth village, or being able to look across the fields to the Thames and Westminster bridge, or to travel north into the countryside to visit Hampstead.

I spend a lot of time for work in Thurrock at the moment, that area on the north bank of the Thames in what has become known at the 'Thames Gateway'. This area is the largest regeneration site in Europe and as such will become a building site for much of the next 15 years as thousands of new homes and the accompanying infrastructure is built all over it. It is currently a very green, strangely rural place where it is indeed possible to stand and look over fields to the Thames Estuary – not, I fear, for much longer...

Arbeit Macht Frei - My Arse!

So, the job stuff. Sorry it's taken a while to get to it, but sometimes when you're so in the middle of something, the last thing you want to do is drag it all up and explain it again. So, the short (ish)summary:

• I fell out with my immediate boss, work became a source of misery
• I continued to be miserable for ages
• Himself lost his job and money got really short
• I finally pulled my finger out and started looking for a new job
• I was offered a new job but didn't think I really wanted it
• I went to hand my notice in and discovered on the same day that my immediate boss was off for 6 months on a secondment
• I offered to stay as long as I could act up into my manager's role, take all the flack and responsibility as well as the salary and job title to go with it
• I was confident that my boss wouldn't return after the secondment and that I would then be in prime position to get that job
• The next boss up was his usual woolly self and fluffed the negotiation, in the process I decided I didn't really want the job, particularly working for such a jerk
• I realised that this weak faffing and pathetic leadership epitomised absolutely everything that was making me miserable in the job
• I quite for real and accepted the other job
• I am now acting up for my boss with a small salary increase while I work my ridiculously long notice period
• I am also moonlighting over at my new place to get to know my new team
• I start my new job in July
• I will be paid a lot more money and have a team of 8 to manage
• If I can stick it out for 12 months I will be able to move back into something I really love but at a much higher level
• I think I'll be happy there, they are nice people, despite working in a concrete jungle
• I am finding the acting up at the old job fine, but then that's always the way once you've quit...!

So there you have it, accompanying all this has been endless soul searching, long drawn out discussions with Himself and various others, fear, insecurity, anger, envy, anxiety, tears and stress. But now it's done and I feel better than I have in months and months. Watch this space for news of the new challenge as things unfold...

The Shotgun Wedding

So, yesterday was the day of my brother's shotgun wedding to his pregnant girlfriend. It was supposed to be a small and stress-free affair, but unless you run away and get married in secret with strangers as witnesses these things are never small and stress-free. It was made doubly problematic for us in that they had decided to get married where we live rather than where they live, so we couldn't even run away at the end of the day because everyone was staying with us. Sigh.

Boy oh boy. I think there must be something wrong with me, but I just can't cope with family gatherings. My own family is bad enough - not all of them, but certainly the close ones. And yes, I realise I'm probably going to hell for admitting it, and it probably indicates I have 'issues', but I don't care. It's all about keeping it real and that means admitting that when I'm in a room with my mum and brother for longer than about 30 minutes I want to kill them both.

When you add to my slightly dysfunctional irritated family a whole other dysfunctional divorced family from Holland and bear in mind that they are meeting for the very first time outside the chilly registry office, then you have an environment in which trouble could flare up at any moment. Throw into the mix a 6 months pregnant bride, a groom in a kilt, a windy day and lots of wine and the recipe for trouble is almost complete.

Sadly though, because I was quite looking forward to a post wedding punch up, or at least a good shouting match, the day passed off almost without incident and a good time was had by all. The only slight blot on the landscape was the bride's warring parents. It seems that the father left the mother when the 3 sisters were quite young and has since found himself another, younger wife. The mother is a grudge bearing mentalist and it has been difficult for the sisters to maintain relations with the father, not aided by his moving to Germany.

So the end of the day arrived and with it one drunk and sobbing sister, begging me (in Dutch) to invite the mother back to my house so that she could go and spend some time with her father without feeling guilty about the mother sitting alone in her B&B. By this stage I had my sights firmly set on my pyjamas, a re-run of the Great Escape and a nice cup of tea, not to mention that Himself was being a curmudgeonly old git and had already snuck off to string some zeds on the sofa. What could I do - I had to say yes, albeit through gritted teeth.

It then transpired that the boyfriend of the middle sister, in an extraordinary display of chivalry, had decided to accompany the mother so that she wouldn't feel bereft and abandoned by all the family. Excellent. I called a taxi. Then the middle sister decided to come too, being unable to leave her mother either. I ordered another taxi.

Upon arriving at the house in taxi one with the sister she broke down in sobbing hysterics feeling torn between two parents and upset that she may not see her father again for many months. The mother then arrived in taxi number two and the sister had to stop crying so that the mother would not know how upset she was. Sigh. They all then sat around drinking tea and coffee and smoking like chimneys while I desperately tried to think up ways of getting rid of them. Luckily my new sister-in-law provided the solution....

...she had left her maternity trousers in her mum's guest house that morning when she was getting changed, she had nothing else to wear and couldn't leave the hotel room without them. She too had been hoping to go out with the father. So it was that my mum had to take the Dutch crowd back to their B&B, collect my new sister-in-law's pregnancy pants and drive on to the honeymoon suite. The newly weds had by then given up as it was so late and ordered room service.

I went to the off-licence and bought a bottle of wine figuring that the only way to tip the exhaustion into complete numbness was booze.

Happy days...

Absence Makes the Heart...

Sorry I've been gone awhile, things are busy. I'm losing weight (which takes up LOADS of time), today is the shotgun wedding so we're surrounded by flapping family, and I've got a new job and have handed in my notice at the old one (hurrah!).

When things settle down around here (hopefully tomorrow, Sunday latest), I'll update you on all this and more...

Are they insane?

Have you heard about the Large Hadron Collider? I hadn't until last weekend. It's a machine that cost £4.4 billion to create, it's located 300ft under the alps in a tunnel that is 17 miles long and up to 12 stories high. OK so far, if a bit James Bondy.

Its purpose is to recreate the conditions that existed in the seconds after the big bang that created the universe, and it will do this by smashing pieces of atoms together at high speed. Hmmm, not so sure...

...now, I'm no rocket scientist (no really), but I imagine the conditions that existed mere nano seconds after such an enormous explosion can't have been particularly hospitable. I'm guessing that it wasn't like the aftermath of the fireworks on New Year's eve, a slight ache in the neck and a desperate need to run home, warm up, have a pee and drink some more warm champagne.

Apparently when the pieces of atoms collide they will create temperatures 100,000 hotter than the core of the sun. Yikes. This doesn't sound very safe. I'm no health and safety Nazi, no sireee Bob, but it would take more than some oven gloves and a pyrex jug to cope with that kind of heat. What on earth is this machine made of? Reconstituted Supermans?!

Then, as if you're not quite uneasy enough at this prospect comes the "and finally..." cutesy finish. It seems that another part of this Death Can is called (yes I know) 'Alice'. Ah, I (metaphorically) hear you cry, this must be the part that makes kittens and puppies? Nope. This is the part that makes extra dimensions and black holes. WHAAAAT?!!!!

How the hell (which is what the planet is likely to become in July when they switch this Hades Vortex on) has anyone got permission for something like this? Mohammed Al Fayed needs to drop the Crocodile Wife nonsense and turn his conspiracy radar onto this. Trust me on this - WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE.

I mean, creating temperatures hotter than the core of the sun in a tin box under the Alps. That can't be safe, at the very least the snow would melt and ruin the skiing. And it cannot be without consequences to generate black holes. Don't black holes consume all matter around them? And presumably this consumption includes Hadron Collider machines of all shapes and sizes, regardless of how 'large' they are. It's not even as if they can have a test run.

Thankfully mine is not the only sane voice in this slavering mousse of insanity, some concerned environmentalists in Hawaii have taken out a law suit to try and prevent these white coated nutters from destroying life on earth. Bless, I'm so pleased they have but I suspect that this may be like someone trying to stop a juggernaut with a postal order.

So before July make sure you kiss your loved ones, have that final fling, take that once in a lifetime holiday and don't make any daft plans like laying out asparagus beds, planting box hedges or starting to save money.

Me? I'll be working my interminably long notice period before I start my new job, but more of that later...

The Wandsworth Allotment Holder

On Dirty Sexy Money this evening there was reference to a sexual position called The Italian Banker. Curious, I did some research - desk, not actual (chance would be a fine thing).

It appears that opinion is divided about which gymnastic arrangement constitutes an 'Italian Banker'. Some say its a woman posing crablike above a man, both facing up (ouch). Others moot that it refers to an early porn film in which a standing woman bends over to offer a seated man some oral relief (the man is a bank employee and likes his pizza and pasta, what can I tell you - BadaBing).

Apparently, if it's the crab version then the woman will burn 912 calories - but this seems like flawed data to me as surely it would depend on how long she could maintain the position before every joint in her body gave out as to how many calories she dispensed with? In my case I would probably burn around 9.12 calories...

Anyway. All this led me to thinking about the invention and subsequent coining of new sexual positions. Just like territories in the New World, this is uncharted territory that is ripe for the plucking (I SAID PLUCKING). So here are some I devised earlier:

The Wandsworth Allotment Holder - a woman bends at the waist gripping a particularly entrenched dandelion, the man penetrates from behind, and as the woman rocks back and forth, tugging ever more furiously on the stubborn root the man looks to the horizon and says, "hmmm, I don't like the look of those clouds"

The Norwich Car Booter - in a windy park and ride on a Sunday morning a man sits on a picnic chair behind a flimsy pasting table covered in knick knacks . A woman sidles up to the table, eyeing his 12 inches, "I'll give you a quid for the lot", she says. The man responds, "you don't get many of them to the pound"


...While struggling to come up with the next smutty aside I very nearly crossed the line and made a tasteless comment about someone from Angus giving head - forgive me. Perhaps it's a sign that I should, in the words of the indomitable Bianca Jackson, "leave it!"...

So, it's April Fool's Day

It has never loomed large in my legend, AFD. My family was not a huge clan of pranksters, and without some decent planning it's actually quite hard to pull of a good 'fool'.

I do remember when I was a child reading books and comics and feeling like it really ought to be a more hilarious event than it ever was. Endless tales of boys in short trousers with muddy knees and catapults visiting jolly japes on milk-sop girls with ankle socks and ribbons made an impression on me, sadly one that I was never able to live up to - on account of the fact that I wasn't one of the famous five and it was 197o something and not 1930 something.

Anyway, one fateful AFD, the only one I can remember taking any significant role in at all, we were 'between houses'. In the process of relocating to the North East, we were staying temporarily in my grandparents' house, both of whom were already in their 70s.

Having read some comic or other, probably one I found at the back of the wardrobe full of fur coats, nestled up against a centaur and a Bakelite construction set, I had devised a series of chortlicious quips that I felt sure would endear the whole extended household to my mischievous nature. The first, and it turns out, last, was the age old tradition of substituting the sugar with salt.

My grandparents used a sugar bowl and breakfasted every day on porridge. I crept down early and effected my cunning plan. An hour later I was dumbstruck with embarrassment as my elderly relatives were dreadfully, awfully sick.

I decided to opt for the 'it wasn't me' defence, convinced that if I denied it vigorously enough and with a passion born of righteous indignation, everyone would come round to my way of thinking and know that the truth was on my side. It wasn't. They didn't. I was punished.

The thing is though, even now, 30 years on, what stays with me is not the joke (it wasn't funny), nor the punishment (I can't even remember what it was), it was, and still is, the crippling cringing disgrace, the utter disappointment in myself that I had made my beloved grandparents so ill. The memory still makes my face burn with shame today, made worse as I remember their attempts to be good sports about it all.

So, while it may have delivered one of the defining moments of my childhood, taught me a valuable lesson about thinking through the repercussions of ones actions, on the whole I think AFD should be quietly dropped from the calendar. Least said and all that...

Oh, By The Way...

...I drank too much wine and spent most of the week watching films, hence lack of witty urbane Easter week off posts.

I WAS going to get gung-ho on the allotment but the blizzards put paid to that.

I have joined Fat Fighters again though - a new branch this time, so watch this space (you'll know it's working when it starts getting lighter as my bulk stops eclipsing the sun).

And I'll update the job stuff when I've stopped being tossed on the horns of a dilemma...

I Started Writing...

...a post about how I find it hard to finish things, but I couldn't be bothered to finish it. Apart from aforementioned problem, it was just a dull old post, so think yourselves lucky.

On a brighter note, I have picked two Post of the Week winners on the trot. The first nomination was Big n Juicy who wrote about the necessary health and safety precautions one should follow if planning to crucify oneself, very Eastery.

The second was this week's winner, Tom's Exit Pursued By Bear.

Now, if only I had as much luck picking lottery numbers...

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

This is a wonderful book. It contains the perfect combination of the finest ingredients – the characters are colourful and believable, the plot is carefully crafted and sophisticated, the writing is eloquent and the genre defies boundaries.

The Shadow of the Wind is a thriller, a love story, a coming of age tale, a fantasy, a gothic horror – you name it, it’s there. It is a tale within a tale, a book within a book.

I made one mistake when reading it - I took too long about it. There’s a lot that happens and I wish I’d spent more big chunks of time reading at the start of the book. But I’ve been busy and instead I had lots of short reads, normally when I was falling asleep, or slightly tipsy. The consequence was that I had to keep going back to double check details.

It’s a satisfying, enchanting book. It doesn’t pull any punches, but there is a wonderful sense of justice being done at the end of it. It's up there with The Book Thief. Top read.

I've been Eastered

OK

Easter came, Easter went. We ate food, I drank wine.

The boat is currently out of the water having its bottom sanded scraped and various patches of rot discovered, wept over, railed against and finally patched (by Himself I hasten to add, not me!) This means that he's out of the house for approx 9 hours a day with Hank.

I'm at home and have this week off work - Hurrah! I had planned to spend a week catching up on the allotment. However, the blizzards, hail, torrential rain and sub-zero temperatures have so far put paid to this. To date I have mainly sat around the house, cooked food for ravenous men to eat with ne'ry a thank you and washed up endlessly.

Today I have another interview and am only writing this post because I'm supposed to be drafting a 10 minutes presentation! Having said that, once today is out of the way, I promise I will finely craft some pithy posts to amuse and enlighten you as the week goes on. Unless I drink too much wine and spend the rest of the week under a duvet watching Disney films, watch this space...!

Further delights to be 'looked forward' to this week include: trying to find enough sacking to cover my bloated body for presentation at the shotgun wedding of my brother in April; sitting like a microwave meal in the hairdressers for hours on Saturday getting my roots done before handing over my entire wage packet for the week to pay for the indignity; trying to remember to join fat fighters again to reduce size of bloat a tad as there are not enough dress sizes left to grow into!

More soon my friends...