Damn You, Susan Hill

Saturday: the works! Sunday: a croissant;
Monday: toast & blackberry jam; Tuesday: an almond croissant

I glimpsed about a second of The Woman in Black this evening, a rattling door handle, and Daniel Radcliffe's quivering eyebrow, and I just know I am going to have nightmares. I know it.

I've never understood why people enjoy scary films (or plays!). I can work myself into a fear frenzy quite all of my own accord. I just have to see a wisp of a shadow out of the corner of my eye in the wrong sort of light, in a place where it oughtn't to be and my heart starts pounding.

I once actually shrieked out loud when a shirt came at me out of nowhere in the dim: the same shirt I had seen hanging on the cupboard door when I opened it, that came lurching back at me when I closed it. Hopeless!

Lovely Rice Pudding Again

Rice pudding

It's funny how some things stick in the mind.  Rice pudding and Mary Jane are inseparable to me, in the same way that mashed potatoes and the damn Bodger and Badger song are symbiotic to me (and my sister).

I feel quite the opposite to Mary Jane on the rice pudding front.  It's always been a favourite of mine, and is a particular comfort food: one of the unholy triumvirate -- rice pudding,  box macaroni cheese,  and Gran-Gran's tuna kedgeree. (Condensed milk exists on it's own special, dire emergencies plane.)

Perhaps it's bottom-lip jutting, tantrummy Mary Jane with her flailing arms and fat-fisted fury, who makes me so fond of it. Either way,  I cannot encounter rice pudding and not think of the cross little miss in her highchair, eponymous shoes flying, and the bowl untouched...

Firelighting and Feminism

Tuesday: one banana (I didn't eat the (s)elf-therapy notepad);
Wednesday: smoothie that may have contained pomegranate,
along with other bourgeois fruits, & grapes; Thursday: same again

I am an excellent fire lighter. Excellent. The fires I light burn bright and hot in an almost mundanely dependable fashion. I think my mother taught me the basics; my father threw in tips here and there. I have a method, and I stick to it, and it works.

This skill has – almost more than any other thing in life – been the deftest revealer of male chauvinism to me. Rarely, in a context where there are men and women about and fires to be lit, can I persuade the y-chromosome possessing company that I may -- in fact -- be the best man for the job.

For a person prone to poor circulation and occasional episodes of Germaine Greer-rivalling bra-burning zeal, this fire-lighting issue is something of a challenge. On the one hand, I don't wish to be an emasculating harpy; on the other hand, just bloody let me light the fire because even though I have ovaries I'm better at it than you, you patronising sod! (But please, do feel free to heave the log basket in, I'm not He-Man.)

Many's the night, I have sat cold, and slowly kippered as some fellow's paltry effort smoldered hopelessly in the grate, and I wished I'd been a little bit more Emmeline Pankhurst and a little bit less "Em, oh, um, can I help…"

P.S. Apologies for poor posting record lately – hen weekending followed by horrid lurgy scuppered my good intentions...

Panel Shows with the Canadians

Forgot one! Friday -- bacon roll;
Saturday -- was a full breakfast;
Sunday -- kedgeree; Monday -- a banana

More amusing than watching panel shows with my Canadian flatmate and her lovely friend, is watching them, watching panel shows: apparently we get away with much more over here… there are actual tears tonight. Tears of mirth.

I think I might take a recording of the luscious-haired Canadian two laughing at 8 out of 10 Cats as one of my Desert Island Disks (if ever I am required!).

Make Marshmallow Crispies not War

Honey nut cornflakes and raspberries

I spent this evening in marshmallow crispy mass-production. This seems as rational a reaction as any to a day as significant as this.

And I had a dance party in the sitting room with the lovely Miss(rs) C (what happens when you're married but you keep your maiden name? Ms?).

All in all a productive sort of an evening.

The Big Question…

Rice crispies and raspberries

Where oh where did my other flamingo sock get to?

Do Vampires Have Passports?

Doppelgänger shreddies and raspberries

I am not proud of this admission, but tonight I watched(ish -- part of) the third, fourth? (I don't know!), Twilight film and I found myself asking, "do vampires have passports"?

Based on R-Patz's waterfall antics, I'd say no. That vampire can shift it. But how did they get to Brazil for their honeymoon? It seems unlikely Mr Vampire checked his Mrs on to a Delta flight after the ceremony and teleported (or whatever vampires do) to Sao Paulo, but on the other hand -- in these times of TSA patdowns and biometrics, where does a 200-year-old undead type get a passport from?

Et Tu, Hedgehog?

A lonely banane

I adore hedgehogs. Adore them. Last night, I dreamt about hedgehogs. And do you know what happened…? I got bitten. The cute little hedgehog that I found under a sofa and was utterly enchanted by bit me.

Mostly I am averse emotional incontinence on the internets, but when even your sub-conscious is telling you that the things that you're enchanted by will literally hurt you, well, you are allowed to throw yourself a pity party. I mean if that isn't a metaphor for life's dashed hopes and dreams I don't know what is.

Below, the best approximation of how I feel right now (but then I always was a lousy drawer).

Lousy drawer…

An Accidental Hipster

Oops, I gobbled it all before taking a picture…
It was a cheese burger and chips, and a Bloody Mary

This weekend, I was almost taken for a hipster, on account having the dog on a ribbon: I couldn't find the lead.

I've been knitting too. And I may have been wearing skinny jeans. I'm one artisanal bread away from defecting to London Fields.

My Happy Place

Doppelgänger shreddies
(what was left of them by the time I remembered a photo was required)

I have found my happy place and it is the lobster shack in North Berwick. Give me a garlic butter drenched crustacean and I am one contented lady. I have nothing else to say except Mmmmmmmmm!

Just Add Wine, and Whisky

Bacon rolio

Take one group of old friends, add wine, whisky, plenty of melted cheese, and some good music and you will dance 'til three in the morning, throw shapes to TSwift with a philosopher, watch your most high-powered friend belt out a Tina Turner classic with a hairbrush, and realise that we'll all still be friends whatever happens on Thursday.

I Wanted a Yellow Bedroom

Rice crisps and a banana

When asked what colour I wanted my bedroom to be painted when I was 6 or so, I said pink: not because that was the colour I wanted, but because it's what I thought I was expected to answer. My little sister, the bolder, bumptious one of us was the archetypal tomboy -- short hair, and a violent aversion to skirts. I felt a responsibility to offer the counterpoint to that. If she was the tomboy, then I had to be the girly girl.

I wasn't terribly good at it. For starters I was far too messy -- my bedroom this clutter generating organism -- it remains so even to this day; my hair always flying out of its plait, a halo of fluffy curls obscuring my vision; my socks constantly slumping about my ankles; my knees permanently skinned.

It wasn't that I disliked dresses, or dolls, or pink even. It was just that I liked climbing trees, and building dams and yellow just as much.

When asked what colour I wanted my room to be, I thought yellow, but answered pink.

My bedroom now is yellow (aggressively, birds custardly so); my sister wears a lot of pink, which puts her firmly with the zeitgeist (t'was ever thus!).

An Abundance of Eggs

Blueberry muffin and a strawberry & banana smoothie
(grabbed on the hoof this morning)

Worry not, I am not about to divulge the latest stocktakings re my ovaries -- who knows what mysteries there are there. It is the fruitfulness of my fridge that is the matter in hand. We are abundant in eggs, and jars of mould.

Never have we achieved a goldilocks zone of just enough eggs chez nous. We run in cycles of panic buying, and woeful forgetfulness. I have eaten 6 eggs this week, all of them long since past their sell by date, and still we have at least a dozen left.

Fortunately I inherited my Great Grandmother's cavalier approach to use bys and best befores, so things seldom go to waste round here. Mostly I ignore the dates and work on the principle that if something smells profoundly odd, or fizzes when you eat it, then it's probably best discarded. Otherwise, it's down the hatch and consider it a triumph if you are not sick within 24 hours.

Literary Beverages Part Two

Doppelgänger shreddies and plums

Considerably more embarrassing than my Peter Rabbit inspired fondness for chamomile tea is my gin and orange phase -- inspired, of all things, by a Maeve Binchy book: Circle of Friends, to be specific.

Oddly, for a catholic establishment, the school library was stuffed with Maeve Binchy's and Rosamund Pilcher's -- ripping yarns involving lapsed catholics (in the former's case at least) getting up to all sorts of no good in abandoned cottages and summerhouses. Even to this day I remember vividly my incredulity that a hot bath and a stiff gin offered the sort of dogmatic loophole that a prescription for Microgynon simply couldn't -- but then I always was a contrary sort of a person.

The postlapsarian girls of Circle of Friends drank gin and orange, and in my early days of sneaking drinks, this -- mortifyingly -- was my tipple of choice. The phase was mercifully short-lived, but a phase it was.

Literary Beverages Part One

Doppelgänger shreddies and plums

Some of you may already know that when I was little I thought that chamomile tea must be a sweet-tasting miracle drink, more delicious than horlicks, or ovaltine (back when ovaltine was still delicious), or hot milk and honey. I was desperate to try it. It was the drink given to Peter Rabbit following his misadventures in Mr McGregor's garden -- how could it not be delicious?

When eventually I did taste it, I was quite underwhelmed. This was no tasty elixir: just a watery, slightly nose-tickling insipidness… My impressions otherwise stemmed, I think -- like many things in my early life -- from a fatal misunderstanding of the text: Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail supped on bread and milk and blackberries, after all; it was only my hero, naughty Peter, who was sent to bed with camomile tea to be taken one spoonful at a time…

Still, I'm increasingly fond of it these days. Maybe it's the mug:

Spare Pants

Honey Nut Cornflakes, bananas & raspberries; poached egg, sausage, bacon, beans & toast;
poached egg, sausage, bacon & beans; sausages, bacon & beans; crumpets, raspberry jam & plums

I discovered this week that I am not alone in feeling compelled to pack a spare, just in case, pair of pants when going away -- even though it's been some time since any of us have been required to call on this spare pair for the reason we were encouraged to pack them as children…

Still, every now and then the spares come up trumps as a swimsuitless Miss ML demonstrated swimming in the fairy pools this week…

Fairy Pools

No, Bambi, No

Rice crispies, raspberries & nectarine

In the continuing saga of Bambis versus Iona,  whereby large be-antlered beauties launch themselves at my tiny car every time I drive home,  I remain as yet undented.  Come to think of it, so do they, but I think my poor little Peugeot would come off worse in a stag-automobile altercation.

Fanatical Fido

Banana, spinach, nectarine & mint smoothie

So here is a thing I've been wondering: Downtown Abbey is starting again soon, and Isis the dog is in the promotional photo, but what are they going to do about her (now) unfortunate name. Doesn't seem quite right Lord Grantham fondly cooing her name with all it implies now, but then I suppose Lord Grantham cooing anything is generally bound to make for uncomfortable viewing… Still, Winter is Coming and I love just about any costume drama -- any port in a storm and all that!

Isis, the (non -- one assumes) fanatical pooch.