Kitchen Porn

Oh the joys of a weekend spent decorating a cardboard box, watching The Tudors, writing and reading...! If only every day could be like today, including the dusting of snow that greeted me upon the pulling apart of the curtains. One thing above others though stood out: a self-indulgent dive into the latest Lakeland catalogue.



Do you know of Lakeland? If you do, you will have probably smiled and nodded in recognition at my last sentence. If you don't, prepare to have your domestic life changed for evermore. I have never made a mystery of my dislike for house-related annoyances and I won't tell you about it again. I do, however, have a weird soft spot for house-related things and this explains why the simple thought of Williams-Sonoma or Crate & Barrel gives me a frisson of excitement almost on a par with thinking about the bags delicately perched on steel hooks poised on glass tables in Harvey Nichols.

I have spoken to many women about this and we all concur: there is something about the Lakeland catalogue that screams porn from its very cover and it works every time. I spent a very happy, very long time in its company this weekend, over-salivating over the brand new brownie pan (part of the bake to take range, genius), over their bumper pack of 120 assorted doylies (I could fold them into paper doves and use them as Easter decorations), over the vintage-looking Tala icing sets (in tins, I tell you, they come in tins), over the 3-in-1 jelly mould (the possibilities are endless or maybe just three), over the Valentine's Day pages (heart-shaped moulds, heart-shaped sprinkles, heart-shaped pasta, I was in heart-heaven) and over just about everything else. It's all so delectable, so well-photographed, so absolutely useful, so damn good for nothing I ever do that I want to get there tomorrow morning first thing after the vet and buy the entire store, including ten banana guards. Porn at its absolute very finest.

From Banal Fiction To Movie Masterpiece

A few weeks ago, I was dragging my heels in the local library. I stumbled upon the French books and decided to pick something new, or at least new to me. Pity that the selection was so tiny and so obvious (Le Rouge et Le Noir for God's sake, who has studied French literature and hasn't read that one?!) that I had to resort to Le Journal de Bridget Jones or Bridget Jones's Diary. I know, you'll wonder where I have been for the past, oh I don't know, twelve, maybe thirteen years? I know that Fielding's novel is the original chick lit but I cannot say that even its standing as supreme crap-a-rola for girls ever enticed me past the back cover.



In French though, it seemed different. Indeed it seemed almost impossible that a male-obsessed, occasionally silly little fatty could even exist by virtue of tongue-relations in the land of the stick-thin and of le petit macaron. Of course France isn't all super-stylish and skinny my friends, I've lived there, but the myth persists, undeterred by statistics that trumpet les français too are getting fatter by the minute. Yes, but... you know statistics... two people, four slices of cake, one person eats three slices, one person eats one, statistics tell us that they both had two each. Moral of the story: proceed with caution when in France, chances are everyone you meet will still be thinner than you and everyone you know from home, minus twenty pounds.

But I digress because Le Journal de Bridget Jones may be in French but the story is still très anglaise. In truth though, I have nothing piercing to say about Bridget Jones, in this or in any other language. Of course the effervescent musicality of French means that banal pieces of information très obvious to any Briton sound like philosophical musings delivered by a witty, upper-class professor, see this bit right here:

Bref, tout le monde célèbre cet été exquis alors que je me morfonds. C'est peat-être la faute de notre tradition climatique. Nous n'avons pas la mentalité qu'il faut pour jouir du soleir and du ciel sans nuages qui sont pour nous des accidents rarissimes. Devant ce phénomène traumatique, nous paniquons: un instinct puissant nous dicte de fuir le bureau en courant, de nous déshabiller le plus possible and de nous coucher, a bout be souffle, dans l'escalier de secour.

The rest is a mix of slight vulgarity and same old same chick idiocy. Upon completion I was afflicted by a strong urge to watch the movie (and its sequel too, in one sitting). I realised then that, for all of the flack Hugh Grant (l'idiot anglais) and Colin Firth (he who only ever plays Colin Firth) normally get, the film-makers have taken a banal, average novel and have transformed it into a comical masterpiece I could never tire of watching. And I know that in the early days Bridget aficionados reeled at the casting of a then insignificant blondie as their fiesty (and brunette) heroine but the truth is, Renée Zellweger gives us a Bridget that is at once vulnerable, tender, intelligent, eventually self-assured, very funny and not at all vapid nor banal. In its very charming denouement Bridget Jones's Diary isn't chick lit par excellence any longer; it's a Hollywood miracle.

All Systems Go

It has been one of those weeks. You start on Monday morning and five minutes later it is 8 pm on Friday evening. I don't mean to sound ungrateful, especially after such a draught in more ways than one, but I don't like it when time flies by so quickly that I don't know what day it is. I don't like it because this week I didn't manage to track anything at all of what I was thinking or doing not just on here but on the red Moleskine that only a handful of weeks back was teasing me, full of promises, opportunities, dreams and as-yet-un-thought ideas.

I flicked through it early and its latest pages are immaculate and very nearly still stuck together, as if I hadn't lived the days at all, but still functioned in expectation. I may have to up the ante next week and write deep into the night if need be, because I do not like this gap, not one bit. Meanwhile, work at the poet's has been steaming ahead. I returned home with an armful (make that two, actually) of poems to transcribe, a file to finish and a database to create. I am not quite done yet and there is the distinct possibility that part of Saturday will be dedicated to this, even though good, cold weather beckons from the Met office's page and a steaming hot Starbee with Rich, which I rarely have the opportunity to share, seems like an attractive enough proposition.

It's always a time of assessment and looking back January, isn't it, but the tax return has nothing to do with it (well, not in my case. I suppose that a payroll/accounting husband does come in handy once a year). It is a time of assessment because the exhilaration of a new year (and new diary) has long worn off and because life isn't half as dull and boring once we are comfortable into our everyday again. I always return to the mundane in January with a sense of sinking dread; two weeks into it and I think that, all in all, life ain't that bad; four weeks into it and I've forgotten to think about it.

This week I've been promoted to the role of co-editor of the selection of poems I've been working on. I was flabbergasted when my guy told me; in fact, I agonised over having given him the completely wrong impression for quite some time. I should have leapt out of my chair, hugged and kissed him, while I just stayed there and nodded in silence, looking less than impressed, I am sure. I rectified it all via email today, when I wrote that 'I shall be delighted to co-edit this book with you and thank you for this exciting opportunity'. It read a bit like a press release, not my style at all, but sometimes, when so many things whirr away in your head and you are working on ten different projects, including cutting out your own inner critic, only a press release will do.

Old Pics

Since I got my first digital camera in 2004, I only ever printed forty of my pics. Meanwhile, iPhoto is housing 9023 shots. Yet on my bedside table there is one small stack of Polaroids that I took in 2003, when Victoria arrived. I came across these a few weeks back and now I often look at them because they enjoy the Pola-Charm, of course, but also because I had forgotten how much of a baby Victoria looked then, compared to now. In truth, I had also forgotten how pissed off William appeared. He was an only dog and was enjoying it. I would like to say that he eventually wiped that annoyed, introspective look off his face but...

Good Luck To You

I am installed at the poet's and burrowing away at the archive. I've got my own, warm quarters, the gallery overlooks an exceedingly charming garden decorated with antlers, I heard foxes and owls at night, and the gentle fog raising from Sherwood Forest is the stuff of winter dreams. I must confess secretly to expect Robin Hood to burst into the study, handing me a wad of cash for my literary troubles and wishing me well with the rest of my life.

As I was leafing through mags, journals, collections, anthologies and cuttings, I came across Bogg, a poetry magazine apparently still in existence, at least according to a certain poetry website. I have been skim-reading an awful lot of info over the past two days, but one line in particular has stuck to memory, this one:

As always, editing is a subjective affair, and we print what takes our fancy.

Think I made that pearl of wisdom up? I've got photographic evidence, look closely:



I re-read it a few times, of course, just to make sure it really had been printed. The initial surprise at such degree of honesty was soon replaced with gratitude. Ah, you see? Someone who has the guts to tell writers that they operate within a subjective business and that tough shit if they don't like it! If only all editors were like this, if only they did not come up with a rack of statistical data and a far-fetched report on how your writing could be improved but in fact just said, I don't like it and that's why I won't publish it! The sooner you realise this is the way it works, the better it is dear writer. And, as ever, good luck to you, for you are going to need it.

I Found Heaven

I am working in Heaven.

Seventeen

Oh sweet Jesus. Seventeen today. The new year is seventeen days old today. It has passed the first mid-point and is careering towards the end of January. Any second now and it will be February and my wedding anniversary and then in no time at all it will be April. Then we will navigate the non-summer and then it will be my birthday, then Halloween, then Bonfire Night and then Christmas and then it will be 2011. Someone make it stop!

Ice-less

I ventured outside today and felt hurt and cheated. Where has the snow gone? Where is the ice? Where is the gentle glistening of pavements and grasses? Where, I ask you? Bah humbug.

Insult To Injury Or Shit Magnet Part II

On Monday evening, Rick and I had a look at the washing machine. We tilted it, removed the filter (completely clean, which surprised me), and even went through the trouble of removing the front bottom panel and to access hoses, the pump and the motor underneath. The top had already been removed. All looked in good order. Upon replacement of the last damn screw, it was with a sinking heart that I pressed START and bowed to the powers of the Bosch universe. The washer was humming as before, but was still not taking any water.

The day after, upon collection of my car which only cost a miserable £ 102 to fix which, you will agree, is a tiny price to pay for a not-at-all tiny car, I phoned Bosch, said that the removal of the filter and whatnot had yielded a non-result and that a technician was needed after all.

The guy turned up this afternoon as planned. He listened to the explanation of the symptoms, nodded slowly and
said: ‘Let’s see, shall we?’. He pressed the START button and immediately water swooshed from the tap into the drum. ‘Well, that’s odd,’ I said, brow furrowed and right hand scratching my chin, ‘I tried it many times the other night, after I put it back together, and it still wasn’t working’. He re-nodded and said that it probably wouldn’t drain. So we waited, seconds ticking away on the display, until we heard another swoosh, this time of water being released from the machine into the drain behind.

Much chit-chat followed as he played around with the programmes and got the washer (which I was by then silently referring to as The Bastard) to take the water, spin for a while, drain, spin and finish over and over. Then a few times more. I encouraged him to take it apart and put it back together. Crazy? Moi? No, it’s just that I badly wanted to get my £ 85 worth of call-out charge you see.

When I waved him goodbye, a scant twenty minutes after he had arrived, I proceeded to my chair at the dining room table, where I slumped, angry and defeated. Much more defeated than angry, if truth be told. I am sliding down the slippery slope of the comically unlucky ones, of those who are followed around by a thundering cloud, of those who are afflicted by the Negative Midas Syndrome, turning everything they approach into lead and everything they touch into shit.

No matter how well I think I do, no matter how hard I try (and I cannot say that taking a washing machine apart is dead easy), someone, something, somewhere conspires against me, so that every time I’ve got a fistful of dollars in my hand, I must immediately flush them down the nearest available toilet. I wouldn’t feel this conspired-against if I knew that my £ 85 went, say, to Haiti, or to cats and dogs in need, or to the preservation of our national heritage. To know that, effectively, they have flapped out of my house on the way to nowhere because of a working washing machine bamboozles me, yes!

At this point you may ask the obvious: but what happened to the washing machine? Why was it not working anyway? I don’t know dear reader, neither did the technician, who suggested, after much prodding from my part, that it may have frozen (mid-cycle? After another cycle I had just run? I am not sure of that one). The truth is that I’ll never know, you will never know, the machine will never know, the technician will never know and the £ 85 will never know either.

Late Afternoon