Quinquireme

Homophonia

2011-02-07T10:15:00.007Z

INT. BEDROOM - NIGHT

Mr BC and I are in bed preparing our characters for a new season of Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, because that's the kind of saucy stuff we get up to these days.

ME: My character is going to be massively gung-ho and macho, but I can't think of a name for him.

MR BC: Call him something Pictish.

ME: Great idea, I'll borrow a name from the (largely fictional, history fans) Pictish king list. I'll call him ... *thinks* ... Brude Urpant.

MR BC: You could call him that, but I must warn you, people may laugh.

ME: WHO DARES LAUGH AT BRUDE URPA.. Oh OK, I'll change it to something else.

A couple of minutes pass.

ME: I've got it! I'm going to call him Ben MacDui.

MR BC: (Outraged) You can't call him that!

ME: Why not? Not Pictish enough?

MR BC: Ben's a well-known Jewish name.

ME: Yes, but it's also Scottish Gaelic for 'mountain'. Like 'Ben Nevis'. And Ben MacDui is a cool mountain, it's the second highest peak in the United Kingdom, you know, and it's supposed to be haunted by a ghostly Great Grey Man, although that's pretty much discredited now, and most people think it's probably just a Brocken spectre, although Brocken spectres in themselves are pretty cool, they're like a giant shadow cast on the-

MR BC: You can't call him Ben McJewy, it's racist.

ME: Not McJewy! MacDui! With a 'd'! And a 'u'! And, for that matter, an 'i'!

MR BC: I'm just saying.

ME: Brude Urpant it is then. All hail Brude, Eladrin Druid, occasional shapeshifter, and part-time forklift operator in a Feywild basket warehouse.

MR BC: Sometimes I think you don't take this nearly seriously enough.

The New Old Library

2010-10-25T14:55:00.016+01:00

It seems that Penryn Library is about to fall victim to Cornwall Council's £110m cost-cutting initiative, details of which were made public today.

Reading between the lines it looks as though the library will either be closed or handed over to volunteers - if any suitable ones can be found.

Of course my immediate thought, apart from "bastards" and "where will the Blue Kitten get her Turn-the-Wheel with Spot books from now?" and "what kind of civilisation closes its libraries, for fuck's sake", and "there goes another community focal point" and "how can we expect standards of literacy to rise if this is the kind of thing we let happen?" was "well, this poses a problem for Penryn's microtoponymy and no mistake".

You see, just around the corner from the library is a very handsome bow-fronted building, whose name is The Old Library. Here it is, resplendent in today's autumn afternoon sunshine.

The Old Library was once the actual library, but it's someone's house now, a bit like The Old Fire Station*, at the other end of the street.

Which made me think: if the current library goes the way of the Old Library, will the owners of The Old Library have to rename their gaff The Old Old Library?

And as the economic downturn continues to bite into Penryn, where every other shop is now empty, will we soon see a raft of similar name plaques springing up as abandoned emporia are turned into private residences?

'The Old Pet Shop'

'The Old Off-Licence'

'The Old Sex Shop'

And so on, until the whole of Penryn is just a collection of houses whose names preserve a blueprint of how the town used to function.

Which is a neat post-modern concept, but a rubbish reality. I'd rather have the library than The Old Library, any day.

* Which, as James points out, looks like it's built from Lego. In fact this actual Lego fire station looks more like a real fire station and less like Lego than The Old Fire Station does.

The Semantics Of Anti-Ageing Creams: A Monograph

2010-08-20T11:45:00.009+01:00

Regular readers will no doubt remember my pioneering discovery of Garnier's Law of Mascara Names, which dictates that the product names given to fancy eyelash gunk will double in hyperbolicity every two years, irrespective of any corresponding technical development in the product itself.

I had long suspected that this same law must also apply to other areas of the beauty industry, but lacked the time and wherewithal to investigate further. But a fortuitous combination of circumstances yesterday led to a major discovery which I feel I must document here for the benefit of future generations.

Those circumstances were a) the good fortune of my being on maternity leave, and therefore having more time at my disposal to explore evolving semantics in the cosmetics industry, and b) the chance arrival of an email from Homes and Gardens magazine, inviting me to enter a competition to win a supply of L'Occitane anti-ageing products.

Now the anti-ageing business is not something I profess to know a lot about, being of the opinion that it's all a scam to sell expensive goo to ladies rendered suitably insecure by half a lifetime's exposure to idiot-rags like Grazia and Closer.

However, having time on my hands I duly clicked the link in the email, only to discover - to the delight of my scientific and enquiring mind - that unlike, say, Moore's Law, Garnier's Law of Anti-Ageing Cream Names appears already to have reached the limits of its potential.

Naturally, as Ben Goldacre will tell you, you can't make an assertion like this without first conducting an exhaustive survey across the whole field of enquiry. Before publishing my astonishing findings to the world, I first had to investigate the names given to anti-ageing creams from other companies. Not knowing any off the top of my head, I turned to Twitter for advice. Sadly this elicited little of use, unless you count 'jizz', suggested by @Lfbarfe, or 'Tesco Value French Mustard', suggested by @Nibus.

So, like all serious scientists, I turned instead to Google.

Here I discovered that, by comparison with mascara names, prevailing naming conventions for anti-ageing creams are actually quite modest. L'Oréal, for example, offers us 'Revitalift' and 'Renoviste', hardly the stuff of fervid dreams of long-lost youth. Garnier, meanwhile, prefers 'Vital Restore', which sounds more like a business continuity procedure in a midsize accountancy firm's data centre than a face cream. Elizabeth Arden has come up with the mysterious 'Prevage', which makes me think of André Previn, who makes me think of Andrew Lloyd-Webber, which we can't exactly chalk up as a metaphoric triumph.

This surprising reticence could be indicative of a number of things. Perhaps in a rare moment of marketing sobriety and self-awareness, these companies acknowledged that none of their products *actually* has the capacity to halt the ageing process, and are therefore a bit circumspect about making hyperbolic claims for them. Or perhaps, unlike their impetuous colleagues on the mascara watch, their branding executives are aware of how much time lies ahead, and how they must not gratuitously squander the precious finite resources of the English, French and Franglais lexicons.

But among all the reticence and linguistic frugality, one company stands alone, on a lavender-scented hilltop, throwing circumspection, restraint and Garnier's Law to the marin and the tramontane. Ladies and gentlemen, that company is L'Occitane, who have seen fit to name their anti-ageing range 'Immortelle'.

Immortelle. You don't have to have GCSE French to figure out what they're getting at there. "Buy this face cream," whisper L'Occitane seductively, "and you will become immortal."

It's a bold claim, and not one that I fancy would stand up under the brutal spotlight of scientific scrutiny. It's also not one that I find particularly comforting. Linguistically, 'immortal' is synonymous with 'undead', which conjures up images of hordes of desiccated liches stalking the earth, draped in grand clothing yet showing all too well the weight of years; decay and corruption their constant companion.

On balance I think I'll take my chances with soap, water and death.

I Love The Smell Of Permethrin In The Morning

2010-08-17T15:29:00.010+01:00

Of all the wars in which this nation is currently engaged, the least covered in the media, discussed on Twitter, or made controversial reference to by the Deputy Prime Minister during PM's Questions is the War of the Fleas.

This is because the War of the Fleas is a comparatively small war, being fought on quite a localised front, id est down the posh end of Broad Street in Penryn.

(All of Broad Street is *quite* posh, but this end is posher due to its being situated opposite The Square, which is the poshest bit of Penryn by far, and doesn't really take kindly to being overlooked by the scuzzy-by-comparison houses that comprise The Posh End of Broad Street, but there we have it, that's how the medieval town planners laid it out in 1259 and there's no going back now.)

And when I say 'down the posh end of Broad Street' I really mean 'in our house', aka Casa Patroclus, or, if you prefer, Blue Cat Towers.

If one were to follow in the mighty footsteps of A.J.P. Taylor and cast about for the origins of the War of the Fleas - for its inciting incident, if you like - one would be hard pressed to identify anything as definitive as, say, Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939. No Archdukes were bitten outside no. 42 during any of Penryn's many parades. No tiny aeroplanes emerged from the Western skies to destroy the yuppie flats in the recently-gentrified Inner Harbour. The fleas are not - as far as I can tell - evolved robots returning from hundreds of years in exile with a nebulous plan to annihilate the human race. I have no idea how it started, or how it got to the point I am about to describe.

For readers, I am ashamed to tell you, earlier this summer the situation reached a low ebb for the motley band of human and feline fighters whose wretched lot was to strive valiantly, day in, day out, against the indefatigable hordes of tiny, biting invaders. There were casualties, many casualties, on both sides. Hundreds of fleas were teased from their hiding places among the cat's fur to meet a boiling, salty, watery end. Hundreds perished in sweeping aerial attacks of R.I.P. Fleas. Biological weapons designed to annihilate the fleas' children and their children's children, yea even unto the tenth generation, were strategically, then indiscriminately, deployed. A sheepskin rug had to be thrown out.

To no avail. Like H.G. Wells's Martians, still they came.

Your human and feline heroes had to change tactics. High-tech weapons had failed. Blanket bombing, carpet bombing, bathmat bombing, all had failed. A short-lived offensive which involved transporting individual fleas to Falmouth in the car, then depositing them in Church Street Car Park, proved to be environmentally and logistically inefficient. It was time for something new.

Enter the parcel tape.

Parcel tape, as it turns out, is a pretty effective anti-flea weapon when deployed judiciously. Favourite tactics include:

1. Sticking strips of tape across the carpet, then removing the lot - and any adherent victims - in one satisfying wrench.

2. Watching, waiting, watching, waiting for a nasty leaping beast to get on to the cream-coloured sofa, then swooping from above with a pre-cut section of tape. Result: instant sticky death.

3. Romantically scanning each other's limbs and clothing for errant fleas, then either a) leaping into action with a pre-prepared section of tape or b) wildly shouting 'tape! tape!', in the knowledge that one's other half knows by now exactly what is signified by this stirring war cry, and will respond by passing the nearest roll. (N.B. not to be undertaken while guests are present.)

It has been quite a miserable summer, all told, not helped by being heavily pregnant for most of it. But now we have reached if not the end, then perhaps the beginning of the end. For today the War of the Fleas entered a new phase, marked by the emergence of an exciting new game that may soon be sweeping the nation. I will spare you the intricate detail of Dirt or Dead?, but suffice it to say the winner is the player who can most accurately distinguish between a) a small piece of black fluff and b) a Corpse of the Fallen.

The cat, meanwhile, has taken to living a shadowy twilight existence under the garden table and refuses to set foot in the house. But soon, all will be back to normal. I hope.

A Walk In The Park

2010-08-11T10:14:00.010+01:00

Opposite our house is a little park, and it was to this park that I yesterday decided to take the Blue Kitten during a break in the seasonal Cornish rain.

While the Kitten is used to going to the park with her dad, an afternoon outing with me is a bit of a rarity, given that I'm one of those Daily Mail hate-figures; a full-time working mum.

Still, it all started off very successfully: we managed to navigate the crossing of the road OK, the Kitten obediently held my hand until we were safely inside the park with the gates closed behind us, and the planned game of kickabout with the plastic football unfolded in frankly impressive style.

(Indeed if Fabio Capello were to send a talent scout down to Penryn, he or she would undoubtedly return Up Country raving about a tiny blonde bombshell, the quality of whose dribbling and running-forward skills cannot be disguised even by the wearing of one-size-too-big Dora the Explorer wellies.)

Not only that, but we had a great game of peeking at each other through some of the new and slightly perplexing municipal exercise equipment, and I successfully dissuaded the Kitten from shredding the poppy wreaths around the war memorial (the park wasn't always a park; until May 1941 it was an impressive Georgian terrace flanking a three-sided Georgian square, brought to an untimely end - along with 18 of its residents - by a stray German bomb probably intended for Falmouth Docks).

There followed a chase around the path and a gaze through the railings at the Bowling Green, which, I informed the Kitten, had been there since the sixteenth century at least; the sea captains domiciled in Broad Street playing endless rounds of bowls while waiting for favourable winds and tides to take them to fight Spaniards, or loot Spaniards, or sell granite to Spaniards according to the prevailing politico-economic circumstances of the day.

(Today, the good citizens of Broad Street and Quay Hill stay indoors playing Fallout 3 and Bioshock 2 as they wait for favourable calls from literary agents, television commissioners, organisers of international sculpture exhibitions and artisanal tea-growers, but the Bowling Green remains, its clubhouse very much a terrestrial departure lounge for Penryn's elderly residents if the frequency of its flag flying at half-mast is any guide.)

This is where it all starts to go wrong. Wearying of my fascinating local history lesson, the Kitten makes a dash for the wrought iron gates, furiously shaking them in an effort to escape the park and go and do something more exciting, like rolling about in the road. In rapid pursuit, I gather up the football and discarded jacket and catch up with the Kitten just as she manages to wrestle her way out on to the pavement. Here, she decides, will be a good place to lie on the ground shouting 'DEATH!' and 'Six Six Six!' for the entertainment of passing motorists. Nothing will persuade her otherwise.

There is no option but to pick her up, temporarily abandon the fallen-off Dora the Explorer welly boot, and bundle her home (which is only on the other side of the road). Heroically, I gather up Kitten plus football plus discarded jacket, and the mission is close to being accomplished.

Except that I can't get up. At eight and a half months pregnant, I am stuck squatting on the pavement opposite my house clutching a wailing two-year-old, a football and a jacket, and I can't move. Something has to be jettisoned, so I let go of the football, which trundles forlornly into the road. A passing motorist slows down, picks it up and throws it back on to the pavement, but there's nothing I can do about that now. I am the worst mother in the world, unable even to go across the road to the park without getting into difficulties and endangering the life of my own child and that of sundry passing motorists. I try not to imagine the Daily Mail headlines.

Seconds later, the Kitten and I both arrive home in floods of tears, much to the bemusement of Mr BC, who thinks we only went for a nice stroll in the park. I dash back out to recover the lost welly boot and the football, only to discover two lost wellies, one of which is in the middle of the road being studiously avoided by passing motorists, and one of which is on the pavement opposite.

There is no sign of the plastic football. I imagine it rolling away down Quay Hill, gathering pace as it approaches the junction with Commercial Road, causing a multi-vehicle pile-up outside Jumblies Day Nursery before bouncing nonchalantly on to Exchequer Quay, rolling towards the edge, falling into the Penryn River and commencing a maritime rampage across the Carrick Roads, causing multi-yacht pile-ups as it bobs merrily towards Falmouth Bay and the wide blue ocean.

In due course it will wash up, faded and deflated, in a ~~lobster~~ shrimp net along Louisiana's BP-blighted Gulf Coast, its historic role as the first football of England's legendary female 2026 World Cup striker unrecognised and uncelebrated.

Today the Blue Kitten's dad will take her to the park. It's by far the best all round.

Sofa No Good

2010-08-09T13:05:00.007+01:00

For as long as Mr BC and I have been together (four years and a sundry number of days, fact fans), it's been my mission to procure a sofa that we can both sit on at the same time to watch DVDs and the like.

This has been no easy task given the triple constraints of a) my bank balance, b) the dimensions of the doors and stairwells in my/our various homes to date and c) the vast and comical height discrepancy between Mr BC and me.

When we were first going out, the only piece of comfy furniture I had to my name was a cherry-red leather Klippan from Ikea. Mr BC's six-foot-two frame promptly occupied the whole of said sofa, leaving me to perch awkwardly on a corner for entire seasons of Battlestar Galactica. This forced me into an unscheduled further visit to Ikea, which opportunistically took place between the ceremony and reception of a friend's wedding, from which I triumphantly returned (via the wedding reception) with a stripy Karlstad armchair.

This was promptly occupied in its entirety by the cat.

(In the end we had to drive to Somerset to get another red leather Klippan, so we could all have something to sit on, but that's another story.)

But that was then. Today, due to a variety of fortuitous circumstances, my bank balance is healthier than it used to be, my doors wider and my stairwell more expansive (although the comical height difference between Mr BC and me remains at an immutable 14 inches).

So it was with no little glee that I allowed myself to rootle through the Dwell sale in search of the perfect DVD-watching sofa. I ended up ordering an extravagant modular number, with a long bit, a corner bit and an extra bit for good measure, paying no heed whatsoever to how big these things might be or how much space they might take up in our upstairs living room.

At length (Dwell only deliver to Cornwall once a month, apparently) the items arrived. They got through the front door OK, but there was no way the long bit was going up the stairwell, however expansive its proportions. Eventually the drivers left the parcels downstairs and bid us a hasty goodbye before the INEVITABLE DOMESTIC ARGUMENT broke out.

Presently:

ME: This is all your fault, you know.

Mr BC: How can this possibly be my fault? You chose them. You ordered them. You didn't look to see how big they are, or whether they'd fit up the stairs.

ME: Because of what you told me about the sofa models.

MR BC: What sofa models?

ME: When we first knew each other, you told me that on sofa adverts, all the models are little people.

MR BC: Did I?

ME: To make the sofas look bigger, you said.

MR BC: Ah, oh. Ah. I see what's happened here.

ME: Yes. You told me that all sofas are modelled by dwarves. Therefore I have accidentally ordered an enormous sofa that doesn't fit in our house.

MR BC: I was flirting with you. Because you're quite small, and yet quite nicely proportioned. I was saying you could be a sofa model.

ME: Oh. I thought you were just trying to tell me that all sofas are tiny in real life.

MR BC: No.

ME: I've warned everyone I know.

MR BC: Look, this bit's broken.

The long bit of the sofa has indeed been damaged in transit.

ME: Hurrah, we can legitimately send it back!

Several weeks and another visit from Dwell later, we have a huge, fantastic modular sofa in our upstairs living room, made out of one extra bit and two corner bits. The broken long bit has gone back on the Dwell lorry, and everyone's happy.

Later, we're recounting this story to the lovely Rach, of Nappy Mountain fame, and her lovely husband Rob, who've come for a blogmeet during their holiday in Cornwall. During the retelling, Rach and Rob exchange meaningful glances. Afterwards they inform us that they have a friend who *is* an actual sofa model, and he is six foot four.

Not long after, Mr BC and I are lounging together on the new sofa, watching Sherlock.

ME: You could be a sofa model, you know.

MR BC: Shh.

If Business Was Really Like Inception

2010-08-07T10:35:00.006+01:00

What a jolly romp Inception is, eh, film fans? A bit like reading a copy of Monocle after watching The Matrix and falling asleep on a train.

I enjoyed it in lots of ways (apart from its handling of the female characters, which was standard action-movie sexist tosh, and let's not even bother trying to apply the Bechdel test), but the most enjoyable aspect for me was its unintentionally hilarious depiction of the sort of thing that goes on in the world of business.

Now I've worked in 'business' for most of my adult life, so I reckon I'm fairly au fait with its daily rhythms and preoccupations. And this may surprise you, but my experience doesn't exactly tally with the depiction presented to me last night by Messrs C. Nolan & co.

If business was *really* like Inception, it would go something like this:

INT. MEETING ROOM - DAY

MARKETING DIRECTOR (terribly serious expression, portentous tone of voice) Jake, I need to know what Mega Corp. are planning for next week's product launch.

JAKE: Oh, my mate works for Mega Corp, I'll ask her, shall I?

MARKETING DIRECTOR (even more serious): No. Your friend could have been compromised. Or... worse.

JAKE: I could ring Bill McBill at PC Answers, he'll have had a press invitation.

MARKETING DIRECTOR: No. McBill can't be trusted. He's been to too many Mega Corp events. Brain got fried at that last wireless mouse launch. Can't even recognise his own children now.

JAKE: Er, I could ask on Twitter?

MARKETING DIRECTOR No. (Shouting) No! That's a trap, too easy. Jake... Jake... I need you to assemble a team. The finest people you can find. Hire them if you have to. From exotic foreign countries, if you have to. This is mission-critical.

JAKE: Right, OK, and, er, what would you like them to do?

MARKETING DIRECTOR: I need you to get inside the mind of Mega Corp. Find out what they're planning. Breakfast at the Lanesborough? Balloon flight over Hertfordshire? Go-kart racing in Nuneaton? We just don't know, dammit.

JAKE: You want me to assemble a team of mind-readers?

MARKETING DIRECTOR: More than that. I need you to lay a trap. Find a way to draw them in, reveal their H1 marketing plan. Get someone who can design an MMORPG, the best there's ever been. And a hypnotist. And an acrobat. And someone who can synthesise a new strain of MDMA that's stronger than LSD but subtler than Summer Meadow Fairy Liquid. And someone who can drive a van. And some really big weapons.

JAKE: (scribbling in notebook) What sort of weapons?

MARKETING DIRECTOR: Doesn't matter, as long as they're really big.

JAKE: And you'd like this done by when? Only I've got that contact report to write up by lunchtime.

MARKETING DIRECTOR: We only have two days. Here's a new suit, a first-class ticket to Bulawayo and passports in twenty different names. Good luck.

JAKE: Are you sure you wouldn't just like me to look on Facebook?

MARKETING DIRECTOR: (Portentous) Good luck, Jake.

UPDATE: Emordino draws my attention to this Inception spoof in the New Yorker, along the same lines but about a billion times better. The end bit is the best.

Tasty Things To Do With Sage

2010-06-13T16:55:00.007+01:00

Given that we have an almost completely untouched crop of sage (above) in our burgeoning garden, this afternoon I asked on Twitter for people's recommendations of what to do with it.

I had so many excellent and delicious-sounding suggestions that James said I should put them all into a blog post, so here they are, with appropriate credits.

1. Put it in a butternut squash risotto. (@danieljowen)

2. Melt some stilton into cream, add sage, butter some pasta and add sauce. Lots of black pepper. Rich so serve as a starter. (@davidsteven)

3. Pan fry until crispy and have with risotto - it's a Hugh recipe. (@ecovallee)

4. If you're not veggie, saltimbocca. (@SoniaRothwell)

5. Sprinkle torn up leaves over vegetables and roast. Yum. (@SueLlewellyn)

6. Tricky but affinity with pork and veal. Crispy deep-fried leaves. Twigs on BBQ for fragrant smoking... (@TessAlps)

7. Add to pork dishes, maybe some meatballs. It's a good stuffing ingredient as well. (@FoodiesSW)

8. I find the standard sage and onion stuffing with chicken most pleasant. It can also be eaten cold, should summer bust out. (@hannahswiv)

9. ...also substitute for basil in a pesto-like pasta sauce. Lovage excellent for that too. (@TessAlps)

10. If you've got heaps of it, Native Americans dry it and use for 'smudging' - burn it, blow out flames and use the smoke to clear sacred space. (@SueLlewellyn)

11. Coat them in batter and fry. Very Italian very delicious. Serve with a Prosecco or Pinot Grigio while listening to Puccini. (@EnterpriseIain)

12. Sage fritters, in a cornmeal batter. (@CulturalSnow)

13. Sage is also a good medicinal herb to keep in your garden - good for sore throats and dry coughs, dontchya know. (@RunSqueezyRun)

14. Mix in with Welsh rarebit. (@kevfrost)

15. Put it in a pork pie! Yum. (@piersroberts)

16. When eaten enough,pick some stalks and put it in vase with some pinks? (@JudyAstley)

Whew. That lot should keep us going until the sage plant is no more - hurrah!

Like No Aspirations You've Ever Had Before

2010-06-07T09:58:00.007+01:00

Not long after giving birth to the Blue Kitten I was comparing notes about the whole gruesome affair with my old friend Becky.

Never one to mince words, Becky observed that in her experience (three infants to date) 'it's difficult to maintain any kind of dignity when some bird is doing embroidery in your minky'.

This word 'minky' was new to me, although its meaning all too painfully apparent. But then Becky has her finger on the pulse of modern argot, whereas I like to model my conversational and writing style on detective novels of the Golden Age. (You'd never hear Lord Peter Wimsey uttering the word 'minky', at least not to denote the precious flower of the female nether bits. It probably meant something different in the 1930s.)

For those who are similarly untutored in the vagaries of modern parlance, rest assured that the Urban Dictionary backs Becky up, providing no fewer than eight user-generated definitions of 'minky', three of which refer to the precious flower of the female etc.

So it was not without some merriment that it later came to my attention that there is a company called Minky, whose business is the provision of mops, pegs and other humble domestic essentials.

But Minky, a company - its own name notwithstanding - with its finger on the pulse of the early 21st-century Zeitgeist, has realised that in our narcissistic age, there is no room for humility in domestic matters. Just as buying an air freshener or a tea towel is now an important lifestyle choice, so the purchase of a new ironing board cover must be imbued with a sense of excitement, panache and social self-betterment.

Replacing one's worn-out ironing board cover can no longer be conceived of as an act of tedious but inevitable drudgery, no, but as a gesture symbolic of the renewal of hope and enthusiasm, of the recapturing of lost youth, beauty and energy, of a better life to come.

In short, it must be seen - along with everything else - as aspirational.

So while 'minky aspirations' may sound to my friend Becky like the kind of febrile affliction that besets a million pub-bound Nuts readers up and down the country every Friday evening, to the marketing department of this venerable British brand it represents nothing short of the complete re-imagining of domestic drudgery as something suffused with glamour and desirability.

And for attempting to instil those qualities in a metallised ironing board cover while having a name that is a rude word for a lady's secret place, I salute them.

Garnier's Law of Mascara Names

2010-01-10T12:23:00.007Z

You may be familiar with Moore's Law, which dictates that the computing power of a single silicon chip doubles roughly every two years, as the transistors upon it get tinkier and tinier.

You may not be so familiar - mainly because I just made it up - with Garnier's Law. Garnier's Law dictates that the names given to mascara products will double in ridiculousness roughly every two years, despite the lack of any corresponding technical advance in the product itself.

Like Moore's Law, Garnier's Law has been in force for some years, such that we now find ourselves in a world where the names given to mascara have become entirely decoupled from reality.

Hence Lash Builder, a plausible name for a mascara, given that the sole function of the product is and always has been to cake your eyelashes in a manner that makes them look slightly thicker and longer, gave way in due course to Lash Architect, a ridiculous proposition when you think about it, since architects don't actually build anything but rather swank about in wenge-wood-and-opaque-glass offices wearing expensive glasses and reading back copies of Monocle magazine. A mascara does none of those things.

Rejected names for Lash Architect: Lash Brickie, Lash Structural Engineer, Lash Planning Officer.

But that was then. Today Garnier's Law has seen to it that we have entered the realm of the truly fantastical when it comes to mascara names. Only last night I was alerted to the existence of a mascara named Telescopic Explosion, which sounds more like an industrial accident than a cosmetic; the kind of thing that you might read under 'exemptions' in the small print of Sir Patrick Moore's contents insurance policy.

Rejected names for Telescopic Explosion: Optical Disaster, Lenticular Catastrophe, Oops I Dropped The Refracting Mirror.

I hardly dare let my mind dwell upon what kind of product names the future may hold in store for that same coloured goo that people have been caking on to their eyelashes for centuries. Perhaps we can look forward to sallying forth to Boots in 2019 to purchase a tube of Lashmageddon, or Thermo-Nuclear Lash Eruptor. I don't think Total Protonic Reversal strays too far from the bounds of the possible, nor Infernal Trajectory, nor Eyeschaton.

We may long for the innocent, simple days of Lash Builder when we're staring down the claggy barrel of a tube of Supermassive Interplanetary Collision Course, but in vain. Garnier's Law, like Moore's Law, is unstoppable. Don't say I didn't warn you.

It Was Tiny, And Purple

2009-12-05T20:34:00.003Z

My friend S. dropped in for a cup of tea today on her way home from shopping in Truro, where she'd bought a dress for her birthday do tonight.

S: They didn't have a size 8*, so I had to get a size 6**.

ME: Bloody hell. Does it fit?

S: Just about. Bit of a squeeze to get the last bit of the zip done up, but I think it'll be OK.

S. is eight months pregnant.

* US size 6
** US size 4

Unusual Media Epiphany

2009-10-18T19:14:00.004+01:00

I had an unusual media epiphany last week, and it had nothing to do with Trafigura, Jan Moir or the balloon boy, whatever that last one was all about.

No, what happened was this. I was sitting on a train, reading an article in the financial pages of the Guardian, on my way to a conference in Exeter.

So far, so unremarkable. The article was about WH Smith's business plans. It's going to open 80 new outlets inside office buildings, based on the success of a number of shops it's set up inside hospitals. Profits are up at WH Smith, the article added, thanks to the canny strategies of its CEO, Kate Swann.

It was at that point that I had my epiphany. Here was an article in a newspaper about a successful FTSE 250 company that happens to have a female CEO. Not only that, but it had been written by a female journalist (Julia Finch), and was being read by a female business person (me).

And yet at no point was the gender of the reader, writer or subject made an issue. The article didn't appear in the women's pages, or in a glossy women's supplement. The reporter didn't mention what Kate Swann looks like, what she habitually wears, or whether she has a partner and kids at home. There was no accompanying picture. There were no allusions to the glass ceiling. Readers were not invited to view Ms Swann's success as an exceptional achievement for someone of her gender.

It was just an ordinary article about business in the business pages of a national newspaper.

And I thought: 'This must be what reading the paper is like for men all the time.'

I know that by drawing attention to it I'm bursting the bubble of ordinariness surrounding this article, and turning it into something remarkable, and therefore defeating the whole object. But for a little while it did give me a glimpse of a glorious future media landscape in which women are just people, and our gender is neither here nor there. And that made me very happy.

Oh, and hello again everyone, I seem to be back!

...And They Lived Happily Ever After

2009-07-14T09:21:00.003+01:00

The End.

There's Such A Thing As Too Much Self-Awareness

2009-05-31T06:45:00.000+01:00

INT. BLUE CAT TOWERS - EVENING

PATROCLUS and JAMES BLUE CAT are sitting in companionable silence. Eventually:

MR BC: What are you thinking about?

ME: I was just mentally going through everyone who follows me on Twitter, and imagining all the ways in which I disappoint, annoy or otherwise fail to meet the expectations of each and every one of them.

MR BC: Crikey.

ME: Why, what are you thinking about?

MR BC: Goblins.

Public Trust Shaken By Fresh Revelations

2009-05-25T14:25:00.006+01:00

The nation's trust in its chosen vanity products is being sorely tested by continuing revelations on the Quinquireme blog about improper copywriting in the toiletries industry, reports today's Daily Telegraph.

In what is coming to be seen as the scoop of the decade, Quinquireme editor-in-chief Patroclus reportedly paid £4.79 for the exclusive right to reveal the widespread linguistic and grammatical inaccuracies pervading the sector.

The scandal started as far back as August 2008, with an exposé of poor translation skills at upmarket hotel-toiletries firm Gilchrist & Soames, but it was not until this month that the Quinquireme began a full-scale investigation into the extent of the problem.

The blog's decision to drip-feed its revelations day by day is causing anxiety not only among makers of shampoo, conditioner and other bathroom essentials, but also among a populace that is finding its faith in its personal grooming products severely shaken.

Today's blog post caused embarrassment for shampoo manufacturer Aussie, maker of such products as the 'Three Minute Miracle' deep-treatment conditioner and 'Dual Personality' shine serum. In particular, the blog cited the unnecessary insertion of a comma into the copy on the reverse of the 'Miracle Moist' shampoo bottle.

Nowhere to hide: blog reveals comma misuse by haircare firm Aussie

As well as publishing a damning photograph of the misplaced punctuation mark, the blog also transcribed the copy in full for the benefit of readers lacking 20/20 eyesight.

Our unique formula, with Australian Macadamia Nut extract, helps condition and smooth hair.
Native to the land down under, the Queensland Macadamia Nut is rich in oils, and has been used in Australia for centuries. And it would have stayed their little secret if it hadn't been for, an intrepid 19th century explorer who schlepped half way across the world and brought it back for the rest of us. What a guy.

"I don't know how they thought they could get away with this," said Jibby McBib, a disappointed Aussie customer. "Just because it's on the back of the bottle doesn't mean people won't find out it's there."

McBib said she would no longer buy Aussie products, but was unsure of which haircare products she could now trust. "You never read about this kind of thing in the media," she said. "It's always all about how it makes your hair look, what it smells like, and that kind of thing. To imagine this kind of thing has been going on all the time behind our backs...well, it makes me sick."

Forensic literary science expert Bilbo McCrum believes the problem runs deeper than simple improper comma use. "Here is a company that promotes itself as being Australian, yet clearly refers to the country of Australia as a place from which macadamia nuts have to be 'brought back' for 'the rest of us'," he said.

"This, combined with the failure to name the explorer who brought back the nuts, or indeed to specify where the nuts were brought back to, very much points to the presence of an unreliable narrator," McCrum continued. "And if the brand's narrator is unreliable, that does not bode well for the trustworthiness of the brand itself."

Ursula Mop, senior analyst at personal-grooming think-tank HAIR, said that the crisis in public trust could have serious repercussions for the country's future. "With so many mainstream cosmetics brands being 'outed' by the Quinquireme, there is a real risk that people will turn their backs on the haircare establishment," she warned.

"I think there's a danger that people will increasingly turn to fringe shampoos as they become disillusioned with the major players."

It's a danger that, for the moment, remains academic, as the public reveals itself to have more common sense than is imputed to it by think-tanks.

"There's no way I'm buying a fringe shampoo," said Jibby McBib. "What would I use on the rest of my hair? It just doesn't make sense."

Polyglottal Bottle Plot

2009-05-21T08:03:00.009+01:00

Assiduous readers of this blog will recall that I once had occasion to take to task the hotel-toiletries firm Gilchrist & Soames for its reckless and cavalier approach to labelling its bottles in what it endearingly imagined to be French.

You, dear reader, have no doubt moved on since then, caught up in the ebb and flow of daily life and its attendant demands. Rest assured, though, that I have remained steadfast and alert to the linguistical shortcomings of the companies that furnish our nation's hotels with tiny plastic bottles of goo.

It's a lonely and desolate beat, untroubled by sensational revelations, media scrums or mass outbreaks of public outrage, but I like to think that I'm performing a vital service in shining the uncompromising spotlight of scrutiny into a dark and neglected corner of consumer affairs.

Today that spotlight falls upon Elsyl, a range of hotel toiletries whose bottles, according to this hotel-toiletries website, have an aluminium lid that gives this unique range a little extra.

Look carefully, however, and you'll notice that the aluminium lid is not the only notable feature of the Elsyl range:

[Click picture for bigness]

It's hardly surprising that the makers of Elsyl are trying to distract you with their shiny lids, for their labels represent an attempt at international jet-set chic that can best be described as 'woeful'.

I wonder if I can imagine the process by which they were created.

...Wibbly lines descend across the screen...

BRANDING EXECUTIVE 1: What we need is a label that lends the product an air of continental elegance. An atmosphere of cosmopolitan élan. An aura of European finesse.

BRANDING EXECUTIVE 2: So what you're saying is that the label has to be in English and French.

EXECUTIVE 1: Yes, yes, good. But not just French, that's so parochial. That's the kind of narrow-sighted caper you'd expect from Gilchrist & Soames. No, we need to project an image of truly international refinement.

EXECUTIVE 2: So, English, French...and Italian?

EXECUTIVE 1: Yes. And - what's the other one? - German.

There is a brief pause for reflection.

EXECUTIVE 2: Can you speak any of these languages?

EXECUTIVE 1: Not really. Except English. I can speak English. Can you?

EXECUTIVE 2: I can speak English too.

EXECUTIVE 1: No, I mean any of the others.

EXECUTIVE 2: Oh. No.

EXECUTIVE 1: We could look the words up in a dictionary.

EXECUTIVE 2: (sucking teeth) I don't know...that's what Gilchrist & Soames did, and they got stick for it on Patroclus's blog.

EXECUTIVE 1: You're right. We don't want to get stick on Patroclus's blog. That's the very essence of what we don't want.

EXECUTIVE 2: It would be a PR disaster.

EXECUTIVE 1: Yes, you don't want to get on the wrong side of the blogs. I've heard that Patroclus has literally tens of readers.

EXECUTIVE 2: I have a marvellous idea!

EXECUTIVE 1: Hurrah!

EXECUTIVE 2: You said we only need to provide an air of continental elegance. An atmosphere of cosmopolitan élan. An aura of European...what was it again?

EXECUTIVE 1: Finesse.

EXECUTIVE 2: Finesse. Well, how about we just translate one word into each language?

EXECUTIVE 1: Brilliant! Which one shall we translate?

EXECUTIVE 2: How about 'with'? It's the easiest one.

EXECUTIVE 1: Fantastic! Quick - to Babelfish!

Some moments later...

EXECUTIVE 2: There, look. Perfect.

EXECUTIVE 1: 'Bath cream avec ginseng'. Oh yeah, baby. That's cosmopolitanism, right there.

EXECUTIVE 2: We're surely the best branding executives in the whole world.

EXECUTIVE 1: We surely are.

NEXT WEEK: Patroclus fearlessly exposes the unnecessary comma on the reverse of the Aussie 'Miracle Moist' shampoo bottle.

Ooh Dear

2009-05-05T20:49:00.005+01:00

The blog seems to have ground to a halt somewhat, what with the twin disciplines of Work and Baby (and to a lesser extent Garden, Twitter, Dungeons & Dragons and Making Biscuits) taking up all my waking hours, including a good many hours when no sensible person should be awake at all.

I really hope to be back before too long, as not blogging makes me terribly unhappy, but I fear it's not going to be anytime very soon. In the meantime, I shall set you a jolly Dave-style quiz, which is:

1. Who is this?

and

2. What does he have to do with this field?

A prize will be awarded for the most entertaining answer, irrespective of correctness.

Mrs BC

2009-03-27T21:40:00.004Z

Last night I get a phone call from my friend S.

S: So, about the wedding. What time shall I come round and help you with your dress?

ME: I don't think I need any help with my dress. I was just planning to put it on over my head and stuff. Put my arms through the armholes and so on. I can probably do it on my own.

S: What about a bouquet?

ME: I haven't got a bouquet.

S: Do you want one?

ME: I don't think I do, thank you though.

S: What are we doing after the ceremony?

ME: We're going to have pasties on the beach.

S: Is that all?

ME: Yes. It's quite low-key.

S: What about the evening thing?

ME: There isn't an evening thing. It's just the ceremony, then pasties on the beach. That's essentially it.

S: I don't understand. What are you actually getting married for, then?

ME: Because we love each other. You know, we want to be married, we just aren't fussed about having an actual wedding.

A brief pause ensues.

S: Hmm, you know, all these years I think I've been getting it the wrong way round.

People Who Are From Cornwall

2009-03-15T17:29:00.016Z

1. John Nettles, future star of Absolutely Bergerac, a dark reimagining of a 1980s Bergerac spinoff series that was never made, also starring Patsy Palmer as Patsy Stone, a jewel thief originally played - with, I feel, a different character name - by Liza Goddard.

(Mr BC maintains the series will be called Bergeracly Fabulous and keeps muttering about format rights.)

2. Jenny Agutter, to whom I once offered a seat on the Truro to Paddington train (she declined).

3. Rosie and the Goldbug, a tip-top indie-pop combo who are responsible for this fabulous slice of early-80s-style electro:

4. Our lovely daughter the Blue Kitten, who is six months old today and has just graduated to apple purée:

5. ~~I can't think of any more.~~ By popular demand, King Arthur, the once and future king. Although, like thingy out of Highlander, King Arthur is really from lots of different places.

6. The Owlman of Mawnan, although he's probably just a big owl.

7. Jethro

8. The Frontier Editor's brother

9. Kristin Scott-Thomas

10. Dolly Pentreath, the vaudeville fisherman/woman

11. That's enough people from Cornwall now - Ed.

It's Twitter Article Bingo!

2009-03-12T19:17:00.006Z

Readers! Do you remember the old days, when you couldn't pick up a newspaper without seeing some columnist or other ranting about how bloggers are socially-maladroit saddos with empty lives, who do nothing but spout tedious drivel on tedious blogs which are read by no one but their mums?

(Then after a bit, the papers decided that blogging was actually the future of journalism, and immediately set about pretending they'd thought of it first.)

Well, pine no more for the days when we bloggers were daring, sexy outcasts, condemned by the establishment and forced to survive on our wits, cake and nice comments left by alluring strangers. For the papers are at it again, only this time they've got it in for Twitter.

You can barely pick up a newspaper these days without seeing some columnist or other ranting about how people who use Twitter are socially-maladroit saddos with empty lives, who do nothing but spout tedious drivel in tedious messages of 140 characters or fewer, which are read by no one at all, or at least no one who's remotely interested.

First, I wondered if this kind of pattern has actually been going on since Caveman Urgh berated Caveman Blurgh and Caveman Wurgh for making tedious cave paintings about their tedious little animal-chasing lives that no one except their mums was ever going to look at or be remotely interested in.

Then I thought that instead I would make it all a bit more fun by inventing a game of Twitter Article Bingo.

Next time you see some Janet Street-Porter type spouting off about Twitter in the national press, you can amuse yourself by seeing how many points you can score from this list:

Twitter Article Bingo

1. Article mentions the following individuals:

Stephen Fry (1 point) [add 1 if it mentions S. Fry getting stuck in lift]
Jonathan Ross (1 point)
Barack Obama (1 point)
Britney Spears (2 points)
Lily Allen (1 point)

2. Article contains the phrase '140 characters or less' in a manner that suggests that any message of this brevity must be devoid of merit (2 points) [1 point off for good behaviour if it says '140 characters or fewer'.]

3. Article hilariously refers to Twitterers as 'twits' (5 points)

4. Article says that the point of Twitter is to answer the question 'What are you doing?' in a manner that suggests that no answer to this question can possibly be in any way interesting or enlightening (2 points)

5. Article quotes an eminent psychologist making unfavourable pronouncements about the mental state of anyone who uses Twitter (5 points) [add an extra 5 points if it's obvious the psychologist in question has never been near Twitter and has no real idea what it is.]

6. Article suggests that the only reason people join Twitter is to 'follow' celebrities (3 points)

7. Article claims that no one on Twitter has anything interesting to say, not even Stephen Fry (2 points)

8. Article makes one or more attempts to coin hilarious new word by replacing the first letter of any existing word with 'tw' (one point per rubbish neologism)

9. Article concludes that Twitter is incontrovertible proof that entire world is going to dogs (5 points)

10. Writer of article appears unable to recognise that if Twitter really was that dull, they wouldn't be writing yet another big article about it (5 points)

NEXT WEEK: Janet Street-Porter hails Twitter as the future of journalism.

UPDATE: Good work, Hadley Freeman!

Let The Pamphleteering Commence!

2009-02-26T20:41:00.004Z

It's only taken seven years and several sleepless nights of paranoid agony right at the end, but I've finally taken the plunge and written something under my real name.

(Which isn't actually my real name at all, but let's not go into that now. Also I have written loads of stuff under my real name before, I used to have a whole blog written under my real name, or one of them, so I don't really know what I'm talking about, but I've been up since 5am and I'm very tired, so if I'm making any sense at all it's a bonus.)

Anyway, you can find it here in The Pamphleteer, LC's marvellously titled new blogzine, to which he has kindly allowed me to contribute. It also features articles by notable bloggers Tim Footman, Great She Elephant and LC himself.

More will follow. And if you're a blogger and would like to contribute, and if no one else can help, and if you can find him, maybe you can get in touch with LC. (Clue: you can probably find him here.)

Cryptid Corner: The Beast Of Falmouth

2009-02-22T20:23:00.000Z

The whole of the greater Falmouth and Penryn area is abuzz with the news that a mysterious animal has been spotted on the coastal path between Maenporth and Swanpool beaches.

The beast was spotted by 23 year old Sam Bradbury, who had the presence of mind to go home and make a frankly excellent drawing of the mystery creature:

Speculation about the animal's identity is almost rife. Richard Freeman from Exeter thinks it could be an aye-aye or a spring hare, escaped from a private collection. Falmouth Packet reporter Emma Goodfellow, clearly not letting facts, the evidence presented in the above sketch or common sense get in the way of the Packet's best story of the year so far, suggests that it might be a lion or a kangaroo.

Yet despite the paper calling on the local community to identify the animal once and for all, it seems that so far no one has managed to solve the mystery.

Fortunately, past experience has made me something of an expert in cryptozoology, and over the years I have built up an extensive library of arcane literature on the subject. While gazing absent-mindedly at Sam Bradbury's drawing, it suddenly struck me that I'd seen something very like it before, in one of the books in my collection.

Fired with the thrill of intellectual pursuit, I made a cup of peppermint tea, repaired to the library and began rifling through the dusty, leather-bound tomes.

It wasn't in any of those, though, so I turned my attention to more recent works.

It wasn't long before I found what I'd been looking for: a series of rough anatomical sketches bearing a striking resemblance to the creature in Sam's drawing:

Setting stylistic differences aside, the illustration at the top left-hand side of the page clearly depicts the creature adopting the same hind-legged stance that Sam so memorably describes. Combined with the uncannily similar references to a bushy (or 'fluffy') tail, I think we can quite safely conclude that the Beast of Falmouth and the beast described in this book are of one and the same species.

It seems that John Meek, animal collections manager at Newquay Zoo, wasn't far from the truth when he gave his expert opinion to the West Briton newspaper: "It doesn't look like anything I have ever seen. The closest thing is a wallaby, although that does not have a cat's face."

Indeed it doesn't, John, indeed it doesn't.

NEXT WEEK: Legendary Owlman of Mawnan 'probably just a big owl'.

UPDATE: Occasional Poster of Comments points out that Sam has a history of inventing bizarre animals, including these ones (more here):

Never trust anything you read in a town full of art students.

I Can Tie A Knot In A Cherry Stem, I Can Tell You About Leif Erikson

2009-02-14T22:06:00.009Z

What with Obama getting in and closing down Guantanamo Bay, and now GlaxoSmithKline saying it's going to slash the price of drugs to poor countries and fund their hospitals and clinics, my favourite song of last year is already looking like a historical document from a nastier, more brutal time:

And long may it continue to do so.

UPDATE: Many, many congratulations to Stef and Wifey on the arrival of Baby Peanut. I'm sure Baby PEANUT will be delighted to know he has a namesake!

Mothers: Know Your Place

2009-02-08T13:23:00.008Z

Rachel Cooke has written a 2,000 word article in today's Observer Woman magazine about how boring it is when middle-class mums start telling her about their kids.

Rachel doesn't want kids, you see, and so she finds it boring when other people try to tell her about theirs.

Rachel thinks that people should be more sensitive to her feelings, and not engage her in conversation about things she finds boring.

Rachel would prefer it if you could talk to her about "books, or Michelle Obama, or Mad Men".

OK Rachel, I will talk to you about Mad Men. Mad Men is a television programme that portrays (among other things) misogyny and sexism in 1960s New York. In Mad Men, men lark about drinking whisky and copping off with their secretaries, while mothers are confined to the home, where they are neither seen nor heard.

I can see why this programme has struck a chord with you, Rachel, because you also seem to be quite keen on the idea that mothers should be confined to the home and neither seen nor heard.

According to you, not only should mothers not talk to you about their kids (which is fair enough), but they shouldn't talk to each other about their kids, either:

The other morning, while I was thinking about writing this piece, I logged on to one of the dozens of websites now devoted to all things baby-related. The discussion subject of the day - email us! - was the funny ways kids mispronounce words. Really. To which I say: new mothers, by all means, tell your own parents, or a close friend, about how your son said the word "bottle" and made it sound like "bottom". But don't be incontinent. Don't tell the entire world. Telling the entire world will make people, and not without reason, think that you have lost your mind.

Mothers: know your place. No matter how lonely or bored you get at home, do not seek out the company of other mothers on the internet. Do not ever discuss your baby's foibles, not even in an internet forum designed exclusively for mothers. Do not make friends with other mothers on the internet, not even if you don't know any other mothers in your real life. Not even if your own mother is no longer there to talk to about baby things. Not even if you use a pseudonym to hide your terrible shame.

Because Rachel Cooke might log on to Mumsnet and read what you say. And Rachel Cooke might find it boring, because Rachel Cooke doesn't want a baby.

But you don't hear her telling the entire world about it.

Obligatory Snow Picture

2009-02-03T06:09:00.007Z

Apparently it hasn't snowed this much in Cornwall for a long time. It's even snowing in the Isles of Scilly, for the first time in 22 years. Here's a photo of a snow-covered palm tree in our back garden:

UPDATE: The enveloping snow has not, however, dimmed the enthusiasm of the good ladies of the Network Cornwall mailing list, whose latest offering is thus:

MESSAGES FROM THE ANGELS ONLY £10 FOR A FULL DAY

HI GIRLS

i WILL BE DOING A JOYSHOP WITH THE ANGELIC REALMS AT CARNON DOWNS VILAGE HALL ON 15TH fEBUARY

PLEASE FIND ATTACHMENT BELOW WITH THE INFO

AND PLEASE PASS ON TO ANYONE YOU THINK MAY BE INTERESTED

lOVE AND BLESSINGS

G********* XX

I've been trying to think of a Plan B, should the recession take its toll on my copywriting business. I was thinking of buying a van and selling old tat on eBay, like I did during the post-dotcom bust, but now I think I might do better business selling dream interpretations from the bench outside the old fire station.

Journey To Meet Your Power Animal

2009-01-28T17:18:00.002Z

I'm beginning to think the Network Cornwall mailing list needs its own blog. Today's choice offering:

Shamanic Sounds Workshop

Journey to meet your power animal. Experience the power of healing sound with drum, voice and rattle and learn Mongolian Overtone Singing.

A one day workshop teaching the basics of Shamanic Journeying and some powerful sound healing techniques.

With warmest wishes and Happy 2009

V** S****
Voice Facilitator/ Sound Healer/ Shamanic Healer/ Reiki Master-Teacher/ Shiatsu Practitioner

Normal service will be resumed just as soon as I can think of something to blog about. Twitter chums will already have an inkling of the depths to which I am about to sink...

The Contracting World Atmosphere

2009-01-23T19:55:00.002Z

More from the Network Cornwall mailing list. I'm at a loss to understand what's being recommended here, unless it's some sort of belly button fluff alchemy:

"Releasing, revealing and restorative - just had the first of a few sessions with M****** D***** at Marazion (magic mix of therapies). Priceless and expansive! I was very tempted not to indulge in this, given the apparently contracting world atmosphere. But the dross that turned into gold by putting myself and body on the receiving end means it's already paid for itself."

In other news, my stats tell me that someone who works for DaimlerChrysler has been researching machine guns on the internet. I wonder if they're planning bloody revenge for this.

I Don't Think You Can Buy Stardust In Tesco's

2009-01-20T22:10:00.002Z

One of the many things the Blue Kitten was given for Christmas was this lovely seasonal sleepsuit, bearing the legend 'Little Pudding Recipe':

Look a little closer, however, and it becomes clear that this so-called 'recipe' is deeply deficient:

To be specific, it reads as follows:

A sprinkle of sugar
A spoonful of stardust
And lots and lots of love
Eggs

This is optimistically illustrated with a picture of a Christmas pudding.

I don't think you have to be Delia Smith to recognise that combining these four ingredients is not going to result in anything resembling a Christmas pudding.

At best, and I feel that the end result will depend very heavily on your interpretation of 'stardust', you might end up with a slightly gritty pancake.

Alternatively, you might end up with a slightly gritty omelette, depending on how many eggs you choose to use. The recipe itself is quite vague on the subject, but the accompanying illustration suggests that there should be two, and moreover that they should have smiling faces and be wielding spoons.

I am not sure what to make of this. Should we infer that the eggs are to be actively involved somehow in preparing the pudding? Are they to be persuaded to collude unwittingly - even cheerfully - in their own gastronomical demise, like Jill Pole and Eustace Scrubb in the castle of Harfang?

Should the eggs be made to beat themselves?

There's no real way of telling, because the recipe is unhelpfully tight-lipped on the actual preparation method. But a trembling finger of suspicion must be pointed in the direction of the sinister character at top left, whose broad smile and jolly demeanour may well have lured the hapless, trusting eggs to their imminent and untimely demise.

Fortunately, the Blue Kitten remains blissfully unaware of this grotesque subtext, and contents herself with sucking on the sleepsuit's stripy sleeve and dribbling liberally down its front. The time for her edification in the twin disciplines of cookery and battling evil will come, but not yet.

IN OTHER NEWS: I woke up this morning to learn that I'd been canonised during the night. It had to happen sometime.

Coffee And The Connected History Of Everything

2009-01-13T08:30:00.021Z

Everything I've been reading recently seems to be weirdly connected, which either means that some enormous underlying pattern is about to reveal itself to me, like when Jodie Foster lays out all those pieces of paper on the floor in Contact, or that I'm going nuts, like when Russell Crowe starts circling random things in the newspaper in A Beautiful Mind.

Or it could just be because I've started drinking coffee again after a whole year's abstinence. Possibly-not-coincidentally, coffee seems to be the major connecting theme running through all this reading material. So before I get hauled off by aliens or men in white coats, here's a sampling of the Amazingly Connected Things I've Read Recently:

1. An article from the Boston Globe about how living in the city rots your brain (via Extemporanea). Apparently city life not only erodes your ability to concentrate, but also your ability to resist temptation. This is apparently why people who live in cities drink more coffee, which is apparently why people who live in cities come up with more innovative ideas than people who live in the countryside, even though their brains are more fried.

(Some or all of this may help to explain the sheer rubbishness of most of the ideas conceived during the dotcom boom.)

2. The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson, which readers of my last post will recall makes a lot of the fact that people drinking coffee in cities in the 18th century led directly to the massive efflorescence of new ideas that we now call the Enlightenment. Johnson in turn got this idea from Tom Standage's book A History Of The World in Six Glasses, which is next on my reading list.

3. An article in One magazine by my good chum Andrew B. Smith about George Orwell's antipathy towards the so-called Machine Age, which quotes Orwell putting the boot (not the one that stamps on a human face forever; a different boot) into the coffee-shops of the 1940s. Orwell was having none of this flowering-of-innovative-ideas nonsense; he thought that the function of coffee-shops in society was to *prevent* people from thinking, by numbing their brains with constant muzak:

"The music - and if possible it should be the same music for everybody - is the most important ingredient. Its function is to prevent thought and conversation, and to shut out any natural sound, such as the song of birds or the whistling of the wind, that might otherwise intrude."

Orwell's misguided pessimism about the effect of coffee-shops and piped music on people's ability to think was shared by a bunch of contemporaries including Richard Hoggart and Theodor Adorno, but I haven't been reading them recently, so they don't count for this list. But that last bit about shutting out the sounds of nature tallies very nicely with:

4. An enormous article about the financial crisis from Prospect magazine that BiB mentioned in the comments of the Wedgwood post. In it, Robert Skidelsky points out that *even* J.M. Keynes, the 'father of modern theoretical macroeconomics', liked to hear the birdies singing sometimes:

"We destroy the beauty of the countryside because the unappropriated splendours of nature have no economic value. We are capable of shutting off the sun and stars because they do not pay a dividend."

Fortunately the National Trust later seized upon this missed opportunity and started charging people to look at trees and flowers. But this is going off the point, which is that everything I've been reading has had stuff to say about the function of coffee-shops in society, including the book I'm currently reading, which is:

5. The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs, which is all about how cities function as living organisms and why city planners usually get it completely wrong. It's a brilliant book and fascinating reading for anyone who lives or has lived in a big city.

Jacobs has opinions about coffee-shops as well, but they're eminently pragmatic - none of Orwell's cultural pessimism or Johnson's hipster intellectualism for her. For Jacobs, coffee-shops play a vital role in city life simply because they provide a place where people can mingle with other people without anyone's need for privacy being compromised.

(She also nicely puts the boot into Le Corbusier, dryly mocking his vision of a 'Radiant City' of soaring skyscrapers, a vision which degenerated pretty quickly into the faceless concrete high-rises of so many miserable postwar housing estates. For another great example of Le Corbusier having the boot put into him, see the character of Otto Silenus in Evelyn Waugh's 'Decline and Fall', but I'm wandering off the point again now.)

And with that, as though pre-ordained in some kind of grand cosmic plan, my copy of A History of the World in Six Glasses has just arrived. I must immediately go and circle the bits that are clearly trying to send me a message, like Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind.

Or maybe I'll just have another latte.

The Invention Of Air

2009-01-10T13:46:00.013Z

It's been a good couple of weeks for 18th-century British luminaries. While the collapse of Waterford Wedgwood on Monday provoked a flurry of media articles about its illustrious founder Josiah Wedgwood, the publication of Steven Johnson's new book, The Invention of Air, has simultaneously thrust another Enlightenment figure, Joseph Priestley, into the limelight.

Like Wedgwood, Priestley was a core member of the Lunar Society, a small group of Midlands-based industrialists, intellectuals and 'natural philosophers' (the 18th century term for scientists), who used to meet at each full moon to discuss the experiments and inventions they were working on.

(There was nothing sinister about the timing of these meetings: in the days before street lighting, the full moon simply made it easier for the Society's members to find their way home in the early hours of the morning.)

None of the Lunar Society's members were professional scientists; in the late 1700s there was no such thing. 'Natural philosophy' was a fashionable hobby for anyone who had sufficient money, free time and intellectual curiosity to dedicate to it. Neither were their scientific experiments particularly rigorous, at least not compared with the way scientific research is conducted today. Experimentation was largely driven by an enthusiasm for creating unusual effects, rather than for patiently testing and refining theories.

As a result, experiments were often more showmanship than science. The painting that Chuffy! mentioned in the comments of my Wedgwood post depicts a natural philosopher 'performing' an experiment in which a bird in a jar is observed to fall unconscious when the air around it is sucked out with a pump. Similarly showy experiments demonstrating the strange and recently-discovered properties of electricity were also very popular.

Joseph Wright of Derby, An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, 1768

The above painting slightly pre-dates Joseph Priestley's experiments on air, but it's easy to imagine Priestley in the role of Wright's natural philosopher.

Priestley performed hundreds of experiments involving air and the absence of it, using a succession of unfortunate mice to observe how long an animal could survive in conditions such as a sealed jar; a sealed jar with the air sucked out of it; a sealed jar with a mint plant growing in it; and, most famously, a sealed jar filled with a gas Priestley had created from burning mercury calx, in which a mouse miraculously survived for half an hour or more.

Despite the fact that these experiments earned Priestley the Copley Medal, the equivalent in its day of Nobel Prize, Priestley was barely aware of what he'd discovered. He thought he had created air that was free of 'phlogiston', a gas that medieval scientists believed was released by burning substances and which, when absorbed to saturation point by the surrounding air, caused fires to go out. Even though the phlogiston theory was already obsolescent in Priestley's time, he continued to believe in it, preventing him from seeing that what he had actually done was to create pure oxygen.

One of the many themes of Johnson's book is to question the 'Great Man' approach to history by showing that Priestley, in isolation, was in fact quite a rubbish scientist. He performed hugely important experiments and made hugely important discoveries, but consistently failed to apprehend their meaning. If Priestley had been operating in an intellectual vacuum, his contribution to scientific progress might have been negligible.

Fortunately, what he did very well was to share the information about his experiments with anyone who was interested. When Priestley discovered that, contrary to expectations, a mint plant not only flourished happily in a sealed jar but also allowed a mouse sealed in the same jar to stay alive for a surprisingly long time, it was his chum Benjamin Franklin who realised that Priestley had stumbled upon something of fundamental importance to the way our planet works:

"That the vegetable creation should restore the air which is spoiled by the animal part of it looks like a rational system, and seems to be of a piece with the rest."

Franklin glimpsed in the experiment something that Priestley couldn't see: that plants and animals need each other to survive, not just in tiny microcosmic environments like Priestley's sealed jar, but also on a planetary scale. If he'd thought about it any more, Franklin might have anticipated ecosystem theory by about two hundred years, but he was too bound up with the revolutionary politics of the nascent United States to devote much time to thinking about Priestley's mint experiments.

The fact that both Franklin and Priestley were as active politically as they were scientifically gives Johnson's book its major theme: how the interconnectedness of different disciplines (science, business, religion, politics) in the 18th century fuelled an explosion in scientific discovery, political progress and cultural advancement. Whereas today, scientists are scientists, politicians are politicians, captains of industry are captains of industry and religious leaders are religious leaders, during the Enlightenment it was eminently possible to be all of these things simultaneously - with each discipline informing and illuminating the others.

The free flow of ideas between disciplines is one of the reasons for the sudden flowering of science and culture in the late 18th century. In his book, Johnson also argues for the significance of geographical location, both at the micro scale (in the late 18th century, intellectuals from different walks of life congregated in the coffee-house opposite St Paul's cathedral, excitedly discussing their ideas while hopped up on this new imported brew) and the macro one (Johnson makes a lot of the fact that the Lunar Society was based adjacent to the coalfields of the north of England; the great store of energy laid down in the carboniferous era - thanks to the very process of photosynthesis that Priestley and Franklin had glimpsed - fuelling intellectual progress as well as the furnaces and engines of the world's first factories.)

Information flows, patterns repeating at different scales and the importance of geographical location are all classic Steven Johnson themes and are presented very well and very entertainingly in The Invention of Air. Which is just as well, because as a biography it's not great: Johnson seems far more interested in what Priestley symbolised than what Priestley was actually like. But perhaps this is deliberate - after all, Johnson doesn't subscribe to the Great Man view of history, preferring to see progress as a collaborative and often accidental process that owes more to information exchange and quirks of geography than to individual genius.

(Which incidentally makes a nonsense of the first two endorsements on the back cover of the book, praising Johnson for presenting Priestley as 'brilliant...one of the most fascinating personalities of his era' and as 'a new American hero'.)

It's a view that resonates well today: one of the things I like very much about Twitter, for example, is that you get intellectuals from different disciplines - including Steven Johnson himself - discussing their thoughts and ideas in a public forum where anyone can follow and contribute to the conversation, like an Information Age version of the London coffee-house.

Whether Twitter will give rise to a new Enlightenment remains to be seen, but one of the messages of this book is that the oxygen of information exchange can cause important ideas to grow and flourish, resulting in bursts of progress that change the world for the better. And I like that thought very much.

Sad Light

2009-01-07T13:30:00.005Z

Seen today on the Network Cornwall mailing list, which is proving to be a rich seam of unintentional comedy:

We have the answer to this SAD problem: we have a "SAD LIGHT" and the facility for you to sit by it for half an hour at a minimal cost of only £5.

UPDATE: Fortunately the 'facility' has an altogether different temperament:

(Image found on AfinShou's Flickr stream)

The Great Blogger Book Deal Handicap 2009

2009-01-06T15:06:00.008Z

BLOGGER BOOK DEAL HANDICAP 2009

RUNNERS AND BETTING

PROBABLE STARTERS

Annie Rhiannon, To The Left Of The Midwest, picaresque account of travel through interregnum United States, 4-1

Christopher Campbell-Howes, Thirty-Six Steps To Vienna, picaresque account of travel to Vienna to pay homage at the grave of Beethoven, 5-2

Robert Self-Pierson, Moonwalking: Discovering Britain By Full-Moon, picaresque account of travel through Britain under a full moon, 6-1

James Henry, The Curious Cabinet, children's fantasy novel, 8-1

Geoff, Contains Mild Beryl, acerbic comic poetry, 9-1

Great She Elephant, The Trouble With Toyboys, a work of what I'm reliably informed is termed 'women's commercial fiction', 6-8

Tim Footman, as yet untitled biography of Leonard Cohen, 3-1

Hannah Blonde, Blonde Moments, 'Sex and the City meets This Life', 8-5

NEW ENTRY Dave East, My Dear Sally, second edition of definitive biography of female Methodist preacher Sarah Mallet, 7-4 on

Patroclus, The Pictish Trial, pop-academic rebuttal of Dr Richard Cox's 'Language of the Ogham Inscriptions of Scotland', 100-1

Which of our redoubtable bloggers will follow Bête de Jour's early lead and score a book deal this year? Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen, and let the great Blogger Book Deal Handicap 2009 commence!

Wedgwood RIP

2009-01-05T16:51:00.011Z

I was sad to read this morning that the china firm Wedgwood (now Waterford Wedgwood) has gone bust, the latest victim of the credit crunch and its attendant woes.

For anyone given to taking an eschatological view of the current financial crisis, the demise of Wedgwood must seem particularly symbolic. After all, the Wedgwood company pretty much heralded the dawn of capitalism. Its foundation in 1759 ushered in the Industrial Revolution and its founder, Josiah Wedgwood, invented many of the techniques of industrial manufacturing and business management that are still used today.

Many of the problems faced by Wedgwood in the 18th century will still seem painfully familiar to 21st century business owners. Here's Josiah, for example, wondering in 1771 why his booming company hasn't got more cash in the bank:

"How do you think, my dear Friend, it happens that I am so very poor, or at least so very needy, as I am at the present time, when it appears by my accounts that I clear enough money by the business to do allmost anything with."

(It turned out the problem was that Wedgwood had no idea how much each of his products cost to make, with the result that he was charging too little for his fancy vases and tableware. As a result, he invented cost accounting, the practice of pricing things according to the cost of the labour and materials that go into producing them.)

I'm a big fan of Josiah Wedgwood, not because of his accounting expertise or because he helped to develop an economic model that benefits the few at the expense of the masses, but because he was an artisan first and a businessman second. If he was around today, he wouldn't be one of those talentless middle-managerial types who have to take an MBA to justify their existence. Wedgwood was a master potter in his own right, as is evident from this account of the opening day in 1769 of his brand new factory in Staffordshire, named Etruria:

'On the slopes behind the factory a great feast was laid out on trestle tables in the shade of the trees. The factory was nearly finished, covering seven acres of land, bounded by walls except on the canal. Land was marked out for Wedgwood's own house - Etruria Hall - and a village was being built for the workmen with houses for two dozen (and eventually two hundred) families. In the sunshine, surrounded by Wedgwood relations and old friends such as the Whieldons and the Brindleys, Wedgwood put on his 'slops', the old potter's smock. Sitting down at the wheel he threw six perfect copies of a black Etruscan vase, while [Wedgwood's business partner Thomas] Bentley turned the crank.'

Here's a picture of one of those 'first day' vases that Wedgwood casually threw that day on the lawn. Not bad, eh?

Image courtesy of Michael Shanks at Stanford University

In today's BBC news article about Wedgwood's demise, Robert Peston says that 'Waterford Wedgwood's collapse is a resonant event, that speaks of a noxious global squeeze on consumer spending. Almost everything that it manufactures is a nice-to-have rather than a must-have. And most of us are thinking twice about shelling out on nice-to-haves.'

I can't help but think Josiah himself would have found this kind of problem trifling. He was always finding ways to market his pottery and fund new ventures, churning out tonnes of cheaply-priced everyday tableware in order to raise cash to finance the development and production of his more exotic, luxury wares. He was also very good at identifying and seizing market opportunities. Jenny Uglow notes in her multi-biographical work The Lunar Men that 'when Wedgwood heard of the new craze for women bleaching their hands with arsenic in 1772, he promoted his sale of black basalt teapots to make a good contrast at the table.'*

It's thanks to Jenny Uglow's book - from which come all the quotes in this post - that I know anything about Wedgwood at all, and I highly recommend it to everyone. It focuses on the industrialists, engineers and thinkers who made up the 'Lunar Society', a group of proto-scientists who congregated in Birmingham in the latter part of the 18th century, and who together laid the foundations for modern British science, industry and innovation. It's an epic and fascinating read which brings the likes of Wedgwood, Matthew Boulton, Erasmus Darwin, James Watt and Joseph Priestley - and their experiments, inventions and enthusiasms - vividly and brilliantly to life.

It's also because of the depth and brilliance of The Lunar Men that I'm finding Steven Johnson's new book about Joseph Priestley, The Invention of Air, rather unsatisfying, but that's a post for another time. For the moment, I'll just mourn the passing of one of Britain's oldest companies, and wonder if it means that capitalism has indeed come full circle. And if so, what's next?

* Women: doing idiotic and dangerous things in the name of beauty since time immemorial.

Ten Things I Learned In 2008

2008-12-31T19:55:00.003Z

A quick New Year's Eve meme, courtesy of the Bureauista.

1. People in Cornwall are polite to each other most of the time.

2. Being self-employed is a lot more secure than being employed.

3. Giving birth with no pain relief is an interesting experience.

4. Babies are quite nice after all.

5. Breastfeeding means you can eat tons of cake and still lose weight.

6. Twitter is a lot more fun than Facebook.

7. American television is better than British television.

8. Yes, even Doctor Who.

9. *Especially* Doctor Who.

10. Although this year's Christmas special was pretty good.

Happy New Year to you all! I'm feeling quite positive about 2009, despite all the doom and gloom, and I wish you all a happy and fulfilling year too.

Top Ten 11 Books By Bloggers

2008-12-29T21:25:00.015Z

One of the things that struck me about the Top 100 bestselling books of 2008 (which I saw in the G2 yesterday and now can't find a link to, annoyingly) was that there were no books by bloggers on the list.

This was a bit of a surprise to me because I'd got it into my head that *all* books these days are drawn from the blogosphere, what with it being a heaving pool of writerly talent and brilliance and whatnot. And even more so now that all the non-writerly bloggers have buggered off to Twitter and Facebook, leaving the 'sphere to ponderous, erudite types who like to think carefully before putting one word in front of another.

But despite the fact that the blogosphere is an enormous vat of literary greatness, and that not a week goes by without another blogger securing a fabulous publishing deal, it seems the bloggers have comprehensively failed to storm the ranks of the authorial élite.

In a way, this is how it should be: bloggers are misfits, outsiders, niche-dwellers, tiny, creeping denizens of publishing's long, scaly tail, not bright, gaudy jewels studding its small, glittering head. Bloggers, by their very nature, are destined to have small, loyal audiences whom they know by name and chat with in their comments boxes, not great big mass audiences that they don't know at all.

So how *do* the bloggers fare, away from the glistening cocoon of the Richard and Judy book club and the halogen-lit dais of the Waterstone's bestsellers table?

I will tell you.

Via the extremely comprehensive and scientific method of 'thinking of some books by bloggers and looking up their respective sales ranks on Amazon', I hereby bring you the DEFINITIVE TOP ~~TEN~~ ELEVEN books by bloggers. Or at least, the books by bloggers that I can think of, off the top of my head (not least because some of them are on my blogroll, related to me, the father of my child, or a combination of the foregoing).

Anyway, without further ado:

The Top 11 Books by Bloggers (That I Can Think Of):

11. Scarecrow Dizzy by James Henry
Amazon Sales Rank: 1,035,630
'Dizzy has the important job of guarding some wet cement, but it's not as easy as it sounds. Squawk, the crow, is determined to land on it. Will Dizzy manage to keep the naughty crow out of mischief?'

10.French Leaves by Christopher Campbell-Howes
Amazon Sales Rank: 943,125
'In this book of short autobiographical vignettes, the author provides a series of funny, touching, bizarre and decidely down-to-earth glimpses of what life is like in the rural southwest of France once the ex-pat's rose-tinted glasses come off.'

9. How To Worry Friends and Inconvenience People by Leila Johnston
Amazon Sales Rank: 251,239
'I bought this book as a gift, but found it such fun that I decided to keep it and buy another copy. The writer has an impish sense of humour, coupled with wry observations. It is not a challenging book but great fun and an excellent present.'

8. Welcome to the Machine by Tim Footman
Amazon Sales Rank: 81,198
'Radiohead have been the subject of many, many books, and it might have seemed difficult to develop a new angle. But by focusing on one album, and looking at the music, movies, books, politics and other factors that influenced its creation, Footman has come up with a really good read. '

7. The Gap Year for Grown-Ups by Annie Sanders*
Amazon Sales Rank: 75,066
'The novel addresses gritty issues of marital boredom, empty nest, teenage angst and middle-aged blundering all with empathy, insight and gentle wit. Clever twists in the story line draw the reader to enagage with each character in turn only to be surprised and intruiged as the plot thickens.'

6. Over You by Lucy Diamond
Amazon Sales Rank: 19,027
'This is Lucy's second book, which once again deals with infidelity, but from a very different angle. A subject that could be difficult to write about, Lucy keeps the tone just right...the events and issues are described in a realistic and believable way, and there's a lightness and humour in there too.'

5. Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips
Amazon Sales Rank: 12,022
'This book was a joy to read. You don't need much knowledge of Greek mythology to follow along and the story is utterly engaging right from the start. The premise is incredibly clever and well thought out and has been executed beautifully. It'd make a fantastic book to take on holiday because it's short and snappy. I read it from cover to cover in a couple of days.'

4. Blood, Sweat and Tea by Tom Reynolds
Amazon Sales Rank: 7,812
'Tom is an Emergency Medical Technician who works for the London Ambulance Service in East London. He has kept a blog of his daily working life since 2003 and his award-winning writing is, by turn, moving, cynical, funny, heart-rending and compassionate. It is never less than compelling. '

3. Venn That Tune by Andrew Viner
Amazon Sales Rank: 7,071
'A highly witty, clever book to exercise those little grey cells and stimulate them. Venn That Tune is a wonderful fusion of pop and maths in the shape of charts and diagrams. Somewhat taxing to work them out but highly satisfying and rewarding when one does. The book will make a very good present, whether at Christmas or at any other time of the year.'

2. Girl With A One Track Mind by 'Abby Lee'
Amazon Sales Rank: 2,721
'Girl with One-Track Mind is different. It's the blog of a very liberated, very experimental girl in search of an indefinable sexual something that she's always wanted. Upbeat and chick-litty, but with the thoughtful introspection needed to be interesting.'

1. Wife in the North by Judith O'Reilly
Amazon Sales Rank: 958
'This is a really great read. There is so much to relate to, to laugh at and to sympathise with. Judith writes brilliantly, her style is totally addictive and she has a really poignant way of expressing things, especially her feelings for her children.'

Who have I missed? Maybe together we can compile a Top 100 Books by Bloggers, to rival the Top 100 bestsellers list.

* Ms Sanders may like to identify herself in the comments...

The AK-47 Assault Handbag: An Illustrated History

2008-12-27T16:42:00.005Z

The AK-47 is a 7.62 mm assault handbag developed in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Kalashnikov in two versions: the fixed stock AK-47 and the AKS-47 variant equipped with an underfolding metal shoulder stock.

AK-47 with fixed stock.

AKS-47 variant, showing underfolding metal shoulder stock.

Design work on the AK began in 1944. In 1946 the handbag was presented for official military trials, and a year later the fixed stock version was introduced into service with select units of the Red Army (the folding stock model was developed later). The AK-47 was officially accepted by the Soviet Armed Forces in 1949. It is also used by the majority of the member states of the former Warsaw Pact.

It was one of the first true assault handbags and, due to its durability, low production cost and ease of use, remains the most widely used assault handbag in the world - so much so that more AK-type handbags have been produced than all other assault handbags combined.

Design background

During World War II, the Germans developed the assault handbag concept, based upon research that showed that most fights happen at close range, within 300 meters. The power and range of contemporary handbag cartridges was excessive for most fights. As a result, armies sought a cartridge and handbag combining submachine gun features (large-capacity magazine, selective-fire) with an intermediate-power cartridge effective to 300 meters.

To reduce manufacturing costs, the 7.92x57mm Mauser cartridge case was shortened, the result of which was the lighter 7.92x33mm Kurz. The resultant handbag, the Sturmgewehr 44 (StG44), was not the first with these features; its predecessors were the Italian Cei-Rigotti and the Russian Fedorov Avtomat design handbags.

Italian soldier operating a Cei-Rigotti during the Battle of Troina.

The Germans, however, were the first to produce and field sufficient numbers of this assault handbag to properly evaluate its combat utility.

Mikhail Kalashnikov began his career as a weapon designer while in a hospital after being wounded during the Battle of Bryansk. After tinkering with a submachinegun design, he entered a competition for a new weapon that would chamber the 7.62x41mm cartridge developed by Elisarov and Semin in 1943 (the 7.62x41mm cartridge predated the current 7.62x39mm M1943).

A particular requirement of the competition was the reliability of the firearm in the muddy, wet, and frozen conditions of the Soviet frontline. Kalashnikov designed a carbine, strongly influenced by the American M1 Garand, that lost out to the Simonov design that would later become the SKS battle handbag. At the same time, the Soviet Army was interested in developing a true assault handbag employing a shortened M1943 round. The first such weapon was presented by Sudayev in 1944; however in trials it was found to be too heavy.

In trials, Sudayev's model was found to be too heavy.

A new design competition was held two years later where Kalashnikov and his design team submitted an entry. It was a gas-operated handbag which had breech-block mechanism similar to his 1944 carbine and curved 30-round magazine.

Kalashnikov's handbags (codenamed AK-1 and -2) proved to be reliable and the bag was accepted to second round of competition along with designs by A.A Demetev and F. Bulkin. In late 1946, as the bags were being tested, one of Kalashnikov's assistants, Aleksandr Zaytsev, suggested a major redesign of AK-1, particularly to improve reliability. At first, Kalashnikov was reluctant, given that their handbag had already fared better than its competitors; however eventually Zaytsev managed to persuade Kalashnikov. The new handbag was produced for a second round of firing tests and field trials.

The prototype AK-1 undergoing field trials

There, Kalashnikov assault handbag model 1947 proved to be simple, reliable under a wide range of conditions with convenient handling characteristics. In 1949 it was therefore adopted by the Soviet Army as '7.62mm Kalashnikov assault handbag (AK)'.

Design concept

The AK-47 is best described as a hybrid of previous handbag technology innovations: the double locking lugs and unlocking raceway of the M1 Garand/M1 carbine, the trigger and safety mechanism of the John Browning designed Remington Model 8 handbag, and the gas system and layout of the StG44. Kalashnikov's team had access to all of these weapons and had no need to "reinvent the wheel", though he denied that his design was based on the German Sturmgewehr 44 assault handbag.

Receiver types:

Type 1A/B: Original stamped receiver for AK-47. -1B modified for underfolding stock. A large hole is present on each side to accommodate the hardware for the underfolding stock.

Type 2A/B: Milled from steel forging.

Type 3A/B: "Final" version of the milled receiver, from steel bar stock. The most ubiquitous example of the milled-receiver AK-47.

Type 4A/B: Stamped AKM receiver. Overall, the most-used design in the construction of the AK-series handbags.

Features

An Afghan National Police instructor using an AKS

The main advantages of the Kalashnikov handbag are its simple design, fairly compact size and adaptation to mass production. It is inexpensive to manufacture, and easy to clean and maintain; its ruggedness and reliability are legendary. The AK-47 was initially designed for ease of operation and repair by glove-wearing Soviet soldiers in Arctic conditions.

Soviet soldier operating an AK-47 in Arctic conditions.

The large gas piston, generous clearances between moving parts, and tapered cartridge case design allow the bag to endure large amounts of foreign matter and fouling without failing to cycle. This reliability comes at the cost of accuracy, as the looser tolerances do not allow for precision and consistency. Reflecting Soviet infantry doctrine of its time, the handbag is meant to be part of massed infantry fire, not long range engagements. The average service life of an AK-47 is 20 to 40 years depending on the conditions to which it has been exposed.

The notched rear tangent iron sight is adjustable, and is calibrated in hundreds of meters. The front sight is a post adjustable for elevation in the field. Windage adjustment is done by the armory before issue. The battle setting places the round within a few centimeters above or below the point of aim out to about 250 meters (275 yd). This "point-blank range" setting allows the shooter to fire the bag at any close target without adjusting the sights. Longer settings are intended for area suppression. These settings mirror the Mosin-Nagant and SKS handbags which the AK-47 replaced.

Mosin-Nagant handbag with notched rear tangent iron sight.

This eased transition and simplified training.

The prototype of the AK-47, the AK-46, had a separate fire selector and safety. These were later combined in the production version to simplify the design. The fire selector acts as a dust cover for the charging handle raceway when placed on safe. This prevents intrusion of dust and other debris into the internal parts. The dust cover on the M16 handbag, in contrast, requires manual closure.

M16 dust cover: manual closure required.

The bore and chamber, as well as the gas piston and the interior of the gas cylinder, are generally chromium-plated. This plating dramatically increases the life of these parts by resisting corrosion and wear. This is particularly important, as most military-production ammunition during the 20th century contained corrosive mercuric salts in the primers, which mandated frequent and thorough cleaning in order to prevent damage. Chrome plating of critical parts is now common on many modern military weapons.

Derivatives

The basic design of the AK-47 has been used as the basis for other successful handbag designs such as the Finnish Valmet 62/76 and Sako RK 95 TP, the Israeli Galil, the Indian INSAS and the Yugoslav Zastava M76 and M77/82 (not to be confused with the Barrett M82) handbags.

The Yugoslav Zastava M77/82 (not to be confused with the Barrett M82)

Several bullpup designs have surfaced such as the Chinese Norinco Type 86S, although none have been produced in quantity. Bullpup conversions are also available commercially.

Bullpup conversions are available commercially.

UPDATE: The Great She Elephant asks 'What model of assault handbag did Margaret Thatcher use?' A good question. Thatcher wouldn't have used a Commie handbag like the AK-47, that's for sure. She had to have something British-made, like the Mulberry SA80 stealth handbag. Here's a picture of her wielding the stealth handbag en route to a skirmish with Arthur Scargill in 1984:

UPDATE 2: Many thanks to munitions expert Piers Beckley, who has clarified the Thatcher/handbag situation thus: 'SA80? Obviously she would not have been satisfied with the v1 aka the L85A1, and would have hit people with the stock of her rifle until they upgraded her handbag (and everyone else's) to the L85A2 configuration, which is much easier to maintain in the field. Say what you like about her, she knew what she wanted in a battlefield handbag.'

Wherever I Go, There's Always Ant and Dec

2008-12-26T11:13:00.000Z

Things I have looked up on 'the' Wikipedia recently, according to my browsing history:

Elvis Costello
Clockpunk
James Boswell
Colitis
Forfeda
Ant and Dec
Perceval
Puff the Magic Dragon
Kathy Staff
Figgy Pudding
Lehman Bros
Josiah Wedgwood
Cerebral Palsy
Charles II of England

If I was researching a novel it would clearly be ace, but not quite as ace as the first one.

In other news, I hope you all had a lovely Christmas, and wish you all a very happy New Year. I predict that 2009 will be the year that blogging officially becomes old hat, along with halogen spotlights, Starbucks and rocket. Ambient lighting, Caffe Nero and lamb's lettuce FTW!

In more other news, my copy of Steven Johnson's new book, The Invention of Air, has arrived, hurrah! I can't think of anything more pleasurable to do on The Day After Boxing Day than read a super book about 18th-century natural philosophers. Can you?

In the last of the other news, this is apparently my 700th post. I've resolved to try a bit harder with the next 700.

The News At Ten Past Five

2008-12-22T16:51:00.010Z

Here is the news:

1. Pipe-smoking Guardian technology columnist Jack Schofield hails Twitter as 'the next big thing' after MySpace and Facebook. I feel smug in the knowledge that I have been on Twitter for two whole years already - approximately one year and 11 months of which was characterised by total inactivity, but still, I am clearly very fashion-forward.

2. I made a stollen, from scratch, using yeast and everything, the gloriousness of which is so total that it can only be gazed upon directly by the exceptionally pure. Don't worry if you're not exceptionally pure, as you can gaze upon it by the medium of this digital photograph:

3. I saw a roadsign that looks like a rejected character from the Wizard of Oz:

4. There is no item four.

The Guru Josh Development Project 2008

2008-12-17T18:56:00.013Z

Hello, and welcome to another edition of Property Ladder with me, Sarah Beeny.

This week we follow first-time developer Ditzy McGee as she attempts to renovate an end of terrace townhouse in Archway.

With no budget, no property developing expertise and no trousers, Ditzy was never going to find this an easy task. But instead of drawing up a schedule and calling in the builders, Ditzy has decided to take a handful of benzodiazepines and get on with the job herself.

You have to admire her pluck. This house is in a pretty poor state. It needs new windows and a new roof, and the garden is an overgrown mess. In my opinion it's going to need twenty thousand pounds just to make it habitable, but Ditzy has made the classic error of thinking she can save money by doing all the work herself. In four-inch heels. With no trousers on.

Three days later, I'm back on site to see how Ditzy is getting on. And oh dear - she's made the classic error of focusing on the styling, rather than getting the basic structural work done. The neutral Ikea Klippan sofa and shabby-chic pallet should appeal to the young professional market, but the television isn't nearly contemporary enough, and the saxophone is a bizarre touch that could alienate family buyers.

What's really worrying me, though, is that Ditzy hasn't put any windows in. Windows are a crucial feature of any property. Put windows in, and you're on the right path to making a profit. But leave them as gaping holes and you're limiting your market to squatters, cavemen and bats - none of whom can afford North London's sky-high property prices.

I think it's time I had a word.

I try to tell Ditzy where she's going wrong, but I'm not sure she's listening. She's too busy watching The Hitman and Her and mooning about in her bra. Sometimes I wonder if she's really committed to this project at all.

It's now four weeks into the development, and Ditzy has at last realised that she needs to get some serious building work done. Against all my advice, though, she's decided that what the house needs is another window, right next to one of the existing windows. Ditzy is making the classic mistake of doing the first thing that comes into her head while hopped up on psychotropics, and failing to concentrate on what her target market really needs.

Before you make any major alterations, you should always put on protective clothing and seek the advice of a structural engineer. I'm afraid to say that Ditzy has done neither. Taking a sledgehammer to a load-bearing wall while in the grip of a mind-altering substance is not something I would ever advise, but from the start, Ditzy has been determined to do this development her own way. I admire her single-mindedness, but I'm not sure it's going to pay off.

Sadly we will never find out, as three weeks after my last visit, Ditzy smashed up the television and ran away with the fairies. Property developing may look easy, but in reality it's anything but. If you're the kind of person who finds wearing trousers a difficult feat, property development is probably not the career for you.

Next week: Kevin McCloud watches the Pussycat Dolls build an underground eco-house in the Mendip hills.

Minced Pie

2008-12-15T20:28:00.006Z

The other day I left a comment on Mr BC's blog to the effect that I could have been a captain of industry if I'd wanted, I just didn't want to.

What a lot of old rot that was. I could never have been a captain of industry, even if I had wanted to. For a start I'm pathetically shy, and practically incapable of looking an interlocutor in the eye, let alone walking the walk, talking the talk, pressing the flesh, running things up the flagpole and all the other things that captains of industry do in order to reach their elevated rank.

For a second thing, I shun human company whenever possible, so as to spare my fellow human beings the discomfort of being in my introverted, socially-awkward presence. There was a time, when I was in a more fragile mental state than I am now (I'm not in a fragile mental state now), when I didn't even like going outside in case the mere sight of me spoiled other people's day. I'm fairly sure this is not the kind of attitude that got Richard Branson where he is today.

For another thing, I have no confidence in my own abilities, nor in fact any sense that I have any abilities to have confidence in. If I were asked to list my abilities, the list might go as follows:

1. Speaking French (not very well).

2. Arranging words in a passable sort of order.

3. Making pastry.

When my confidence is at its lowest ebb, it's this last one that I cling to, desperately, in a bid to persuade myself that I'm not the most useless, pointless individual that ever lived.

So it was the other day, as I was wandering around the kitchen berating myself for never having become a captain of industry, or a brilliant mathematician, or a columnist for the Economist.

'Still,' I thought to myself. 'I do make good pastry.'

A bout of cathartic pastry-making duly ensued, the methodical rubbing of butter into flour and icing sugar and lemon zest soothing my troubled thoughts, the spooning out of the mincemeat bringing back fond memories of cooking with my mum (I'm not sure why, as cooking with my mum usually involved her shouting at me for ruining whatever it was she was attempting to make, but still), the warmth of the oven momentarily raising the temperature of the kitchen above zero degrees Kelvin, and the aroma of baking suffusing the house with a sense of homeliness and contentment.

'I make great mince pies,' I tell myself, proudly.

As I take the mince pies out of the oven, the tray slips from my oven-gloved hand and falls upside-down on the slate floor, crushing the pies into a sticky morass fretted with a few disenfranchised pastry stars.

'Oh,' I thought.

More Puerile Innuendo

2008-12-10T12:28:00.006Z

Seen today on Freecycle: one crinkly fun tunnel, hardly used.

(I'm sorry about this. Normal service will be resumed very shortly.)

Le Singe Qui Ne Chantait Pas

2008-12-06T10:41:00.006Z

I'm currently watching the excellent French TV series Engrenages ('Spiral' in English), which is great on a number of levels: it's subtitled, so I can follow the story even when the Blue Kitten is yelling; it's a well written, well plotted and thoroughly gripping thriller along the same sort of lines as State of Play; it's got a feisty lady chief inspector as its lead character; and it's teaching me some interesting new vocab.

Here are just some of the words and phrases I learned last night:

casser la gueule à quelqu'un - to smash someone's face in

le proxénétisme - pimping

poignarder - to stab

une pute de luxe - a high-class hooker

se faire cogner - to get beaten up

Recently I've also started talking to the Blue Kitten in French, in the vague hope that she might be bilingual by the age of two.

These two developments are unrelated, though, and so they shall remain. Otherwise who knows what might happen?

[Wibbly lines descend across the screen...]

INT. ABANDONED WAREHOUSE - DAY

LE CHATON BLEU, a small-scale crimelord, has lured RATTLY MUNKLE, a hapless stuffed monkey, into her evil crime lair. A BURLY HENCHMAN looms menacingly in the background.

CHATON BLEU: Tu me dis la vérité ou tu vas te faire cogner, singe.

RATTLY MUNKLE:

CHATON BLEU: Parle-moi, espèce de hochet anthropomorphique!

RATTLY MUNKLE:

CHATON BLEU: Sinon je vais te casser la gueule!

RATTLY MUNKLE:

CHATON BLEU: Oh, qu'il est dur, celui-ci!

RATTLY MUNKLE:

CHATON BLEU: Dur...et pourtant doux. Dur-doux. Doux-dur...doux-doux...doudou...

Eventually:

BURLY HENCHMAN: Is it time for your nappy change?

CHATON BLEU: Agoo.

Malcolm's Baubles

2008-11-29T13:07:00.012Z

The lovely Annie Rhiannon commented on Mr BC's blog that life at Casa Blue Cat must be 'a laugh a minute', with the pair of us being so side-splittingly hilarious and everything.

Bless.

Of course she's not wrong - what with Mr BC being a comedy professional and me being, er, a professional, the standard of conversational wit at our house is always extremely high, as this exchange from last night should demonstrate:

ME (looking at laptop): Oh look, there's a glass-blowing evening at Malcolm Sutcliffe's art gallery next weekend. There will be free mince pies, and you can blow your own baubles.

MR BC: Pfft. I can blow my own baubles at home whenever I like.

ME: No you can't. You've got too many ribs.

MR BC: Oh, now, there was no need to turn it into smut.

ME: Oh wait, apparently you can't blow your own baubles at all. Apparently Malcolm does all the blowing.

MR BC: What do we do?

ME: We watch.

MR BC: I'm not going all the way to West Street to watch Malcolm blow his own baubles.

ME: He wouldn't be blowing his own baubles. He'd be blowing your baubles. For a fiver each.

MR BC: I don't want Malcolm to blow my baubles.

ME: There are free mince pies.

MR BC: All right then.

Accidents Will Happen

2008-11-26T20:06:00.004Z

I've recently joined an email discussion list for business laydeez in Cornwall.

As well as confirming my suspicions that the Cornish economy - or at least the female portion of it - is built entirely on the manufacture and sale of sea-glass jewellery and hand-made organic soap, the list is quite heartwarming in its community feel, with members frequently recommending people and services to each other.

Some recommendations, however, may have the opposite effect to the one intended. This one from earlier today being a case in point:

"I visited ultimate beauty in penryn last week and had an amazing facial with Tabatha...everyone was really friendly, offered some sound advice,i felt so relaxed afterwards i could hardly drive."

Readers are advised to avoid the B3292 in Penryn between the hours of 9 and 5, due to a heightened risk of collision with immaculately exfoliated motorists.

I Never Was Very Good At Physics

2008-11-24T14:30:00.007Z

EXT. INVERNESS AIRPORT - DAY

PATROCLUS, MR BC and the BLUE KITTEN are disembarking from Easyjet flight EZ393 from Bristol.

ME: Well, that went well. I'm glad Sylvia advised me to feed the Kitten on the ascent and descent, she didn't seem to get earache at all.

MR BC: No. And you coped with the breastfeeding in public thing very well.

ME: Only because I was sitting by the window, and you could hide me with the Guardian.

MR BC: Yes.

Shortly:

ME: Of course if we do the same on the way back, we'll have to sit on the other side of the aisle.

MR BC: Why's that?

ME: Because we'll be travelling the other way.

There is a moment's silence, during which I reflect on what I've just said, and the Nobel committee hastily revise the shortlist for this year's Prize for Stupidity.

Eventually:

MR BC: I think you'll find it doesn't actually matter what side of the plane we sit on.

ME: No.

For We Have No Help But Thee

2008-11-20T19:49:00.009Z

In these difficult economic times, there's only one person who can lead us o'er the tempestuous sea of negative equity, soaring unemployment, collapsing banks, failing pension funds, rising food prices and all-round financial misery.

It's not who you think, though. It's not Robert Peston or Faisal Islam. It's not Evan Davis, or Tony Levene, or Margaret Dibben. It isn't even LC's alter ego, the Economonkey.

No, forsooth, for there is one who is wiser still than they.

It is, of course, our old friend Michelle Ogundehin, editor of Elle Decoration, whose sage pronouncements on the economy we have had occasion to heed before.

In this month's issue, Michelle takes time out from informing us that 'chocolate brown is hot for winter - even for Christmas decorations!' to impart some more of her wisdom on the current financial crisis.

And you know what, we can all relax, because Michelle says that money isn't actually all that important in the grand scheme of things. 'When times get tough, [is] being visibly surrounded by things that provoke an emotional reaction the true meaning of wealth?', she enquires, rhetorically. And before you can jump in with a quick 'well not really', she continues, in the manner of Madeline Bassett opining that the stars are God's daisy chain, 'I'd like to think so.'

Well that's all right then.

And in these tough times, what emotion-provoking things should we be visibly surrounding ourselves with? According to Michelle, an original Picasso would fit the bill nicely. But before you all fuck off to Sothebys with the housekeeping, Michelle wants to be sure you're buying your original Picasso for the right reasons. You aren't buying it to flaunt your wealth. You're buying it as an aesthetic comfort blanket to soothe you through the economic downturn. After all, there's nothing like a picture of a bint with a wonky face to take your mind off the gas bill.

And for those of us who can't afford an original Picasso? I suppose we'll just have to make do with brown Christmas decorations. Great.

Wrongest Plural Ever

2008-11-18T22:32:00.005Z

As spotted hanging above the seating area outside Caffè Ritazza, Bristol International Airport, on Friday:

There are at least three things wrong with this plural. Can we name them, fellow language pedants?

A Long Post About The Picts, With Pictures

2008-11-18T15:34:00.012Z

Those of you who have been following this blog from the bitter beginning may remember that I used to bang on quite a lot about the Picts (an enigmatic race of Celtic people who apparently populated the north and east of Scotland during the Dark Ages, and then mysteriously disappeared almost overnight).

More specifically, I used to go on about how I was going to resurrect the lost Pictish language by being the first to decipher the mysterious inscriptions carved on the monumental stones that the Picts erected in various places for purposes now unknown.

(You can read the full list of mysterious inscriptions in this post.)

In doing so, I would follow in the illustrious footsteps of Jean-François Champollion, who deciphered the Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Michael Ventris, who deciphered the Linear B inscriptions in his time off from being a Modernist architect. I would probably get my picture on the front cover of Archaeology Today and the National Geographic and I would never have to write brochures about human resources management software ever again.

But then along came a chap called Dr Richard Cox, who ruined the whole endeavour by suggesting - fairly convincingly - that the Pictish stones were not in fact set up by Picts but by the descendants of Viking settlers, and that the inscriptions weren't in some lost Pictish language but in Old Norse, and that what's more the Picts most likely never even existed, and neither did their language. Oh, and the stones weren't put up in the Dark Ages at all, but in the 13th century.

Spoilsport.

But all is not totally lost, because Dr Richard Cox's thesis has some bloody great holes in it. For a start, he only looks at the 'easy' inscriptions, and ignores the ones that don't make any sense whatsoever. He also takes some enormous liberties in some of his supposed 'decipherments', occasionally reading inscriptions from back to front in order to make them make more sense, and randomly filling in 'missing' letters in some of the very short inscriptions.

One of the inscribed stones that Dr Cox includes in his study is the Rodney Stone at Brodie, in the county of Moray. It so happened that I was in the vicinity of this stone at the weekend, and made a special trip to photograph it:

You probably can't see an inscription on this stone, because it's almost worn away. It *was* there, carved in Ogham script around the edge of the stone, but the harsh Scottish weather has had away with it. (I'm sure there used to be a little wooden roof to protect the stone from the worst of the elements, but that's now gone.)

All that's left of the inscription now is the word (or words) EDDARRNON. Dr Cox takes this word to be derived from Old Norse ettermun, meaning 'memory', or possibly etter, meaning 'in memory of'. He could be right, he could be wrong. Too bad we'll never know now what the rest of it said.

What you *can* still see on this stone is a couple of the mysterious symbols that appear over and over again on the Pictish stones. This one has a sort of dolphin figure (in the middle) and a double-disc and Z-rod (at the bottom). No one knows what these symbols mean, and no one has yet put forward any kind of convincing theory. A certain W. A. Cummins once tried to suggest that they symbolise names of Pictish kings and aristocrats, but that's really just speculation.

Here's the full lexicon of Pictish symbols for anyone who's interested:

(Image courtesy of Aberdeen City Council)

As far as I know, no one has ever made a proper study comparing the Ogham inscriptions on each stone with the symbols that appear on it. Maybe I'll make that my new project.

Fin

2008-11-10T20:47:00.002Z

I think this might be The End.

Until someone invents an all-in-one nappy-changing, baby-feeding, baby-comforting, washing-up, mini-apple-pie-making, corporate copywriting machine, at least.

(Now I've said that, I'll probably be back next week. But it seems unlikely.)

Sniff.

Blogging Serendipity

2008-10-30T15:47:00.008Z

Tim in Thailand's latest post has just led me to the Follow The Yellow Brick Road blog, winner of this year's Manchester Blog Awards.

Coincidentally, a recent post on that blog has a link to the Advice To Sink In Slowly art project, in which students at University College Falmouth - which is right here in Penryn - have designed some really beautiful posters containing useful advice for new students starting at the college.

Coincidentally, Mr BC is at University College Falmouth RIGHT NOW, guest-lecturing to some of those new students on how to forge a career in professional writing.

Coincidentally, one of his bits of advice will undoubtedly be to start a blog in order to get your writing out there, which, coincidentally, is what Tim's original post is all about.

I know, it's well coincimental.

But anyway, aside from the Thailand-Manchester-Penryn blogging connection, the Advice To Sink In Slowly posters are well worth a look, and indeed, at a fiver a go, a purchase. Here's my favourite:

More lovely poster art where that came from here.

Doh

2008-10-28T16:42:00.005Z

One thing I've noticed about having a tiny helpless baby is that you spend a lot of time holding the tiny helpless baby in your arms, thereby confining yourself to a small patch of sofa opposite the television.

Under these circumstances, it would take a stronger will than mine not to turn the television on and spend the entire day watching repeats of Property Ladder, Grand Designs and other fetishistic pre-Financial Apocalypse property shows.

Last night, while watching a repeat of Relocation Relocation, I felt a sudden stab of jealousy as Kirstie and Phil found a nice thirtysomething middle-class couple a fantastic stone-built cottage in a pretty village beside the estuary of the river Exe in South Devon.

"Ohhhhh," thought I to myself. "If only I could live in a lovely old stone-built cottage in a pretty village by a lovely river estuary in the West Country. How much more pleasant life would be. How much calmer, and more fulfilling, and less stressful."

It wasn't until much later, as I lay in bed waiting for Mr BC to return from London, baby sleeping peacefully in her cot as a CD of tropical lullabies played softly in the background, that I remembered that I *do* live in a lovely old stone-built cottage in a pretty village by a lovely river estuary in the West Country.

I am an idiot.

IN OTHER NEWS: The first time the health visitor came round to inspect the Blue Kitten, she wrote 'Lovely baby' in the Kitten's health record book. I don't know if this is actual medical terminology, but going by this recent photo of the infant, I don't think I can really argue with it:

Fig 1. Medical experts have detected loveliness in this specimen.

Bathetic Policy

2008-10-09T19:52:00.007+01:00

A masterpiece of bathos from the Easyjet travel insurance policy I accidentally bought the other day:

We will not cover you for any claim arising from, or consisting of, the following:
War, invasion, act of foreign enemy, hostilities (whether war is declared or not) civil war, civil commotion, rebellion, revolution, insurrection, military force, coup d’etat, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction.
Any epidemic or pandemic.
Ionising radiation or radioactive contamination from nuclear fuel or nuclear waste or any risk from nuclear equipment.
You not enjoying your journey.

Given that our journey is going to involve transporting a screaming two month-old baby in the car from Penryn to Truro, then on the train from Truro to Bristol, then on the coach from Bristol Temple Meads Station to Bristol Airport, then on the plane from Bristol to Inverness, then in a hire car to a hotel in Nairn, and then the same journey in reverse just two days later, I think Easyjet may have been wise to put that last clause in.

And this isn't even taking into consideration the potential psychologically-detrimental effects of the Blue Kitten's first audience with her terrifying 97 year-old great-grandmother, who lies in wait at the journey's end, possibly wielding an axe*. Although it would be quite difficult to blame Easyjet for those.

* It has been known.

The Fountain Of Youth

2008-10-03T17:57:00.012+01:00

Steve the plumber has been here yesterday and today, fitting a new super-efficient boiler in anticipation of the financial End Times, and removing a leaky old Victorian toilet which will not be required either before or during the Apocalypse.

Fig 1. Victorian cistern: here rust, and let me die.

This leaves me (well, us, but it is I who have taken up the quest with the appropriate levels of zealotry) with the opportunity to fit a fancy new toilet in the space vacated by the Victorian one.

Fig 2. Victorian toilet bowl: doomed.

My mission took me to the B&Q website, where I was immediately struck by the evocative and suggestive names of the sanitaryware on offer. I particularly liked this one, although I hardly dare to wonder if it lives up to its name, and if so, how it might work its magic:

Although perhaps if I'm really planning to install the Fountain of Youth in the downstairs cubbyhole, I could ride out the coming financial Armageddon by charging people a fiver a pop to, er, partake of its healing waters.

Who wants to go first?

Quote Of The Week

2008-09-29T13:23:00.003+01:00

From Liberty's head of fashion buying, Olivia Richardson, on those new-season platform shoes that not even models can walk in without falling over:

(Photo courtesy of Jezebel)

"I don't think practicality comes into it. It's more of an empowering assertion of your own femininity."

Yes. I've always found being rendered unable to walk very empowering. Also, as anyone who's ever had one too many Diamond Whites will attest, falling over is very feminine. Bonus femininity points if you manage to flash your new-season satin-bowed Damaris knickers* while doing so.

* DAVE: WARNING: PANTS

Credit Crunch Wisdom

2008-09-27T18:07:00.005+01:00

Just surfacing briefly from an enormous pile of nappies, wet wipes and tiny garments to draw your attention to some wise words uttered (or rather typed) earlier by my lovely cousin The Bureauista.

If you're looking for a job at the moment, or if you're suspicious about your employer's long-term prospects, take heed:

'The experience of watching a business disintegrate has taught me quite a few things. If I ever go for another job interview, it won't be the training opportunities and the staff canteen arrangements I'll be asking about; I'll be requesting to see the balance sheets and to have a long chat with the company accountant. I'll be asking exactly how much guaranteed business is coming in in the next six months, what contingencies are in place in case a client drops out of the picture, whether there are savings to cover salary payments in the event of an emergency: all things I would never have considered it necessary to ask before.'

All these things are essential questions to ask at interview, or at your annual appraisal, or you may come to regret it very soon...

Read the Bureauista's complete post here.

How To Write Complete Bollocks (And Still Get Paid)

2008-09-22T13:06:00.020+01:00

Emblazoned across the top of today's Guardian front page:

(Picture shamelessly stolen from Andrew Collins's blog.)

Here's an excerpt from Catherine Tate's introduction to the advertised 'How To Write Comedy' supplement (most of which, it turns out, has actually been written by Richard Herring):

'I suppose what I'm saying is I don't feel in a position to give advice about writing, because, technically, I'm not a writer.'

No. Still, no reason not to accept a commission to write a guide on 'How To Write Comedy', eh? Especially as you don't actually have to write it at all!

So, given that one of our 'top writers' admits to not being a writer, what are her three top tips for the country's would-be comedy scribes? Something about pacing, maybe? The best way to format a script? How to create a killer punchline? Ways to convey an idea more economically?

Let's see:

Trust yourself. You have to start with what you think is funny before you can have the confidence to write to anyone else's brief.

Have confidence in yourself...good...good... *makes notes*

Give a gag three chances to work, if after three (separate) attempts they're still not laughing, bin it.

Hmm, perhaps la Tate thought she'd been commissioned to write a guide on 'How To Do Stand-Up'. Still, don't let that stop you taking her expert advice about writing to someone else's brief.

Don't take criticism personally, take from it what's useful. Apply it and move on to something better. And be brave. No one got anywhere by being too scared to open their mouth in case nobody laughed.

Well, there's where I've been going wrong: I never realised that writing was done by opening your mouth. Truly I have learned much about the craft, thank you, Guardian supplement!

The title of this instructive piece, incidentally, is 'Joke's On You'. Hmm.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Billy takes a methodical approach to critiquing the Guardian's 'How To Write A Novel' supplement...

Patroclus And Mr BC Discuss...Lactation

2008-09-21T19:19:00.004+01:00

INT. BLUE CAT/QUINQUIREME TOWERS - DAY

MR BC: I'm going to the shops. Do we need anything?

ME: Erm...some milk. And some cat biscuits.

Pause.

ME: And a cabbage.

MR BC: What kind of cabbage?

ME: One with really big leaves.

Not Actually Blue, Or A Kitten

2008-09-16T08:31:00.008+01:00

Well, that was quite possibly the most rubbish liveblog in the history of blogging, I do apologise.

Anyway, I am delighted to announce that the Blue Kitten is now in the house, born at 9.06pm yesterday* and weighing 7 pounds exactly. Here's a photo:

She looks a bit gingery there but her hair is actually black.

You can see another pic of the Kitten in ET mode here.

Thanks to you all for your comments throughout yesterday, they were really very encouraging and helpful. Turns out that even the most straightforward birth (as thankfully this was) is a bit of an ordeal, eh?

* Which means she shares a birthday with both Dave and Delirium. Auspicious!

Patroclus Heroically Half-Heartedly Liveblogs Own Labour

2008-09-15T02:19:00.008+01:00

Contractions started - most inconveniently, I thought - at 11pm precisely, and have been every 10 minutes for the last three hours. I have a laptop and a supply of chocolate Hobnobs. I expect I'll be here all night.

*Waves to nocturnal blog visitors from exotic timezones*

Don't worry, I'm not going to liveblog any gory details, in fact this may be the last this blog sees of me for Quite Some While...

...unless it all turns out to be a false alarm, of course.

UPDATE 06.55: Not a false alarm, but a bit of a long drawn-out experience thus far. Still, at one point I did make an Excel spreadsheet to analyse the contractions, my nerdiness knows no bounds...

UPDATE 10:08 Ow. Owowowowowowowow. Ow.

UPDATE 11.24: I am 3cm dilated and eating a banana (this is not a euphemism). Fascinating stuff, eh?

Patroclus Reviews A Book, Rants

2008-09-14T12:01:00.012+01:00

I'd almost finished Ben Goldacre's new book 'Bad Science' when my cousin popped up to divulge some salacious details of a date she once had with him, which was fortunate, because if I'd known about this earlier my judgment of his oeuvre might have been clouded*.

Goldacre: 'fabulous hair', says source.

But happily ignorant of a number of intriguing snippets of information regarding the good doctor, I was able to enjoy the first 292 pages on an entirely intellectual, rather than visceral, level. Which is good, because Ben Goldacre's entire professional raison d'être is to teach us to use our brains, not our emotions, to assess the science and health stories we read in the media.

I realise I'm probably preaching to the converted here, what with the vast majority of this blog's readers being Guardian-reading (and even Guardian-writing) types who are well aware of Dr Ben's Bad Science column and his apparently single-minded dedication to debunking all those lurid and ill-researched newspaper stories about health scares, miracle cures, fad diets and all the rest.

Anyone who saw yesterday's Guardian front-page story, for example, will know that Dr Ben isn't afraid to explain exactly why so many 'leading' nutritionists and vitamin-supplement advocates are quacks, frauds and charlatans of the worst sort, even if doing so lands him and the Guardian in court.

His book, then, is all about how lifestyle and consumer journalists lack the scientific knowledge and analytical skills to 'see through' pseudo-scientific claims about health risks - such as the supposed 'link' between the MMR jab and autism - with the result that newspapers are full of badly reported, badly researched and poorly-backed-up scare stories that appeal to readers' emotions rather than to their reason.

On a general level, the book not only provides the reader with a battery of critical tools with which to deconstruct and interrogate these so-called news stories - and learning to read between the lines of media stories, as far as I'm concerned, is an essential life skill and one I'll be teaching the Blue Kitten the minute she demonstrates any kind of mastery of the art of reading - but it's also very, very scathing and frequently very, very funny.

For me personally, having worked for several years in PR, I also found a lot of it uncomfortably close to home. Because, as Dr Ben rightly points out, the reason these scare stories end up in the media in the first place is that there's a PR machine behind them, creating sensationalist press releases from 'research' that is at best deeply flawed and at worst completely made up. The aim of this PR machine, usually, is to promote some vitamin supplement, specialist diet or homeopathic remedy as being better than anything suggested by mainstream medicine, the pharmaceutical industry or your own common sense.

Thankfully I've never done PR for any product that actually had a direct effect on life and death - unlike the vitamin supplements promoted by Matthias Rath as being more effective against Aids than anti-retroviral drugs - but I'm uncomfortably familiar with the process by which a press release purporting to be about a piece of research ends up being widely reported by gullible, inexperienced or just plain busy journalists.

I've lost count of the number of press releases I've seen that announce 'important research findings' without mentioning what the research consisted of, how it was conducted, how many people were studied, or ~~who commissioned it~~ whether it was independent or commissioned. And usually, there's no actual research report for journalists and interested parties to peruse, only the press release itself.

This is because very often the research has been conducted by a PR person emailing a bunch of their friends with a poorly-designed survey, and reporting the results as percentages rather than absolute numbers. '65% of Britons have been victims of identity theft' sounds like a good story. But if you only survey 14 people - and only people that you know - then the fact that nine of them have suffered identity theft means nothing. You might have consciously selected people you know to have been victims, for example. Or your friends might consist predominantly of people who spend a lot of time divulging personal information on Facebook, and are therefore pre-disposed to having their personal details stolen.

What amazes me more than the utter lack of any kind of intellectual rigour involved in this PR wankery, though, is the willingness of journalists to report it as bona fide fact. I know that editorial staffs are forever being cut down, and that most journalists don't have time to investigate every story properly. But I don't think there's any excuse for uncritically publishing meaningless statistics as if they were hard evidence of some supposed trend**. It only encourages PR people to put even less effort into their so-called surveys, resulting in an ever-diminishing respect for factual accuracy and an entire newspaper-reading public who think they're being informed, but are actually being fed a diet of made-up rubbish dressed up as fact.

Which, when it's made-up rubbish about identity theft, may not be so bad, but when newspapers report that MMR causes autism, or that vitamin C can reverse the spread of Aids, is not only irresponsible but actively evil.

This post was brought to you by raspberry leaf tea, chocolate Hobnobs, and the continued non-appearance of the Blue Kitten.

* Naturally we're far too classy for kiss and tell on this blog, but I will just say that the phrase 'a bit of public frottage on Greek Street' remains indelibly etched in my mind.

** I read the other day, for example, that according to the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission, only 13.6% of national newspaper editors are female, compared with 17.4% a year ago. Along with many other media outlets, the Guardian - Ben Goldacre's own paper - interprets these figures as illustrative of how the number of women in senior management roles is receding.

Now I'm prepared to believe that the EHRC has ample quantitative evidence for the return of the glass ceiling, but this claim in particular is statistically invalid and can't be used as evidence of anything. There are only around 25 national newspapers in the UK. This means that the EHRC's stats show that there's one fewer female editor now than there was a year ago. When your so-called stats are dictated by the actions of one single person, they aren't representative of a national trend, sorry EHRC.

This Post Was Meant To Be About Something Else Entirely

2008-09-13T11:08:00.014+01:00

My efforts to bring on labour naturally - in advance of a looming 8am Tuesday deadline for induction - have turned, as you might expect, to the increasingly baroque and desperate.

So desperate in fact that I found myself attempting to spur my recalcitrant uterus into action by reading - or at least trying to read - that 'Wife in the North' book by Judith O'Reilly, which is based on her blog about how her husband knocked her up and made her move 350 miles from London to Northumberland and how unspeakably awful and intolerable the whole situation is.

'Wait a minute!', think I, not for the first time. 'My significant other made me* move 300 miles from London, and knocked me up, AND I have a blog - why haven't I got a book deal?'

The answer (apart from all the obvious stuff, like how this blog has no central premise nor narrative arc, and is in fact a fifth-rate ragbag of poorly conceived rubbish), is that I'm not a former journalist, nor am I chums with popular political blogger Iain Dale, nor therefore am I able to pull any 'strings' among the London 'media power elite'.

(Unless you count that phone call I had with BT the other day, during which I persuaded them not to charge me for selling me their BT Vision service because it turns out that our house is incapable of receiving terrestrial television - you see, this is exactly the kind of unspeakably awful and intolerable situation that would never arise in London, why haven't I got a book deal, etc. etc.)

Nor, to be fair, do I whinge very much about 'having' to move to Cornwall, because Cornwall is every bit as beautiful and idyllic as everyone always says it is, and because I'm quite euphorically happy here almost all of the time, and because, unlike Ms O'Reilly, I am capable of putting petrol in the car.

I did find her book better written than I expected, although the quote on the back cover describing it as 'Cold Comfort Farm with booster seats' is not only deeply misleading but also an outrageous insult to one of greatest and funniest satirical novels ever written in the English language. And I did cry at a couple of the more mawkish bits, but blamed this on hormones. And I do feel sorry for her in some ways, as her husband seemingly did make her and the kids move to an isolated spot in Northumberland and then continued to spend most of his own life in London. (You may feel inclined to draw your own conclusions from this, incidentally.)

But when I got to page 67 and to the third time she complains about running out of petrol in the car because her (absent) husband hadn't filled it for her, I lost patience with her CONSTANT WHINING and threw it on the floor.

Betty recently wrote that Ms O'Reilly seems to think that she is in some way representative of women in Britain today**. Personally I would hope that most women in Britain today are capable of identifying when the car is low on petrol (clue: the red light comes on), and subsequently of driving it to the petrol station and filling it. But then Ms O'Reilly is a Tory, and therefore perhaps more inclined than many to view herself as subordinate to her all-powerful, all-decision-making husband. The Tory worldview of women and their role in society doesn't make me particularly optimistic about our next government, I have to say.

Anyway, I couldn't help noticing that not even the physical effort of dashing a paperback to the floor had succeeded in prompting my waters to break, so in desperation I turned to the next book in the pile of '3 for 2' books I'd brought back from Waterstone's, namely Ben Goldacre's 'Bad Science'.

Which is actually what this post was supposed to be about, but I got distracted almost immediately. Dr Ben and his one-man Quest for Truth will have to wait until tomorrow.

Unless I'm otherwise engaged tomorrow, of course.

* I wasn't exactly uncomplicit in this terrible act of coercion.

** I've just noticed that Betty took umbrage at exactly the same bit as I did, heh.

My Condition Is In The Same Condition As Yesterday, It Turns Out

2008-09-08T12:04:00.005+01:00

I've scoured all the online pregnancy and birth sites, but nowhere does it say that a good way to stimulate labour is to watch a succession of witty, sparky, visually-gorgeous films in which a deadbeat loser becomes accidentally embroiled in a criminal plot through a case of mistaken identity - with hilarious consequences.

I saw that as no reason not to give it a try, however, which is why Mr BC and I recently dug out both The Big Lebowski (which I'd never seen before) and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (which I had).

Now obviously there's nothing I can tell the highly pop-culture-literate readers of this blog about The Big Lebowski that they don't already know, and what with film criticism being very low on my list of skillz, there's nothing much more I can say about Kiss Kiss Bang Bang that I didn't say last time.

So I'm just going to point out that both films have excellent soundtracks, and here to demonstrate that fact is one track from each, which - if you don't have them already - I thoroughly encourage you to download and enjoy at your leisure:

From Kiss Kiss Bang Bang:

Felix Da Housecat - Silver Screen Shower Scene (mp3)
(Buy from Amazon)

From The Big Lebowski:

Kenny Rogers and the First Edition - Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In) (mp3)
(Buy from Amazon)

In the meantime, I'll just go back to waiting for the contractions to start...

Displacement Activities

2008-09-07T15:59:00.007+01:00

What I have done today instead of having a baby:

1) Went to Truro, had an almond pain au chocolat, lord of all the buns.

2) Discovered there is an archaeological site in Afghanistan called The Minaret of Jam.

3) Decided The Minaret of Jam would be an excellent title for a Fighting Fantasy book:

Deep in the mountains of Northern Afghanistan lies an untold wealth of treasure, sealed in a spindly tower made entirely from fruit-based preserve - or so the rumour goes. Several adventurers like yourself have set off for the Minaret of Jam in search of the fabled hoard. None has ever returned. Do you dare follow them?

Your quest is to find the treasure, hidden high in a tower of pectin, fruit and sugar, populated with a multitude of terrifying monsters. You will need courage, determination and an almost unlimited supply of toast if you are to survive all the traps and battles, and reach your goal - the jam-smeared inner sanctum of the forbidding minaret.

4) Noticed the phrase 'refresh thumbnail' on Facebook's Blog Network app.

5) Added 'refresh thumbnail' to my lexicon of Phrases That Would Have Meant Something Competely Different Twenty Years Ago.

6) Spent a long time wondering how you would go about refreshing a thumbnail.

7) Decided that dipping it in a fingerbowl of icy water and lemon wedges would be particularly expedient.

8) Entertained my friend S. for afternoon coffee and chocolate Hobnobs.

9) Cross-examined my friend S. about her new boyfriend, whom she's been seeing for eight days:

S: ...and we're going to get married and have two kids, so I'm going to have to hurry up and get divorced, and he's going to have the snip reversed...

ME: Does he have a job?

S: Not exactly, but he's designed a chandelier.

ME: Ooh, that sounds good.

S: Yes, it's made of leather and giant penises.

Pause.

S: Modelled on his own, apparently.

ME: Right.

S: You know, for S&M clubs and so on.

ME: Mm.

Pause.

S: He's not actually *into* S&M.

ME: Well, he sounds great.

10) Decided the penis chandelier would go really well with that vagina sofa I saw on Craigslist.

11) Had tea.

Dragons' Den

2008-09-05T11:37:00.002+01:00

What with the Blue Kitten now being a day overdue, I've been doing what every expectant mother does in the final, impatient stages of pregnancy: playing Dungeons & Dragons.

As far as I'm aware there's no old wives' tale about fantasy role-playing games helping to bring on labour - unlike, say, eating fresh pineapple, going up and down the stairs and tweaking your own nipples (not all at once, that would be dangerous, plus the neighbours can see through the landing window), but that's no reason not to try it out.

I'd never played D&D before now, not least because a) I am female, and b) I spent most of my formative years incarcerated in a posh boarding school where the prevailing leisure activities were limited to flicking one's hair, wearing cashmere scarves, stealing other people's socks and listening to Chris de Burgh.

(Brrr.)

The nearest I'd got was a brief phase of playing those Fighting Fantasy books in the early 80s, books which Mr BC informs me were aimed at people who had no friends with whom to play D&D; a description that I find almost unbearably sad. My dad banned my brother and me from buying those the minute he became aware of them, but not before we'd gleefully polished off The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, The Citadel of Chaos and The Forest of Doom.

Then we got a ZX Spectrum and discovered text adventure games like The Hobbit, which we played for hours and hours in our isolated farmhouse in the north of Scotland, while our peers in built-up areas were discovering the joys of actual fantasy role-playing games that we - or at least I - had never even heard of.

So anyway, here I am, some 30 years late to the fray. And it turns out that D&D is a sort of highly complex mixture of story-telling, dice-rolling, lego, algebra and chess. Although the lego part is only because we're using lego to represent our characters as they explore an underground cave network. Here is my character:

She's called Iolaire, which, as any fule kno, is Scottish Gaelic for 'eagle'. The ornithologically-astute among you will notice that the bird she's carrying atop her oriflamme is not an eagle but an owl, this is because a) I don't have a lego eagle and b) I don't know the Scottish Gaelic for 'owl'. D&D is all about creative improvisation.

Despite being an elf (actually an Eladrin, but I'm trying to not alienate any readers), surely one of the more amiable of the fantasy species, Iolaire apparently has zero charisma, which makes me like her a lot. Her lack of social skills means she spends most of the game lurking about at the back not talking to anyone, and occasionally taking out the odd goblin with a well-aimed arrow.

Here are Iolaire's companions, mobbing a Dark Elf (the emo-looking chappie) in a corner:

Iolaire was right back out of the way (coincidentally the same position I used to play in hockey) at this point, but she still managed to get in the fatal shot. Hurrah!

Dungeons & Dragons has a dreadful, probably unsalvageable reputation for being the preserve of the stinky, socially-leprous teenage boy-nerd, but having played several games of it, I can see its merits on lots of levels.

It's very creative, for a start, as someone (the Dungeon Master) has to make up an extraordinarily complex story - and backstory - as you go along, and you have to decide what you're going to do at any given juncture, and then whatever you decide to do affects the story, and so on. This means it's like being in a film, rather than simply watching a film, which is quite cool.

It's also good for mental arithmetic, as you're forever having to roll different dice and add things together and add other things to that and then subtract something else and divide the result by your fortitude quotient, and so on.

I think a lot of its bad reputation comes from the fact that it's full of elves and goblins and stuff, stuff that people who think they're quite cultured refuse even to countenance, let alone take seriously. But I can't see why it *has* to be limited to wizards and monsters; the principles of the game can be applied to any scenario. The other morning I had a splendid idea for a teenage-girl version, in which one could choose to play a model, or a pop star, or a girl-geek, or a spy, or a mum, or a scientist, and so on, and see how that unfolded.

(If I had my way, probably in a manner that would reveal 'model' to be the most useless and pointless of roles, and 'girl-geek' to be the bestest and greatest, but it doesn't work like that; everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, and the aim is to find ways to combine them to best effect. At the end of the day it's all about friendship, mutual respect and co-operation, which is lovely.)

So now I just need several thousand pounds from a games company to fund its development, and an acre of time in which to develop it.

Which, if the Blue Kitten carries on not appearing like this, it may turn out that I do.

Does My Bum Look Big In This?

2008-09-03T20:08:00.007+01:00

NOTE TO DAVE: DO NOT READ THIS POST IN THE LIBRARY.

I like to think there will come a time, several months from now, when I will have stopped breast-feeding, my figure will have returned to its former, er, 'glory', and I will be able to wear proper fancy French underwear again.

In anticipation of that joyous day I have spent the last hour perusing Figleaves.com, the underwear-fancier's shangri-la, in search of impossibly beautiful lingerie.

Among all the balconettes and thongs and jacquard and guipure, my eye was caught by something I'd never heard of before. Apparently you can now buy pants that 'enhance your rear profile' with 'firm foam padding'. To be specific:

This shorty by Huit is designed to enhance your rear profile by giving you sexy feminine curves. Cut in a low rise design from opaque jersey, it has firm foam padding at the full coverage rear.

I foresee a day when we will be able to dispense with every physical attribute that Nature provided for us, and concoct ourselves completely out of collagen, bacterial toxins and foam-stuffed pants. Thus arranged, we will march on the world like an army of zombie Mr Blobbys, all padded curves and blank, expressionless faces.

Later, horrified by the continued wilful appearance of blemishes, wrinkles and folds, we will develop the Physical Airbrush (TM), a device that applies Photoshop-like manipulation to what's left of our real bodies, allowing us to strip our limbs down to sticks, remove our lower ribs and replace our skin with a kind of weird shimmering gauze.

Having thus attained the very apogee of femininity, we will collapse en masse to the ground, consumed by botulinum poisoning and too weak to stand upright.

But at least our arses will look fantastic.

Back To Basics, NHS-Style

2008-08-31T13:08:00.007+01:00

INT. MATERNITY WING, ROYAL CORNWALL HOSPITAL - DAY

Your unflappable heroine, PATROCLUS, is being subjected to various medical tests by a team of midwives. MIDWIFE 1 prepares to take a blood sample.

MIDWIFE 1: Is this your arm?

ME: Yes.

Disclaimer: I should point out that the standard of ante-natal care in Cornwall is very high indeed, and I have nothing but admiration and respect and gratitude for all the midwives who've been looking after me. Although they do sometimes say some quite funny things.

NOTE TO READERS: Rest assured I am not actually in hospital - I am at home and about to have my tea. Friends and family will be advised by text when anything birth-related occurs! Blog-readers will probably learn of any news in due course either here or chez Mr BC.

Nuclear Chic: New For A/W 08-09

2008-08-30T11:20:00.016+01:00

Poor old Gordon Brown, no sooner does he go off on his joyless holidays than the upstart D. Miliband tries to a) usurp him and b) re-start the Cold War.

Now, different people have different ideas about whether confronting Russia is a good idea right at the moment, particularly given that we're already engaged in two wars, and given that we made our own declaration of independence from the moral high ground in 2003 when we (I say 'we', although really it was actually T. Blair and his conveniently nebulous chums, God and History) chose to invade Iraq illegally.

But so far, no one has drawn the obvious conclusion from Miliband's posturing, which is that he is in the pay of a shadowy secret society whose deadly aim is to provoke another Cold War purely for its own ends.

And by 'shadowy secret society' I do of course mean the Victoria and Albert Museum, and by 'its own ends' I do of course mean the viral promotion of its new September exhibition, 'Cold War Modern'.

Yes, what better way to pique the nation's interest in its latest artfest than to persuade the Foreign Secretary to go and declare war on Russia, thereby ensuring column acres of Cold War 'nostalgia' in the media? Before you know it the Daily Mail will be giving away a free cover-mounted DVD of Threads to every reader, while the Saturday Guardian will be inserting glossy wallcharts showing what to do in the event of imminent nuclear attack.

(Bored of knitting your own jumpers from leftover edamame to beat the credit crunch? Have fun with the kids this weekend by building a fallout shelter under your raised vegetable beds! Our supplement shows you how!)

The marketing geniuses at the V&A, meanwhile, are doing a sterling job of making the threat of nuclear annihilation fashionable again, primarily via the time-honoured medium of the enamel badge. For just £3 you can purchase a set of five badges that apparently 'capture the imagination of the Cold War era':

(Click for bigness.)

'The badge designs draw on images from ‘Civil Defence Handbook No.10: Advising the Householder on Protection against Nuclear Attack’,' chirps the marketing blurb, before regaining a modicum of composure and warning 'Not suitable for children under 3.'

I should say not.

Does anyone from the V&A Marketing Department - or, for that matter, David Miliband - actually remember the Cold War? I don't recall it being in any way imaginative, stylish or exciting: the adjectives that spring to mind are more along the lines of 'chilling', 'unspeakably terrifying' and 'the FOUR-MINUTE WARNING, for fuck's sake'.

Still if it comes down to it, at least the V&A shop will make a few pennies, which does make a nice neat metaphor for the ideological triumph of capitalism over communism - although perhaps not quite as much as this item does.

NEXT WEEK: Miliband declares war on France in a teaser campaign for the National Gallery's Jacques-Louis David retrospective.

Not (Yet) A Recognised Medical Condition

2008-08-29T21:44:00.003+01:00

Overheard in the Day Assessment Unit, Princess Alexandra Maternity Wing, Royal Cornwall Hospital, Truro:

MIDWIFE 1: Gosh, it's busy today, isn't it?

MIDWIFE 2: It really is. We've got urine coming out of our ears!

Mannequin Pis

2008-08-28T15:18:00.011+01:00

Given that Elle Decoration comes out with a 'small spaces' supplement on average about three times a year, I often wonder how they keep coming up with ideas to fill it.

I mean, there are only so many ways you can fit a desk under the stairs, or drawers *into* the stairs, or a mezzanine bedroom into the achingly fashionable live-work space that you created from a disused shipping container.

But this time, the Elle Deco team have surpassed themselves. They've located a tiny Belgian house in which the toilet is next to the bed, and the bed is next to an uncurtained plate-glass, shop-style window:

I know our Continental friends are more relaxed than us uptight Brits, but even so. Would you *really* want this kind of arrangement in your home? (Think carefully, now.)

And more to the point, would you really want to be one of these people's neighbours?

Brrr.

Lucky For Some

2008-08-26T13:45:00.009+01:00

Readers may recall that last week an unpleasant spat broke out on the poop deck of the mighty Quinquireme, involving myself, Annie Slaminsky and one Ria Campbell, marketing supremo of a New Online Thing.

Ms Campbell had been politely trying to persuade Annie and me (and, as it turns out, also Hannah and Nuttycow) to test-drive the New Online Thing and write about it in our blogs, but we got the wrong end of the stick and thought that Evil Marketers were trying to take away our souls by pointing at the sky and shouting 'look!' and then secretly hacking into our Blogger accounts and replacing all instances of the word 'yummers' with an inline text ad for Head & Shoulders.

(I think that's how it works.)

Anyway, it turned out that this wasn't necessarily the case, so I thought the least I could do would be to try out the New Online Thing and see if it was any good.

It turns out that the New Online Thing is all to do with karaoke, and is an online version of those private karaoke booths that you see in swanky places in London now (at least I assume you do, I've never seen one, but I'm imagining it's just like in Lost in Translation and you get to go in them with Bill Murray in the middle of the night and nothing much happens until the Jesus and Mary Chain come on and you realise it's the end. Only Ria informs me that if you're in a karaoke booth in London rather than Tokyo, you're more likely to encounter Jude Law - although encountering Jude Law anywhere in London is a pretty safe bet, as he seems to hang over the entire city like an early Victorian miasmatic fog, waiting for some earnest physician - or Heat reporter - to estimate his quotient of phlogiston and thereby assess his value or otherwise to society as a whole.)

But I digress.

Yes. This is an online version of those private karaoke booths, which are run by a company called Lucky Voice, which is owned by erstwhile UK dotcom entrepreneur Martha Lane Fox.

Now I've only done karaoke once, and my rendition of 'Never Ever' by All Saints didn't exactly wow the crowd at my friend Becky's birthday party, so I'm not in a great position to judge the merits of Lucky Voice Online. But I can tell you this:

1. It's free, unlike those karaoke games for the Xbox, etc. that you have to pay for.

2. It has 'Love Machine' by Girls Aloud (which is one of Mr BC's favourites, although I couldn't persuade him to sing along with it), and lots of other songs too.

3. It lets you make your own playlists and organise your own karaoke parties.

4. You probably need a microphone, a big monitor and some decent speakers to actually get the full benefit of the experience.

5. It's free.

6. It's in closed beta testing at the moment, but I have ~~FIVE~~ ~~FOUR~~ ~~THREE~~ ~~TWO~~ ONE REMAINING spare invite if anyone wants one. Just leave a comment or send me an email at quadrireme at gmail dot com and I'll have the butler wire one over to you forthwith.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to bake some HEAD & SHOULDERS FOR ALL YOUR ANTIDANDRUFFULAR NEEDS mini-apple and blackberry tarts.

Bonekickers: Patroclus Weighs In

2008-08-25T19:23:00.008+01:00

As Mr BC and I took a shortcut through Truro Woolworths on our way to Caffe Nero for ye traditional Saturday morning coffee and bun*, I noticed that the Series 1 box set DVD of Bonekickers is now available and yours for just £24.97.

Now to some people, Bonekickers was just another TV series. To others, however, it has become a symbol and an icon, not to mention a cipher and a byword, for EVERYTHING THAT IS WRONG WITH THE BBC TODAY.

Never in the history of the Guardian's media blog, for example, has a single programme provoked so much ideological warfare among so many. In the blue corner, the cultural relativists, led by Guardian media editor Janine Gibson, with the argument that as long as a programme is enjoyable and people watch it, it has earned its rightful place in the schedules.

In the red corner, the cultural elitists, led by Guardian TV reviewer Gareth McLean, contending that the BBC ought to have some standards when it comes to drama commissioning, and that poorly-scripted, execrably-acted, laughably-plotted, historically-inaccurate drivel has no place in the repertoire of the finest broadcaster the world has ever known.

And for as long as the BBC fails to announce whether a second series has been commissioned, these two factions will remain locked in a largely pseudonymous, vitriol-flecked online battle, neither quite able to claim a definitive victory over the other.

For my part, while I can understand where the relativists are coming from - a lot of people *did* seem to enjoy it, and its ratings weren't terrible, and it's only television, after all - I have to say I'm with the elitists on this one, if only for the reason that the programme could so easily have been a thousand times better. And when I say easily, I mean as easily as doing one or more of the following:

1. Decide whether it was supposed to be self-aware comedy-drama or actual serious drama. Instead, it oscillated between one state and the other so frequently and so ineptly that it became impossible for the viewer to establish just how he/she was supposed to relate to it. Were we supposed to laugh at its evident parodying of Time Team, snicker knowingly at its ludicrous, sub-Da Vinci Code levels of historical accuracy and plausibility, or empathise seriously with the characters as they struggled with emotional baggage, professional challenges, family problems and borderline mental illness? It is possible to become genuinely emotionally involved with a self-aware, self-parodying TV programme - think The Simpsons, or Arrested Development - but only if the characters are lovingly crafted, well developed and behaviourally consistent. Rather than flimsy puppets who are only there to propel a number of ludicrously unbelievable plots towards an all-too-obvious conclusion.

2. Just have the one plot. Maybe, instead of having the team of archaeologists miraculously find (and subsequently destroy) a different priceless historical artefact each week, the programme could just have had them chasing one priceless historical artefact (Excalibur would have been fine) over the course of the six episodes. One artefact, one secret society bent on preventing its discovery, a tantalising build-up of clues, revelations and dramatic tension, lots of flashbacks to relevant historical events - none of this would have met with much complaint from me. But to have them unearth the True Cross one week, Boudicca's mummified body the next, and the corpse of Joan of Arc the next - before finally wresting Excalibur from its secret hidey-hole out the front of Wells Cathedral (and then promptly breaking it) - was taking things far too far, even for those who don't mind the old willing suspension of disbelief.

3. Have believable characters. I'm given to believe that Julie Graham, Hugh Bonneville and Adrian Lester can all actually act, so the fact that the whole programme was simultaneously wooden, melodramatic and implausible (not to mention 'stupid') must have been down to the script and characterisation. No archaeologist, I'm fairly sure, has ever said 'don't mess with me, I'm an archaeologist', or 'ground, give up your secrets!', or 'ride a little imagination once in a while'. In fact I checked with my brother, who has an archaeology degree, and he said that they're more likely to say things like 'who's nicked me trowel?', 'is it teatime?', and 'real archaeology is never as exciting as it is in Time Team'.

Also, archaeologists aren't known for being filthy rich (although they *are* known for being filthy), so you probably won't find too many of them owning penthouse flats on Bath's Royal Crescent. Plus, if you ask me, it's rare to find a woman with monomania; we're essentially multi-taskers, not given to single, overpowering obsessions. Well, about men, maybe. Or our weight. Or, if the chick-lit novels are to be believed**, chocolate, shoes or handbags. But not usually about swords. I find it very hard to believe that a woman could be obsessed with a sword. I could be wrong about this.

Anyway, all these things put together - and this is without even touching on the supposed postgraduate student Viv's total ignorance of anything to do with archaeology or history, or the fact that some bloke apparently buried a WW1 tank single-handedly, or that escaped slaves from America might have planted a Virginia creeper in the shape of a handy arrow pointing conveniently to the door to their secret underground cave, or that an archaeologist, when buried alive in a stone sarcophagus, might seek to keep his spirits up by reciting the dates of Agincourt and the Norman invasion - all these things put together add up to a programme that wasn't in any way clever, or dramatic, or emotionally engrossing, or consistent, or believable (even in a willing-suspension-of-disbelief way). For something that was supposed to be a drama, those are some quite serious failings.

We still don't know whether a second series is going to be commissioned, but if it is, it'll be a sign that the BBC isn't embarrassed to commission absolute rubbish. Which is fine if you think that 'if people enjoy it, that's the main thing', but not if you're relying on the BBC to display any kind of measure of actual critical judgment.

Maybe they're just waiting to see how many people fork out £24.97 for the DVD. I don't think I'll be among them.

* I am delighted to report that Truro Caffe Nero now serves the mighty almond pain au chocolat, Lord of All The Buns. Turns out that all we had to do was ask them to stock it. Woo!

** Do not believe the chick-lit novels.

Hidden Art

2008-08-24T19:54:00.011+01:00

Some photos from the Hidden Art Cornwall Design Fair, what the lovely Mr BC and I visited this morning.

It's an exhibition of contemporary Cornish designers and furniture-makers, held in the fantastically falling-apart 15th-century Godolphin House near Helston.

The house has been taken over recently by the National Trust, but is still so decrepit that they can only let 80 people in at once in case the floors collapse.

Neither my camera nor my photography 'skillz' could really do justice to the fantastic juxtaposition of modern design and crumbling late-medieval plaster.

Outside there were tents where you could buy the designers' wares. We bought some coasters from our near-neighbour, Lucy Turner of Higher Market Studios here in Penryn, who rescues unloved 50s and 60s furniture from the local charity furniture shop and turns it into very nice, one-off pieces like this:

It's on again tomorrow (Bank Holiday Monday) from 11am to 6pm, so if anyone reading is in the vicinity of Helston, I'd highly recommend a visit. It's £6 to get in but well worth it.

You can see more photos on my Facebook page here.

Dining Chair Nirvana

2008-08-21T19:18:00.009+01:00

Attention, shoppers! Why buy one 'Verdi' dining chair from Habitat for £99.00 minus delivery...

...when you can get FOUR white maple dining chairs from M&S for £74.70 including delivery?

(What's more, with the M&S deal, you and up to three of your chums can play a splendid game of Musical Christine Keeler! Hours of saucy fun!)

Children Of Women

2008-08-20T21:42:00.007+01:00

We may have scoffed at Theo Paphitis's apparent lack of understanding of human biology when he complained that women 'get themselves bloody pregnant', but this story in today's Guardian suggests that he may actually have been on to something.

According to the article, new US census data reveals that fewer children are being born in the States, a problem that's also contributing to ageing populations across Western Europe. The reason for the decline? It seems that fewer women are choosing to get themselves bloody pregnant. As a result, family sizes are declining:

'The findings also highlight the shrinking of the average American family. In 1976, women on average had 3.1 children, but that figure had fallen by 2006 to 1.9 children. That is below the level of fertility needed to ensure a stable population - 2.1 children per woman is known in demographic jargon as "replacement-level fertility".'

Is it just me, or does anyone else spot anything strange about this? Either we've moved into some kind of futuristic women-only society without my noticing, or the Guardian is suggesting that the decision to have children and raise a family is the responsibility of women and women alone. There's not a single mention of fathers anywhere in the whole article. It's almost as if men were entirely irrelevant to the whole process of creating and nurturing new life.

Which raises the question: what are men actually for? A question perhaps best answered by this comment from the BBC's Have Your Say site, preserved for posterity by the chaps at Speak You're Branes:

Mothers are far better at dealing with housework & crying babies & screaming kids…& all at the same time as well.

Fathers, & males in general, are IMO more likely to crack under the pressure and/or more likely abuse babies & children left in their care in one way or another…and that includes verbal abuse & also sex abuse.

Generally speaking, nowadays I wouldn’t trust men to discipline small young child unchecked, while considering that many men are now on or dealing in drugs.

magicalways54, Romford

So there you go - women are for having babies, while men are for bringing home the crack at the end of a hard day's drug dealing.

Crumbs.

Lame Fox

2008-08-19T19:46:00.011+01:00

It looks like Annie Slaminsky and I have received exactly the same email from a marketing person keen to have us review a new online product.

I have to say that when I received an email from a 'Ria Campbell' that began 'Dear Patroclus, I think your blog is great; I am a regular visitor and your writing is never less than fun, insightful and entertaining by turns' I was initially flattered, then a mite suspicious, given that I don't know this person and that - to my knowledge - she has never commented on the blog before.

I was made even more suspicious by the fact that some of the punctuation marks in the email had rendered badly, making it look like text that had been copied and pasted from somewhere else. Then I saw Annie's post and realised that Ms Campbell is sending the same flattering email to everyone. I'm not special at all!

Having worked in PR and 'social media marketing', I'm quite painfully aware that a lot of companies are trying to court bloggers these days. Sadly, they're mostly going about it all the wrong way - either by sending bloggers press releases and hoping the blogger will write about them, or by pretending to be a fan of the blogger when in reality they don't read the blog in question at all.

But I did a bit of digging, and was surprised to discover that Ria Campbell works for a company that ought to know better. A company run by one of this country's most successful dotcom entrepreneurs, famed for her successful online and offline marketing techniques. (Can you guess who it is yet?) And a company, therefore, that really ought to know how and how not to approach bloggers. Tsk.

So sorry, Ria, I won't be writing about your 'cool' online service, and if anyone else is reading this who received the same email, I hope you won't be either.

Halp!

2008-08-18T15:26:00.004+01:00

Does anyone happen to have a recipe for low-fat banana muffins (ones with oil instead of butter)? I'm sure I had a recipe somewhere, and now I can't find it, and the internet is taunting me by not seeming to have one either.

Many thanks in advance!

PS As you can maybe tell, I'm on maternity leave now. It's brilliant - I just sit around on my arse and people send fantastic presents, like sponge bags and books about the Etruscan language. I've already decided I'm never going back to work, ever, and instead I'm going to run an organic B&B supplied with organic bread and organic eggs from the new organic deli up the road, and put twee hand-written labels on things, like some kind of actual physical embodiment of Country Living magazine. (Although as Mr BC looked seriously alarmed when I informed him of this plan, the likelihood of my going back to work before so very long is fairly high.)

The Great Depression Probably Wasn't All That Great, Actually

2008-08-17T20:22:00.021+01:00

Merryn Somerset Webb, editor of MoneyWeek, has this to say in today's Observer Magazine about everyone in Britain - yes, that's everyone, in the entire country - who was born after 1968:

'People under 40 are not used to losing jobs or being made redundant. We are not used to property prices falling or not having what we want. As adults we haven't suffered hardship.'

Anyone care to disagree?

And let's not even get started on how asinine the rest of the feature is. Fretting about your haircut is not the same thing as having panic disorder, or OCD, or PTSD, or clinical depression. And if worrying about her split ends is the worst kind of anxiety that Harriet Green can imagine, I'm not entirely sure what qualifies her to write a cover feature about a) anxiety disorders and b) economic hardship.

On which note, forgive me if I'm wrong about this, but when 'the mother of all recessions' does eventually strike, I don't think it's middle-class Londoners and people who are used to checking into the Priory when they get a bit overwhelmed that are going to be the hardest hit by it, do you?

So just maybe the Guardian and the Observer could ease up a bit on this whole 'ooh blimey recession is coming, we're all going to have to shop at Asda instead of Waitrose, it'll be just like the Great Depression, what larks' tossery, and give a tiny bit of consideration to who might actually be suffering from real economic hardship, and what that suffering might be like, and what we might be able to do about it.

I thought that was what being a liberal was all about. No?

The People Called Roman They Go In The 'Ouse?

2008-08-16T21:42:00.011+01:00

Imagine, if you will, that you are a branding executive at Gilchrist & Soames, a purveyor of luxury toiletries whose name, if its website is to be believed, is echoed throughout the world's most luxurious hotels.

Time was when the world's most luxurious hotels used to provide delicate little bottles of your wares in artfully arranged baskets in their marble-clad bathrooms, but then came 9/11, and people weren't travelling so much, so the world's most luxurious hotels had to scrimp and save a bit to make ends meet.

And inevitably, rather than continue to provide guests with expensive, nickable bottles of your luxury hair products, they took to bolting one great big refillable bottle of the stuff on to the marble-clad bathroom wall, whence only the most determined, screwdriver-wielding traveller could detach it.

But at the same time, the world's most luxurious hotels needed to maintain at least a veneer of luxuriousness, otherwise there would be little to distinguish them from the average Travelodge. So they asked your employer, Gilchrist & Soames, to make sure its bottles of shower gel still looked classy, even if in reality they were just plastic bottles of gunk bolted to a wall.

Of course, everyone knows that the way to make stuff look classy is to label it in French, the language of Parisian chic and sophistication. And so it falls to you, lowly branding executive, to create a label for the bolt-on bottle of shower goo that not only evokes the kind of traditional English country-house grandeur suggested by the name 'Gilchrist & Soames', but which also lends the product an air of continental elegance and cosmopolitan élan. In other words, the label has to be in English and French.

All very well, of course, but you don't speak any French, do you, otherwise you'd have a job at Clarins or Chanel, or some other classy Parisian cosmetics company. So when it comes to translating the admittedly rather brutal, anglo-saxon 'Hair and Body Wash' into French, you're at a bit of a loss.

Now, as I see it, at this point you could take one of three courses of action:

1. Ask someone you know who speaks French, or, better still, who *is* French, to translate it for you.

2. In your lunchbreak, nip down to a genuine French cosmetics retailer, say for example L'Occitane, to see what they're calling it. Better still, look it up on their website.

3. Run it through Babelfish. (Not something I'd usually advise, but in this particular case, its suggestion, while still bad, is infinitely better than what you eventually come up with.)

But no. You did something else. And to be honest, I can't really fathom what it was you did, or how you managed to get it so spectacularly wrong.

Fig 1. Spot the wrongness.

I would surmise that you started out by making the classic schoolboy error of translating word for word. Hair. And. Body. Wash. Maybe you looked up each word in turn in an English-to-French dictionary. Maybe. In any case, using this method, you managed to translate the first two words OK, even though in the overall context of the thing, they ended up being meaningless.

But then you got to 'Body'. I can only assume that upon discovering that the French for 'body' is 'corps', your delicate sensibilities rebelled and refused to let you allow a word that looks like 'corpse' to appear on a label that is supposed to radiate elegance, refinement and good grooming. Whatever happened, the result is that you elected to remove the final 's', leaving 'corp', a word that doesn't exist in French.

Finally, no doubt gathering your confidence and enthusiasm as you entered the home straight, you embarked on the word 'Wash'. Problematic, this, as 'wash' is more traditionally used as a verb than a noun, particularly in French. But you don't want a verb here, you want a noun that describes the product inside the bottle. In your place, I might have steered clear of the tricksy 'wash' altogether, and maybe gone with 'gel', like they have at L'Occitane.

But no, you're determined to translate word for word, so 'wash' it is. And somehow you end up not with the infinitive 'laver' ('to wash'), but with 'lave', which is either the first person present indicative ('I wash'), or the third person present indicative ('he/she/it washes'), or - and I think this is most likely, given the absence of a pronoun - the second person singular imperative ('wash!').

In essence, then, what you've done is create a label that, while exhibiting flawless English, once translated into French reads 'Hair and Corp, Wash!'

Which is one way of creating a truly memorable hair, bath and body product, but possibly not one that reinforces Gilchrist & Soames's claim to have a passionate and dedicated team of employees whose core focus is to constantly reach for further perfection in everything we do for our customers.

Twat.

Mad Men vs Patroclus: The Copywriting Smackdown

2008-08-07T10:32:00.011+01:00

As time's wingèd chariot bundles inexorably towards the onset of my maternity leave, I find myself wondering what I'm going to do with the acres of free time I'm going to have for the next three months or so.

(What? Surely changing nappies and breastfeeding can't take up 24 hours of the day, every day! That would be madness!)

I'm gingerly testing the waters of the imminent lifestyle change by stepping up my television viewing. Not real, as-broadcast television, we don't have that at the moment, but DVDs and stuff.

And what better place to start than with Mad Men, a programme that not only is 'the nearest to genius television can get' (Metro), but in which several of the protagonists also have the same job as me - to wit, advertising copywriters.

This is where the similarities between me and the dramatis personae of Mad Men end, though, because after having viewed six episodes of Season One, I can confirm that there are some significant and probably insuperable differences in our working lives. Allow me to enumerate.

1. Office. The Mad Men office is chock-full of rich young men-about-town, the occasional silver fox and a horde of impeccably-coiffed fashionable secretarial ladies, all of whom spend their working day smoking, drinking cocktails, ravishing each other in well-appointed hotel rooms and making barbed comments about each other's dress sense, literary achievements, etc. In my office there's just me and the cat, and the cat is definitely the better groomed.

2. Client Meetings. In Mad Men, all client meetings go on for five minutes and unfold in exactly the same manner: the advertising team (who are all hungover) tell the client they don't have any ideas, the client gets a bit miffed, one of the advertising team berates the client for being female/stupid/Jewish/out of touch, and the client storms out in a huff. Later, someone has to save the account either by taking the client out to a strip club, or by sleeping with them, or both. By contrast, my client meetings are all at least an hour long, involve very long, very tedious powerpoint presentations littered with technical jargon and three letter acronyms, and end with the client requesting that I find some kind of common lexical ground between a photo of some peas and the notion of activity-based costing, which moreover must be expressed in a 'punchy' and 'compelling' fashion.

Fig. 1: Copywriting in the 1960s. Note reclining position, lack of clothes, absence of laptop, etc.

3. Desk. The desks in Mad Men are furnished with a) a phone, b) an ashtray, c) a bottle of spirits and a number of elegant spirit glasses. My desk is furnished with a) a phone, b) a printer, c) a laptop, d) several vast, unwieldy piles of printed-out powerpoint slides littered with technical jargon, three-letter acronyms and scrawled notes about 'key messages' and 'calls to action', e) any number of unfinished cups of peppermint tea, f) the cat, g) clumps of discarded cat fur, h) a leaflet about breastfeeding, i) dust, j) crumbs and k) a load of pens that I stole off the lovely Mr BC and promptly lost the tops of.

4. Office Hierarchy. In Mad Men, the copywriters (who are all men) have fashionably-attired lady secretaries to type up their copy (although I've yet to see anyone really produce any copy) while they set about playing practical jokes on each other, drinking whisky and ravishing successions of women in well-appointed hotel rooms. I, on the other hand, spend my day not only thinking of copy, but also typing it up on the typey-typey keyboard and emailing it to the client. Yes! I am living proof that women can think as well as type, something that in 1960s New York was apparently unheard of. On the downside, very little ravishing goes on in my office, possibly because I am eight months up the duff. (Yes! I am living proof that a woman can think, be pregnant and type all at the same time, despite what Theo Paphitis would have you believe.)

5. Remuneration. Despite the dubious business model outlined in point 2 above, the directors and account directors in Mad Men are all filthy rich and able to afford summer houses in the Hamptons, expensive clothes, successions of mistresses for ravishing in well-appointed hotel rooms, etc. Curiously, despite spending most of my working day actually working, as opposed to bitching and drinking cocktails, I have a lower salary than some of my teacher chums and a wardrobe composed almost entirely of cast-offs from eBay. (Despite this, my Granny has taken to informing her friends that since going freelance I've become 'a millionaire again', but that's a story for another time.)

So there you have it: Mad Men 1, Patroclus 0. Anyone fancy a martini?

My Vagina Foo-Foo Is None Of Your Business

2008-08-05T16:58:00.010+01:00

I see today's Guardian has cottoned on to the new (American) fad for 'vaginal rejuvenation'.

This, for the uninitiated, is what you ask for when you've already had cosmetic surgery on all public-facing parts of your body, but still feel the profound psychological emptiness that comes from believing Cosmo, Glamour, the Daily Mail etc. when they tell you (explicitly or implicitly) that men - and indeed the world at large - are only interested in how you look.

According to these women's-media tossers and their assorted plastic-surgery charlatan chums, how you look 'down there' is now just as important as what your face looks like, how skinny you are, and so on.

But what gets me about the Guardian article is the way it starts off being all horrified that women are being pressured by the media into getting their labia sculpted into alleged man-pleasing contours, but then ends up going on about how maybe we *should* be worried about the general fitness of our vaginas after all.

After all, why worry about ending up a spinster (which is probably your own fault for having unattractive labia, you negligent slattern) when you could be worrying about ending up an incontinent spinster?

This nonsense has gone too far, and gone on for too long. I'm thinking of organising a ritual burning of every women's magazine and women's supplement in the land. If only it would stop raining.

IN RELATED NEWS: Thanks to my dad for sending me this empty-headed niaiserie from the Weekly Telegraph, in which some British woman offers to reveal to other British women - for the bargain price of £2,500 - how French women stay thin. I say: spend the £2,500 on Gitanes and smoke yourself skinny. You'll feel so much better.

UPDATE: Leonie said: 'what else is wrong with me that i should really do something about already? do tell.' Well Leonie, had you considered that you might need shoulder liposuction? Come to that, maybe we ALL need shoulder liposuction, to fill (or rather, empty) the gaping black void that we all feel when we realise we don't look exactly like Keira Knightley.

Distance = Rate x Proximity To Carluccio's

2008-08-03T10:33:00.008+01:00

According to today's Observer Business & Media section, Richard Carrick, boss of holiday firm Hoseasons, believes that 'fuel costs have made some far-flung reaches of the UK, such as Scotland and Cornwall, less popular [with holidaymakers]'.

Might I urge Mr Carrick to consider the idiocy of this statement? There are no 'far-flung reaches' of the UK. There are certainly a number of exotic, dragon-infested places that are quite far from London, but that's not the same thing, is it?

(And no, Simon Calder, I haven't forgotten about your similar transgression, either.)

Back From The Void

2008-07-23T12:46:00.009+01:00

Yes, right, hmm, here I am, back from the lavender-scented wormhole in which I've been lounging for the past, hm, three weeks (crikey).

During my blogworld absence some, none or all of the following may or may not have occurred:

1. I made the lovely Mr BC drive to Somerset in a very large van in the pouring rain to pick up a sofa that is the identical twin of my existing wipe-clean cherry-red sofa that was once a recurring leitmotif in this very blog.

2. I accused South West Water of appropriating THREE HUNDRED AND THIRTY SEVEN POUNDS of my own money, and then pretending they didn't have it. A response has yet to be forthcoming.

3. In a partially inebriated state, the lovely Mr BC mistook a sculpture made of mussel shells for a tasty cake.

4. Flies got in.

5. I went to the launch of the lovely Miss-Cellany's new book, Things To Do Now That You're A Mum, and I got a signed copy and a glass of lemonade. I urge you to purchase copies for anyone you know who's about to become a mum*, or has just become a mum, because it is full of useful advice like 'join a samba band', which isn't covered in the NHS 'Birth to Five' book (I know, I've checked).

6. I watched two episodes of Bonekickers and now I think I've been swindled by Time Team - real archaeology is all about fighting with baddies in underground caves and setting fire to unimaginably important historical artefacts.

7. I got massively over-excited at the news that Condé Nast is launching a new UK version of Wired, and have spent the last 48 hours wondering if I can persuade them to commission me to write an article about, I dunno, the carnivalesque production of the self in disembodied space or something.

8. I placed a bet on the new UK version of Wired not lasting more than five issues.

9. I grew 12 pepper plants from seed, and now I feel like Percy Thrower.

10. [LATE ENTRY] I realised that this blog is six years old today. Awww. How it all began.

* On which note, many congratulations to Scroobious, a recent recruit to the ranks of forthcoming parenthood.

Caption Competition

2008-07-02T09:50:00.006+01:00

Yes, well done, it's the coat of arms of Richard the Lionheart (inventor of the bottomless scrubs), but are these really a pair of fearsome 'lions combatant', as heraldic parlance has it, or is it more a case of two really quite camp lions who've run into each other unexpectedly in the street?

Please leave your suggestions for what these two lions might be saying in the comments box. I have the ship's artist on standby to execute the best suggestions in the medium of pixel on light-emitting-diode...

UPDATE: Stand by everyone, for we have two winners! The ship's artist has been briefed, and the glorious victors will soon be immortalised in a new blog post...

(Image shamelessly appropriated from the Wikipedia entry here, although the circumstances are so morally ambiguous that I cannot quite think of it as theft*.)

* Which is clearly the best excuse ever for nicking something, and I plan to use it all the time, thanks Boris.

'Their Brains Turn To Mush'

2008-07-01T13:00:00.006+01:00

Today's G2 quotes Theo Paphitis (some kind of businessman, apparently) holding forth about the uselessness of pregnant women:

[Women] "get themselves bloody pregnant and ... they always argue that they'll be working until the day before, have the baby, go down to the river, wash it off, give it to the nanny and be back at work the following day, but sure enough, their brains turn to mush, and then after the birth the maternal instincts kick in, they take three months off, get it out of their system and are back to normal".

(My emphasis.)

Is that so, Mr Paphitis, whoever you might be? Perhaps you'd like to know that even in my advanced state of uselessness, I have managed to do the following in the past couple of weeks:

1. Write a 2,000-word paper on how best to manage old corporate WANs and modern IP networks.

2. Write a list of recommendations for how to keep Eastern Europe economically competitive, which will (apparently) be presented next week to the president of Romania.

3. Write a number of letters to senior government officials persuading them that buying my client's software will help them to meet their revised 'efficiency targets' under the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review.

4. Write an executive summary of the European software industry's recommendations to the EU for policy revisions designed to encourage technology-based innovation.

Of course it could always be the case that I just *think* I did those things, and that what I actually did was scrawl a number of rudimentary pictures of bunnies in crayon on the back of a cereal packet.

And there is the fact that yesterday I forgot to take my towel and my underwear with me when I went for a swim, meaning that I later had to trail round Asda WITH NO PANTS ON, the horror.

But still.

Optimal

2008-06-26T08:49:00.004+01:00

Can anyone tell me how George Michael is in any way relevant to this story?

'A baby, who was brought back from the dead after she was accidentally knocked into a river by her mother, has lost her battle for life.

The mother and the three-year-old were unharmed after their ordeal, which happened around half a mile downstream from a house owned by George Michael, the popstar.'

Could it be anything to do with search engine optimisation, I wonder? Bad Torygraph!

The Avenger

2008-06-25T11:36:00.002+01:00

INT. B&Q PENRYN - DAY

PATROCLUS and MR BC are looking for a saw. After some dithering:

ME: They all seem pretty similar to me.

MR BC: I'm going to get this one.

Presently:

MR BC: I've changed my mind. I'm going to get this one instead.

ME: You only want that one because it's called 'Predator'.

MR BC: Well, that's a good name for a saw.

ME: Blokes are so easy to market to. Just give something a ludicrously macho name, and you're away. There's probably a spirit level called 'Mutilator' in the next aisle.

MR BC: I don't know why more companies don't do that. If there was a toothpaste called 'The Avenger', blokes would never buy any other brand.

ME: 'The Dental Avenger'.

MR BC: No, just 'The Avenger'.

ME: What about 'Avenge'?

MR BC: 'The Avenger' is better.

ME: Righto.

Back In The House!

2008-06-22T14:34:00.010+01:00

Hello blogchums, I am back after another BT-enforced exile in the Land of No Broadband. Hopefully the last one ever, though, as now we've seen the amount of stuff we own, we're planning never to move house ever again.

It seems that during my absence I was tagged twice (twice!) for the same meme, first by Oli and then by Clair.

Luckily this meme is a) easy and b) fun, as all I have to do is list seven songs that I'm into right now. But because I'm so lovely, I'm not going to just list them, I'm going to give them to you as a splendid free podcast! Well, I mean, it isn't a podcast really, it's just seven songs squished into one audio file, what the lovely Mr BC kindly made for me with his super Garageband software.

So anyway, here we go, seven songs I am into at the moment, with vacuous commentary:

Yeasayer - Sunrise
I don't know anything about Yeasayer at all, other than that the Very Short List thinks they're quite cool right now, which means that all the *real* New York hipsters probably liked them about a year ago, and they're now quite passé, but not so passé that you'll have read about them being the 'next big thing' in the Sunday Times. (I think that's generally the way it goes.) This track is enormous and uplifting, as are almost all the other tracks on this non-podcast. I'm in a kind of 'enormous and uplifting' mood now, musically. Possibly because I *am* currently enormous, and need lifting up whenever I ill-advisedly sit on the ground, to fix carpet trims and the like.

Gnarls Barkley - Run
Usually a pop song is popular because it has a catchy melody or some other catchy hook that makes you really love it at first but then after you hear it another three times you realise that's all there is to it and you feel empty and cheated and a bit sick, like when you eat a Big Mac. (I think Theodor Adorno had something sniffy to say on the matter, but it backfired on him somewhat, as everyone accused him of being a big Wagner-loving snob and apparently no one likes a big Wagner-loving snob.) Anyway, Gnarls Barkley are not like that. Somehow they manage to make amazingly detailed and fantastic songs that sound like they're the best song ever written and that they've been around for about forty years, even though they were only written last week. This is one such. Worship Gnarls Barkley, for they are very special.

The Shortwave Set - No Social (Optimo Espacio Mix)
I like the Shortwave Set, because they're what a British indie band should be like - male/female vocals, lots of weird instruments, they take a gramophone on stage with them, etc. - and then I read that Danger Mouse (of Gnarls Barkley fame) had produced their latest single, so I went looking for it, and then I discovered this great remix of it and thought 'that's even better!', so here it is.

Nirvana vs Supermen Lovers - Come As The Starlight (Overdub Bootleg)
I love mashups, and I love Nirvana, and I love French electro, and this has all those things! (With thanks to Rafael, from whose hopefully-not-actually-moribund blog I unceremoniously whipped it.)

Martina Topley-Bird - Valentine
I thought I'd better have something slightly more subdued at some point, so here's Martina Topley-Bird, ex-cohort of Tricky. She has a lovely voice, and this is a lovely song, and I think that is all that needs to be said.

TV On The Radio - Dirty Whirl
Whenever I get a new album, I like to circle it suspiciously for several months, before putting it away on my CD shelf for another couple of years or so, after which I will tentatively get it out and give it its first listen. So after originally purchasing it when it came out in 2005, I've finally got round to listening to TV On The Radio's 'Return to Cookie Mountain', whence this song comes. And now I've heard it, I can't get it out of my head. It's fantastically infectious and has lots of great lyrics about some femme fatale or other being a 'dirty little whirlwind'. I'd quite like to be thought of as a dirty little whirlwind, but it's unlikely, as I spend most of my time repotting geraniums and going to B&Q, rather than messing with rock stars' heads. Oh well.

Eminem vs Survivor - Without Me
It is Eminem's 'Without Me' mashed up with 'Eye of The Tiger'. There is nothing subtle about it at all. It is brilliant. Oh yes. You know it.

Here you go then:

Download Podcast (m4a, 27MB)

I now hereby tag Mr BC, Wyndham, Tim and Rivergirlie to list their seven songs of the moment - podcast optional.

IN OTHER NEWS: Thanks to Annie for bringing it to my attention that my Guardian Letters blog was plugged in the Guardian Guide yesterday. Woo! (Although frankly I'm still waiting for a proper answer to my BURNING QUESTIONS.)

AND ALSO: Congratulations to Sarah Peach and team for getting the long-awaited 'You're Not Alone' blog anthology book out on to the virtual shelves at lulu.com, and congratulations to Occasional Poster of Comments for getting into it!

Quote Of The Week

2008-06-10T07:31:00.004+01:00

From a BBC article about a new eco-town project:

'The government has said that of the 5,000 homes to be built, 2,000 would be affordable.'

Presumably the other 3,000 will be pebble-dashed with emeralds, thatched with peacock feathers and priced at 80 billion pounds each. No wonder the housebuilders are going out of business.

They Seek Him There...

2008-06-06T15:30:00.003+01:00

Stop panicking everyone, the wandering Wyndham has been located! He's in the tearoom, over here, no doubt serving up cake and the finest wines known to humanity.

Hurrah!

Criminal Justice

2008-06-06T08:31:00.014+01:00

I've been commissioned to write a lengthy tract about some technology my client has developed that will apparently make the criminal justice system more efficient.

On a planning call with various 'stakeholders' in this project, the conversation wheels around to why I was selected to write this thing in the first place.

'So, Patroclus, do you have a background in criminal justice?' asks a stakeholder.

I pause briefly to consider my experience in the sector, which includes:

1. Being told off by a weary policeman for rolling in a municipal flowerbed in Forres, Moray, at 2am on the night before the 'Britain in Bloom' judges were due to arrive.

2. Having a disgruntled policeman pop up from behind a hedge to take my photograph as I participated in an episode of organised civil disobedience on Crown land as a protest against the criminalisation of peaceful mass trespass under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill (later Act).

3. Being forcibly manhandled off Crown land by a no-nonsense mounted policeman during the same episode.

4. Being tear-gassed by riot police in Park Lane, after a protest march against the aforementioned Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill (later Act) became somewhat lively, this liveliness including the burning of cars, trampling of flowerbeds and overturning of bus shelters in the aforementioned Park Lane, and the rattling of gates leading to Downing Street (the latter activity later immortalised in the opening credits of woeful 1999 Britflick Human Traffic, which is now notable only as an early celluloid outing for The Lovely John Simm (awww look at his little face, awww, etc.) and for having the Age of Love's 'Age of Love' on the soundtrack).

5. Receiving a phone message from the Devon and Cornwall police requesting that I go down to the station 'for a chat' following the publication of an article I had written for the student magazine about a conference at which representatives of the aforementioned police force had reassured local parents that 'there are no drugs in Devon and Cornwall'. (In proper Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas style I had turned up to the conference stoned, but only in order to give a hilarious ironic counterpoint to my article. My professional dedication has never been anything less than impeccable.) I didn't go.

'Erm, not really,' I reply.

Unpalatable Truths

2008-06-03T10:57:00.005+01:00

In retrospect, getting pregnant within three minutes of arriving in Cornwall was perhaps a little on the hasty side, as it's come to my attention that lumbering pregnant women are all but useless at renovating stinky old houses.

So for example, I can get on to the floor to unscrew floorboards, which is helpful, but then I can't get up again, which isn't.

I can cut up old carpet with a Stanley knife, but only for about ten minutes, after which I have to whinge extensively about how much my back hurts.

I can walk to the shop to buy milk, but only at 0.0007 miles per hour, meaning that by the time I return, the milk has gone off in the relentless summer sun (curse you, relentless summer sun!).

I can carry stuff from the car into the house, as long as the stuff is made of paper or cotton wool or balloons, and not from wood or metal or china or anything remotely useful.

I can pull up weeds in the garden, but only until I see worms, at which point I have to squeal 'ewww, worms!' and run away - oh wait, that one has nothing to do with being pregnant and everything to do with being a namby-pamby ex-city-dweller.

There's one skill that hasn't deserted me due to my enormous bulk, though. I'm still very good at nagging. Nagging - or the repetition of unpalatable truths, as I prefer to think of it - barely hurts my back at all. And what's more, because I'm female and can multi-task, I find that I'm quite capable of nagging expertly at the same time as standing around cradling a cup of tea and a Digestive biscuit. While Mr BC scales ladders, paints ceilings, shifts mammoth wardrobe pediments from room to room, and heaves great boxes of flatpack garden furniture hither and thither.

All of it wrongly, of course.

Open Source Garden Advice

2008-05-30T21:28:00.005+01:00

We've got the keys to the New House now, which is so exciting that I started hyperventilating outside Pizza Express earlier and some skater boys looked at me as if I was some kind of dangerous nutter.

Anyway! There's a tree in the garden that we want to cut back a bit, as it's draping itself all over everything...but we don't know what it is. Does anyone recognise it from the below photos, and if so, do you know if we can prune it a bit?

'The branches are kind of corkscrewy,' adds Mr BC. It's a bit like a weeping willow, only it isn't a weeping willow. Here it is from another angle:

Any and all suggestions gratefully received!

Patroclus and Mr BC Discuss...Stress

2008-05-29T09:23:00.005+01:00

INT. LIVING ROOM - NIGHT

PATROCLUS and MR BC are waiting for the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall programme to come on. A voiceover announces a forthcoming instalment* of 'Location Location Location'.

VOICEOVER: Buying a house is one of the most stressful things you can imagine.

MR BC: No it isn't.

ME: It's supposed to be. We must have done it wrong.

MR BC: I don't remember getting in any way stressed about it at any point.

ME: You were quite stressed about it the other day.

MR BC: Well, all these estate agents and solicitors kept ringing up to say 'Congratulations! You've exchanged!' When I was trying to eat my lunch!

ME: You aren't like other people, are you?

MR BC: No.

* Is this how you spell 'instalment'? Or is it 'installment'? I am having a minor crisis about it.

The Mug Chain

2008-05-27T11:20:00.011+01:00

I am having a pleasant instant-message conversation with my brother about what we did on our respective weekends. Suddenly, apropos of nothing, the conversation takes an unexpected turn:

BROTHER: Did Alan Turing actually used to chain his mug to the radiator?

ME: I don't know. Did he?

BROTHER: I can't remember if it's true, or whether I made it up.

ME: I once tied a mug to myself*, but it wasn't my 'magic' Alan Turing one.

I do some digging on the internet, and discover several references to Alan Turing chaining his mug to the radiator. I duly inform the brother.

BROTHER: Ha! I knew I hadn't made it up!

ME: Is this for a client?

(My brother works in marketing too, and is often required to come up with 'creative ideas' to promote some piece of software or other.)

ME: Are you giving away branded 'mug chains'?

ME: Give us your business card, and we'll give you a FREE mug chain - just like Alan Turing's!

ME: Radiator not included.

It becomes apparent that my brother has sloped off, no doubt unable to withstand the vim and verve of my potent wit, so I relate the conversation to Mr BC instead.

MR BC: Is the mug included?

ME: Hm, I didn't think of that.

A companionable silence descends. Presently:

MR BC: It would need to be quite a long chain, so you could lift the mug to your mouth.

Suddenly this doesn't seem to be such a bad idea at all. Branded mug chains would be cheap to produce, and would surely be popular among the Turing-worshipping geek community, who would no doubt welcome a means of keeping their 'special' mugs - which they probably got from Linus Torvalds's secret bunker at the alpha launch of the Linux kernel in 1992 - out of bounds to their colleagues.

The chain could also imply 'security', and would therefore be an ideal booth giveaway for a security software company, like an antivirus company. And what's more, by ensuring that the mug is not used communally, the chain would - quite literally - prevent the spread of 'viruses' across the 'workspace', thus giving concrete, tangible form to an abstract, metaphorical notion; something the software industry has always struggled to do.

I am on marketing fire! I sketch a rudimentary mug chain on my to-do pad, and make a note to fax it to none other than Siralan** himself.

It is at this point that I notice it's already midday, and there's washing to be done, and boxes to be packed, and carrot cake to be made - and before I do any of that I have to write an article about online video for one client and a list of recommendations to the governments of Central and Eastern Europe for another.

The mug chain will have to wait. But ITS TIME WILL COME, goddammit.

* A true story, but one for which the world is not yet prepared.

** Sugar, not Turing. Alan Turing is dead, for a start, and therefore doesn't have a fax machine. And he wasn't a 'Sir', although he did more for this country than Suralan ever has, and what's more Suralan wouldn't even have had a company if it hadn't been for the work of his illustrious predecessor. And besides, faxing my idea to Turing, the rightful originator of it, would be tantamount to commercial suicide!

Revelations

2008-05-26T11:18:00.006+01:00

The lovely Mr BC has tagged me (mainly because I asked him to, I've never quite got the hang of these 'meme' things) to answer the burning question: 'What revelations have you had since taking up your writing career?'

The reason I wanted to do this one is that I'm aware that quite a few of you are, like me, toiling at the unglamorous end of the writing industry, with no prospect of ever being asked to write anything about dragons, or ninjas, or unfeasibly attractive and scantily-clad Liverpudlian teenagers.

BUT WE HAVE FEELINGS TOO, DAMMIT!

So now I am going to impart some wisdom, and then I will tag some more of you to impart your own wisdom, and maybe together we can create a beautiful primer of everything that anyone might want to know about how to be a 'professional writer'.

Here we go then, some revelations I have had since I took up my writing career - or rather 'accidentally fell into' my writing career - nine years ago:

1. Being a freelance writer is brilliant. You get to work at home, have coffee whenever you like, look out of the window whenever you like and (usually) organise your working day however you like. Now there's the internet, and laptops, you can theoretically work from anywhere, which is how I didn't have to give up my job to go and look after my mum when she was ill, for which I am profoundly grateful.

2. Those adverts ('Make A Living From Writing!') that you see in the back of Sunday supplements are deeply misleading. Unless you're extraordinarily good, extraordinarily lucky or extraordinarily well-connected, you're never going to make a decent living as a freelance journalist, novelist or screenwriter. (Obviously this doesn't mean you shouldn't try, especially not if you're a naturally gifted creative writer, but just be aware that it's highly unlikely to make you unbelievably rich.)

3. This doesn't mean you can't make a decent living as a writer, though. You can. If you get enough work, and if you work hard enough at it, you can even earn the equivalent of a six-figure salary*. To do that, you need to be in the private sector. And not just any old part of the private sector - you need to be in an industry that's awash with cash. And not just any old industry that's awash with cash - you need to be in one whose products are complicated and obscure, and therefore need careful and precise explaining. It helps if it's an industry in which not many people know how to write about the products in a way that laypeople understand. Technology is one. Finance is another**. Pharmaceuticals is probably another one.

4. Once you get into one of these industries, and demonstrate that you can write beautiful, limpid prose that not only educates the target market about what the product does but also makes them REALLY WANT TO BUY IT, you'll be amazed at a) how much people are prepared to pay for your services and b) the kind of things they ask you to write. On more than one occasion, I've been paid to write an internal memo. Amazingly, there are people who have so little confidence in their own writing skills that they'd rather pay someone to write their emails for them. In some ways, I find this a sad reflection on an education system that has clearly failed a lot of people. In other ways, I'm eternally thankful that so many people feel unable to string two words together, because otherwise there'd be no work for me.

5. There's a received wisdom in the world of marketing that no writing is any good unless it's 'punchy', which means 'extremely short', 'devoid of verbs' and 'bereft of all meaning'. Many clients don't seem to care what the text actually says, as long as it meets these criteria. (This post of Matt's sums up the attitude nicely.) This means that I quite often spend all day writing meaningless 'punchy' stuff, which is why I like to be quite long-winded on this blog. Sorry about that.

Now then, let's hear it from fellow writers Great She Elephant, Bête de Jour and Rach. And of course anyone else who feels like joining in.

UPDATE: You can read Rach's very fine answer here.

* For the record, I don't have a six-figure salary, but I came within spitting distance of one during the dotcom boom. The dotcom boom was brilliant.

** I'm aware that the finance industry is currently emphatically not awash with cash, but give it six months and it'll probably recover.

Guardian Letters Project: The Results Are In

2008-05-25T12:32:00.005+01:00

For anyone who's still following my FEARLESS INVESTIGATION into the possible gender bias on the letters pages of the Guardian and the Observer, I am proud and delighted (not to mention just a little bit deflated and depressed) to inform you that the final reckoning has been, er, reckoned, and you can see the results in these three separate posts.

I know this is not the most important thing in the world. I know that even by drawing attention to it I may be setting the cause of gender equality back rather than forward, a bit like Bidisha does with her frankly bizarre outburst about why people don't rate JK Rowling as a writer (thanks Oli for bringing that to my attention).

I may just be depressed because I read the comments thread appended to this XKCD post about the ratio of female to male leads in Hollywood movies (thanks Del for that one, via Slaminsky), and realised that there are a lot of people out there who won't accept what's staring them in the face, and probably never will.

Anyhow. Your fearless investigator ploughs on regardless, at least until teatime, when she's scheduled to continue the Firefly-watching marathon that she has embarked upon in response to your overwhelming recommendations. I am very much enjoying it so far.

IN OTHER NEWS: After what may have been possibly the least stressful house-buying escapade ever, Mr BC and I have exchanged contracts on the New House (which is actually a very Old House), and get the keys next Friday. Woo!

'The Gift'

2008-05-22T14:02:00.008+01:00

Although this blog may give the impression that I am a saddo stay-at-home no-social-lifer whose idea of entertainment is staring intently at Statcounter until I begin to discern patterns in the data, like that geezer in A Beautiful Mind, I can assure you that nothing could in fact be further from the truth.

Why, only the other day I was round at the house of my friend S, whom I've known since we attended the same nursery school in the north of Scotland at the tender age of three, and who by some bizarre concatenation of coincidences now lives at the other end of the street from our new house.

S introduced me to her friend L, who was also visiting, and a pleasant three-way conversation ensued about the usual things: the 'usual things' these days being babies, epidurals, episiotomies (if you don't know, for god's sake don't look it up, especially not in Google Images) and the way one's outlook on life changes when one reaches one's late thirties.

S and L are more 'conflicted' about the latter than I am, because whereas I gave up my hardcore party lifestyle a good few aeons ago, S and L are still quite keen on getting out into the world and enjoying themselves in an, erm, uninhibited kind of manner.

(Only my friend S, for example, could go out on a Saturday night to play in a fiddle orchestra recital in a Cornish village hall, and return the following afternoon having seduced a Young British Artist - and for this I take my hat off to her entirely.)

L said that her fondness for partying combined with her status as a new mum had become untenable, and that she was leaning towards settling down and jettisoning some of her more bohemian friends. She no longer wanted to 'walk between two worlds,' as she put it - quite poetically, I thought.

So far, so Sex And The City Series 6. But then weird wavy lines descended across my field of vision and the next thing I knew the conversation had ceased to make any sense whatsoever:

L: Because it's a pain, you know. I just want to lead a normal life, but there are all these birds everywhere. Like the other day I was in the chemist's, and the shop assistant went all blue jay all over me.

S: What's blue jay?

L: You know, a blue jay - like a chough, or a linnet. You know. A lot of outpouring of emotion.

S (to me): L has the gift.

I nod dumbly and begin to wonder whether I've suddenly come down with a rare case of ergotism (I've been watching a lot of House lately, and if there's one thing that House teaches you, it's that you never know when ergotism might strike).

L: Yes. And like, you know, the other day, there was an owl moth in the house. You know those moths that have a pattern on their back like an owl? Well, my grandmother is an owl. And so I knew there was something wrong with my grandmother. And of course it turned out that she was ill. It's exhausting. I wish I could turn it off, but people need me.

S: You could just give it up.

L: I could, but you know, there aren't very many of us. I shouldn't waste it.

While I'm still wondering what the hell all that was about, not to mention whether there actually is such a thing as an 'owl moth', L decides it's time she went home for her dinner and bids us a cheery goodbye.

S later explains that L is a shaman, and is forever being called upon to escort unwanted bird-spirits from this world to the next. We agree that we wouldn't want to be shamans, although S goes on to claim that she inherited the gift of second sight from her grandmother, but doesn't like to use it.

I consider making some kind of counter-claim about my own 'gifts', but beyond the fact that I once passed Grade 4 piano, there's nothing I can immediately think of. I've always been the square one.

Cryptid Corner

2008-05-21T14:19:00.006+01:00

When the lovely Mr BC and I were sojourning in Helsinki in 2006, we had occasion to take a trip to the beautiful medieval town of Tallinn, where not only did one of us have fish soup for breakfast (which is all kinds of wrong), but where, on disembarking at the ferry port, we also saw a solitary taxi driver holding up a cardboard sign that read 'BAT PEOPLE'.

I remember being terribly interested in this at the time, an interest that I am sad to say was not shared by my travelling companion, who was more interested in getting into town and wolfing down fish soup. (At breakfast time. I ask you.)

I still don't know who - or, more ominously, what - the taxi driver was expecting to pick up, but yesterday while going through some old photographs I happened upon one that might hold a clue to the mystery:

Blurry though it is, I think you'll agree that this image presents compelling pictorial evidence for the existence of a forgotten race of bat people. In addition to the creepy, batlike stance, on enlarging the photo you will also notice the unusual tonsure, suggesting that this particular specimen is a member of an elite ecclesiastical order - possibly even a high priest or priestess.

I can't find any references to a race of bat people among the usual literature, but I feel that this photo, combined with our experience in Estonia, points to more than mere coincidence. Could this be an ancient cousin of the Mothman, or even the Owlman of Mawnan Smith? I think it certainly warrants further investigation.

I Will Get Back To The Picts One Day, Honest

2008-05-20T13:07:00.009+01:00

Goodness, what a lot of work I have on at the moment, but I feel neglectful of you, lovely blog-readers.

So here for your edification is a marvellous post from io9, all about the myth that women don't like science fiction (I have been instructed under no circumstances to refer to it as 'sci-fi').

Is it just me, or is all this 'women don't write blogs', 'women don't blog about politics', 'women don't write letters to the newspapers', 'women don't like science fiction', etc. thing becoming a bit tiresome? What do people think we do all day - go shopping and talk about shoes?

Women: not all necessarily like this.

As Annalee Newitz points out, women like science fiction all right - usually when it's got good female characters in it. And for my money, you won't find a better range of female characters anywhere on television, let alone in science fiction, than in Battlestar Galactica. Why, there are so many! And so varied! And they're all proper characters, with proper, complex personalities, in a proper story, not just simpering foils, or 'token feisty woman' characters, or one-dimensional babes.

And surprise surprise, everyone seems to like it. Maybe because that's what life is actually like*.

Battlestar Galactica: advancing the cause of gender equality, one vest at a time.

Something to think about there, eh?

* Apart from the imminent threat of annihilation by sentient ~~aliens~~ robots disguised as humans, obviously. Although...

Public Service Announcement

2008-05-18T09:34:00.003+01:00

Readers! Do you also have a blog? Do you want to tell all about your blog to a complete stranger, in complete confidence? Do you have the stamina and strength of mind to answer many questions about why you blog, where you blog, when you blog, and whether you've ever actually, erm, 'got jiggy' with anyone as a result of blogging?

If the answer is yes then don't wait another minute - pick up your laptop and go to Bête de Jour's. He's doing a survey of bloggers and needs another 757 replies, apparently.

Go to it!

(Unless you've already done it, of course, in which case don't go to it, or you'll pollute the sample.)