Florence

In September 1992, I was 21 years old and three-quarters of the way through a degree course in French and Italian; a course that requires students to live abroad for ten months. I'd already spent nine months living in France, and I was now supposed to spend a month in Italy, at the Dante Alighieri Language School in Florence.

This was all very well, but I was also expected to get myself to Florence and pay for a month's accommodation and subsistence. As I had no money at all, and neither did my student boyfriend D., this was somewhat problematic.

In a fit of generosity, my dad had said that if D. and I could get ourselves to the south of France, where he and my mum lived, he would drive us to Florence.

I don't remember how D. and I got to the south of France, but I expect we took the coach from London to Toulouse. Upon our arrival, my dad helpfully claimed not to remember anything about promising to drive us to Florence*. This was not only Somewhat Unexpected, it was also Not Good, as my mum and dad's place in France was on the Spanish side of the country.

As neither of us had any money, our only alternative was to hitch. My mum drove us to Béziers and dropped us off at the péage (motorway toll station), leaving us to our fate. How my mum felt about leaving her tiny and completely impractical daughter to hitch along hundreds of miles of foreign motorways accompanied only by a monoglot crusty fantasist has gone unrecorded by history, but there we go.

It all went OK at first; we got a lift almost straightaway from someone who was going to Nimes airport. Shortly we learned the inadvisability of trying to hitch out of an airport that is only served by one flight a day, especially after that flight has been and gone. After several hours of barren emptiness, an airport worker took pity on us and drove us back to the motorway, where we immediately got a lift to Arles with a bloke who drove barefoot.

At length we got to Nice. Nice has the biggest péage I've ever seen, but no one wanted to pick us up there. After two hours, we got a lift from a bloke in a yellow Mercedes who tried to gather us to the bosom of Jesus. As D. didn't speak any French, and I'd only just defected *from* the bosom of Jesus, this didn't work as well as he might have expected. He chucked us out at Ventimiglia, on the Italian border.

By this time it was dark, and a high wind was getting up. D. reckoned we ought to stop for the night and put the tent up. Optimistically, we attempted to do this on the only patch of grass we could see, which happened to be right outside the passport control office. Two carabinieri watched us put the tent up (in the dark, in a high wind), before strolling over to tell us we couldn't camp there. We put the tent up again, on an embankment. All night the wind threatened to uproot it, but didn't.

The next day we got a lift with an Italian bloke who kept laughing to himself. I was sitting in the front (as I spoke Italian), and D. was in the back. Eventually the bloke told me he was laughing because he'd missed his turning for Turin, and would have to go back miles after he dropped us off. Later, D. told me he had surreptitiously got his knife out of his rucksack when the bloke started laughing, convinced that he was about to kill us both.

When we got to Florence we stayed at a campsite overlooking the city. I got up every day and went down to the language school. At the language school I saw another girl from my university, but I didn't tell her where I was staying. Most of the other people on my course at uni were quite rich (Santa Sebag Montefiore used to sit behind me, for example), and had probably rented palazzo apartments and scooters and were living it up like Gwyneth Paltrow in The Talented Mr Ripley.

Instead, I made friends with a bloke called Ben, and went to a fantastic coffee bar with him every day for a latte. D., stuck in the campsite with no money, wasn't very impressed with this behaviour.

In the campsite we met a couple called Darren and Mandy: he was a textbook Essex boy; her dad owned a pub. They were on their way to Rimini, which had somehow become the epicentre of the mainland European rave scene. They taught us how to make jewellery out of stones and wire. We helped them abscond from the campsite without paying, and wondered if we'd have to do the same ourselves. We befriended some shy Belgians and I beat one of them at chess. Snap and Dr Alban were perennially playing on the campsite jukebox. We ate fried potatoes and tomatoes every day because that was all we could afford. Despite that, it was brilliant.

One day I read in the newspaper that the Italian lira had fallen out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. We weren't sure what this meant, but it didn't sound good, and we thought we'd better go home in case hyperinflation was about to break out and we would need wheelbarrows of lira notes just to get out of the campsite. D. phoned his mum and asked her to wire some money. Somehow, this worked. We used it to pay for the campsite and get a coach back to London. At Victoria coach station we had to borrow money from a complete stranger to get a coach back to Worcester, where D.'s mum lived.

D. and I split up three years later, and I've not thought about this Italian episode for a long, long time. For some reason I started thinking about it this morning, and just felt like writing it for posterity.


* To be fair to my dad, I think he had only extended this promise to me, rather than to me and the boyfriend. I don't think my dad liked the boyfriend much.

When In Doubt, Make A List

It's that time again - that time when I exclusively reveal everything I've looked up on Wikipedia in the last few days, in order to avoid work provide my long-suffering readers with a fascinating glimpse into my psyche:

The Aliens
Geotagging
Leprechauns
2006 FIFA World Cup
Broken Social Scene
Clara Bow
Difference Engine
Destroyer
Irrational Exuberance
Jet Boy, Jet Girl
Junior Boys
Leila K
List of Minor Characters in Judge Dredd
Nemesis the Warlock
Shirley Kwan
Valencia
Virginia Tech Shootings

Hmm. That's not nearly as good a list as last time. I think my Wikipedia-fu is slipping.

Irrational Exuberance

Coming home last night after a hard day at the social media coalface (as described by LC), I had this conversation with my cousin, who'd come to stay for the night after attending the London Book Fair:

ME: So what are you up to these days?

COUSIN: Well, I've just moved into a new flat in Edinburgh, and I'm still doing some freelance editing, but really I'm working on this project with a couple of friends.

ME: What sort of project?

COUSIN: It's a sort of MySpace for unpublished authors.

ME: Cool.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Second Dotcom Boom. I like it.

Hiatus

Blogging is on a bit of a hiatus at the moment, while I grapple with the exciting but at the same time quite annoying reality of working 13 hours a day even when I'm SUPPOSED TO BE ON HOLIDAY.

(Hurrah for the tech industry boom, this time next year we'll all be millionaires, etc., but on the other hand, where did my free time go?)

In the meantime, if anyone reading is a professional writer (i.e. you derive all or part of your income from typing your own words into a machine), please head over to Miss-Cellany's blog as she wants your input into some research she's doing for her MA.

Also, if anyone reading isn't a professional writer, but fancies themselves as the next Neal Stephenson/Bruce Sterling/William Gibson, head over to the British Computer Society, which is running a short story competition for a 2,000-word work of fiction that 'must have a plot involving information technology, either in the past, present or in years to come.' Go to it!

Song Of The Week!

Get it now, before it becomes the soundtrack to a Coke ad/an Adidas ad/a Nike ad/every single barbecue you will attend this summer:

Bonde do Role - Solta o Frango (mp3)

[Buy from Boomkat]


UPDATE: While we're on the topic of glorious musical silliness, please also accept this mashup of Elvis Presley's 'King Creole' with 'Ça Plane Pour Moi' (the original Plastic Bertrand version, not the Leila K version, although I loved that too, as I will love any song that crams a lot of words into not much space, no matter what language it's in), and the Banana Splits theme:

Arty Fufkin - Creole Pour Moi (mp3)

[More where that came from at Arty Fufkin's website]

Not one for the Elvis purists, I'd imagine, but it makes me laugh.

Help - British Gas Are Bankrupting Me

What you don't really want to find after enduring the Return Train Journey from Hell (actually, Truro*) on Bank Holiday Monday is a threatening letter from British Gas demanding immediate payment of £750.74 or suffer immediate disconnection from the mains supply.

I wasn't particularly surprised to find this letter waiting for me, as my friends at British Gas had already sent me TWO letters last Thursday, one demanding immediate payment of £740.74, and the other demanding immediate payment of £461.47. Failure to pay these, would, they informed me, result in them coming round to disconnect my supply. They might also BRING THE POLICE WITH THEM, they hadn't decided yet.

(I did try ringing them at 7.28pm on Thursday when I finished work, but at 8.00pm I was still on hold, and their offices closed. Hm.)

Still, this might be an improvement (it's hard to tell) on my last monthly bill, for £1,013.64, which I received while away in France, after a month when my (one-bedroom) flat had been empty and the central heating off.

On one of the rare occasions I've managed to get through to British Gas, as well as reluctantly handing over £200.00 in an attempt to keep them off my back (a strategy that appears to have backfired), I enquired as to how I might have racked up a bill of £1,013.64 during a time when no one had even been in my flat. They were unable to tell me, as I'd apparently been 'moved to the new system', but they could tell me that I had to pay up sharpish.

I can't even begin to understand what they're up to, but they seem intent on bankrupting me.

Still, I'm not the only one - apparently they sent Andrew Rawnsley from the Observer a bill for £2,000. Perhaps he and I are jointly funding their price cuts.

I don't have a spare £1,000, and even if I did, I wouldn't really want to give it to British Gas. Anyone any suggestions?


* Really, don't ever try travelling to Cornwall on a sunny Bank Holiday weekend, just stay at home; it's safer**.

** Although I did have a lovely time, and the simnel cake was plentiful, and I got to meet up with OPC and the lovely Miss-Cellany, and my best friend from primary school who keeps randomly appearing (in a good way), and her 'birthing partner' (whatever that means, I don't like to think too closely), and there were relaxing walks along the beach in the sunshine and nice meals and good company and French films and stuff, so I'm not actually complaining at all.

At Home With The Bloggers

From left to right:

1. Your correspondent, coyly engrossed in a copy of Tim Cultural Snow's magnum opus, Welcome To The Machine: OK Computer And The Death Of The Classic Album.

2. The lovely James Blue Cat, reading Katy Newton's contribution to Shaggy Blog Stories: A Collection Of Amusing Tales From The UK Blogosphere.

3. Fairy lights (model's own).

4. Some IKEA bedlinen (model's own).

Not shown: A Habitat mug, some Tea Tree Oil Mattifying Moisture Gel*, the Eiffel Tower, Benjamin Franklin inventing the lightning rod, weevils, Superman.

In the foreground: my MASSIVE SCARY HAND.

Bloggers reading books by other bloggers while in bed with other bloggers are so hot right now.


* Whose name suggests that it exists in several physical states simultaneously, thus contradicting all known laws of physics and making it a possible contender for the 'philosopher's stone' long sought by medieval alchemists. If only they'd thought to look in the Body Shop, eh?


Tags: shaggy blog stories | radiohead

Things I Don't Want To Think About Too Closely

INT. PIZZA EXPRESS CHISWICK - DAY

Me: I'd like a Nostrana salad, please.

Waiter: Um, sorry, we can't do that, we don't have any boiled eggs.

Me: Oh, right, oh, so I can't have a Fiorentina pizza either?

Waiter: No, that's OK. We've got eggs. We just don't have any boiled eggs.

Me: Um...

Why I Don't Like British Indie Bands

I was pleased and surprised to find a private message for me in last.fm the other day, asking if I'd be interested in writing for www.miwsig.com, a Welsh-tinged music website.

Sadly, I can't write about music for toffee. I can't even tell the difference between a harmonica and an accordion, as I discovered recently while planning a post containing Three Great Songs With Accordions In Them, so it's best all round that I politely declined.

Of course this doesn't stop me from writing rubbish about music on my own blog with merry abandon, which is a good thing, because I have been ruminating for a while on the contentious topic of Why All* British Indie Music Is So Crap.

After much thought, I have decided it boils down to four things:

1. Lack of musical expertise. I want my indie bands to be able to play proper instruments, and lots of them. None of this two guitars and a drumkit crap. I want cellos and kazoos and trumpets and pedal steels and double basses and timpani and accordions (yes) and harmonicas (which are not the same as accordions) and klezmers (whatever they are**) and glockenspiels and instruments I've never heard of. If possible, all on the same song. Ideally accompanied with bleeps and samples for a full-on rich tapestry effect.

2. Lack of lyrical expertise. I want my indie bands to have actually gone to school, and to have paid attention in their English classes. Or their French classes, or their Spanish classes, I'm not fussy. And if they didn't go to school, that's fine too, but I still want them to have a bit of sensibility about our fine and versatile language. I want them to think about their lyrics, and stop writing facile clichéd crap, especially facile, clichéd crap that doesn't make any sense, NOT EVEN METAPHORICALLY, and is just there to prop up a dull, samey song played on two guitars and a drumkit. Mainly I want long, clever words with lots of syllables in them, arranged in some kind of pleasing and original order, dammit.

3. Lack of female vocalists. British indie music is just way too blokey. I want to hear female vocals in there too, thank you very much. If no girls want to be in your band, perhaps you could just try singing like a girl occasionally, to break up the awful monotony a bit.

4. Improper motivation. Honestly, sometimes I think some of these bands just want to sell records. I want my indie bands to be psychologically driven to make music, even if no one buys it. Writing songs should be an unstoppable cathartic impulse, not a way to make money because no one will give you a proper job.

With these considerations in mind, I propose an instructive evening in front of MTV2 playing British Indie Band Bingo. That should sort the Shortwave Sets from the Razorlights. Scoring goes like this:

1. Band features instruments other than guitars, drumkit and keyboard: ONE POINT

2. Band has mixed gender line-up: TWO POINTS

3. Band has male and female vocalists: THREE POINTS

4. Band's lyrics do not make you wince, roll your eyes, or shake your head sadly: FOUR POINTS

Ooh, this might actually make watching MTV2 bearable.


* Not *all*. Just 'most'.

** Apparently not an instrument at all. See?

Tim Jonze Please Take Note:

1. Comment is Free is not a blog. It's a newspaper website that allows moderated comments. It isn't updated by a single person or identifiable group of people, it doesn't link to other blogs to form part of a community, and its posters rarely converse with - or even acknowledge - their commenters.

2. People who comment on Comment is Free are not 'bloggers'. They are 'commenters'. They may also be bloggers, but you have no way of telling, unless they specifically type their blog address into their comment. Unlike proper blogs, CiF doesn't automatically link to commenters' homepages. This sends a subliminal message to CiF commenters that says: 'although we spout off a lot about how democratic we're being, we actually think you are inferior to us, and your paltry amateur websites are not worth linking to'. This is probably one of the reasons CiF commenters get so riled up.

3. You are not a blogger. (You think you are, because you sometimes get paid to write on the Guardian Arts blog, but in my book, that makes you a journalist.)

Honestly. I don't know what Emily Bell et al have been telling the staff, but almost all Guardian/Observer hacks seem to be under the impression that the Guardian invented blogging, in some sort of brave and pioneering foray into democratic media, and that CiF is the only 'blog' in existence.

Maybe one day one of them will accidentally stumble into the wider blogosphere, like Jodie Foster in Contact, and discover it teeming with highly intelligent alien life.

And speaking of alien life, it's all gone a bit psych-rock here at Quinquireme Towers, as we interrupt our boycott of British indie bands to appreciate the mighty cosmic genius of The Aliens. Here, have a track off their new album 'Astronomy for Dogs', which manifests a particular awesomeness from 3m12s onwards:

The Aliens - Only Waiting (mp3)

Dot Dot Dot

Sincere apologies to anyone coming to this blog from the link at Troubled Diva, expecting to find a rollicking hotbed of hilarity and stuff.

Soon* my dealings with the French tax authorities, mairies, notaires, sous-préfectures, déchetteries etc. will come to an end, and I will be able to write inconsequential nonsense** and post twee indie-pop mp3s on here again.

In the meantime, many, many thanks to everyone who has commented and emailed, it has meant a lot to me.


* Although 'soon' in French bureaucratic terms may be taken to imply 'sometime this century, if you're lucky'.

** I can't guarantee it will be funny, though. Oh, the pressure...

Books Of Blogs Are Evil...

...except when they're for charity, then they're very good indeed.

That's why everyone should proceed immediately to shaggyblogstories.co.uk and spend £8.96 on Shaggy Blog Stories: A Collection of Amusing Tales from the UK Blogosphere, which Mike at Troubled Diva has heroically spent the whole week creating.

You get a lovely book of funny blog posts to keep for ever and ever, Comic Relief gets all the profits, and no one has to wear a red nose. Everyone wins!

Go to it!


Tags: shaggy blog stories | RND07

Mum

I am sorry to report that my mum died on Saturday night, peacefully in the local hospital in Béziers. My brother and his partner were with her; I had gone home to sleep.

Your comments are very welcome, but please bear in mind that this blog is read by a lot of other people who knew and loved my mum, who spent an enormous amount of time and energy looking after her during her illness, and who will miss her very much.

Normal service will, I hope, be resumed shortly.

Yum-Raarrgh

It is officially Yummy Mummies and Tigers Week in the blogosphere:

1. Rafael Behr* has a highly amusing definitive guide to 'Yummy Mummy lit', a genre whose existence I had hitherto only dimly surmised. I don't think I really need to know any more about it now.

2. Spin has a fabulous deconstruction of some self-congratulating yummy mummy's bleatings in the Guardian.

3. Tim has some pictures of some lovely tiger cubs**.

Yummy Mummies and tigers are so hot right now.


* A rare and admirable example of a national newspaper journalist who properly understands this blogging lark, and who doesn't go on about it, either.

** Apparently there are monkeys in these pictures as well, but I am notoriously monkey-blind and therefore cannot see them.

Up The Twitter, Part 2

Having been befriended in the night by Norse blog-goddess Annie Rhiannon, I have started thinking about Twitter again.

Naturally I can't just muck about on Twitter like everyone else, oh no. I have to understand what's so important about it.

I have to develop a Theory.

Is it fragmenting our linear sense of time, by showing what hundreds of different people are doing at the same moment? Is it shattering our sense of direction and meaning and purpose into kaleidoscopic shards of inconsequential thoughts and actions? Is it like blogging for ADHD sufferers? Can anyone communicate anything meaningful in 140 characters or fewer? If so, will it give rise to any new literary formats? Is it just a bunch of self-regarding old arse?

Your views would be much appreciated. In the meantime I am going to have a nice cup of tea.


UPDATE: I'm now feeling very smug, because just a few hours and ten comments later, and thanks in no small part to the contributions of Valerie and Sean, I reckon I've finally understood what Twitter is all about!

Basically it all harks back to what Sherry Turkle was saying in this article from the New Scientist in September last year - that people are becoming so used to having a social network on the internet that their feelings and experiences no longer seem real to them unless they share them online. So essentially people like typing what they're thinking or doing into Twitter because it makes it seem more real.

I suppose it is a sort of new version of taking a photograph, or capturing something on video.

Anyway, that theory makes a lot of sense to me, because most of the people on Twitter don't seem like idiots, but rather they seem to be very webby, connected people who are used to being online all the time. Bingo.

Thanks to everyone who suggested things in the comments - you have no idea how happy it has made me to be able to solve a problem with the help of disembodied blog-friends in Reykjavik, London, Bristol, Bangkok and San Diego. Ahhh, it's enough to restore your faith in the internet, isn't it?

Dear lord, I think the isolation is getting to me.


Tags: twitter

Things I Would Have Photographed If Only I Had A Camera

EXT. LONDON ZOO - DAY

A yummy mummy and her toddler are standing in front of a large plate glass window, facing away from it.

YM: Do you want to go for a wee?

Toddler: No.

YM: You'll tell me when you do?

Just centimetres behind them, an enormous, angry Sumatran tiger bares its teeth at their turned backs. Oblivious, yummy mummy and toddler move off towards the fish and chip stall.

Not Trying To Be Funny Or Clever, For Once

Wyndham and cello both kindly asked how I felt about moving back to France again.

I'm not keen to talk too much about this situation, because a lot of people are emotionally or logistically involved in one way or another, and some of the people involved read this blog, and some of the people involved don't read this blog, and it doesn't seem right to talk about any of these people too much.

So the basic story is this: my mum lives on her own in the rural south of France, in a house that I bought for her after she and my dad split up. She is very ill with cancer, and she had some chemotherapy, which has helped a bit but not entirely, and now she needs a lot of looking after.

For the last eight months my lovely brother and I have been taking it in turns to spend a few weeks down here, but for reasons I won't go into, it makes more sense for me to take over full time, at least for the next year or so.

So I've given up my flat in London, as of the end of April, and the current plan is to move all my effects and belongings down here in the week after Easter.

My feelings on the subject are probably neither here nor there, but they are decidedly mixed. Obviously I am very distressed about my mum, especially as there's nothing I can do to make her any better. Other than that, and apart from the fact that I will have to work remotely, I suppose the three things that worry me most are:

a) The loneliness - that picture in the post below is the view from my terrasse, and as you can see it does not exactly depict civilised society in full throng.

b) My complete lack of practical skills - it's all very well that I am here, but I can barely cook and my looking-after-seriously-ill-people abilities register at about minus 15 on the Florence Nightingale scale. Although I am learning to spend at least some of my time in the real world, however difficult it might be.

c) Maintaining a long-distance relationship - I've done it before and have no qualms about doing it again, but it does become worrying when I don't know how long I will be here, and of all the places his career might be heading, the most rural part of the poorest département of France isn't really likely to be one of them.

So that's it really - everyone has obstacles and problems to contend with in their life, so I'm not seeking sympathy. But it *will* be very nice to know over the coming months that you lovely blog-readers and commenters are there; your (virtual) presence will make a big difference to me.

So That's It Then

In April I am moving from here:


To here:



Now I suppose I just sit back and wait for my £70,000 advance...

Treading Water

I'm treading water on the blog rather, while several pivotal, crucial and unimaginably far-reaching aspects of my life click into place.

At least I hope they're going to click into place - they might shatter under the pressure and fly off in hundreds of different directions, like the retaining wall of a lego viking fortress when a cack-handed amateur (me) attempts to slot in the gate to the dragon's cage.

I was going to regale you in the meantime with a colourful tale from my past, probably the one about when I was manhandled by the police during an episode of mass civil disobedience on royal property (my relationship with QEII & co having been somewhat varied over the years), but then I started thinking about the weighty aspects of my life that are about to click into place (or not), and then I started thinking about lego, and then I thought I'd quite like a cup of mint and liquorice tea, and then...

*goes to make tea*

...but you know, by this time next week everything should have become clear, and I can stop wittering on in such a vague and annoying fashion. I hope.

Eaten Trifles

After a 25-year hiatus, I have now eaten trifle twice in the same week. I am wondering if this is a sign. Are we in for some kind of 70s party food revival? Will there be cheese footballs and sausages on sticks? Will it lead to joyless wife-swapping, Nana Mouskouri and oversized spectacles?

I have some pictorial evidence (not of joyless wife-swapping), but New Blogger isn't letting me upload photos just at present.

In foreign media news: I started giggling twice in the paper shop this morning; once at the title of a magazine I hadn't seen before, called Psycho Enfants, and once at French Elle Decoration's giddy declaration: 'On craque pour le style girly!'*

(Must buy floral teacups immediately.)

In music news: Chicago's finest unsigned twee electro-country band, Track a Tiger, have a new album. Possibly the only US indie band to link to Cricketing Dave from their website, Track a Tiger are generously giving away two tracks from the new opus, viz:


Track a Tiger - Saint About To Fall (mp3)

Track a Tiger - All These Accidents (mp3)


As ever, it isn't going to change your life, but it'll sound nice while you're potting geraniums, having a bath or sipping Lapsang Souchong from a floral teacup. Which, after all, are what Sundays are all about.


* The lovely Mr BC promptly translated 'on craque' as 'on crack', which made me laugh a lot.

Simulacra Saturday

For some reason, in the mp3 blogosphere, Saturday is traditionally Covers Day.

(I might just have made that up, but it seems like a good tradition to me.)

So here for your entertainment are four lovely tasteful covers that will bring joy to your ears and a wanky postmodern knowingness to your music library:

The Magic Numbers - Crazy In Love (mp3) [Buy from Amazon]
Lo-fi acoustic cover of chavtastic Beyoncé floor-filler. Genuinely makes my stony little heart feel quite skippy. Is that wrong?

Lambchop - This Corrosion (m4a)
Lo-fi, ponderous version of everyone's favourite overblown goth anthem, with lovely piano bits. Still my favouritest cover ever.

Devotchka - Venus In Furs (m4a) [Buy from Amazon]
I've never really listened to the Velvet Underground original, but Devotchka make it sound like an itinerant crew of whirling dervishes having a party in Castle Dracula. Which can only be A Good Thing.

(With thanks to Occasional Poster of Comments for introducing me to Devotchka in the first place.)

Nina Gordon - Straight Outta Compton (mp3)
Thanks to the lovely Mr BC for this one, erm...lo-fi acoustic cover of top sweary NWA gangsta rap classic. Strangely beautiful.


NB If anyone has any noisy, obnoxious covers of lo-fi acoustic songs, please do send 'em over. It would be nice to get a balance.

Seven Things

Stolen from Tim and Spinny:


Seven Things I Have Wanted To Be

1. Archaeologist

2. Journalist

3. Waitress

4. Japanese

5. Steven Johnson

6. Clay Shirky

7. Taller


Seven Things I Have Been

1. An estate agent

2. A boy

3. In love

4. An indie kid

5. A raver

6. On medication

7. Happy


(It's that kind of day.)

It's Time To Face The Truth

I just found myself googling james blunt you're beautiful lyrics.

I don't think I can show my stony little face in the blogosphere again.


COMPLETELY UNRELATED UPDATE: Does anyone know the code for showing the labels in the sidebar? I don't want to shift over my whole template to one of the new ones, but I want to list the labels...thanks in advance!

Bloggers Are Lonely Outcasts, Says Canadian Bloke

I know, I know - what better way to celebrate Valentine's Day than by idly trawling through my ex-husband's ex-lover's blog? Ah, the romance of it.

Still, I'm glad I did, because she posted a link to this article from the Windsor Star, in Canadialand, in which local author Michael Keren declares that blogging is 'melancholic and illusionary', and that 'the majority of [bloggers] remain in the dark, remain in the loneliness'.

Worth a read, not only for Professor Keren's Hardyesque cast of mind and whimsical use of pop cultural references to explain the fundamental sadness and alienation that lie at the heart of blogging, but also because if you screw up your eyes and peer through your fingers, it's a bit like reading an article from the Onion.

Happy Valentine's day, my fellow lonely, deluded outcasts. And remember: I am not real, and neither are you.

Ask The Audience, Part 2

Despite my best efforts, nothing in the least bit interesting has happened* in the last few days, so I find myself at a loss for something to blog about.

I think I can get away with this once a year, and last year your suggestions kept me going for just about the whole of March. So I think it's time once more to ask you lovely people: what should I blog about next?


* To give you an idea, highlights of the past week include:

1. Slight mauling at hands (or rather, teeth) of large Rottweiler.

2. Re-installed last.fm.

3. Ate trifle for first time since 1982.

4. While strolling among the vines, acted out scene from World of Warcraft, which resulted in second slight mauling, this time by an Alsatian.

5. Got rash on face, not sure how. Possibly transferred by Rottweiler or Alsatian during episode of slight mauling.

6. Wrote a shopping list, went to supermarket. Omitted to take list out of back pocket during shopping trip. As a result, failed to purchase Twinings Earl Grey tea bags.

7. Drank a lot of Liptons Russian Earl Grey, which is horrid.

So as you can see, I need help.


UPDATE: Although I *did* listen to Loganoc's Saturday afternoon radio show, 'Twee as Fork', which was ace, as she played a nice song by Elliott Smith and that CSS song that I like.

How To Win Commenters And Influence People

Silicon Valley gossip-rag Valleywag reckons it has the definitive guide to writing really popular blog posts.

Apparently it's all about winding people up, but also making them feel loved and a bit sexy at the same time:

How To Achieve Blog Nirvana


NB Although I see the post itself has two comments...

NNB Of course, as any fule kno, comments are only one indicator of blog popularity, two others being 'readers' and 'people linking to you'.

NNNB Ooh, talking about blog popularity is making me feel all dirty and vulgar. It's like talking about money, or sex. Brrr.

NNNNB Unless you're writing about money and sex in a funny or educational way, obviously.

NNNNNB Shut up now patroclus.

What All Indie Music Should Be Like

1. Catchy guitar hooks (which sound a bit like what I remember the theme to The Magic Roundabout being like, no, wait, that's the keyboard bits, I'll start again...)

1.5 Swirly keyboard bits that sound like the theme to The Magic Roundabout

2. Androgynous French indie-girl singer

3. Cute Swedish indie-boy guitarists

4. Less than three minutes long

5. Endearingly DIY video, featuring endearingly DIY 'effects'

6. Infectious shouty bits that make you want to go and shake your hair a lot in indie clubs, even though you are thirty-six years old

7. Brilliant.



Oh dear god, I posted a YouTube video. It must be the beginning of the End Times. Here, have an olde-worlde audio file as well; it's considerably better quality:

Envelopes - Freejazz (m4a) [Buy from Amazon]

Expat Biscuit Dilemma

Most people when they go to the supermarket simply buy things and go home again. Not so my dad, who is the sort of person to whom Things Happen.

(While I go to the Spar in St Chinian most weeks to buy cat food and milk, Dad goes to the Spar in St Chinian once and ends up in court as a witness to an episode of Britons Drunkenly Failing To Integrate.)

Dad's trip to Intermarché in Bédarieux the other day was no exception. A casual mention to the checkout girl that it would be nice if they stocked tins of Ambrosia Creamed Rice led to his being whisked upstairs for a meeting with The Buyer, an enthusiastic individual with commendable aspirations to retail excellence.

The Buyer was excited to have captured a real live Brit, and pressed my dad into spilling the culinary secrets of his homeland. Did the British really want to buy Mars drinks, blueberry muffin mix and cans of Dr Pepper, as his supplier would have him believe? The amount of sugary muck that the store was having to throw away had led him to suspect otherwise.

Eventually, my dad agreed to take away the supplier's catalogue and return with a list of grade A, sure-fire exemplars of British cuisine that could not possibly fail to fly off the shelves.

Which is how Nibus, the lovely L, my dad, the stunning J and I found ourselves last night hunched over the supplier catalogue engaged in heated debate about the relative merits and saleability of a cavalcade of tinned and processed goods.

No category of foodstuff emerged as being more contentious than that of the chocolate biscuit. The room was divided over whether the milk chocolate Digestive or the milk chocolate Hobnob was the surer path to expat retail nirvana. Eloquent, passionate, statistical and probabilistic arguments were presented for each. At one point I attempted to clear the impasse by texting Britain's foremost snack food expert for a second opinion, but no reply was forthcoming.

With The Biscuit Question still unresolved, we eventually produced a list of five products so loaded with nostalgia, Sehnsucht, primordial cultural resonances and E numbers that no expatriate Briton could possibly resist their allure.

A commemorative case of Tate & Lyle Golden Syrup ('Out of the eater came forth meat, out of the strong came forth sweetness') to anyone who can guess all five correctly.

Off Again

And off I go back to France for another five weeks of exile.

[This statement accompanied with a lot of melodramatic sighing, tearfulness and wistful staring into the distant distance, in the manner of Elijah Wood at any given point in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.]

See you all on the other side...

I Do Wish I Was A Little Bit Taller, Actually

Q. Could there be anything, anything at all, more spirit-uplifting, more life-affirming, more pointlessly joy-making, than an entire album of cheesy 80s synth-pop hits mashed up with old-school hip-hop tracks?

A. There could not. And here to prove my point is that Skee-Lo track mixed up with Harold Faltermeyer's legendary 'Axel F':


Skee-Lo vs Harold Faltermeyer - I Wish (m4a)


Ooh, and there are SO MANY MORE where that came from. Public Enemy vs Baltimora! Beastie Boys vs Bomb the Bass! Busta Rhymes vs Neneh Cherry! All so beautifully mashed up you can't even see the seams! Buy this*, and you will never be unhappy ever again. Ever.


* I got it for a fiver in FOPP at the weekend. Bargain!

My Middle Class Orgasms

(Anyone who is related to me, or who works with me, may care to look away for the duration of this post, as I fearlessly throw my editorial policy to the wind...)

It's been a long time since I stopped reading Cosmopolitan, and you don't get too many articles about the female orgasm in Wired or the Economist, so I don't know if this is common or not. But essentially, all you need to know (although you may feel that you didn't need to know this at all) is that at times of - ahem - intense sexual pleasure, I hallucinate.

These aren't your run-of-the-mill swirly psychedelic visuals, of the sort produced by illicit hallucinogens. Oh no. They're much more refined than that. More refined, and more materialistic. And quite design-led. So refined, materialistic and design-led, in fact, that sometimes it's a bit like watching a film of A Rebours directed by the art editor of Elle Decoration.

Here, by way of example, are some of my frequently-recurring coital visions:

• A lovely Elizabethan knot garden



• A lovely Elizabethan knot garden under the snow



• An entire collection of retro Marimekko-style furnishing fabric



• A flotilla of steampunk airships in the style of Fornasetti



• A set of cushions with bold art naif flower prints



• Some nice candy-coloured notebooks with a treeline silhouette motif

I'm not sure what conclusion to draw from this, other than that my brain has somehow accidentally got wired up to Condé Nast. I don't know whether I'm inadvertently producing issues of House and Garden, or they're streaming back copies of World of Interiors straight into my head, but either way it's an arrangement that works for me. You can never see enough nice stationery, in my opinion.

Next week: My Middle Class Dreams, starring Florence Broadhurst and Nigel Slater.

A Short Post About Films

'I know,' said the lovely Mr BC, 'let's watch All Known Films In Which A Body Part Is Severed And Then Comically Mislaid, And In Which A Large Spider Also Gets On A Woman.'

And so it came to pass that last night we watched low-budget Brit-horror-action-comedy Severance, and high-budget Raymond Chandler homage Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. And both of them were great.

Everyone must see Severance, for not only is it surprisingly gripping and yet also pleasingly funny, and not only is Danny Dyer very likeable in it, and not only does a cute blonde chick get to smack up baddies with a big stick, but it was also written by one of us, namely a blogger, namely the mighty James Moran. And a fine job he has done too.

Also I liked Kiss Kiss Bang Bang because it has good colours. And because someone mentions a talking monkey that comes from the future and only says 'ficus', which is the best line in a film ever.

You can see why I don't really do film reviews.

Ontological Grief

The real me has been muscling in on Patroclus's territory of late, which is causing the pair of us all kinds of ontological grief.

The real me used to have the good grace to stay off the internet, choosing instead to sit in a swanky office writing brochures about software packages that do boring, menial things that humans don't like doing.

But the real me was envious of the fun Patroclus was having, with her blog and her wonderful online friends. Perhaps inevitably, the real me bred an army of emergent nanobots, who generated a software package that generates brochures about software packages that do boring, menial things humans don't like doing.

With nanobots now safely in charge of client service, the real me escaped on to the internet to play havoc with my own sense of a single, unified self.

The real me now has her own blog, and her own profile on Twitter. And just as Patroclus fears that one day her 'real' identity will be revealed, the real me fears that one day she will be unmasked as Patroclus.

In some places, the safety curtain between us is already looking distinctly threadbare. Lots of people know at least one of Patroclus's real names. Patroclus and the real me write on similar topics. The real me occasionally accidentally comments as Patroclus, and vice versa. Lexical fingerprinting experts could link us in seconds, probably using this very post.

I'm just hoping we stay separate for long enough to run into each other online. In theory it could be a beautiful friendship - we have so much in common - but I have a suspicion that we don't actually like each other all that much. The mischievous postmodernist in me is really looking forward to finding out.


UPDATE: If anyone can shed any light on what Dante Gabriel Rossetti was trying to express with that doppelgänger painting up there, I'd be most grateful. My book about the Pre-Raphaelites is rotting away in the cellar of my French house, and the so-called 'information supernet' is annoyingly unforthcoming on the subject.

Squeee!

George Clooney is apparently making a mini-series of The Diamond Age!

Hmm, I'd better actually read it, then, eh?

EnglishWatch

Especially for Pashmina*

I saw this notice sellotaped to the automatic doors of Chiswick M&S today:

The automatic doors are not working at this current time. Please use the other doors.

Please don your deconstruction helmets and prepare to march on M&S HQ wielding sawn-off copies of the Economist Style Guide.


* Whom it was lovely to see at the already legendary GW convention on Saturday, along with fellow bloggers and commenters Aimee, cello, ducatilady, Heather, Marsha Klein, realdoc and many, many more...top day all round!

Forty-Eight Hours Earlier

There are many sensible reasons why I should have found it difficult to get out of bed and go to work on Monday. Some of them are as follows:

1. It was cold.

2. It was dark.

3. It was raining.

4. I'd just come back from holiday.

5. The bed was nice and warm.

6. Also, there was a very attractive man in it.

7. My laptop was still broken.

8. I had a thrilling article to write about internal helpdesk systems for banks.


However, none of these things was going to prevent me from springing from the bed at 6am like a newborn gazelle and embracing the promise and joy of the first day back at work. Oh no. But I hadn't really bargained for reason number nine:


9. Fear of zombies.


I probably shouldn't have watched the first twenty minutes of 28 Days Later on Sunday evening. Then I wouldn't have spent the whole of Sunday night having terrible dreams about being chased across Turnham Green by the living dead and (as if that wasn't scary enough!) divebombed by zombie lapwings.

By the time the alarm went off I was still terrified, and refused to leave the flat before it got light, lest I be pursued along Chiswick High Road by shuffling yummy mummies and their undead tots.

Tonight I shall watch Season Two of the O.C., and pray that I don't have dreadful nightmares about being hounded by hordes of skinny comic book geeks sporting faintly subversive indie-band t-shirts.

Although, on second thoughts, that might not be so terribly bad...

Readers: Your Stories Needed

Woo hey yeah (as we thirtysomethings say when we wish to appear hip), I have commandeered the blue cat iBook while its unsuspecting owner is in the bath.

Today I was thinking about my book, and then I remembered that I don't agree with books, as they are simply products of the capitalist machine, designed to manipulate the masses into handing their money over to evil publishing corporations that are probably all ultimately owned by Rupert Murdoch, only disguised as something rewarding and cultural, even though most of them are by 'Sophie Kinsella' and therefore not rewarding and cultural at all, but rather just a list of other products of the capitalist machine designed to manipulate the masses into handing over their money for things that are even less rewarding and cultural, and then I came round and found that I was walking very fast towards Chiswick, mouthing the words to that acid house remix of 'Personal Jesus', and scattering old ladies and infants in buggies in my haste.

Then I persuaded myself that if I did get a book published, it would probably be morally OK if I also serialised it online for free, and that's when I thought I could really do with enlisting the help of my blog readers.

If you've read this far, you shall now reap your reward, because this is where we get to the audience participation bit.

My book (should it be published, or indeed written), is about how the 'participatory internet' has changed life in Britain. And for this, I need your stories and anecdotes about how it has changed things for you.

By 'the participatory internet', I mean anything that's online in which you actively participate, rather than just looking or reading. So, if you write a blog, or take part in chat forums, or put your own music or videos (original or 'mashed-up') online, or post reviews of things on websites, or even email or instant message people, can you think about how this has changed your life, and either let me know in the comments, or send me an email at quadrireme at googlemail dot com?

It doesn't have to be a massive, earth-shattering kind of change; trivial stuff will be just as interesting, if not more so. And although I said I'm interested in how things have changed in Britain, I might change that, so even if you don't live in Britain, please do still let me know.

If this comes to any sort of fruition, I will of course solicit your proper permission before anything is published.

Gentle readers, I thank you in advance, and look forward to receiving your stories.

Still AFK

Laptop still dead, back soon. I hope.

Resolutions

1. Write a book! Woo, yeah, it will be the best book ever, about the internet and stuff, and everyone will want to read it, except newspaper lifestyle columnists, who won't want to read it because it will contain UNPALATABLE TRUTHS.

2. Erm, that's it.


PS Happy New Year!

AFK

Well, the laptop is officially dead, and I feel like I'm practically dead, so it's time for a break.

First I am going to walk up the hill, then I am going to get on a plane, then I am going to get on a train, and then I am going to go into hiding with a book about prime numbers and a book about cholera, and not come out until the 8th Jan.

Happy New Year the lot of you!


UPDATE: I've just realised that this means I won't be on MSN during the GW feature-length special (10pm, C4, Thurs 4th Jan) after all. Bugger. Rest assured I will be with you in spirit, fellow GW aficionados.

UPDATE 2: Also, I urge all and sundry to join in with Tim's chapter-by-chapter critical deconstruction of the dreadful adverb-fest that is The Da V*nci C*de, for which he has set up a special blog and everything. The fun begins on Jan 1, perfect for your New Year hangovers.

Happy Christmas Blogchums!

No doubt I will be blogging right through the festive season*, like the trooper (read: no-life saddo) that I am, but I just wanted to wish a very happy Christmas and New Year to all of you lovely readers, fellow bloggers, commenters and lurkers.

It's been another odd year for me, and you've all been instrumental in cheering me up through the bad bits and making the good bits even better. Thanks to each and every one of you, and I hope you all have a lovely time, whatever you're doing and whoever you're doing it with!

I look forward to reading your comedy Christmas deconstructions and New Year's resolutions in due course. And to catching up with me London-based blogging chums when I'm back in the big city in January.

Patroclus xxx


Oo, look at that, kisses and everything. Has my mum spiked my tea?


* This was an optimistic prediction, made before my laptop succumbed to a festive virus, and I succumbed to a festive bout of unhappiness that prevents me from blogging. Normal service will be resumed at some point, though, I'm sure.

Monkey Songs Redux

(I don't even know what 'redux' means*; it just sounds good.)

Betty brought this one to my attention. Apparently it's *the* electro-house club anthem of 2006, but I wouldn't know about that, because I haven't been near a nightclub since that unfortunate incident with the angels and the ceiling and the TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE FEAR.

But it's by Justice vs Simian, and 'simian' means 'like a munkle', so it counts as a monkey song and is therefore relevant. And by crikey, it is ace.


Justice vs Simian - We Are Your Friends (mp3) - [Buy from Amazon]


If it doesn't put a stupid big grin on your face, I don't know what will.

Oh and there is quite a good video too, including some splendid slow-motion cat-jumping** action, but you will have to go to Betty's to see that, because we don't hold with nasty newfangled moving pictures here on the good ship Quinquireme.


* I don't know what 'gestalt' means, either.

** Not the same as 'cat wronging', for anyone here from the UKMHOF board.

Up The Twitter

At six twenty pm I go on to twitter.com, because apparently it's what all the cool people are doing.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do there.

Apparently you type into a box what you're doing right now, and then you can see what everyone else is doing right now. I type something suitably pretentious into a box, and then I look at what everyone else is doing.

Everyone else is mainly cooking dinner and listening to Hot Chip on their iPods. I fight the temptation to type into a box 'Hot Chip are, like, *so* 2005! You should be listening to Lindstrom*, dweebs!', because a) I am not fifteen, and b) these people were on twitter.com before me, ergo they are cooler than me, even if they are listening to Hot Chip on their iPods.

I type into the void a bit more.

Nothing happens.

A bloke called Mathew is wondering what's so good about twitter.com.

So am I.

I reckon everyone else is just pretending to know what's so cool about it, while they cook dinner and listen to Hot Chip on their iPods.

Mathew wonders if it's because he doesn't have any friends.

I almost offer to be his friend. Then I think that might be a terrible breach of Twitter etiquette ('twitiquette'), and some of the people on there have been there since, ooh, last week at least! They might gather round me and Mathew in a circle and laugh, and taunt, and chant 'you love him, you love him'.

'Twitter is more fun with friends!' says the blurb. Going by the available evidence, I consider that this statement may have merit.

I email James to see if he wants to go on it, luring him with the promise of a site that's so inconsequentially solipsistic it makes blogging look like War and Peace and the Red Cross rolled into one.

Strangely this doesn't work.

In a last ditch attempt to get to grips with it, I inform the Twitter crowd that I am 'moping'.

Nothing happens.

I go and cook the dinner, without listening to Hot Chip on my iPod.

It is now eight sixteen pm. In Twitter time ('twime'), about seven years have passed. Mathew probably now has thirty-eight thousand friends and a column in the Guardian.

'This typing what you're doing into a box malarky, it'll never catch on', I think to myself.

I sit down at my laptop and fire up Blogger.


* Or is it Prins Thomas? I can't keep up.

Three Monkeys

Here are three songs with 'monkey' in the title, hand-picked from my enormous archive of monkey-themed songs.

In true local radio stylee I'm dedicating these to LC, because he needs his mind taking off things, and songs about monkeys are just the thing, I reckon. But everyone else please do feel free to dig in too.

Barry Adamson - The Monkey Speaks His Mind (m4a) - [Buy from Amazon]
Sinister, growly jazz noir, with lyrics I'm not sure I want to listen to all that closely. And screaming. Lots of terrible, anguished screaming, of the sort that you might hear echoing around the Italian marble walls of the loos in Cipriani. Brilliant.

Not sure who - Monkey Gone To Heaven (mp3)
Ahh, the Pixies were great, weren't they? Of course, they would have been even better if they'd booted out Frank Black and drafted in Frank Sinatra. Wouldn't they?

The Emperor Machine - Monkey Overbite (mp3) - [Buy from Amazon]
It's all about epic psychedelic space disco for winter 06-07, kids, and here is a fine example of the genre. I heartily advise you to pull on your silver platform moonboots, project some swirly lava shapes on to what's left of your specialist-polished plaster walls, and get down.


BONUS NON-MONKEY-RELATED TRACK, as requested by Aimee:

Don't know who this is either - Wave Of Mutilation (mp3)


Next up: five songs about axolotls, hand-picked from my enormous archive of axolotl-themed songs.

Blogworld 1, Evening Standard 0

Seeing Stef the Engineer's comment on the previous post reminded me that I've been meaning to write about blog posts I've read that have stuck in my mind.

I might do a proper Review Of The Year In Blogworld later on, but I want to mention this one now, just because it's timely.

Compare these two tales of disaster* survival:

1. My Tornado Hell (from the Evening Standard, via Blue Cat)

2. Stef and the Kobe Earthquake (from Shoot The Messenger)

Any hacks out there still want to claim that journalists are the better storytellers, or that bloggers are the vacuous, self-obsessed ones?


* That's if you subscribe to the view that the Kensal Rise tornado was a 'disaster'. I'm not sure that the loss of a fully insured Cath Kidston carpet and some tangerines is quite in the same league as, say, Hurricane Katrina, but you know what I mean. I'd also be grateful if anyone could provide any insight as to what exactly might have been going on in the mind of Caroline Phillips as she wrote this. Did she really think it was going to inspire sympathy? Admiration? A chick-lit book deal? I'm completely at a loss to understand.


UPDATE: For anyone thinking this article is a spoof, here is an actual picture of it (what I nicked from someone on this forum; thank you, person on that forum!):

Pop Cult

As ordained in the scriptures, I am now Patroclus MA (Pop Cult). Woo! Who wants in? You get to wear pink robes and worship at the shrine of Baudrillard and everything. Polygamy is optional.


UPDATE: To mark this rite of passage, I am declaring a full-on Qualification Amnesty. Please therefore take this opportunity to list your qualifications in the comments. I want the lot!

The Colossus Of Prades

If you liken the human brain to a computer (which is something I like to do a lot), mine is the reconstruction of the Colossus that those two unassuming chaps are working on out the back of Bletchley Park.

This is not because my brain is massive, revolutionary, or the first of its kind. Oh no. Quite the opposite. My brain is like the Colossus because it is devoting a vast amount of computational resource to processing just two questions, which are being repeatedly fed into it on an endless stream of ticker tape:

1. Will I have to move to the rural south of France permanently?

2. If so, how will the rest of my life play out?

There's no way yet of answering either of these questions, but this doesn't stop my brain from endlessly processing, processing, processing. Lying awake at night, processing. Walking in the countryside, processing. Having a bath, processing. Cooking dinner, processing.

There are a lot of things that are worse than moving to the rural south of France. Thousands of Brits do it all the time. Then they write gushing books about it, or articles in the Sunday Times, which attract other Brits, like the bodies of dead ants attracting increasing numbers of live ants. The weather is usually quite nice. The countryside is beautiful. The hedgerows are full of rosemary and thyme and lavender and pears and hares and snakes and shrews. My house is rustic and cosy. The food is cheap and tasty, the coffee is great, the views are fantastic, and the neighbours are forever bringing home-made pies and cakes round.

Wait a second, why don't I want to move here again?


ALSO: Note to Realdoc - I can't comment on your blog at all at all at all, which is really annoying me.

Do Geeks Dream Of Lego Sheep?

Courtesy of the lovely Mr BC, I have a fantastic lego advent calendar.

In my enthusiasm I managed to completely destroy it before I figured out how it worked, at one point laying bare all of the little lego sets incubating in the cells behind each of the doors. It was nothing a bit of hasty sellotaping and folding couldn't fix, though, and the calendar is now functioning as it should.

However, recently the calendar has started behaving suspiciously, as if it knows as much about the inner workings of my life as I know about its.

Yesterday morning, for example, door no. 8 yielded up a festive hospital bed, complete with drip. Yesterday afternoon, I had to take my mum to the hospital (scheduled visit, nothing alarming), where a certain amount of time was spent lying about on a spookily similar bed, watching the news about the festive rail strikes in Clermont-Ferrand.

This morning, door no. 9 revealed a little hospital desk and computer, featuring a fancy adjustable flat-screen monitor. Eerily, today I am writing a brochure about healthcare computerisation (pace Realdoc).

I'm leaving for the airport at 6.15am tomorrow, but there will probably be time for me to open door no. 10 before I go. I'm just hoping I don't get one of these:


Because that would just be way too scary.


UPDATE: Look! This Matt also has the lego advent calendar! And he's put lego Anakin Skywalker on his hospital bed, whereas I've put lego Draco Malfoy on mine! And my lego doctor also put his briefcase in the luggage x-raying machine! It's things like this that restore my faith in humankind.

UPDATE 2: Ooh, I got a bit overexcited there. Anyone would think I was quite looking forward to my little sojourn in London Town.

Blighty

After six long weeks in exile, I'm just about to make good my escape back to the land of Marmite and Twinings Earl Grey, to stock up on...er...Marmite and Twinings Earl Grey. And to check that the lovely Mr BC and I still like each other*. And to meet some people in Hungerford. And to pitch some dreadfully fashionable Web 2.0 malarky to some people in Reading. And to go to the work Christmas party. And to see Tunng and Viva Voce play in Brick Lane, if anyone fancies coming along on Monday evening.

My reward for all this frivolity is a 3.30am taxi back to Stansted on Wednesday morning, and the exile commences once more...


* Which apparently we do. Awww.

Everything I've Been Taught By Men

Here is the COMPLETE, UNABRIDGED and ALPHABETICAL list of everything I have learned about from my four serious boyfriends over the last 15 years:

Acid house, Isaac Asimov, avoiding being killed by hippos, Belgian hardcore, canoeing, class As, football, Joseph Heller, the internet as a metaphor for the hive mind, investment banking, making jewellery, the Mandelbrot set, MMORPGs, object-oriented programming, pool, science fiction tropes, RPGs, skiing, Neal Stephenson, techno, Visual Basic, Kurt Vonnegut, when to change gear.


UPDATE: Well, I never considered this would become a meme, but lots of other people have had a go, and the resulting lists are incredibly eclectic and endlessly fascinating. Have a look at Chaucer's Bitch, Extemporanea, Great She Elephant, Loganoc, Realdoc and Spinsterella, for a start...

Interstellar Joy

I thought I'd do my word cloud again, but I wasn't going to post it - until I saw that the new one includes the fantastic phrases 'big Billy biscuit' and 'interstellar joy'.

Interstellar joy.

I can't begin to imagine what it is, but I *really* want some.



What serendipitous phrases are in your word cloud?

Remixes Of The Week!

All things considered, I can't stand Depeche Mode. I tend to think of them as a sort of tiresome S&M version of U2, the band I detest most out of all bands, ever. But I really, really love 'Personal Jesus', for reasons I don't fully understand.

This week, for reasons also unknown, I have also developed a terrible weakness for early-90s-style squelchy acid house. I can't go for a pleasant walk in the French countryside without simultaneously subjecting myself to full-frontal sonic 303 assault administered intracerebrally via my fraying iPod earphones.

Not content with keeping this to myself, I'm going to draw you brave blog readers into my lonely little acid-drenched exile by subjecting you to this *epic* remix of 'Personal Jesus', which actually sounds like a gigantic intergalactic laser space war has broken out over which star system gets custody of 'the' Mode. It's epic, and it's awesome, and Great She Elephant, for one, is going to hate it:


Depeche Mode - Personal Jesus (Boys Noize Rework) (mp3)

[Buy from Phonica Records]


And here's the antidote, it's Quinquireme favourites Husky Rescue once more, here being remixed by Tunng. Tunng combine really lovely sparkly electronica noises with traditional instruments, and they've never sounded lovelier or sparklier than here, accompanied by Rita-Leena Korhola's ethereal vocals. Oo, it's like looking at the stars on a clear midwinter night. No, really it is:


Husky Rescue - Diamonds In The Sky (Tunng Mix) (m4a)

[Buy from Amazon]


That last one is especially for Broke in Berlin, who inspired me this evening to re-learn how to upload mp3s to this blog...there's no stopping me now, muahahaaaa!

When Insects Attack, Lurk Or Get In The Biscuits

Excerpts from The Ladybird Book of French Creepy-Crawlies and Their Behavioural Characteristics:

Wasp (la guêpe). Refuses to die when winter comes. Instead, lurks under duvets and stings the naked arses of unsuspecting humans that try to get in the bed with it. Buzzes a lot while the injured human leaps about in pain and bats at it with a copy of Susan Cooper's peerless children's fantasy novel The Dark Is Rising, before shoving it unceremoniously out of the window. Lurks under the windowsill waiting to be let back in so it can have another go.

Spider (l'araignée). Gets in laundry baskets and reveals itself menacingly whenever lumbering humans attempt to bury it under socks, pants etc.

Moth (le papillon de nuit). Breeds prolifically in cupboards. Somehow gets into the fancy biscuits, despite the fact that the fancy biscuits are in an airtight tin. Somehow gets into the fancy coffee, despite the fact that the fancy coffee is in an airtight jar inside the fridge. Will not stop getting in the fancy foodstuffs no matter how many times it is told. Eventually pays for its disobedience by being mercilessly sucked up by the hoover.


NB I know a spider is not an insect.


PS It is Smat's birthday today! Happy birthday Smat!

Blog Of The Week!

Oohhh, it's non-stop lovely lovely online design porn:

Bend To Squares

Oohhhhh.

Must look again.

Ooohhhh.

Song Of The Week

Hmm, I haven't had a Song Of The Week for months, so this is probably more like Song Of The Ortem Time. And a fine song for ortem time it is too, being a lovely, contemplative alt-folky song about falling in love with the light in the morning after the night.

Apparently it's a cover of a song by Psychic TV, but that doesn't really mean anything to me; it's just nice:

Califone - The Orchids (mp3)

Volume

One of the salient architectural features of my French house is that it has very few internal doors.

This is fine if all you want to do is swan from room to room remarking on the pretty patterns made by the mildew or marvelling at the delicate festoons of cobwebs. But when you're trying to work at the dining room table, and the dining room is actually more of a cupboard off the sitting room, and the sitting room is where your mum spends the day watching television, then things become slightly more vexing.

Far be it from me to speculate on the efficacy of my mum's hearing, so let's just say that mum likes the television to provide her with a rich cinematic experience. There's nothing about Hetty Wainthropp Investigates or Keeping Up Appearances that can't be improved by cranking up the Dolby surround sound to plaster-loosening levels, for example.

Today, however, mum decided she'd had enough of Patricia Routledge's various incarnations and started watching her Lord of the Rings DVD box set instead. As I was trying to write an article about European economic competitiveness, this gave me no choice but to put on my headphones and attempt to drown out the hobbitses by subjecting myself to the complete works of doomed Oregonian junkie Elliott Smith at an inadvisably loud volume.

Under the circumstances, it's a wonder I even heard my phone ringing, but I did, which is how the following scene unfolded:

Mobile phone rings. I yank off my earphones and am instantly felled by a tidal wave of orchestral music as the LOTR theme swells and booms around me.

Me: (answering phone) Hello, Patroclus speaking.

Client: Oh, hello, it's your client here. I was wondering if you had a few minutes to go over something with me?

The LOTR theme rattles the windows and light fittings with nuclear intensity.

Me: Oh, yes, sure. Of course.

Client: Are you sure? You sound, er, busy.

Me: No, no, I'm fine, I'll just move into the...hang on...

I move three feet to the right, into the kitchen. The volume abates by a fraction of a decibel. I pray for a contemplative scene in which Frodo stares into the middle distance with a troubled look on his face. Unfortunately, the music continues to swell. Then swords start to clash, and dwarves and Men start yelling about dark things and rings of power.

Client: Have you got the document open in front of you?

I haven't. I've left my laptop in the dining room. I'm going to have to go back in there and fetch it. I wait for a lull in the proceedings and make a dash for it, phone cradled to my ear.

Me: Right, yes, just opening it now...

From the sitting room, a booming voice intones 'ONE DOES NOT SIMPLY WALK INTO MORDOR.'

Client: Are you in an airport?

Me: Not exactly.

I hastily unplug the laptop from its various shackles and run back with it into the kitchen. Unfortunately, it turns out that one of the things I unplugged was the earphones. Now Elliott Smith is blaring out of the speakers at an inadvisably loud volume.

Elliott: NO BAD DREAM FUCKER'S GOING TO BOSS ME AROUND

Client: Should I ring back later?

Me: Yes, I think that might be best, actually.

Patroclus Has A Go At The Media. Again.

In the comments on the last post, Realdoc asked:

'How come no-one is playing all this stuff on the radio though, it's not as if it's difficult. Like Valerie I got Matson Jones, Tilly and the Wall, Howe Gelb and Lovage after your last cast and wondered why the hell I hadn't heard any of it before. Shouldn't 6 Music or someone be playing this stuff?

Which is an excellent question, and not just because it includes a pleasing endorsement for my inaugural podcast. Why do none of the established radio stations play obscure American indie tunes?

Well, in fact, I'm pretty sure they do, from time to time anyway. I've heard some good stuff on BBC 6 Music on the couple of occasions I've listened to it (although I was probably only tuning in for the purpose of stalking DJ Dr Snackspot - hello DJ Dr S.).

But the real answer is that it's all to do with the internet and the so-called long tail, a phrase coined by Wired editor Chris Anderson to denote a large volume made up of lots and lots of little things. There's a *huge* amount of music on the internet now, as bands don't need their record labels to do their distribution any more - they can just upload their stuff straight to the web, and it's available worldwide.

And where there's a huge amount of music, there are a huge number of musical styles and a huge number of niche audiences, rather than one 'mass' audience. So I like jangly American indie-pop (among other things). Valerie and Realdoc, as it turns out, also like jangly American indie-pop. (Hurrah!). Nibus, on the other hand, likes ambient stuff with tweeting birds and the sound of telephone wires oscillating in the breeze. Rafael likes mashups. James likes obscure covers and sparkly electro-pop. Prolix likes alt.country. Tim likes literate indie-pop. Billy likes intelligent alternative rock. Llewtrah likes metal. Spinny likes indie-rock. Cello likes Rameau. Some of us might like some of the same things, but essentially our tastes are all quite different.

All this is great, but the mass media, like Radio 1, and XFM, and BBC6 Music, are all predicated on playing to as big an audience as possible, at least within their 'brand identity'. They can't cater to everyone's taste - there's no mass media radio station that could keep even the twelve people listed above happy all the time. So they have to play it safe, and choose songs that are going to be liked - as opposed to loved - by a lot of people. I don't know how they choose what they're going to play (but I would very much like to know, so if anyone has any insight then please do chip in), but what you end up with is a bunch of 'safe' music from bands that are usually on established record labels with proper marketing machines behind them.

BUT (and cello will hate me for saying this, because it's an extension of the same argument we've been having all over the internet), the great thing about music and the internet is that you don't HAVE to listen to the mass-media radio any more for your fix of music. Why listen to a radio station that's been chosen to appeal to as broad an audience as possible, when you can listen to a radio station that only plays the music you like or are likely to like?

That's the thinking behind last.fm and pandora.com, which are personalised radio stations (and, in the case of last.fm, also a social community) that only play music that they calculate will appeal to you. And it works like a dream, broadly speaking. Having tried them both, I can't think why anyone would want or need to listen to Radio 1 or XFM any more.

Some might argue that by listening to music that lots of other people allegedly like, you're participating in an enriching shared cultural experience. But I don't want to have a shared cultural experience with a load of other people, not in terms of music anyway. Music is culty and snobbish - and I like it that way. I don't want to like music that lots of other people like. I want to feel like the music I like belongs to *me*. I'll happily share it with you, dear blog readers, because you're all lovely, and this is a blog, and blogs are the new spiritual home of music - but I don't want to see it on MTV, and I don't want to hear it on Radio 1, and I don't ever want to see Howe Gelb in Heat, in fact I'd be quite happy never knowing what Howe Gelb looks like. I like being in a tiny niche audience for the music I like, and I'm happy for it to stay that way.

Of course, if I have my way, the bands I like won't ever make it 'big', and they won't get rich or marry Hollywood stars or get inducted into the UK Hall of Fame (whatever that means) or have kids named after fruit.

So in conclusion: I am a selfish élitist snob when it comes to music, but I'm happy about that.

Which is no kind of answer to Realdoc's original question at all, is it? Would anyone else like to have a go?


UPDATE: Someone has just found this blog by searching for 'iPod as Ideological State Apparatus'. Blimey. Discuss.

Interstellar Array Update

A France Télécom engineer just turned up to my house, unbidden, and switched on the broadband connection. Just like that. After three years of them telling me I couldn't have it.

I'm so happy I think I'm going to faint. Or lie down. Or download tons of mp3s from the Hype Machine.

Hurrah!!!


UPDATE: And now let us all celebrate my re-connection to the hive mind by listening to some stupidly catchy twee Texan indie-pop, courtesy of stupidly catchy twee Texan indie-popsters Voxtrot. Particularly recommended for fans of Belle & Sebastian, Camera Obscura, Lucksmiths et al.

Voxtrot - Trouble (mp3)

Ooh, I feel another podcast in the making...

Cartesian

One side-effect of my mum's illness is that she has amassed a gigantic hoard of exotic medicaments, with names that sound like Doctor Who villains. The other morning I'm sure I caught ZOPHREN planning an intergalactic electromagnetic assault on SPASFON.

Needless to say, mum and I are both quite confused about what she's supposed to be taking and what she isn't. Which is how this conversation ensued yesterday with the doctor (not *that* doctor):

Mum: I'm worried about all these medicines, I don't know what I'm supposed to be taking.

Doctor: Well, now, ah, you see, I'm a Cartesian.

Me: Ah yes, Cartesian dualism.

Doctor: Oh, you studied philosophy?

Me: A bit.

Doctor: All French people are Cartesians; it's in our nature.

Mum: Cartesians?

Me: He believes in the separateness of the mind and the body.

Mum: Right, well, what does that have to do with anything?

Doctor: I don't make a note of anything, you see.

Me: It seems to mean he doesn't believe in keeping medical records.

Mum: Right. So which of these medicines am I supposed to be taking?

Doctor: Buggered if I know.


In other news, no lesbians with interstellar arrays have turned up yet, but I did see a dead snake.

The Joy Of 802.11x

When I bought my house in France in 2001, I never considered that I might ever actually have to live here. I was relatively well off at the time (no longer, sadly), my mum needed a place to live after she and my dad split up, and there was this huge ramshackle house going in this tiny stone-built hamlet nestling among the vines, for which the owner only wanted 290,000 old French francs (the equivalent of about 27,000 pounds).

'You paid two hundred and ninety thousand?', said my new French neighbour, aghast. 'Bloody hell - they saw you coming!'

I very rarely think about the future, so I never foresaw that my mum would be diagnosed with cancer, or that she would become so ill that she wouldn't even be able to make herself a cup of tea. So I went about my career in London in the usual way, eventually becoming the business partner of ex-blogger and international jetset businesswoman Tabby Rabbit, with a swanky office in Chiswick, a lovely team of writers and designers, and a tip-top portfolio of tech-industry clients stretching all the way from San Francisco to Dubai.

Which is all very well in London, but I'm now back in France caring full-time for my mum, while still trying to manage a team of lovely people in London, work across 34 timezones* and cultivate a tip-top portfolio of tech industry clients stretching all the way from San Francisco to Dubai.

And as if this wasn't sufficiently temporally and geographically 'challenging', just as I was on the point of leaving the country I also quite unexpectedly acquired a boyfriend** in deepest Cornwall.

All this would be OK, if it wasn't for the fact that when I bought the French house, I unwittingly chose one in a location that is infuriatingly just out of reach of the broadband signals radiating out from the two nearby villages.

They saw me coming, alright.

Trying to care for an invalid, manage an international business and have a long-distance relationship with the aid of one telephone line and a maximum internet connection speed of 45 kilobits a second is difficult. When one of the frequent Languedocien thunderstorms knocks out the telephone line for four or five days at a time, the situation becomes...well, I'm an optimist, so let's say 'laughable'.

Last night, though, I was listening to some music on my laptop in bed, when a message flashed up out of nowhere saying 'One or more wireless connections are in range. Click here to connect'. Barely pausing to wonder whether the first of those two sentences was grammatically correct, I followed the instructions, mesmerised by the possibility that someone out here in the vineyards of rural France might have a wireless broadband network.

Miraculously, it connected, I downloaded one (spam) email and scurried to MSN Messenger to see if there was anyone online I could talk to. Another message flashed up: 'No wireless networks are in range', and I was back alone in bed with my laptop.

I haven't seen the signal again since.

It's funny the technological luxuries you get used to. I bet Robinson Crusoe never had this trouble.


* I counted. Although some of them are the same, just with different names. Either that or there aren't 24 hours in a day after all - which may come as unwelcome news to Jack Bauer.

** Not that I'm complaining about this. At all. Quite the opposite.

Biscuit Factory

There's a classic episode of Bagpuss in which the mice from the mouse organ build a chocolate biscuit factory. To the outside observer (specifically, Bagpuss himself), the factory appears to be a hive of efficient and prolific biscuit production, churning out delicious sweetmeats at a clip that would have made Jack Welch's little heart pound with capitalist-industrialist joy.

The twist (because this is classic television drama, and therefore there must be a twist) comes when Bagpuss asks to eat one of the biscuits (seemingly unmindful of the fact that he is made of cloth, and therefore has no digestive system), forcing the mice to reveal that the factory's frenetic output is an illusion, and that its production line simply recycles the same biscuit again and again.

I can't begin to tell you how many times in my illustrious career I've felt like the mice with their biscuit factory. As I'm in the service industry, it's imperative that my clients always see a hive of calm, efficient and professional output, no matter what kind of unholy catastrophic disaster might be unfolding behind the scenes.

Today, for example, I found myself trying to buy time by pretending to be in a strategic meeting in London, when in fact I was recklessly driving 15 miles along winding country lanes in the south of France, unwashed and unkempt, trying to get to a broadband connection so that I could send my client a set of brochures that he probably thinks were created by a team of black-polo-neck-wearing, Creative Review-reading, coke-sniffing Mac bunnies in a swanky London studio with exposed brickwork, when in fact they were created by my own little brother (who is a proper designer and everything, just in case any of my clients are reading and getting worried) at the dining room table in my ramshackle French house in the middle of the Languedoc vineyards.

Still, it's a lovely autumn day here, and I think I've got away with it.

Plain Choco Leibniz, anyone?

Surfacing Briefly For Air

...in the style of Lara Croft (fellow alumna of my alma mater) in that swimmy-underwater bit in Venice with the motorboat...

Anyway, lots going on, not all of it exactly wonderful, so no time for anything much except to give a couple of plugs to the following people:

1. The illustrious Tim Footman (fellow alumnus of my other alma mater) has written a book about Thom Yorke (fellow alumnus etc. etc.) and Roland Barthes (who didn't attend any of my educational establishments) and Arsène Wenger (I might have made that up), which is even now available for pre-order on Amazon! Go to it, especially if Radiohead is your bag. And even if Radiohead isn't your, er, bag, then still go to it, because Mr Footman is a splendidly eloquent and effortlessly erudite and highly entertaining writer, and he certainly knows his pop culture.

2. A friend of my friend Smat (fellow alumna of my alma mater*) is playing a gig at the Notting Hill Arts Club on Friday 15th December. She's called Farah Naz, and this is her myspace page, so you can check her out, and according to Smat the stuff she'll be playing at the gig is edgier and like way more ROCK than her stuff on myspace. As Smat's coming all the way from the North Downs for it, and I may be paying the old country a fleeting visit around that time too, it might be a splendid opportunity for a West London blogmeet. Watch this space...

In other news, some Egyptians have tired me out, so I'm going to lie down now.


* I didn't plan this, honest. It must just be one of those coincidence things.