A Bit Mad

As part of my continuing quest to spend every single penny of the money I haven't got on pointless and transient rubbish, I paid a visit yesterday to my "stylist", Christophe.

I can only assume that Christophe interpreted my indecisive, monosyllabic mutterings as "please make my hair look like a particularly messy and overgrown birds' nest, to the extent that people phenomenally more attractive and groomed than I will point at me in the street and, if they have any, shield their children's eyes. And then please charge me an arbitrary but eye-wateringly large sum of money for the privilege."

All the while he was creating this distressed confection he was making oily observations like "you have beautiful curly hair" and "it's very fine, but there's a lot of it. A lot." Which (misguidedly) made me feel that with just a bit more effort than I'll ever be prepared to put in, I too could look like Madonna. Or Sting.

"I dunno Christophe, it looks a bit mad," I said as he presented me with a mirror in which to admire his masterwork of art naif. "It's beautiful," he replied. Yeah. I bet the bastard laughed all the way home.

Yesterday wasn't all bad, though. My business partner H. and I got caught in the tractor beam (that's no moon, that's a beauty counter, etc.) of Gift Time at Lancome, and ended up spending hundreds of pounds on cosmetics we didn't understand just so we could get a free make-up bag to throw on the pile of other free make-up bags we've accumulated in this manner. Which is probably just the sort of thing that Albert Camus had in mind when he dreamed up all that stuff about absurdity.

Still, it was all a splendid antidote to this very sad Wilco album I've downloaded from iTunes. More money well spent. Hurrah for capitalism!

Election Newsflash

I'm slightly worried that some people might assume from my flippant and trivial manner that I don't know there's an election going on. I do. Charlie Kennedy nearly lost my vote with his anti-Labour party political broadcast, but that would mean I'd have had to vote Green and I'm too old for that now. So don't worry Charlie. Just as long as you abdicate in favour of "Emperor" Ming Campbell as soon as you get in. Not that my vote is going to make any difference in Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush.

Up The Shithole*

No, not another unsavoury San Francisco carpark practice, but the exciting news that in spite of popular demand, the late, unlamented London Lifestyle (TM) bible Shithole* will shortly be making its second online début.

The inaugural meeting was held last night in the Blue Anchor, an impromptu editorial team appointed (stand by to receive your surprise contracts) and a schedule of features for Issue 1 lovingly scrawled across the back of the Evening Standard and a number of fag packets.

Not only this but a domain name has been acquired, a vast webspace purchased, and all I need to do now is learn HTML, acquire some web design skills, locate my missing comedy talent, buy a new digital camera, develop an imagination and/or get my hair cut, and we'll be away!

In other news, I am very sad to be missing tonight's glorious, fairy-lit début gig of future post-rock legends Marineville. [BLATANT PLUG: The Star, Guildford High Street, errr, forgotten what time, £4 on the door]. I have no doubt that in a year's time I shall be frantically pretending to have been there.

A La Recherche De L'Appartement Perdu

Flicking through the free copy of New London Lifestyle (TM) magazine fabric (love that lower case, *so* 1999) that came with this month’s issue of comedy bible Elle Deco, I happened upon a ridiculous article about my hippy ex-landlord and one-time manager of Daisy Chainsaw, who for purposes of legal safety we’ll call Nuthatch Doggo (which actually suits him better than his real name).

Turns out that Nuthatch has taken his often-expressed desire not to lay a heavy vibe on anyone to its logical extreme, by reincarnating himself as a personal yoga teacher to Madonna and Sting (Sting, you say? Would he have achieved such wealth and recognition if he’d named himself Proboscis, or Ovipositor, I wonder?). I was heartened to see that in spite of his new A-list starf**king credentials, he’s still styling himself on Leo Sayer.

Which got me to reminiscing, like the fifth-rate Marcel Proust that I would love to be, about our joyous 1998-era flat in West Ken. This lurid den played host to not one but *two* legendary parties, each featuring much insalubrious action, including a live sex show (you know who you are); Hawaii Elvis and Las Vegas Elvis escorting a Razzle sub-editor off the premises for lying on the living room floor grasping at women’s crotches; my friend S sprayed from head to foot in gold paint; two other friends attempting carnal unity in our tasteful mirror-fronted wardrobe; the Second Coming of the Messiah; an impromptu fireworks display on the roof terrace *and* a number of friendly visits from the Environmental Health and HM Constabulary.

Happy days. Still, as Proust will attest, you can’t carry on like that forever. Can you?

Was It Rob Newman Or Antigone Who Said

"Is this it? Am I supposed to just...go on living?"

Whichever it was, the answer is "That's about the sum of it."

Thank you, Channel 4, for bringing so much comedy into my life.

In other news, I can sensationally reveal that the new Dr Who will be played by Davros. In order to exterminate himself, Davros/Who will be forced to trap himself in a place that Daleks can easily access, but where the only exit is down a flight of stairs. Namely, the first floor of Marks & Spencers on Kensington High Street. Teatime sci-fi was never so reflexive. Or British.

Fear And Self-Loathing In Slough.

Guided by the principle that you didn’t see Jack Kerouac or Henry Miller sitting around of a weekend worrying about whether their section headers should be in 14pt Arial or 16pt Univers, I just went out in search of some picaresque excitement, action and adventure.

It soon became apparent that I’d picked the wrong town for that, however, so what with being a girl and all I settled for the oldest known antidote to extreme sleep-deprivation and self-loathing, to wit: spending money I haven’t got on pointless rubbish.

Now usually buying books will cheer me up (one day I might even try reading them) but today it only served to prompt a massive bout of vituperative self-abuse (not *that* sort).

“Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? What, you mean you don’t already own it? What kind of complete, total loser *are* you? What’s it doing on your favourite books list in your profile then, you charlatan!”

“Oh for Christ’s sake, not *another* book about complexity theory! You’re only going to put it in the bookshelves in a fruitless attempt to impress people cleverer than you. Loser!”

“Enduring Love? You already own that, you silly cow. You might even have read it too, if it wasn’t rotting away in the cellar of one of those falling-down houses that you insist on buying and then abandoning because you can’t finish anything you start (cue Elliott*)”.

Still, that last one is one in the eye for Belbin.

Not content with the haul of books, I then wandered about in search of more unnecessary tat, getting more and more riled up at the entire global clothing industry’s ludicrous attitude to bikini sizing, which effectively means that I will never, ever be seen sporting a fetching two-piece swimsuit, and especially not at any point during my forthcoming sojourn among the eight-foot, golden-skinned Amazonians of Venezuela (which, if you put it like that, is probably all for the best anyway. Thank you, Dr Pangloss).

And in a final nod to my utter inability to be consistent or decisive about anything at all, I spent about four hundred pounds on nicotine patches that will see me through another two-month period of being a non-smoker, after which I will reward myself for my commendable abstinence by immediately reverting to a filthy 20-a-day habit. Great.

* STATUTORY WARNING: may provoke etc. etc.

I'm being commissioned to write an article about "silent attrition". Believe me, I know all about that, but only as it applies to the soul. And speaking of which, some NTK sadist has seen fit to turn EHA back on. Just as we thought we might finally be free of its joy-sucking snarkocentrism...

Make the choice, adventurous stranger,
Click the link and bide the danger
Or wonder 'til it drives you mad
What would have happened if you had...

Haven't written in a while, as I seem to have been going through what my Dad would call a "personal reorientation". I now find myself living in my French house, only instead of carting rustic French furniture around in a Transit van, I am looking after my ailing mother who is being treated for ovarian cancer. With any luck, the malignant cyst that was removed two weeks ago in the Centre Hospitalier de Béziers (top marks to the French for their quality hospitals and attractive surgeons) was the end of it, but if not there are dark days of radiotherapy or chemotherapy ahead. It all depends on the results of Mum's next (exploratory) operation which is scheduled for the 3rd July. So fingers crossed that all will be OK.

Mum's sudden hospitalisation meant that I had to leave my job early, and leave both H. and the country in great haste. I arrived on some godforsaken Ryanair flight to Montpellier carrying nought but a modestly sized suitcase (filled mainly with designer furnishing fabric) and my work laptop, which I hope they're not expecting to get back any day soon. That and the bleedin' Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell, which I have been carrying around with me for seven years without ever finishing even one of the four novels it comprises.

Apart from the emotional rollercoaster of Mum's illness (though she herself insists she feels fine), the sudden uprooting and the 40+ degree heat, living here in the Languedoc does have some advantages. Instead of mangy one-footed pigeons there are hoopoes, goldfinches, swallows, herons and swifts in the garden and a black redstart nesting in the hole next to the front door. On returning from this evening's walk along the old railway line we were greeted ar the door by the first snake I have seen for ages - a beautiful little adder that we at first mistook for a lizard. And I finally get to play house in my house - so I've been spending a lot of time painting walls and shutters, improvising curtain rails, staining wood, rearranging the bathroom and reading endless copies of Maison Francaise and Coté Sud.

On the other hand, it is lonely (I don't feel I'm quite ready to join the hordes of retired expat Brits with their choir outings and bridge parties), broadband is a shimmering distant chimera (although I'm going to a France Télécom demonstration of ADSL on Wednesday) and money is tightish, although I have already been given some freelance work with hopefully more to come.

I'm going to bed - more updates to come, but don't expect Peter Mayle.

Hmm, feeling a bit dangerously crazy these days...have caught myself buying all kinds of weird things, like the Collins Complete DIY Manual and a book about how to make cushions (if anyone thinks that doesn't really sound crazy, be aware that I have never made anything with my hands in my entire life, unless you count a yellow blanket for a doll's bed that I knitted when I was nine). Earlier on I found myself bidding for a power drill on ebay and even earlier I was on the Ford site configuring a dark blue short wheelbase medium-roofed Transit van. What's going on? Why have my hands gone numb? The thrill of imminent freedom is making me light-headed, have hatched all kinds of crazy plans about setting up a furniture shop in the cellar of my French house in which I will not only sell *lovely things* I picked up for next to nothing in the local depot-vente, but also beautiful cushions that I will have made with my fair hands (yeah right) from the bargain designer fabrics I've been buying by the bucketload on ebay. It all seems perfectly reasonable to me, but whenever I try and tell H. this is what I'm going to do, he looks at me like I'm a nutcase. Maybe it's the dilated pupils, wildly unbrushed hair and complete lack of make-up that I'm fetchingly sporting these days.

Meanwhile, back at work, my boss has apparently been telling everyone I'm leaving because I can't handle the stress. Thanks for that. Actually I'm leaving because I think that spending 15 hours a day either at work or travelling to and from work is inhumane. And dealing with the corporate politics of a company with 42,000 employees and several thousand battling egos is something that no decent adult should be required to do. Not to mention the fact that I've got just a mite fed up of the explicit Gulf War metaphors the company uses to describe its marketing strategy. Plus has anyone noticed how fantastically boring the corporate software industry is these days? Although rumour does have it that we're on the cusp of the Second Dotcom Boom - a rumour that, I'd like to point out in anticipation of future finger-pointing and recriminations when it all crashes again, was single-handedly started last week by Timothy J. Mullaney in Business Week. Hope he's right, I have high hopes for online sales of my rustic French furniture, Art Deco stoves and exquisite cushionry. Vive la révolution!

The contents of my handbag:

£3.01
90.80 euros
$1.02
Receipt for one copy of the Times, one copy of Maison Francaise, purchased Munich Airport
Eurostar first class boarding pass and receipt - London to Paris
Receipt for NHS prescription
Petrol receipt
Piece of yellow notepaper bearing logo of my employers and someone's hotmail address
Bus ticket valid to Archway Station
Taxi receipt NW1 to Waterloo Station
Swissport boarding card Geneva to London
First Direct cheque book
Taxis Parisiens receipt - 40 euros
Taxis Parisiens receipt - blank
Lufthansa boarding card - Munich to London
Work security badge
Orbit chewing gum wrapper
Three St John's Wort tablets
Three weeks' worth of Cipramil tablets
One silver and green amber bracelet
Key to Peugeot 206 convertible
Two biros
Two black pony tail bands
Two modem adapters
One toothbrush
One American Express Corporate card
Unidentified receipt for 8.20 euros
Handouts from a Powerpoint presentation

Tomorrow promises to be a beautiful sunny, Spring day in London - and what better way to spend it than by joining thousands of other lovely people in protesting the devastation of Baghdad. Assemble at 1200 midday at either Gower Street or Embankment: further details here.

Troops Poised To Attack Iraq

The trouble with newsfeed services like the mighty NewsNow is that in this time of crisis, you find yourself constantly gaping at the screen, watching the countdown to war unfold minute by painful minute, until you CAN'T TAKE IT ANY LONGER...

07:54GMT: BBC reports troops poised to attack Iraq.

12:52GMT: Troops poised on brink of war, affirms Reuters.

14:00GMT: The Islamic Republic News Agency says Tariq Aziz has been killed, according to a bloke in Bulgaria with the gift of second sight.

15:00GMT: The Sun claims that Tariq Aziz has defected to Kurdistan, according to a bloke in Bulgaria with a large telescope.

15:47GMT: UPI reports 17 million leaflets dropped on Iraq to persuade soldiers to surrender.

16:25GMT: Troops still poised for attack, according to Channel 4 News. Some of them are getting a bit of a stiff neck.

17:58GMT: Xinhua News Agency reports Aziz appears on telly warning of "bloody war." Bloke in Bulgaria insists he saw him down the betting shop in Sofia putting a fiver on Bush to win.

18:19GMT: U.S troops remain poised for attack, confirms Reuters. U.K. troops, meanwhile, are having a cup of tea and watching Corrie.

19:26GMT: Reuters reports that 17 Iraqis surrender as a result of leaflet drop. Marketing Week reports all-time lowest conversion rate of any direct mail campaign.

19:35GMT: Fox makes a late entry into the media fray with the breaking news that Allied troops are poised to attack. Rumours begin to circulate that "the troops" actually consist of one Eagle-Eyes Action Man surrounded by handbag mirrors.

Right, that's it - I'm off to seal up the bedroom with duct tape and stuff tins of beans under the bed.

Iraq. Is it about the oil, or is there something more sinister going on? Sounds like a job for the Random Conspiracy Generator...

H. is correct that I'm old before my time. It's 9pm, I'm doing yesterday's Times Jumbo Crossword, half the clues have got something to do with Inspector Morse and I find this only mildly irritating, and I'm thinking of going to bed. I can guarantee that at this very moment, 600 miles north of here, my 92-year old grandmother is doing exactly the same thing. Granny probably isn't using Google to solve the Inspect Morse clues, and she doesn't have to get up at 5am to finish an essay on the cyborg potential of the internet, but still.

An amazing thing happened today (and it's only 8:53 am!). I received, unsolicited, a letter from my MP Frank Dobson (Lab., Holborn & St Pancras), assuring me of his belief that war on Iraq is still unjustified. Regular visitors to these pages may recall that back in September I used the Faxyourmp.com service to ask Frank to urge Tony not to go to war. I did receive a letter back quite promptly from Frank saying that he opposed war without the backing of the United Nations.

This morning he has sent me an extract from Hansard from 26th February at 3.29pm, in which he is recorded as saying:

"I am simply not convinced that all-out military action on Iraq can be justified at this time and on the scale envisaged [...] I share [the Prime Minister's and the Foreign Secretary's] concerns about weapons of mass destruction, about the vile and muderous Iraqi regime, about terrorism and about the need to uphold the United Nations. And I recognise...that every alternative course of action...is likely to result in protracted misery and a large number of deaths for the people of Iraq. The Government argue that these concerns justify virtually immediate military action, and that they would be resolved by that military action. I find those claims less and less convincing.

[...] I do not believe that the Government have made the case that, after 12 years of not protecting the Iraqi people from their vile and oppressive regime, it is now a moral imperative that we do it within the next few weeks. [...] I do not believe that we have made the case that there is any connection between the current Iraqi regime and al-Qaeda. [,,,]

[...] Even less convincing are the claims of the United States about the enforcement of international obligations, when we consider its failure to implement Kyoto or obey the World Trade Organisation. It is tending to behave rather like a small maverick state. A small maverick state is a nuisance. It is a real problem for the rest of the world if the only remaining super-power turns maverick."

I think it is fantastic that Frank has taken the time to write to me and send me his views. I am comforted that my local MP vigorously opposes the war. And I think it's fantastic that Faxyourmp.com is giving people the opportunity to have this kind of dialogue with their MP, rather than just whingeing about things in the pub. There's still time to persuade Tony of the massive public opposition to the war. If you feel like this, write to your MP and make your views known!

Got flashed twice by speed cameras last night as I was trying to break my Reading-to-Kentish Town record (which I did) and arrived home thinking dark thoughts about the police state. Why, if a decent, tax-paying corporate whore can't drive her middle-management silver convertible at 90 miles an hour in the middle lane of a deserted motorway at 1am, what can she do any more?

Actually I see it as a sign from God that driving is evil and that I should stay at home and be happy. As H. says, "it's never too late to drop out". It can't be a coincidence that my next MA exam falls on the same day as I am supposed to be giving some dumb presentation in Madrid.

You could put all this in context of the looming War on Iraq. I can't be the only employee of Corporate America to be feeling that we've somehow got caught up in a bad bunch, that we've accidentally got in with the bullies. That the nation that pays my wages is doing so out of the dinner money it stole from the poor kids with glasses and freckles. As the days wear on I feel less and less comfortable about it all. Maybe it's time to change schools...

Quinquireme is back in the house, after a frightening foray into the world of the wealthy middle-class Caribbean vacation. A week of watching H. sip Pina Coladas under the palm trees on the tropical paradise island of St Lucia (my zero-vice-tolerance meant I quaffed nothing stronger than pineapple juice the whole week) has left me with a patchy tan and a feeling of nausea and horror at the senseless luxury enjoyed by the unthinkingly well-off. Made even worse by the realisation that my grip has finally been weakened and I've been sucked all the way down into the Sarlacc Pit of the Bourgeoisie.

It was never meant to work out this way - I always wanted to be an archaeologist or a waitress. I was never supposed to become a highly paid corporate whore with a silver sports car, a silver mobile phone and a silver iPaq. That kind of thing used to fill me with revulsion. Now look at me! You try and make excuses like "I wouldn't normally have gone to St Lucia, really we were just visiting my fiance's parents, who live there on their yacht", but that doesn't sound too good either. Anyway, Christ, I sound like I'm asking people to pity me. Actually I'm just giving vent to my self-loathing. I'll stop now.

Meanwhile...im Osten etwas neues: Albert the Gorilla is back! Go Albert!

The Great Firewall Of China

Just learned from nibus that Albert the Gorilla has fallen victim to the notorious Chinese firewall', thus putting an abrupt end to simian dispatches from Shanghai. Tunnel for freedom, Albert!

In other news: H. was attacked by a 'youth' in the illicit 24-hour off-licence on Saturday night. No harm inflicted, but tut tut the rising crime wave (and still FPD Savills want £295k for their poxy railway-benighted cubbyhole on Prince of Wales Road).

H., J. and I went to Somerset House on Saturday to try and track down the owner of The Wisdom of Epictetus, only to find that it's been turned into some sort of art gallery and is no longer the place to go to look up your ancestors. Any suggestions as to a suitable starting place would be much appreciated.

The Wisdom Of Epictetus

Struggling to write this from a condition of indescribable weakness and sickness - well OK, I have got a cold. But my legs are shaking a bit, and I nearly fell asleep in the car on the way home. DVT nothing, the real danger of long-haul flights is catching your fellow passengers' bugs. Thought I'd better write something though, if only to appease the EHA "crowd" (there's at least three of them) who have temporarily appeared - hello chaps and welcome. Make yourselves at home, feel free to toast a nice muffin or something before settling down to browse through the fascinating treasure trove of original thought and pithy observations that is my archive.

Anyway, update: home from San Diego, nothing much to report. Next stop: St Lucia, departing 8th Feb. Weekend highlights: watching the incomparable El Sid play a relatively well-attended gig in the world-famous Chat's Palace in Homerton, followed by a trip to Chichester (the San Diego of the English Riviera) to show the engagement ring to H's grandmother. Next project: trying to fill in the gaps in H's family tree, with particular reference to a mid-19th century Fellow of a London college who once owned a book of philosophy entitled The Wisdom of Epictetus. If that's not a strong lead, I don't know what is.

Moon Landings, Suspiciousness Thereof

Right, here I am, back from Geneva, and on my way out to San Diego (actually departing on Saturday), where I will have the privilege of being in the same room (a very large room, admittedly) as Dr Buzz Aldrin, Astronaut, Airman, Scientist and Patriot!

In anticipation of the probing questions I am going to put to Dr Aldrin regarding the authenticity of the moon landings, here is a reminder of some aspects of the lunar conquest that don't quite add up.

Engaged

What a day for news - a suspect has been named in the Camden "body parts" murder, the US has sent 11,000 troops to the Gulf, and H. and I are engaged to be married!

Yes, readers, he proposed to me last night in someone's back garden in N16, amid fireworks being set off by youths outside a kebab shop in Stoke Newington High Street. Both families duly informed and we are utterly exhausted with the whole rigmarole already. Going to buy the ring on Saturday. Wedding not until next year - possibly on an island in the beautiful river Orb in the Languedoc. Now facing the hideous prospect of having to read Brides and Setting Up Home magazine (shudder).

Don't be concerned though; this isn't going to turn into one of those wedding blogs. Normal claptrap will be resumed forthwith. And lest I forget in all the excitement - a very Happy New Year to all my readers and may 2003 bring you happiness, plenty and fulfilment.

Charles Dickens once lived in Camden (16 Bayham Street, to be precise). If he came back today, stories like this would make him feel right at home. I reproduce a particularly nineteenth-century portion here:

The mutilated bodies of a woman and teenage girl have been found dumped in bin liners behind a pub in Camden, north London. A double murder inquiry has been launched after the remains were found by a homeless man foraging for food in a bin in Royal College Street. He carried the leg parts to a nearby hospital for tropical diseases where shocked staff called in police. One of the black bin bags found behind the College Arms contained a torso, believed to belong to a white girl aged as young as 14. Two sections of a leg, thought to belong to a white woman in her 30s, were found in another bag at the scene.

Everything about this story makes me feel sick - children murdered at Christmas time, people with nowhere to live being forced to scavenge for food over Christmas. At the risk of sounding like a Daily Mail reader (I assure you nothing could be further from the truth), is this how far our "progress" has brought us?

Still, on more cynical note, I hope this latest atrocity will be the final pin in the bloated pig's bladder that is FPD Savill's ploy to sell one-bedroom flats on Prince of Wales Road for a third of a million pounds a go. "Oh, but this *is* a nice area. Really it is. So there are a few murders, and the filthy Silverlink train runs right outside your bedroom window, but it's a small price to pay for the convenience of living so close to Iceland, Woollies and the Drinker's Paradise off-licence..." Would be house-buyers are strongly advised to get a grip.

Aha, found the answer to the Beacon Hill question, thanks to www.thorneycroft.com. Apparently it's named after one or more Beacon Hills in Wiltshire, as a Wiltshire landowner, Thomas Poynder, owned the land in Holloway on which this and other streets were built on the 1870s. So in a way, it is named for the ancient beacon fires lit by prehistoric colemen, just not in that actual place.

I'm not much in the habit of linking to "interesting things I found on the internet" (that's really for the boys, I think), and still less to things I read in other people's blogs. But I've got to make an exception for this fabulous thing I found via Ben Hammersley - someone has started to write up Samuel Pepys's diary as a blog! We're probably witnessing the start of a new craze for 2003 (I'd write up Dorothy Wordsworth, if I had the time), but you do get the feeling that however cool and modern this is, the paper versions are still going to be around when the websites have long gone. Whoever said we're living in the new Dark Ages was undoubtedly correct.

[...] I wrote the above, and now I've had some more thoughts about it. Now I've linked to Pepys's diary on the sidebar there, it's like he's here among us, walking the same streets, eating the same leftover turkey etc. It's like a telescoping of time, ourselves and our past selves suddenly living side-by-side. And I love the whole linking thing - links to maps and explanations and descriptions of places etc. When I was very little I had a persistent fantasy about writing a diary and putting it in a huge tea-chest with all of the objects and photos of people, places etc. that I had referred to in the diary. In my teens, I did keep a diary in a box (actually a series of yearly biscuit tins) together with related objects, and I have several of these boxes in my cupboard still. So I suppose in a way I was envisaging a kind of blog format, with the source text and the links to mentioned objects close by... who'd have thought that it would come to be so easy and take up so little space!

Merry Christmas to you all - hope you had, and continue to have - a fab festive season.

I've just started reading The Fields Beneath by Gillian Tindall. It's an incredibly detailed history of Kentish Town, intended to be a blueprint for uncovering the history of inner suburban areas everywhere. It's beautifully written, completely authoritative and with an excellent wry sense of humour woven in.

Who would have thought that town planning could be so fascinating - anyone who's read Emergence and liked the sections on organic versus planned developments will enjoy the minute (I mean really minute, there's practically an inch-by-inch description of where the River Fleet and its tributaries used to run) detail in this book of how urban areas develop and are built. I'm on my way to becoming a Kentish Town bore, and am already delighted at the knowledge that Anglers Lane, which my street runs off, used to be a track taken by people going to fish in the river Fleet (also known as the Ken Ditch, from where Kentish Town takes its name) before the river was encased in an iron pipe and built over.

Note to Mark - you would really like this book - get it from the Owl Bookshop! Same goes for anyone else who lives in Kentish Town, Camden, Highgate, Holloway and surrounding areas. Maybe I'll even find the answer to my question about Beacon Hill in here.

By electing to spend Christmas Day together just the two of us, it seems that H. and I are conforming to no demographic known to man. He's a meat-eater and I'm a vegetarian, which essentially makes it Christmas dinner for one, yet the fridge is full of stuff designed for extended families - 18 chipolatas (the lowest denomination available), half a pound of pork, sage and onion stuffing, a month's worth of potatoes, and a giant net of sprouts. Unable to face the prospect of a giant bag of carrots, I've opted for one of those teeny trays of baby carrots, with some baby leeks thrown in for good measure. H is getting smoked salmon for a starter (another giant pack, most of which will probably end up in the cats' dish) while I'm having an onion tartlet. For the main course, H. is getting a kind of pre-stuffed chicken breast affair, and I'm having vegetarian Lincolnshire sausages. For pudding I'm making a tarte tatin - it was going to have pecans in it, but I seem to have eaten them all already.

Christmas Day is the only day in the year that I ever cook, so we're not expecting Nigella Lawson quality, or even Delia. But if the worst comes to the worst I guess we could always crash Jamie Oliver's place up the road, break his arms and nick his turkey dinner. Incidentally, I confirm that there is no Sainsbury's within miles of Oliver's Kentish Town pad, so I can only assume he actually shops in Somerfield like the rest of us.

Went to see the Two Towers last night in the seriously horrific new complex in Fulham Broadway (shudder). I *loved* the film, it's got such amazing scenery, and the Man, the Elf and the Dwarf are great, although the Hobbits continue to be deeply irritating, especially Elijah Wood, who has about five lines in the whole film and spends the rest of the time looking pained and pathetic and in need of a good slap. The Ent was just as I had imagined from the book, and Gollum is spot on.

The Two Towers is all about impending war, and I spent at least half of the film in tears because it's all about to come true, and we're on the wrong side. It's difficult to feel good about Aragorn & Co pelting the Uruk-Hai with arrows, and the Riders of Rohan turning up at the 11th hour like the Prussians at Waterloo, when you're plagued with a queasy feeling that Sauron and Saruman are just Bush and Blair with beards. The Middle-Earth/Middle-East connection is too close for comfort too. Well, if it comes to it, I'm with the Ents, even though the "Which Lord of the Rings Character Are You?" test has me down as Galadriel.

Wooo - one superhuman effort later, and all the Christmas cards and presents have been wrapped, sent and delivered, the Christmas tree has been bought and decorated, peace has been made once more with my grandmother (whose 92nd birthday it is today - happy birthday, Granny!), the cleaner (whose name is Lolita - I kid you not) has been given her Christmas bonus, and all the work-that-had-to-be-done-before-Christmas is complete! Wooooooo! I'm off to have a nice hot bath and a game of Tomb Raider to celebrate.

When, oh when, oh when will it end? It's the week before Christmas and I have back-to-back meetings all week, was in the office till 9.15 last night ploughing through piles of rubbishy work things, the Christmas cards haven't been sent, the Christmas presents haven't been wrapped or sent (but at least this year they've been bought), I'm owed four thousand pounds in expenses and consequently haven't got any cash, I got a speeding ticket, the VAT man is after me and I haven't eaten anything sensible for days. Things have been like this for two and half years solid now. Is it actually going to be like this for *ever*?

Apart from all that, I keep meaning to say something about the Lilac Time. I used to have this huge crush on Stephen Duffy (I await charl's disdain) when I was 15 and he was in the charts with that dreadful "Kiss Me" song. Then when I was 17 he came out with the first Lilac Time album, now tragically discontinued, which was the greatest album ever (I await nibus's disdain) - beautiful folk-pop melodies and quirky lyrics that managed to stay just on the cool side of twee. How I *loved* him.

Sadly, in the early 90s I went all indie and rave, and Stuffy and I went our separate ways. Last year, though, I bought the Compendium album, which now lives in the CD player of my horrible soulless company car, and it's like rekindling an affair with a childhood sweetheart. In my mind, over the intervening decade and a half, he wrote all those love songs for me and for our long-lost romance. In a parallel world, I could have been the Girl Who Waves At Trains. In this world, it turns out that I am just the Girl Who Keeps Excel Spreadsheets. Perhaps it's not too late - Stephen, if you're reading this, please come and rescue me from corporate purgatory.

A mammoth work week just gone, featuring 15-hour days and a particularly enjoyable 48-hour stretch with no sleep and no food other than vending-machine hot chocolate and vending-machine blueberry Frusli bars. At one point I somehow managed to get myself quoted in the press in Norway. Still, by yesterday it had become clear that my project (product launch) was an overwhelming success and that [whisper it] senior management was very pleased. Given that senior management is currently in New Zealand gearing up for the semi-finals of the Louis Vuitton Cup, I personally doubt the veracity of this.

In other sailing news, huge excitement welled up on Tuesday as it seemed that against all odds, Sanjola had pulled into the lead of the Atlantic Rally, ensuring safe passage into the history books for Cap'n Dicko and First Mate Jennifer. Sadly it turned out that our seafaring heroes were heading in entirely the wrong direction, and had to pull a quick U-ey round the Cape Verde Islands to rejoin the others mid-fleet. Looks like they'll have no trouble fulfilling Cap'n Dicko's ambition of being in St Lucia for his birthday though. Go, Yacht Sanjola!

Ooh, and as ordained, Smat has now got a blog. And a new job! Go Smat!

Got to go, Simon Schama's on telly. The Picts, Simon!

Cyborg

Ooh Lord, another week flashes by without me noticing. Let's see, what happened? Girl friend H. (as opposed to boyfriend H.) turned up on Monday night, and in due course of conversation we got around to the subject of cyborgs, upon which H. revealed that she is good mates with Kevin Warwick, and that his detractors just don't understand him. Anyway, H. concurs with Donna Haraway that she'd rather be a cyborg than a goddess, while Sara thinks she would prefer to be a goddess.

Boyfriend H., meanwhile, has been keeping himself busy getting banned for a week from the Daily Mail chat forum for mentioning (actually, painstakingly deconstructing) the rumour about Posh and Becks. He thinks it's a PR stunt, I don't think it's even that. But the Daily Mail says it's defamatory and they've gagged him.

In other news, it's 80s fever here as H. pulls a marathon session of GTA: Vice City on the PS2. Just at the moment it's playing Wang Chung's Dancehall Days. I got H. killed the other day by insisting that he remain in the car so I could hear Sigue Sigue Sputnik. Lord only knows what the game (flash, audio) is about, but the soundtrack is ace.

H's adventuresome parents set off yesterday from Las Palmas in Gran Canaria to sail across the Atlantic, bound for St Lucia. Follow the progress of the mighty Yacht Sanjola on the Atlantic Rally website! According to the Fleet Viewer, Sanjola was last seen at N 28° 9' 0" W 15° 25' 0", travelling at 0 knots. Cap'n Dicko and First Mate Jennifer aren't going to get very far at that rate!

Well everyone, I pulled a 10-hour studying session on the flight home from SF, and you would not believe how much my eyes have been opened by this Women, Machines and Cyborgs course I'm doing. Ideas you take for granted (what in cultural studies is called hegemony) that fall apart at the first inspection. For example, during the Enlightenment in the 18th century, Carl Linnaeus was one of the first scientists to attempt to classify living things. Looking for a category name that would bind together al those animals that were not fish, birds, insects, worms or amphibians, he picked the name mammalia, because in all species of this category, mothers suckle their young. He could equally have chosen pilosae (mammals uniquely all have hair) or aurecavigae (mammals all have a hollow ear, with three ear-bones, in common). Some people point out that he may have had personal political reasons for deliberately choosing the term "mammalia" from the range of options.

At the same time, Linnaeus classified modern humans as homo sapiens. So the implication is: it's the (uniquely) female lactating breast that provides the common link with animals, but it's the "masculine" quality of reason that sets us apart. Sexism is still alive and well in science!

Ahhh, the lonely virtual life....no one's posted any comments for days and all my friends are sleeping when I'm awake (apart from the indefatigable Snark). What's more, the mysterious Paranoid Android and I are *still* the only bloggers in Kentish Town. In yank-news...CNN mounts 24/7 Hans Blix hate campaign, maintaining that he's never going to find any WMDs with that jaunty liberal Swedish attitude, and what America really needs in Iraq is a cross between Sherlock Holmes and the Terminator. In an effort to compete, NBC scoops a leaked document that reveals the worst-quality roads in the Bay Area. Apparently they're in Half Moon Bay, although San Leandro is also pretty bad. Clearly a slow news day here in Silicon Valley.

I've forsaken San Francisco for the dodgy Hotel Sofitel in downtown nowhere, with a view of a fake lagoon on the far shore of which loom the menacing towers of our HQ building. Upon arrival I was greeted with a fake "bonjour" by the American receptionist whose name is Giacomo. There's a giant carpet depicting Seurat's Bathers on the wall behind the reception desk. On the wall in my room there's a plan cadastre of the Louvre, a rubbish poem called "Dualisme" which I won't reproduce here, and some other cod-French fakery. The crumbs I found on the desk were quite real, though. Apparently, our CFO actually lives here, perhaps in a super-fake suite on the top floor. Mmm, I am going to have such a lovely week.

Yay, Steven Johnson has started a blog! Everything that man says is great. And look! he's handsome too. Go Steven!

Ohh, so much to tell, so little space....battled through jet lag to go and watch Carly Fiorina deliver a keynote speech at the Moscone Center. Gawd almighty, if I'd wanted to see an ad for HP I'd have just stayed in the hotel and watched CNN. So the tech industry's in a bit of rut, but honestly. People don't want super-hot new technology, said Carly. Good enough is good enough. What? And only HP is good enough. Harrumph. Oh, and Unix is not dead. Oh but it's Linux, Linux, Linux all the way, super-fast Linux clusters, "maximal capacity utilisation". Not a peep about Capellas and his mmm...juicy new job. Still, nice jacket, Carly.

Southwards by train to our work's headquarters, located on a stretch of reclaimed marshland and served by a godforsaken railway station with no taxis. A visiting speaker lectured us on marketing. "You don't create brand, your customers create brand" etc. It turned out that this guy was one of those old-school marketers who think that people are consumers and that therefore their only impulse is to receive. He was trying to market broadband. Making the same mistake as all the broadband marketers, everywhere, who think that success is predicated on getting people to receive stuff. Like all the other broadband marketers, he'd found by and large that people do not want to receive stuff, especially when that stuff consists of interactive buttons that show stats during basketball matches. Did he never think of finding out if people might actually want to broadcast stuff *up* the pipe? I thought, but didn't ask, cos everyone else was lapping it up.

Finally, took cab last night to the Mission (which turns out to be a bit like Hoxton but without the Nathans, or indeed any visible denizens at all) to see the Buckminster Fuller play, which was really great. Triangles rule, man. Had a bit of a shock when the actor, Ron Campbell, started on about Earth being a giant spaceship, and then came off the stage and up the stairs to where I was sitting and said to me "how was your trip last night?" I just gaped. Apparently though, my trip had been silent and beautiful. Slightly disorientated by the fact that the play is delivered as a monologue which is part autobiography, part science lecture, and there's a certain amount of audience participation (including the "Home, home in a dome" singalong). So you kind of want to start raising your hand and asking science questions, until you remember that you're not actually seeing Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller in front of you, but an actor. Weird.

Happy birthday to you/Happy birthday to you/Happy birthday dear nibus/Happy birthday to you!

I was looking at the San Francisco City Guide trying to prepare myself a schedule of things to do while I'm there. My eye alighted on a "multimedia theater experience" type thing called Euphorium. Sounds good, I think, I'll definitely go to that. Very Bohemian. S. T. Coleridge, opium, Kubla Khan, the Man from Porlock etc. - marvellous. Investigating further, I quickly realised that this is the very same Euphorium that is currently playing in the Chalk Farm Roundhouse, just a few hundred yards from my door in Kentish Town. We were in the bar opposite only last night. Is San Francisco just like a reflection of Camden on the other side of the world?

Anyway, I've decided to go and see the Buckminster Fuller singalong experience instead.

For the first part of my MA course, I was required to read huge long Marxist tracts about the relationships between culture and society. The part I've just finished was more into Nicholas Negroponte and Howard Rheingold. For my new course I've just had to read an article from BBC Tomorrow's World's now-defunct magazine. It included a picture of Thora Hird on her Stannah stairlift, in response to which I was asked to make notes on whether or not I believe Thora is a cyborg. Is it just me, or is academia dumbing down before my eyes?

Abusing the Fireworks Code, Pt. 1 - Attended a fireworks party last night at the house of some friends who will remain nameless, in a south coast town that will remain nameless (clue: it is apparently distinguished by its lack of fresh fish shops).

A gigantic firework, of the "box of tricks" type, was positioned half way up the garden in a wheelbarrow. The first attempt to light it failed. Returning to the firework to light it again (don't do it kids!) also proved fruitless. At length, one of our hosts was seen to disappear into the garden shed and return with a can of petrol, douse the firework, and throw lighted newspaper into the wheelbarrow. At this point, the more rational of the party guests retreated from the conservatory into the further recesses of the house. But to no avail. The petrol burned prettily for a while, but fireworks there were none. A larger can of petrol was produced, and the process repeated. Twice. No fireworks.

Gradually, attention to the non-doing firework waned. It was raining, and the party returned to the conservatory where moules were consumed, muscadet imbibed and the issues of the day chewed over.

As the evening wore on, and more muscadet was drunk, the idea of a "Who's Got The Best Bum?" competition was floated. The male guests lined up for the female guests to judge. In an ill-thought-out attempt to bribe the panel, one of the hosts suddenly whipped down his trousers. As he did so, there was a series of huge explosions and the conservatory was illumined with a hundred fireworks igniting at once. Fully two hours after the petrol had been poured on the gigantic firework, it went off.

I like to think that there is a lesson to be learned here. Mostly about the danger of abusing fireworks, but also about the proper conduct of "Best Bum" competitions. Despite the flamboyance of our host's bid, the winning bum was eventually judged to belong to M.

Since parking the new car up there I've become preoccupied with finding out why Beacon Hill in Holloway is so called. It's not really much of a hill, although undoubtedly it is on a slope. I thought that rather being the haunt of prehistoric surveyors (dodmen) or beacon fire lighters (colemen), it might have something to do with the optical telegraph or semaphore telegraph, but it doesn't seem so.

Eventually my wanderings brought me to a fantastic site which shows Charles Booth's "Poverty Map" of London, with every street and house colour-coded according to the economic circumstances of the people who lived there at the end of the 19th century. It's fully searchable too - hours of fascinating browsing. Didn't help much with the history of Beacon Hill though, except I found out that in 1898 it was called Beaconhill Road. If anyone can enlighten me further, please do!

08:45 - new car ticketed...09:00 - new car clamped...09:10 - £75 clamping fee paid...10:45 - new car unclamped...11:05 - new car removed to lawless Beacon Hill in Holloway, the last remaining enclave of North London where one can park at will. Now to decide on most expedient course of action: a) attempt to obtain parking permit for new car, or b) move to N7. Remembering the last round of shenanigans we had with Camden Council's Parking "Solutions" department, b) would probably be quicker and easier. Still, it's always nice to know that my money's going into valuable council services. And the walk back from N7 to NW5 is always pleasant, even when it's raining.

Alfred Watkins would have had one or two things to say about the name "Beacon Hill". I bet the colemen and dodmen never had any trouble with traffic wardens.

Can you believe the British public? Sixty minutes of Rosie Boycott reminding us about poor Diana throwing up food and visiting hospitals, and they're grasping for the remote control through the piles of soggy Kleenex Balsam, tears coursing down their cheeks and Candle in the Wind on endless repeat as they click the "vote" button over and over again. Get a grip, you fools! Only last week you thought the Greatest Ever Briton was Isambard Kingdom Brunel! Let's get this straight: Diana was a dim Sloane with a nice smile. She was emphatically not the greatest Briton that ever lived. Now, John Peel, on the other hand...

I'd forgotten to say up to now that my work have seen fit to dispatch me to San Francisco to attend a meeting and "network" with our good friends at Headquarters. I'll be there from the 14th to the 22nd November. I've never been to SF before, so am open to anyone's recommendations about things that I should do or see there. Not so keen on the general touristy stuff, but any kind of alternative-technology-culture-conventiony-type malarkey would suit me just fine. Also, as a non-smoking, non-drinking vegetarian I guess there's no better destination for me, so I'm looking forward to finding out how and where one socialises without the involvement of alcohol, which in the UK is pretty much impossible.

H. and I cycled to Dalston for a Shithole* editorial meeting. It was a fantastic autumn day, everyone in our street was out in their front garden talking to each other, the trees were turning red and gold, the street cats were milling about, cycling along the canal there were lots of lovely North London-type couples in woollen winter coats and colourful scarves out for a walk, ducks were paddling along, there were kids out playing in the autumn leaves in London Fields. Sometimes even the heart of London can seem like the countryside.

Editorially we didn't progress very far (apart from completing a new column called Bras of the Stars!, which will be appearing on these pages just as soon as we've done the photography), as Blind Date intervened, as did Simon Schama (who I fancy, but Sara told me not to) and his History of Britain (read: History of England, plus a couple of things that happened in Wales, Scotland and Ireland that had some bearing on English history). I'm sure I was driving behind Simon Schama the other day. Simon, if you're reading this (and I like to think you are), please confirm if that was you driving around Mayfair in a red sports car. And next time, remember the Picts!

Still on the subject of environmentally-friendly "feminine hygiene products", Smat (who really needs to get her own blog) has now alerted me to the existence of something called The Keeper. So if any Friday night pub bores ask you to "name something a woman invented", you know what to say.

On an entirely different note, H. just returned home jabbering about gangs of beautiful women roaming the streets of Kentish Town. It's probably a ploy by FPD Savills to try and flog the dodgy flats they've built round the back of the old false teeth factory. "Occupying a prominent position", indeed. Only if you're into watching people smoking crack or shagging behind giant dustbins. Or if you enjoy getting mugged on a regular basis. Still, on the plus side, it's very close to Pizza Express.

Turns out Smat is a virtual Mum after all. She gave me a list of websites where one can purchase and resell new and "pre-loved" cloth nappies. You'd be amazed. If any of you have small infants in tow, then ditch the evilly corporate and environmentally-hazardous Pampers and give one of these a try:

The Nappy Lady

Twinkle On The Web

Plush Pants

The Soft Option

Oh and ladies, apparently there's a growing trend towards washable, knitted "feminine hygiene products" too. I think that may be a cultural evolution too far....

Am being assailed with blinding headaches, due no doubt to having spent 18 hours solid on Friday sat on uncomfortable dining chair staring at laptop and monitor screens. Snow Crash nothing, this is the real downside of attempting to live a virtual life. Only available course of action: three Nurofen and I'm off to the Surrey countryside to see my friend Smat, whose life (including as it does a husband, three lovely daughters, Brownie pack management and a garden) is anything but virtual.

Tom Coates gave me a handy opportunity to find out if I still understand Italian. So here's the article from Il Sole 24 Ore in English - it's pretty cool too. A pox on the media industry! And apologies to any passing Italians for the liberties I've taken with the original text:

A Blog Infection

A look at the the viral spread of personal publishing sites
By Giuseppe Caravita

“Blogorrheic” is the term, now well known, coined by the man who is generally held to be the Italian blog pioneer : Antonio Cavedoni, a web designer from Modena, is the author of one of the first of these personal sites to appear, in the summer of 2000. Blogorrheic is not a pejorative term ; it means love for the things that one has to say. The joy of writing and of updating one’s site every day.

It’s from this that you get what is perhaps the most extraordinary characteristic of this phenomenon – its viral nature. It’s different from the classic online communities, which accumulate around specific subjects on a centralised site managed by a moderator. Blogs behave like neurons exchanging signals along a chain. Or like cellular organisms, capable of self-replication. «Let’s take the example of someone who starts a blog, talking about their own life and interests,» explains Weblog expert Tom Coates. “Gradually they start to link to other people who share their interests, and if they produce content that is particularly interesting, they will be linked to in turn. In this way, via constant interlinking, communities of interest form, which continually enrich each other. The blogger naturally tends to attract his friends and relations to his site, generating further “proliferations”. And you often get geographical groups forming, in which you don’t just get online friendships but also personal, real-life relationships.”

Virtuous Circle: It’s a sort of virtuous circle with three separate development trajectories – the community of interest, the real-world family and friends, and local groups of bloggers. The whole system is further consolidated by the activities of aggregator sites (like Bloggando or Blog.it) and above all, by search engines. In particular Google, which compiles its rankings on the basis of the number of times a site is linked to. This tends to increase the visibility of the most popular blogs and further extends their readership. The bloggers, of course, produce all kinds of stuff – journals, music, digital art, books, advice, opinions, hobbies, associations and a huge amount of spontaneous journalism.

Some examples: For example, a site like Kuro5hin, created by a young American physicist, Rusty Foster, organises spontaneous discussion groups around interesting subjects (mostly current affairs) and boasts around 100,000 regular readers, with 6.5 million page impressions per month. Another of the best known blogs, Dave Winer’s Scripting News (Dave is the administrator of Userland Software, a company that produces one of the best blog authoring tools) has a “circulation” of around 10,000 readers, and is considered one of the best technical sources in the US, particularly as regards Open Source software. In total, according to the Online Journalism Review, the half a million active blogs have a combined audience of 150 million American readers and almost half a billion worldwide. These are big numbers. To the extent that venerable titles like the New York Times have started to create partnerships (with Userland, for example) to deliver news channels aimed specifically at bloggers. And online publications like Salon are experimenting with inviting external communities to contribute to sites run by its own reporters, communities who often add to Salon’s articles or rip them to pieces.

The journalistic front: Fear of a progressive undermining of the big publishing houses (primarily online publishers like AOL Time Warner) by the new and unstoppable network of blogs, have recentlly multiplied in the USA. A key case was the 11th September. While the TV networks, during the attack, only showed the images of the towers in flames, the New York blogs reported live (albeit in an often imprecise manner) what was really happening in Manhattan. And this was without the news feeds that are received centrally by the mass media. A lesson which today is driving much of the American media to develop new websites where thet can conduct a dialogue with readers. Amd to provide tailored information services for the blogging community. Given that, as Myrray Fromsen, professor of journalism at the University of South California, observes: «every online community, of whatever size, still needs a traditional news feed to get its information». Except that in the Userland environment there are tens of channels which users can “subscribe” to get the primary material from which they can produce their comments and discussions. The result: it’s certain that blogs, starting from the US, will change the structure of the information industry. But the signs of a possible innovative synergy seem to be already visible.

Guess what - today I received a lovely letter from the Rt Hon Frank Dobson, MP for Holborn and St Pancras, in response to my fax about how we should not attack Iraq. Here's the text in full - I am not sure whether Franko is giving me the party line or his own opinion (if there's a difference), so maybe any political pundits out there can read between the lines and tell me what's really going on in his mind:

Thank you for your recent letter about the possibility of war against Iraq. I share your concerns. I do not support unilateral military action by the United States and Britain. Measures to secure Iraq's compliance with United Nations resolutions can only be taken with the explicit authority of the Security Council.

Before launching any military action, even with the authority of the UN, it would be necessary to consider the long-term impact on Iraq, the Middle East and the world in general. Questions which would need to be answered, and answered satisfactorily, include:

- could the disarming of Iraq be secured by other means?
- could military action achieve this aim without a large loss of life by the invading forces and enormous Iraqi civilian casualties?
- what would happen to Iraq afterwards?
- what form of government would be acceptable both to the divided inhabitants of Iraq and the United Nations?
- what would be the impact on the Middle East?
- what would happen to oil supplies during and after such a conflict?
- what impact would a conflict have on the fragile world economy?

That said, it is undeniable that the current Iraqi regime is vile, has invaded two of its neighbours, and used chemical weapons against both its people and Iran. The people of Iraq and neighbouring countries would be better off if Saddam Hussein and his Government were ousted.

Many aspects of the problems posed by Iraq and the general instability and lack of democracy in the Middle East are inextricably linked with the conduct of Israel towards its neighbours and in particular the treatment of the Palestinians. Some people argue that action to disarm Iraq will not be acceptable to other Arabs until action is taken to re-establish the Israeli/Palestininan peace process and bring it to a successful conclusion. Conversely it could be argued that the issue of Iraq distracts attention from the Israel/Palestine problem, and provides an excuse for the United States not to get on with putting its weight behind the peace process. One thing is sure, there will be no lasting peace and stability in the Middle East until both Israel and Palestine are sovereign states with secure, internationally accepted boundaries inside which their people can live in peace with one another and their neighbours.

Thank you for writing,

Yours sincerely,

Frank Dobson [signature]

He's succeeded in making me think that maybe we won't attack Iraq after all, but correct me if I'm wrong - I'm a naive Libran and am usually prepared to believe anything I'm told if it sounds sincere enough. Anyway, I'm remarkably impressed that he wrote back - he's certainly gone up in my estimation.

I just wrote today's witty and polished blog entry three times and every time I pressed "post" it disappeared. I want to cry. What's happened to Blogger while I've been away?

Ooooh, this new blue colour (shamelessly stolen from Yeah - On Bizzarro World) is so much better. Anyway, today I happened to step outside to take my dry cleaning to the dry cleaners, and Kentish Town looked like a completely different planet. It struck me that I've been inside for months, working, studying, travelling and sleeping. "Outside" has actually become an alien world. Is this the future? I can't remember the last time I saw any of my friends - my best friend e-mailed me today to say she hadn't seen me since before she was pregnant with her new baby, who's now...well, she's on solids anyway, if that means anything to you. But it seems to me like I saw her just the other day. So that's like, a year, passed by without me noticing.

And what's more that old feeling is creeping up on me again, that feeling that I'm actually in a coma in hospital, or in an asylum, or dead, and I'm just imagining my life. Hmph. I should never have read Marianne Dreams as a child, or The Bridge as an adult, or seen Naked Lunch or The Others. I'm also reliably informed that this is also a plotline in Buffy, although I've never seen it.

Oh, and thanks to Andrew for fixing the broken bit of HTML. Next thing is, how do I put pictures on here? Maybe I just lie back in my hospital bed, stare at the ceiling, and imagine them into being?

If someone could tell me why there's a random piece of HTML appearing in that box over there, I'd be most grateful.

Status update 1: Even though I accidentally left the Snopake ReOrganiser at home, the project was an overwhelming success. This is despite the fact that on my way to the airport I caught sight of a solitary magpie by the side of the motorway. Which got me really hung up on the magpie thing again. Like....when does the magpie's effect wear off? If you see one, does it portend sorrow for the next 24 hours, the next week, the next month, or until you see two mapgpies? Someone please help - amateur magpie augury is taking over my life. I feel like that guy in my fourth-form latin book - haruspex. Apparently the haruspex used to run around at posh dinner parties with a long sticky (and no doubt brown) stick, catching birds on it and reading their entrails to tell the future. Or am I confusing two different things?

Status update 2: I now have exactly 72 hours in which to revise the whole of my MA course for the exam on Monday.

Status update 3: I have not washed my hair for days, have got no make-up on, have had about 6 hours sleep all week, and am wearing scruffy old clothes. Despite this, H. this evening spontaneously told me I looked sexy. He never says that when I am dressed up and stuff. I guess that's what you get for going out with a Unix developer.

Status update 4: It's my birthday on Monday. I will be 32. Please leave me messages of condolence and encouragement.

Question of the day: Where has UK Play gone?

The anti-war march was a real eye-opener. The media may be unable to put a figure on the number of people marching, but I can tell you first-hand - it was huge. I've been on a few demos in my time (and before you ask, yes, I firmly and rationally believed in what I was marching for and no, I did not wear a mask, cause any damage, throw anything at anyone, get drunk or shout abuse at the police - I'm a nice middle-class girl who always puts her litter in the bin), and none was as big as this, not Mayday, not Reclaim the Streets, not the Criminal Justice Bill protests, nothing.

Demos are always uplifting - being part of a huge crowd of people that are committed to making a stand for what they believe in is exhilarating - but this was special because of the number and variety of people that were there. Lots of Muslims (the majority of whom, may I say, were women - so let's just stop and think before we use Iraq's appalling treatment of women as an excuse to bomb them) but also lots of Christians, atheists, agnostics, Buddhists etc., all united in the belief that terrorism is bad, but war is worse.

I'm no expert on the Middle East situation but I am deeply ashamed that the Prime Minister of my country - whom I generally held to be an intelligent, morally-upright individual - is prepared simply to throw away our entire moral code in one fell swoop by following that dangerous idiot G.W Bush into an unjustified war. So as well as making my point by joining the march, I also used the excellent service provided by Faxyourmp.com to make a direct appeal to Frank "Dobbo" Dobson to stop Tony committing an act of moral bankruptcy. Here's the text:

To: Rt Hon Frank Dobson
MP for Holborn and St. Pancras
House Of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA

Sunday 29 September 2002

Dear Rt Hon Frank Dobson,

I am writing to tell you that I took part in the very large demonstration in London yesterday to protest against the mooted pre-emptive strike on Iraq, and to appeal to you directly to help the UK avoid any such course of action.

The notion of a pre-emptive strike, whatever the perceived justification, is morally wrong. We cannot launch an attack on a country in which innocent civilians will certainly be killed, merely on the suspicion that one day, that nation may do the same to us.

As we in the West generally position ourselves as the moral guardians of the world, to do so would send a signal that it is morally OK, in our book, for any nation to attack another nation whom it suspects of harbouring a grudge against it.

This precedent could lead to utter moral bankruptcy the world over. I am both frightened and deeply ashamed that the Prime Minister of my country - whom I have supported vigorously in the past - is so willing to throw away the moral code that the vast majority of people in this country live by.

Frank, as our local representative in government, please help our great country avoid this shameful act of aggression.

Who knows whether Frank will listen to my plea, but if you're reading this and you feel strongly too, fax your MP now! We live in a supposed democracy, so exercise your democratic rights while you still can!

I can't even begin to tell you how much has changed around here since blogging became a valid form of expression. There I was, sniping at the system with my controversial musings on the usefulness of examining the original locations of the Pictish symbol stones, and snapping at the heels of the old guard with my pointed asides about stationery - and now suddenly here I am, fully approved of and appropriated by The Man. It's all happened too soon! Where was the tabloid hysteria about the creeping menace of depraved individuals secretly typing their innermost thoughts into the internet where decent people might see them? Why were there no grainy close-ups of "ringleader" Tom Coates in the Daily Mail, wearing a hooded fleece and tapping diabolically at his keyboard? Where were the hastily rushed-through amendments to the Criminal Justice Act, the granting of emergency police powers to search the homes of suspected "bloggers" without warrant? Why was Sasha's bus stop not burned to the ground by angry lynch mobs? Revolution's just not what it used to be. Right - I'm off to the Stop the War march.

Les sanglots longs
des violons
de l'automne
blessent mon coeur
d'une langueur
monotone

Such may have been Paul Verlaine's opinion of this time of year, but it isn't mine. There is nothing in the whole world better than the autumn. The sun just warm enough to bring out the smell of turning leaves, the sky by turns bright blue and ominous black, the plastic bags caught in the wind, the first days of wearing jumpers, boots and 40-denier tights, and best of all, new stationery. Yes, even though I graduated nine years ago I continue to live by the rhythm of the academic year, which is why today I found myself happily bumbling around Camden Town Rymans, buying folders that I'll use diligently for a week before reverting to scrawling on the back of bits of paper that I will then immediately lose. All hail to the Snopake ReOrganiser, a folder that evokes comfortable yet exciting images of well-planned projects brought to fruitful, measurable and career-enhancing conclusions. First thing tomorrow my current project is going into the "Electra Purple" ReOrganiser ("Electra Blue" has been reserved for my next MA course). Check back here on the 4th October to learn whether the magical polypropylene talisman delivered on its promise!

Just been made aware of this. I feel like the "I didn't do it" boy. Perhaps in a bid to assert my multidimensionality - but more likely because the autumn is coming - I went out and bought a totally uncool book about ley lines. (If you want a totally cool book about ley lines, try this). Ley lines, maps, place-names, codes and ciphers - these are my cerebral equivalents of woolly jumpers and mugs of cocoa. Roll on October!

News just in: doyen of stylish London living, Duncan Bartley, explores the fashionable addresses on Camden's swinging Parkway.

Apparently, it's been all go this week. Someone accused me of being articulate. Then someone else accused me of being inarticulate. The word "elitism" got bandied about a lot, usually erroneously. I went to Brussels. Stayed in the godforsaken Airport Sheraton, unable to sleep because of the giant neon Europe symbol blazing just outside the window. They've got a sculpture of a horseman in the foyer made entirely out of rifles. Weird and horrible. Came back to learn that I am now a company director. I'm a director of Romarin Publishing (warning: noises of church bells and cigales), the most profitable publishing house in the Haut Languedoc. You go, Romarin Publishing! Now I must go as H. has come home and I have not seen him for a week.

Invalidation

Just minutes after posting the "Not the Best British Blog" box, I found myself poking around in the Guardian website, ending up in the blog of an individual called Steve Bowbrick. Now Danny O'Brien says that Steve Bowbrick's alright, so I'll go easy, but his musings on the entries for the *controversial* Best British Blog competition are indicative of the incredible distance the print media has managed to travel up its own arse. "I think the competition will prove to be a real validation for the new form," he witters, as though he was some kind of St Peter at the Pearly Gates of Mass Media Heaven. Look mate, you've totally missed the point. You're not validating us, we're invalidating you!

Enough of all that - time to establish my girlie credentials. Having seen the film "A Knight's Tale", er, several times over the past few weeks (thanks Telewest Front Row!), I feel that I speak from a position of considerable authority in informing you that Edward the Black Prince - aka James Purefoy, one of those Primrose Hill-dwelling luvvies no doubt - is very easy on the eye indeed. Here he is, ladies (and gentlemen). If you haven't yet seen this film, you must. Again and again, until Telewest's customer profiling system caves in upon itself. I mean, look at that coat! Look at that unbuttoned white shirt! Mr Darcy has nothing on this. Oh, and I bought some sparkly cushions and a khaki sheepskin rug today in Camden market. It's official: I *am* female!

Sedition in the ranks! Here's a box listing some of the people who haven't entered the Guardian's *controversial* Best British Blog competition. It's something to do with free expression and not needing to be validated by the moribund trad media. It's anarchy on the wires folks - the media industry's had its day. Are you listening, M.T. Moloney?



Cheers to Tom "Best Blogger/Best Poof 2001" Coates from Plasticbag for this.

Ahh, normal service has returned to Blogger after a week of indecipherable errors preventing me from posting. So anyway, some things happened. First of all, I finally moved to Reading. The flat is excellently low-tech. The phone line isn't working and the portable TV only receives three channels - BBC1, ITV and Channel 5. Clearly there's not much call for bourgeois intellectualism in central Berkshire.

Secondly, I had a letter from my tutor informing me that I can no longer flame him as his home PC has been stolen. Poor old tutor, trying to mark his students' essays on the impact of new communications technologies on modern society, only to have his own modest brush with modernity - an AOL account he set up in July - cruelly truncated by the selfish actions of a naughty burglar. Anyway, the essay went off to him in the end, although once again he will probably refuse to mark my febrile rantings about stand.org.uk and the RIP Act. Even Pyra got a mention in this one. Instant recipe for a fail.

Thirdly, it was the anniversary of September 11th, an occasion marked by the distribution to millions of employees of hyperbolic, mawkish and jingoistic e-mails emanating from American corporate CEOs. At our place we got off lightly, with a tastefully understated exhortation to remember our eight colleagues who died, but others displayed positively Spielbergian levels of schmaltz. Top prize goes to Anne Mulcahy, CEO of Xerox Corp., whose opening parry reads "The events of last September 11 are forever etched on our minds and seared on our hearts," and continues in this vein for fully four paragraphs, ending with a vow that Bin Laden and co will never force any Xerox office to shut down. You go, Xerox Corp! Not to be outdone, John Mack "The Knife", CEO of Credit Suisse First Boston, implored his troops never to forget the "spirit and sacrifice" of a colleague who lost his life in the attack. Sacrifice, eh? In whose name?

If you have a mawkish company 9-11 e-mail to "share", paste it into the Shout Out and we'll have a contest. No disrespect meant, just a good old British sense of stiff upper lip.

I've got to one of those work stages where even if I worked 24 hours a day for the next week, I still wouldn't get all my work done, let alone any of the other stuff. There are things piling up all around me; work things, degree things (like my last essay written during my holiday but not sent off and now 10 days late just because I can't engineer it, me, a printer, an envelope, a stamp and my tutor's address to be in the same place at the same time); things about buying the house in Scotland; insurancey things about the house in France; things about moving into the flat in Reading on Monday; friends' emails not replied to, Duncan Bartley's column not updated; things my Dad wants me to do about becoming a director of his company, and on and on and ON. That's why I'm off to the Oxford Arms now, to play Gun Crime Bingo.

Magpies. Wretched creatures usually hang about on their own just at the roundabout going into my office "campus". One time I saw a lone magpie actually hopping about by a squashed feathered corpse. So as you can imagine I've become a bit haunted by that "one for sorrow, two for joy" rhyme. Well, yesterday there were two magpies on the roundabout, and we did some great interviews with the FT and Business Week. Today there were two magpies again, and I went into a mad dynamic workaholic fury, sending thousands of emails and dreaming up crazy new strategies off the top of my head and firing them off to random internal mailing lists. Is it the magpies? Is it the onset of autumn? Or is it mania? I saw two gigantic crows at 10.15am too. What does it all mean?

I've been in Reading most of this week, and while my back was turned, Camden turned into Compton. Driving home the other evening I was attempting to take my usual shortcut up Jamestown Road, but found the police cordoning it off and a bunch of paparazzi taking photos. Turns out I'd just missed a drive-by shooting! According to the article there have been six murders in Camden in the last three weeks, but according to H. (who's having a feud with This is London for removing some of his more flagrant posts from their forums) this is "utter bollocks" that they've "just made up". Still there's a police sign appealing for murder witnesses outside the Arizona, which is also in Jamestown Road (and where the video for that irritating "Tequila" song was filmed, pop trivia fans) so there must have been at least one.

It's nearly the end of August, which means it's nearly the end of the summer! I hate the summer, it makes me depressed. To celebrate the impending arrival of Autumn, I have done numerous things. Firstly, I have rented a flat in Reading to live in during the week. Redeeming features: nice fireplace, close to work. Non-redeeming features: it's in Reading, noisy ex-convicts live downstairs. I move in on the 9th September. Secondly, my purchase of my Granny's house in Scotland is now proceeding apace, after a long fallow period characterised by intrafamilial spells, curses and invocations. Luckily it all started up again before we got to nam-shubs. Thirdly, I have ordered a company car - a silver Peugeot 206 convertible with black leather seats. Fourthly, I have signed up for my next Open University course, which starts in November. Get this title: Gender, Technology and Representation - Women, Machines and Cyborgs. Apparently for this course I will be required to study the films Alien, Aliens and Blade Runner. Fifthly, I have decided to spend my imminent week's holiday at my French place, assuming that it is not already occupied by mothers, neighbours, rats etc. Planning to do healthy things like cycling, swimming, canoeing etc. Will probably end up eating pizza, inhaling paint fumes, sweating, being bitten by mosquitoes etc. And sixthly, after a long period of staying in and thinking about Pictish symbol stones, I feel a new bout of gregariousness coming on. So, I'll see you in Camden's new, improved Oxford Arms later, yeah?

Inspired by charl from EHA, I got myself a room in Habbo Hotel. Apart from the flaky software, the preponderance of teenagers and the frankly unattractive surroundings, it could be a return to the good old days of avatar-based communities! Anyway, everyone's welcome to visit me there - my room's called quinquirama. You'll have to become an avatar yourself though, first. Look forward to seeing you!

Top Hole! London's new-found guru of underground style, Duncan Bartley, has a new column every month in Shithole* magazine.

This short but fascinating review of Minority Report in the British Medical Journal turned up at random in the electronic news clipping service I get for my work. The whole premise of locking mentally ill people up because they *might* commit a crime is something that we have totally failed to get to grips with. On the one hand, there are people suffering from OCD who have obsessive thoughts about killing people (but who never in fact do) who are scared to go for help in case they are sectioned, and then you have people like Michael Stone, who allegedly asked to be locked up in case he killed someone but was turned away, with tragic consequences. Funnily enough, on the same day, Jonny sent us the draft of his new short novel, which is on the exact same theme of how to treat people who to the majority of us seem like they are "mad" - are they dangerous lunatics, or are they visionaries?

Had a great idea today - I'll get my mate Steve, who works at the Ordnance Survey, to make me one of those customised maps he sells. Actually, a whole series of Landranger maps of Pictish Scotland, with all of the houses and roads removed, and leaving only the Gothic writing for ancient sites, and the placenames. That way it'll be easy to see what Scotland looked like in the Dark Ages, and see how the stone sites correlate with the Pit- placenames and also the Iron Age dwellings that the Picts were supposed to have taken over. Cos it struck me from looking at the maps of some of places where the stones were found, that they were near to (but not in the immediate vicinity of) Pit-places and ancient settlements. Also, they were all quite low down, and close to the water. Here is a good example. And here is another one. The arrow indicates the place where the stones were found, although that does not mean it was where they were originally placed.

Oops, I deleted yesterday's post by mistake. No great loss though as it was only some nerdy ramblings about Archaeoptics.

Today I shelved the whole Pictish thing and started back on the Popular Culture MA. The trouble with this year's course - Transformations in Media Culture - is that the whole thing was written back in 1998 by a crew of whingeing Luddites who still refuse to countenance the very existence of the internet, and instead harp on about the "imminent arrival" of digital TV as though we were collectively expecting the coming of the Antichrist. And while I have several axes to grind with Telewest (in particular their random numbering of channels and the broken Excel spreadsheet they deign to call a "TV Guide"), I wouldn't go so far as to consider them the earthly incarnation of Satan. Why, if it wasn't for digital TV I wouldn't have seen the Michael Ventris programme and I wouldn't have started back on the Pictish project - so dumb that down, you tweed-jacketed machine-fearing cretins.

Today was a milestone in internet history - the day that pictures of cats outnumbered pictures of people for the first time. In fact, at any time, you are never more than seven links away from a picture of a cat.

Pictish Things

Yay, tomorrow I will receive my copy of ECMS! Then I'm planning to maybe take a trip to Scotland in August to have a look at some of the stones close up, oh, and also to buy my grandmother's house, which my uncle is selling to me. If you stand on tiptoe in the garden you can see the Moray Firth and the Black Isle beyond it. Very beautiful. Unfortunately it is taking me so long to getting around to buying it that my Granny has put the Evil Eye on me, and has all but banished me from the family. Maybe I can distract her by giving her the portion of my project related to deciphering Pictish Ogam script.