Wednesday 31 2004
Oooh my aching thighs! Was out prancing about the park with my running club yesterday. It's composed of three persons with whom I work. We heave our way past frisbee players and skateboarders, picking up our pace when other joggers come into our line of vision. Shame is a wonderful motivator.
Having missed two weeks due to my highly cultural lifestyle (Kraftwerk & Barcelona) I was horrified at the change in the park: along with screeds of bluebells and squirrels are humans. They sit, walk, and generally get in the way - in the sense they're there while we're trying to better ourselves. By high summer we're hoping to be ultra fit, and in my case have either reduced my rear or have found a bum bra, to hold in check that wobbling shelf.
In reality we're pretty good for a bunch of ladies who sit on our arse all day scoffing sweeties and slorping tea - green tea in my case seeing as I'm so health conscious...
On our second week we got abused by some little boys when we tried to have a go on the helterskelter: I'd said "we've got much better things to do than chase you little shits" to the woolly-hatted leader. His response made me screech inwardly and lament the kids of today:
"You'll no say that when I smack your hole"
That week we ran away, but ever since we've looked for them, hoping that we'll come up with some fabulously scathing remark that will make the little fuckwits think "hey, these ladies are right. I renounce petty crime and anti-social behaviour."
I got my exam results - got a B, which is what i need to get into my first choice university. Yippee! As a silly perfectionist I'm annoyed I dropped from 85% average to 64%, but its annoyance that my bloody procrastination worked so well. I've started making lists & charts: with Barcelona over I've nothing to plan - losing lard & passing my exam in May are my new obsessions...
until I find something else to plot & plan like a master criminal...
Sunday 28 2004
Yesterday I bought a pair of boots, taking my total to seven. Yes, should Glasgow be snurved in snow for the rest of kingdom come, I shall be able to gambol like a winter lamb in my sensible footwear. Well, when I say sensible, I must omit the silly high suede pointers or the silly black pointers.
Such pointy boots force flesh upwards, giving an ice-cream cone effect, so should be avoided with short skirts. As seen in my detailed pen portait, above, they should also be avoided with the current trend for big turn-ups. Also, don't wear with big turnips, you'll look like an idiot. My new boots though are divine and are heeled within the realms of sense. 70s in a good way, they shall make me the bees knees amongnst those who dress 20 years older than they really are.
Last night we watched the BBCs glittering finale for the Best British Sit-Com. For months now this contest has been trailed on the tv, with micro-celebs doing hour-long pleas for each of the shows in the top ten. The Lovely Stan forced Mrs. Dearness and I to participate in the final by submitting out guesses for the final places. These he table-ifyed and accorded a bizzare system of points ...
The winner, of course, was Only Fools & Horses. Stan though was irate at the placing of Fawlty Towers at 5. After that was announced, he lost interest in his score card system: his fevered eye rolling and grimacing was akin to Basil himself. I think part of him would like to stride round wearing too-short breeks: I would be his Manuel but he'd say I am Sybil. That would be a lie.
Thursday 25 2004
In Barcelona did Stanley Stan
A dreadful cam'ra loss a-see:
Where he, by the Sagrada Familia, ran
Through winding streets measureless to man
Down to the mediterranian sea.
In Barcelona, a bright light city made up of dark winding caplillaries, Stan's camera was stolen. I could scan in some postcards we bought (but never posted) but they are the standard pictoral fare seen in any travel brochure. We're mid insurance-claim and its loss has made us determined to return. It was a time where we both saw so many excellent photos: the saucy french-maid's leg table, the lacey jazz of El Nus, the greasy saucissons, the cracked health-unaware sangria pitchers and the profusion of dog shit on the streets (paved with grey stamped cobbles, stilletto-wearers!)
We stood at the top of Montjüic and regarded the cityscape: it is a vast stretch of orange, brown and white squares which form the life of millions. I was underwhelmed looking at all this: it was the day after the camera loss & we were both struggling to be happy & not ruin each others holiday. Also my breeks kept on falling down so that the waistline cupped my belly, encouraging in to wobble like a perfect dollop of mayonaise. It's such a dry-looking place, despite all the hundreds of fountains. I guess that's what you get in the mediterranian.
Park Güell was stunning - in the manmade way as is much of the city. We dusty-scuffed our way to the top, then dust-scuffed our way to the bottom to coo at the the Hansel and Gretel buildings designed by Gaudí. Really, so parched do you get that you could imagine reaching out and plucking out of the ceramic squares. It would feel like a cold ceramic square, but it would taste like the juciest plum.
We ended up having a wonderful time: I am off pastries and gussied-up ham sandwiches for a long time though. I must learn some spanish or catalan so we can eat some different food when not in tapas bars (point & gurn like an idiot time). Hillariously, Stan speaks english with a spanish accent when in Barcelona. I can't wait to go to Amsterdam: his Orkney accent sounds Dutch by way of Kingston, Jamaica.
Wednesday 17 2004
¡hemos ido a España!
 
drrrrrahh!
Tuesday 16 2004
Just back from Kraftwerk!
It was a night of industrial pantomine, where the head villan, Ralph Hutter - a cross between Bill Murray and Terry from Emmerdale, would whisper asides into his call-centre microphone as his sinister voice carried over the relentless digital beats redolent of trains, wheezing cyclists and calculators. It was a fabulous show - so alien to me Little Miss Folk.
When the 4 human automatons appeared on stage, they had in front of them desks with laptops: the desks turned out to be keyboards, but by that time I was convinced they were starring in 'The Weakest Link - The Musical'. Behind them a system of posh overhead projectors beamed series of repetitive images: vitamins, Tour de France footage and 50s models parading about. Like Kylie they had costume changes, but Kylie doesn't sing about radiation.
My ears are crying & bruised and I am delighted to be back in the organic world rather than trapped in a bleak binary cell, but oh it was a good show!
During the second encore (there were three) the humans were replaced by robots made out of tailor's torsos with heads modelled on the group members circa 1985. They executed balleria arm movements with jerky synchronicity.
The whole extravaganza was so incredibly camp and truly was a techno pantomine. No sweeties chucked into the crowd though. Boo hiss!!
We're off to see Kraftwerk tonight at the posh-sounding Glasgow Academy - I wonder if they sell big foam fingers to point into the atmosphere as they belt out all their hits.
Sunday 14 2004
Exam tomorrow and I have just made a batch of muffins and cleaned out the food cupboard. The hoovering is done and the sheets are changed and my god I'd love to start scrubbing the walls of the kitchen.
The phenomenon of procrastination is a strange one: its another example of how we can kid ourselves into doing or not doing so many things. The outcome we avoid is a desirable one - in my instance, walking into the exam hall prepared and calm - but the preparation involves accepting not everything is known to me at this one point in time, that I have to allow myself to submerge my brain in information.
It is a case of Fear & Anxiety in Partick as I try to accept not passing well is not dreadful. As I try to revise polygenic inheritance I feel as if I were starting the 1500 metres after having finished the 800: I am out of breath, puffed. My energy reserves - my capacity for learning - are depleted and I am stopped from refreshing my memory muscles. When I stare at a page I see a layer of information that I am required to know, but behind this layer I am aware of a deeper layer of meaning: the things I'll never know stress me out because they're roads never taken, curtains shut on windows as I pass them.
Speaking of curtains, a woman who lives across the road from us has a lurch of lace curtain which scoops over her window. She lurks at the side of her sitting room and watches...she also shifts her furniture every three or so days. Either she has her sofa at her window, so she can comfortably keek out & see what's what on the street as well as keeping an eye on us across the road in our flat getting up to usual things, or she has her ginormous tv in the window, allowing her to watch us and the world from her favourite seat. I know this not because I am James Stewart in Rear Window, but because my cooking position allows me either a fabulous view of my greased-up cooker or of the goings on of said wifie. She also has a high shelf all round her sitting room on which sit porcelain dolls.
Understand that I am not the watcher, I just notice her watchery. Who's worst? The person who watches people, or the person observing the watcher's day to day behaviour to the extent she knows when furniture has been moved from 100 yards?
Thursday 04 2004
Two weeks til Barcelona. Yippee!
Problems...what to take to wear? A gal can't be sashaying round a cosmopolitan city looking anything other than utterly divine. So .... here's how the next two weeks will go:
- spend all spare time thinking about combinations of skirts, jeans, trousers and tops
- think of perfect shoes to match
- whittle down clothes pile to bare essentials
- add a couple of small items add shoes for going out in
- add trousers to match going out shoes
- add extra going out outfit
- add shoes to match extra going out outfit
We fly out on thursday the 18th - by tuesday I shall be packed and Stan & I will have fallen out because I am so incensed he hasn't even thought about what he's going to wear each day and he's aghastI have. We shall be there friday, saturday, sunday and monday - leaving on tuesday afternoon. Yes - I am aware I am redic: but oh the horror of not having packed and oh the horror of feeling uncomfortable!
I have reached a 'stage' in life where I accept in order to be happy at a given event, I have to plan in some respect. Yes, I'd love to be able to fling on a shapeless garment which becomes a stylish & new fashion statement, but the truth of being 5'4 (and a half)" and slightly rotund rather than a slyph means some stuff looks shit, and some looks grand. But...it's not as easy as having only clothes that look grand - because it depends entirely on time & place as to what looks good. This morning I had on something I wore last week & felt grand in, but this morning it felt 'yikk-o'.
Such is the nature of being vain I guess. Hopefully in a few years, when I have more important things to think about than how others perceive me, I can file 'thinking I look slightly yuk' under 'things I once thought unbelievable' in that I just won't give a damn whether I look yukk or bruck or phoawar.
Looking at UpMyStreet.com for some nonsense or other, I was drawn by curiosity to the 'ACORN' profile. What ho! I thought, sipping my tea, is this a squirrel-rating for an area? No..it turns out one can find out what sort of neighbourhood one lives in, or indeed is thinking of moving to.
As an ACORN type 23, this is me and my clyde-side comrades:
- a MEDIUM HEAVY viewer of ITV
- a HIGH purchaser of microwave ovens
- I take half the national average rate of car journeys to work
- we have over twice the averageproportion of people with degrees
- unemployment is around 20% higher than average
- we love gadgets and appliances weenjoy television advertisements, but are not so keen on radio and press advertising
- The Independent has high readership levels
- we run, play football, fish, do athletics, ramble, play table tennis, camp, climb and play darts
- we visit art galleries frequently.
- and finally, we have an above average consumption of a wide range of alcoholic drinks - draught ale, bottled lager, table wine, whisky, vodka and, in particular, gin
What I find bizarre is how the frequency with which one watches ITV - a commercial terrestrial TV channel - is used to decree an area's upward or downward mobility: that and the buying of microwaves.
Tuesday 02 2004
What a beautiful picture the Lovely Stan took in Aberdeen: the sparkling grey city was clad in thick snow over the weekend. It's like an enchanted fairy-tale landscape in his Ma & Pa's back garden. The bird table is winking through the twinkling sequin snow and the branches of the trees are dormant: like snatching hands ready to pounce on trespassing strangers.
Polkadotmittens has been a deserted wilderness for a while: digital tumbleweeds have been bleeping their way across my screen every time I crank open the 'thing' I use to make this site. Seems I'm not alone: Gina too is in pre-Spring weblog Doldrums. I worry that having an online presence is turning me further down the road to Raging Egomania Town and that there really is little point in documenting the minutiae of my life when I'd be better off getting out a bit more.
Rather than winter-sad I am light-sad. The increased sun and air circulating around me serving to depress me slightly: after a couple of years of adultdom, one realises every year there will be the same 'I will be healthy'; 'I will exercise'; 'I will be svelte'. These platitudes are brought on by the freshness of the air, the crispness of the sun, and - for a week or two - it's believable that this year will be the one where I banish the lurks, eradicate the bats and discover a new sense of self that will carry me through the following years wise and sage.
A likely story. I have purchased - online of course - a supplement containing various proportions of omega fatty acids 3, 6 and 9. It is hoped in Polkadot Towers that in thisplastic chalice I shall find the elixir to counteract my can't be arsed-blues.
Sunday 29th February
Today is my 1st of March: no phantom day for me thanks very much Julius Caesar. Take your extra day of winter & leap!
With Stan away this weekend I've eaten only pancakes and listened only to the radio, except for the hour round 11 today when I was (smug voice) jogging round the park. What though-provoking gems are to be found in the invisible caves of BBC Radio 4 .
Whipping up some parsnip soup at lunch time (my lent-ian zeal for pancakes having worn off by then) I listened to Gardeners' Question Time. I love pottering round to this, though having no acre of my own to plough & furrow, I furrow my brow trying to store up tips on how to deal with plants resistant to slugs, just in case I ever get a garden to ignore. The programme had a fascinating study on rhubarb and its growth. It creaks then it grows, and requires no food as it has its own inner strength compelling it to grow.
What a great idea for a novel: anthropomorphic vegetables: as the humans dither round in their lives, the crusading Crown of Rhubarb sorts out its tender's woe. Through it's intense inner power, it transmits positive energy to the gardener who comes to a sense of self by the end of the growing season. But like any good human, the Rhubarb has a dark side: its poisonous leaves, choc-full of oxalic acid, tempt the nameless gardener's cat to nibble a little (the grass it would normally eat to salve stomach problems having been blighted due to over-zealous application of organic fertiliser). The cat dies, and full of sadness the gardener starts to hack up the Rhubarb. This is the climax of the novel: the denouément comes with the gardener realising, thanks to the Rhubarb's creaking energy, that she must not fear and be able to accept blame. She is filled with calm, buries her cat and makes some crumble.
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