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Thursday, 27 2003
Maeshowe webcam is online again: watch avidly every day then forget to look on the day of the action: that being the 21st of December, the shortest day. Forget to see the sun beam penetrate the dark tunnel of the tomb as it rises and sets behind between the Hoy hills. One year, I'll remember! As with last year, here is what you should see.
Wednesday, 26 2003
You get nothing for free...
Just like the time I thought I could disprove gravity after a vivid dream in which I flew round my bedroom, I have been found to be wrong. I love getting things free: multiple newsletters arrive for me from various 'freebie'-type websites, alerting me to places I can get coupons and discounts if only I buy buy buy! Only last week I was frantically trying to find something to buy from John Lewis's online store so I could get £10 off anything over £20. (I got some fab snow-flake fairy lights - frozen glitz for our dirty windows.)
So several months ago I signed up to be a 'consumer reporter' for a firm who conduct the final stages of testing for various products. Essentially I am to use a product, which is disguised in a plain bottle, and give my reactions as an experienced consumer. Today I got my first batch: a firming cream and a foot lotion. To be applied twice a day, in firm sweeping movements.
... fatigued after a session on the production of Adenosine Triphosphate during the Kreb's Cycle I decided to have one of my standard boil-heat baths. Oh, the relaxation! But now, when usually I should be weeping with heat from my home-made sauna, I am shivering & chattering. The free cream contains menthol it seems: so much menthol I shall have to go to bed in my new eskimo snow boots and floor-length cardigan. I have to use this cream for 4 weeks: surely then, by Christmas Day when free of the dreaded mint-menace, I shall have shivered my way into a size 8 gown, which I shall purchase using my coupons.
All very well, but what will my next freebie be? And why is this the second night I may have to sleep with boots on? Cinderella with her free fairy magic and slipperly glass slippers has nothing on me!
The eskimo boots are my Christmas present from Stan: I have always been incapable of waiting for presents - unfortunately for Stan this works both ways, as he has now been told of the birthday surprise I bought him. Yes, in March we are going to see Kraftwerk at the tarted-up art-deco cinema on the South side of Glasgow, now rather grandly called The Carling Academy. I have to practice my robotic dancing: perhaps I can bribe Stan into doing a lifetime of housework in return for not embarrassing him with a robotic Kraftwerk-inspired dance.
Sunday, 23 2003
I love Mandy, the lighter-aloft Barry Manilow standard. You came and you gave without taking, but I sent you away - oh Mandy. Once upon a time, me and a few chums discovered it amongst a parent's record collection: it was my moment of epiphany - this is how music should be, and ever since that day, when the piano-bothering Nose revolved into my life I have appreciated only music with a climactic verse and surging chorus. No avant-garde flanging sitars for me thanks very much!
Stan is an aficionado of Kraftwerk and Stereolab: were either of these beep-beep-oink type music makers to come up with anything comparable to Mandy, or a Kenny Rodgers number, I too would love them. Mandy is real - she's no show-room dummy. However....the recent news that the direst of boybands, Westlife have recorded my tune is forcing me to re-evaluate my tastes. What if they decide to cover Here comes your man by The Pixies? or my favourite tune of the moment Hurt by Johnny Cash? Can their saddo attempt to get to the Christmas number 1 and retain their creepy boyband crowns kill my love for Mandy? Has the inclusion of ringing bells dampened her spirit?
Wednesday, 19 2003
In the ever-changing world of p.mitts, I have finally hit upon a comple arrangement of 'things' which mean the largest amount of people can see it looking okish. Before, I suspect only I saw it at it's best. The End.
Living in a world of perpetual tiredness, I am beginning to appreciate how a new mother might feel - well, I would had I any responsibilties other than making sure Stan puts the milk back in the fridge & doesn't leave wet towels on the bed.
At the airport this morning seeing G off, I was struck by how places such as that are so transitory: not one thing is ever the same: no routine, only patterns of normal: the stroppy customers, the excited travellers, the disasters and the blur of faces and thwack of baggage labels against conveyor belts. G's leaving to return to her home in New Zealand left us strand-ees bewildered and sad at the sudden disappearance of her personality as she trundled through a stark corridor lined with bright white plastic. A tunnel of light to rebirth? Don't talk rubbish I'm telling myself, but the journey to a place which in this country represents freshness and better possibilities seemed symbolic to me when I made it 2 years ago. I returned with nails & no fag habit.
The one's who're left behind think they have it the worst, but right now, knowing G is somewhere over the Atlantic as I type, I feel for her: the not knowing is not easy.
Monday, 17 2003
On my way tonight I sat opposite a smartly dressed man, in his late 50s. He had a suit with a smart parka and well polished brouges, neat grey hair and a crisply-cut moustache. He also clutched a bag - not a sleek briefcase as his garb would suggest, but a very old Safeway's plastic bag. I could tell it was old because it was of a thicker gauge of plastic, the generation of poke prior to the supermarket's cost-cutting measures, when poly bags were strong & cat-litter-worthy. It had a powdery look - the lettering, a thin layer of plastic, was degrading into a scarlet and moss-green ether. Was he an environmental warrior in his spare time? or a typical Scot who keeps his good bags for Sunday best?
What would someone like me - a noticer of folk - see in a person like me I wonder? Ruched socks, concertina-ed under her feet slowly driving her mad on her walk to work: she imagines the girl vowing to conduct an itinery of her sock drawer: two circuits of the sitting room per pair to establish elasticity and grip. Bag held over belly - a camouflage measure to disguise the lurks a horrid drunk man might once have mistaken for the 4th month of pregnancy. Figity eyes - the horror of having to have ocular standoffs with strangers on the way home.
As you can see, p.mitts has changed again! Blinkin' Cascading Style Sheets!!! In theory they should simplify matters, but for neep-heid here they are a bloody nightmare. If any of you can advise me on how to ensure I have clean table-less pages without layers that tango about the place,please tell me!!! I've got a grip on how to go without <font> tags etc, but giving up tables? Crivens, I'd be better off trying to stop sucking my thumb.
Sunday, 16 2003
Remember remember the neeps of November.....? As we are the Partick Clampitts, keeping all items regardless of value, our neeps were left to their own devices on top of some cookbooks. Here, witness their evil.
This afternoon the lovely Stan and I took a walk through the crisp & sunny West end on the hunt for lunch. This part of Glasgow is encrusted with interesting food-shops - all mouth-wateringly similar though. Bruschettas and jus and cappucinos of raspberry cream with julienne of industrial-carrots. After much wandering, Alice-like we stumbled down a lane to Tchai-Ovna tearooms, where we had wonderfully fresh teas: me Chunmei-Zhenmei - aka noble eyebrows and Stan Pai Mu Tan (white tea ). Along with this we had a platter of vegetarian greek delights followed by a most delicious muffin: chai chocolate - light and moist with cocoa, cinnamon and ginger with a creamy icing of cardamom.
I shall be found in the kitchen, experimenting with cream, cardomom pods and tea bags.
Saturday, 15 2003
Not on holiday, no not me. Neither in hospital, no I have been doing some exciting things: the equivalent of spring cleaning, I have now updated polkadotmittens to a clean swish level of style and design.
using the beauty of cascading style sheets, all my text, images and link obey certain domanatrix-like rules I've set. For example, normal links are underlined when your mouse hovers over them, whereas certain links, like the comments, make your cursor turn into a magnificent question mark. I have various categories of writing styles - so get ready for a rainbow of joy!
From Clampitts to clean - the disappearance of the Hoover from outside our door seems to have traumatised Stan. We now have a giant mock-persian rug. After a night of revellery with his chum B he mistook it for a brand new really expensive real Persian carpet. The reality of the carpet is it's clarted with manky dog hair, and as it was found in the rain on a rainy rainy night, it'll guff of fetid dogs and nappies by tonight. I anticipate a barrage of neighbours, hammering on our door.
Thursday, 06 2003
It is one minute to midnight, and I sit here in jeans and one boot. Oh but it's a sexy boot - a 4-inch stilletto heeled pointy number: chocolate suede. And it's now my bedsock, as I cannot get it off. Testing outfits should only be done when one is not alone: now, I shall have to sleep in my jeans and my boot, and I will have to walk to work in a pair of shoes I vowed would only ever be worn from door to taxi to pub table. Last I wore them I felt I was dying from the toe up: withered trotters.
horror of horrors - this time last year I'd fallen down the stairs at Hillhead underground, twisting my ankle after chortling about my fear of getting 'trotters' - ankle snapping off leaving me with a bare bony extremity upon which I must forever hobble. Oh wicked fate!
Goodbye spangly cursor - though I never knew you at all, you had the grace to skip and twinkle, while those around you crawled.
Wednesday, 05 2003
blogday
17:49
Like a bairn who's had too much sugar (approx 7 too-hard ginger biscuits) and too little sleep (had to have afternoon nap) I am currently in a foul mood. Stan has bitten once my rancid bait, he has now retired to the gloom of the sitting room where he's watching some sci-fi crap acted by folks wearing false foreheads & pressing random lit-up panels as if they were really driving some ridic aircraft about the galaxies. Humph. And the eejits outside are really pissing me off too. At this rate I shall be sitting alone in the bedroom with my ear muffs on, sucking my thumb and vowing revenge on everyone..anyone. The Christmas Cake was a success - in that it didn't burn. It's like a slab of burnt baked beans: too thin and an embarrassment to the cake genre. I shall have to layer the icing so it bulks it up: cake steroids. When I unwrapped it from the parchment paper I had that irresistible urge to fling it down the close. Then of course I'd incur the wrath of Mrs McFelch, the close guardian. Once, when I was about 12, I spent a week or two of my summer holidays making - plates out of salt dough. Yes, salt dough. I made a dinner plate and a side plate. I cooked them. I painted them intricately. They looked wonderful, in a salt-dough dinner-set way. I then got so filled with fury at some unmemorable flaw I smashed them against the outside steps. At least I had that foresight: my mother's face had I came over all Greek on her lino would have been a sight.
Don't you hate it when you're really angry, but forgetting why you begin to smile. You just have that feeling you shouldn't be curving your mouth upwards, so you fight it off, like you had to do in Sunday School, when the mannie talked about love.
14:26
From Stromness, the daughter of a nurse and a fisherman, there are always aspects of the news which seem pertinent to the people and place from where I originated. Usually its the NHS, but today the MSP for Shetland has caused a furore by speaking out against the Common Fisheries Policy. Basically this policy means fleets from EU countries can puff round EU waters hoovering the seas clean with their giant nets and uber-trawlers. Fishermen in Orkney and Shetland see Danish boats being allowed to sook up all manner of fish while the Scottish fleet use large-holed nets with special escape panels for young under-developed fish; then they see Irish and Spanish fishermen being given grants to build new and larger boats while the Scottish fleet continue decomissioning. Sustainability it seems applies only in some places.
Tavish Scott has retracted his statement, saying ministers did not believe withdrawal was in the interests of Scottish fishermen while earlier in the day he asserted If we could get rid of the common fisheries policy, which demonstrably does not work, I believe it would be possible to construct that regional policy involving, for example, Faroes, Shetland, Norway and Iceland.
Re-election chances?
12:47
What is your tv to room ratio? We have 5 rooms - bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, sitting room and hall (which counts as a room by virtue of it housing The Computer). Our ratio is 1:1, having 5 sets. One 1970s Sony Trinitron in the black, red and beige bedroom; one yellowing 1970s Sony Trinitron in the glossy mauve kitchen (which has a minty green areole around the pendulous light); one late 1980s Toshiba and two 1970s white and black portables (one Indesit, one Bush) in the beige and smoky grey sitting room. This brace of monochrome sits at the end of the sofa: an excellent table for various bags and things I daren't fling out.
Anyhoo....must go and sift my flour and line my cake tin: my plush media-centre is filled with the undelicate scent of Sainsbury's cheapest brandy.
11:05
Drying my hair, I have to find The Fuse: our one 13amp fuse, which services the hairdryer and the hand mixer. The corresponding plugs of course use different screw heads, so this is a welcome opportunity to practice plug-changing.
Talking of fuses, the dry cracks of firework racket shall rise to a noisy symphony soon: more Peter Maxwell Davies though than Beethoven. Last year on the evening of the 5th, I walked through Hillhead terrified as all around me sparks and rockets errupted in a cacophony of light and gleeful noise. When I was young it never occurred to me to buy fireworks - so I am mystified as to how all the kids round here can be able to re-create the fireworks display from the Sydney Olympics. Tying a firework to a puppy so it dies? What fun. Last year my chum Mary was shocked to see a rocket whizzing towards her as she walked through Kelvingrove Park. Responding to reports of these rogue light-display technicians and their frightening activites must take up a fair proportion of police resources at this time of year - so why is it so easy to buy them?
09:53
Peel and raisins and glace cherries are soaking in brandy: I feel quite sick have such a whiff of drink at this time in the morning. While I grated my zest and squeezed my oranges Fred MacAulay on Radio Scotland was talking about Guy Fawks' night - the historical reasoning behind it. It's interesting to note that way back in the time of King James the 6th/1st we can find conspiracy theories: this one being that there was a cabal of hard-core Protestant MPs who turned a blind eye to the ferretting of a group of dodgy Catholics, led by Robert Catesby, under their Parliament building. They knew the plot would be uncovered, generating a limitless supply of anti-Catholic feeling which would guarantee the future of a Protestant Britain.
It seems in Stromess this worked a treat: still to this day we have a tradition which echoes the age of religious hatred & paranoia. Us Bloody Puddings have a right time of it during mid-winter. From Halloween til today we have neeps sitting in our living rooms, the root-vegetable effigies grimacing at us as they soften. Ripening thus, they become more sinister: the faces more evil as their time comes….
After all the fun of halloween, on the night of the 5th we would process to the bonfire where we fling our lanterns into the flames to burn up alongside Mr.Fawkes.
How wholesome and sweet – nutritious too really, encouraging us to eat raw neep and lots of clapshot…Except we call our lanterns pops and when we chap the doors of the houses we chant penny to burn me pop and historically we burnt them as effigies of the Pope. Lost the origins of this tradition are, or maybe deliberately obscured: for who wants to admit to such anti-Catholic sentiment these days outside ofthe fringe members of certain football supporters’ organisations?As a child I knew nothing of this history of anti-papist feeling which gave me such fun during the long dark nights of winter. George Mackay Brown, writing in his column Under Brinkie’s Brae in 1978 described us as sweet little turnip bearing tyrants.
08:28
My name is Christine, and I have the day off work on a spurious claim: my day is to be recorded for posterity: my arse you say - well, it's kind of true! You may know me, you may not, but here is my website where I generally explore issues of slight relevance, but if I continue in the vein I have been, I'll have a black n' white record of all my childhood memories of growing up in Orkney. Too I have several issues I tend to go back to in times of thought-drought: food, skin and Orkney in general.
As usual I have been snatched from sleep at half seven by the industrial cockerel calling all the workers over the river at the BAE shipyard at Govan. Waking up in Stromness can be compared like this: you're either woken by a real feather-clad cockerel, or by the awkward sighing of cows on their way to the milking parlour. Either way, it keeps you in touch with your roots I guess.
Excuse me if it seems I never shut up today - I am here recording my day along with making a Christmas Cake for Stan's ma. (eek! - just minded on to take butter & eggs out of fridge). It's a bit late in a Delia-scale to be heaving sticky cubes of peel into a rich egg-butter batter, but I figure if I baste it daily in a basin of brandy it'll taste as if it's been made for years...
I think I will now go & soak my fruity bits in said alcohol.
Tuesday, 04 2003
Like a feart cat, I have poked my whiskers around the door: tomorrow is blogday, and it is to be a normal day, except one where I shall be broadcasting in 10-point Arial to a best kens who. My whiskers have been brushing up against the other blogs which are taking part in BBC Radio Scotland's project to chart a day in the life of Scottish techno-diarists. As the keeper of p.mitts (my affectionate term for this digital time-sooker) this has proved to be a fabulous excuse for taking a day off from the dusty grind of library life. I have got 2 litres of milk and made a tray of the hardest ginger biscuits you can imagine. Stan has been banished from the computer so as the mistress of all I survey I shall be filling up this page with screeds of fabulous observations and opinions.
Finally we are more Conran than Clampitt: I refer to the hoover that was a permanent feature outside our door: now we are sleek where once we were a junk yard. It sat next to a black plastic bucket, which Stan loved to fill with contraband crisp packets and sweetie wrappers he thought I'd never see. Now all we have outside out door are two bikes (one road, one mountain), a statue of a snake and a doormat. Woman next door has a mega-yukka, a mini cabbage plant and a huge leafy number. I want botany bay on my doorstep too.
Saturday, 01 2003
November's here in a crisp of leaves and flurry of scarves. Oh I love winter! Hats and gloves and intense stews nibbled at while sitting in your warm cosy living room watching the darkening sky. And fireworks too - hence my scintillating cursor trail which shall accompany us through this glittering month.
This is a busy month - preparing for Christmas, watching fireworks and going out for more meals than I have during the rest of the year put together: I shall suffer through it! A friend is leaving too: jetting off to her balmy home in the southern hemisphere: their gain is our loss!
On the 5th I along with many other Scottish folks shall be taking part in BBC Radio Scotland's Blogday, when we shall be asked to write about various aspect of our day, the resulting screeds being recorded and arranged into a programme to be aired I think, that night. It's so exciting thinking about it - hearing what other folk sound like and how all of our styles, personalities will be arranged. I imagine it as all of us coming to the producer's house each with a flower (I shall be a daisy I think) and them being arranged into a pleasing sheaf of colour, texture and shapes.
Last night Stan took me out for dinner - it was utterly wonderful: the place, Arisaig in the Merchant City, was dark with wood, its air rich with delicious aromas. We had booked through 5pm.co.uk so had got a great deal of two courses for £12.95. I had the beetroot in beer batter, which was sweet and tender, then the peppercorn chicken - succulent and accompanied by a glossy whisky sauce. Mmmm...the curry I have for dinner tonight seems rather one dimensional in comparison (especially as it's out of a jar!)
We then headed off to our favourite pub, mono, where it turned out they were having a halloween party. Nigel the manager was fabulous as Frankenstien's monster, though Stan said hello to him as if he were in his normal get-up. There was a dominatrix mermaid and a Nosferatu with exceedingly convincing ears. My chum who works there was a female pimp: her moustache was waxy and excellent, but with her short blonde hair she looked more like a menacing milky bar kid. I have warned Stan that next year we are going...any ideas for outfits?
Stan's out so I've russled up a pile of cocoa courgette muffins (with added chocolate chips), which are being consumed along with a vat of tea. (memo to self: must get more teaspoons - we have place settings for 10 but only 5 teaspoons, one of them being the silver spoon I was born with, which burns as soon as you waggle it about to extract all the goodnesss from your teabag). What's wrong with me?! - I have nothing better to do on a saturday night than eat and indulge in my new obsession....airbrushing. One can make oneself look exceedingly bland and hollow, so I've decided to eery-ify myself
In this a shot Stan took of me at Milngavie train station in June. It's a great shot as it conveys more about me than a posed smiley number would.
I flattened the colous slightly with Alien Skin Doctor's JPEG repair tool, then used a combination of burning, which darkens areas, and dodging, which lightens. I decided to create a dark foreboding atmosphere, with a very artifical dart of light over my cheek bone. What does it all mean?...
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