Work

"Everyone seems a bit down around here at the moment."

"Yeah, I was hoping that you coming in might lighten the burden."

"Honey, I'm a freelancer not the tooth fairy."

Sigh.

Cartoon Shimuras

Guess who found new software to play with? I know it's a bit crap, but I'm still proud of my efforts.

When Marianna and I went to the fair...

This was a couple of weeks ago, but I've been having picture uploading issues. We ate cherries and drank champagne at my house and then went and ran about on Highbury Fields.

Slump

I have the mild blues this afternoon. (Mild blues? Forgetmenot? Periwinkle? Ella Fitzgerald?) On the whole, for the last month or so, I've been feeling quite confident and upbeat, bar a few entirely justified blips, but today I am all out of sorts for no obvious reason. I'm looking forward to getting home and making an omlette with Caerphilly cheese and asparagus and having a really long bath with rose oil and just hiding for a bit.


Oh, My First Emo Blog Post. A landmark of sorts.

Still, at least I'll live longer. Maybe. Look.

Knee to know basis

Our KNEEgeeks bulletin board (forum) is the core of the KNEEguru community.

COME JOIN US -


It was only hurting a bit from slipping on the escalator at Liverpool Street Station and now I am being sucked into an Internet Knee Cult. And it is terrifying, soon I will be selling all my possessions to buy plastic models of the inter-condylar notch. Deprogramme me... please...

COME JOIN US


cannot resist... slipping... i want to be a knee geek too... tibia...

For AMP

Julie Burchill's sleevenotes from St Etienne's Too Young To Die:

The spirit of St Etienne resides in serveral select sites and states of mind. The smell and sheen of a dismayed seaside town the day after summer; anticipation; the straight, shiny, swinging hair of the perfect sixties girl as she jumps ceaselessly in slo-mo into the perfect MG; sorrow, oftn so sumptuous that it feels like pleasure; the lonely splendour of the first model home in Milton Keynes; the sheer, heart-stopping unimpeachable joy of waking up in the monring and stillbeing English.
Add to all the fact that they are the music heard on the edge of sound, and it was always a forgone conclusion that you would surrender to this most mellifous of menage a tois. Because if God is truly in the details then St Etienne sit at his right hand holding his slide rule.

Pop music, in all its squalid slendour, has always had a horrible habit of making one less than one is, boiling you down to the lowest common denominator of the big black throbbing bottom bass line; what's his name, what's his number and how do I get him? But St Etienne always made you more. You'd put on the Saints and sit around for hours musing on what it meant to be a girl, to be of the English blood royal, to be alive, to be duplicit, to be living after the fall of Communism, to be living at the end of the century, to be human. And then, and only then, would you genefluct with L'Heure Bleu and leave the house by the fire escape when all were sleeping to meet him by the waltzer and snog him on the beach.

Long before the current and thoroughly admirable habit of Brit beat bands writing soundtracks for films no one would ever make, St Etienne were writing the new, improved soundtrack for the one and future cinema Renaissance. They sound silver; silverer than any screen could ever be. And they cast a giant shadow, a Pale Movie itself. Like A Motorway expands into Two Into Three Won't Go; Hug My Soul sees in Here We Go Round The Mullberry Bush; You're In A Bad Way blows the whistle on Billy Liar; Hobart Paving collects the debris outside The L-Shaped Room. Just close your eyes and you can see Pearl and Dean's eternal blue sky.

Like coming from a cinema matinee into daylight, St Etienne strand you blinking and disorientated, but happy. And already you miss them, before they can even leave. And yet you want them to leave, so you can get on with the serious business of missing them. To late to say goodbye, but too young to die; remember them this way.

Apply pressure and elevate the spirits

In non-1950s-homemaker news, I went to see Applicants in Camden last night. They absolutely ruled. Amazing stage presence, witty samples and tooth-based guitar playing. What more could a girl ask for?

Then we all got stupidly drunk and danced.

I needed that.

Plant

Oh yes, I am a domestic goddess right now. I even bought a plant today.One day it may look like this:

Housewife dementia

I can't hack this no-day-job, no-flatmates thing and the boys have only been gone for just over a day. Loads of time away from work was lovely at first, but I started to gte bored last week and now, with no one to talk to in the evenings unless I go out and no one in when I get home if I do... put it this way, our kitchen is fucking spotless. I can't settle to write anything, TV is boring, reading is only working in half-hour blocks, the bobbin on my sewing machine is fucked (along with the computer, machines are raging against me this month) and I'm roaming around the flat feeling utterly restless and trying not to text those who shouldn't be texted or to phone everyone I know sounding faintly mental and needy. I am so, so, so bored. How do you do it, those of you who live alone? Actually I think I'd be fine if I had something to do in the day, but all this space is making me feel itchy.

Flatmate guilt

Having heaped praise upon Tom, I feel the need to say I also love Dave. After all, I have nicked his jeans today. (Yes, living alone for a week gives me all the fresh food in the fridge and the right to plunder wardrobes. Shame nothing really fits me.)

Doug love

My superbrilliantlovelybesthousemateever Tom remembered to pick up a copy of JPod for me before he left for Barcelona. This triggered a Coupland-off between me and Amp.

"I bet you don't have a signed copy of Generation X!"
"I do! Here it is!"
"Does it say To Miss AMP though?"
"Why in the hell would it say that, it says To Anna! AND I have an uncorrected proof of All Families Are Psychotic!"
"But is your GenX an American first edition? Signed in San Fransico?"
"No, but I do have a copy of City Of Glass which you aren't supposed to be able to get outside of Canada!"

(Remaining bandmates watched this heated exchange with mystified looks.)

Literary considerations aside (I am too hungover to go lit crit, I stayed up drinking with the boys who had decided not to go to sleep before their flight), I've always loved Douglas Coupland for his attention to detail, the poetry of the minutiae. Getting a fresh Coupland hit hightens my detail senses too and it suddeny seems very now and appropriate that I got Tom to get me the book because he works for a Big Corporate American Book Chain (Mc LitJob - ew, that sonds a bit filthy actually) and gets a staff disount. I plan to keep the receipt as a bookmark.

Anyway, as a homage to both Doug and Ms Masonic Boom's love of all internet quiz crap, here is my Living Cartoon Profile, adapted from the book.

Name: Anna
Name people actually use: Anna (I'm starting to feel one-dimesional, given my total lack of nicknames and net handles.)
Preferred room temperature: 20C
Favourite game: Minesweeper
Preferred Simpsons character: Lisa, especially when she breaks out of the standard red dress and into new outfits. Other than Lisa, I go with Miss Springfield for being fun to mimmic. ("And you was a girl Joe!")
Preferred karaoke song: Tough call, probably Brass In Pocket, though Lost In Translation has made that a bit cliche now.
Food group most prevalent within work cubicle: When I have an office job, the small skinny latte owns this section.
Has she, following the Death of The i-Mac (1999 - 2006 RIP baby), actually bothered to bring the book to an internet cafe in order to complete this? Yes.
Does this make her feel like a bit of a loser? Yes.
As much of a loser as the time she thought 'Some loser somewhere must have written out the sleeveotes Julie Burchill wrote for St Etienne's Too Young To Die, that's what the internet is for' and then couldn't find them and hit a real personal low by typing them out herself and becoming that internet loser? No.

In other news:

I finished work yesterday. I spent this morning lying in bed eating blueberries from a china dish and reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being. And now I am going swimming again. A day off, who ever would have thought it?

I love this photo, even though I'm sticking my stomach out in the pot-bellied way I used to when I was about five. Don't we all look lovely, despite the crippling hangovers? The girl in the photo looks about seven thousand times more self-possessed than I will ever be. Go photo Anna!

(With thanks to Miss AMP.)