Daiquiris are a girl's drink.

L'apartament

2007-02-23T15:26:00.000Z

I first saw this film at a Future Shorts night at 93 Feet East (I used to be Future Shorts interval DJ - I miss that actually.) Anyway, I believe the musicians and the film makers are Swedish and I think it's ace.

So good I went there twice

2006-12-16T15:50:00.000Z

Last year I'd never set foot in America, despite many resolutions I was always too broke (shout out to the debt mountain). Now I have been to New York twice thanks to getting a job with lovely people who deem it essential for me to go there. Aw shucks. Sometimes life is hard, you know?
Based on this last visit I've decided I definately [heart] NYC much more in a mild December than in the insane heat of July, at least my co-workers now know that I don't smell of sunscreen on a permanent basis.
The beautiful:
I like having an office to go to - somewhere to go stops you feeling like a tourist. Plus I managed to navigate the subway system properly. And I tipped people. Even with my non-tipping accent.
And then being a tourist: I ate a hotdog in the park and took pictures of Grand Central Station and skyscrapers and NYPD cars and sad-looking horses hitched up to buggies.
I like their lo-fi bars, putting a happy end to bar-pub debates.
And I like casual-pass-the-mic-around-the-bar-kareoke arrangements, though I am increasingly gutted that I missed the oppertunity to do Fairy Tale of New York, in New York, in December.
The lack of buildings from pre-1900 feels highly surreal (for someone used to the Georgian and Victorian centres of Britain's cities), but I love the glut of 1920s architecture and the decco lettering on shop signs.
And I love the micca in the pavemnts that makes them sparkle at night.
The apple martini. Hello!

The damned:
Feeling like the token British character in ER every time I opened my mouth and heard my accent jar and sound prissy in comparison to evryone else.
The hotel which gave me an eye infection, fused my hair straighteners and gave me suspisious looks when I gave them my Metrocard instead of my room key to be let back in late at night. (Okay I see the point on the last one. I'd been awake for 26 hours and it had nothing at all to do with drinking gin followed by Kirin lager.)
"Where you from? Ireland I bet. I'm Irish myself!" (For starters, no you're not Irish, not talking like that, and neither am I. Have nothing against the Irish, some of my best friends etc, but I do have a healthy respect for getting the facts right.)
The croissandwich. (Colleague: "You actually ate one of those?")

Now I am listening to Gershwin and about to start baking a vanilla sponge cake with white chocolate icing for Tom's birthday. It's a surprise, but Tom is the least internet person I know. The chances of him reading this ever are just above nil.

(With thanks to Lee for getting up at ungodly hours to take me to/ fetch me from Heathrow; Lauren for Japanese food and girl talk and to Joe and Yancey for being lovely to work with and taking me out for drinks, pool, singing etc.)

Buy my mate's book!

2006-09-29T13:04:00.000+01:00

This is a book that my lovely friend Paul wrote. It's about football, so not for me, but I'll read it anyway because he is lovely and I'm very proud of him.

Anyway - he's always been a good writer and if you like football or wish to purchase a Christams gift for someone who does, here you go: Prawns In The Game.

Blimey, it's like being Richard and/ or Judy.

What's your punchline?

2006-08-14T17:10:00.000+01:00

Based on Flatmate Tom's assertion that any evening is over when people start telling jokes ("you know, jokes jokes") the three of us thought it would be better/ more fun/ an interesting conecptual experiment (riiiight) to try and come up with punchlines to random joke openings. We weren't very good at it. 'Best' one of mine:

Tom: What happened to the plane load of sheep that went to Ibiza?
[silence as three red-wine-fogged brains creak about a bit.]
Me: They had it laaaaarrrge.
[Dave packs up laughing. I think this says more about Dave/ the amount he'd drunk than my abilities as a comedian.]

So...

How many Samuri does it take to change a light bulb?

Did you hear about the woman who could only eat cake?

So, Zidane walks into a record shop...

Go on. There's a comments box waiting for you. Make me laugh bitches.

Tapes 'n' Tapes

2006-08-14T17:07:00.000+01:00

"Did he just say 'I'll be your badger?"
"The name reminds me of stalker-ish indie boys."
"..."
"You know, how they'd try and win you over, mixtapes 'n' mixtapes 'n' mixtapes."

(I actually, on first listen, don't mind this album, but I'm currently failing to see what all the fuss is about.)

Purple hat

2006-08-11T15:39:00.000+01:00

The man was standing near the bottom of the escalator at Warren Street Tube station and staring at the picture. He looked like a photograph himself: tall, but with stooped shoulders, dark black skin, a crumpled black suit - although he'd removed the jacket and was letting it droop onto the floor - and a glorious purple Fedora with a tarnished gold hatband. I had a quick scan, being certain I'd see a battered horn case too, but there was nothing.
He was staring and staring at a picture of Her Royal Highness Princess Diana as photographed by Mario Testino; a poster for an exhibition. There was Di, slightly bigger than life, in black and white with that come-hither-but-don't-hurt-me expression she was so good at. And he was transfixed, looking her bang in the eye and as still as the picture.
He looked so sad. I was transfixed myself, by him not her, and I watched him looking all the way up the escalator.

I heart the 90s (or drunken nostalgia)

2006-07-31T10:21:00.000+01:00

"But the internet used to be the most facsinating thing!"
"I know. I had a holiday job working for the Drum 'n' Bass Arena and I felt so cool, trotting off to this internet start-up."
"I used to sit there with my orange clamshell i-Book..."
"Do you remember when lattes were actually cool?"

A small animated me, that looks very little like me.

2006-07-24T16:17:00.000+01:00

In the last week I've been to New York and played at Truck festival and I'm too, too tired to write about any of it. Later perhaps.

Daisy Duke? I hope your thighs get sunburned.

2006-07-14T14:50:00.000+01:00

Never shop for Daisy-Duke-style hotpants with PMT, never, even if three weeks ago or so someone told you you had a nice bum and seemed like something to cling to in the midst of Crazy Hormone Week. Now my self-esteem is somewhere below the Tube network and I have a headache. I can't find an over-night bag either.

Much better was yesterday, early evening, which was spent lowering the tone in the British Library by gossiping and scoffing chocolate brownies with F.

The Stirling Prize for softball

2006-07-13T20:15:00.000+01:00

David Attenborough: "In the warm weather they flock to open green spaces, seeking others of their kind, swarming across the grass in circular formations. This display is confined exclusively to the summer months and few of those who share their environment are even aware of its existence. They are architects... playing softball."

Yes, I found out last night that every Wednesday in the summer most of London's architects all go and play softball in Regents Park and follow it up by swamping the pubs of Camden. Apparently there were about 500 of them yesterday. The pictures in my head suddenly became all BBC nature documentary: wildebeest storming over the savanah; shoals of krill massing in the Antarctic; reindeer wheeling on the tundra, but all clad in serious designer glasses.*

Really, I mean who knew? You could probably halt half the building in the south east and seriously damage Nicole Farhi's British profit margins with a well-timed explosion.

*("So," I said to my informer, otherwise known as my flatmate. "How high was the poncey glasses count? Sorry to stereotype and everything..."
"Pretty low actually," he said. "I mean we were playing softball, people put their contacts in.")

Work

2006-06-30T17:21:00.000+01:00

"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

2006-06-28T15:00:00.000+01:00

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...

2006-06-28T10:59:00.000+01:00

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

2006-06-27T15:55:00.000+01:00

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

2006-06-26T17:03:00.001+01:00

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

2006-06-26T15:36:00.000+01:00

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

2006-06-16T16:44:00.000+01:00

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

2006-06-16T16:42:00.000+01:00

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

Housewife dementia

2006-06-15T17:31:00.000+01:00

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

2006-06-14T15:46:00.000+01:00

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

2006-06-14T12:03:00.000+01:00

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:

2006-06-01T12:51:00.000+01:00

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?

2006-06-01T12:42:00.001+01:00

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.)

Some things I will miss...

2006-05-30T17:04:00.000+01:00

I leave my current workplace tomorrow. I am glad to leave the entertainment news. But I will miss many things.

I will miss my laptop I will miss flirting with the cute guy in the nearby coffee shop I will miss possibly the best manager I've ever had I will miss being friends with systems support and getting 'server error' messages that say 'can I bum a smoke?' I will my miss my co-workers and their odd form of humour.

But most of all I will miss being Weekly Whispers. Whispers was my creation, and frankly a bit of a nutter. She was part Shimura-Curves-well-down-the-pink-wine, part Guardian fashion writer Hadley Freeman and, probably, part me. Whispers got to go to the Grammys. Whispers got to shout her mouth off and take the warped moral high ground about trivial subjects. She's excitable, scathing and, if she came to your party, would probably would drink your flat dry whilst talking 19-to-the-dozen about the similarities between Charlotte Church and Cleopatra. It's the campest, daftest, most utterly silly thing I've ever written and I wrote it every week (I did it last thing on a Friday, some of them are far more erratic than the one above). I think someone else will now take the Whispers mantle. I'll miss her, my little pink Frankestein's monster.

Space rock childe

2006-05-26T15:24:00.000+01:00

A member of a popular sapce rock band lives upstairs from my current office. He has two blonde children, both under the age of about four. I was outside just now and the small boy, bored by the conversation of adults around him, was hitting the pavement with his foot in the manner of one pressing a pedal and going "waaaaawhooooaaaawoooooommmmmaaaaaaa."

It's in the genes, clearly.

Spider monkey robot! Go!

2006-05-24T17:22:00.000+01:00

Fly my simple-game-addiction pretty, fly!

Swinging robot

Drone work will turn your brain to cottage cheese

2006-05-09T17:40:00.000+01:00

Search, copy, paste.

Search, copy, paste.

I am adding links to pages. I am being forced to care about the positioning of ampersands. I am adding links to pages.

I am so deathly bored that, in the course of all my routine searching, I ran a search to see if Tupac had any upcoming live dates. Then I swore very loudly at the CMS for being crap and not having an entry for a major artist. Then it crept into my addled under-used brain... yeah, right, Tupac's going to be playing live. Live. Clue there.

I am adding links to pages.

Headache

2006-05-08T14:43:00.000+01:00

For no reason. Unfair. Not responding to water or painkillers. Or yoghurt. Have 1000 pixel stare from sitting in front of computer.

Patsy Kensit has my jeans on

2006-05-08T10:22:00.000+01:00

I discovered Ms Kensit and I share taste in stretch demin whilst browsing Grazia magazine.

I think leaving my current job will actually do me some good. I want to live in a world where I will not be able to name every single member past and present of the Sugabaes, where I will not be reduced to spitting bile by the Sun's showbiz column, because I won't have to read it. (Special heads up to Victoria Newton here, outstanding achievement in the fields of self-obsession and pointless petty bitching.)

Obviously the money panic is not good, but at least I will be free from the swamp mindless tittle tatle.

Swimming

2006-05-07T17:17:00.000+01:00

For the first time in forever I decided excersize may not be evil and only for hearty, join-in types and went swimming. I'd forgotten how evocative the smell of chlorine is; as soon as I walked through the door I could feel one of those spongy floats between my fingers and the mouth scalding sweetmilk of vending machine hot chocolate.

Anyway - I really enjoyed it. Who knew? I usually view my body as a series of parts, sections to be celebrated or hated and hidden. It was strange to use my whole physical self and to be aware of my body as a mechanism. And I felt amazing afterwards, it sorted out my hangover very nicely.

Oh dear, I may be in danger of buying a fleece and some tasteful gold sleeper stud earrings and becoming a Lesuire Centre Person.

It's blogging month

2006-05-05T13:09:00.000+01:00

Odd really that I only ever get the urge to blog in May. Possibly it's something to do with the onset of summer that creates a need to hide away indoors with the windows open and curtains drawn. Still, this year I intend to keep it up. Really, truly. I am also wondering, if I do keep it up, how long it will be before anyone I know cottons on? I have internet rounds of blogs and message boards and MySpaces and Flickrs, but I'm not really in on those of anyone else.

And the pink has gone. What was I thinking? Actually I know what I was thinking, it's because I was going through a phase of drinking stupidly over-priced Barbie pink cocktails in late night gay bars with my friends S and V. So I ended up with a pink blog and a really embarrassing log-in name which shall never be revealed to the world. Ever. Ever ever.

(Ever ever explained: Someone's playing Kanye West in my office.)

Why freelancing sucks: part one of many

2005-05-24T13:31:00.000+01:00

I had lots of things I wanted to write now that I've decided to blog again. I had my first ever gig on Sunday, my friend's band are going to be on MTV - but - I just want to moan about feeling ill.
I have a cold. I can't breathe through my nose. I am shivering.
Can I go home?
Can I Hell.
The joy of being on a day rate has me being stuck here until six.
I want to be somewhere warm and have a small cry.

Sounds from my bedroom window

2004-05-20T16:53:00.000+01:00

My flat sits on a corner, at the end of a row of typical north London Victorian redbrick. If the traffic is light and the sash window is open I can hear most of what happens on the street. All these people who think they are alone in the road or cocooned in the solitude of their car, all these people with stereos and arguements, they forget you're never really out of earshot in a city. Here are the aural snapshots from the last day or so.

22:17 Two men talking in Turkish with great animation.

22:18 The arythmic clopping of a girl running in high heels. When I lean and look out I see her silver top and her long blonde hair falling about her face.

22:20 "Tell her," says a woman's voice. "Say 'Just shut up!"

22:38 A man, northern: "Er er what's his name, his name ... Ian Duncan Smith. He was fucked [inaudible] election. Fucked mate."

0:13 "But I didn't drink anything last night."
Giggles, a woman says in a friendly way: "I love you. [inaudible due to passing car] But Amy said... [passing car]"

7:20 Some spacey R'n'B from a car stereo

11:30 Child screaming so hard it sounds like it's about to vomit.

14:42 Man shouting "I've got a sore arm!" and Dizzee Rascal shouting "fix up/ look sharp!" from a radio.

First post

2004-05-17T09:42:00.000+01:00

For a long time I've thought there was something faintly embarassing about blogging, as it relates to me at any rate, I'm quite fond of other people's. But still, I'm here now.