I am back from a very pleasant holiday in Greece. We had no access to a themometre (or a clock, which led to some strange meal times) but in our estimation it was ‘very hot’. Conversation with everyone you met centred around two topics. The first was the heat. You heard various tales of how hot it was. Stories of ’47 degrees in the shade were heard’, given that I wasn’t dead I didn’t believe those stories but like I say –very hot. The other conversation was mosquitoes. They were insane. I have been bitten over 30 times and I was one of the lucky ones. I am rocking some particularly beautiful ones which have bruised around the bite. My dream of returning bronzed and glowing with health are dashed. I have returned looking like someone you wouldn’t sit next to on the bus in case you got scabies. My dream of returning bronzed from a holiday is a dream that just won’t die. I am 31 years old. I am ginger. I have freckles and no discernable eyebrows or eyelashes. I have had to receive actual medical advice regarding the severity of burns that I got from merely walking to the shops. Yet still every holiday I go on there’s a voice in my head that says ‘this could be the year, you could go brown, you could have an amazing tan, you just need to let it build up gradually’. This theory is slightly flawed given that I lived in Australia for a year and returned paler than when I left- just how gradually am I planning on building this tan? Still I once again decided that this would be the holiday of brownness. But in the spirit of letting things build gradually I slapped on the factor 40 and kept to the shade. However this time there was the complication of the mosquitoes. By the time I had suncream and bug cream on this created some kind of reaction which made me erupt in to a disgusting rash and my skin take on the texture of gravel. Which meant I had to forgo the bug spray and get bitten a lot. I was still pale though. Then I fell asleep and burnt my back.
So I resorted to my default sun bathing position- in the shade with every inch of me swathed in towels. A bit like I'd died but no one wanted to interupt their holiday to deal with it so they'd fashioned me a shroud out of luridly coloured beach towels. Just waiting for it to get a bit chilly before they take me fishing and generally recreate 'Weekend at Bernie's'. So I return. Bitten, red and with some weird bubbly skin thing going on. Not really what I was aiming for. Great holiday though. I think my favourite bit was being told by a waiter that the reason Greek people weren't being bitten was because they drank ouzo - so we dutifully downed a couple of shots each night. When we told another waiter this theory he merely shook his head and said 'a man told you that right? I don't want to know how this story ends'
About Me
- Angel of Harlow
- Book out now on amazon! Buy, read, enjoy, tell your friends, buy a spare copy.
Saturday, 16 July 2011
Film idea
I have a radical idea for a film. I think it could spark a new genre and a mass spin off market. Following in the steps of Twilight, Step Up, Street Dance, Street Dance 3D it’s a film for teenagers who can’t be bothered to develop any tastes of their own and so rely on the media to tell them what they like.
So my teen film: it’s about a posh teenager who for some reason has to leave their private school and attend a run down, horribly terrifying school/prison which is entirely inhabited by all the children of the Sylvia Young Theatre school doing ‘tough cockney’. Why the posh child can’t attend a normal comprehensive with a mixture of people in it is not clear but also unimportant, Tarquin (as posh child shall be known) is flung in to this new environment. But here’s the revolutionary twist – Tarquin CAN’T street dance. He can’t even do any old fashioned dancing that he would have learnt at his posh school like ballet or morris dancing which he would have fused with street dance in an amazing new fashion leaving his peers breathless with respect and waving their fingers around and saying ‘hey yo that posh guy he is off the hook innit’. Instead Tarquin is forced to make friends and influence people by getting to know them and talking to them about a variety of topics. At some point he may do something utterly radical like go to the cinema with them hang out in a shopping centre rather than go to an illegal night club and have a dance off with a terrifying street gang who express themselves through skipping and speaking threateningly without ever swearing. At the end of the film Tarquin realises that if he just keeps his head down for a few years, makes some decent friends and then goes off in to real life rather than thinking that high school is the most important part of your time on earth and the best time for your life to peak is at age 15.
It’s radical but it might just work.
So my teen film: it’s about a posh teenager who for some reason has to leave their private school and attend a run down, horribly terrifying school/prison which is entirely inhabited by all the children of the Sylvia Young Theatre school doing ‘tough cockney’. Why the posh child can’t attend a normal comprehensive with a mixture of people in it is not clear but also unimportant, Tarquin (as posh child shall be known) is flung in to this new environment. But here’s the revolutionary twist – Tarquin CAN’T street dance. He can’t even do any old fashioned dancing that he would have learnt at his posh school like ballet or morris dancing which he would have fused with street dance in an amazing new fashion leaving his peers breathless with respect and waving their fingers around and saying ‘hey yo that posh guy he is off the hook innit’. Instead Tarquin is forced to make friends and influence people by getting to know them and talking to them about a variety of topics. At some point he may do something utterly radical like go to the cinema with them hang out in a shopping centre rather than go to an illegal night club and have a dance off with a terrifying street gang who express themselves through skipping and speaking threateningly without ever swearing. At the end of the film Tarquin realises that if he just keeps his head down for a few years, makes some decent friends and then goes off in to real life rather than thinking that high school is the most important part of your time on earth and the best time for your life to peak is at age 15.
It’s radical but it might just work.
Wednesday, 6 July 2011
Technology
I had to go to the bank this lunch time. To get there I had to navigate the joys of Oxford Street. This meant I not only dealt with the weather in July (rain/sun/rain/sun/hail/sub tropical cyclone/snow) but I was also wearing flip flops which meant that every so often I lurched sideways and nearly head butted some scaffolding. I also dealt with tourists who walk insanely slowly and suddenly and without warning stop dead. I got called a rude word by one for over taking. But hey, you can’t be too down when there’s coffee available on every corner and you work in the centre of one of the greatest cities on earth. Besides I was to have a real treat this lunch time. My mind was about to be blown.
I encountered the whizziest paying in machine I have ever seen. I had cash to pay in and so I trudged in, filled out a form and was looking around for an envelope to put it in when I realised things had changed (I don’t really pay in too often, I’m more of a taking out kinda girl). Envelopes and even paying in slips have gone, replaced by a machine which you just fling cash in to, it counts it and adds it to your account instantly. I did it bit by bit just so I could watch the little trap door open and hear it count the money.
Ahh technology. It’s great isn’t it. Makes paying in money that little bit more fun. I am also enamoured with the sparkling water tap we have here. I am easily pleased. But as I sit here drinking sparkling water and marvelling at paying in machines I am also quite angry. The emergency debate on phone hacking is taking place and it just staggers me to see what’s been going on.
Personally I think the people who sanctioned it should be called to account. Those that did it should be called to account and the whole sorry episode should be blown wide open and everyone involved should be exposed. But at a lower level, why did no-one ever question it? I watched the news this morning and there were journalists and friends of journalists talking about the pressure of the job and it was used as a justification for the acts. I know it’s easy to get caught up in a job. I know the feeling that it’s the most important thing in the world and then with a couple of months hind sight you think ‘Wow, I totally lost perspective there’. But seriously, as someone was hacking a dead girls voicemail and deleting messages did they never think – ‘you know what, I don’t think this is what I should be doing. No job is important enough.’ I fail to see how someone’s moral compass can be so off that they could do that. But they did. And as people higher up refuse to resign and say they knew nothing about it the problem continues. It doesn’t matter if they did or didn’t know. Someone needs to take responsibility. Someone needs to say ‘This simply isn’t right and it happened on my watch’. The more they cling to the wreckage the more they are causing damage to the families of the victims. They are also causing harm to themselves. They have lost their grip of reality and morality and need to walk away from the place they are in whereby they think these acts are acceptable. They need to hack in to their sense of decency.
I encountered the whizziest paying in machine I have ever seen. I had cash to pay in and so I trudged in, filled out a form and was looking around for an envelope to put it in when I realised things had changed (I don’t really pay in too often, I’m more of a taking out kinda girl). Envelopes and even paying in slips have gone, replaced by a machine which you just fling cash in to, it counts it and adds it to your account instantly. I did it bit by bit just so I could watch the little trap door open and hear it count the money.
Ahh technology. It’s great isn’t it. Makes paying in money that little bit more fun. I am also enamoured with the sparkling water tap we have here. I am easily pleased. But as I sit here drinking sparkling water and marvelling at paying in machines I am also quite angry. The emergency debate on phone hacking is taking place and it just staggers me to see what’s been going on.
Personally I think the people who sanctioned it should be called to account. Those that did it should be called to account and the whole sorry episode should be blown wide open and everyone involved should be exposed. But at a lower level, why did no-one ever question it? I watched the news this morning and there were journalists and friends of journalists talking about the pressure of the job and it was used as a justification for the acts. I know it’s easy to get caught up in a job. I know the feeling that it’s the most important thing in the world and then with a couple of months hind sight you think ‘Wow, I totally lost perspective there’. But seriously, as someone was hacking a dead girls voicemail and deleting messages did they never think – ‘you know what, I don’t think this is what I should be doing. No job is important enough.’ I fail to see how someone’s moral compass can be so off that they could do that. But they did. And as people higher up refuse to resign and say they knew nothing about it the problem continues. It doesn’t matter if they did or didn’t know. Someone needs to take responsibility. Someone needs to say ‘This simply isn’t right and it happened on my watch’. The more they cling to the wreckage the more they are causing damage to the families of the victims. They are also causing harm to themselves. They have lost their grip of reality and morality and need to walk away from the place they are in whereby they think these acts are acceptable. They need to hack in to their sense of decency.
Friday, 24 June 2011
Friends and phones
It is said by many that the mark and measure of a true friend is being able to go for months without talking then picking up as if nothing has happened when you do see them. I half buy in to this theory, surely in these days of mass communication it’s not that hard to stay in touch – but at the same time I have many of these friendships myself. Mainly by virtue of having lived in some far flung places and having friends that still live there and also because I really, really, deeply loathe speaking on the phone. My phone is always on silent and nowhere near me. It’s not that I don’t want to talk to you. I just don’t want to talk to you on the phone. Let’s get a coffee, let’s DO something. And if that’s not practical due to geography then send me an email. I’m better in email.
You can edit what you say in email. You can embellish events to make them sound interesting, because here’s the thing – when you haven’t spoken to one of your true friends in six months how do you make it sound like you have achieved something in half year? I spoke to a friend of mine the other night. He has a very exciting job. I don’t know exactly what he does but involves a great deal of dashing and daring and living in numerous foreign countries. He also has a love life and is very happy. I have no love life which immediately cuts my conversational material in half and whilst my job is fun and I enjoy it a lot it mainly involves being in an office rather than wrestling tigers whilst holding a bayonet between my teeth.
Now it’s not that you have to hype your life up to gargantuan proportions and I’m sure he didn’t ring up to hang on my every word as I recounted tales of dashing and daring – I’m pretty sure it was more of a catch up. But when your life is reduced to six months of ‘you know, going out and stuff’, it does being to sound like you are sitting home night after night rocking and talking to a special teddy bear friend called Mr Trousers.
Of course the second I got off the phone I remembered I had been away, I had done quite a few things and was actually ticking along quite nicely and there was no need to plunge head first in to the existential crisis I was heading for. However it would have been beyond weird to ring him up and suddenly start listing what I had been doing and doing so would have doubled my allotted phone time for the month (about twenty minutes). Therefore yes there are friendships where you can pick up and carry on and I love those kind of friendships and am grateful for them but you really do need to pick up and carry on and not try and summarise your life so far. Either that or you have to overcome a hatred about talking on the phone.
You can edit what you say in email. You can embellish events to make them sound interesting, because here’s the thing – when you haven’t spoken to one of your true friends in six months how do you make it sound like you have achieved something in half year? I spoke to a friend of mine the other night. He has a very exciting job. I don’t know exactly what he does but involves a great deal of dashing and daring and living in numerous foreign countries. He also has a love life and is very happy. I have no love life which immediately cuts my conversational material in half and whilst my job is fun and I enjoy it a lot it mainly involves being in an office rather than wrestling tigers whilst holding a bayonet between my teeth.
Now it’s not that you have to hype your life up to gargantuan proportions and I’m sure he didn’t ring up to hang on my every word as I recounted tales of dashing and daring – I’m pretty sure it was more of a catch up. But when your life is reduced to six months of ‘you know, going out and stuff’, it does being to sound like you are sitting home night after night rocking and talking to a special teddy bear friend called Mr Trousers.
Of course the second I got off the phone I remembered I had been away, I had done quite a few things and was actually ticking along quite nicely and there was no need to plunge head first in to the existential crisis I was heading for. However it would have been beyond weird to ring him up and suddenly start listing what I had been doing and doing so would have doubled my allotted phone time for the month (about twenty minutes). Therefore yes there are friendships where you can pick up and carry on and I love those kind of friendships and am grateful for them but you really do need to pick up and carry on and not try and summarise your life so far. Either that or you have to overcome a hatred about talking on the phone.
Tuesday, 20 October 2009
Dog Suicide
I was very relieved this week not to have participated in the suicide of a dog. I was at a meeting at a friends house and their dog was wandering around. At one point during the meeting someone leant over to me and said "the dog just got something out of your bag, I don't know what it was though".
There followed a rather frantic game of 'Kim's game' where I desperately tried to remember what I had had in my bag and what the dog could have eaten. My phone, my purse, my keys and my make up were all still there so I was fairly confident the dog wasn't in the kitchen tarting himself up and making long distance calls before driving my car away to do some shopping. I assumed the dog had just eaten a reciept or something but then I suddenly remembered that I had a pack of neurofen and a load of anti-hystamines in my bag that were now no longer there. The visions of a transvestite dog now turned in to visions of a dog in serious danger.
I pretty much reassured myself that I would have heard the dog crunching his way through a load of tablets and their plastic packaging but I still had niggling doubts that I had inadvertantly provided this innocent creature with the tools to end it all. The rest of the meeting wasn't a relaxed affair. I eventually confessed all to the host who laughed and suggested I take a wander to the kitchen to check on the dog. Who was fine. And seemed to me to have a smug look on his face.
There followed a rather frantic game of 'Kim's game' where I desperately tried to remember what I had had in my bag and what the dog could have eaten. My phone, my purse, my keys and my make up were all still there so I was fairly confident the dog wasn't in the kitchen tarting himself up and making long distance calls before driving my car away to do some shopping. I assumed the dog had just eaten a reciept or something but then I suddenly remembered that I had a pack of neurofen and a load of anti-hystamines in my bag that were now no longer there. The visions of a transvestite dog now turned in to visions of a dog in serious danger.
I pretty much reassured myself that I would have heard the dog crunching his way through a load of tablets and their plastic packaging but I still had niggling doubts that I had inadvertantly provided this innocent creature with the tools to end it all. The rest of the meeting wasn't a relaxed affair. I eventually confessed all to the host who laughed and suggested I take a wander to the kitchen to check on the dog. Who was fine. And seemed to me to have a smug look on his face.
Friday, 28 August 2009
Technology
Technologically speaking it’s not been a been a good couple of weeks. Admittedly some of it has been my fault. A great deal of it has not. I was not built for this age. I should be in the 1920s marvelling at a picture lantern. Not losing the will to live in the Car Phone Warehouse. Which by the way is the most ridiculously out dated name for a shop. Who has a car phone? It’s like popping to the Betamax Warehouse to buy a dvd.
A couple of weeks ago I went to the cinema one Sunday afternoon. I saw the Time Travellers Wife, which is alright, not sure I entirely understood it – just as I got my head round one concept (oh he can go forward and backwards) another one would spring up which would fox me – how could he write a list of the exact dates he would visit her? Anyway the sight of Eric Bana dancing around in the nip meant that I was fairly cheerful when I left the cinema, I checked my phone for messages, I had none, so I put my phone back in my bag. Or so I thought. I actually put it through both handles of my bag and it landed face down on some tiles and shattered the screen. Which isn’t handy when it’s a touch screen.
So I took it to the Car Phone Warehouse to make use of the insurance that I fork out for every month. Apparently they had to assess my claim as I have claimed on my insurance before. Yes, I have, when I hurled my phone in to a pint of water when I was asleep. This is why I have insurance, because I am clumsy, even when asleep. This is why I now wish to set the insurance wheels in motion. But no, I had to wait 72 hours to be assessed. So I thought I’d spend my time usefully backing up my phone. Or in my case, merrily deleting all the photos off both my phone and my computer. Did it properly too, can’t get any of them back. Great. I was mature about it. I cried.
I awoke on Monday ready to start the week afresh. Got to work and discovered that the central locking in my car had failed and I was locked in my car. I sat there for a while trying to decide whether to crawl out the boot or fling myself out the window. I wasn’t entirely sure if there was a release catch in the boot and I didn’t really fancy then being trapped in there. I also wasn’t too sure of my ability to Dukes of Hazard it out the window. However after a lot of pulling at handles and kicking the door (technical) I could get out the passenger side. Which is how I spent the three days before I could get it to the garage and have it fixed. So glamorous.
It was the strangest thing to break in a car. Almost as odd as the time that the wind caught my car door and knocked it off the hinges and I had to have the whole door realigned and glued back on.
Just so you know I drive a ford not a clown car where the doors fall off at random.
But now I have a car that opens and shuts and a temporary phone until mine is returned, still no photos though. Two out of three isn’t bad.
A couple of weeks ago I went to the cinema one Sunday afternoon. I saw the Time Travellers Wife, which is alright, not sure I entirely understood it – just as I got my head round one concept (oh he can go forward and backwards) another one would spring up which would fox me – how could he write a list of the exact dates he would visit her? Anyway the sight of Eric Bana dancing around in the nip meant that I was fairly cheerful when I left the cinema, I checked my phone for messages, I had none, so I put my phone back in my bag. Or so I thought. I actually put it through both handles of my bag and it landed face down on some tiles and shattered the screen. Which isn’t handy when it’s a touch screen.
So I took it to the Car Phone Warehouse to make use of the insurance that I fork out for every month. Apparently they had to assess my claim as I have claimed on my insurance before. Yes, I have, when I hurled my phone in to a pint of water when I was asleep. This is why I have insurance, because I am clumsy, even when asleep. This is why I now wish to set the insurance wheels in motion. But no, I had to wait 72 hours to be assessed. So I thought I’d spend my time usefully backing up my phone. Or in my case, merrily deleting all the photos off both my phone and my computer. Did it properly too, can’t get any of them back. Great. I was mature about it. I cried.
I awoke on Monday ready to start the week afresh. Got to work and discovered that the central locking in my car had failed and I was locked in my car. I sat there for a while trying to decide whether to crawl out the boot or fling myself out the window. I wasn’t entirely sure if there was a release catch in the boot and I didn’t really fancy then being trapped in there. I also wasn’t too sure of my ability to Dukes of Hazard it out the window. However after a lot of pulling at handles and kicking the door (technical) I could get out the passenger side. Which is how I spent the three days before I could get it to the garage and have it fixed. So glamorous.
It was the strangest thing to break in a car. Almost as odd as the time that the wind caught my car door and knocked it off the hinges and I had to have the whole door realigned and glued back on.
Just so you know I drive a ford not a clown car where the doors fall off at random.
But now I have a car that opens and shuts and a temporary phone until mine is returned, still no photos though. Two out of three isn’t bad.
Facial Mutation
I still haven’t renewed my passport. Although my MP has replied to my ranty email and has said he’ll write to the home secretary about my assertion that renewing your passport shouldn’t cost the same as a new one. I picked up the forms for my passport on Saturday and then went to get photos taken. I was relishing the chance to get rid of my old passport photo as I look like a junkie on a come down. I’m really not sure what happened but I have had to put up with it for 10 years. So I paid 4 quid, followed the bizarre rules (hair tucked behind ears, face in the oval – it didn’t fit) and then got a set of photos which show I have progressed from a junkie on a come down to …a junkie who will mug you in the street with a dirty needle. I looked at them for ages (mainly in disgust) and then convinced myself they weren’t that bad. Then met my friends for lunch and they were all reduced to speechless hysteria and then one of them said “take anything you want just don’t hurt my face” so I have decided they were unusable.
So I thought I’d lard on the make up, tie my hair back rather than have it stuffed behind my ears and have the photos retaken. I was planning to do it on Monday. Then on Sunday a small lump appeared on my forehead. I thought it was a spot so attacked it, it wouldn’t die. By Sunday evening I looked like I had been hit on the head and had one of those amusing cartoon style head bumps. Monday I came to work and my whole forehead was swollen and my lump was enormous. I went to the chemist and he said it looked like a bite so gave me some stuff to put on it. When I woke up Tuesday I was looking a bit puffy so I thought I’d slap a lot of make up on. Sadly I couldn’t locate my eyelids as they were so swollen. On closer inspection the bridge of my nose had blended in to my massively swollen forehead and I looked horrific. I cried. The mature option. And then realised that I was only crying from one eye. Which amused me for a bit and then I went to the doctors. Was put on penicillin. Spent the day hiding from the world. Woke up Wednesday to discover even bigger face, one eye swollen shut and two massive eye bags. Cried again. Went back to doctor. Now on steroids. Hid from the world.
Today is Thursday and I have some semblance of a face, I still don’t have the most defined features so I am wearing my glasses so people are able to guess where my eyes should be. Sadly I am having to wear them half way down my nose in a librarian style as the top of my nose is still quite swollen. Such is life.
Of course this is the week when the person I like asks me out for a drink. I have refused on the grounds that I would have to wear a balaclava. I may be being overly vain but I am not that attractive at the best of times, I’d rather not ruin my chances totally by having Krakatoa on my forehead. Which is so swollen it’s now a fivehead. I really hope this goes down soon. It is deeply unpleasant. I hate it.
So still no passport photos. I shall have to put it on the back burner and do it next week when I have some shape to my face. If you see me tottering around looking like Bette Davis in What Happened to Baby Jane then I am off to have the snaps taken.
So I thought I’d lard on the make up, tie my hair back rather than have it stuffed behind my ears and have the photos retaken. I was planning to do it on Monday. Then on Sunday a small lump appeared on my forehead. I thought it was a spot so attacked it, it wouldn’t die. By Sunday evening I looked like I had been hit on the head and had one of those amusing cartoon style head bumps. Monday I came to work and my whole forehead was swollen and my lump was enormous. I went to the chemist and he said it looked like a bite so gave me some stuff to put on it. When I woke up Tuesday I was looking a bit puffy so I thought I’d slap a lot of make up on. Sadly I couldn’t locate my eyelids as they were so swollen. On closer inspection the bridge of my nose had blended in to my massively swollen forehead and I looked horrific. I cried. The mature option. And then realised that I was only crying from one eye. Which amused me for a bit and then I went to the doctors. Was put on penicillin. Spent the day hiding from the world. Woke up Wednesday to discover even bigger face, one eye swollen shut and two massive eye bags. Cried again. Went back to doctor. Now on steroids. Hid from the world.
Today is Thursday and I have some semblance of a face, I still don’t have the most defined features so I am wearing my glasses so people are able to guess where my eyes should be. Sadly I am having to wear them half way down my nose in a librarian style as the top of my nose is still quite swollen. Such is life.
Of course this is the week when the person I like asks me out for a drink. I have refused on the grounds that I would have to wear a balaclava. I may be being overly vain but I am not that attractive at the best of times, I’d rather not ruin my chances totally by having Krakatoa on my forehead. Which is so swollen it’s now a fivehead. I really hope this goes down soon. It is deeply unpleasant. I hate it.
So still no passport photos. I shall have to put it on the back burner and do it next week when I have some shape to my face. If you see me tottering around looking like Bette Davis in What Happened to Baby Jane then I am off to have the snaps taken.
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