Hair today, Hair-raising tomorrow

I was flicking through the local paper recently. Yes, flicking. I’m not interested in the MP’s latest photo opportunity at a non-event, or letters from Mrs Angry of Aylesbury who can’t string a coherent argument together, but the newspaper’s so desperate for copy they print it anyway, or a story about yet another damaged car thanks to yet another gigantic pothole, with Bucks Council trotting out it’s moronic response to everything: “We take these matters very seriously”.

So, flick, flick, flick …. Flick back again. 

What The Flick? Surely not. Hair discrimination? This I gotta read, if only because my blood pressure was a tad low that morning and reading something daft to perk it up was much easier than going for a brisk walk.

Now I'm backing Putin?

No. Not exactly.

But I have compared him favourably to Macron. Reason being, Macron is supposed to be an ally. A democratic soulmate. A peace-in-Europe advocate. A cultural cousin, sharing philosophical outlooks from Catholicism (not necessarily of the Roman variety) to the Enlightenment.

Putin on the other hand is, if not a true communist, certainly not a democrat. He’s not mad. He’s bad. Just look at how he treats the opposition. Novichok with your tea, anyone? Russians are mainly Orthodox Christians, and they never really ‘got’ the Enlightenment. Too busy fighting Napoleon, who was French by the way (well, Corsican, but close enough).

In defense of Boris?

No. Not exactly.

Even if BoJo didn’t technically break his own law, he broke the spirit of it, approved punishment for ordinary people who attended smaller social gatherings during lockdown, and then lied, lied and lied again, apologising only when there was nowhere else to go. Comparisons with Prince Andrew as being part of ‘the arrogant, entitled elite’ are surely not unkind. A failure of leadership and moral standing if ever there was one.

So that’s the end of this blog then.

Well, not exactly. 

Update on the baby-vomit

Yesterday I blogged about the yukky smell in my kitchen that I eventually worked out wasn’t rancid baby-vomit but a pint of double cream that had spilled into the reservoir behind and under the integrated fridge, inaccessible by definition.

The idea of a fridge reservoir is to catch the condensation that forms at the back of the fridge, which is then evaporated by a heating element so there is never any need to empty or clean it. And the idea of one whole pint of double cream heading into the reservoir, along with God-knows-how-much condensation, was quite a queasy thought.

Today's highlight was a funeral

Today didn’t start at all well. 

Coming down the stairs, I could smell what I can only describe as three-day-old baby vomit, bucketfuls of it. Bins need emptying, thought I. No they didn’t. Dishes need washing then. There were indeed a few in the sink, but only vegetably stuff from the previous evening. Something off in the fridge? Getting close. 

Shit Happens

The FT appears to have joined forces with the Guardian to bring down the privatised water industry because of untreated sewage polluting our rivers and coasts [i]^,[ii]. Basic journalistic principles of factual and balanced reporting are being sacrificed in favour of sensationalism, political bias and pandering to ill-informed public hysteria. Because shit sells; balance doesn’t.

Here we go again

I used to make boring New Year’s resolutions every year and religiously break them. Even more mind-numbing, I used to make and break the same ones, which included growing my nails, joining a gym, and giving up gin. The usual twaddle doomed to failure because: my nails are naturally weak and brittle; every time I go to a gym I do my back in and have to rest up for weeks; as for giving up gin … get real!

The past few years I’ve tried to think of more interesting resolutions that I might have a chance of keeping. Others have been suggested by friends, some of whom are no longer my friends as a consequence. Here’s a sample:

Twitter Twitter little spat

Way back in mid-November (which feels like a decade ago), I announced to the world that I had joined Twitter, albeit incognito. ‘Twas a big deal for me, a truly momentous occasion, and I devoted a whole blog to it … so, so sad.

Why did I join Twitter?

Welcome Back and Merry Xmas to my mojo

Some aspects of the festive season have turned me off for the longest time:

• The pressure to buy imaginative gifts when all I can think of are socks and scarves;
• The struggle to suggest to rellies what I’d like for Xmas and who are never satisfied when I say, Oh just a bottle of gin will be fine. (Although, one can never have too many earrings.)
• Mistletoe that has to be replaced every few days … hmmm, is that a metaphor?
• Glitter and pine needles everywhere that even my ridiculously expensive Dyson can’t keep on top of. (Ugh – preposition at the end, sorry);
• Xmas cards that are bad for the planet. All hail, JacquieLawson.com!
• Squeezing into too-tight sparkly clothes that I wear just once a year. Thank goodness for Bridget Jones’ knickers.

Sex and the City

This post is my raunchiest yet (for me, that’s not difficult) and written for the Girlies. So, Gents, if talk of fashion, make-up, bitching and sex is a real turn-off for you, look away now.

When SATC first hit our screens, I sniffily avoided it. I’d read the hype and decided it was nothing but cheap porn. What persuaded me to get off my prudish high horse and give it a try was the realisation that one of its pivotal characters was Carrie Bradshaw’s love-interest (one of her many, that is) Big, played by Chris Noth.

Be still my beating heart.

A Tale of Two Darkest Hours

On Sunday evening, replete with roast pheasant, accompanied by potato and butterbean cakes à la Clarissa Dickson Wright, and a fruity pinot to wash it all down, we settled by the wood burning stove to watch Darkest Hour, the 2017 film about Winston Churchill’s first few weeks as Prime Minister in 1940.

A sentence like the one wot I just wrote used to be benign, boring even, but now it’s full of triggers for today’s wokerati. One by one:

• Eating pheasant is alarming to extreme vegans (the vegans I know are reasonable and tolerant and I don’t include them in this post);

Little things mean a lot

There’s something relaxing, bordering on the therapeutic, watching a soufflé rise: whether it’s smug satisfaction at having made it; anticipation as to how scrummy it’ll taste; maybe respect for the science behind the phenomenon; or just childish wonderment at the tantalising transformation from slop huddled in a dish to the master of all that it surveys.

Red Letter Day with a Blue Stocking Lunch

Yesterday was a Red Letter Day – a day that is pleasantly noteworthy or memorable. The term has its roots in classical antiquity – important days are indicated in red in a calendar dating from the Roman Republic (509–27 BC).

I bet you always wanted to know that.

My dirty little secret

Please don’t tell anyone.

I’ve opened a Twitter account. Using a pseudonym of course. And it’s only a matter of time before I fire off something a bit too right wing or pro-Brexit or non-PC that attracts what I think is known as a ‘Twitter storm’. However, as no one knows who I am on Twitter, it doesn’t matter, does it? The attacks can’t be personal. The threats would be, in practice, empty. In fact, I might just fire off something OTT anti-Metropolitan-Urban-Elite deliberately to raise blood pressures, and then argue them into the ground.

The cure-all that is Mother Nature

The other day, with Monday's vile headache threatening to return, I walked about 12 miles. I’d meant to walk about 10, but I got lost, several times. I'd picked up a recommended walk from the hotel website in North Yorks where Hubby and I had decamped for a few days’ R&R (that’s Rest and Relaxation, not Rum and whatever-mixer-starts-with-an-R).

The walk’s written instructions were accompanied by a small-scale map, with the route highlighted in yellow, obliterating key visual details. The text included Yoda-style wisdom (not) such as, “Continue up the hill through the forest”, where there were two possible uphill routes – one went northeast and one northwest. Another said, “Pass through a gap in the wall by the water trough”; there were several gaps and no water troughs.

Blighty vs Krautland, plus the ‘OxCam Arc’

Knowing that I speak German, enjoy holidaying in German-speaking countries, my best friend lives in Germany, and I have a line of Zimmermans in my family tree, a mate sent me a link to an article in The New Statesman. Yeah. The New Statesman. To me. It was always going to end in tears.

The article (From Germany, the UK appears ever more dysfunctional and absurd) was penned by one Martin Fletcher. The name rang a bell. Even before I read the article, I found his website and recognised several of his previous articles in various publications.

Fletcher thinks anyone who voted for Brexit and then for BoJo, to get it done, is a fanatical right-wing ideologue, a jingoistic xenophobe, or was too exhausted to think straight, was easily seduced by lies and vacuous gimmicks. His vocab, not my interpretation. There’s no room in his closed, liberal-elite (probably metropolitan) mindset for the possibility of an intelligent, thoughtful, conscientious, responsible Brexit supporter.

Don’t blame Brexit or Covid.

Well we are in a dreadful pickle aren’t we. Christmas is going to be the worst ever. No cheap, plastic, Chinese here-today-gone-tomorrow toys under a non-existent Christmas tree. No factory-farmed turkey. No smashed avocado for breakfast. THE HORRORRRRRRRRRRR!

Oh, strap on a pair. What’s wrong with a jar of homemade marmalade from the mother-in-law (best in the world – the marmalade, not the in-law), paper chains made from discarded colour-magazines, a whole poached wild salmon, and my home-made, home-grown plum compote. Compared to Afghan women, Chinese Uyghurs, and white working-class northerners applying to university, what’s to complain about?

Einstein, Jesus, Irving and Beethoven

While writing my previous blog (“Inspired choices of music”), I had a feeling that I’d written something very similar before. I checked previous blogs – no nothing there. I searched all my documents saved on my laptop – including archives – and found an essay I had drafted in 1998 while living in the US. It was almost published in a prestigious magazine, nay TWO prestigious magazines, but the first rejected it after a monumental tussle between two editors, and I rejected the second when the editor said he liked the essay’s first half but not the second so could I re-write it. No one tells me what or how to write, so it remained unpublished and I forgot about it …

 … until I wrote ‘Inspired Choices’, the following bit in particular:

“You can analyse the pants off it in the most scholarly, imaginative way, but at the end of the day it boils down to your instinct. Your soul. A religious experience. A certain piece of music just does ‘it’. What’s ‘it’? Ask your soul,”…

Inspired choices of music

No I’m not thinking of Classic FM’s Top 100 or Desert Island Discs, but the most perfect, irreplaceable, hand-in-glove musical pieces ‘inserted’ in films, which re-imagine the former and elevate the latter. I’m not referring to music written specifically for a film, but classics lifted out of their original contexts and snuggled perfectly into an alien genre.

This occurred to me while attempting to play the piano the other day after six weeks in a sling. I shoulda stuck to “Chopsticks”, not tried something too ambitious, but Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” is what caught my eye while rummaging through my music stool. I tried to play it and failed.

Marketeers vs. Musketeers

A headline in today’s Daily Mail Online reads, “Supermarkets are ALREADY selling festive products with shoppers urged to buy now and 'stock up' amid fears over Christmas food shortage due to gas crisis”. Another one reads, “Alok Sharma [Business Secretary] insists there is 'no immediate concern' … the supplies will be there for Christmas…”

I know what you’re thinking; you’d rather trust a supermarket than a politician, so there must be an imminent shortage and you must shop for Christmas without delay.

Nah. Let’s think this through, shall we?