"livro ou tv?" by lubs mary on flickr

1.”fat people farting”

synopsis: a panel of celebrities discuss footage of obese people passing wind. points obtained by guessing the contents of each contestants diet, with a quick fire round of ‘name that tune’. viewers at home can play along with the retro inclusion of a scratch and sniff card – a true blast from the past. proposed host: Les of ex-corrie fame.

2. “supermodels reading proust”

synopsis: watch their beautiful little faces veer between confusion, bewilderment and crushing incomprehension in this 18 hour first episode. next week: page 2.

spin-off series: “proust impersonators borrow small sums of money” (possibly from aforementioned models. a bit like secret millionaire, but different.)

3. “hospital patients very slowly getting better”

synopsis: aired continuously over 6 months.

highlights: ward sister margaret jones loses her favourite pen for half an hour. then finds it where she left it. in-patient janet wilson catches a bit of a cold while recovering from a knee operation – dr hatton comments “she is likely to stop sneezing within 2 to 3 days. 5 max. that’s the best we can hope for at this stage”. tune in to find out how janet copes when her nose gets a bit dry from cheap 2 ply tissues.

spin-offs: “springtime with prostates and small warts” & “saline drips of yesteryear”

presented by anthea turner.

4. “children crying inconclusively”

synopsis: …

5. “MPs with STDs”

synopsis: catchy.

yes, i am aware that this has probably definitely already been thought of, but i like to think they would lack my unique flair and world view (ha ha).

today’s irritants:

1. while we’re on the subject, pretty much anyone who uses the word awesome. unless you are literally slack jawed with amazement, agape, without words to express the magnitude of wonder which you are, or have recently experienced, it’s probably just ‘good’. next time, think about just saying ‘that was good’ or, if you feel very strongly, ‘that was very good’.

2. overweight men who stand too close to you at a pedestrian crossing, and, even though they have just watched you press the button once like a normal person, continue to attack it furiously with their middle digit for the full forty seconds it takes for the green man to appear, their paunch sporadically nudging your elbow as they wank out their furious morse code. clearly they believe there’s a sentient being living in an underground cell changing lights according to need; “ohh-hoo, look at this margaret, there’s 472 people waiting to cross the road on clapton high street, quick, we must change the lights for them IMMEDIATELY god KNOWS what chaos will ensue if we hesitate a moment longer!!!”

you make me shudder with disgust.

of course, the first, last, and only rule of mirror face is never to let any other human being see it. this is somewhat ironic, as in your head this is what you hope against hope the world will see; you at your most attractive, appealing and in my case, a little sardonic (i didn’t say it was an all-encompassing face, strange i should home in on this characteristic, i know). however, should a friend catch your quick flirtation with yourself in a shop widow, hysteria will ensues. trust me. at the very very least a mocking sideways glance is coming your way. it’s a crying shame, but it’s the truth. you look nothing like that.

which leads to my point (get to the point, child). of all the faces we pull, work face, family face, i-fancy-you face, stranger face, which one, if any, is true? and how many versions of yourself are out there roaming around in other people’s heads completely beyond your control?

let’s say you meet someone once, and make a hilarious pun and then never ever see them again. in their head, should they randomly remember you, you’re that really funny person they met once. which is just smashing. but funny stranger face is by no means consistent. if it was, it would probably turn rapidly into perpetually-pun-generating-i-don’t-want-to-be-her-friend-anymore face.

let’s just imagine for a second that you’re having an off-day. say you accidentally put on a top with an awkwardly placed toothpaste stain which you’ve only just noticed at 3pm in the afternoon, and your fringe is doing this really weird thing where it’s kind of sticking up, for no reason, and you’re phone battery ran out so you can’t listen to any music and that’s just about the most annoying thing that could happen today, so you are, simply put, huff-full, and acutely aware of your inadequacies as a normal human being for these short hours. and you bump into a friend of a friend at a bus stop, where you have been waiting for some time. so to fill the gap, you mumble something incoherent about the music situation, and maybe mention the fringe as their eyes wonder to the devious piece of hair, while simultaneously you try to subtly hide the toothpaste stain and calamity upon calamity in the 20 seconds they spoke to you, you come across as an awkward mess of a person. and they walk away, confused, no doubt. and there it is, it’s out there. however great you are at being normal you in public tomorrow is now completely irrelevant. your doppelganger is out. released from its grubby mumbly cage. and it is not a pretty sight.

well yes, i am clearly overly preoccupied with what people think of me, but come now, who hasn’t walked away from a situation and thought: ‘what on earth was that? what was i doing back there?’

i met a gent recently who i found, perhaps still find, utterly unfathomable. why was this a problem? well. which face should be used with the unfathomable? work face is clearly too formal, and yet you don’t want to terrify them with the depths of your madness face, or, god fore fend, and more terrifying still, see where flirt face lands you (nb. usually a whole new world of trouble). sooo you try cool face. sane, but potentially boring. but that doesn’t fit either. because who are you normally? you end up being a parody of you, probably with a hint of the fonz about you as you try to remember what cool people act like, with an awkward hand on hip arrangement and, my favourite trope, you laugh too loudly at their jokes which everybody else around you knows should barely credit an indulgent smirk.

in another recent incarnation of myself, when a person of authority gave me some good news i paused, wondered what to say, and chose to reply with a london-accented ‘shut UP’. yes. like that. like a teenager from eastenders. i forgot myself, my habitual patterns of speech and distinct lack of accent, and borrowed a phrase from the now common lilly allen-esq vernacular and told him to shut up. he told me, somewhat awkwardly, that he was being quite serious. i fell silent, could think of nothing to say and wondered how this conversation might now continue. must i keep up allen face for the duration? in short; what on earth was that?

we are a million faces. and maybe that’s ok. social chameleons. adept at morphing into whichever mould seems socially appropriate (or in the worst cases inappropriate) at any one time, and cherry-picking from the wealth of faces we are inundated with every day.

maybe the conclusion is that mirror face should be let out of its glass cage a little more often. maybe one should forego new friendships and not laugh at the horribly unfunny, but meet it with the confident half ironic smile which has stared back at you for many an hour as you apply eyeliner (how very metrosexual of you, boys). further to this, maybe one should make a special effort to stick more consistently to the accent one was brought up with when expressing surprise. maybe that would be ok too.

that, or tomorrow i go shopping for a new mirror.

Quackin' in the rain by Ani Bee

so long summer. it’s controversial, but i’m enjoying the rain today. mostly because of the thunder, but especially because i have no intention of going anywhere. so i’m going to pretend it’s a sunday, have a cup of tea, tidy my room and watch some murder she wrote. good gracious jessica, another cousin of yours is having a party, one of the guests has been poisoned and yet you show not a flicker of alarm or surprise? what a pro. my bet is on the man with the eyebrows. that is some suspicious facial hair…

unless, of course, unless it transpires that you, jessica, have actually been funding the publication of your terrible murder mystery stories by mercilessly bumping off every wealthy friend of a friend you just ‘happen’ to meet while, visiting your cousin on their ranch in texas (ye haw), or just ‘happen’ to run in to when buying english muffins for your ‘tea’ from your favourite ‘english’ bakery. mysterious how all them people drop like flies in your company, isn’t it? you and that sheriff are awful close, aintcha miss fletcher? he in on the cut, is he? nice little set up you have here, after all, where is all that money coming from? 30 seconds of typing every week isn’t going to pay for all those road-trips, now is it? we need to get csi hick town special down here sharpish to whip your backwater murderous behinds into the slammer before you can say forensic psychology *cut to jessica and the sheriff in those contamination babygrow suity things looking shaken and confused*. it had to end sometime, jess *shakes head*. it had to end sometime.

…second thoughts, maybe i’ll leave the house. yes. yes, i think that would be wise…

brian had just been offered a job on hollyoaks

but wow, it’s hard. this is not to say i sit at home wrapped in cotton wool all day (i mean, i would, but it itches).  i have done, and will continue to do the things that terrify me. but who can say truly that they have put it all out there on the proverbial line? pegs and all? no, don’t just sit there self satisfied and say yes, i mean to be truly, truly unencumbered by the fear of judgement, to relinquish the desire to preserve the closely guarded image of yourself you’re trying to project to the world, and just go ahead and be. regardless. ego firmly aside.

now, i’m going to be…well, foolish, i would imagine, in saying what i will say next because i think it makes me somewhat of a directors nightmare. the cold sweaty kind, which means i’ll probably never get a job, but since we’re being brave…(and with my hand covering the ‘delete’ button)…

i am at my most brave when on stage…that’s when the ego genuinely seems to disappear, and nothing at all, at all matters except fully committing to what i’m doing and the truth behind it. this usually results in a mind numbing headache – that’s my barometer of a good performance. if i can barely speak because it hurts too much, thumbs up (yeeah, healthy, i know).

but i find it absolutely impossible to try and muster that same level of focus and fearlessness in rehearsal. because…well, in rehearsal, i’m there. ok, yup, that’s definitely a bit weird, i know, but slipping in and out of character, being critiqued, in rehearsal you are being you being an actor. the hangups are still, well, hanging on in there, in some way. on stage, with an audience, well, the i just doesn’t really exist for a little while. it can’t exist. not if it’s going to be any good (to my mind, at least).

in rehearsal it’s like there’s a limit to how far i will go…i know i will put on my best possible attempt at committing to the action….but as a case in point take the example of ‘being’ a frog and a piece of spaghetti as an improvisation warm up, from a previous post. how, how how how, do you turn off the inner dialogue that says ‘you are all nuts. this is…am i allowed to smile? do i have to look as serious as this guy? he looks like he doesn’t think this is nuts. he must, therefore, be a fool.’ and thus spend the whole time talking myself into it, and simultaneously getting all excited wondering who will be the first person i can tell about the guy who took being a piece of spaghetti oh so seriously. because i do take it seriously. more so than, well, just about anything.

frogs aside, for it is  indeed a silly example, what on earth happens when you graduate to playing actual walking, talking, animate human beings (we’re going up in the world) but….you don’t quite trust the director? the very person who is, in one way or another, asking you to be brave.

yes, i know, i may have just committed an acting cardinal sin. of course, i have absolutely no experience of this in my acting to date, it’s purely hypothetical…

but then what? you can’t be brave and unconvinced simultaneously. then we’re all just back to pretending our commitment to pretending to be frogs.

you seee!!!!! and you thought the cast of hollyoaks looked gormless because they’re rubbish at acting, they’re not, they’re just rubbish a pretending to be convinced by being a character in hollyoaks.

i’m genuinely looking for answers on a postcard to this one. or, more likely it requires quite a large glass of wine, and probably boils down to a slurry decision that we’re all acting pretty much all of the time in a big grown up game of ‘let’s pretend’, anyway, some of us would just like to be paid for it.

….of course, for any prime-time teen-soap casting directors out there, i really am very good at gormless…

photo by Brian Negin

kind of nice, isn’t it? it looks like it should be the answer to something exciting. some sort of key to something. sadly, it isn’t. this is a study on the product of prime factors, which year six children up and down the country have to know how to work out. like this. well, maybe they do it in their heads, but alas i lack the ability. today i spent a good long while scribbling out these beautiful, logical little patterns at work (my job is strange sometimes) and reminding me of the dread of friday afternoon double maths at school, which i loathed with all the gravity i was capable of at fourteen.

but my god, i don’t think anything on earth is more satisfying than working out and looking at this. neat little flowing rows of numbers, full logical working out, and in the end, the right answer. no quibble, no argument, no opinion. simply and wonderfully resolved and correct. a big red tick. a sticker of a cartoon cat in a party hat. the problem dissolved. amazing.

i think in another life i would have liked to have studied maths with philosophy. i know i know, this isn’t proper maths, maths on that level is insane, maths on that level would probably tell me this page of certainty is in fact a complete lie and that the number three doesn’t actually exist, or something, raise more questions than it would ever resolve and send me insane. and i suspect they stop giving you stickers when you get to degree level. well, maybe i should be an accountant. one who hand writes accounts in a ledger, matching up the in and out, day in, day out, making sure every little number balances out. a huge tome filled with perfect sheets of tiny squared paper, and a never ending supply of really nice pens.

how satisfying. how dull. but how little risk.

now where

is the fun

in that?

an awful thing happened on thursday morning. i might say unspeakable, but i shall be brave and say it out loud:

the kettle stopped working.

i know.

bleary-eyed, having very reluctantly dragged myself out of bed muttering consolations under my breath that it was ok, it was nearly friday which meant really it was nearly saturday and therefore the day of the haloed sleeping in-ness, and having counted myself to ten to get out of bed about 82 times, i shuffled across the ungodly terrain that is our kitchen floor, yanked the green monstrosity from it’s circular, life-giving electric perch, and shoved it under the tap, before nestling it back down, and clicking the switch. had a little walk around the kitchen, moved some dirty washing up from over there, to over here, got my second favourite mug out, rinsed the cafetière and pottered. for a while.

then i frowned. where was the kettle grumble? i cupped the kettle. kettle wasn’t warm.

click.

hmm.

jiggle.

bash.

clickclickclickclickbloodyclicklcikclicklcikck.

quiet grunt (me, not kettle).

stare.

confusion.

more stare (i admit, i stared for quite a little while)…

utterly bewildered as to how we were going to resolve the situation, i hoped my baleful look may be met by a glint of orange light from the ancient warming creature. surely, it would realise my dire need for coffee, and quickly, as i had snoozed for far too long already, and take pity on me. and maybe apologise, and explain that it was only trying to cheer it’s lonely self up by having a giggle at my expense. it didn’t. i suspect it was in cahoots with the toaster, trying to show off. i even tried wiping the base thing dry, with the only thing that came to hand, which was our pair of entirely ineffectual oven gloves (do not get me started on the ridiculousness of these…just, not a word, i have very real scars for which they are entirely responsible. tin foil, would probably guard you against lava hot baking trays more effectively).

alas, no resolution was to be had. so there we both were; me forlorn, the kettle victorious.

i don’t mind telling you, i have taken issue with this kettle before. in fact pretty much every time i use it. putting the limescale aside (mmm crunchy treats at the bottom of the cup), it is entirely incapable of pouring. at some point in its life it seems to have thrown caution to the wind and decided that simply adhering to expectation and providing a steady flow of boiling liquid into the anticipating vessel, or even in the general direction to which you aimed it was too bourgeois, and gave no opportunity for self-expression. like some sort of french surrealist artist, (it’s best if you do the accent and say this bit out loud with over-exaggerated shruggy shoulders and hands in the air) ‘you want water? here, here i give you water! what? WHAT? in the cup???? you have no imagination, i cannot work with you, you are a philistine’. boiling water frequently cascaded absolutely and predictively chaotically (a rare thing indeed), everywhere. over the counter, on the floor, on your hands, getting enough actually in the cup was like that ‘cube’ program on the telly, where deceptively simple tasks are ACTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE. i bored myself, even (i know, it’s true, sometimes it happens) saying out loud to everyone every single time i used it how ridiculous it was that the primary function of this object was to heat and pour water safely, and it had completely failed at one of those things and who the bloody hell designed it, didn’t they even test it, how ridiculous, what a ridiculous state of affairs what is this world coming to how could this happen in modern society.

well. le kettile (as he will henceforth be known) decided revenge is a dish best served cold. and cold, indeed, is what he remained.

it is at this point that i discovered exactly how long a watched pot, or pan in this case, takes to boil. i had debated trying to microwave water in some sort of spouted vessel, but my sleepy brain really had no idea how that would turn out. it felt wrong. and confusing. and i suspected it would taste different. (fyi pan water tastes faintly of onion.)

so, i decided to be a grown up, and for the first time in my life, buy a kettle. not borrowed, not a parental cast-off, or even a friend’s kettle. no. my own kettle. and it would pour, and everything. it felt like a rite of passage. i am officially no longer a student, i am a real grown up woman. although the concept also felt wrong…like having to buy your own socks. socks are things your mum buys for you, usually from supermarkets, sometimes special ones for christmas. no one should ever have to buy their own socks. the universe provides them, surely.

in a truly middle class way, my first thought was john lewis. i wanted a kettle consultation with a man in a tie, to discuss my needs. and as put beautifully by the delightful emma this week, i was acutely aware that this kettle had to say something about me and my lifestyle, my philosophy, my ambitions. where do i plan on being in 5 years time? would this kettle still be relevant, maybe i should project and buy one to represent where i want to be, and not for where i am now, so many questions…

alas, as so often happens, my financial state failed to adhere to my whims.

so i went to argos.

to be confronted with a chapter on kettles, and a gentleman named dan, who was struggling to cope with the heat somewhat, as the dark blue patches on his shirt testified.

and the good book argos did not disappoint. a whole world of kettles. why did we put up with le kettile for so very long? we could have broken up with him and his difficult ways eons ago.

one had a free toaster, a whole page was bargain basement (i skipped that one, one must retain some sort of standard – bargain kettle today, tomorrow, who knows? a bucket of KFC and a ketchup stained dressing gown. i think not.) every colour, and every material under the sun. i was surprised to find yellow and pink still featured (lord only knows, for those truly ‘wacky’ amongst you. god help you). in my second outing of middle-class tourettes of the day, i caught myself thinking ‘oh! a kenwood…’

it was glass, very nice, but seeing as natwest were paying i thought i’d better not take the piss. just in case….you know, they’re keeping an eye out and accosted me as a left the shop: “miss lewis, i believe you owe us a considerable amount of money, not to mention the student loan company, whom you are laughably paying back at a rate of a penny a month, that you intend to one day enter into the most unreliable and ill-paid jobs possible on this god-given earth, have absolutely no savings of any description, a cavalier attitude to pension plans, a wardrobe of ridiculous clothes akin to that of a child’s dressing up box and yet, miss lewis, and yet it appears you feel the need to spend upwards of £55 on a glass kettle, a kenwood, no less, attempting, it seems, to live the life of an 80s yuppie…how very interesting…”

i nearly bought a silver plastic one, for a mere £16.99. it looked kind of spacey. luckily, it was out of stock, so i went for a slightly portly white one. inoffensive. un-judgeable. functional, but not the cheapest.

luckily i survived the purgatory that is the waiting game of argos shopping. i put my headphones in an listened to the now show, tried not to breathe through my nose, or meet anyone’s eye. my recent experiences of croydon have taught me not to antagonise these people.

having excitedly unpacked my symbol of adulthood at home that evening, and deciding to give it a spin around the block, you cannot imagine my delight when i discovered that the clear bit where you can see the water actually glows blue as it boils. and the pouring! oh! oh, it is so beautifully neat  and precise i actually exclaimed aloud. not only that, but it came with a whole booklet of instructions, explaining to me such useful concepts as how to plug it in, and then turn it on, that it might get hot while it…get’s hot, and so i shouldn’t touch it, or let people of reduced mental capacity or children operate it unaccompanied (don’t even let a dyslexic child in the room while it’s in operation, just in case. in fact send them into the garden, to be on the safe side.)* despite falling into the former of these groups, i am now quite certain of my adult status along with all other owners of white goods, so 50% allowed to fly solo.

i’m quite confident we will get on splendidly. as long as it doesn’t start getting any loopy ideas. and if it does, well, i might just have a flick through the relevant chapter of the book of all things argos in front of it, just to remind it who’s boss.

next, who knows? proper over gloves? a broom with a handle entirely intact? pans without great wounds gouged into them, or permanent burn marks? a microwave with a plate that still goes round and tupperware boxes to match our ever increasing collection of miscellaneous lids? now that would be living.

this week bethan has been: having a free wee at paddington station (tuesday was a good day), reading nothing because she hasn’t had any time, tempted to stop wearing thick black tights because apparently it really is the height of summer, but not yet convinced, and embarking on the final series of six feet under.

* i am one, (or was) so legally am allowed to make this joke. promise.

yes yes. there is nothing like going home and absolving yourself of all adult responsibility. i wish this was my garden. with proper grown up things like a little bucket to keep your pegs in, beetroot growing in a decorative trough thing and flowers in pots. and a vat of fish bones and blood to make it all grow (i don’t know if that’s normal, or if my mum might in fact be some sort of witch.)

either way, the blackbirds have been singing, the flowers bought yesterday at the garden centre look smashing, my shoulders are only the littlest bit pink, and we’re all only suffering ever so slightly from the excessive wine consumption last night. well, sunny evenings call for a holiday mentality, say i.

all in all, the loveliest of summer times.

(…tainted only ever so slightly by wasp paranoia. little vicious bastards.)

ps. new hair cut makes me feel a bit like a french child of particularly cool parents. from the 60s. just so you know.

a floppy instrument of torture.

…and then there are those other yogic times. when you’re trying to find a bit of wall to pop your legs up on to, to get all that lovely blood flowing back into your organs, and you’ve been all polite and english about the whole affair, so there aint no bits of wall left, and the man you shuffle up next to, whose taking up quite a bit of the coveted verticality, tells you sharply:

‘there’s no room’

how very anti-karmic of you.

and you have to spend the whole of the relaxation, meditative, nothing time trying to forgive him, and stop yourself thinking about how karma’s going to bite him on the bum pretty soon. which isn’t very good of you. especially not the way you were planning how you would like karma to put a bit of teeth into it…

wall man: i hereby forgive you and your rubbish attitude. i expect you are an only child.

…ok, let’s try again without the last bit…

*ahem*

wall man: i forgive you.

…(just)…

…(damn….work in progress…)…