Ghosts of Economies Past

It’s the time of year for retrospective blogs. Everybody is doing a top ten, and I will too soon enough. Sometimes though, life feels like it’s being lived through a retrospective lens. Not the vasolene smeared nostalgic one, the one that once was whole but got dropped, dented and scratched on a day brim full of promise.

I was back at the supermarket café today. It felt like a novelty as I haven’t been out of the house for a while. A group of ten or twelve men were led in by a young woman. There was a tense atmosphere, some of the men seemed to know each other but the  group was subdued. They seemed to be working men, aged 45-55, rough hands, local voices, incongruous amongst the shoppers. The young woman, polished, with a cheap but new suit and beautiful ankles handed around forms, and addressed the group. She ‘explained the process’ then walked away. The men picked up pens awkwardly, scratched heads and compared ideas about what should be written.

It was a gloomy thing. My eyes teared and I left before the end of the show. It seemed to me that this was a group of men made redundant from a factory together, now throwing themselves on the mercy of a supermarket chain that might employ one lucky one in an unskilled job on a quarter of the wages he would have been used to. They were keeping a quiet dignity together in hard times. The young personnel officer had been at pains to point out to them that she had seen others and had more people to see.

It felt a bit like the 1980’s. I used to go to the job centre to pick up a summer job and see men the age of the fathers of my friends (sometimes they WERE the fathers of my friends). Each week they were a little more grey, as though they were fading ghosts having experienced a social death. In that great recession, many of those men never found work again or competed in the job market with the likes of me for jobs in hotel kitchen. The years went on, things picked up, and I forgot them, apart from the time in 2008 I visited a Cornish churchyard and saw the headstones of two that I had known, not factory workers, but miners from Wheel Jane.

The news is trying to put a positive spin on the economy. Let’s hope for the sake of the dads of my children’s friends, and for Nick and me that their optimism comes good.

Electing

It is the day of the local and national elections. There has been a more intense build-up than usual, with lots of people stating their views. A good thing for the country, I think. We should be concerned about who governs and how we are governed. Nick, Nina and I all walked down to Spon Gate Primary School to vote and we voted different ways, which is what it’s all about.

Over the last few months, I’ve noticed an unsettling trend on Facebook. There is a box in which users write a thought for the day, the week or the moment, it is called a ‘status’. People have been getting political, perhaps as a response to the expenses scandal involving MP’s of all parties, and this seems a good thing. My difficulty has been with the popularity of status notes that attack asylum seekers. I collected some examples. Here they are:

JUST SO I UNDERSTAND THIS. YOU PASS THE NORTH KOREAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU GET 12 YRS. HARD LABOR, YOU PASS THE AFGHAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU GET SHOT. YOU PASS THE ENGLISH BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU GET A JOB, DRIVER'S LICENSE, ALLOWANCE FOR A PLACE TO LIVE, HEALTH CARE, EDUCATION, BILLIONS OF POUNDS SPENT SO YOU CAN READ A DOCUMENT. WE CARRY PASSPORTS IN OTHER COUNTRIES OR FACE JAIL TIME. REPOST THIS IF YOU AGREE
Status 4.5.10

My ENGLISH pride I will not hide. The ENGLISH race I wont disgrace. My ENGLISH blood flows hot and true and ENGLISH people I'll stand by you. Through thick and thin until i die my ENGLISH PRIDE stands so high" !!! --- ST GEORGES DAY is TODAY make this ur status to show your proud ENGLISH friends and remind them to celebrate !!
Status 23.4.10

lets build the biggest church in pakistan n open a chippy on every corner!
Group 21.4.10

All of the above (and there have been many others, these are just the most recent that I found to cut and paste) were posted by people I know and like. Some seemed to be words that were being passed around. I am left perplexed. Do people genuinely believe these things? If so, what led them to hold these views. Does it in any way matter that the first statement is far from accurate, in the second that StGeorge was Lebanese, or regarding the third that during the Empire the British exported our culture and fucked up Pakistan for generations to come? What bothers me more though is that I didn’t respond to any of these statuses (or is that stati?). I am a coward, or a bit too polite as Facebook just doesn’t seem the place? Should I have responded, and if so, in public or by email?

On a similar theme, I wanted to go down to Barking and join the anti BNP work, but I had to have the car’s MOT done, so I didn’t make it. I was a bit frightened of being attacked, so may well have chickened out anyway. I gave £5 instead. Is that enough? No. I will try and do better.

By this morning, I was starting to go off Facebook a bit, but it only takes the smallest of somethings to turn me around. Up popped this lovely status:

The only wasted vote is an unused vote. (I think so, anyway.) Even voting for a party that can't win a 'safe seat' will contribute to their overall vote share, which could influence the coalition of a hung parliament.

Trust me, I've got a poncho.

Bye!



Bye then x

Possible Worlds

I’ve been having a quiet time. The house is a bit cleaner. I’m 6lbs lighter. There’s nothing else to report on the domestic front. I’ve been too busy doing nothing to be writing.

Meanwhile, the TV news has been gripping. It is over a week since I left myself a note listing two blogging ideas:

Volcano

BNP

The world has moved on, and it’s almost a shame as I might have liked a memento of how I responded to the eruption of a volcano in Iceland that closed UK and European airspace for days. It all seems like a distant memory now. We weren’t much affected by the blue, vapour-trail clear skies. There was only a coat of ash on all of the cars to remind us. Too thin a coating to write a satisfyingly rude message. I was reminded of the song Every Day Is Like Sunday by Morrissey, where the lyrics run, “Trudging back over pebbles and sand/ And a strange dust lands on your hands/ And on your face”. That old song was written with a view to nuclear apocalypse, now we live with a mood of environmental disaster. It seemed to me that the ash that had blown in the light breeze for 1700 miles to fall on my car was a warning of how, in spite of human technologies that appear to have everything under control, nature can crush us all in a moment. Taking this view is of course not very profound, and hasn’t influenced my behaviour at all. Lights still left on all over the house, tumble dryer in constant use…

The elections are looming. Labour are doing very badly. A significant number of people on Facebook are posting right wing, BNP style group memberships, especially around St George’s Day These are people I know and it makes me very sad. At first, I tried to fight back a little, but it has got progressively disheartening. My prediction for the elections: Conservatives win with narrow majority, Liberals in second place. Hung parliament that will focus on electoral reform. The only hope is, I have a very poor record of predicting reality TV shows, I’m trying to think of it that way. It’s surely for the best, in the best of all possible worlds.

Arrivals and the Departed

Looking at the gaps between posts, it is evident that it would be better to revert to posting every day. All this waiting for something interesting to happen has led to nothing interesting happening. But then, with me sitting on my sofa playing Zoo World on facebook, why would it?

On Thursday, my baby brother came back from China. Nick and I met him off the plane. I had never greeted anyone at an airport before. I feel that I may have missed out on one of life's key experiences, but I feel alright about it because I can't swim either. That is a bigger life experience to miss. I am unsure why I have never paced an arrivals hall before. It could be because my family are not globetrotting types (not true, both of my brothers have lived abroad since leaving Uni), or because we are cold and unwelcoming (maybe nearer the mark), but I think it is mostly because we are all independent types who don't expect to be collected from anywhere and looked after. This time, R had to put up with it. I sort of insisted, having watched a schmaltsy daytime TV thing where an interviewer records the goings on in airport departures and arrivals in a pass the tissues kind of way.

Heathrow terminal 5 at 4.50am is bright. Coming from a gloomy motorway morning, my eyes never adjusted to the glare off the white walls and shiny surfaces. It is said that airports all over the world are the same, and I don't doubt it. It was as if everyone was wiating for something not very exciting to happen. First to strike me were the men in untidy dark suits. They stood in three foot of territory that they had claimed for themselves, each carrying a laminated paper with words and numbers that appeared to be in some sort of code. Professional waiters. Men - all men -  paid to wait on planes. No silver trays. It seemed to me that they must recognise each other, they probably work similar shifts each day, doing the waiting. Yet, they never spoke to each other, not even a nod of recognition between them. Unusually for people waiting, even though the waits were long and I never saw them collect anybody, they never had their phones out either, not even to text, or play solitare. Perhaps, like restaurant waiters, being seen with a phone, or with a mate, or with coloured socks is not the done thing.

If the waiters were visible, there was one man who had discovered the secret of invisibility. I was looking for things to look at, and yet it took me a good while to spot him. He was wearing a grey suit and was so still that he blended into the discrete grey booth behind him. He didn't lean on it, so the slight sway of his body gave him away when the light glanced off his lanyard. I kept an eye on him after that, hoping that this guardian of the borders would, in the blink of an eye, swoop in and pick off a straggler. There was no more movement though, even when a woman collapsed to the floor in an epileptic seizure. She was helped by a fluttering of red coated and lipped air stewardesses. There was no blood.

As still as the man from the UK Borders Agency, although paradoxically ultra visible, were the Arrived. This scruffy rag-tag of brown-ness were those who had arrived, but not yet departed. They slept stretched out on the chairs in and area that appeared to have been especially set aside for them. All were sleeping, or almost sleeping, or stretching towards sleep. I was reminded of a time in a Zoo where seals and sealions were housed together. In the twilight,  the seals were sleeping in a loosely tumbled grouping, while in a place of their choosing a little removed, the sealions were awake, feeding and talking still. In the airport, the sealions were in the coffee shop. I wonder how long the Arrived waited, and what they waited for.

R turned up, dazed from a long flight. Had we not collected him, he would have become one of the Arrived, waiting for the National Express Coach. As it was, we took him to the coffee shop and then on to Cornwall. I gave him a sausage roll and the Guardian newspaper. You don't get either of them in China. The front page of the Guardian was devoted to the socialist Michael Foot who had departed. You don't get more of him anywhere.

Dulce et Decorum est

A difficult week for a member of the family. An easy week for me. ‘It's not fair‘. Little girls tend to say that quite a lot. My little girls used to chorus it regularly, their whines tingling up my spine until a cup of tea after bed time. The logical part of me tends to say that we make our own luck and life goes tits up due to our own poor judgement but, as my little ones used to say about whatever it was, ‘it's not fair’ is often just as fair an assessment.


I have a vivid memory from school. Lanky, deep voiced Mr Tinson, usually funny, looked ancient to me but younger than I am now, was in serious mood. Apropos of something now unremembered, he told his class of 29 thirteen year olds that one of us would be dead before the age of 30. In a generational coincidence, Nina was told the same thing while she was at school.

I never thought more of the concept until the first time that a school friend died. Not a friend, or someone I knew well. A nodding aquantence in the way of school life. She died aged seventeen having accidentally driven her new car over a pier and into the sea. I remember her name, her long blonde hair and her laugh from across the sixth form common room. It shook me up at the time. It was a big story in the news and a man on the bus commented loudly, knowing nothing, that it must have been a suicide. It wasn’t. The coroner found that she had mistaken the reverse for a forward gear in an unfamiliar vehicle and bunny-hopped the car as a new driver will. Bad luck that she happened to be parked on a unfenced pier at high tide. I got off that bus, and got over the shock in the way of the young. It was part of growing up.

Last week, a school friend of Nina’s died. Not a friend, just a boy who happened to be in her form. A nice enough boy who had said hello to her, who was a bit naughty and cheeky until his last year at school when his teachers threats to give him a poor reference for his application to join the Army turned him into an angel. He joined up at sixteen, and died at twenty, it was a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. He was a specialist in disarming those bombs. The army was his life, but he was looking forward to coming out soon and starting civilian life. A new military campaign has been all over the national news. They say it is going well. The local news carried nice footage about the young man’s death, with intervews with his friends and family. The school said that everyone is in shock.

There can be no proper response. I find myself no more eloquent in thought, word or deed than when I was Nina’s age. It’s not fair.

Life goes on and with it the little disappointments and patches of ill-health. My poor baby, it isn’t fair.





Dulce et decorum est is Latin from Horace although I know it from the poem by war poet Wilfred Owen which I was studying around the time Vanya died. The meaning is,’It is sweet and right’. If you don’t know it, please read the poem for the rest. http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html

This post is dedicated to the memory of Vanya Bray 1969-1987 and Guy Mellors 1989 - 2010
http://helmandblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/sapper-guy-mellors-killed-in.html

Wednesday 8.7.09

Well, I did promise myself I'd get off my arse today. Thankfully I made good on it, although not in any spectacular way. I feel better for it, but then again, I felt better anyway, otherwise I couldn't have got on with stuff. QED.

I forced myself out of bed early and look Darcy for a walk. We did the full 2.5 miles around the Memorial Park, clockwise. It was as much exercise as I've done all week, and my muscles were rebelling slightly, but I persevered. Darcy was very happy and ran the whole distance in the way that I remember running a walk with adults as a child. I would run on ahead (in fact I would usually skip) then stop to examine something, by which time the trailing adult would arrive and I would run on again. Darcy also did the child's trick of stopping at forks in the path and looking back as if to guess the route.

I rarely walk in the morning and was impressed that people seemed to be in a good mood. Darcy jumped up into the middle of a couple holding hands. He was a bit muddy and they could have been annoyed at his breaking up their romantic moment, but they laughed in stead. Quite a few young people were about, I think because GCSE's are over. Three young men were in the skateboard park, not on their boards, but reclining on a ramp sharing bottles of pop and their i-pods. Darcy ran up to them and gave us all a joyful moment when he failed to make it to the top of the ramp and slid down backwards with a scraping of nails. There was a nice woman with a learning disability out with her friend. She wanted to pet Darcy and was charming in a witty way. She told me that they were going shopping next, which was my plan too.

I managed a healthy supermarket shop and resisted cakes, chocolate, crisps, and pastry. It was a bonus that the shopping was cheaper as although I had bought extra fruit and veggi burgers, I didn't buy any meat. Swings and roundabouts though I had to buy a new bathroom caddy from B&Q. The previous one has broken apart due to rust and it has been bothering me for almost two weeks. Finally, there I was at B&Q. The caddy, in a new style, was almost £13. Ouch. Funny how I would think nothing of spending that much on a take-away meal to last the night, and yet find it expensive for something that will be used every day and last two years (if it lasts as long as the last one).

I had lunch out and read the paper which was devoted to Michael Jackson's funeral. Again, I failed to be moved. I was impressed to read the sensationalist reports that me are now redundant, lab-grown sperm are the future. MJ would have loved that possibility I'm sure, given that his children have turned out to be biologically related to neither parent. It looks as though they were loved though. He protected them from the glare of publicity for the most part. Unlike his family who have thrust them right in to the spotlight. Poor kids, especially Blanket who will have to contend with having lost his Dad and with having a difficult name. I'm glad that our kids have almost grown up. If they lost us, they would be Ok. It's a morbid thought but true. Heaven knows what they would do with my fabric and their Dad's aeroplane books though. We'd better stay alive.

Saturday 6.6.09

No blog for a few days because nothing much has been happening. I've tried to get a bit of writing done but not been impressed with the quality. Similarly, I've tried to get stuff done about the house, but not got far. Everything's ho-hum.

I voted in the Euro elections. That's a rare thing, but there is a lot of concern about the rise of the far right, so I felt the need to play my small part in keeping back the tide of BNP, UKIP and the Christian fundamentalists. The voting form was the longest I've ever seen it, around three lengths of A4. How did I vote? Labour as it happened, although I did flirt with the thought of voting Green. I went down with Nina, it was her first time voting, another watershed. I tried to remember the first time I voted, but wasn't able to. I think I was in Leeds at the time. I only know this because I don't know where Carharrack's polling station is (I'd bet on Mills Hall though). In any case, nationally there was a big swing to the right. A blue wind of change is in the air.

Hot weather kept me in until today, now its raining, keeping me in only marginally less. Days tick by, and I do nothing.

Big Brother season is here. Every year I say I won't be watching it, and every year I get right behind it. This year, I'm owning it, they say it might be the last, it's been going ten years, imagine that. Me and my former boss K bonded over it, he got E4 specially to watch the live feeds and I was a bit jealous. Oh, such heady times.

Tomorrow, something less boring. Please. Maybe Wanker lady will return. She might like to be my friend. It would work out better than me and K, that's for certain.

Thursday 21.5.09

It seems as though the depression of yesterday was a blip. I woke up feeling good this morning, and cracked on with some proper writing, 2000 words by the end of the day. It is helping that S has asked to read some as it is making me get on and write it up properly as opposed to its being half in my head and half in very scratchy notes. I was listening to Morrissey's back catalogue while I was writing, and thinking of my old college friend Julie. How we loved Morrissey's first solo effort Viva Hate. I still can't decide what I think he meant by the lyrics of Bengali in Platforms.

I was outraged that the local free paper delivered the BNP's pre-election mail shot. I would boycott the paper, but don't see how I can as I don't actually buy it. The fringe parties seem to be getting a lot of publicity this year. There is a right wing Christian fundamentalist group, and a pro-car lobby as well as UKIP and the Liberals. They all scent the blood of the much knocked about Labour party. I can't wait until it's over. There's no good result to hope for this year. This is only the European elections anyway, and because I've made no effort, I've no clear idea of what the person representing me might have to decide on. I expect there's expenses though.

I ate a whole family sized Dairy Milk Caramel bar this evening and I feel horribly sick. I'd better not make it a habit. I had pie for tea as well, so that's enough calories for the week. If I carry on, I might start a pro-fat lobby for the next elections. French Fancies could be my sponsor, I could declare them as income and expenses in one.

Tuesday 19.5.09

Sorry to write about the weather, it's such an English cliche to do so. I don't even count myself as English, I'm Cornish, or British, or European, and we don't talk about the weather. It has been a day of sunshine and showers. I knew it would be as my friend S let me know that that was the weather in Liskeard, and Cornwall always gets the weather first. It was sunny in Coventry at the time, and Darcy was telling me it was time to get out for a walk. I was too busy lolling about to listen though. Eventually, he decided to have a good sleep and advised me to do the same as the rain was coming in. I paid no attention and decided it was time to go out for a longish walk, rain or no rain.

When I was a girl I used to listen to Mum's James Taylor records and dream of just walking a long way away, indefinitely. I knew it wasn't realistic, but I liked the idea of just walking until I was tired and sleeping in some homemade shelter appealed. The song that made me think of that, Country Road (on the Sweet Baby James album, try Spotify) has come back into my life, inspiring similar fantasies. I was optimistic the rain was passing off and keen to get out.

We got to the park via the sunny trip to the supermarket. I decided to break my usual pattern and walk clockwise around the Memorial Park. I parked in an unusual spot. Darcy was initially confused by this, but rushed off to find some other dogs to chase and some strangers to jump up at. I was still at the car as the poo bags that I usually keep in the glove box were absent. I resorted to searching around on the floor of the car for plastic food packaging with which to pick up the inevitable deposits. I found a sweet bag and the wrapper from an English Pasty just as freckles of rain touched the windscreen. I was proud of myself for not cleaning out the car, see, tidiness is over-rated .

I had my pacamac with me and all was well as I called Darcy back from his anti-clockwise paddle in the muddied stream. All of the excitement was too much for him, and he rushed off into the middle of the sodden field to poo. I had hoped to stay on the paths, but made my way over to pick it up. I then found that the sweet packet (the larger of the bags I had found) was too small to get the poo into, so I had to use it as a sort of tongs and carry the poo exposed to the bin. Not content with this, ten minutes further round, he managed another big one. Getting that to the bin began to feel a bit like an egg and spoon race, only the egg was three big bits of poo and the spoon was a flimsy pasty packet. I was triumphant when I got to the bin without getting poo on my hands, clothes, or a passing child.

The rain started to pelt down. I didn't mind too much. It reminded me of the walking trips I used to make to the Lake District with some people with a learning disability. Cumbria gets more rain than any other part of the UK and in my experience a lot of that is of the sunshine and showers variety. There were times when I wished that I could make it a rule that I would only go with people who could put on their own coat and do it up unaided. I spent a lot of time up there as wet as the sheep but I was a good worker and always put on the other persons coat before my own. I love the Lakes and thought about how I would like to get fit again and do some hill walking. It is a very special area to spend some time in. The people who needed help with their coats gave me a great gift.

After the rain came the thunder. Darcy started to walk to heel and his ears drooped lower and lower to the ground. He loves to swim and paddle up to his neck in the filthiest pond water, but he's not keen on the rain. He was too polite to say 'I told you so', but he took a determined route back to the car. I don't mind thunder too much, but we were out in the open. I was a bit concerned about walking past people who had their umbrellas up. What if lightning was attracted to the spine of the umbrella at just the time I was brushing past them? I made a detour to bypass a man with a large umbrella on a narrow path. Darcy called me a stupid human. I don't think he was quite fair about that.

We got home soaked, Darcy with the wet dog smell that can't be eradicated by any method known to him or me. Me a bit snuffly and stiff. Half an hour later, the sun shone brilliantly and Darcy lay in it's warmth to dry off.

While I was at the supermarket, I read a bit of an article about a man who has written lots of quirky begging letters to companies he likes. Many of them have sent him free stuff. I was wondering if it might be worth my writing to the makers of French Fancies. I have been promoting their product to readers of this blog for literally days. Also, I do genuinely 100% love French Fancies, especially the pinks, as I think I may have said. I've been running the diary style blog since 8th February, this will be entry 78. I started assuming that no one would read it, but I wanted the discipline of writing something every day, and to get a bit braver about getting my writing out there. I have no way of knowing how many people read it. The wonderful surprise is that some readers have been kind enough to get in touch to let me know that they have enjoyed it. It has been a real buzz to hear from you. Thank you. There is a facility to leave a comment on any of the entries, and you don't have to be signed up to Blogger.com to do that. I've taken off the comment moderation to make it easier, and because I feel a bit more confident now. I value feedback hugely. Seriously tho', thank you.

Sunday 17.5.09

Nick and I had our fairly predictable Sunday. Routines seem to evolve to fill a vacuum, even when things could be spontaneous, so there must be some benefit, although I'm not sure what that might be. We sat about until mid-morning, then went to Mc Donalds for lunch and to read the paper. The press induced scandal of MPs' expenses has been in print for weeks. I don't understand the surprise that people are expressing. It is human nature to take what we can, and anyone who makes it in politics must have a selfish, ruthless streak, and a sense of entitlement. That's how those in power managed to get on. The fun is in thinking how long their routine earner has lasted through generations of politicians. They made up the lax rules that let them claim anything from plumbing under the tennis court to a Twix, and then put the claims in, year upon year. We elected them (or didn't). I can't remember the last time I voted, it's always the same guy who gets in here, and whilst I don't identify with him, he is the correct political shade. This is where I might tell myself that people died for my right to vote, and apologise for being cynical, but I won't be doing either.

In the afternoon, we went on a hunt for a cycle helmet for Nina. We didn't find one, but boy did we suffer the fucked-up-ness of Sunday in the supermarket. The debate of the 1990's about whether there was demand for Sunday trading has definitively been won and lost. It wasn't worth it, even for the French Fancies that were on special offer. I like to think their soaring popularity is thanks to my blog.

When we got home, I went to bed, read for a bit, and then fell asleep. It's the only foolproof way of dealing with period pains. Nina brought up the sausages, bread and scrambled egg that Nick had made. I felt a bit bad that I hadn't fed the family anything good for them. Everybody was a bit grouchy, probably because I had ignored them all. That's being a mother. With great power comes great responsibility, but not always a great big payment for expenses.

Meant to say a couple of days ago, I thought of a working title for the writing. 'Two Hours To Taunton Deane'. I was inspired at Bridgewater. Also meant to say that I donated some of the money we got for the car to Richard Herring's programme for Hitler Mustache so that M201DNV will be printed in the brochure. It's a little memorial, and a little bit potty. The money goes to Scope.

Wednesday 8.4.09

There was plenty on the BBC News today, not least police anti terror raids on homes in Manchester, Liverpool and Clitheroe (yes, I did hear right). That's not what the nation is talking about though. The nation, including most of my friends and family is mostly concerned with the plot of Eastenders. Naturally, always bang on trend, I haven't been watching.

I don't follow the programme, but I have been intrigued by the passions that have been aroused. For posterity, I should explain that the fictional character Danielle comes to Walford in order to contact her birth mother, Roxy. Roxy's father has led Roxie to believe that her child is dead, and Danielle to believe that she is unwanted. At the moment that Danielle realises that her birth mother has accepted her, she is accidentally run over by long time villain, Janine. I hope I have that right, it has taken some research. The state of the nation is such that a Facebook group started up on April 2nd has gathered 7492 members at the time of writing. A petition posted on petitiononline.com has gathered 10,401 signatures and proudly boasts being mentioned in The Mirror, The Daily Mail and Heat magazine.

I could have gone out this afternoon, but after yesterday, I didn't fancy another walk. I spent an hour and a half watching three episodes of Eastenders back to back. I don't get it. No, I mean I get the plot, its not difficult to pick up. I just don't get the fascination. The writing seems poor, the characterisation caricatur-ish, and most of the acting wooden. I do quite like the way the evil Dad is played, but this may be because I recognise the actor, Larry Lamb, from Gavin and Stacey (also, I love his name). Surely, they've had this plot before. How many favorite fantasy friends have been run over and died on that stretch of road?

The next episode surely should be a campaign for a nice road safety scheme; roadhumps, a 20 mile per hour zone, a chicane ornamented with tubs of flowers. Any of these may help. Its too late for Dainelle, but we need to make sure that no other Eastenders character loses their life in the same way again. Enough is enough.

Oh no, see what's happened. I've been infected by the soap virus. I'm already thinking of tuning in to see what happens in the Branning trial.

Saturday 14.3.09

What do other people do on Saturdays? I had planned to go out to Stratford with Nick, maybe sit in the park, or walk by the river. It was sunny enough. We didn't though. I was very low on energy and motivation. Nick's priority was to get dishwasher tablets, he approached that little task with zeal, even offering to treat me to a Morrisons lunch if I would get them. What more would a girl want?

The meals were dreadful, twice fried and microwaved, greasy and crusty. I've said it before but really, this time needs to be the last time. It did give me time to read Guide in the Guardian. They were offering a multi authored New Pop Lexicon Explained. I read the article in good faith but I'm none the wiser about F-bomb memes, global illage or nuking the fridge. Surely those smug journos have made it all up. Apart from http://www.spotify.com/ and http://www.lcanhazcheezburger.com/ of course, I've seen them. Oh and slash/fiction I've heard of but only because Dave Gorman writes about it in his Googlewhack Adventure, its not like I've googled it myself. So, I'm bang on trend as usual then.

Spent the rest of the day with the TV and the rest of the paper. At least I achieved dishwasher tablets although I haven't loaded the machine yet. Off to Cornwall tomorrow, so that'll get me out of it nicely.