Musicals

I have a strange relationship with musicals, both stage and film. There are several movie musicals that I would watch over and over again, often involving nuns or wizards or St Louis. I generally find out if they're on over Christmas then invite myself over to Mum and Dad's to watch them (I may have mentioned MuleBoy's hatred of this sort of thing before). There are several stage musicals that I have seen over and over again too and would still do so now - Guys and Dolls is one that I've seen roughly about 6 or 7 times, whether amateur, school or professional shows. But I am not very good at forging relationships with new musicals. Big Sis, after unsuccessfully asking me to listen to Rent, used an almost osmotic practice by playing it continuously so that I was humming it all the time and had to finally listen to it to find out what the words were. I had Wicked in my flat for ages before giving it back to Dad without having listened to it at all as it just felt too much like hard work. Maybe it's the packaging, or the fact that listening to a story on CD is too much like hard work. I think the former might be the key however, because make something look like the trashiest piece of naff and I will desire to watch it with every particle of my being.

I have craved High School Musical since I saw an advert for it sometime last year. I thought it would be the sort of thing that Big Sis would enjoy and bought it for her for Christmas. The fact that it's a film and not on CD probably helps, although I wonder whether I would have been more into Wicked if Dad had told me the plot: witches + high school = camp extravaganza. However, after watching it last night (I figured that buying it for someone for Christmas and then asking to borrow it six months later is a decent grace period), I couldn't help but be disappointed. I don't know about you, but when I watch a musical I expect decent songs and decent singers. And maybe some sincerity, at some point. However, I was confronted with this:



Now, they can sing, don't get me wrong, there's a tune and everything. But Jeezy Chreezy! It's so plastic. And all the singers sound like this, like they've somehow had their throats coated in plastic. Also, that girl has that expression for the whole film and how would you not run away if the boy started doing that face right in front of yours? Oh, and the other thing; she's a genius (hence the book reading at the beginning of the clip). I slap my forehead with my palm and go and lie down somewhere annoyed at the plot that involves a jock and a geek discovering their love for singing together and uniting a divided school. Then, I come into work and root through You Tube to find a clip of a film that was the sort of thing I was hoping for. Obviously as High School Musical was Disney, I couldn't really expect the underage sex, sexual experimentation and cross-dressing, but, oh, the music. Seriously, if you like musicals and people who can sing, hunt this down (as I plan to do in my lunch break tomorrow). Even Sondheim makes an appearance. It shares at least one thing with HSM, though. Its name is pretty much an "it does exactly what it says on the tin" type of dealio. Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you Camp:

So Tired

Dear Lord, I'm tired. We had a party on Saturday, which I left at 2ish on the grounds that my eyes were closing whether I wanted them to or not. I woke up at 8 after something of a restless night, mainly caused by the fact that MuleBoy managed to stay up the entire night and left me on my lonesome. Although this is something that I'm used to with the insomnia and all, it isn't something that I particularly like, especially when coupled with the fact that I could hear him downstairs laughing and talking.

As a result, MuleBoy decided to go to bed at 9ish last night and insisted that I come so that I didn't wake him up later, which also ruled out reading or doing a puzzle book in bed. I fell asleep pretty quickly but woke up with a mini-panic attack at 1.30am. I finally fell asleep again much later, after solving the cause for panic attack, watching an Al Pacino film (it was okay but if Michael Rooker's in a whodunnit kind of a thing, it's going to be him whatdunnit), putting the cats away so that Steve didn't jump on my face and Meatball didn't claw at the door. As there was a mere hour between the 6am when I dropped off and my getting up time, I'm now wondering if I would have felt better had I not bothered to go back to sleep at all. Oh, and considering his concerns about being woken, MuleBoy was not disturbed by me once despite my nocturnal to-ings and fro-ings. I feel like crap.

The plus side is that at least the party was good and I had a lovely time yesterday with Mum and Big Sis at a local Garden Show. The minus is that I have no idea when I'm going to catch up on sleep.

Not quite crystallised

It's never very sensible for me to write a post that hasn't been formulating in my head for at least a day beforehand. Otherwise, I spend a vast amount of time editing and deleting as I go along. However, the pressure of a dated blog has forced my hand and I must write something.

Things are moving on apace, particularly the wedding which is now less than three months away. I don't have a photographer which is something of a worry, but we can always busk it if necessary. People are coming, they have cameras, we'll cope.

I've heard back from somewhere about a placement in casting, yet to hear about dates, something else has popped up that I'm giving serious thought to and I have to redo my CV.

MuleBoy is entirely done, his last five assignments are in and we're feeling all light and happy with the knowledge that people can come round without him having to work it into his schedule. Always a plus.

It's raining but you probably knew that.

I saw Zodiac and it was very good. Dad'll enjoy it immensely, I reckon. Mum'll fall asleep but be insistent that she enjoyed it regardless.

I got very drunk on Sunday and miraculously did not get any form of hangover beside an appetite that felt like a yawning abyss. I was going out for an Italian the next day, though, so it worked out all right.

I'm in a play. I'm finding the lines something of a struggle as my discipline is shot from lack of practice. I've got a week to learn a lot of stuff. I'm sure I'll manage.

I gardened on Saturday and my legs still hurt. This may have been exacerbated by not realising the Greyhound races were outside.

I'm back to Urban Funk after it conflicting with work for several months and shall enjoy the last two weeks of the class enormously. I hope.

I've deleted from GoSupermodels and got addicted from MySpace. I discovered it's actually quite fun there when you start talking to people. Yay for fun.

Umm, let me know if I've left anything out. Perhaps you'd like to hear more about my exploits with an improvisational band known as F*ck Knows and the Dilapitated (sic) Llamas. I would change the spelling but I think it adds to the charm. This was while drunk on Sunday and we created 14 songs, the last of which was called Fifteen Songs because we'd miscounted. Other classics were Chicken Stew and Albino Loving. Strange night: Zombie bouncing down the stairs, magical disappearing pizza, MuleBoy's fanclub, Randy McNewman in the living room. It was very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very good.

Things are Starting To Happen

MuleBoy's dissertation is finished. I asked for permission to print it out at work and now have it sitting in a drawer, awaiting one mini-amendment that required a panicky phonecall from his work. He has, by sheer jamminess, managed to get a full time job at the place where he was going to have to quit because they didn't have enough hours. He has but three essays to do and then he will be finished. He is set to graduate on 24 July, a day which I plan to celebrate fully.

The thing that has glued me to my place is done and I am nearly free to pursue other things. But I still don't know what to do. I am so fundamentally struck with ennui at the idea of continuing in admin but am not skilled in any other areas. I've been looking at placements but all are unpaid and we can't afford for either of us to be doing that sort of shenanigans for a while. And the wedding and honeymoon are in the way of most suggested dates. I'd love to join the Actor's Company but that costs 11 grand and, despite the structure of the company which allows people to work part time, that is extremely past my means. And I want a period of living at least a little bit within my means. That'd be nice.

My goal at the moment is to save for a postgraduate course at a drama school. Within this time I plan to look for other things to see if I'm better suited for them instead. I found something quite spectacular at the Donmar Warehouse which is my short-term goal. They've started a new thing, which is a trainee casting person and is supported by a bursary, so is paid. I phoned to find out what I could do to get it next year (it's a year post that starts in February). I'd need some casting experience beyond the amateur dramatics so have emailed a few companies about shadowing them. I think I have the skills for casting, particularly in the way that I can memorise actors and their careers. But it's frustrating that in order to get something paid I have to do something unpaid, which is similar to the sort of jobs that MuleBoy wants to go for. I may also continue to write and read film stuff and, if I do anything good, may send it to people.

I don't know what to do, as long-term readers will be well aware, but at least I am at the point where I can look for stuff rather than just wish for stuff to happen in the future. I've applied for a couple of adminny jobs already in order to make a start in London and can genuinely start to make plans. It's a relief.

In other news...

We kicked ass at the drama festival thing. Yay. The play what I devised* was recalled and got second best play of the festival, Zombie got best actor, Semolina Broccoli got Best Supporting Player, Mrs FW and I got mentioned as runners-up in the acting categories and Lorraine and Semolina's play won the whole thing and will go through to the next round. This does mean that Working didn't get through because only one team from each company could qualify, but I still get to tag along as a replacement for one of the original cast who can't make it. Which I think qualifies as being jammy.

I'm very excited because Mrs Drunken Accomplice is PREGNANT! From henceforth she shall be The Sober Accomplice until such time as she has ceased breastfeeding. Congratulations to all the Accomplices, especially Foetal Accomplice.


*MuleBoy reminded me of a story I like the other day. Someone I work with met Hello Darling on a train. Hello Darling said that she was going to see The Play Wot I Wrote in London. It later got back to Hello Darling that my colleague had said afterwards that "you'd think she'd have better grammar if she'd written a play". Love it.

Embarrassing things

So, I shall come clean. I have a tendency, as I think is well documented in here, to doss about a bit on t'internet at work. My current presence on my blog at 9am on a workday morning confirms this, I think. For the last couple of months (deep breath), I have been playing on the world's most embarrassing site for a 27 year old woman who has friends and a boyfriend. But I can't seem to stop. Big Sis accepted this when I told her, knowing my mentality, but Mrs Funny Whistler was rather disconcerted. It is called GoSuperModels and, basically, it's MySpace for people who really want to pretend to be models. Unfortunately this often tends to be 11 year old girls who can't type and overuse smileys. However, this was just my first impression as I used the site merely to play modelling games and buy clothes. Genius concept - play games, buy clothes. Now I'm addicted for an even worse reason than my need to pretend that I'm a model with an easily extendable clothing budget. I've got friends on there. Now, one of my friends is a mother-of-three who goes on there to make sure her daughters are safe and one of them is a 22 year old freelance web-designer who gets bored when she's working from home but the friends that I get on really well with are 14 and 15(!) We have the same music tastes, which is how I got into their club in the first place (clubs are a big thing in GSM) and they genuinely make me laugh. The other thing, quite important to me, is that people aren't allowed in the club unless they type well as the club does not tolerate webspeak.

Obviously, the age thing can make me feel awkward, but I do tell them how old I am and don't pretend to be anyone I'm not. I do get freaked when they start to talk about being alone forever because they don't have boyfriends but have to stop myself from contributing to a discussion about that because I'm sure I was equally melodramatic at that age, if not more, and shouldn't really start saying things like "don't be stupid, you need a slap", if only because people didn't say it to me. So I talk to them about GSM and music, we play word association games and "would you kiss this person?" games, during which I was surprised to find out that someone else would kiss Simon Pegg. There was me thinking he appealed mainly to 20/30 something women. That said, everyone on there is in love with Johnny Depp, which is an age gap and a half for most of these girls.

I think it's probably odd that I never got into MySpace when I'm pretty obsessed with this but there are a couple of reasons why it works better for me. 1) MySpace is about how you look in some ways. I put a Sara Silverman picture on my MySpace profile to begin with and got a deal of response that dropped off after I told people that that isn't me. GSM gives you an avatar and that is your physical identity. I prefer this as I like to pretend that I don't look like me. 2) MySpace doesn't have games or shopping facilities. This is rubbish.

So yes, I am a teenager in an adult's body, but I think you knew this already. I like to think that the GSM thing is more an expression of the part of me that likes to pretend she went to an American High School (seriously) and was a popular girl and is going to be a model. My obsession with America's Next Top Model is probably also an expression of this. Just don't hate me for it.

Strange Pasttimes

So, am living in a small vortex of nerves today. I normally get nervous before performing but there's nothing quite like having no safety net to keep the adrenaline going way in advance of the event. With Dude (an improvisational comedy night along the lines of Whose Line Is It Anyway, in case I haven't mentioned it before), my brain has established a quite remarkable feat which is to suppress any anticipation or knowledge of the event even happening until the day before, ensuring many nights of sleeping where there should be sleeplessness and fear. Unfortunately brain is not performing a similar task at the moment. With our current foray into a local amateur drama festival, we have reprised a piece that I am surprised I said yes to, given the inordinate amount of fear it inspires. I can only justify the decision by saying that I think I forgot how fricking terrifying it is to prepare and perform due to the rose-tinted specs of time and other people saying how much they wanted to see it again. As an actress who loves scripts and generally shouldn't be allowed to talk in real life without an edit function (a recent party where I talked a huge pile of crap really loudly is still making me shudder in recall, particularly where I insisted that meeting me was the highlight of everybody's life and then wouldn't let it go. It was one of those dreadful times when my ego had shouting privileges), I have a certain terror of being script-less. In this sense, scripts are the safety-net whose absence is making me sweat (ooh, it rhymes!) We (Mrs Funny Whistler, Big Sis and I) are embarking on a mostly wordless piece, devised by ourselves about four years ago about two women who piss each other off in the office and then have a bit of a boogie with the cleaner. I suppose I am fairly confident about it - I've been talking myself through it every night before going to sleep, which turns in to a shopping list:

MFW enters, wait for her to shred and type
In (hair in hat*)
Coat
Sit
Bag
Bra
Toys
Hair
Fidget
Magic Piece of Paper
Punch
Windows
Apple
Phone
"Hello. Oh, hi Rob. Yes, I know, I know. Oh yeah. Mmhmm, uh-uh"
SHREDDER
Sneeze
Fan
Filing Cabinet
Text Message
Tape
Revel in Desk Size
Tape War
Dance of the Chairs

*new idea from Big Sis so deserving of parentheses

But, if it isn't funny, what happens then? We had a technical rehearsal on Sunday where we did the Dance of the Chairs and not a smile was cracked, even by friends to make us feel better. Admittedly, the dance works because it comes after a gradual escalation of silliness and doesn't really work on its own but it was a huge blow to our confidence. Dad came to watch our subsequent panic-fuelled run-throughs to give us tips and his main piece of advice, which I am clutching, is that it isn't that funny. I had been playing it like a loon and he said that this gave the wrong impression and that, by toning it down, it would be more quaintly humourous than side-splitting. Oh, the relief. Now, I can quiet it all down, adding pauses and fun rather than clownish expressions and a manic pace. Finally, in our last run-through, we got the tone and pace right - clocking in at the twenty minutes required for the festival's rules. Now, it's just about whether I remember this as we fail to get any laughs tomorrow night. And whether Apple comes after Punch. And I cannot stop worrying.

I guess it has hit me so strongly as tonight I get to see the festival in action for the first time ever. I am nervous for our group who are performing and nervous because it is a reminder of what we have to go through tomorrow. That said, I am really looking forward to tonight because the tantalising glimpses of song, movement, music with wine glasses and the appropriate use of a cast member's hair have whetted my appetite. Let's hope I will be able to concentrate without my mantra of bra, toys, hair...

Red Carpet

As something of a film fancier and enjoyer of nice dresses, the Oscars is something that I get excited about, although always seem to forget to book time off work in order to be able to stay up and watch it. However, seeing as it overruns by a lot and gets a bit boring, that's probably a good thing as I can still enjoy it without having to sit through it. I've just been reading through a post via my favourite website Go Fug Yourself here (scroll down for Fugging the Oscars), which is a blow-by-blow account that made me laugh quite a lot. Essentially: Helen Mirren and Forest Whittaker won. Big surprise. Alan Arkin won, which is good as Little Miss Sunshine was genius, although I loved Mark Wahlberg so much in The Departed that I was secretly holding out for him. Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker (my favourite editor) both won for The Departed which also won best film. Although there were better films, I'm just really glad it won over Babel and The Queen. I haven't seen either of those for a reason. The fact that Babel was by the same guy who did 21 Grams didn't encourage me to see it as that was one of those films, like Mystic River, that I felt I was supposed to like because it was very serious and important but came out of feeling very let down. I also read a review of Babel that said that if the same idea had been done with a more positive feel, it would have been ridiculously naive, but as it was a depressing subject matter, we're supposed to take it seriously, which is pretty much my feeling about 21 Grams and confirmed my prejudice. And I know I should probably see The Queen and get my ideas changed about her but I don't want to. She's just a woman with a crappy job who's pretty much out of touch with modern Britain for all of her hand-shaking and hospital visiting. I feel sorry for her but I'm not interested enough to spend two hours in her company.

To be honest, the awards are generally a let-down after all the hype and the speeches can be embarrassing but the outfits never let us down. Annoyingly my favourite dress of the year belonged to Reese Witherspoon. And it's dark blue, which I always feel is a back-up black at awards ceremony, i.e. dull. But unfortunately, having looked at several photos, I still love it to bits. It's gorgeous. Cate Blanchett's was much less upsettingly pleasant as it was interesting, unusual and on an actress who I respect and like, and who appears uncredited in Hot Fuzz (it is her - I've had it confirmed. I am no longer the crazy woman ranting about how I know it is her to a defiant MuleBoy. I am now the crazy woman with proof). Gwyneth, Penelope and Jessica Biel all came a cropper to unpleasant shades of pink. I liked both Eva Green and Nicole's dresses but their faces scared me. Cameron Diaz decided to wear white, which always looks bridal, and she managed to get a dress so architectural in structure that she looks like a bride from an awful 80s wedding. Or a really clean version of the Tricorn Centre. And she should stop being brunette. I thought that Helen Mirren looked great but she generally does. Kate Winslet, my favourite red carpet person, looked a bit lacklustre. Mainly because of her hair. But she wore a colour which is the most important thing. My favourite men were Robert Downey Jr, Clive Owen and James McAvoy. Eddie Murphy looks like he thinks that he's still in Dreamgirls and Djimon Hounsou, lucky bastard who got to sit next to Jack Nicholson in the front row (if I ever go to the Oscars, I want to sit there. Can you imagine getting little asides from Jack Nicholson? Also, he always genuinely looks like he's having fun), had shiny edgings to his lapels. Daniel Craig is always gorgeous but, like Eddie, seemed to forget he wasn't actually on set and had dressed Bond-appropriate. I know it's difficult to escape Bond comparisons in a tux but would refer him to Clive Owen's example. The rebel didn't wear a tie of any kind! And it still worked.

I can't wait until the highlights, I want to see the interpretive dance where they make images from recent films. I want to see Abigail Breslin and Jaden Smith be cute together. And I want to see the Dead Person Montage, which, if I'm honest, probably is one of my favourite bits of the show. Even if it isn't as good as what Mark LaMarr used to do on Never Mind the Buzzcocks for all the people he just wished had died over the year.

Lacking Inspiration

I have been finding it very difficult to do anything recently. My enthusiasm for things has evaporated temporarily. Pretty much the only things I have looked forward to are going to see my Dad and TV programmes (although these are very dependent on mood, except for America's Next Top Model which I could genuinely watch for 24 hours a day without getting bored). Obviously it hasn't been that bleak, I may be exaggerating a little. I went out for a Valentine's Meal with MuleBoy and we've been doing wedding stuff. But I missed an audition for Big Liam's band because I was going to the hospital the day after Dad's op and had spent the morning in floods of tears. I couldn't face getting a part in the next play so pulled out after auditioning. I haven't posted or written anything for a month. I've stopped going to the gym and ate nothing but sugar for about a week before moving on to junk food and cheese for the last three weeks. This, in turn, has led to hours of standing in front of the mirror hating myself, unable to find anything to wear. I am planning to go to the gym today but am finding it hard to shift out of patterns of self-hating leading to binging.

But my Dad is home and, if not entirely himself again, is getting there. Although it has led to some problems in my brain area, this whole experience has not been as bad as it certainly could have been and I have coped. My manager said yesterday that she would have been crying the whole time and I find it hard to believe that I wasn't. I had one bad day and that was it. I just feel like I've been crying the whole time. I have tears that spring into my eyes from time to time caused by random triggers like, for some reason, the end of The Railway Children repeating in my head. I'd walk down the road and "Daddy, Oh my Daddy" would hit me. Seriously, I just typed the blessed thing and it made me go. I think that what I need is some kind of finish to the whole thing. Some kind of train platform reunion where my Dad can dance a jig to prove he's okay and I can hug him and just feel better.

I am having second thoughts about posting this. Obviously, if you're reading this, the first thoughts won out. I saw Dad yesterday and he was up to sitting at the computer and had read my last post, which is good. But I don't want to write a post about how I feel crap because I've been mildly traumatised by my Dad's heart attack and subsequent triple heart bypass and then have him feel guilty when none of this is his fault. But I do need an outlet and this is my forum for my more selfish and self-indulgent thoughts. I just urge you, Dad, to understand that, however much I would wish to protect you from knowing that it was difficult for us, it was hard and we struggled at times but we would willingly go through worse for you to be alright.

When Life Goes Scary

I tried to post yesterday but had to stop as I was on the verge of embarrassing myself in a public place. It was a very bad day yesterday. I cried during the dissertation hand-in, although it was fortunately at a point when students were still lining up at the printers and weren't actually present. My Dad went into hospital on Tuesday night as a result of chest pains and then was told he'd had a heart attack and needed to stay in a week. We were all in a state of high panic but having got to the hospital and having Dad sit with us in the waiting room for a bit we'd all calmed down, but this news suddenly made it seem much more serious.

I closed off yesterday. I couldn't tell anyone except my boss at work so that I could leave early. I hadn't slept particularly well the night before and tiredness combined with a barely suppressed panic meant I just couldn't let anything out or I wouldn't stop. Dad's health since has been really good;, good blood pressure, good heartbeat but it's difficult to relax. I feel more relaxed but there's still a niggling thought in the back of my mind that when I'm not there, anything could happen. I wish I had the tools to defend my family against everything. A doctor and a warrior and a magician all in one. They are so precious.

I would break if anything happened to my Dad. I was trying to phrase it yesterday and couldn't find the words. I can't think of anything that expresses it better. I would break. I do not know anyone with more passion or the ability to express that passion and be so infectious with it. Although he can stumble with the words, his excitement is lifting and his sincerity is palpable. People are drawn to him and his talent and what is an indefinable air of being just kind of cool. Many's the time have I been told by people, or overheard, how awesome my Dad is. He's devoted to my Mum, and she to him, and their relationship is one of the best I've ever seen. Although he sees himself as curmudgeonly and grumpy, which, don't get me wrong, he can easily be, he is an optimistic and romantic bon viveur.

That last point may have to be trimmed somewhat with a post-heart attack diet but what can you do? I think evidence of his awesomeness can be seen in the response to me telling people; emails and phone calls and visitors have been popping in and I'm so grateful for all of this. People are amazing.

Crazy Lady

So, I'm back on a diet and back to obsessing about food. I'm sure you're not exactly fascinated by this and I know that I can get a bit repetitive but, as with Herself and her drinks list the other day, sometimes it is good to use the blogs for our own means as opposed to providing entertainment. I have managed to eat very little this week, which I am quite surprised by. I was ratty when I came back from a training session this morning because I hadn't eaten and there were biscuits and everything. I have now eaten and my mood has been restored. I'm eating a bowl of cereal for lunch as I hate sandwiches that have been around for a while. I only eat sandwiches at home because they're fresh. I think it has to do with getting cheese and cucumber sandwiches at school; when I got to them at lunch, the bread and cheese would be soggy from the cucumbers. If I remembered, I'd take the cucumbers out when I got to school and store them separately. I can't remember if I ever actually told my Mum or not, that probably would have been easier.

Anyhoo, yesterday was a work hand-in and I was up and down like a yoyo so decided not to do the cereal thing and got a gross wrap that was 9 Weightwatchers points. I threw half of it away so it counts as 4.5, I reckon. Had to do the same thing just now with a sticky toffee Mullerlite thing. There weren't any apples at the corner shop and I'd seen a persuasive advert of a Mullerlite and a chocolate button, saying that they were about the same fat content or something so thought that the Mullerlite would be brilliant because so much more filling. Unfortunately it was really sickly, so have wasted £3.55 this week on food that I have thrown away. Very frustrating. And really, who sells crap yoghurts over apples? I went to Tesco Express while walking in to work this morning (get me) and they didn't have any of the apple type that I am currently eating so didn't get any there. I'm into Granny Smith's at the moment, before that it was Cox's, before that, Gala and Braeburns and I really only ate Granny Smiths in my teenage years. It does make it slightly awkward that not only do I only eat one type of fruit but that I also only eat one type of the one type of fruit that I do eat. Does that make sense?

I have been to the gym Monday and today and walked either to or from work every day. When I get home, MuleBoy has generally cooked something massively unhealthy, so that is something to change for next week! But as a cap to the day I've been having pure sugar. I had five After Eights on Monday and four Minstrels last night. It's something to look forward to. This restraint will last until the weekend, I reckon. Then I'll probably be just as crap as before. But at least I'm trying now.

The cats' diets are going pretty much as I expected. Having been back for their second weigh-in (they have to go every six weeks) Steve has lost 250 grams and Meatball has gained 100. I'm not quite sure how she's managed this. I put on weight because I can go to the shops and buy more food, which I can't really imagine her doing. So we're going to exercise her more, which currently involves us running to the top of the stairs with her food. She stops and looks at us from the bottom and waits for us to come back down again. I was in a rush this morning so gave up after she sat on the fifth step and refused to go any further. In light of this, the cat harness that we've bought in order to walk her is starting to feel like a wasted purchase. I'll give it a go at the weekend, I think. Maybe at night so that no-one can actually see me walking a cat.

Waking Up

Happy New Year everybody!

I've been in hibernation. It's been very nice. Taking the first week back at work off is becoming something of a tradition and it is generally extremely lovely. I sleep a lot, eat a lot, play games, spend time with MuleBoy, watch old films, stay up late and avoid the shower. I know, I know, the last bit's gross. It's just really nice falling out of the world for a while.

So now I'm back. Can't say that I've done anything constructive yet, except plan to not eat very much today and I made myself bring in my gym bag. Early days. And to be honest, I'm not really convinced that I'll get very far with any resolutions that I've half-heartedly formed in my head. But I'm currently feeling content and warm-glow-ish, which is worth a lot. Excited by the future and all the possibilities. I can see an end to MuleBoy's degree, he has a new job at the mo, I can see an end to my job and the start of something new. Everything seems shiny and new, just like it should do after a decent hibernation.

Identity

So, first night of the play last night. I think it went well, we heard some positive stuff, which was nice. Very difficult to know when you don't spend that much time actually onstage, but the bits I was on for seemed alright.

Finally, to return to my much delayed blog from Wednesday, I am sick of being mistaken, misspelt, mispronounced and misunderstood. I understand, on the phone why someone may get my name wrong as I speak quickly and the sibilance of the end part of my name does run into the word "speaking" so that it often disappears. I do not understand email and letter confusion. It is written down. How, in any way, can people be so dense that they just don't double-check something before they reply? Somehow, they just seem to assume that I've got it wrong.

Similarly, I have a problem with being mistaken for somebody else. This happens a lot as Big Sis and I are similar-looking and for some people this constitutes us being the same person. Every time this happens I go and rant at Big Sis because I don't understand! We have similar faces, similar mannerisms and similar body shapes but there are enough differences to stop us from being the same. I choose to be ginger, she chooses to be blond. I'm three inches taller. I have a much longer face and goofy teeth. She has a smile like a normal person. Part of the problem is that Big Sis has a public role in her job and a number of people around where she works know her. They then see me, not knowing she has a sister, think I'm her, smile and say hello in a friendly way. As I don't know them, I'm not quick enough to twig and will give them a variety of responses a) confused smile, b) confused frown, c) blank face and, on a bad day, d) glare. I worry about this. It concerns me that I reflect badly on my pleasant and personable sister and makes me feel not so much a person in my own right but merely the bad side of her personality.

Of course, it's worse when the person in question does know both of us and still gets us mixed up. Surface differences are all well and good and I do get mistaken for any number of tall red-headed girls my age with glasses, not just for Big Sis. This just confirms my suspicion that people are basically stupid. But after talking to us both a certain amount and seeing us fairly often, I do get insulted when we're mistaken. Our personalities are markedly different and this, in itself, should overcome any superficial similarities of appearance.

I think where my real problem in being referred to by the wrong name or as the wrong person is that it makes me feel diminished. Every time, I feel like my uniqueness and my identity are being eroded. I moved churches aged about 14 because I found somewhere where I wasn't referred to constantly as someone's granddaughter, daughter or sister and wanted to be known in my own right. The main problem being that Granny was in the Guild, Dad was a steward, Mum ran Sunday School and Big Sis did the creche. There was no niche for me so no-one, except my friend FernBoy, knew who I was unless it was in relation to my relations. I didn't really start socialising at the Bench until I got cast in a few things because I didn't want the same thing to happen.

I don't know why I need to have such a fervent ownership of those things that make up who I believe my self to be like my name and appearance. It probably says something about my self perception that I have to have some grip on these relatively unimportant things to know who I am. This extends, unfortunately, to other elements of my life. Once I have got really close to people, I find it difficult when they are close to other people. I need people to tell me that they like me, especially MuleBoy. I remember getting freaked out when I was younger because I realised that other people could sing better than me because this meant that I did not own that talent. It is a constant effort not to touch things and people and aspects of my personality and scream "mine". It is an effort not to show how upset I can get by things that other people don't even notice. My Dad wrote a thank you letter to a family member for a birthday gift and told them what had happened on his birthday. He wrote that Mum cooked the meal, Big Sis baked a cake and Kitten poured the wine. For a start, the wine thing is a very minimal contribution and what was worse, I didn't even pour the wine. I was an afterthought and a slightly grasping conclusion to make a neat sentence. I can still remember how gutted I felt that I was so marginal. I reminded Dad that I had, in fact, written him a poem that had taken me a good deal of head scratching to get right so he wrote an addendum to the sentence that went "and wrote a poem". Now I felt marginalised, my achievement negligible and I had corrupted a nicely paced sentence with my melodramatic response. One of the most striking things about it is that I remember it so clearly now.

What I would like to know is what this says about me, other than deranged. Is this a sign of being spoilt, as my Granny told me and my parents repeatedly as I was growing up? Or is it a sign that I didn't have anything I considered truly mine growing up because everything I did, Big Sis did first or did with me? This would explain my scary need to have friends that are mine because this was one of the many things that we had to be fair about. We still have a number of mutual friends and it is still something that I struggle with. I don't go so far as when I was a teenager and questioned friends about who they liked best and why when Big Sis wasn't there, feeling cheated when they didn't immediately and fervently say that it was me.

Basically, I don't understand how identical twins cope. I love Big Sis to bits and don't resent her for this. I just have to suppress a lot of instincts when dealing with situations and spend a lot of my time angling for praise and reassurances of my place in the world and my position with other people. A lot of this blog is almost making excuses for myself and explaining certain personality quirks. I guess that's not what I intended. I don't want to make excuses for myself but I want to make myself clear. This is me. It's not pretty, it's not rational and I probably am crazy in a lot of ways. I do know that other people have crazy personality quirks and flaws like me and I don't consider myself to be special in this way. But I do like to articulate these quirks because it helps me not over-obsess about things. I've been obsessing about something that happened last week and trying to work out why I felt emotionally bruised by something extremely insignificant. So this is the outpouring of a week of obsession. Sorry.

Mean!

Talking about fist shaking. I was fully intending to kick someone who was rude to a colleague yesterday. Here is a transcript of their conversation, see whether you think it deserves a kicking:

Rude Man: Where are your catering facilities?
Colleague: What do you mean...(intending to ask whether he meant our humble canteen or the official University caterers based in another building)
RM: What part of 'catering facilities' do you not understand?

Colleague pointed him to our canteen, which he dashed to and then dashed from and outside. I saw him out the window and shook my fist. Later on, I saw him again and stared at him in an angry way. I don't like unnecessarily rude people.

This isn't even the thing that I was thinking about posting when I mentioned that I was thinking about posting. This is something else entirely that sprung to mind as a result of the bracketed fist shaking that I perpetrated towards my Pa, almost as proof that fist-shaking does occur in the real world, even though I don't know anyone else apart from me that actually does it. It's a very good way of venting frustration though. Partly because it makes me giggle when I do it so the frustration is vented through the healing power of being an eejit.

Kick Off

This is the week that the huge endeavour actually has to happen. No, not my birthday, sillies (it's on Saturday, by the way). The play starts tomorrow, which is somewhat stupefying as it's been something of a Sword of Damocles for a year, hanging over all of our heads, from the production team to the cast members, to the families of the production team and cast members. I've had a slightly special view of it, as have only been a part of Play One (see Boanerges for a more detailed explanation of the play) due to slightly diva-esque tendencies that I have been simultaneously chastising and congratulating myself for as the process has gone on. But it is actually quite nice being part of a production, so getting all the nice stuff that that entails, camaraderie etc, and being able to look forward to seeing the show too.

It was also quite a relief to get some time to finish puppet making last night while everyone else was rehearsing. The wolves (on for three appearances tops) are something of a burden. I was really hoping that I could get away without giving them bodies but the director has requested they be bodied up, so I now have to make bodies and work out the mechanics for the actors holding the bodies so it was good to get cracking on that last night. Wile E. Wolf (the second one I made had a coyote-ish snout, hence the name. The first one was relatively dull so he has been monickered Kevin) also needs a face so I have to get cracking on that, too.

There was another reason for relief as my foot, the one that I busted on holiday, has started playing up. No doubt my antics as a puppeteer have upset it rather but wearing a slight heel yesterday and going over on it probably didn't help. I am now wearing my sports trainers and have a little limp. It'll be fine by tomorrow, I'm sure. Being a puppeteer has been a huge challenge for me but one that I've definitely relished. Considering I did what I thought was a terrible job in the puppeteering part of the audition, I was rather surprised to get one of the main puppets (which basically means one with a line or four). Main problems have been trying to remember I'm invisible, trying to remember I'm invisible but remembering that I can still be in the way, trying to get other people to remember that I'm invisible. Difficult job when a large person already. I've managed on the whole, although a couple of scenes where the introduction of the set changed the physicality have resulted in something slightly nightmarish. Going up and down the (extremely vertical) ladders, playing pass the puppet, very tricky. Going up the stairs, do-able, coming down the stairs, slow and clumpy. The balloon scene, which was re-blocked last week, is a complete nightmare. This is currently my bete noir and I have to spend the interval psyching myself up for it. I have to squat, back against the wall, arm outstretched holding puppet in position in front of me, completely visible albeit in blacks with a hood. This is through the audience coming in after the interval, through voice-over introducing second half, through minute-long conversation. Then I get to move finally because the puppeteer in front of me moves to get into position and makes me less visible, so remove back from wall (hopefully without toppling as I did on Monday) and put weight fully on feet which are starting to go numb. Then have to act with puppet without being able to see puppet (I have a horrible feeling wire and inner workings of puppet are visible) and then, finally, beautifully, I can get up as the set is closed. I then spend the next scene before I go back on, stretching and walking and trying to get some feeling back in to my feet and legs.

Discomfort aside, I have loved doing this play. I enjoyed the day-long puppet making sessions. I enjoyed rehearsals. I like everyone in it, although certain cast members have driven me mad, one in particular who has been getting very stressed (uncharacteristically so, I might add) about people doing things correctly and then who doesn't turn his mobile phone off and does not possess the ability to whisper. My Dad has defended PD, who I personally feel doesn't deserve it. He might have got on a bit better if he'd aimed for the cast-call time rather than the play-start time. That's all I'm saying. I am trying very hard to resist the call of the inner prefect though. I'm not exactly on top of it but I'm getting there.

Wow, this is a very rambly post. Apologies for those reading this who are bored with the play already. I may post again later today. I was going to post about something quite different and then got derailed by reading Boanerges (shakes fist).

This week at work...

...I have managed to look through a holiday brochure for the US to get holiday ideas. I'm pretty stuck on Stowe, Vermont and Boston as destinations other than New York. The pictures of Fall leaves make me stroke the pages. Talking about it over with MuleBoy, realised that he has much more confused idea of where everything is than me. Glad I now know where all the states are - yay, the Geography Game (also played at work)
...I have gone back to a story idea that I never got off the ground and have written some actual words. Not many but they exist
...I have designed a Chocolatl (sic) wrapper for the play
...I have requested rights information for a play we're planning to pitch for next year
...I have decided on a new hair colour for when I get my hair done next Friday
...I have hunted eBay for wedding shoes, mainly because the wedding bit in BHS has closed down, which was where I planned to go. Still nervous about buying stuff I haven't tried on so haven't gone so far as to purchase anything yet. Also looked at Irregular Choice shoes. Gorgeous but the ones I really like are so vertiginous, I can't imagine wearing them for more than five minutes at a time. Also looked at possible Best Lady garb for Big Sis. Still haven't found anything that looks right, although looking back at Kate Winslet's Alexander McQueen for Givenchy Oscar outfit, that's kind of what I want. But one that's less likely to keep Big Sis stuck in an embarrassingly lengthy toilet trip a la Kate.
...I have looked for hotels in the area for the wedding night. I am not obsessed. Really.
...I went dancing twice, first at Salsa, second at Urban Funk. First one, not that keen on dancing that close to someone as can't hide sweaty-face easily and not allowed to just do whatever the hell I want. Also, looked down at my feet at the wrong point and realised that dancing partner was slightly more excited than he had any reason to be (I mentioned sweaty-face, did I not?) Made me want to run away and never come back. Urban Funk was blessed relief following that.

...I haven't told anyone that I am bored and have little to do because then they might get a bit suspicious about what I'm actually doing with my time. I have done some work, obviously. I sent some letters out already this morning. I did the post just now. Some students who've left will be getting exit awards. It's all good, it just takes up no time at all.

Bored now

I am looking at the clock and I am just so bored. I just rang MuleBoy to alleviate the dull and he started talking about dissertations and referencing which didn't exactly work. It isn't like I have nothing to do at work, I just have nothing very satisfying to do. My options are: ringing round and leave messages on students' answerphones for them to never call me back, sorting out a new and exciting way of organising the new annual reports procedure, and filing. I don't have a very good relationship with filing. My appraisal every year consistently contains some approximation of the phrase "I hate filing, please don't make me have to do it any more". I also have to work out how to manage Research people but still don't really understand how the whole thing works and once I've done it, this will involve more filing.

Instead I've spent a large portion of my day looking at things to do once I've left this particular episode of my life. There are so many reasons why I've stayed in this job for longer than I really wanted to and all of those things are still keeping me there, and it is really starting to make me chomp at the bit now. So I've been trying to decide what I want to do next! My plan is to do something postgraduate-y and my train of thought is currently rather bifurcated as I can't decide between two options:

Option No.1 - Study a 1 year diploma/MA type thing at a drama school and do the acting thing. Now this is lifelong dream territory. I have considered the acting malarkey before and have put myself off as I know I am not confident enough to actually do it despite really, really wanting to. I know I'm good but I lack certain other qualities that are necessary, like thick skin and the ability to make a good first impression (on average I'd say I make a good third impression, when the fear has subsided enough for me to not sound like a twat).

Option No.2 - Do an MA in Film Studies and either become a film critic or a film lecturer of some kind. When you start reading someone else's text books (for fun!), you realise that this is something for which you have a more than passing interest in. This is the more practical version but the problem with my practical ideas for a CAREER is that they fall by the wayside when I return again to the fact that I really want to act and that the idea of not acting fills me with horror.

I've also been doing stuff towards my wedding but I'm playing it down because I really don't want to be the sort of person who obsesses about her wedding. I never ever anticipated I'd get this excited about the whole business. I blame the dress.

I am Bad Mummy

The cats hate me. I'm right there with them.

We went to the vets on Saturday for a booster leukaemia shot (this boggles my mind and makes me want to look into leukaemia more as I didn't think it was something that could be treated preventatively). Afterwards they went in to see the nurse for Weight Clinic. I can't believe that I go to WeightWatchers for me and feel guilty, and then have to go for someone else and feel guilty too. It's like that show about killing the kids, where they torment parents about how terrible they are and how the children are going to die early. They do it for cats too - we got heart failure, diabetes, arthritis so they were really twisting the knife. Our only defence was that we've only had the cats for six months and had adopted both the food and the habits of the previous owners along with the cats themselves.

So we have mended our cat-feeding ways and they shall soon be on the road towards losing half their body weight (a goal which neither of us feels is particularly realistic). But, obviously, not being in control of their own food, they are hating us for the imposed regime. Particularly Meatball, the bigger of the two. She's generally pretty easy-going and will submit to any number of indignities when I'm feeling playful. However, she has turned into psycho cat now and will generally just sit by her bowl in the kitchen watching us with baleful eyes and waiting for us to fill it. Seeing as I have often let my diet slide due to general moodiness and turned back into a normal human being as a result, I can definitely sympathise. But it doesn't stop me from feeling rejected when I pick her up for a cuddle and she wails in her strangled motor way (occasionally she meows like a normal cat, but she's just not very good at it consistently) and struggles to be free. Its very demoralising. Steve, on the other hand, is much less tormented and even eats less than she is given. I spy a future Slimmer of the Year in the making. I wish I was like Steve.

As you can tell, I am turning into someone ever so slightly obsessive about my cats. It's funny though, despite the cat hair, the expense (Meatball needs dental work - oi vey), and the fact that I quite often skip my breakfast in the mornings because I'm giving them theirs, I can absolutely state that they have improved the quality of my life. A few years ago, during a Christmas break from Uni, I sat around with my friends and we made a list of what we predicted for people. Despite not being particularly maternal and having no pets, they all unanimously decreed that I would be the one surrounded by children and animals in a farm somewhere (it was also decided that I'd be the least likely to be gay, which given the company was quite an obvious one). It's an idea that's stuck somehow and has become something of a mini-dream. I guess the cats, and the fact that I can care for them and look after them, has made it feel slightly more achievable.

I Aten't Dead

Hello. I spoke Mrs Funny Whistler last night who said that she was concerned due to my lack of posting recently. So this is a brief note to confirm that I'm okay. Big sighs of relief all round, I know.

I was off sick last week which meant that I don't have much access to a computer, my home one being booked by MuleBoy permanently for Fantasy Football, MySpace and the occasional essay writing. If I want to use it, I have to undergo a ferocious cross examination and produce a stamped and signed permission slip on request. It's just too much work for a simple post. This week I have been trying to catch up after being off sick for a week which has been a pain, especially considering I'm picking up work for a colleague who's now on holiday for six months (or maternity leave. The one thing that makes me want to get impregnated, especially now it's nine months).

In other news, last night I was talking to Beanie about a part in a play I had really wanted but hadn't got and sounded stupid when he was trying to explain why I hadn't got it. The thing is, I know why I haven't got it and I know that it isn't really about me but about what the director wanted, something I understand even more since directing myself. I understand the reasoning behind it and may have done the same in a similar situation. However, fundamentally, and I know there are actors reading this who can appreciate it, it is always a rejection. I can hear reasons and explanations, even compliments about my audition. But the only thing you really feel is the no.

Well, that's a patchy little post. I promise to do better next time.

I am the REAL Rod Hull

Is it Greeeen jelly?

I am aware that the above reference is slightly obscure but I don't care. You should have watched more Lee and Herring.

Anywho, I am very excited because this week I have discovered a penpal. I did not go out and try to find a penpal, she found me. This came about, I am guessing, because she decided to do that thing that we've all done at some point; typing her name into Google and seeing what comes up (my favourite is still MuleBoy's lifestory on film - it was made in 2002). She spied my work email and decided to make contact - so yes, my penpal has the same name as me. At the moment we're still amused by this and keep signing off our emails with our full name. Unfortunately our middle names are different, sadly for me as hers is particularly pretty, so the similarity ends with our first and last names.

We are very different in terms of lives. She's 13, which makes her half my age, and this, along with a very good standard of written English, makes me think of her as a smaller version of me. Henceforth, she shall be known as Mini-Kitten! She lives in Connecticut, which inspired me to enquire about it as a honeymoon destination as I plan to spend some time looking at trees looking pretty (the plan is also to go to New York so that MuleBoy doesn't go crazy - he's not a big lover of the countryside). She also thinks England is "elegant", which made me chuckle, and is going to be learning about Europe in school this year so "anything she doesn't know about England will be covered, hopefully", which confirmed my feelings about the US perception of Europe. We're very small, apparently. I bit back a comment on that one; she's bright, she'll work it out.

I'm guessing that, being 13, she'll get bored of it quicker than I will. However, it's quite sweet and fun for the moment so I'll keep it going until she stops replying or asks me to stop.

snazzle frazzle mazzle

As said by Mutley.

I had to apologise to my colleagues yesterday. After borrowing Neanderthal Boy's phone directory and then realising it wasn't helpful, I did actually intend to throw it back to him with the intention of hitting both his phone and cup of tea. No accident. I was generally extremely irritable yesterday; I really had to stop myself from screaming at students and just shutting up the office. It may have been because I am trying to kickstart the diet again so my only sustenance during the day was a bowl of cereal and Diet Coke. It may have been because I had spent much of the weekend being grouchy and hungover so hadn't really felt like the weekend had happened, except for the two evenings where I was creating the hangover. It may have also been because Muleboy had come to bed at 4.30am Monday and woken me up, which was fine as I normally go back to sleep again but then he woke me up again because he thought he'd heard something. Of course he'd heard something - we have two overweight but active cats. Anywho - whether it was one or all of these things, it meant that I wasn't in the best mood, exacerbated by the proliferation of new and subsequently confused students needing help and a data-inputting job with a deadline for Friday that I'm only halfway through now despite doing constantly for two weeks.

I have resigned myself to being irritable on occasion. I don't have much control over it and can do nothing except wait for it to be over. I only ask that if you realise that this is my mental state, do not try to see if I'm alright, jolly me through it or tease me. I'm not saying that I will actually rip your throat out, I will just want to. Bizarrely, after years of living with this and occasionally being subjected to me in this state of mind now, Big Sis still does at least one of these things. I have come to the conclusion that she has no sense of self preservation. That, or she is an evil mastermind and, in a twist from my currently perceived view of the situation, I am the good sister (I sense scepticism from my gentle readers). Tips for the future - leave me alone without making it obvious that you are leaving me alone, do not draw attention to mental state in any way, wait until I start laughing at myself and then approach.

Attitude

Working in an educational establishment as I do can definitely have its ups and downs in terms of how old I feel. On the plus side, people mistake me for a student quite often, I get a student card and can pretend that I am forever 21. However, on the minus side, I can turn up to a class in "Urban Funk" (feel free to laugh at the image of me doing Hip Hop) at the Uni Gym and find myself surrounded by girls whose main aim in life seems to be to make me feel old. The worst part was when the instructor said that she was 21 and I felt very alone. I also struggled to possess any "attitude", a necessity for any dancer of the Hip Hop. The end of the dance routine that was put together was a move full of attitude and yet the only attitude that I had was looking slightly like a little teapot. Bless the students and their ability to look good in jogging trousers while striking poses. I'm going back, though, it's the best class I've done for ages. I may look silly and I may be old but I do like a dance.

Much love to the good people who have been carrying on the nice things. The nice things are reciprocated in triplicate. You are all very lovely.

Touched

I have been loath to commit anything to html for about a week for fear that I be flippant. Thank you (again) to Herself for being supportive and basically very nice to me. If you want to know why, there is a comment under the 0 comments link to the previous post but it isn't showing up. Please take a look if you would like to see nice things about me. Please go ahead and add things (no obligation). Please go ahead if you would like to add comments about Herself. Or if there is anyone else that you feel needs to know nice things about themselves for any reason and whom you know actually reads this blog, please feel free to continue the nice things thing. We could have a forum of sisterly love going on. I know that having a list has made me feel very good about myself and I have referred to it at the various points when I have felt a bit crappy about myself this week. So go on people, be nice!

Mo' Money

The heading is a reference to a film that I've never seen and which I remember primarily for the accompanying theme tune sung by Janet Jackson and Luther Vandross. In retrospect, it heralds the coming of the apocalypse starring, as it does, the Wayans Brothers. Admittedly the lead is Damon Wayans who is less evil than his brothers Shawn and Marlon who are responsible for Little Man (in cinemas now, run and hide), White Chicks and the Scary Movie franchise. These movies make these particular film makers (they write them too, dontcha know) as high up in my "I wish they didn't have a career" list as Michael Bay, Paul W S Anderson, Martin Lawrence and Renee Zellweger post-Nurse Betty. Damon, I can put up with for having starred in a Spike Lee film, albeit one that I didn't particularly like, and for not being involved in his brothers' output. Well played, Damon, well played.

That was a surprising detour considering that this was meant to be a post about the job that I applied for recently. I've been having that "stuck in a rut" feeling and have been applying for jobs that would be a big change, especially in the improving my finances department. This means that I have been applying for jobs quite a way above my experience level. However, I have had good feedback for my applications and managed to get an actual interview for one post. I got excited when I was shown what could be my office, which had but one workstation in it and a surprisingly pretty view but in the end this turned out to be more of an "and this is what you could have won" situation as I didn't get the job itself. Again, positive feedback but no actual job.

I had really mixed feelings about it, though. At one stage this weekend I considered the possibility that I may get offered the job and entertained the idea of turning it down and telling everyone that I just didn't get it. Obviously, that didn't happen because I wouldn't confess to it if I'd done it but the idea was there. I almost wished that I had done worse in interview so that there was no chance I'd get offered it. I fear change, basically. I would have said yes because I couldn't have turned down the money but I would have been shitting myself. It takes me a while to adjust to the idea of doing something new and even longer to convince myself that I can do something that I haven't already proved to myself I can do. My need for security, which I was explaining to Herself yesterday, extends to much more than my need to know where the money's coming from.

Likes and Dislikes

I've been catching up on book reading recently. I had a dry period before I went on holiday due to busy-ness and change of routine, especially walking to and from work which meant that I no longer had a good hour a day of platform and train-bound reading time. It took me a good two weeks to get through one book that would normally take me about four days. The last time I spent two weeks or more reading one book was Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, a sizeable work of fiction that took me a mere three weeks (seriously, it's huge. I'm still proud of that record. It's also awesome, read it). Now I feel I am returning to form once again as I am able to utilise my spare time for reading once again. I have borrowed a couple of Ian Banks novels from my boss recently and am quite awed at his ability to not repeat himself in style or content. Go from reading The Wasp Factory to Whit or Espedair Street and see what I mean. You need a strong stomach for The Wasp Factory though, there's a particular scene in it that still makes me go pale at the thought. I don't think it would have had the same effect if I'd seen it on film, which is the reason I keep picking up Chuck Palahniuk's latest at the bookshop, before returning it to its pile in fear. There's a parental advisory label on it for goodness' sake.

Speaking of censorship, I am currently reading The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas whose blurb was so enigmatic that I had to get it. Although the story can be assumed from the blurb, the approach to it in the novel is different to any others that I've read on the subject and I approve of the mystery as more detailed descriptions would spoil the gradual revelations meted out to the reader through the lead character's innocence. The censorship that I object to is that implied in the blurb, which states "you will go on a journey with a nine-year old boy called Bruno. (Though this isn't a book for nine-year olds)." I actually think this is a book perfect for nine-year olds. They may not know about the subject, they may not realise the situation but they will understand the feelings of Bruno and perhaps want to learn more because of him and what he sees. Thanks to Mum and the boy in her class who urged her to read it.

So there we have it, I like reading. I like other people reading and then having conversations about books. I dislike watermelon. Although, bully to me, I ate some on holiday. It was mildly traumatic and I still don't like fruit.

Tricky

The problem is, the more you refrain from posting, the more there is to post about and the next post can become a huge rambly update-y thing when you finally return. So do I describe my holiday in great detail, or do I take the lazy approach and just refer you to Beanie's description of the holiday so I don't have to?

Regardless, I shall inform you that I had a really, really excellent time, Muleboy's insect bites and my ankle-wrenching accident nonewithstanding. I spent some quality time with the Mule, spent some quality time with lots of other people that I really like, ate a lot, drank a lot. Didn't do as much exercise as I would have liked and despite my preference to spend ridiculous amounts of time in the pool ended up spending rather too much time using it as physiotherapy or not bothering because getting in and out was too much like hard work. We went on trips out and we had our first wedding present bought for us on my favourite day out. We danced, we sang, we talked, we watched Dog Day Afternoon in Italian and we slept.

Since then, it has been nicer than I would have thought getting back home as I did miss the cats (call me crazy cat-woman) and my house. I don't really want to be back at work but what can you do? I had a great extended weekend and popped up to London to talk to a man about a dog and spend some time with Mum, Dad and Big Sis, followed by a lovely wedding the next day. Mr Whistler and Funny Girl are now joined in holy matrimony and shall be henceforth the Funny Whistlers. It works for me. I also managed to tidy and sort some of the bedrooms that had yet to be done in our new and enormous house, which gave me a great sense of fulfilment before I spent bank holiday monday parked in front of a TV, first at Drunken Accomplice's and then at my very own. I didn't do as much concerted laziness as I had planned but as this is probably something I would say about my holiday as well, I would count this as a personality flaw.

While on my holiday, I made two decisions. One, that I would direct again with the Mule. I expected to come home and regret this decision but am actually both hopeful and excited. I shall be better this time and try and improve the stuff I got wrong last time (assuming we get voted in). I also plan to write more. I have good ideas, I write fairly well, I just don't dedicate any time to it. If it doesn't work after I make a concerted effort, then it isn't something I can do and I can cross it off the list.

So there we go, both long and rambling. I thought it would be.

Signing in

Just a post to say, I have been away and am back again today (Once you start rhyming, I think you should see it through). It was very nice (despite thunderstorms, terrorism fears and my typical knack for accidents and misfortune). I shall fill you in in detail at some point and may even be so daring as to include a photo (although I have got so lazy recently that I haven't even been bothering with links etc). Right now I just have to try and remind my body that I do have to stay here all day, I can't have crudo (yum!) or a ridiculous amount of cheese for lunch and I can't just pop indoors for a nap during a strenuous day of swimming, sunbathing and reading when I feel like it. I do not need a nap, I do not need a nap.

It was all going so well

I have fallen back into bad habits. Not the eating thing, I messed that up already. No, this is the obsessive counting and listing thing that my brain does when I'm tired. I found myself counting my footsteps as I walked to work this morning, which I change when I walk on a different surface. I can walk on cracks within a particular type of surface but I have to try and avoid stepping on two types of surface at the same time. Nothing bad will happen, I'm not that crazy, but it will fuck up the counting, which isn't allowed. The worst thing is when I realise I'm doing it about halfway through and try and work out what I must have looked like as I take alternatively large and small steps trying to fit it in. And then, despite being conscious of it, keep doing it.

Basically it's a brain under stress thing. When I'm very ill or very tired, this is what it resorts to. When I had appendicitis (aged 12), I couldn't sleep and went through in anal detail things that I had just watched (Vice Versa and Abigail's Party) and listed the plots and characters' relationships to each other to a dizzying extent. It stopped making sense but I still kept listing. It explains my love for Japanese puzzles and pointless trivia about films at any rate - they're both ways of fitting my brain's need to count and make order into (mostly) acceptable forms. So the next time I annoy someone by listing all of the films that a particular actor has been in when you only needed one, please take a deep breath and try and think of me like a high-functioning Rain Man. I just can't help it. And if you harrass me about it I will hit my head with my hand and make braying noises. You have been warned.

Living for the Weekend

At the moment, weekends are really good. I'm staggering from one event to the other and spending lots of time with people I like. However, this is starting to get to the point where work is so quiet after busy-ness (and I am being forced to file) that they take a zillion years to even get to the weekends meaning that my time is divided unequally between zippy, fun, social stuff and crappy, slow, boring stuff. Currently, I am in denial that it is Wednesday today as this week has already been so long that it simply must be Friday. As soon as I get home, time resumes normal speed again and I can quite happily spend a half hour sorting the cats out and putting things away and it feels like half an hour rather than a day.

I spent a very pleasant evening last night when MuleBoy was out, sorting out a couple of bills (which is actually quite pleasant at the moment as people keep giving me money), deciding on recipes for Friday evening when we're having family over to celebrate MuleBoy's Mum's Birthday (I've narrowed it down to about twelve) and having Steve the cat fall asleep on me while watching The Terminal on Sky Movies. Not great but actually not subject to the recent Spielberg disease of half-hour-too-long-itis. It needed some story refinement but at least when it got to the end it didn't keep going. The best bit by far was the main character's reaction when he gets to America and is running around the airport frantically trying to find out what is happening to his now-dissolved, war-torn country on the airport TVs. Completely isolated and unable to read the English onscreen or hear because they don't have the sound up, he eventually has to resort to standing outside, looking in at the TV in the VIP section with automatic doors closing in front of his face every few seconds. There were other nice touches, such as the contents of the tin he carried around with him and the ending. But ultimately schmaltz became the overriding (and overbearing) characteristic of the film, which let it down.

Well, at least writing this has made time go a bit speedier. I only have seven hours and forty minutes to go now so should be able to make it until the evening. Go me!

What's it all about, Alfie?

Or, what's this, what's going on here sweetie? as Karen from Will and Grace may say. Unfortunately I hated the remake Alfie (haven't seen the original) and find myself liking W&G less every time it's on. Anywho, I was only trying to express the confusion that you, gentle readers, would naturally be feeling at my posting two days in a row. I don't know what to say, must have just got bitten by the bug again.

I saw Ponytail Boy today. There's something of a saga behind this one. About two or three years ago, maybe even four (help me out, when was Finding Nemo released?) I went to the cinema to see, well, Finding Nemo with a group of people. On coming out, one of the ushers, a short, chubby blonde guy with a ponytail (hence the name) stopped me and said "Hi, Alice. How are you doing?" Now that's a friendly greeting isn't it? Implying an acquaintance where the pair have perhaps met regularly for a period of time but haven't seen each other for a while. I had absolutely no recollection of him AT ALL and allowed myself to be swept away by the large crowd exiting the screen. MuleBoy and I go to the same cinema regularly and he would generally be there and I would smile and act like I knew him and ask surreptitious questions of his co-workers. I asked one girl his name and she said it was Toby. I know no Tobys. Eventually it got very awkward because he'd twigged I had no idea who he was and I was too chicken to just ask him his name and where he knew me from. But I stopped seeing him at the cinema and didn't think about it again. Imagine my joy when I turned around a corner one day at work and realised he works for the same company as me now. Oh. Crap. So on the days when I see him it's back to awkward smiles and uncomfortable silence. One day I will find out, I promise.

Was it only myself and Mrs Drunken Accomplice (presently sober, birdseed eating Accomplice) who mourned the loss of Nikki from Big Brother? I don't understand a public who get rid of the really arsey, interesting people in the house. They want fights, sex and bitchiness but don't want the people who actually do these things to stay in. I miss her already. ("Who is she? Where did you find her? Who is she?)

Update

So here's a quick rundown of the past two, blog-free weeks:

Moved
Unpacked
Did garden (except old bamboo which defeated me)
Mule Boy painted the front of the house
Had housewarming, hurt back trying to rescue Scotland Girl from my bathroom
Walked around like an old woman at various events at the weekend
Was bullied and forced to go to doctor's, realised I hadn't changed doctor's and had to go to Havant
Worked very very hard at work and it felt very long. Filing looming like an unavoidable monster
Applied for new job which is my job but for more money. Fingers crossed, everybody
Went to see play; cried but didn't laugh and was subsequently confused by the play as a whole
Had an anniversary dinner and cinema date with the Mule. It was v. v. nice. I still like him a lot
GOT CATS!!!!!
Had Mr and Mrs Drunken Accomplice round for a meal on Saturday and used the new oven properly. Tempted to really push it, using both grills, both ovens, griddle plate and all four hobs. Also determined to invite more people over for dinner as forgot how nice cooking properly is.
Had a preview of our Italian holiday. Got drunk, embarrassed myself with the language and fell asleep. Cannot wait!
Took a day off work and went clothes shopping with MuleBoy. Not as much of a chore as you'd think.
Am now at work and still many nice things are stretching out before me. What a good Summer this is turning out to be.

bleurgh

Am not going to post too much this week as the Mule and I are moving at the moment and I tend to come home from the gym and get confronted by stuff. Boxing and packing stuff and bills and change of address stuff. Although the Mule has done a large amount of it himself, it is still not what you want to come home to at the end of a tiring day. However, people have been very helpful, particularly family members, and we have had many boxes donated and offers of help with the actual move so thank you to everyone, including The Emsworth Two who very kindly offered us boxes and then who we had a breakdown in communications with when we didn't need them any more. I hope your Wednesday evening was not ruined.

So expect minimal posting for the next couple of weeks as we attempt to put together our new and bigger place. Expect Christmas Tree like tantrums as I get frustrated at not being able to help as much as I'd like (the busiest time of the year at work is underway) and MuleBoy gets to do all the fun decorating stuff. There will be tears, there will be sighs but eventually it will all be over and we'll be able to go to Italy and sun ourselves and relax as work and moving related angst is swept aside.

In a byword to Herself, aw shucks!

Dear Diary Room

Now, I have omitted to tell you all about the Mule and me and our current need to watch Big Brother. As I have claimed several times recently, I haven't been this hooked since series 1, although I remember watching the big fight of a couple of years ago with fascinated horror (still the Mule's favourite BB moment). I don't know why it is more watchable this year but my main justification is that I can actually identify with some of the people. I don't think I am like anyone in there but I have definitely met them before in certain incarnations. Grace, the nationally hated girl, is the one that I went to school with that I loved and hated in equal measure. Capable of cruelty but also the embodiment of what I wanted to be aged 13-16, she was the most popular and, if not exactly the prettiest, she was definitely attractive and comfortable with herself (which was definitely something that the rest of us lacked). Part of why I think the BB audience hates her is because they all knew that girl too. Obviously Grace was bitchy and two-faced, but I think the fact that she owned up to it and didn't try to make excuses was quite impressive. However, she is still reviled because she didn't seem too bothered about the fact that people hated her but what is she supposed to do; break down in tears, break into the house and apologise to everyone? Every time I have spent any time with a group of girls in a claustrophobic setting; school, college, halls of residence I have bitched, been bitched to and been bitched about. It's what we do.

Regardless, although I didn't mind Grace and feel the need to defend her because, let's face it, a 20 year old girl who could be a bit mean doesn't really deserve this level of hatred, my favourite housemate is Nikki. I know, I know, I'm a bit surprised too. I would have cheerfully throttled her in the first couple of weeks and especially after she entered the house in a bunny outfit. However, at some point this changed. I am sure that if I met her in person the need to throttle would return but, in a way that I can't really justify, I absolutely love her on BB. It's partly the way that she is ridiculously melodramatic, with her posturing and hairtossing and incredibly loud and idiosyncratic way of complaining but also the way that I really can't tell whether it's real or not. Earlier this week she was dancing and singing in the garden and got upset that the other housemates were complaining about it so she stormed off to the diary room. When she got in there, she started complaining than realised how stupid it was and started laughing at herself and her crap singing. MuleBoy was convinced she was an actress when she first went in and I really wouldn't be surprised if it was the case. She also reminds me of a very funny girl I know, who often does caricatures of people she knows or has met and Nikki could easily be one of these. I'm hoping I see Funny Girl on Sunday actually in order to request a "Nikki" although I can't imagine her and Mr Whistler watching BB so would probably just get a funny look.

My fascination with BB would probably end at the point when Nikki leaves, thoughink. Although the rest of the housemates are okay and I enjoy Glyn's songs and Pete's apologising when he's cross with someone (I can definitely relate to that), Nikki is the reason that I keep watching. So if she is evicted tonight then that will probably be the end of my current BB obsession. Next year, the Mule has stated he wants to apply so that would be a reason for obsession. Fear, horror and tension but definitely obsession.

Attention to Detail

We've reached the time of year at work where all I do is check things and fret that I haven't checked enough even though I am now checking one particular thing for the third time and am now taking an enforced break so that my head doesn't explode. The thing that keeps me checking is the knowledge that any mistakes I make will be magnified tomorrow afternoon when everyone else gets to checking stuff. So far, I have missed something every time, which is excruciating, but its always been relatively minor so no-one else has been too bothered. But it would be nice if, this year, I managed to catch everything.

Had a lovely time at the weekend. Caught some rays at Himself's birthday party, although Archimedes was surprisingly reticent given his recent overtures of friendship. Managed not to fail at Giant Jenga despite clutching a plate of delicious barbecued goodness while removing Jenga bricks.

Then the Mule and I caught a film that we'd wanted to see for a while. Brick has been criticised (by Trash Addict, see link, right) for taking the whole teenage adaptation thing too far in the way that it sets a Raymond Chandler-esque tale in a high school. I understand the criticism as cinematic power does seem to be placed fully in the hands of teenagers and films therefore become aimed at that market. However, as MuleBoy mentioned on the way home, it is difficult to consider Brick attracting the texting, giggling audience that seem to frequent the same cinemas as us. With a labyrinthine plot, no sex or nudity and witty dialogue that never panders to the lowest common denominator, it isn't your typical teen film. The reason why high schools work as a setting and have been used in updatings of literature and styles is because the constraints and social structures that govern them relate more closely to past social structures than anywhere else in modern-day Western society. Clueless worked as an updating of Emma because of the hierarchical class divisions perceived in both. Brick works because it takes a similar class structure and uses the central point of the school to create the film noirish claustrophobia, although we never see our antihero Brendan actually in class (he does, however, acknowledge a debt to Accelerated English when complimented on his nifty turn of phrase). My favourite aspect of the film was the language, which used the rhythms of film noir language and some of the phrasings in order to recreate that hard-boiled style of the 1940s. I really enjoyed Brendan's dry wit and delivery and am impressed by the actor, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's, graduation from sitcoms to difficult drama. I liked the following exchange in particular, as Brendan provokes the anger of a school jock:

Brad Bramish: Oh yeah?
Brendan: Yeah.
Brad Bramish: Oh yeah?
Brendan: Yeah.
Brad Bramish: Yeah?
Brendan: There's a thesaurus in the library. Yeah is under "Y".

Love it.

Ping!

Okay, so I talk about my hair a lot. I think this has a lot to do with the fact that in my head I tend to think of my hair as a separate entity that contributes to, but is still apart from, my person as a whole. Not like a wig though, I mean like a consciousness thing. I often bemoan the fact that I can't just brush the damn stuff and envy women with straight hair who get mussed up and can correct mussing very easily with a single, portable implement. If I get mussed up, I have to use fingers, water, a mirror, an afro comb in desperation and generally just pull the whole thing back with a hairband that I keep on my wrist. Unfortunately the only thing that generally improves my hair when it looks shit is washing it and showers aren't as portable as hairbrushes. However, if I had lovely, shiny, straight hair, I am sure I would get bored of it pretty speedily. It would also look odd with my crazy big face and head (it's enormous. Really). I actually love my hair, however much I complain, and especially the curls that are endlessly entertaining. I was pinging a particularly stubborn corkscrew this morning while reading my emails and thinking that if I had straight hair, I wouldn't be able to spend my time pinging it when I'm bored. It certainly wouldn't be as elastic or as useful as a weapon. I'm kind of re-in love with my hair again after getting it cut back to my original style, which really does suit me the best. I was briefly loving the bob-like cut but it got long and triangular so quickly that it wasn't worth it. Shaggy layers are the best because they're more flexible and, for someone who has always resisted tattoos for the main reason that I throw out clothes within a year of buying them and generally out of boredom, this is a good thing.

I have been getting a bit hysterical at work this week. A particular situation has been created by one of my artistically inclined colleagues that generally makes me start giggling in a slightly panicky way when I think about it. Basically, I have to sort something out in a week that would typically take a month and the first step involves contacting someone who may be the person that I need or may be just someone who has the same name and I am beginning to suspect that neither of them exist. It's all deeply silly and my only consolation is that it is not my fault.

Useless

Oh my God, I haven't posted for 12 days! I am not as useless as Beanie or Dad who haven't posted for years and years but am still pretty flipping crap. I promised myself I'd post at least once a week and have let myself down. I am hanging my head in shame. However, being crap appears to be my forte as this weekend I managed to muck up several plans and many things went askew and skewiff and skewed all because of me. Mainly MuleBoy's plans and it was all my fault. Also, I missed rehearsal on Sunday because I didn't think I was needed and instead spent my time gallivanting in the sun with Big Sis. Can't really pretend to be sorry, especially as I spent the previous day inside making puppets out of copper wire and solder for the same production. It wasn't too bad but it did mean that on Sunday I had the urge to be outside for extended periods. And I had to buy that cheese and those garden statues; these are life necessities, people!

However, all this does mean that I now have to apologise to several people and surrender my weekend to the Mule to make it up to him.

Something Missing

I caught up with my friends last night, one who lives most of the time in Scotland and two others who live locally and who I very rarely see. We get on incredibly well and last night we spent hours talking about minutaie, baring our souls and making each other laugh and we can go months without seeing each other and still feel very comfortable doing that. It's not surprising that I haven't seen Scotland Girl since last August as she does spend most of her time in Aberdeen and she's had a lot of significant life changes recently. But Her Loveliness and AltGirl live around the corner and I still only catch up with them when the more farflung Londoners, Scotland Girl or Spy Girl are around. I spend a lot of time worrying about the fact that I am in a rut in terms of friendship, in that I don't have anyone that I really confide in or reveal everything to and have a group of people that I get on with but don't really know very well. But that rut is of my making as I just start convincing myself that I'm too busy or that person is too busy and don't get on and make contact as I should.

We did talk last night about how much trickier it is to make friends as adults. Your lives are so much more complex and situations are different to college or University where friendships are initiated because everyone is making friends and you have that shared connection and situation. At work, you're entering at a different point to everyone else, you're all different ages and it is so unlikely that you will have much in common that you're very lucky to be able to socialise with people at work. The main people I work with are all a lot older than me, except for Neanderthal Boy who I don't think I could bear spending any more time with than I already do, and I'm so useless and shy outside of my comfort zone that I find it really difficult to talk to other people who work in different parts of the place even though I may have a lot more in common with them.

So I miss my friends and yet feel unable to make the effort to see them more. Partly due to fears of rejection, partly due to fears of impinging on their time, partly due to own busyness and laziness but the end result is still the same. Yet another thing to put on my list of stuff I need to do to improve the overall quality of my life. This is going to sound so stupid but how do normal people fit all this stuff in? I feel like I have to fit all the important life things that I need to incorporate into my day-to-day existence by never sleeping ever again. I used to play The Sims but had to stop when I got frustrated that I could never get enough time to fit in all the stuff you need to create a fully-rounded little person. It started to reflect my own life in a way that made me uncomfortable. I hate being a grown-up.

Being Fair

And that isn't as in the Fairest of them all, because I may wish it but it aint so. Fairest of all the 26 year old women who have curly hair, glasses and occasionally blog and call themselves Kitten maybe. That's as in pale, wan, translucent (my personal favourite), white, untannable. Now, I know I am not as pale as some, namely Beanie and Geef who once got burnt within approximately two minutes of stepping outside. However, I do have trouble not with getting burnt so much but with getting stuff to match my skin tone. I recently bought a tinted moisturiser for fair skin with an SPF to speed up my morning toilette a little. I got the 'fair' tint, tried it on my hand and it looked okay. When I put it on my face at home before work on Monday morning, I looked ever so slightly like I was blacking up and my face hovered above my extremely white-looking neck like a magnum on a white stick. So I did my neck and then rued the fact that I was wearing a low cut top as an expanse of white spread out from my now-brown neck. Unfortunately, by that point, I had to get my train and ran out of the house without any breakfast. Fortunately I had make-up remover things with me and was able to get rid of the ridiculous face and neck when I got to work. So not only did the tint look stupid, it also slowed me down rather than sped me up! I have since decided to improve my colour with self-tanning moisturisers instead and now I am covered in patchy golden brown bits of skin. I can't win. I should just accept that colour does not look good on my skin and I will not be able to get away with white at my wedding, otherwise no-one will be able to see my face and, if it is a particularly bright day, may get struck down with snow-blindness.

Bad Blogginess

I have not been in the mood to write this week. I don't know why, maybe it's because I haven't spent long enough brushing my teeth (although they are still clean teeth, don't get me wrong). I just felt that my last post wasn't as inspired as it could have been and am scratching my brain as to what I should write next. I have been feeling tired lately - maybe it's the stress of thinking about moving, which we should be doing soon, or MuleBoy's insomnia which is bad at the moment. Maybe my mental faculties just aren't acute enough to ramble in a crazy way as is my usual style, I don't know. I promise to be back on form soon, but don't expect too much for a while. I will post, just don't expect the high quality word diarrhoeia that I know you have come to expect from me for a while. Inferior diarrhoeia for the near future it is, then.

Mouthbreathing

I have a stigma to do with the fact that I breathe through my mouth rather than my nose. When I first started doing Pilates, a lot of emphasis was placed on breathing through the nose and I would either forget to do it or start inhaling desperately through suddenly blocked nostrils. When relaxed, as now, I can breathe quite easily through my nose but as soon as I start moving about, the panic sets in and my mouth opens. Embarrassingly, I found myself wheezing a few weeks back in Boxercise as the guy who runs it was yelling "breathe sensibly in through the nose and out through the mouth" to the group at large. I just can't get enough air in through my nose and then I start to panic when jumping about and boxing things. Having said that, the fact that I don't do it automatically is also a problem and in Pilates I would generally switch off and also forget to engage my pelvic floor and core stability muscles, which is like some kind of very-specific-to-Pilates crime.

However, I can understand and excuse these exercise things as the body under stress does funny things, what I do get worried about is what it looks like onstage and in real life (I can't believe that I put it in that order of priority). People who have their mouth open all the time look a bit dense, sad but true, and I really don't want my mouthbreathing make me look like an idiot, which is where the stigma comes in. Maybe I should tape my mouth up for a while so that I am forced to breathe through my nose. Cue line of people queueing up to help me out with that one. Suggestions welcome however. Teach me how to be like the cool kids with their nose-breathing skills.

Films, Lovely Films

The Mule and I went to the cinema on Saturday for a double billing of cinematic delights. Neither of us had been for ages due to other, theatrical commitments and MuleBoy's Uni workload. I was desperate to see Slither and quite fancied Confetti (it has Jessica Stevenson in, which is a reason to watch anything except dire BBC sitcoms) but Mule was in more of a Mission Impossible 3 mood and if you can't have one star of Spaced... Well, Slither helped my diet out as I had no intention of eating sweets or indeed anything for a while after it finished. While I like horror, and I do, there's something about body-horror that makes me a little bit squeamish. With flesh-eating people, phallic tentacles and evil (and again phallic) red squishy worms, it was a bit too much, especially towards the film's climax when there was a sequence of great unpleasantness. However, I would still thoroughly recommend it as I'm a big fan of B-movies and enjoyed the humour and scares. There was a nice sense of surprise going through the film; no-one really knew how to deal with the situation they were suddenly faced with and none of the characters were ever particularly safe. Although I do play the "who's going to die" game with certain genres (horror, disaster movies) it is nicer if it isn't spelled out. I also approve of anything that gives Cap'n Tightpants (Nathan Fillion) a starring role.

MI: 3 was surprisingly good, I was disappointed by the first and avoided the second but decided to watch this one. Mainly because JJ Abrams was in charge and it has Phillip Seymour Hoffman in it (and the other star of Spaced, Simon Pegg). JJ Abrams had made me happier because he was going back to the notion of the Mission Impossible team, that, lets face it, was the point of the TV series. I remember ridiculous plots that shouldn't have worked but were a lot of fun in their implausability and always boosted by the fact that you had loads of different experts. I was really enjoying the first 10 minutes of MI: 1 because you had Emilio Estevez being clever with computers etc, Kristin Scott Thomas being fabulous and Tom Cruise being the front man. It was then hugely disappointing when they all died and Tom ended up being the only man. So this was a return to the team and, on the whole, it worked. Still a little too much emphasis on Crazy Tom, but there we go. And Pegg was great. I've got this thing about British actors playing British characters in American products, I love it if they do well and really stay British. I think it's because I hate being badly represented so would prefer if they manage to retain their identity. I never really understood why Helen Baxendale couldn't just say "trousers" in Friends and had to say "pants". Would the writers have fired her if she'd put her foot down? I think not. Maybe they should have done for being patently unfunny, but that's a different matter. Anyway, Simon Pegg is funny, probably had some input on his lines, and you should all look out for Hot Fuzz which is in production at the mo.

I also bought Primer last Friday, which I am hoping to watch soon. Apparently it's a combination of lots of different films that I like (eg Donnie Darko, Memento) and you've got to love innovative independents.

Age

We generally get bulletins read out to us at work by Neanderthal Boy, who spends a lot of his day skimming through news websites. This is a person who thinks exclamation marks at the end of a sentence automatically mean that someone is being sarcastic (heaven forbid that they should be, say, exclaiming) and he still is more news-aware than me. Anywho, he has just informed us that the world's oldest person has just celebrated their 128th birthday. Now, for anyone who is feeling old presently, let's think about that in proportion to the nice lady in El Salvador who has 13 children and multiple grandchildren, great grandchildren and great great grandchildren. My main surprise is that she's in El Salvador; who knew that somewhere that volatile could produce such an aged person. I always picture the very oldest people as living on tiny little islands in the East somewhere, with very healthy diets of fish and rice.

In comparison, my Mum, who celebrated her **th birthday on Tuesday, is nothing but a babe-in-arms, although she's not very much like a **-year-old anyway. When she was a few years older than me now, she successfully convinced people she was a schoolgirl onstage and I distinctly remember one of my friend's grandmothers at a party telling me, aged 12 and spending the night upstairs, that she looked like a girl of 17 (which I think Mum, then in her early 40s, scoffed at afterwards). So she has always been very successful at being younger, which is due as much to her young spirit as to her enviably good skin and bright eyes. Lucky Mum.