book snob? moi?

Hearing on t'wireless that a third of British adults have lied about reading a 'high-brow' book to appear more intelligent. Being unable to resist my natural urge to show off, I rushed to find out more. Today really is a good day for smugness, as I find I really have read the top ten books on the list. Hah.

Top Ten Books we other people apparantly lie about reading:

1. The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R Tolkien
Well of course I've read it, and the Hobbit. Several times. And yes that is several times before the fillums came out. Another year or 2 and O will be having the Hobbit for his bed time story. Interesting tho that everyone apparantly wants people to think they've read it, before the fillums came out most people pointed and laffed at you if you admitted reading Tolkein. Geekchic really has arrived.

2. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Yep, read this one too, only a couple of years ago. It was a bit of a marathon, and more of a 'because it's there' read than something I adored, but I kind of enjoyed it. Although I can't believe most people tell everyone else they've read it?

3. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Read the book, seen the fillum, got the single. It was one of my a-level set texts as it happens. I remember thinking I wouldn't enjoy, then not being able to put it down. Haven't read it for years, tho. I'm really more of a Janeite than a Bronte fan - can't be doing with all that running round the moors in your nightie. I still say Heathcliffe was Mr Earnshaw's bastard, why else would he bring some weird kid back from Liverpool one day? I also have this interesting theory about Thomas Hardy's .... oh you've just seen someone over there you know and have to rush off? oh OK

4. Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus - John Gray
OK I confess, I've only read about half of this twaddle. Because it's twaddle. If you were trying to impress me at a party by telling me you'd read this, you'd fail. Now if you told me you'd read How Mumb-Jumbo Conquered the World, that would impress me.

5. 1984 - George Orwell
You mean everyone else didn't spend their teenage years reading Orwell and Huxley and getting all angsty about dystopian futures? Shallow bastards, probably out having fun while us sensitive souls worried about jackboots and human faces in our bedrooms. Mind you, the more I read about the role of Stalin in the Spanish Civil war, the more I realise why Eric Arthur hated Stalinist communism quite so bitterly.

6. Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone - J.K Rowling
Got my copy of number 7 reserved already. Hurryuphurryuphurryuphurryup

7. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Read it, love it. Used to be my favourite Dickens' but that's now between Bleak House & Little Dorrit

8. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Yep, but see above for general comments on Brontes.

9. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
Read it, it's awful. Dreadful pish. Carboard cutout characters in plot-by-numbers 'thriller'. I am certain I shall never see a Dan Brown book lovelier than a tree. Even an old dead dutch elm disease infected rotten blasted stump.

10.Diary of Anne Frank - Anne Frank
Another "you mean everyone else didn't spend their teenage years crying over this?" one. Seriously, you must have read it?

not again

So I got back on the dreaded scales and the dreaded numbers were as dreadful as I'd dreaded i.e. highest ever (& over the 18 stone barrier). This is Very Very Bad and Something Must Be Done. I don't feel like I have the energy for it but will push on and hope some energy turns up. I've logged back into WW esource to log my points (because it's a handy tool for recording eating and exercise, and points are easier to work with than calories) and committed to going to aquarobics tonight. And as ever, in case of emergency, buy books.


Actually I must stop buying books, already this month I have spent more on books than most people do in a year and I have a bedside shelf full of ones waiting for me, pluses boxes of stuff on the way from the OU. But this was essential book buying, I needed some books to help me help O with his maths. I don't actually care (much) about whether or not he can do the maths, what upsets me is how easily discouraged he is in the face of new, hard-looking things. I don't want his brain telling him what mine's told me all my life - I can't do it, I'm rubbish, I'll fail, I'll be in trouble, I have to do it perfectly or there's no point, that kind of crappy old yaddah yaddah. So I've got him some books, me some books, and a book for a friend's new baby. Oh and a book for me and O's half-term trip to London - we pretty much know which sights we're going to see and now we know where to eat, too.

So that's the 'spend less' and the 'eat less' resolutions blown already this year, but at least the 'use less plastic bags' one is going strong. I wandered round town with my carbon-neutral, as used by Dick 'n' Dom, omg I look like I hug trees and knit my own muesli, unicorn grocery jute bag, smuggly telling shop assistants "I've got my own bag, thanks, I don't need a plastic one".

Then I came home to wait for the plumber and pimp my blog - thanks so much to phydeaux3 for the labels cloud code.

fluffy clouds

well as you can see I've been playing with the kewl new blogger. Next action: make my labels show as a fluffy cloud rather than a nasty list.

one more thing

one of my new favourite things is Freecycle. You've got stuff you don't need anymore, someone else wants stuff, they come and collect stuff from you. Hurrah, less consumerism and less stuff in landfill. When I gtd-ed my office I found a pile of stuff I've offloaded on freecycle. I've got some great stuff from there too, best of all a new bed¹ for O which he loves (we were going to buy one but then it showed up for free yay). Go on, try it, it's like ebay but for free.


1. We bought the mattress new, tho. Ickety ick to used mattresses.

health kick

R had his annual check up at the doctors and was told his cholesterol is too high, he has some liver enzymes that shouldn't be there and he's put on weight. So basically he needs to drink less, eat better and exercise more. And it's not just him, is it? My eating continues bad, although today I have made myself a lovely fruit smoothie - probably the first time this year I have consumed fruit other than bananas.

I went back to belly dancing this week (C gave me a gorgeous coin belt for Christmas so I had to try it out) and am actually going to try and do 2 hours a week instead of just 1. I have offered to take a friend along to the beginners' class with me, so then I will have to go. Also I am going to go back to aquarobics and re-start pilates. I have to put these in place now as regular habits - if I don't do it now then when I re-start my studies I will think I don't have enough time to exercise too.

Finally getting serious? Dunno. Hope so. OK I know hoping isn't enough. I have my exercise plan drafted out. Now I have to work on the eating. Not just for my physical health but my mental health too, I've been really irritable for the past few weeks (months?) and I know I would feel better if I wasn't consuming so much cr@p.

Next action is weigh myself, find out the worst. Eek.

exceptions to the rule

My motto is "never do today what you can put off till tomorrow", but I make an exception for stationery shopping. I feel about stationery like normal women are supposed to feel about shoes - somewhere out there is the one, the magic item, that will make me organised and productive and beautiful and sexy. Getting into GTD has given me a fantastic excuse for indulging my passion. I have lovely new intrays and files and folders and best off all, brand new today, a lovely box for keeping my 43folders in (thanks to 43folders wiki for the tip - there is no room in my tiny office for another filing cabinet so a box for my folders is great).

The 2 things I like best about GTD are:

1. he tells you how to set up a simple system to organise your stuff. All my systems break down because they are too complicated or things drop through the cracks. I think this new system might work for me, I particularly like the whole tickler file thing, I feel like I might finally be managing my paper.
2. the emphasis on next actions. For someone who prevaricates and panics and procrastinates like I do, focusing on the next thing I have to physically do makes sense. It also chimes in with stuff I worked on during CBT sessions in the past.

The book has a quote which I love, so I have made it into a motivational poster incorporating my spiritual beliefs:

It is easier to act yourself into a better way of feeling than to feel yourself ino a better way of action

O.H. Mowrer

catching up

Christmas was great, it was really nice to spend the day with all of my family, plus we went to visit friends who moved to Brum last year. Owen got totally spoilt with mounds of presents, including Marvin's Mind Blowing Magic. He spent New Year's Eve performing street magic for friends and neighbours.

All back to work and school now boo and also waiting for the course materials to arrive to start my next OU courses. In preparation for which I have signed up to the cult of Getting Things Done. I've read the holy book, I've set up the sacred 43folders and now I'm ready to start cranking those blessed widgets. I'm going for a mainly anologue implementation to start with (square cut folders, A4 paper, post-its), we'll see how it goes.

Eating is double plus ungood right now, bingeing like feck. Next action: read "Overcoming Binge Eating"

a sad post

Not that Xmas was sad, actually it was great and I may even get round to blogging it (Oh yeah and resolutions) at a later date. But tonight I feel sad and old and maybe finally a grown up. K is the same age as me, more or less, and one of my oldest and dearest friends. On Friday night his mum died. It was completely unexpected and a huge shock. She was only 60. She was a brilliant woman, the centre of their family who held it all together. She was always kind and welcoming to me when I used to visit. Tonight on the train I was happened to be listening to HMHB and it took right back 20 or so years to when I first visited their home. And I remembered her and felt for K, who was very close to his mum. And I felt a bit sorry for myself, too; I am 40 this year and my contemporaries' parents have started dying. Does this make me a grown up at last?

Anyway I got home and cracked open the best whisky and gave him a ring. And now I'm going to sit and drink some more of the best whisky and raise a glass to K's mum.

I'm not overweight, I'm an eco-warrior

Apparantly, being a lard arse is good for the planet. Pass the pringles, I shall be a one woman carbon sink. That should get my carbondaq account in credit.

happy holidays

I have spent the last week doing very little - after several weeks of being constantly busy and running round the country for work, I had that 'I'm comin down with something' feeling. At least for the first time ever I am ready for Christmas, hurrah for on-line shopping. But we do have to go into town this afternoon, O wants to skate at Picadilly Gardens. And the new permanent ice-rink is nearly finished, so maybe he will get to fulfill his 'Dancing on Ice' dreams.

In other 'my son's a gay' news: we spent yesterday morning baking biscuits and listening to Abba's greatest hits. We had a friend's 4 year old with us; at one point O was choreographing dance routines for them.

Tomorrow we are off to my parents' for Christmas. This will be the first time we've been to them on the day itself since Owen was born - on the years we're not in Ireland, we have Christmas at home and then go to my parents' on Boxing day. But this year I thought it would be nice to see them on the day, my mum is very happy and has invited my sister & boyf and my aunt & uncle too, so we will have a house full and it will be fun.

If I don't blog again before then, I hope everyone has a fantastic Christmas (and may you not have to listen to 'Wonderful Christmas Time' as often as I do, it being O's new favourite seasonal song that keeps supplanting the traditional Trojan Christmas on the cd player).

I rock

Got my course results - passed my residential school (10 points) with a grade 2 pass and my main 60 point course with a grade 1 (ie distinction), scored 91% on my final exam. Go me. Am now verr' drunk having just got in from office xmas outing.

theology 101

O had joined the school choir to take part in the Christmas musical 'Hosannah Rock' (he now says he does believe in god, or perhaps he doesn't, so he is going to be an agnostic for now).

In the spirit of primary school nativities everywhere, all the children are getting 'a part' but it seems all the good parts have gone to the juniors, leaving the infants to dress up as a motley collection of farm animals. Yesterday O was allocated a pig costume. For some unfathomable reason he is devasted about this (although not, one suspects, as devastated as little Mohammed's parents are going to be when they hear he's being a pig too). He wants me to go and see the head to find out if he can be a sheep instead, but I am a mean mum and told him he should ask himself if he can change costumes. O is terrified of getting in trouble, I have been trying to reassure him that the worst that can happen is she says 'no'.

I also remarked that pigs were unlikelly to have been found in a Bethlehem stable because Jewish people don't eat pork, and perhaps he could say that to the head. We got out the bible to check for references to pigs at the birth of Jesus. Unfortunately it fell open at the parable of the prodigal son¹, which in the Good News version has an illustration of him swineherding. So much for the 'no pigs in biblical Palestine' line of argument.


1. One of my least favourite bible stories. I never liked it even when I was a god botherer. Killing the fatted calf to celebrate the bad boy's return while ignoring good one who stayed at home and did the right thing, never seemed like a good message to send out to me. Same with the lost sheep, all that being happier about one sinner who repents than 99 who never did anything to repent. Bah.

in the name of research

In my new MS-office-free world, Thunderbird has introduced me (at long last) to RSS feeds. One of my regular reads is "Adventures in Ethics and Science" - she's a philosopher with a PhD in physical chemsitry, what's not to love?

Whence I read about this experiment investigating the speed of a meme, being conducted by a graduate student. As I understand ¹ that 'graduate student' is left pondish for PhD student, and PhD students being a subject close to my own heart, I thought I'd join in too. Go on, click the link to Scott's post, do the things he asks and help another poor student become a doctor.

Other news: eating bad. Bad bad bad. But I have a new book on my bedside table and I am going to work on it. I wish my course books for next year would hurry up and come, so I could have something to do to occupy me. I've been so used to having studying to do, I don't know what to do with myself between courses.


1. aka as I found out from wikipedia

half hearted

Things have generally been OK this week. Oh except for Tuesday when I was away from home and feeling like crap and ate two packets of hula hoops in contravention of my 'no crisps' rule. And last night I broke the 'no booze' rule - Rob & I finished the holiday whisky while watching "Return of the King" on teevee. But there was only the merest sniffter left. Also there were rather more cals/points in Hugh F-W'sstuffed squash than I anticipated. I've been bellydancing and swimming this week, and I tried to go to pilates but the instructor was ill; also took O and some mates to the park on Sunday.

My mood has been a bit low for a few days, tho, which I need to keep an eye on. Maybe I'm still on a come-down from being so busy for the last few months. In the run up to my exam and then the holiday I had to put lots of effort into keeping my energy high, so I could throw myself into getting everything done. Now I just want to throw myself onto the settee and watch repeats of "The Practice". Except ITV3 have stopped showing the Practice boo hoo hooo.

dedication

I went belly dancing last night, and as a result missed the first IACGMOOH, because my personal trainer said I had to go. My personal trainer is on at me to take more excercise generally and won't let me use the lift, I have to go up the stairs instead. My personal trainer is 7 and calls me mum.

blah blah blah

Oh flick feck arse. I hate all this dieting cr@p. But also I hate being a bleb so back on the path of rightousness I attempt to go. Weighed self this morning, as expected am heaviest ever, weighing more than Liza Minnelli. Plan of sorts:

• no alchohol for 2 weeks
• no crisps
• exercise: Monday = bellydance, Thursday = pilates, Saturday = swimming

tis a start. Today I shall be mostly taking my mind off crisps by playing with my computers - wireless network tends to play up so arrival of shiny new laptop is a good time to reinstall it from scratch. Also am trying an MSOffice-free experiment on new machine, have got open office installed, now need to try playing with it to get Thunderbird and Lightning (very very frightening) to work too. Then I'm getting a feck off big external hard drive to back up all my puters on.

anyone wanna babysit?

Being how we's old and dull me and R hardly ever go out together. Now we have 2 nights out in as many weeks and no-one to babysit since our regular babysitters went to college or turned into single parents bah. And it's on school nights so sleepover not a good option but it'll probably come to that. We've to two lots of comic genius to see - Mark Thomas on the 15th and then Jeremy Hardy on the 30th. I've quoted this before but it's well worth posting again ....

Good point well made, Mr. Duncan. As you clearly say, it states in Leviticus Chapter 18 Verse 22 that homosexuality is an abomination. Which reminds me—there are a couple of things I need guidance on. Firstly, If I wanted to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7, how much could I expect to make from such a deal? Also, my colleague Pete insists on working on the sabbath. Exodus clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or is it OK to get some outside help? Lastly, does the whole city really have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side by side. And when I burn my mother for wearing garments made from two different threads, do I torch her whole or just a bit?

Jeremy Hardy
(thanks to the The Unofficial Jeremy Hardy Page for this)

And then deep deep joy, the HMHB fans email drops into my inbox to tell me they're playing in Manchester next February! Yay hay, see you there Nigel. I think I'll wear a black tour jacket over my Dukla Prague away kit and, if it's cold, keep warm with me Joy Division overgloves

spend spend spend

Now that R has a proper job (at least until next summer) we is not poor all the time anymore hurrah but the downside is I now have to pay for my OU courses myself boo hoo. So today I shelled out for next year's courses - geology and extra geology.

I need to book the summer school too but that will have to wait because I spent the rest of the money on a new laptop instead. Our old one is all old and slow and cranky with a battery life of about 10 minutes, the new one is all shiny and speedy and lovely and long lasting, and my new best friend. Tax bill, what tax bill?

back

Well I've been back for over a week but life just keeps happening and getting in the way of important computer stuff.

Our holiday was great, NE Scotland is beautiful and the fishing village we stayed in was lovely. Other lovely places include Hopeman (top quality rockpooling) and Pennan (spot the Local Hero phone box)

We had far better weather than we had any right to expect in October, the first couple of days were glorious. It wasn't so good after that there was still lots to do; we went to the Museum of Scottish Lighthouses - it was amazing to see the lenses and reflectors close up, I'd never really thought about what they're like

and to the MacDuff Marine Aquarium - which is small but perfectly formed. It's really interesting that all of their fish etc are indigineous, and the staff are really lovely and helpful and interesting

Owen's favourite thing of all was the ice-rink, we went twice (plus once to the swimming pool). One thing we didn't get to do was go on a boat trip to look for whales and dolphins and sharks - they weren't sailing because of the weather. We did see a seal close up in the harbour tho, awwww. Oh and visited "the world's leading malt whisky specialist" to get a pressie for R - tho he had to slum it with a bottle of GlenKeith rather than one of the malts with a 3 or even 4 figure price tag.

So, a great holiday but too much driving (C doesn't drive so it was all down to me). Going up was OK as we did it in 3 hops (Manc-Durham / Durham-Dundee / Dundee-Portsoy) but the drive back down all the way from Portsoy to Durham in one day was too much really. Then when we got back it we had to get ready for O's birthday, he was 7 last Saturday. He was very happy with the roller blades we gave him, he is very keen on honing his skating skills to perfection. He didn't have a party this year, we had a few kids for a sleepover and cinema trip instead, plus a surprise visit to the chocolate fountain.

Weightwise things are quite bad, I suspect I am now at my heaviest ever. I have been bingeing quite badly. I think I am going to spend some time working on my bingeing behaviour and try once again to get that under control, and also to increase my exercise, but I'm not going to go on an actual diet for now.

holiday shopping

Tomorrow, me & O are off to pick up C, then on to NE Scotland for a half term post exam holiday. I have been working on holiday preparations, today I went into Waterstones for an OS map and emerged with:

Imperium by Ryszard Kapuscinski
A History of Modern Russia: From Nicholas II to Putin by Robert Service
- I've read a bit about Russia, including Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps by Anne Applebaum (fascinating but harrowing) and I've read Imperium before but I can't find my copy (Ryszard Kapuscinski is one of my favourite writers); currently I'm working my way through Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag-Montefiore

Fire Sale by Sara Paretsky
- hurrah hurrah for a new V.I. Warshawski novel

OS Map of our holiday area
- it is very strange going to Abroad and finding out they don't have a national ordnance survey and no official national OS maps.

Top Trumps Sharks
the Puffin Monster Joke Book
- Hopefully these will keep O amused for part of the long car drives ahead (we also have a travel Guess Who? set yay). He has just discovered Top Trumps at his mate's house and came back raving about. I used to love Top Trumps too.

Now the only things I need (which I will hopefully be able to get when we get there) are a book of local walks and a book about the local geology.

I am told some people think you have to buy clothes and have your hair done and stuff in preparation for holidays but that is just wrong. The most important thing is to make sure your holiday reading is sorted. Then your holiday listening. Everything else takes care of itself.