Not really feeling like doing anything

at the moment - I am 6 days into my holiday, and without a foreign sojourn (for two weeks at least), I have slumped into the apathy of early British summer. The weather has reverted to type, with grey skies and mild drizzle, so any efforts to wander around London have been curtailed - so much so that on Tuesday, British power stations conspired to cause a black-out in the Museum in Docklands - but it did mean that there is free entry on Sunday. And to the Jack the Ripper exhibition as well. It was the first time I have been to Canary Wharf in years (maybe even a decade) - it is still as inhuman and business-orientated as ever, but having been to both Hong Kong and New York in the interim, the tall buildings and fully-paved plazas with the merest sprinkling of plants seem to be the functionalist-impressionist dream of the architects of these modern centres of capitalism.

Since then, not much else, I’m afraid. Shopping. Listening to music. Watching daytime TV in 10-minute bursts. Cleaning. Cooking. A hint of reading - mainly odds and sods of Russo-Soviet history and culture inspired by Dimbleby in Russia - as he wandered through Samara, there were odd glimpses of murals and mosaics that still linger from its days as one of the centres of Soviet arms manufacturing - manna from heaven for me, as they lacked the finesse of the standard north-western Russian propaganda.

I have also been revisiting the Muppet Show on DVD - the first series so far, and, childish as it may seem, it makes me laugh. A lot. I think that may say more about my sense of humour than the quality of the jokes, but still. I have even almost forgiven them for selling out to Disney.

A number of things have been playing on my mind recently…

Will I ever manage to remember the declensions of Czech nouns? Was my nocturnal nosebleed symptomatic of some as yet undiscovered ailment, or was it simply due to hayfever? Why did I wake up as it started to bleed? Why is Jonathan Dimbleby doing a show about Russia? When will my book about the vestiges of Celtic tradition on the Western periphery of Europe arrive? Why do I loathe dressing up my meagre achievements in a veil of recruitment jargon on my CV?

Poinsettia care

is harder than childcare. It had wilted. And started to drop leaves. Unlike a child you cannot ask it to point where it hurts. So I checked on the internet. Not enough light. Or so I thought. I moved it to the living room - hours of indirect sunlight (as advised - too much is as bad as not enough). Too much water. So I watered it the way they advise. Leave it to stand for 20 minutes, then leave to drain. Still limp. Leaves drop. So I followed the directions of how to make it bloom again in Xmas - cutting it back to 8 inches. They believe that this holds it in a Peter Pan state, in which it simply reblooms each year and the energy is all put into attractive red-coloured growth. Is this morally right? Did Percy Thrower ever have to deal with this kind of thing? Has my life reached the level of gardening tips on my blog? In other news, I have a mysterious parcel to pick up from the Post Office…

The worst thing

about this insomnia at the moment is the fact that it is costing me money. I curse the day I set up an iTunes account. It is all just too easy. I used to have to trawl Soho record shops looking for obscure funk singles, or modern German latin jazz EPs, or compilations of breaks from small towns in the US Midwest. Now it is all there - I just have to search for anything that takes my fancy. And then I check the record label’s website and see something else. And so it continues. And for just 79p a track. And I can not buy the b-side of a single if it is too awful.

Tonight’s foray has brought unusual hiphop and beats from Palov & Mishkin and a compilation of jazz, latin and afrobeat influenced tracks from the German label Jazz & Milk. Nice.

This weekend I will mostly be doing nothing

My Easter break has kicked off early, due entirely to working both days last weekend. So as of this morning, I am free. Until Tuesday morning. It has, of course, in the greatest British bank holiday tradition, started raining. Heavily. The TV is full of 10% off adverts for Homebase and images of families decorating/gardening/travelling/visiting stately homes (delete as appropriate) together. The most concerning news for me, however (apart from Brian Wilde sadly passing away) has been that Crown have sought to make odour-free paints.

The smell of emulsion is one of the defining points of my childhood, as I remember the outrage when my parents decided to stop wallpapering the house and paint the walls instead. Ahh yes, the joys of ripping off whole sheets of wallpaper from the skirting board to the ceiling. And the torture of having to remove the final scraps seemingly welded to the wall. No mean feat for a nail-biter like myself.

Anyway, the smell of paint. Generally to reduce it, we tended to open windows and doors, which also ensured that the paint dried that much quicker. So, does this development of odour-free paint reveal anything about British society? Are we so nannied that we cannot survive with the smell of paint for a couple of hours? Are we afraid to open our doors and windows even when we are in the house? Do we all simply have too much money to indulge in these extravagances?

I ask only as these questions have been laying on my mind thanks to the wonderful, if slightly concerning BBC3 programme ‘Freaky Eaters‘ - in which a psychologist and nutritionist try (and generally succeed) to get people with aversions to types of food to overcome these problems and become rounded, valuable members of society. When I say aversions to food, I don’t just mean they dislike broccoli (who doesn’t?), but they will have lived 26 years (as the guy on it last night did) eating only biscuits and chocolate bars (somehow he had become head chef at an Italian restaurant), or the woman who ate only bread and tinned soups, or the guy who had only eaten meat since the age of four. They had never tasted cheese. Or vegetables. Or fish.

How is this possible? With the exception of the States, where most individual rights (and wrongs) are permissible, I cannot imagine that a show would be seen as anything other than a comedy - the victims/patients are lauded for trying a sliver of orange (or banana, as they are not the only fruit), and we get o watch them gagging as they try potato or cabbage for the first time. It was suggested last night that the psychological issues that underpin these aversions are similar to those that we Westerners would feel if presented with locusts or scorpions (I have images of the banquet scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom here), although these also play on Western antipathy towards all things creepy-crawly (and I wonder where that comes from, as there are very few poisonous/dangerous arthropods in Europe). Orientalism?

I myself was a fussy eater when younger, and speaking with the true zealousness of one converted to eating almost anything now, going hungry helps in this. If there is nothing else to eat, you will eat it. Unless, of course, you have an allergy to it, or it is broccoli. My thought would have been that if my child ate only biscuits, do not keep biscuits in the house. Although, obviously it is much easier to give in to these demands, or to assume it is a phase they are going through (not in the 10cc sense), the issue is that my generation has been the first in which it has been possible to defer growing up almost indefinitely (well, till 30-something at least), and, in fact there are whole facets of industries geared up just to this Peter Pan like obsession with our childhoods - DVDs of TV shows, School Disco, constant evenings of nostalgia on TV, re-releases of sweets and chocolate bars (I am convinced that it is only the over-30’s who buy Star Bars and Party Rings), and reissues of Star Wars toys, Marvel comics, etc. Essentially you can now relive (or even create) your childhood in its entirety at a higher cost and with slightly better quality than 20-odd years ago. Or, indeed, you can simply never leave it in the first place.

New socks

Having entered the EuroMillions draw last week in the vain hope of winning £88 million (and falling short, actually making an £11.60 loss of £18’s worth of tickets), my mind wandered to what I would do with such immense wealth. My life is reasonably comfortable. I can pay my bills, buy a couple of luxuries, and even manage to save a little each month. Anything beyond this would simply be an expansion of my current standard of living, rather than any great indulgence.  I do not need a car. Houses elsewhere would be nice.

But then it struck me, I would buy new socks. Not just a pack. I mean that I would want to wear new socks every day. I bought some last week (in fetching shades of purple and grey), and revelled once again in the pleasure and pain of the feeling of brand new socks and the realisation that once washed they will never feel quite as perfect ever again. I realise it is far from ecologically or economically sound. But surely it is better than spending it on caster sugar, fake diamonds, curtains, helicopters or space travel.

Back again

Broadband at home again despite the best efforts of a dodgy socket (telephonic) to disrupt me.

The Life Laundry

was a dreadful BBC2 lifestyle show, in which a “home consultant” (how does one train in this area?) would come into someone’s house, take everything out of it, put it on their lawn/forecourt, and tell them to sort through it. They would then try to sell anything of value, recycle anything that could be, and then pulp the rest of it in an enormous crusher. The result, ideally, would be that the individual would have more space, more money and be psychologically healed by breaking with their past.

I have bought a shredder in anticipation of my early September move. And, I have to say there is something wonderfully cathartic about destroying masses of useless paperwork (to be recycled and/or used as packing material, of course). So much so, that it has also inspired me to remove all my CDs from their original cases and store them in wallets. I am not sure I will be psychologically healthier following this process, but at least there will be far less to carry down to the van come the start of September.

Today

Estate agents
Premier League
Baltika
Peter Davison
and Shredder no sorry, a shredder…

Number 95

is the bus that travels from White City to Hanger Lane. I know this because I caught it this evening, then changed to the number 83 to Ealing Hospital. The tubelines into West London all went into meltdown this evening. Why, I am unsure.

Thankfully, my train terminated at the aforementioned White City, and so I waited for 20 minutes in front of BBC Television Centre (the home to many of my dreams as a child), then caught the bus. I was even more grateful that it happened at this point of my journey (or as grateful as one can be when your journey time is doubled), as I have been stranded at East Acton Tube station before - missing in Acton, if you will (there was a student band at my halls of residence in 1995/6/7 who thought that was a wonderful pun - I assume they had actually lived in Acton, rather than simply being illiterate or having no proofreading skills). And now I wonder whether there are American and Ethiopian bands missing in Akron and Axum respectively. God, I hate my brain.

Despite being next to the A40 out of London, East Acton is, in fact, the middle of nowhere. For all I know, there could be a dimensional portal at the exit to the station - such is your chance of catching a bus towards any local population centres. I am sure Warsaw and Krakow both have more connecting bus services to Ealing than East Acton does - and it is less than 2 miles away. There is a bus that runs to and from Hammersmith, but it just stops in the middle of an industrial estate. End of the line. Quite literally, if it was the last bus leaving Hammersmith bus station, you saw the word Acton and assumed it would at least carry you vaguely in the direction you wanted to go.

Ah, I feel much better now.