January 2009
58 posts
“The bigger challenge is to help the millions of parents who are not directly...”
– New Statesman - Bringing up baby
Excellent and rather bold piece on parenting, co-authored by my dear friend and former boss, Sonia Sodha.
Unusually, service-y
A discussion on Facebook pointed me to this rather useful part of the NUJ website, which explains how to chase late payments from people who owe you money and are reluctant to pay it - an article that any freelance hack may well find a bit handy, especially now that a lot of publications are a heck of a lot less solvent than they once were and would quite like to sit on as much cash as they can...
Yesterday I received a copy of my university’s alumni magazine, which was exciting, as I haven’t seen it for some time - and it has a special place in my heart, specialer than most alumni magazines in the hearts of alumni, because I was the editorial assistant there for eighteen months as my work-study job. I flipped fondly through the pages, recalling how I cut my first journalistic...
Las Vegas
…is a place I never thought I’d go to, but thanks to The Best Freelance Gig Ever I leave at the crack of dawn on Sunday morning to take a helicopter ride over the Strip and sleep in a pirate-themed hotel. I’m researching now for things to do during my free time, but do you have any recommendations, dear readers? A pirate-themed hotel is not really within my usual comfort zone.
Two essential things I read today
- Former school orchestra colleague Amy forwarded me this link with a revelation about cello-related injuries, which is quite hilarious. Oh, those crazy Brits and their crazy fake letters to the British Medical Journal! So lovable.
- Paddy sent me this sympathetic blog post from the Guardian, in which the author seconds my complaint from Saturday - an online system that doesn’t work unless...
Some book reviews from the weekend...
Trauma by Patrick McGrath
American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin
Mad, Bad and Sad by Lisa Appignanesi
“Thanks so much to Gina, Jean and Judith for braving the inclement weather and...”
– Giles’ post-Book Club emails are always ace, but this one particularly made me smile (and quite love the UK again).
Not loving the UK today.
I just cheerfully logged on to the appropriate website to fill out my online tax return - not due until January 31st, as I have been reminded by various letters in the post/advertisements on the tube platform - to discover the before I can fill it out I have to wait for them to send me a PIN number, IN THE MAIL. WHICH TAKES A WEEK.
And because of this I am going to be fined £100 for filing late.
...
BAD IDEA magazine | The Butcher’s Shop is Back!... →
I’m not going to be able to make this one, alas, but I do encourage y’all (who live in London, or those who feel like flying in espesh) to check this out - it’s great fun and the Hendrick’s is delicious (they didn’t pay me to say that).
Not to go on and on about the gym, but I went this morning for the first time on a Saturday in a while and I remembered why - because while on weekday mornings around nine o’clock when I usually attend, the gym is populated by students and slighty-employed writers and old ladies with canes, on Saturday mornings it’s chock full of men wearing those special belts that are supposed to...
A life lesson for us all
I was really not feeling in the mood to go to the gym this morning; I slept through my alarm clock six times until it just decided I wasn’t worth its exertions and stopped going off altogether. It’s raining, it’s cold, I couldn’t find my hairband - a serious problem in light of my new haircut, with something approaching a fringe but which is at once too long to be one, yet...
Himglish and Femalese.1
That men are sometimes inclined to be more competitive than women in certain scenarios is something that is quite widely recognised, but nonetheless still fun to test, now and then. Jude (downstairs neighbour) and I were discussing the fact that we are both now in possession of four 19 litre bottles of water each, courtesy our generous, ‘running water is overrated!’ landlords.
...
It felt important to phone my parents yesterday, to be in touch and say, ‘did you see that? Yes, so did I.” Dadelstein was particularly reflective.
“You know,” he said. “I could kind of see myself campaigning to be elected. I’m quite competitive. I’d want to win. But once I got there, I wouldn’t want to actually do the job. But Obama? He really...
Language Log » Adverbial placement in the oath... →
via my wee sister.
After nearly a decade of living abroad...
…I feel, today, like I own a small piece of America again.
(And that may be the cheesiest thing I ever write, but it is true.)
The Top 43 Appointees Who Helped Make Bush The... →
(via sasharappaport)
I kind of look forward to when I am a lady of mature years and the era of these dipsh*ts is but a short period in my personal history, rather than the entirety of my adult life.
“My wife says she feels scared and lost and full of guilt. “It’s my...”
– Paul Kaye: ‘A dark fog has enveloped us’ | Life and style | The Guardian
I am excited to note that the American publishing phenomenon of late-2008, ‘How to Talk to Girls’, will shortly be hitting deprived British shores. Now, this particular title was written by a precocious (oh, how adorable!) nine-year-old child, but age ain’t nothing but a number: it’s been on the New York Times Bestseller List for several weeks, which I assume is not because...
“Despite the content of the Mills & Boon books becoming slightly racier over...”
– Britain’s oldest romantic novelist to spend 101st birthday working on her 130th Mills & Boon book | Mail Online
(via iainbroome)
I wrote my first book, a Mills & Boon-style romance, in the summer that I turned 21. I had a very boring job that demanded that I sit in front of a...
“Tony Blair was both Britain’s Obama, transforming its politics, and Britain’s...”
– Interesting New York Magazine profile on Tony Blair, dressed - the journalist helpfully tells us - in gray T-shirt, blazer, and acid-washed jeans. (via somethingchanged)
What a fascinating journalistic technique - undermining Blair with this small, horrifying fashion detail which may or may not be...
I suspect...
…that a side-effect of the current no-water period chez moi is going to be a marked increase in my personal health and fitness, since it just seems idiotic to go the gym every morning without doing some exercise (as opposed to making a beeline straight for the showers). This is good, of course, but at the same time I feel slightly bitter about it, that because of my landlord’s shocking...
Totally flattered by a drunk (or: woman’s need for... →
The lovely Anastasya is blogging again on life in Copenhagen, and I am delighted.
“Conrad can feel old-fashioned - the portrayal of women in these narratives as...”
– Classics corner: The Tale by Joseph Conrad | Books | The Observer
Oh, how I love writing for the Observer’s Classics Corner. The only way I could possible love it more is if it was called the Klassix Korner, but I am coming to terms with the fact that it is too much too ask.
“I spent about 3 hrs a day back in 1993 talking to my dear friend from 9th grade...”
– Rucksack Wanderlust
I really miss Christiane!
Pooh Bear returns after 80-year gap - News, Books... →
(via iainbroome) Winnie (well, the A A Milne estate) and I share a literary agent, so this makes my heart swell with home team pride.
Friday
Even though I (usually) don’t work in an office, and (usually) do quite a few hours of work throughout the weekend, I still love the feeling of Friday nights.
Continued adventures in my water-less flat
Tonight, there wasn’t enough to cook my pasta for dinner. I had two options:
a) Trek downstairs to Jude’s flat with a jug.
b) Boil pasta in some Hendrick’s, which was left over from a party.
I decided that both of these choices were crap, so instead I toasted a pita and had a G&T. The latter kind of took the edge off my plumbing-related wrath.
“The Twilight books, by comparison, their unsubtle Mormon agenda presenting...”
– Twilight vampires fangs by Imogen Russell-Williams | guardian.co.uk
Jean: OK, I will walk along the canal. See you in five minutes.
Seb: The canal! Don't get mugged.
Jean: Don't worry, I am taking the road that runs next to it. Besides, it's only five o'clock. The muggers don't start their shift until six.
Seb: Yeah, and I guess Hackney is so gentrified now...
Jean: The worst that could happen is that I might get hit over the head with an organic marrow.
Curried pasties and soup as Arctic hits UK | UK... →
Oh no! As I haven’t been outside in two days I actually had no idea how cold it is. Still not cold enough to induce me to eat meat-filled pastry, however.
Treading on thin ice: The couple who took toddler... →
This article is so anti-Canadian. Seriously, however, when I was a kid I had a hugely irrational fear of drowning as a result of crashing through an icy lake, undoubtedly because I read about it in a book because I certainly was very infrequently actually near any kind of frozen body of water. Much as I was also hyper-aware of the steps I’d need to take to save myself if I was ever...
Today I am taking a proper sick day - a rare occasion, seeing how my job allows me to just work in my pajamas most of the time anyway. But I am actually so unwell that I have taken the extreme step of asking an editor for an extension, and thus shall be spending the rest of today lying very still and hoping that the sheer tedium will drive the virus from my body.
One good thing: after...
Moving = ghastly
Searching for a new flat is never easy, but it is particularly not easy this time around: first of all, I require luxurious amenities such as running water, because I am just very spoiled. Second, I am a deeply unappealling flatmate: I have an irregular income (although I do pay my bills, of course, I am unsalaried and thus it is difficult for me to prove my net worth) and even worse, I am at home...
Detox remedies are a waste of money, say... →
Go science, go! I often find it amazing how difficult it is to argue with people who are convinced by these kinds of stupid claims.
I was recently at a lunch with a number of women who were discussing why they had given up drinking fruit smoothies because they had been persuaed that grinding the fruit up magically reduced its vitamin content (they were not citing the fact that some smoothies have...
CREATIVE THRIFT | SUSO →
POLITICALLY CONNECTED | SUSO →