December 2009
36 posts
On partying like it was 1999
We marked Y2K at the Desmond Americana, then the swishest hotel in all of Albany. Our choices were limited: some friends were depending on an older one to get them some alcohol; my parents were staying home, where my siblings would do their annual performance of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ on their French horns, standing in the snowy garden. I was one semester in to university, slightly chubbier...
On my return from the threading emporium
Flatmate Ben: Let me see your eyebrows.
JHE: See? [raises eyebrows]
FB: Ah, nice. They'll be good for winks.
JHE: And scepticism!
“Books are notes from the field, bound and domesticated, life brought into narrow...”
– Joshua Ferris, writing against culling your book collection. (via gregbrown) (via thebronzemedal)
[Oh, you’re right, Joshua Ferris, you’re very right. But I hope now that you have persuaded me to not get rid of any of my books, you’ll also be happy to come round and help me carry...
“Christmas allows no hiding place. There can be no excuses, not when everyone...”
– The perfect gift? How about an end to loneliness – and not just at Christmas | Jonathan Freedland | Comment is free | The Guardian
On respecting my mother even more than usual
Preparing for Christmas is really difficult. I’ve cut a few corners, and I think that the dinner itself is just about under control (another trip to Sainsbury’s is required, perhaps two) but I haven’t even begun to consider the fact that my family will probably want to eat some other meals as well while they are here. The planning! The execution!
It’s amazingly difficult,...
WatchAn excellent audio slideshow from Sebastian and his friend Kate Harding, from their time in Nepal earlier this year. Very worth watching.
JHE Solves Your Relationship Problems: Tell him,...
Everyone’s been in your position at one time or another. Even I have been there once in a while, and I am a relationship expert and was born in the 1980s… read more: himglishandfemalese:
“I don’t think women are top of anyone’s agenda. I find now is the time for more...”
– Emma Thompson: ‘Chances are you’ll know somebody who pays for sex’ | Film | guardian.co.uk (via clembastow)
On assessing a decade
The impending close of this year prompts reflection on the last ten, of course, and though I’ve already expressed my reluctance to make lists, it nonetheless seems appropriate that I should note this in some way. I mulled over the best fashion to do it - the ten most hilarious things that happened to me? Ten most pivotal moments in the course me becoming a writer? But then I remembered that...
“Books sold as Christmas novelties are, for the most part, the Ferrero Rocher of...”
– Christmas novelty books | Book reviews | Books | The Observer
On food safety
I am a little late, five minutes late, for my volunteer training.
I’m a little late, I say. Sorry.
Go upstairs, says the receptionist. Go through the big door.
I do so.
I’m sorry I’m late, I say to the trainer. She is silent. She looks unimpressed.
I take a seat between two women who are taking notes in books about food safety.
Hm, I think. I signed up to lead creative...
Best Friend and Consultant Primatologist Lauren...
Jean: You're going to be a doctor! Now one day when you're on a plane and someone gets sick the air hostesses will say, 'You're a doctor! A passenger is sick! Can you help?' and you will say, 'Only if it's a monkey!'
Lauren: Well, I could only observe it.
“You know that times are changing when this article receives so many negative...”
– Put em right on Enid Blyton | Jean Hannah Edelstein | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
This week’s life lesson: don’t ever, EVER dis Enid.
Related: I wonder what it was like to be a writer when it was less easy for people to express their wrath? I arrived just a handful of years too...
“Each year, we traditionally inflict the rigours of market discipline on a trio...”
– An email from Citigroup that made me imagine the author sending it round to his banker friends, with a note saying, ‘look what I did, guys! ha ha’ and the other guys (who have rolled up their shirtsleeves, are maybe a little drunk from the Christmas lunch) punching him in the arm and...
On trust
This is my seventh British winter, and I trusted that I had it sussed: when there’s snow, any snow at all, the whole city shuts down, everyone freaks out and clutches the walls of the buildings as they creep down the side walk, and I sidle past with the confidence and serenity that one can only possess after four winters of walking practice in Montreal (or an equally ice-and-snow coated...
“Feminism may have given women the inclination - and the power - to be as...”
– Why men can never forgive a wife’s affair… even though they’d expect YOU to forgive them | Mail Online
In today’s latest incisive Daily Mail critique of feminism, we learn that men can forgive themselves for cheating, but not their female partners. Oh, it seems they are saying, for the olden days...
Stories gleaned from Google Analytics: Episode 3
‘Timothy,’ Michael says. It’s the end of a long day at the call centre.
‘What ho, chap!’ says Timothy.
‘We need to talk,’ Michael says.
‘Jolly good,’ says Timothy. ‘I’m all Britney Spears.’
‘Timothy,’ says Michael. ‘This is serious. We’ve had several complaints about you over the last...
“We watched him golf on television and couldn’t help but stare in wonder. He...”
– Jonah Lehrer thinks we’re shocked by the Tiger Woods scandal because we made an fundamental attribution error (FAE), which occurs when “people overestimate the importance of supposedly “fundamental” personality traits and underestimate the importance of variables like context.” (via...
My parents and I discuss Tiger Woods
Mum: Tiger Woods was away all the time. I am glad your father no longer has to do so much business travel.
Dad: I know, there were all of those MRI groupies.
“First, try to be something, anything, else. A movie star/astronaut. A movie star...”
– Lorrie Moore, “How To Become A Writer” (via bibliotheque)
On being depressed
I’ve been quite depressed for the past two weeks. Well, very depressed, really - the kind of depressed where I don’t feel like getting out of bed at all, don’t particularly feel like interacting with people (even the closest people to me), don’t particularly feel like doing work or reading or writing or doing anything but feeling really very sad.
I’m lucky, in a sort...
Will you design for cake?
If you have been reading my blog for a while, you may have noticed that my design skills are rather minimal. Most of the time this is not a problem, but it does become rather more challenging when I am about to launch a quite exciting new literary project, which I am doing right now. So, I’m hoping that through the Magic of the Internet (tm) I might be able to find someone with some graphic design...
I’ve personally found that handmade gifts are the best sort to promote romance, because frankly there is just something very lovable about a homemade jumper or scarf, even if it is kind of misshapen or much too big. Although, come to think of it, all of the men I’ve made knitwear for have eventually broken up with me. WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? (read more: Himglish and Femalese)
On the first time my therapist expressed a...
I don’t like Christmas, I said. I’ve never really enjoyed it since I was a teenager and I was severely clinically depressed and lots of people said, ‘oh, well, it’s Christmas so now you will be happy’ and I wasn’t happy, and then I felt even worse, that not even tinsel and cookies and reindeer songs could cheer me. Ever since then I have found it oppressive. And...
Step away from the stationery cupboard
himglishandfemalese:
Several readers have responded to my previous screeds about the potential downfalls of in-office love affairs with nice emails citing examples of people they know who have fallen in love in the office and are now together forever (or, indeed, citing the fact that they themselves are now committed to their one-time office-based loves). It is certainly the case that work can...
Himglish and Femalese Life Lessons Derived from a...
Yes: I went to see New Moon at the cinema. I am mildly embarrassed. But I also found that it was full of teachable relationship-related moments. Herewith: (click to read more)
“While the story is stuffed full of period detail, it is too often buried under...”
– Zulu Hart by Saul David | Books | The Observer
“Franze and Evans is the kind of place you want to have in your neighbourhood....”
– The London Review of Breakfasts
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“The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.”
– Ezra Pound, ‘In a Station of the Metro’
***
Tonight was a late one - I went to the amazing Nuno Mendes pop-up restaurant in Dalston (this deserves a separate post, or perhaps just a quiet sigh of pleasure) - so I didn’t get to my daily poem until, well, until it was already...
Anyone else bored with books of the year? | Books... →
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“…and deep in the high that does nothing but fall
(with a shout
each...”
– ee cummings, if everything happens that can’t be done
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I am not generally a joiner, but I’ve signed on for One Hundred Days To Make Me a Better Person, sponsored by the London Word Festival (my favourite word festival). My pledge: to read a poem out loud once a day: partly to make...
