May 2009
28 posts
“She doesn’t, she told Guardian Review editor Lisa Allardice, like reviews...”
– Kate Atkinson tells Hay festival she’d rather not be a published author | Books | guardian.co.uk
Today I read my first bad review: a profoundly bad review, which I stumbled upon in a paper that I never read, because Ben had brought it home and left it on the coffee table. I had promised...
What happens when a company does not understand... →
Sometimes the comments on the Guardian blogs make me feel so dispirited,(especially when they are saying misogynistic things about me) but on balance? Things like this prove the ability of social media to be AWESOME.
“Don’t make me come down there and smack you upside the head with a volume...”
– On the Guardian Books Blog, I write on why life’s too short for thousand-page novels.
Write For Your Life: An interview with Jean Hannah... →
An interview with, ah, me, conducted by the very excellent Iain Broome, chef-patron of Write for Your Life.
“This tendency to undercut her most serious points with humour is Waldman’s...”
– Is this woman a bad mother, or just honest? - Features, Health & Families - The Independent
It always makes me just a little sad when journalists find it remarkable that women are funny.
“To the dismay of traditionalists, more manufacturers and retailers have have...”
– Row erupts over yoghurt producers ‘using American spelling’ - Telegraph
Oh, poor traditionalists! I have to say, while I am in general in favour of assimilating (note my spelling of ‘favour’, there) I cannot get down with the awkward British pronunciation of...
“Mary Poppins! We can see your arse!”
– An adorable Dutch bicycle, with basket; a knee-length skirt; a sudden gust of wind; a stag party of drunken cads on a Saturday afternoon in Spitalfields. It was an unlucky convergence, a tragic stroke of fate.
On the bright side, at least, I was wearing my most bloomer-like pants.
“If I had known in high school that I would one day come to parties this cool, I...”
– Me, at a very cool party, tonight.
The death of civilization
In the last few weeks, every time I leave my bike (Sebastina) parked somewhere, people leave rubbish in her adorable wicker basket. Yesterday I reclaimed her after work to discover that people had deposited: a face protection mask of the sort that people wear while spray-painting, a pair of work gloves, an empty water bottle, an empty can of Red Bull, and a half-eaten bag of Hula Hoops (for...
“Over the interminable years of the Bush administration, it was apparent that...”
– Obama’s bold stance on abortion | Jean Hannah Edelstein | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
While predictably very crazy, I feel that overall comments on this piece are less very extremely crazy than they might have been, which heartens me, a little.
“Might we hope to learn to use technology to improve our love lives? Or does love...”
– Lost in translation - Times Online
My friend Hetty texted me this morning to tell me that she was reading Style and was righteously indignant to see that someone had written about Himglish and Femalese…but then she checked the byline, so that was OK.
“If not shocked, some readers might wonder what a celibate priest knows about the...”
– Sex and God do mix – according to ‘Catholic Kama Sutra’ | World news | The Guardian
A sure sign that I am getting old
The fake modelling agents outside of Topshop no longer ask me if I want to become a fake model. Evidently I am neither fresh- nor gullible-looking any more.
“Weddings make people crazy. So crazy that they do things like write ‘carriages...”
– Himglish and Femalese - JHE Solves Your Relationship Problems: Short and Sweet but Actually, What?!
On Eurovision
A funny thing about having lived in the UK for six years but not having changed my accent (much) is that sometime when people meet me for the first time and they don’t know how long I’ve been around, they very kindly but unnecessarily explain special British things to me, like the differences between the north and the south or the offside rule in football or what to do with custard.
...
On writing
It’s surprisingly hard to measure success in your writing career. You set a goal - say, to get published, or to get published in a national paper, or to get more than three hundred words published in a national paper - and it happens, and you’re very extremely happy, but then after a few minutes (or hours) you find yourself thinking again, ‘OK, but what’s next? What do I...
Ode to Babs
gauntlet:
Barbara Windsor who was honoured with a lifetime achievement award at the British Soap Awards this weekend, has really had two separate careers.
First as a young women in the 1960s and 1970s she was the eye candy who provided two valuable assets to many Carry On films, then since the early 1990s she has been a bold and brassy soap opera matriarch.
Barbara’s own life reads like a soap...
Download an extract of Himglish and Femalese from... →
himglishandfemalese:
I hope you like it!
I remember when camera phones were first invented.
I scoffed. ‘Why would you need a camera in your phone?’ I said. (At the time, notably, I didn’t even own a mobile.) ‘What’s next, a phone with a toaster?
Oh, how I live to eat my words (and my toaster-phone snacks) every time I document something random and fascinating. For example: on Tuesday I was walking to dinner through St Jameseseses Park when I happened upon...
WatchFor those who don’t read my other blog (please do, it’s quite fun) here’s the trailer for my book, for your amusement…
It occured to me last night that my relationship...
is most comparable to the sort of love affair that is fraught with anticipatory tragedy, because you know that you won’t be able to hold on to your beloved. I cycle around feeling like the bicycle and I have to live in the moment, because I know that one day I will get to wherever I’ve left it to see only the remnants of a Kryptonite lock, abandoned on the ground.
There was once...
…a time in my life, not so long ago, when I would not have cycled through Shoreditch singing Cole Porter songs with my flatmate, for fear of mortification. Fortunately, however, I have outgrown that. As Bank Holiday pasttimes go, I highly recommend it as a way to feel quite joyful.
And then, I realised
I really like blogging here, even if sometimes it is a little bit asinine. And thus, just like that, I was back.