Even though I’m not looking to move imminently, every so often I have a gander at property ads to see what else I could get for my money. Everyone does, right?
Anyway, I really feel that only in Britain would this photo be used to help market a studio flat: the perfect home to drink away your loneliness.
Anonymous asked: I've applied for Editorial Assistant jobs at magazine and book companies. For this type of job, is it usually a one-to-one interview or a group interview? Thank you!
One-to-one, in my experience!
Anonymous asked: I really hate that Paul Auster book. What are your thoughts on it?
I’m enjoying it, in a read-a-bit-before-bed kind of way (as opposed to a inhale-while-walking-down-the-street kind of way).
Feeling quite pleased with my completed infinity scarf! Also known as ‘a regular scarf that had to be turned into an infinity scarf because I ran out of wool and the knitting shop didn’t restock the right colour’.
Currently reading! What an amazing cover. Sadly my edition does not have this amazing cover.
Currently also wheezing, which is dull.
I. It struck me, like never before, somewhere in the sixth or sixtieth hour of my flu-induced confinement (but probably the sixtieth, because I believe in the first throes I was delerious) that the only thing more unforgivably banal than composing, in my head, a 140-character remark about my suffering (vile suffering; in the grand scheme of possibility, gentle suffering) would be sharing the remark with an audience of hundreds: a handful my closest friends; a further handful of colleagues and professional contacts; dozens of brands and spambots.
I was suffering, to be sure, not just from ‘flu but from a lack of witnesses. Does a sweaty four-day battle with a virus really happen if you live alone and permit no one to see you because no one is obligated (by blood relationship, or by romance), and because although you’ve lost your sense of smell you have an inkling that it is a blessing? What a tedious urge, I thought, as I pressed ‘delete’. So many friends have sent kind messages, offers to deliver orange juice, condolences. And yet. I am not just ill. I am banal.
II. I re-read the AG Sulzberger piece on vegetarianism, the one in which he complains, among other things, of midwesterners being forced to cook their own food because barbecue restaurants don’t cater to their needs. A little light background, confirming his position as heir to the New York Times fortune, but also his unexpectedly mature age.
I shared the piece with my American friend at work, with whom sharing things about America that make us sigh and roll our eyes with expat American world-weariness is a frequent and enjoyable past time. I suppose it is a form of fellowship roughly equivalent to when British people talk about the weather.
I mean, he is our age, I say about AG Sulzberger. It’s like writing a letter home to your mum to say that you don’t like the food. When you’re 30! Except it’s like writing a letter to the nation! You would not do that. My American friend shakes his head in disgust and I laugh and laugh and I say what is wrong with our nation? and then I am crying as well as laughing, both profusely. Which is, perhaps, because I have taken a lot of cold medicine over the last week. But perhaps it is also a small part of my self in throes of grief.
You are wrong with our nation, it weeps. You are laughing at this picky, privileged eater, Jean, but if you were the heir to the New York Times fortune would you not be writing articles about how sad it is to have the flu when you are far from home and no one is watching?
From this article: “Even though the region boasts some of the finest farmland in the world, there is a startling lack of fresh produce here.”
My mother-in-law is a vegan who lives in the woods (yes) in southern Ohio. And even though it’s an hour and a half to the nearest grocery, she and my step-FIL are still alive. People who actually cook for themselves instead of going to restaurants every night like they’re Lorenzo de Medici don’t have such a “struggle” for “survival.” Have your manservant go to a supermarket, A.G.
“The mentality of the Midwest is, green is garnish,” explained Heidi Van Pelt-Belle, who runs Füd, a vegetarian restaurant in Kansas City.
Lol, Heidi Van Pelt-Belle, you are terrible.
“Some say they have learned to cook for themselves…”
(Source: maura)
Reading the Islington Tribune – “Open to All, Coerced by None” – on Saturday is a weekly pleasure: it’s a unique mash-up of hyperlocal news with stories of national import.
(She was asked to dress down by the school head; the kids complained she ‘didn’t look like a proper princess’.)
SETTLING in a chair in the interview suite of the press office at the National Theatre in London - a small, ugly beige room that completely belies the grandeur of the theatre itself - Simon Russell Beale is wincing.
He hasn’t broken a leg, but almost: last night, in the middle of his performance as Joseph Stalin in Collaborators, he tripped on the multi-levelled stage, aggravating an old foot injury.
”— Simon Russell Beale kindly talked to me for The Australian, even though he was in a lot of pain!
My friend Lydia gave me this clever present! A stamp with your contact details on it is not something you’d ever think about needing, but now I’m branding my books like there’s no tomorrow. And who needs a business card when you can stamp an acquaintance’s hand/sleeve/face?
ATTN: “You look great! Have you lost weight?” is not a compliment. I know it has been the go-to praise-route towards many women since the inception of puberty, but I’d like to put an end to it. Why do I hear this like a broken record every holiday?
Some alternatives:
- You look great! How are…
The only thing I think when someone tells me that I look like I’ve lost weight is, ‘how hideous did you think I looked before?’ As a result, I have a strict personal policy of never commenting on anyone else’s weight. Which, strangely enough, I think sometimes comes over as a bit rude, oblique, or at least unobservant.
On a related note, this is an interesting post on body image and women by Clementine Ford (both of these links via Rachel.)
Photograph: Murdo Macleod
Women, professor Hawking said in an interview with New Scientist, were a “complete mystery” – one that he now devotes much of his time to contemplating. Here are a few of our pointers to help him on his quest…
1. Much like individual fundamental particles,…
| Jean: | Anna, should I wear my glasses for my new Guardian profile photo? |
| Anna: | No. |
| Jean: | Even if they make me look smarter? |
| Anna: | No, they don't. |
