The Unnecessary Chronicles

Watching The Muppets

2010-12-27T08:37:00.000+10:00

GEORGE: I dated Barrymore
KERMIT: You dated Ethel Barrymore?
GEORGE: No, Lionel. Ethel was busy that night.

The Muppets are so silly but make everything better.

KERMIT: Ralph's poem tonight is a tour de force, which is a kind of 'Toot Your Own Horn'. Now let's bring him on with a great big hand... *great big foam hand crosses the stage*

And later:

SAMTHEVULTURE: so what do I do here, Ralph?
RALPH: You just play the part of the bird. I mean, it's not written for a Vulture, but you'll do just fine.
SAMTHEVULTURE: and this is...cultural?
RALPH: sure, it's light opera, gilbert and sullivan.
*plays "willow, tit willow" from the Mikado*

ADDIT:

KERMIT: STADLER! Don't give me that Hogwash!
*enter George with a pail*
GEORGE: what was that?
KERMIT: I said don't give me that Hogwash.
GEORGE: Oh, bc I was just going to wash the hogs, but if you don't want the hogs washed I won't wash the hogs!

On Titanic - the ship that sunk

2010-12-27T08:35:00.002+10:00

I was reminded by a recent viewing on the ABC to post of the last time I last watched a re-run of the old ship-ahooy-tragedy that is this epic filmic experience.

Jack is a know-all bastard. A bastard who just has to know best... better. The general expert on life, in general. Who (rather like bloggers) always has an opinion about what to do in any situation.

And of course you're going to believe him - you're a young lady (not you, necessarily, but someone else perhaps) who is caught in an oppressive, autocratic and socio-economic relationship of pure convenience.

Contemplating suicide? Get back from that ledge, pretty lady and have unprotected sex in the backseat of a car with me, a boho American who will teach you about Art. And did I mention sex. Because everybody wants syphilis.

How did I get chained to a railing below deck in third-class? Never mind that now. Why not use that there axe, pretty lady full of pent up rage - I mean, I can't use hands to paint if I'm drowned now, can I?

Wait, did someone say there are there not enough lifeboats on this unsinkable ship? The irony is killing, isn't it? Watch me find a floating bit of chippendale. There's some - I know so much I could probably even tell you what century it's from.

Now, the ship's going down pretty fast, and vertically! But never fear, I am fully up on the principles of aqua dynamics: just take a deep breath and swim really fast - oh, and don't let go of my hand, yeah? Don't let...

Though he'd had no more education than a street's walk through Montmartre with a pencil and paper (and, really, how many of us have done that?) I just love how convincing he is with his "do you trust me" line.

"Sure I do, Jack. Show me your pastel sketches and sweet, sweet lovin' again, won't you?"

Of course, his street-wise-can-do-know-how attitude turned out to be rather useful in almost every situation, but that's plausible bc he loves Rose. And, no matter the flailing of logic far behind it, love conquers all in Hollywood - even GCSEs.

Tess of the D'urbervilles - Part 2 - BBC miniseries 2008

2010-04-26T21:49:00.001+10:00

This morning I decided whether or not to have a second cup of tea. if i were the queen of England i would have two. maybe even three.

I have been meaning to watch Part 2 again for ages...

(Tess of the D'urbervilles - Part 1)

*after the wedding*
ANGELCLARE: just thought i'd take rooms in your old ancestoral palace for a couple of days. remember, the place where you were employed as a servant and then raped?
TESS: thanks honeybun, what a nice surprise. oh! diamonds! hells, i look hot

why did i decide to watch the second half of Tess this morning? I know what happens - and what a horrible way to start the day!

ANGELCLARE: you are fit.
TESS: let's sex it up.
SERVANT: just bringing ye news that someone's died.
TESS: can't you knock first?
SERVANT: ruins the moment

(Tess of the D'urbervillles - Part 2)

ANGELCLARE: i have to tell you something: i absolutely hate deception and impurity but let me tell you about this 48hr long affair of "abject dissipation".
TESS: but that is wonderful news! now I can tell you about being raped.
ANGELCLARE: you whore!

"i am a peasant by position, not by nature" (tess=1)

(Tess of the D'urbervilles - Part 3)

ANGELCLARE: I'll send her off in the post cart. that'd be the noble thing to do.
TESS: I'll go home to me folks, they'll look after me.
TESS'MUM: oh! my married daughter! really married this time.
TESS: um...
TESS'DAD: *is drunk*
TESS: guess it's the workhouse for me then

(Tess of the D'urbervilles - Part 4)

ANGEL'SPARENTS: so you married a dairy girl. we couldn't make the wedding - you understand of course. is she super pretty and virtuous.
ANGELCLARE: um.
ANGEL'SPARENTS: now i will read you a passage from the bible about being virtuous.
ANGELCLARE: *is tormented* why is this story so damned self-referential?

TESS'DAD: *drinks*
ROOF: *leaks*
TESS'MUM: *carries the pig across the yard*
TESS: cor.

ANGELCLARE: *invites another girl to go with him to Brazil*
GIRL: *goes and gets her things really quickly (bc he's really fit)*
ANGELCLARE: *changes mind*
GIRL: you mean we're not going?
ANGELCLARE: I am a mess of indecision!

TESS goes to see ANGEL'S PARENTS and on the way she finds ALEC D'URBERVILLE has become an evangelist.

ALEC: I have given up worldly things.
TESS: I don't believe you.
ALEC: you are so hot when you're angry.

TESS: *goes back to the workhouse*
ALEC: *arrives on a white stallion*
TESS: you make me very very angry
ALEC: and you make me very very horny. let's get married.
TESS: after you raped me, abandoned me, made me bear your child and subsequently caused my husband to leave me?
ALEC: well I do have bigger balls than this horse.

TESS: *finally writes to ANGELCLARE* if you don't come I'll totally marry this other guy
ALEC: *lurks on the horizon on his big white horse*
ANGELCLARE: *festers infectedly in a brazilian hospital*

ALEC: the way to Tess' heart is to bribe the bailiff to give me some alone time with her
TESS: I should have become an alcoholic, it'd make this so much easier.
ALEC: *smokes* I'm no longer into religion - you're too fit and I like the hedonistic lifestyle too much.
ALEC: Anyway, this workhouse is bringing you down (kind of like I did) and even though I get so ANGRY around you, I also find you kind of hot and am therefore comfortable oscillating between overwhelmed adoration and vicious demands for your obedience. After all, you made me give up the priesthood - which means you are to blame for EVERYTHING.

ALEC: I can give your family so much if you just show me some kindness.
TESS: I know what you mean by that, sir!

ANGELCLARE returns to the village (he is a sickly and brooding young man)
ANGELCLARE: *tracks down TESS*
TESS: *looks quite the ladydoll* too late, pretty boy. my "husband" is upstairs, in bed, waiting for me. I am his creature. we have sex all the time.
ANGELCLARE: cor *leaves*
TESS: *calls after him* not that I enjoy it!
ALEC: I am clearly a dissolute creature, lounging in bed like this with me glass of wine.
TESS: *stabs him violently*
BLOOD: *drips through the ceiling into landlady's breakfast*
MUSIC: *intensifies*

*on railway platform*
TESS: I've murdered him, Angel, can you love me now that he's dead?
ANGEL: *thinks* sure! we can go to America!

Part The End

TESS: we have no where left to go, the best thing (symbolically) for us to do is sleep under stone henge and I shall make you promise to marry my sister.
POLICE: *approaches*
PLOT: *happens*
POLICE: this is a Thomas Hardy novel, right? bc what with you being symbolic and all, we will have to arrest your wife bc, remember she murdered that guy?
ANGEL: she's on that stone altar over there
POLICE: subtle. like A S Byatt.
TESS: i have clearly had too many good times in my life.
ANGEL: why does this book always end so fast?
TESS'SISTER: *appears out of nowhere and holds his hand*
TESS: *in jail*
ANGEL: i was a rubbish husband, wasn't I.
CREDITS: *roll*

TWILIGHT 'New Mooooon!' - facebook review

2010-04-11T20:34:00.006+10:00

Here were my very first impressions of New Moon, as recorded intermittedly on Facebook:

oh dear. i should be marking and planning. but I'm watching New Moon. and it's every bit as awful as I expected it to be.

why doesn't bella realise that the most inconvenient relationship you can have is with an undead creature - and she goes ahead and has two of them?

jacob: i will never hurt you or leave you

bella: thankfully my new undead bf is more stable than my last one.
jacob: oh, but we have to break up now *leaves*

bella: wtf, again?

so of all the boys she could fall for, she chooses the only two eligible undead boys in town #bringontheangst

bella and jacob: *practically snog at bella's house*

edward: *rings bella's house*

jacob: *picks up the phone*

edward: *angstily crushes the phone (like wolverine)*

bella: *acts rashly*

plot: *thickens*

edward: *becomes angry vampire*

bella: *blames everyone but herself*

jacob: *takes of shirt*

alice(who?): *drives*

camera: *pans*

wait, are they in italy? wtf?

bella: *runs through fountain*

red caped crowd: *ignores*

edward: *undresses*

red caped crowd: *ignores*

audience: *swoons*

plot: *stagnates*

audience: *still swooning*

protagonists: *spout superlatives and generalisations*

tweenies: *are further manipulated into believing in the fundamental narratival symmetry of reality*

*enter the clichéd vampires of italy* (so much evening dress)

clichéd vampire king: you'd give up our life for someone like us? a souless vampire?

camera: *pans to edward and his incredibly fit torso*

bella: it wasn't a hard decision to make...
audience: *concurs*

bella: *languishes*
edward: *stalks*
bella: this is just like old times.
jacob: what now?
bella: jacob who?
film: *ends*

I enjoyed this film, in a weird sort of way.

I mean the film stands for everything I hate about American teen films - it promotes manipulative, unhealthy representations "normal" relationships, it stereotypes adolescents in a really patronising way and is cheesy to the max. And it has the self assurance to be about vampires, and not be funny.

But everyone's so attractive and tries so hard, and there's so much angst that it's kind of endearing. I haven't seen such a sincere, unashamed film since the 'Da Vinci Code'.

The only time I really raged about this film was the final scene when Bella and Edward are talking about taking their relationship to The Next Step.

edward: let's wait five years

bella: that's too long

edward: well, maybe three

bella: what are you waiting for

edward: i have one condition

bella: what are you asking?

audience: don't do it, edward. don't sound like a dick,

edward: marry me.

Why, Stephanie Meyer? Why?

And that is my opinion.

Twilight - first and only impressions. Blimey.

2010-04-08T20:26:00.004+10:00

My realtime status updates as I voluntarily enter into the world of the 'Twilight' phenomenon (despite being a bit slow off the mark)

SCENE ONE
this morning, I'm watching twilight. cor, it's dreadful.

I'm sure it's been said before, but in every scene, Bella looks as though she's about to have a stroke

SCENE TWO
edward: I was designed to kill!
bella: i don't care. bc i think you're well fit, pretty boy.
edward: i really want your blood and by blood i mean sex
bella: well go for it, goodlookin'—
edward: —I HAVEN'T FINISHED MY MONOLOGUE YET!
bella: (why did i fall for the reflective type?)
edward: *monologues*

SCENE THREE
edward: I have a gf now - I'm going to wear shades - bc that is what the fonz would do
bella: i am so socially uncomfortable with this display

something significant about to happen. I can tell by edward cullen's intense facial expressions and dramatically halted speech.

SCENE FOUR
edward: i have been watching you sleep for a few months now. but that is not creepy, bc I love you—
bella: let's snog
edward: —however, bc I have an uncontrollable urge to kill you when we are together we must not snog but only sit here and talk about proust or something else that only I am interested in
bella: *falls asleep*
jessie: sounds like some of my exbfs

cor, edward has just said "then you and i will go somewhere, far away, together" - it's interesting the way he has so simply used the threat to her life to put bella in a position where she has no hope but to stay with him. one could almost imagine a cleverer vampire might have contrived this whole scenario from the start...

SCENE FIVE

hmm... considering she's dying that's a bit unnecessarily intense, edward (though bella's hardly complaining) *cue montage of waterfalls, leaping gazelles and other carefully selected symbols*

SCENE SIX
oh for god's sake now he's crying.

SCENE SEVEN (END)

edward: our bliss is so attractively emotionally
bella: nothing can go wrong now, bc we are dancing at the prom and that means it's the end of the film
vampire hiding the wings: *dangerously portentous at the necessity of a sequel* or is it... *hides there in a big feather coat, watching their love like a vulture or some other ominous animalistic symbol*..."

End.

I found this film predictable and unnecessarily manipulative. It was very difficult to sit through and possibly mightn't have managed it if I hadn't been working as well...

Of course, everyone was very attractive and the action sequences made the best possible use of SFX to save the actors having to do anything taxing. So all in all, a win - in a bugger of a way.

a little bit of earth - my not so secret garden

2009-12-21T09:23:00.003+10:00

I call it my not-so-secret garden, because everyone I meet gets told all about it and everyone who comes to visit has to go on a long and very boring tour around the thing - but I do love it so!

And my very best christmas present so far has been harvesting the first zucchini fruit from my garden today!

There are still three or four immature little fruit growing, and the plants themselves (there are four blackjack zucchini plants, only two of which are old enough to flower yet) have almost taken over my herb garden! But I do love them so I can't bear to replant them!

I planted in October, and this is where it was at in November:

and this is where I am today (late December)

So far the gardening has gone splendidly.

I have blackjack zucchini, prolific thai basil (and some very slow growing sweet basil), chilli plants, camomile, lettuce, spinach and parsley growing in the long bed

(the close up is of the lettuce, spinach and chili)

Small vincas flowers and some slow growing cosmos in the front garden.

Baby Tomato, mignonette lettuce, iceland poppies and more sweet basil in a portable greenhouse which doesn't seem to be as fabulous as the label promoted.

Some darling pots of geranium cuttings which are taking off fast, as well as garlic chives, lavender, some small little succulent leaves which are yet to root and little christmas egg cartons slowly growing seeds for family members.

The sweetest little sunflowers and marigolds growing in a little bed alongside the fence...

...and...

...PUMPKINS!

HURRAH!

Book Review - "A Pair of Blue Eyes" (or "Victorian Girls Want Sex") by Thomas Hardy

2009-12-17T09:37:00.008+10:00

I'm sorry I can't cut this behind a link - unlike lj, blogspot has some complicated html happening.

A Pair of Blue Eyes or Victorian Girls Want Sex
By Thomas Hardy

This book took me a week to get through and I shouted and laughed and hurrah'd and ranted at Hardy's sheer audacity to publicly be such a bastard to his characters.

A Pair of Blue Eyes follows the generic Hardy tragi-romance mould whereby a set of pure, intellectual and personally aspiring young men are emotionally crippled by the thoughtlessness of a fickle woman.

The story follows the heroine, Elfride (to whom the eponymous ‘blue eyes’ refer), as she navigates all the pitfalls of love and courtship that any attractive lass from the English countryside might be expected to charter. Secretly, of course, Hardy is channelling all the positives (and probably negatives) of his early relationship with Emma Gifford (before he locked her in the attic) and Elfride resonates a range of the very characteristics loved and despised in his most famous later female protagonists.

The novel opens with Elfride presented as a curious, naïve creature who is as delicate as any swooning 18th century romantic heroine. After a particularly exhausting round of chess (where her tender female brain is quite taxed) she retires to her room and it is pronounced by the doctor that “on no account whatever was she to play chess ever again”. She is susceptible to guilt also and turns uncharacteristically and briefly to brandy in a moment of emotional overwraughtedness.

Yet, as the novel progresses, Efride shows she has far more vim than most of her male counterparts give her credit for – she is both impulsive (though this is often to her detriment), resourceful and passionate. She admits the first dawnings of sexual feeling for one the village’s only cultured suitors, Mr Stephen Smith – a London man who visits their village on business with her father, the vicar. Elfride wastes no time feeling overwhelmed with the simultaneous emotions of both guilt and lust:

STEPHEN: Elfride, I’m too poor for you, and by you I mean your father.
ELFRIDE: yes that is a bit of a problem.
STEPHEN: I really haven’t any money…
ELFRIDE: yes I know – not a good match for me at all.
STEPHEN: and I haven’t told you my darkest secret yet…
ELFRIDE: I get the picture – let’s run off and get married already.
STEPHEN: why don’t you wait here for me while I make my fortune in India first?
ELFRIDE: so we won’t be having sex then?

Watching Elfride unwittingly destroy her bevy of suitors doesn’t leave one as cold and unsympathetic as reading the fate of Hardy’s later heroine Bathsheba, who gets her comeuppance in the hands of the adulterous Sergeant Troy. Elfride is driven by emotional stimulation and understands her actions and reactions only within a strictly prescribed social code of manners that isn’t always adhered to by its participants. Hardy is clearly describing a lass who has been left quite uneducated about the realities of social behaviour and responsibility and the ending to her tale, though sudden, is both at once outrageous and satisfying.

Elfride takes risks in ways that shock her suitors (and indeed, the Victorian audiences of the day) – and this exploration of her sexual awakening, and the effect it has on the world around her, does wallow somewhat in Victorian sensibility. However, beneath this, contemporary readers can note a celebration of her femininity and Hardy has little of the soured bitterness he implies of his more famous heroines. Elfride is just a nineteen year old girl, after all – she fishes for compliments, is a sucker for a bit of chauvinistic misogyny and makes stupid, impulsive decisions (which Hardy’s voice blames on her female vanity) that often put her life in danger:

ELFRIDE: Watch me walk around this incredibly dangerous cliff face/mountain ridge/church parapet so that I might impress you, pretty boy, and win your lovin’.
SUITOR DU JOUR: I’m not sure we can make love when you’re dead, not legally anyway, so why don’t we go back down and read a bit of Plato?
ELFRIDE: Plato’s a bore – watch how well I walk around on this very high ledge *slips*
SUITOR DU JOUR: *saves* I think I love you for this moment of stupidity.
ELFRIDE: want to sex me?

Throughout the novel the men she is enamoured by are of two moulds. Either they are wet boys who froth romance from every pore and wade through the shallows of emotion, flattering and winning the heroine with an inflamed fervour for sex —

YOUNG MAN: *walking in the countryside* let’s just have a little sit down on this seat for a minute
ELFRIDE: oh look at the time –shouldn’t we be getting back?
YOUNG MAN: you have such beautiful eyes, Elfride
ELFRIDE: I’m not entirely sure it’s proper that we’re sitting alone and so cosily like this…
YOUNG MAN: And you have such stirring lips.
ELFRIDE: You go too far, sir.
YOUNG MAN: *snogs her*
ELFRIDE: Can we try that again?

— or they are older, reclusive, intellectual types who claim the ‘cruel to be kind’ courtship model, mocking and insulting the heroine till she’s left in a state of subjugated adoration.

ELFRIDE: Tell me what you like about me – do you love me for my hair?
DEEP INTELLECTUAL TYPE: Don’t be ridiculous, it’s mousy and quite unfashionable.
ELFRIDE: Do you love me for my fair complexion?
DEEP INTELLECTUAL TYPE: Be quiet, you brown canker, I’m trying to remember my Latin conjugations.
ELFRIDE: Do you love me for my eyes. Some say they are my best feature. Didn’t you notice that they are even the title of this book?
DEEP INTELLECTUAL TYPE: I find you vapid and uninspiring. And a little bit stupid.
ELFRIDE: do you want to snog me?
DEEP INTELLECTUAL TYPE: I’m not sure I understand what you mean.

In both cases, of course, Hardy insists the men are absolute pictures of virtue and sexual innocence – inspired only to lust by the heroine’s unwitting fabulousness. Prior to meeting Elfride, the men have no past, no indiscretions, no lusts (but for what the heroine inspires in them) and their characters are only marred by a violent jealousy for Elfride’s increasingly chequered past.

This past literally stalks around the background of this novel as a real life haunting spectre – the hovering and veiled shape of an angry widow which cuts a ghostly and demonic domestic figure. This plot device – a manifestation perhaps of Elfrides guilt (or lack of guilt?) – seems frequently out of place amid the foreground of vapid sensibility and frothy teen love:

DEEP INTELLECUTAL TYPE: *kisses her* have you ever done this before?
ELFRIDE: um *changes topic* have you ever done this before *snogs him back*
DEEP INTELLECTUAL TYPE: you know what I love about you – your honesty and your innocence.
SPECTRE OF HER PAST: I curse you to an eternity of unhappiness with my veiled glare of rage.
DEEP INTELLECTUAL TYPE: wha—?
ELFRIDE: do you want to see what’s under my corset?

And yet this character does manage to lend a sense of gothic darkness and justified danger to Elfride’s perhaps wonton fickleness.

But don’t get me wrong, for all my criticism I adored this novel. I devoured it vigorously, my pen spouting opinions in the margins of every page. Hardy is clearly new to this – the book hasn’t the considered plot development of Jude or Tess and his narrative devices and character descriptions sometimes ere on the idealistic penetrations of fanfiction-writing adolescents. However, he writes with wit and the plot veritably rollicks along, always surprising and always engaging. I love imagining the young Hardy (he was just over 30 when he wrote it) truly in love with his heroine and yet despairing at her shortcomings as he despaired about those of his wife.

This is a passionate work that sends both an unpleasant moral message about fickleness but also comments on the behaviour society expects of its women. If you’ve read Hardy before you will thrill at making comparisons to his better known characters and stories, and if you haven’t you will adore this simple romantic tragedy and really enjoy the feeling of outrage once you reach the end of the novel.

A corker read!

guesting

2009-11-10T19:00:00.001+10:00

Entertaining. My friends have always been about entertaining - generous and lavish and in particular, have always been fabulous guests. But this past fortnight, in my new place, the friends (fabulous friends who I love dearly) I have had around for dinner have left me feeling poor of pocket and, worse, a highly disgruntled host.

What has happened to halcyon days where said friends would turn up with a little yoo hoo! at the front door - carrying exactly what you'd asked them to bring (and even a little novelty bottle or box of sweets for afterwards).

I put together the post below in the vein of my current favourite book of entertaining (as left on our kitchen table by my flatmate Anne), Entertaining Under the Influence. But the post doesn't stand alone as a mere didaction of unspoken advice. It is couched in the frustration of a fortnight's strained entertainment and longings for Things Past.

It is an in depth description of the one rule I would remind my guests of, if I had the courage, or better still if they read this blog:

Guesting

Rule Number 1:
You should bring something to the table that offsets the labour and cost your host has expended on you by adding a degree of unanticipated enjoyment to the evening. A bottle of wine is favourite classic. Though a fabulous salad or dessert (check with your host first!) or a lively but unusual pet that you can bring out for the party's amusement and then put comfortably and humanely away in a cage during dinner, never misses the mark either.

Rule Number 1.1:
When asked explicitly to bring a bottle of wine. You should not turn up empty handed. Or worse, with the dregs of an old bottle of party liqueur. Nobody wants to drink liqueurs before, or even with, dinner. Midori rarely goes with anything meal short of a sponge trifle and erroneously assumes your host even enjoys Mexican cordials.

Rule Number 1.2:
If you've been asked to bring the wine, then you're responsible for bringing the wine. Never assume your host has some in reserve.

From the host's perspective, with this in mind, it's necessary to tailor your meal and indeed the structure of the entire evening to your guests' little ways.

For example, if you have a guest who likes to stop in at McDonald's before they come for dinner - plan a light meal and a wide range of starter canapés beforehand so you can feast up and still have salvageable leftovers for the next day.

If, on the other hand, your guest likes to fill up on the starters and then cry off the main - don't offer any. Make the meal big and simple and straightforward. Make the wine a-plenty (assuming they bring a bottle) and make sure the music is up.

Above all - generousity is at the heart of entertaining, but it's a heart with two very separate very necessary ventricles through which the generousity must pass* and if you friends just aren't giving to the unspoken code of guesting, the entertainment will, starved, expire.

I have no answers to this - I have the same two friends coming over again on two separate occasions in the next fortnight.

Perhaps if I withhold their dinner...?

* :P yes, I'm all about the awkwardly constructed biological metaphors right now

wherein I blog again and the internet is finally connected

2009-10-27T07:38:00.004+10:00

A backdated series of entries from Week One in what Anne and I are calling Lady M.

.................

Saturday

Today I moved into M street. The house is enchanting in an incredibly ‘shabby chic’ fashion (emphasis on shabby). A mishmash of architectural styles – art deco patterns on the ceilings, giant Marvel characters scrawled in biro on the baser block walls of the downstairs studio space, paint jobs from every tenant and every decade and the rippled glass and white window frames from the post war workers’ cottage (which I suspect was the original design). I even went to lifeline and bought a wardrobe from the 1920s and ‘50s vanity and drawers.

I love it. It is making me happy, even though it lacks a certain crisp to the corners. One thing it doesn’t lack is spice. Anney has brought more spices than Coles stocks, including bacon flavouring bits and popcorn seasoning that has made many people very excited. I am happy in a house with many and varied spices. I am so glad she’s moved in.

Monday

A divine walk to work – a tad sunny and given the Brisbane weather extremes, just hot enough to use the sunbrolly – and just long enough that I might one day walk up the hill behind our house without panting.

Tonight, should I have wished it, there could have been a grand cookup, but instead, I bought Subway.

Tuesday

One should walk 23 minutes per day, according to Steven Fry. The weather is steaming tonight. When does he expect me to do my 23minutes I wonder?

Thursday

I had started to make the macaroni cheese – but was interrupted by phonecall from my parents:

PARENTS: where are you, our little cherub?

ME: well, at my home. That place to which you banished me after that big fight we had and after which you said I couldn’t live at home with you ever again.

PARENTS: but why aren’t you here?

ME: I felt that was fairly self evident.

PARENTS: no, we’re at the curry connection waiting for you. Why aren’t you here? You were told last Thursday. You should be here if you want curry. We will pick you up.

This was a positive experience on so many levels.

Friday

Tonight was mum’s exhibition. I felt very elegant, but also very judgemental and very self righteous. I tried to hide it behind the chipper exterior of the general patina of awesomeness. The works looked striking in the gallery and though she didn’t sell out in the vernissage, she had a heap of approval, a small wealth of works bought and a bevvy of positive reinforcement – especially one lady, a return buyer, who bought two works to offset her raging exccentricitieees… (it is about this time I fall asleep!)

Moving House 1

2009-10-10T06:28:00.003+10:00

This has been written over a couple of days - as moving house is rather distressing and needed documenting, but quite sapped all my vigour.

It's six twenty five in the morning and I am sitting on my bed surrounded by too many boxes. There is a problem. All these boxes contain books. Underneath these boxes are my other belongings, but I can't box them because they're under the books.

Am going to ask the help of professional movers to make this transition. Last year I broke a stack of ribs because of ill-considered lifting and most of my family and friends conveniently have had horrid back pain at some point this year.

And besides, I am practically an adult now. Certainly mostly-employed, at least, and it is only a civic duty in these economic times to make the stretch to hire flex movers who pride themselves on furniture removelists that "are fully trained, hardworking and enthusiastic". They are also advertised as all "under the age of 25, extremely fit and genuinely enjoy moving houses."

I wouldn't want someone who didn't enjoy his job.

I'm excited about the potential of this house. And a bit worried about what state I'm going to find it in. I move in on Friday. Friday afternoon, after work. That's when my stuff will (hopefully) be delivered. But I can't put anything out until I've at least cleaned the place and turned the electricity on. I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed about organising all that before the move date.

Thankfully, it's very likely Anney will be my lady lodger - and she's very good with a broom, so I am led to believe.

It's now Saturday.

Anne and I are set to explore the garage sale potentialities of Indooroopilly - all those middle class students moving house and what not. This is very exciting. I have visions of buying distressed and rustic (it needn't be both) hardwood wardrobes for an ant's of the price, and discovering ancient oriental throws to toss over the backs of chairs and sofas.

Today I will also Finish Packing. I have been beastly lazy. I have books still to fit into boxes - not to mention the rest of the shit I own.

Moving house seems to me a cluttered and impulsive business - nothing can be planned because the house moving gods don't seem to both reading the plans we lay. And I'm not really sure what has to happen next.

Thankfully, we found out yesterday that the electricity is already on.

in which the blog starts with a general complaint... from here it can only get better.

2009-10-02T18:08:00.000+10:00

I used to keep a journal religiously. I have volumes of diaries in my cupboards at home and innumerable posts on my old livejournal account and yes, I've somewhat fallen off the proverbial wagon in recent years.

But it's a friday evening and I am on the cusp of turning 26. I have noticed my once attractive pot belly is turning into a bit of a keg, and I have just this morning been officially given notice that I must Move Out (after my over-reacting and emotionally excessive father and I argued last night about... the news).

My birthday picnic is tomorrow - and after a full two months of blue skies and brilliant balmy sunny afternoons the forecast is for either more dust or rain. Perfect timing, Mister Subtropics.

There are mozzies biting me in abundance and I have a sniffle.

I've also found a beautiful little shabby house to rent but it'll cost me more than $300 a week. And did I mention that thanks to Education Qld the likelihood of my getting any sort of teaching job with holiday pay this year is practically naught. Meaning I'll have to find a casual job over the Summer.

So they're my complaints.

Maybe this was why I gave up writing a diary. It always ended up a grand self-involved postulation.

It's my birthday tomorrow and I am well disappointed with it all. I wish it could be Sunday already.