I’m pretty sure this can’t be real, because although I can imagine someone making this video, I can’t imagine them then going on to post it as their actual online dating profile – but it had me crying with laughter at my desk anyway.
And if you need another laugh on a drizzly Friday afternoon, try this neat ad from ENO:
I promise that one day soon I will put up a post that isn’t nicked from Zooborns, but I couldn’t let this one go by without sharing it. It’s a baby girl baboon! With red hair!
…seen a real-life animal that looks more like a Quentin Blake drawing than this Palm Cockatoo chick, born at Adelaide Zoo last year?
(From Zooborns, of course.)
Courtesy of Zooborns.
This winter, I changed jobs. Everything about the new job is an improvement on the old one, but one thing that’s so palpably better that it makes me want to weep with the relief is the location. Until late last year, I was commuting from glorious Herne Hill to the wilderness of White City, a journey of roughly ten miles, all of them unwelcoming and frenetic. In comparison, my 45-minute hop up to the West End on the reliably speedy number 3 bus seems like unimaginable luxury, although I suppose I might tire of it eventually, and since my destination is now only 4.5 miles away my average speed of 6mph could probably be improved upon, unless I’ve got the maths wrong, which no doubt I have.
Whatever, the point is that once I get to WC2 I am in WC2, which is a place of surprise and adventure. It’s an area of London I’ve known for as long as I can remember – what Londoner hasn’t? – but being there daily, and relying on it for my everyday chores and routines and treats, is something else entirely. I have learned which sandwich shops always use fresh bread and don’t charge obscene tourist prices (naturally, I’m not telling you which they are), and I’ve found a friendly and charming woman called Rita who will do my eyebrows, which are terrifying to behold in their natural state and need a firm hand, and I am on nodding terms with an elderly man who lives in the flats that overlook the open-air pool on Endell Street and spends his days in the café where I go for lunch after I’ve been swimming. Suddenly, in myriad small but miraculous ways, this corner of the city belongs to me.
And I love it. Tucked away between Leicester Square and Covent Garden are more shops, galleries and restaurants than I ever expect to have time to investigate. I could eat somewhere different every day. I have read the spines of a tiny percentage of the books for sale in the secondhand shops along Charing Cross Road and already found fifty books I want to buy, although so far I have limited myself to an Agatha Christie and the Observer’s Book Of Weather. I have discovered a gothic church I’d never seen before, two proper sweet shops, the Equity headquarters and a part of Neal’s Yard I never knew was there. And I haven’t even started yet.
But back to that commute. As I mentioned, 45 minutes for a journey of four and a half miles is not, in the scheme of things, an impressive rate of motion. But I’m coming from a commute that lasted 75 minutes and involved a walk, a tube, a change, another tube and a walk, or, if I wasn’t in a hurry, a shorter walk, a train, a change, a tube and a longer walk. Either way, the journey was crowded and unpleasant. So relatively speaking, my new journey is a breeze.
I think it’s impossible to overestimate the importance of relativity when it comes to health, wealth and happiness. I had a horrible commute for eighteen months, so this one makes me happy. If you’re ill, getting better makes you happy. If you’d given me £50 when I was a student you’d have made me happy. Now I’d just think “fine, that’ll go towards this month’s service charge”.
All of which gives me great hopes for the future, because the longer the beloved and I share a flat that’s barely big enough for one, and a bed that was never designed for two, the happier we’ll be when we get to live somewhere that’s properly big enough for a couple and has a BATH. I hope I never get everything I’ve always dreamed of, so I can always gleefully anticipate the day when I do.
When I was deciding how to rank this year’s songs I originally had Cliff at number one and this at number two, until I realised that if I were to make a list of my favourite songs, rather than my favourite Christmas number ones, this would still be near the top, whereas although Mistletoe and Wine is my favourite Christmas song, I’m not sure what merits it has outside of being Christmassy.
In a rare example of the law of increasing returns, this song gets better each time someone covers it. Elvis’s version is better than Willy Nelson’s, and when the Pet Shop Boys got their hands on it they turned it into nothing more or less than the perfect pop song.
I have chosen this video rather than the regular one because it doesn’t have a fat man talking throughout, and because Neil’s leathers are quite becoming. If you are at home, it’s time for a glass of fizzy wine. If you are at work, it’s time to go home. Happy Christmas!
I’m accidentally got a Christmas head on me two months too early, having been to see a charming snowbound Norwegian film called Home For Christmas at the LFF this week, and it’s been exacerbated by my having just made the Christmas pudding. Now is about the right time to do it, but it puts me into the festive spirit too soon.
So I am remedying it with this summer song by Hildegard Knef, which raises my spirits in quite a different way. Enjoy.
Exactly one year ago, I was here:
I know this because today is my birthday. I turned 33 on the high seas, and I am turning 34 a day after arriving back from a completely gorgeous trip to Ontario, spent with family old and new as well as some good books and better friends. Due to a lack of planning, the photos are lurking somewhere in my dad’s luggage, but they will make an appearance here and elsewhere soon.
Anyway, it turns out going on holiday around my birthday is a good thing to do, partly because it’s a treat and partly because when people ask me what I’m doing for my birthday I can say “going to Canada”, and thus be relieved of the obligation to hold any kind of a party. I like parties, but I like them best when they’re someone else’s.
The only downside of being away at this time of year is that I miss the start of the football season (do you see how carefully I chose the title of this post?). We started off in fine form with wins against Leicester City in the league and Yeovil in the Cup, then folllowed up with consecutive losses to Barnsley and Ipswich. We usually draw the opening game of the season, but is otherwise a fairly traditional start for us. However, I was cheered by the news (texted to me while I was away, its importance clearly warranting the cost of an international SMS) that Edgar Davids has signed to the club on a pay-per-play basis. That can only be fun.
Anyway, it’s about time for me to go back to bed so that I can shortly be brought breakfast in it. I used to dislike having a birthday at this time of year, because the season is just starting to turn, so my birthday always felt like the end of something. But in recent years I’ve come to realise that the end of summer is also the start of autumn, and autumn has a loveliness of its own. So I’ll take pleasure in today’s grey drizzle and look forward to the leaves changing colour. After all, when that happens, it means it’s nearly Christmas.
I usually wring every last available drop of fun out of the Country Show, but this year, for a variety of reasons, I only spent a couple of hours there each day and as a result I felt I missed quite a lot of it. I went to bed last night feeling faintly sad and anxious at not having spent more time there, like a child who suddenly realises that when she wakes up it won’t be Christmas any more.
But when I awoke this morning I remembered that it’s quality, not quantity, that counts; and this year’s show was one of the best I can remember. The weather was perfect – sunny and warm but not hot – and the music was super (Alabama 3 in particular were brilliant, as they always are); the atmosphere was better than ever and despite record attendance it felt completely relaxed and friendly everywhere I went. It was nothing at all like that year that we had to dive out of the way of a bunch of teenagers trying to stab another bunch of teenagers. (But then, I was child-free this year, so I didn’t have to go to the funfair.)
Here’s a girl dancing in front of a parade that popped up out of nowhere while we were buying books for 20p each from the library van:
And here’s another shot of the same parade:
According to the South London Press, 180,000 people attended the show over the two days. So it was doubly odd to find myself back there this morning, one of perhaps half a dozen people whose daily business takes them into Brockwell Park at 7am. It looked empty and silent, but also kind of beautiful:
Forget Cyprus, I never want to live away from here.
Dang. I was so close to being right about Holland winning the World Cup! But I’m glad Spain won it, because they deserved to, and because I have more Spanish than Dutch friends. Although I have just inspected my bank balance and it turns out the cash I would have won had Holland beaten Spain would have been very useful (payday is Thursday). Oh well.
Anyway, I’m going to move on and pretend none of it ever happened, and I’m going to start looking forward to the event of the year, the Lambeth Country Show at Brockwell Park this weekend. The Lambeth Country Show is worth our council tax on its own. There’s live music, actual animals, jousting, fruit and vegetable shows, craft stalls, cake, cider, a funfair and sheep-shearing demonstrations. It is the most fun in the world, and it’s all free and on my doorstep. Who needs holidays?
Glad All Over 