Sitchuashun normal

Feh. Still have the blahs bookwise. Have been trawling the internets looking for things to add to my shopping list and mainly thinking, "Meh," at any fiction.

But in better news, it seems as if my long-awaited ebook reader may potentially arrive in the next few weeks in someone's suitcase (it's been sitting in its box on someone's hall table for the last 8 weeks, and I simply don't trust it in the post). Woohoo.

And better, yet, Tanya Gold was on most excellent form today in the Guardian. In my case it was the incessant demands for fish knives that drove me to a similar level of despair and rage that although banked, still burns. The fish knives and an £85 cotton bathmat. And this was over 4 years ago, when pounds were actually worth something. It's probably a £150 cotton bathmat by now. What in the hell would anyone want to do with an EIGHTY-FIVE POUND bathmat? Frame it?

I want to marry her, and then we can both get all the spoons.

Deep Cake Time

I've been sadly neglectful of the blog to date, for various reasons, most of them quite dull - even the one involving the cabbage. Actually, especially the one about the cabbage.To get some momentum, I hereby resolve to take a more splatter-gun approach to the the process. It means less planning, mainly, and probably more drivel. Oh well.

In the home-grown spirit that reflects the blog's latest direction, I wanted to mention a new-found reason to love Open University/BBC telly programmes. I've been watching the series, "Coast" (a tour around the coast of the UK in 12 episodes delivered by a mixed bag of academics). There's a bit in the one where one of the experts gives a basic explanation the creation of the Jurassic coast down Dorset & Devon way.

Picture the scene: the anthropologist (and I don't know why she's talking about geology, but as will soon become clear, this is more of an introductory session than an in-depth discussion that flings around words like "igneous" and "lithostratigraphic" with wild abandon) has hair dyed crayon-red and arranged in windblown plaits that clash with her maroon anorak. She is sitting on a flimsy aluminium table outside a seaside caff somewhere like Lyme Regis. It's windy, grey and looks like rain. A waiter brings her three slices of cake on a paper(edited to add) blue-edged, china plate. (Sorry, but I wouldn't want to give anyone the wrong impression, since apparently plates are quite important to geologists.)

Using the cake, the helpful academic piles up the Triassic (ginger) Jurassic (Victoria sponge) and Cretaceous (Madeira with extra peel) layers horizontally. Tilting the three-layer cake on its bottom corner to illustrate the way the strata sank to the east during the Cretaceous period, she then represented the coastal erosion that exposed all three layers with a plastic knife used to slice off the upper corner.

Cake, geology and probably a nice cup of tea at the end. Lovely.

Chronologifragilisticexpealidocious

While winter winds blow snowy through the dawning of the year (it's January - it counts), a young(ish) procrastinator's fancy turns to matters calendrical. As in the careful selection of a piece of wall furniture that illuminates the furthest reaches of the soul; that encompasses the shy hopes and dreams of the coming year. Or at least doesn't bring on allergic reactions to the calendar's subject matter by mid-July when the only alternative is the dreaded leatherette-and-gilt corporate promotional calendar:

Monthly Data Storage Solutions! - featuring Mr. November's technician coyly peeking out from behind a server, or perhaps discreetly concealing his manly attributes behind an extra-large memory stick?

After all, it's not every year that a person gets a copy of Dieux du Stade, «Un jour de match», or can stumble upon a tiny shop in the backstreets of Venice and pick up a few discount copies of Seminarian of the Month.

The variety is endless. The decision, vital. This year, I've opted for "Antique Maps" thereby cunningly alluding to my fondness for antique maps. Also vellum.

But how to choose when there are so many?

Tropical Islands.
Half-Naked Air-Brushed Women.
Half-Naked Air-Brushed Women on Tropical Islands.
Half-Naked Air-Brushed Women In Waters Near Tropical Islands
Half-Naked Air-Brushed Women In Temperate Oceans.
Completely Naked with Strategically Hair-Brushed Women.
Cartoons.
Great Art.
Bad Art.
Scary Art.
For the Love of Shih Tsus.
Many, many, many Animals. Some uglier than others.
Many, many, many Famous People. Ditto.
Hot Buns.
Hot Cross Buns.
Hot Mildly Annoyed Buns.
A Very Tiny Paper Aeroplane A Day.
Staplers of the World! (Could this be the most desperate exclamation mark ever?)
Beer.
More Beer.
Houses.
Doors.
Windows.
Houses Without Doors Or Windows. (Or houses, for that matter)
Castles. (Some of these were once houses)
Prague.
Foggy Prague.
Luminous Glittery Technicolour Sunsets of Prague (Some editing and castles).

But the calendar that really says it all for this year? The calendar that I shall regret passing over in times to come? The calendar that speaks to generations and gives deeper meaning to the modern obsession with carving the banana of time into ever-more-precise slices and then mooshing it up with a fork and eating it on toast with butter and brown sugar (yum)?

Fruit. In Motion.