Division ding-dong.

It's slightly less obvious than "The Wall".

With the usual seasonal irony, it's been absolutely beautiful and warm for the last few days while I wrestle with a filthy cold. The evil germ has done weird things to my ears that make me feel as if I'm listening to a Pink Floyd album in a submarine. In other words, I have very blocked ears because of sinus inflammation, can hear sloshing and crackling when I move my jaw, and my left ear generates a peculiar tinny echo for all but the lowest-frequency noise.

Given my age, the Pink Floyd reference is a good indicator for the extreme noncool level of my de rigeur "I'm-miserable-and-ill-now-go-away-you-bastards-and-stop-hassling-me-about-borrowing-the-ironing-board" flannel pyjamas, striped socks and bad hair. I'm too old for it to be ironic and/or retro (the fact that I don't really have a clear idea of which it's supposed to be probably speaks volumes), and too young to be a first-time hard-core fan with original vintage concert T-shirt, who can sneer at the wannabe pj's in their pastel-snowflake-printed sadness.

Worse still, I've been this way for a very long time. But illness tends to bring out the dark side of my stadium rock/big album secret vice. One of the reasons that I avoid medication for the average cold-type bug is a sneaking fear that one too many decongestant tablets will find me in head-to-toe denim, and BIG hair, waving a zippo lighter with enthusiasm at a Status Quo gig. It could happen. I once bought a tape of the best of Bon Jovi while under the influence of one too many medicated throat sweets/cough drops and ten years later, not only can I still sing all the words, but I even know the track order.

So somehow it all made sense to my mucus-addled brain to go trawling through the archives and dig out this photo from an excursion up to the castle last summer. At least it might help to illustrate why I'm anticipating the coming summer with not a little dread. While last year, leopard-print ruled, I think gold and "brights" are supposed to be in this summer.

Sometimes, it's just like the Sound of Music

This is what guys living in Czech-land chat about 'round the supersonic coffee machine on the Tuesday after Easter Monday.

"Hey, so did you beat your wife on the legs with ribbon covered twigs yesterday?"
"Yep. Well, she was quite insistent. What about yours?"
"Yeah. Our family is pretty traditional. I sang the carols and everything while I was doing it. Did you make the whip yourself?"
"Nah. Her father made it for me - I've never been able to braid the pussywillows properly. Guess you need to be born here to get the knack."
"Nice of him. This year, I forgot to buy one and ended up using a wooden spoon. Didn't get a whiff of slivovice* afterwards, let alone a proper egg. She just hung them all on the tree for the kids. I'll never hear the end of it now. She reckons a wooden spoon wasn't enough to get rid of the really bad spirits - let alone the fertility thing. She thought it was a total cop-out, without the ribbons.""Yeah… I know what you mean. My wife never lets me forget the Easter I doused her in water instead of flogging her legs. It ruined her favorite shoes. I didn't get any of the gingerbread lamb that year."
"Your wife makes gingerbread lambs?"
"Uh-huh. Hearts and rabbits too, but I like the lambs best."

"I think lambs are supposed to be just as good for fertility as the water thing."
"Probably. They're pretty tasty anyhow."

*plum brandy

…tastes just like cherry coh-lah...

(stripped of branding to make it acceptable for public blogcast)

But first, a quick, polenta-fuelled, trip up a mountain to see the natural sculptures in the Valle di Sella in the snow. Up where the air is thin and the snow doth fall in late March, artists are ferried in during the summer (less snow then) to make sculptures out of natural material which are left to weather the effects of the elements.

Top of the list is the work-in-progress tree cathedral. In theory, after 25 years, the trees inside the wooden framework will have grown into the desired shape, and the framework itself will have rotted away, leaving a living, leafy building.

Among the other bits and pieces (including an amphiteatre made of woven twigs) that are scattered through the forest is this one, which as far as I recall is called "Pieces of Stripped Pine" or something.

Then off we went to Trento to dry off our trouser legs and practice looking more glamorous while wandering through streets where the walls looked like this… …and the sky looked like this… But, whither Lola? Luckily, Trento isn't all about miniscule gelati and elegant little cups of espresso. All that fresh mountain air means they take their food seriously south of the Dolomites, and on the day we visited, a cheese fair had plonked its ripe and oozing self in a square right by the main underground parking lot. Imagine my delight! Italian cheese piled high in stinky piles of beautiful ripeness! Oh unspeakable joy! Oh unbounded rapture! Oh momentary anxiety over the transport of dairy products by plane! Giddy with various edible fungus fumes, I bought:

1. A wedge from a wheel that smelled of old socks and looked as if it had been buried in a burlap bag and left to rot for several months.
2. A slab of gorgonzola so gloopy, blue and melty that it was sliding off the display board and slowly dripping its way to freedom.
3. A small roundel (I think I just made up that use of the word, but it fits) of very stinky goat cheese infused with the juice of a head of garlic, in its own special straw nest.

I did not buy:

1. A chunk of bright yellow Sicilian cheese studded with peppercorns and made with saffron flour, mainly because the stallholder was quite annoyingly insistent on flirting with us and sang very bad Italian pop songs.
2. Some strange stringy stuff with a faint plastic aftertaste.
3. Something with an unpronounceable name, rolled in dead leaves and ashes, because the guy wouldn't let us taste it first.

And then there was the highlight of the Trento Regional Cheese Fair (probably not its real name). That fine spring day, we had the honour of being graced by the presence of none other than Lola, the prize-winning cow. According to her nicely hand-lettered sign this fine speciman of bovinehood had presented her proud owners with 14 calves (ooof) and vast quantities of milk, as a consequence of which said owners were forever grateful and prepared to say it in painting on a wooden board decorated with flowers.

Not only that, but Lola's supreme conformation and top quality milk production had endeared her so much to some judges not a million miles away from the secret alpine headquarters of the Federazione Provinciale Allevatori di Trento, that she was designated "Queen of the Mountains" and given a very large shiny bell to prove it. Lucky, lucky Lola.

Tra-la-la-la-splish

It may have been raining in Bolzano...

...but there was sunshine in my heart.

Ahhhh...

Personally, I blame an overdose of the free samples at the Trento regional cheese fair for that brief moment of insanity.

Since the mutual friend lives in the wilds of northern Italy, one of the many edumacational opportunities offered by a fleeting visit in her direction is a quick trip to Bolzano, which by virtue of the multiple "o"s is very satisfying to say. The Alto Adige region is but a hop, skip and jump to Austria which means that not only is it a nice place to eat pasta and look at mountains, but also sausage means more than mere salami and can come curry flavoured with mustard, almost everyone speaks German of a kind and most events can be rounded off with a nice piece of strudel/struedel/struedl/strooooodol (mmmm...).

On the downside, the weather was springlike only in the sense that torrential rain, sleet, fog and snow also can happen in March too. But that's quite a handy excuse for eating enormous helpings of polenta swimming in melted cheese, fried mushrooms, meringue-y things, heaps of risotto, yet more strudel, Sachertorte and chocolate Easter bunnies. Have a food picture.

I usually go for the ears first.

Tomorrow: Lola the prize-winning cow and her very big bell.

Mysterious Dimensionless Points

Polyps update: mysterious brooding.

Mysterious cause of camera refusal to download photos to laptop: assumed mysterious battery.

Imagine some pictures of snow here - I was in the mountains when I wasn't stuck in the portakabin or the smallest hotel room in the world (very clean, but mysteriously kettle-, drawer- night-table- and electric-socket-less).

The most mysterious thing, however, about the recent jaunts abroad is what has happened to my default foreign leungwidge. The DFL is the massacred version of an otherwise innocent and inoffensive foreign-to-the-speaker language that pops out in the absence of any decent command of whatever local language might be. It often bears absolutely no resemblence to the actual language you should be speaking, unless by doing so it can cause insult to the local person with whom you are attempting to converse (badly).

The DFL may be accentuated by the atrocious and yet irresistable urge to mime if doing so will cause acute humiliation. These days, however, it is only rarely the speaker's own native language spoken Clearly. And. Distinctly. In. A. Loud. Voice. With. Odd. Em.Pha.Sis. Or. A. Funny. Accent. Normally, it's whatever language you studied least and worst or most recently quite badly. It should not be confused with those foreign languages which a person speaks with any degree of fluency. Oh no. Far be it that you should be confused with a reasonably articulate speaker of anything apart from helpless grunting noises that never quite sound the same no matter how hard you try.

Nor, however should the DFL should be confused with those bits of language you pick up while abroad ("Do not flush/use the toilet while the train is standing in the station", "Do not feed the monkeys children - they bite"), watching films in smoky arts cinemas, or reading those books where the mysterious, foreign, tycoon hero peppers his speech with exotic endearments, curses and the odd (ungrammatical/mispelled/or both) sentence in his mother tongue. ("Efharisto!", "Querida!", "Avec les roberts comme ça, ta rhumba est exceptionnelle" and, "Non credevo che 'impotente' volesse dire 'non può divertirsi'", my darling.)

Anyhow, over the last few months, my default foreign longwidge has now become Czech. Heaven and Mrs. Jana both know I can barely manage a word or two in Czechland, but it seems that distance has an effect rather like that of half-a-bottle of Becherovka. My Czech actually gets more fluent the further away I am from the country where my mangled efforts would be most useful.

Those poor Italians hardly knew what hit them, what with my volley of "Prosím"s and "Promiňte"s as I hurdled through the Milan metro and fervently embraced the whole of the south-Tyrolean train network with a deathless passion.

Of course, now that I'm back in Czechland, 3 whole days of being indoctrinated into the vagaries of Italian (can't speak it, can follow some, thanks to french, music and a whiff of distant latin) by Our Mutual Friend and boyfriend, means that I'm now apologising and thanking people in dreadful Italian. Probably just long enough to annoy the bilingual flatmate of Sicilian extraction.

Bring out your... bread?

The polyps did try to stage a rearguard action from the lower right quadrant beneath the kneecap, but so far haven't succeeded. Czech hydrogen peroxide is clearly good stuff.

So I'm not incapacitated, just in Italy. And these aren't necessarily the same thing. For one thing, the coffee's better, even on the trains. The little I can see of the place from the window of our glamorous 70s portakabin is quite attractive, albeit rainy.

Brief little Wednesday something-like-a-thirteen for the purposes of comparison with Cancun.
1. Blogger speaks Italian.
2. Pasta is a starter.
3. Mmmmm... coffee.
4. Less weirdness, generally.
5. Peas? Why peas?
6. Hooray for new no-smoking legislation. At last I can wear dry-clean-only trousers to restaurants.
7. One of these restaurants may have been run by a man who gave me an autographed volume of his own poetry.
8. The power of the blonde is magnified here.
9. This is a bit weird.
10. Gotta go get trained.
11. No toga.
12. No toga.
13. No toga.

Knee of the non-Vampyre

Gross coral scrape update: inflamation down about 35%, madly itchy in unlined wool trousers and surface area about 1 1/2 inches across. The world needs to know these things.

In other news, I've fallen off the wagon. Last weekend, while in the throes of the sort of giddy ecstasy that can only accompany an all-to-rare visit to my favorite bookshop, I bought another vampire book. Well actually, a few of them. I am weak. I am also an idiot. Why do I do this to myself?

Normal people would think, "No. That's it. I have vowed no more angsty wounded creatures of the night and their terminally drippy soulmates. Enough fang jokes. Enough use of the word "feeding" in any context except those which involve fresh hay and domesticated animals. Or maybe situations supervised by animal nutritionists in zoos at a pinch. But no more of this cod-gothic twaddle that makes me feel vaguely bilious. All that black leather will probably give me sweat rash. Sunshine is good. Daylight is your friend. Now settle down and glom a few nice historicals set in ancient Rome."

And I tried, I really did. But on Saturday afternoon, my pathetic excuse for a subconscious signed a pact of mutual alliance with the billions of polyps in my kneecap, took advantage of my weakened, jet-lagged state and decided to work its wicked wiles on my pocketbook. Legless and brainless, that's the goal.

"Ooohh, shiny orange cover in reasonable taste. And hey, it's okay if there are werewolves too, like in this one. Besides, lookee, this is the one that looks as if it may turn things on their head. It had good reviews. I think SmartBitches liked it. Oh, and in this one, it's not as if she's a vampire hunter. I mean, she hunts bad creatures of the night with fangs that drink blood. But they're not vampires. So that's okay. And hey, this is a book by she-who-usually-writes-about-vampires, but it looks as if this one doesn't have any of them in it at all. Must. Add. To. Pile."

Then I had to lug them back here. Only to discover that the one that isn't remotely about vampires and the one that isn't-about-creatures-called-vampires-this-time-but-they're-probably-lurking-somewhere-close-by both contain stupid mistakes about something I'm familiar with.

Polishes halo. Shows restraint.

Oh soddit. It's stupid scuba stuff.

Bites through restraints with vampire-sharp teeth

Normally if I'm enjoying a book, I tend to gloss over minor niggles. After all I'm no expert anything. There could be exceptions or variations. I might have remembered wrongly. But in the here and now of the splish-splash subaqua fun that is scuba diving, I've just finished a refresher course and buddied a novice, so all the safety stuff and basics are swirling around in my head. When clashed with a fly-by-night mistake or three, they turn me into one of those angry know-all nit-picking pedants who writes letters to newspapers in posh ink that start, "Dear Sir. Imagine my mortification and appalled intellect upon reading in line twenty-seven, page one hundred and seventy-six of the newly-published novel, "BlahBlahBlah"…" Aarrrgghh. Aarrggh. Aaarrgggh.

So I need to get a couple of things off my chest somewhere reasonably safe, where hopefully no one will ever know of my shame, or consider me a total nut job since they've given up reading this post around paragraph two due to the incomparable grossness of my knee scab.

First of all, aarrrggghhhandsignalsaaaarrggghh pleeaaase not thumbs-up for "ok" pleeeaasse. Just get one of those cards, or look it up. Pleeeaaasseee. Secondly it's air, dammit, AIR in the tanks. NEVER OXYGEN (okay, maybe for some shallow decompression stops but they were going DOWN heheh).

You thought that was bad? Incoming pedant alert

Oxygen gets toxic at depth. Even the 21% in normal air is bad for you if you go deep enough (instead people use kinds of funky stuff like trimix that I've never tried, because it's also cold down there, and I'm a wimpy-arse diver with nerves of jelly who likes being warm and looking at pretty fish). Oxygen toxicity makes you nauseous. It makes you twitch. It makes you spit out your regulator. Its effects can very easily kill you. It's a very very bad thing.

But in this book, h/h filled up their tanks with *shudder* oxygen, leapt blithely into the water (without checking their spare regulators, sigh) and immediately plunged to their horrible convulsive watery deaths. Maybe. That's when I stopped reading.

It's like the ceti eel. But worse.

There's what you might either consider a really gross or really cool looking scrape on my knee where I bumped it against some coral last week. The offending coral was the type that resembles a brain, (and after a spot of quick googling, I have just discovered I'm not the only one to have this genius idea, because - surprise, surprise - it's actually called brain coral. Who'd a thunk it?). Consequently last week my right kneecap sported a raised red pattern that looked a bit like a clutch of alien worms doing a bit of synchronised twisting around on their way to resemble some kind of mystic celtic knot pattern.

I accepted this as my punishment for being stupidly careless, and watched it slowly fade away over the following few days (although I did take a picture, just to check that it wasn't progressing up my leg in a really creepy parasitic way). But yesterday morning, it spookily reappeared, bigger and redder than ever.

I panicked, convinced that billions of tiny coral polyps had been aggravated by my wool trousers and staged a revolt. Having marshalled their forces, I could see this but leading swiftly to virulant septicimea and the doomed march of my leg to the guillotine to liberate my patella from the rest of my body, while the little bastards knitted away, chuckling with glee. Of course, it was possible that they would have instead promoted agrarian land reform and the collectivisation of industry, but I was convinced these polyps had nefarious intent.

So off I limped last night (and scratched when it could be managed with discretion) to the nearest chemist's (pharmacy) for a bottle of industrial-strength disinfectant, armed only with a couple of scribbled phrases from one of my colleagues. Except that I got there too late. The chemist's/pharmacy/lekarna was closed. The polyps snickered. The cold wind sucked away my extremely unpoetic wails. The sleet fell in a particularly miserable way.

And then… then... a ray of hope shone through the circular series of holes in the front door. A ray of light too, which from a practical point of view was even better. A flap opened, and a woman in a white coat appeared. Before she could tell me to go away, I rattled out my new Czech phrase: "Yeeuurgh haff some dizinfektant fur skeen?"

"What?"

"Furr skeeen. Skiin. Skan." I rubbed the skin of arm, and contemplated pulling up my trouser leg to show her the disgusting wormy scar on knee.

"Oh. Like Hydrogen Peroxide?" (actually, it sounded more like "Peroxided Watery" to me, but I got the drift)

"Yes. Yes." Frantic bobbing of head.

The slide shut and I strained frantically to hear any noise from the inside. Preferably fizzing.

Two minutes later, the slide opened, and the woman's head appeared, along with a hand brandishing a small brown bottle.

More nodding and frantic "Yes. Yes's", as I did my best to impersonate an adorable stray puppy begging for shelter and scraps.

The woman was unimpressed by my pathetic attempt to tug at her heartstrings. "Twenty-four fifty. There is no change."

"Oh. Okay. Wahn minutee."

I rummaged through purse and pockets frantically, scattering metro tickets, pens and old bits of paper into the puddle at my feet. Arrrghh... Arrgghhh… Panicked… Made sobbing noises…

But reader, I gave her the exact change.

On a clear day

I'm jet-lagged, sleep-deprived and mourning the loss of my flip-flop led freedom from the constraints of shoes and woolly clothes. It's also cold and sleeting back in Praha. Sniff.

Have some pictures.
Jump where?

Oh. Here:

Add a bit of colour.

I can't take credit for this bit of underwater photography - my efforts always come out as funny blurred blobs. Anyhow, I was so busy looking at the reef to try to figure out what everyone else was frantically pointing at, that I nearly sat down on this guy, and had my own Steve Irwin moment. The dog in a mansuit in a wetsuit thought it was hilarious.


Waaaaaahhhh!!!!

Duuuuuudde...

The very early Monday Thirteen from Cancun.

1. It is VERY WEIRD here.
2. I'm beginning to gain an appreciation of the subtle imagery of some of the RnB that doesn't make it onto Radio2.
3. Dooff. Dooff. Dooff. Dooff. Dooff.
4. How many words can possibly rhyme with arse? Sorry. Ass.
5. Grass. Mass. Blast. Fast. Chast?
6. See 1.
7. Diving is muy bien.
8. There are very tiny ants crawling all over my laptop. Yep.
9. Blogger speaks Spanish now.
10. Fishizzle. I think.
11. Toga.
12. Toga.
13. Toga.

Sprung

The curse of the drinking classes has unexpectedly pulled a few extremely rare rabbits out of my sweat-stained and rather grimy cap this month. Like buses, the ineffable rabbits of "off-site" trips all seem to come at once. The last of these is a week in Italy at the end of March, with the opportunity to extend through the weekends either side. So hooray for a total of 5 days to visit the electronically elusive but gorgeous I. and shop for big bags of coffee and beautifully-preserved foodstuffs in glass jars.

In a slightly more peculiar but very cool vein, I'm also hot-foot off to Mexico at the end of this week. Cancun, to be precise, which is the surreal bit. Apparently there's this bizarre cultural phenomenon known as "Spring Break" going on right now which turns the whole place into a madhouse heaving with scantily-clad American college kids.

My (middle-aged, male) colleagues find this notion somewhat exhilerating. I am a tad unenthusiastic about seeing these gentleman embrace the phenomenon wholeheartedly and halfclothedly. I'm also beginning to wonder if I should be packing a toga for both trips, or just hide my shame under the world's biggest sombrero.

Extra! Exteerraa! A-Peel! Extra!

Holy publisherific, Batman! Exciting new from the world of ground-breaking, "reach-out-and-touch-a-consumer" technomarketing wizardry! They brought you DIY cover art. Now, Penguin bring you the DIY novel!

Yawn.

Well, perhaps less of the "now", more of the "mid-January" and a bit of a flirtation with the past tense would have made the introductory sentence more accurate. In fact, the whole project it due to close in less than a week. But the DIY comment stands. Some bright sparks at said publisher's have clubbed together with some other clever folks from De Montfort Uni and through the modern miracle of software-enabled collective authorship, have come up with a wikinovel project.

To slightly deflate the party balloons, it's not exactly the first wikinovel in the world. But it's probably the first one run by a major publisher of Serious Literary Work. Oeuvres even. Ones with classy covers featuring Art and nary a bemulleted Viking or exploding spaceship in sight.

Their site terms the whole project an "experiment" to see if such a collective adventure can really come up with the goods. It also raises a few interesting questions about the notion of collaboration in art and authorial ego and so on, which are always fun things to think about.

In a bit of a hat-tip to that well-known theory about an infinite number of animals inclined to put evil monkey paw to keyboard and churn out works of literary greatness creative genius is the more appropriate term, they've called it "A Million Penguins." *snort.* stupid flightless waterfowl. we are legion. and unopposable thumbs or not, we can type faster and better than any flipper-bound bird. so stuff that in your beak and regurgitate it.

So far, the penguins in question have been working mighty hard to duck what is it with you and the waterfowl today? the whole boring coherent narrative angle. Which makes reading a bit of a challenge. When approaching it very early in the morning without benefit of caffeine, my tiny brain heheh... many a truth spoken in jest... tends to quail Quail? QUAIL? this stops right now, you bird-brained freak. or do you actually want to be painting that big-winged toff's horn until he gets round to blowing it? in the face of what seems to be an impossible creation by the most bloody-minded of committees - the ultimate camel novel. Camels? Now camels are jumping on the writing bandwagon? Or is this some kind of weird sub-genre from one of the more "specialist" epublishers? Isn't it enough that Posh Spice has a blog? Oh. You're doing that dodgy metaphor-as-cliché thing again. That one has always been pretty dire, you know.

On good days, it feels like reading a Choose You Own Adventure novel straight through, with no brakes and a blatant disregard for the instructions to "Turn to page 67 if you disguise yourself as a shrub and follow the Wild-Eyed Chanting Monks into the Cave of Sacrifice." Just like then, you can even scribble alternate endings on the back flap if you like, as well as crossing out and replacing all the page numbers. Ahh... the heady joys of summer holidays and unlimited time at the library. The big difference in this pool of creative anarchy is that some other jolly comrade-in-flippers will probably come along and delete all your work two hours later. But at least you can then do the same to them.

Actually, there's one alternative version of the novel where someone has attempted to impose a conceptual unity by introducing a banana theme heheh. But so far I think the discussion pages have been the most interesting aspect of the project: the despair and the randomness, the frustrations and the delights, the plotting and the conspiring - it's all in there. you mean they're not just happy writing? they have to talk about it too?

The novel does seem to be settling into some kind of shape as the end of the project draws ever closer. no staying power. told you so... but at least those daft hordes of shuffling leopard-seal bait will soon get back to huddling in the snow looking cute but dumb while posing for artistically frostbitten french cameramen... Well, more of a roughly-woven mobius comic strip really, but it's been an interesting read so far, and I'm pretty glad that it seems to show we're still a long way from becoming the borg.

Away an bile yer heid

Oh, thank heavens... no way was I going to be able to edit down my week's mixed back of rants into anything digestible or even coherent. Luckily, the Wandering Scotsman sent me this, and it's made me feel all teary-eyed and nostalgic. Sniff.

Anyhow, this is dedicated to Mrs.B and D'Eath who between them and their ancestral roots taught me how to strip the willow, eat "proper" chips, read Irvine Welsh and most importantly, the correct way to incapacitate innocent bystanders with a cannily-flung shoe while reeling. And here's to Maili (hope all's well with you).

In a typically pathetic effort to shoehorn this into the blog while maintaining a purely fraudulent sense of an overall thematic arc here's a bit of blurb. (You may want to skip this and just go to the bit at the bottom.)

Some might note that the list below doesn't exactly evoke the same image of Scotland as say, Christophe(r) Lambert (a Frenchman - snerk) in a skirt, Mel Gibson (an Australian) in blue paint, Liam Neeson (an Irishman) in a swarm of midges, or Sean Connery in anything, but especially a pair of "Mr. Universe" bathing trunks. To say nothing of those millions o' Hieland lairds frolickin' bare-chested amang t'rannoch an t'yowes.

Brief rant: I wish popular Scottish history of this type delved a bit more into the very strong historical Scottish-French connections and political machinations within the Scottish royalty in general. Not only is it damned interesting, but I think it gives a greater sense of genuine history than the trope of a rabid pack of weedy and effeminate Sassenaches laying waste to mystic and ancient tribes of barely-dressed tamed calendar models.

Actually, I think this sort of silliness denigrates vast tracts of Scottish history and gives the English way too much credit. I mean, take the Scottish Enlightenment - it played a critical part in the development of modern western thought: all that lovely stuff on political economy, history, humanism, philosophy, scientific method and dancing frogs. Ideas that changed the world, she shouts, waving an invisible hand or two. And then a few hundred years later there's the whole take on Burns as a Soviet literary icon. Aarrrghhh. Must. Stop. Ranting. No. Time.

Anyhow, one of these days, I swear I'm going to write an essay on approaches to Scotland in popular culture. With a splash of amnesiac Orientalism and a post-modern secret baby.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that just like the above examples, the list below represents facets of "a" Scotland(s) rather than "the" Scotland. Neither is more "right" than the other (regardless of accuracy), but trying to believe in the absolute truth of one vision feels to me like being in a mental straitjacket. Besides, since everyone has their own vision of a place, one way to wander through that person's head (dammit, I just knew that Zadie Smith thing was going to make its presence felt) is to try to see a place as they do.

In the case of Scotland, after versions like the ones given above, or even below, it's lovely to have a dose of Alexander MacCall Smith. Or go down the gritty 'tec route via Ian Rankin to end up in darker places of the Iain Banks type. Or maybe others (open to carefully-worded suggestions at this point).

But I think this nonsense about spending evenings spent studying is showing neon-yellow at the seams. I'll try and do some rhythmic breathing at the weekend to see if I calm down a bit. Or maybe I'll dig oot the poem I posted on SB's once, for the sake of posterity. Onwards.

You know you are a true Scot if...........
1. Ye can properly pronounce McConnochie, Ecclefechan, Milngavie,Sauchiehall St, St Enoch, Auchtermuchty and Aufurfuksake.
2. Ye actually like deep fried battered pizza fae the chippie.
3. Yer used tae four seasons in wan day.
4. Ye canna pass a chip/kebab shop withoot sleverin when yer blootert.
5. Ye kin fall about pished withoot spilling yer drink.
6. Ye see people wearin shell suits with burberry accessories pure class!
7. Ye measure distance in minutes.
8. Ye kin understaun Rab C Nesbitt and know characters just like him, inyer ain family.
9. Ye go tae North Berwick cos ye think it is like gaun tae the ocean.
10. Ye kin make hael sentences jist wae sweer wurds.
11. Ye know whit haggis is made ae and stull like eating it.
12. Somedy ye know his used a fitba schedule tae plan thur wedding daydate.
13. You've been at a wedding and fitba scores are announced in theChurch/Chapel.
14. Ye urny surprised tae find curries, pizzas, kebabs, fish n chips,irn-bru, fags and nappies all in the wan shop.
15. Yer holiday home at the seaside has calor gas under it.
16. Ye know irn-bru is a hangover cure.
17. Ye learnt tae sweer afore ye learnt tae dae sums.
18. Ye actually understand this and yurr gonnae send it tae yer pals .
19. Finally, ye are 100% Scot if ye ha' e'er said/heard these words;
How's it hingin
Clatty
Boggin
Cludgie
Pished
Get it up ye
Wee beasties
Erse bandit
Amurny
Away an bile yer heid
Peely-wally
Humphey backit
Ba'-heid
Baw bag
Dubble nugget

Da books! Da books!

In order to improve my general quality of life and the fatness of my bank balance, I set out last weekend to register for not one, but two libraries. The kind folks at the City Library puzzled their way through my non-existent Czech to confirm that I actually need a real, live Czech person to act as a referee. And pay a substantial deposit. So will be back next weekend after the blackmail kicks in.

To be fair, for the privilage I get to borrow from their extensive English-language selection, kindly donated by the British Council some years back. Although perhaps not all 8000 books at once. They also have a giant sculpture in their entrance hall in which thousands of books are bricked up to make a giant hollow tube. Through a split in the side, you can look in and get mild headrush from the mirrors placed at the top and bottom. I panicked, checked to see most of the books were in Czech and breathed a sigh of relief.

Then I popped across the square to sign on at the National Library. After a fairly extensive inquisition and some complicated manoeuvres with a black felt-tip pen and the coat-check lady I managed to acquire not one, but two identical cards. I think one must be a spare. Sadly, neither of them can be used to borrow books, but I do get to use the reading room and flit through the stacks like a giant-stack-flitting animal in a coat and glasses.

To make the place even better, the whole library has that wonderful shabbiness caused by endless rows of handwritten card catalogues, large potted plants with big dusty leaves and antiquated computers and those huge microfilm readers bought in a fit of wide-eyed technological enthusiasm back when a very different bunch were exporting technology to this corner of the world. Haha! Yes, meeztress perille... Ve haff ze mikrofeelm! And a way to read it... Now crank zat hendle harder! Harder I tell you! haha!

But the reading room is the best of all. Huge and high-ceilinged, with desks that creak and snap as the unwary brush past, brass-shaded lamps connected by electric flex covered in brown cloth, floorboards that groan under hard wooden chairs, and strange chilly drafts of undetectable origin.

At the far end, the wall above the main entrance is covered by an enormous mural in shades of grey. Doubtless its subject matter is meant to elevate and improve the moral and intellectual fibre of the hundreds of thousands of students who use it to practise critical eye-focussing exercises in those all-important and infrequent mental breaks.

Unfortunately, it is all too easy to be distracted by the 30-foot, black iron, eighteenth-century roccoco stove that looms up against this same wall blocking half the mural, and thereby reducing the edification factor by as much again. Enormous, big enough in the belly to cook thirty skinny students and presumably once used to heat the vast room during the sort of freezing winter that passed us by this year. It is my new favorite thing.

Raiddrops keep falling on my head

Today, the sympathetic weather is working overtime. The skies above this little corner of the Czech Rep. have generated the kind of overcast cloudiness that reflects my general muzzy headedness that not even floor-varnish-dissolving coffee can cut through. And thus the randomiser is born: a collection of those small wisps of thought that on a good day might have been quashed 'neath the weight of more sensible matters. Or thoughts of manatees.

First to walk the plank is the "Special Edition" washing-up liquid. It honours our kitchen sink with its noble presence. After the supply flatmate's wild flirtation with the dark side of grapefruit-scented detergent, her departure to Frenchishier shores and the inevitability of time's effect on supply means we're now back to a more normal green.

Of course, as the lovely D'Eath is sure to remind me if she can put down the Daughter Of D'Eath quickly enough, by using the qualifier "normal", I am imposing my own version of "normality" upon dish-washing Others in the form of liquid detergent stereotypes. In fact, even the term "liquid" is deeply suspect, redolent as it is of westernized industrial manufacturing practices and dismissive of the paste-based substance widely used in the South and other parts of the world.

Furthermore, to essentialise this product based on its most narrow purpose within the domestic sphere ignores the potential for its change and growth beyond the narrow confines of the kitchen and its consequent reinforcement of gendered relationships. After all, is it not also a useful de-fogger for diving masks? Although the debate between the relative merits of this substance and saliva in this arena should probably seek to avoid a focus upon loaded Western conceptualizations of "health" and "gentility".

In any case, before venturing further into this territory, I must acknowledge that my own culturally-biased view of washing-up liquid is probably a form of cultural imperialism, situated awkwardly upon the false dichotomy of "normal"/"grapefruit".

In an effort to move from this central focus upon "green"-ness at the centre of my personal cultural universe, I must therefore also acknowledge that while green, the substance in question rather than being lemon or pine-scented, in fact has the more peripheral odour of apples, I think. Not speaking Czech, I am basing this assumption on the pictures of fruits which strongly resemble (to my mind) green apples on the bottle.

Of course the individual who has never seen an apple, may perceive this image as one representing another fruit or even another object altogether. Such as a tennis ball. And their perception of tennis-ball-scented detergent is of course equally valid, given the filtering experiences of our own lives.

However, since the more novel (to my culturally-limited viewpoint) grapefruit-scented detergent does not merit the label, "special edition", and the colour green predominates in the supermarket shelves (except for deuteranopic individuals), it may in fact be the dispensing pump that is the basis for such an attribution.

For there is no squeezing of bottle in the domestic sphere of Peril & co. Instead, use of this "Special Edition" dispensing system subverts those attributes deemed masculine within the dominant western idiom that governs our ritual hygiene practices, by the enhancement of a simple task with the application of technology.

Of course, this consumption of technology is in fact more ambiguous than it appears at the outset, since while the appropriation of technology subverts certain masculinized traits, the role of the consumer is considerably more nuanced. Furthermore, the label "special edition" itself signals the uniqueness of this particular act and thereby underlines and reinforces the association of masculinity and westernization with the novel and the progressive. Perhaps we are collaborators, merely confirming entrenched practices and biases.

Perhaps this is why I am feeling slightly underwhelmed by the "specialness" of this "edition". And yet this may also help me to place into context my annoyance at the way flatmate XYZ uses three WHOLE pumps when cleaning a few plates. It must be due to subconscious anxiety about social roles and the suppressed urge to reinforce "traditional" feminities within the domestic sphere. Perhaps we should be adopting entirely new ways of doing the washing-up.

(Is it very obvious that this studying thing has kicked off again? But I'm still using that bourgeois punctuation nonsense. Must try harder.)

Penguin! My Penguin!

Or, I'm Going to Take a Heroine For Whom No One has Provided a Jacket

The real evil, some might say, of an author's situation is their having rather too little power over the marketing and presentation of their work. The unfortunate choice of cover art or artiste can threaten to alloy her enjoyment of sales beyond a particular niche and create a disagreeable consciousness of the most unfavourable perception of the quality of her writing.

The same might be said of the gentle reader, whose choice of material may do a great deal to distress or vex her. With none of the inducements of an offering more attuned to the artistic sensibilities, there remains little beyond obvious cliché for defence when affronted by the prejudices of others. Rare indeed is the cover which unites some of the best blessings of a book's existence; more frequent, those covers which bring grief to the unlucky reader in the form of pointed commentary upon one's state of mind and possession of more hair than wit.

Those who suffer thus may therefore count ourselves extremely fortunate that Penguin have released editions of six classic works whose pristine covers the happy reader may embellish at will, and upon whose blank canvas one may depict as attractive an image as one might wish to present to the idle observer. For the sum of five pounds, your humble blogger has thus secured the purchase of Miss. Austen's fine volume, Emma, and will doubtless present her own raw efforts in the usual haphazard fashion upon their completion and her acquisition of log-in rights to the scanner.

Postscript: On the subject of my last entry, it has occurred to me that this post may be a fitting submission for Beth's own SB Day. However verification of her site reveals that the weekly announcement has yet to appear. Perhaps later.

How do I dub thee?

...cheesiest of days?

For some today is a festival of the highest squidgy-wuv-bunny-wunniest degree. A time when women are not ashamed to out-ruffle the pink chiffon whiffliness of la Cartlande, and men dress in tights and floppy hats to serenade their inamoratae 'neath a honeysuckle-scented arbour. A time to shout your love to the heavens and not fear the next morning's sore throat.

It is also time of expensive and scratchy underwear that you secretly feel will look faintly ridiculous at a later date. A time to venture into the hostile territory of fiercely-regimented public dining, expensive meals that do not become inspiring by virtue of being in the shape of a heart, or worse, cupids performing unmentionable acts. A time of embarrassing public gaffes, dry cleaning bills and a "rose for the lady." For others it's worse.

And so, here is the anti-valentine. It's dull, obvious and actually written on corporate email while doing a poor impression of writing an unpleasantly tactful memo about the people who remove their shoes in the office. It has then been printed out on featureless stationary and typed up in a badly-lit late-night airport waiting lounge where all the shops are closed apart from the one that sells bad overpriced coffee. The closest it comes to romance is the 25-crown-for-5-minute-leatherette massage chairs that look like someone's stuck a motor on the cast-offs from a garage sale.

Note the lack of hearts and sentimentality. Note the lack of pictures, even from a corporate logo (although the one with the dead turtle might have been appropriate, come to think). Worst of all is the fact that I have extracted this whole thing from an email to a friend and then re-worked it into a blog post in order to completely de-personalise the whole experience and ensure it thereby loses all meaning.

And to round things off nicely, I slept poorly, my breakfast banana was bruised, the milk in my tea tastes funny and I'm flying east-west so the whole day is actually 25 hours long. Happy Valentine's Day.

Nearly accidentally deleted this...

...better publish and be spammed.

Bookwormom hath spoken and thus for Monday's post, there is a meme... This is a) a relief because it gets me off the hook thinking up ideas on a busy Monday, and b) rather terrifying since I have absolutely no idea what to say. It's supposed to be ten weird things about me. This is hard, because anything about me that causes other people to give me that squinty-eyed, funny look with a puzzled shake of the head (like that multiple-book a week habit which leaves the newer, book-every-few-months, flatmate astounded) seem pretty normal from this end of things. Even the monkey.

Luckily, for those fearful of angering the gods of meme, the February edition of the Fortean Times has hovered to the rescue like a UFO filled with silver-clad inspirational aliens on white horse-like creatures. It specialises in the weird. So I am in a position to present 10 weird things very tenuously related to me.

1. One of the most destructive tornadoes to ever hit the UK was recorded in Birmingham two years ago in July. I used to live in Birmingham nowhere near the place it happened, but had moved by then.

2. There was also a tornado last December in London. Eerily, I also used to live in London several miles from where this tornado touched down, but had also moved months before it happened.

3. Erich von Däniken, the Swiss writer most well-known for his "ancient astronaut" theory of alien intervention in the prehistoric development of humans opened "Mystery Park" in Interlaken, Switzerland, in May 2003 to showcase his theories. It closed last year. I have been to Switzerland and admired the punctuality of their trains and dust-free plants, but have never been to Interlaken, nor visited "Mystery Park".

4.In November, 2005, China's first restaurant to specialise in dishes featuring the, uh, male organ, (gulp) opened in Beijing. I have never been to China, and since reading about this restaurant, am more herbivorous than before so unlikely to sample food in this restaurant.

5. When a Swiss driver was caught by Canadian police driving 100 mph (160 kph) in a 62 mph (100 kph) zone on the highway between Montreal and Toronto, his excuse was that he was caught up in the delight of being able to drive quickly without the risk of hitting goats. I hate goats.

6. On Bonfire Night last year in Monkwearmouth, Sunderland, a 22-year old soldier inserted a Black Cat Thunderbolt Rocket into his, uh, hindquarters, and then proceeded to ignite it. I have attended several Bonfire Night parties and once drove through Sunderland in a car. Not a rocket.

7. A woman in Croatia was struck by lightning when brushing her teeth last year, after putting her mouth under the tap to rinse. The lightning travelled through her body and exited out of her, uh, rear exit. Doctors say her life was saved by her rubber-soled bathroom shoes. I also brush my teeth, although I have not yet had the opportunity to do so in Croatia. I do not own rubber-soled bathroom shoes, but am considering the investment.

8. A palæontologist has concluded that the osteology of the plesiosaur, Murænosaurus would make it unable to lift its head and neck above water swan-style. Instead would have acted like a feeding-tube, used to pull up soft-bodied prey from the seabed. This makes a living fossil of this species to be an unlikely candidate for Nessie's secret identity. I have been to Loch Ness and really liked typing the "æ" in those words.

9. A Romanian man who was jilted by his finacée just a few days before the wedding offered to marry the first woman who could fit into her erstwhile wedding dress. Dozens of candidates applied with the (presumably lovely) Ana Maria out-Cinderella-ing the lot, leading to accusations of "love at first sight".

It took three fittings and the most wire-pokingly, chicken-filleted, strapless doohicky for my last bridesmaid dress to behave as it ought. I spent most of the wedding and reception absolutely paranoid that any stray breeze or overly enthusiastic handshake would upset the whole arrangement and lead to one of those "wardrobe malfunctions" without the Timberlake to hide my shame. Luckily, my 'do, which contained 2 cans of "product", 43 bobby pins and 3 elastics would have maintained its rock-like solidity even in the face of one of the aforementioned tornadoes, although crashing into the main marquee pole may have shattered it.

10. Rohan Kriwaczek wrote The Incomplete History of the Art of Funerary Violin (Duckworth), which describes the history of this musical style from its emergence in the Reformation to its wholesale destruction under the aegis of Pope Gregory XVI in the first half of the 19th century. In October, after a New York Times article suggesting it was a hoax, Mr. Kriwaczek admitted that the whole thing was a carefully-researched fake.

When I was younger I played the violin at a funeral or two, sometimes in ensembles, sometimes not. I also used to write book reviews for school assignments about books that hadn't actually been written by authors who didn't exist. If my teachers ever suspected this, they never said a word.

I am now too exhausted to nominate candidates, so if you like it, you can have it. If you don't, no worries.

Street and a few veg

In an increasingly pathetic last-ditch attempt to keep this blog thematic, I can now reveal that last week while in London I walked right past the entrance to Peckham train station, completely oblivious. And it was all because of those pesky vegetables. Not a potato or a talking dog in sight, mind you. Instead, the cunning greengrocer had to make do with:

boxes of crinkly red scotch bonnets
shiny white globe aubergines
piles of the green bumpy cucumbers that are bitter melon
the stinky durian fruit beloved by bats
long white daikon
leaves, many, many leaves
bitter gourd
bottle gourd
snake gourd
calabash (isn't it a gourd, too?)
cassava
plantain
purple mangosteen (note to self - this would be a really good name for a Victorian-era disease: Galloping Purple Mangosteen. Cured only by Dr. Proctor's Patent Syrup of Centrifuged Worm Fungus and peat baths.)

I should probably point out (if it wasn't already obvious) that the selection of fruit & veg in Prague has been rather limited of late. Apparently, now all someone has to do to lure me off the straight and narrow is to leave a trail of okra for me to follow. I'm so weak-willed that all this vegetable glory, which included the humble carrot looking a bit perkier than I've seen lately, made me late for work.

The wrong vegetables

The reason I haven't blogged for a while is that conversations like the following are beginning to make me lose my already tenuous grasp on sanity, reality and most of the social graces.

The scene: an anonymous kitchen furnished in Ikea and early discount paper towel rails which is absolutely not anywhere near any office. A professional coffee machine gleams like a french-roasted beacon of hope amidst the UHT milk and mismatched crockery.

An anonymous person, possibly exuding a discreet air of peril, is eating homemade vegetable harira (skip the beef, add marmite to the stock and extra chickpeas) with rosemary flavoured crackers and reading The Singing Neanderthals (the bit about vervet monkey alarm calls).

Enter The Current Rather Podgy Bane Of Her Life in a pumpkin-coloured shirt, Simon-Cowell-high-waisted trousers and foreshortened tie with its tip snugly tucked into a black leatherette belt. The voice is oddly high-pitched and squeezed through the throat, with an extremely peculiar accent that takes an experimental approach to the use of vowels.

"Are you ea(r)ting soup?"

"Yes." Slurp.

"Oh. What kind of soup are you ea(r)ting?"

"Vegetable."

"Oh. How int-er-e-sting!"

Pause to consider the most logical response. "Thank you".

"By times, do you ea(r)t the(r) potato soup?"

"Sometimes, yes."

"Oh. That is also very int-er-e-sting!"

Slurp. Bemused silence.

"Is there any potato in your soup right now?"

Slurp. "Uh… no."

Pause. Brief moment of hope, rapidly dashed (mashed?).

"So now... now I have some que(r)stion for you."

Slurpslurp.

"In E(r)ngland. The(r) people… are they ea(r)ting the ye(r)llow potatoes or the white potatoes?"

Blank look. Puzzled slurp. "Umm… I guess it depends. I tend to use yellow potatoes in cold food like salads and white ones for things that need to be fluffy, like mash."

"Reeeaally? That is so VERy int-er-e-sting!"

Slurpslurp with quiet desperation.

"Yes. It is VERy int-er-e-sting be(r)cause in the EAST of Poland the people only eat the white potatoes be(r)cause the ye(r)llow potatoes are only for the animal food."*

Slurpslurp with slightly louder desperation in the hope that soup noises will drown out this flood of information.

"But you know, ha-ha, in the WEST of Poland it is comPLETEly the opposite. ComPLETEly. In the WEST of Poland, ha-ha, they eat the ye(r)llow potatoes. I have ABsolutely NO idea(r) what they are doing with the white potatoes." Chuckles.

Careful examination of soup to see if any remaining carrot is of suitable dimension to lodge in a passing windpipe.

"Ye(r)s. Ha-ha. It was VERy funny when I went to the WEST of Poland to the university and I could not find the white potatoes aNYwhere!"

Upon reflection, carrots are too small. Curse my blind adherence to recipe dimensions that call for half-inch cubes.

"It was simply crazy. No white potatoes in ANY shop! Ha-ha." Shakes head ruefully at this clear example of Western Polish willful insanity. "VERy funny."

Pieces of tomato appear too mushy or not hot enough for the desired result.

"And so that… this is why it is so VERy int-er-e-sting to hear that in E(r)ngland you are eating the white potatoes AND the ye(r)llow potatoes."

"Well, we have other kinds of potato too." (Oh gods, stop the madness.)

"Ye(r)s. But it is the white potato and the ye(r)llow potato that are so important in this thing."

"Mm-hmm". (Silence is golden. Like a perfectly-crisped potato.)

"Ha-ha. You British people are so VERy funny. Eating the ye(r)llow and the white potatoes. In Poland we do not ea(r)t the cold potatoes. Ha-ha. Potatoes in the(r) salad. Ha-ha."

Pumpkin appears to be reaching bursting point as a consequence of the unintentional hilarity of the tuber consumption habits of the British nation.

"Yup." Considers the rosemary-cracker-to-watery-eyeball trajectory. It could be done.

"The(r) white potatoes AND the ye(r)llow potatoes. Ha-ha."

"You'll have to tell your wife."

"Oh ye(r)s. I must tell her straightaway. She will find this so VERy int-er-e-sting. And funny too. Ha-ha."

"Always happy to oblige."

"Ha-ha." Leaves in haste to presumably flash mail all of Poland with the wacky gastronomic habits of Perfidious Albion.
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Aren't raw potatoes poisonous?

*note, the shades of potato may be the wrong way around. I am no Polish potato authority - traumatic amnesia is nasty stuff.