Ribbons and things

I haven't posted about any crafty activity for a while, mainly because I haven't done any, but am getting stuck into Christmas present making at the moment. My little room is gloomy and cold, but there is something so absorbing about sitting and making things with my hands, that carries me away into my imagination, or whatever the radio is burbling on about.

I also found the most amazing haberdashery in Portobello yesterday, I can't remember the name, but it was a proper old-fashioned place. I had a nice little daydream about living in some pink-painted Chelsea mews, and spending all my money on ribbon.

I have also been thinking, unfortunately, about Georgina Baillie (of the Sachs-gate affair) who seems to be creeping into Metro-style gossip pages with worrying regularity. I don't want her to be famous, simply because she wants so much to be - she was even in the Guardian over the weekend, choosing her books of the year. She chose, and I can't work out whether this is with a sense of irony, or a lack of self-awareness of quite bintish proportions, Russell Brand's My Booky Wook, helpfully pointing out his suspect treatment of women.

Against my will, I do quite like the fact that she is quite unashamedly goth though. I also went to Camden over the weekend, and was disappointed that the place where I used to go as a chain-bedecked teenager is just a tourist-thronged market of mass-production stripey tights and slogan T-shirts. Apart from Georgina, where have all the goths gone?!

This is England

I watched the aforementioned film last night. As anyone who knows me, knows, any film that doesn't have a montaged dance-training scene doesn't usually come onto my radar, but I had read good reviews and thought I should educate myself.

I found it really disturbing, not so much because of the violence, although it was brutal and often unexpected, but because of its vision of an England that exist(ed) on the periphery of 'normal' society. The skinheads are disenfranchised, anarchic, chaotic, but also seductively stylish and loyal (up to a point). I was a child during the Thatcher era, and so have never really understood the extreme emotions, the hatred and rage, that her actions stirred up. My knowledge of the Eighties is more of a second-hand, nostalgic one, similar to the (ironic) use of 'Tainted Love' blaring out of a radio at one point- New Romantics, kids dressing up like Boy George, a mum with enormous glasses and perm like my mum had when I was a child.

It was also touching and spikily humorous and affectionate, and left me thinking about the nature of masculinity and sexuality and identity and integrity, and of art's capacity to be politically more effective than any number of dry treatises or speeches.

Meep

Ok, this is not a proper post, but this blog is possibly the cutest thing I have ever seen...

Rainy days

What is this appalling weather all about? Saying that, I am tucked up inside, intermittently lurking on Craftster and knitting yet another scarf. I made a mistake about five inches in, but have kept going in a stoic, I-don't-care sort of way, even though it is as niggly and annoying as the pub sign outside my flat which promises 'complimentary champagne'. I have an urge to perform some kind of nerdy stealth graffiti on it.
Have been at my mum's for most of the weekend. She lives in the middle of nowhere, and so I have spent a very pleasant, calming time doing country-ish things like gathering apples from the garden, star-gazing with binoculars and painting the stairs a very Cotswoldy shade of pale. There's something about taking time off work that seems to make it acceptable to eat cake after every meal and to regard stroking the cat as half an hour's worth of constructive activity. It would probably drive me mad in the end, but I find the idea of living in the depths of the country very inspiring creatively. Perhaps because London at the moment feels all wet concrete and people in identical black coats and the monotony of Tube adverts, but everything in the country feels more tactile and real: onions in a brown bowl, the pink dawn filling a curtainless window, nights so black and silent.

Michele Roberts

This is the book I am reading at the moment. I'm down to the last 20 or so pages actually, and trying to eke it out. Roberts has probably handbagged Margaret Atwood down to second place in my favourite authors ever list. I just love the way she writes, particularly her descriptive passages: "The trees are turning bronze and rusty at their tips and the sun hangs low and heavy like a yellow plum". Very apposite for the time of year, as autumn clings on with its fingertips before the big, scary, middle-of-the-night blackness clamps down around 5 o'clock.

I am, admittedly, an ardent Virago-type reader (although have been trying to educate myself in manly, recent writing with some Philip Roth). But there is something so earnest and truthful about the way Roberts writes, that the strident '80s feminism doesn't feel too anachronistic, although it does bring you up short to realise that the struggles she saw were going on even 20 years ago.

On that note I am going to some sort of anarchic cross-stitch event this evening. Someone at work rather sweetly said 'Even nice girls are radical sometimes', which I think would be an excellent T-shirt slogan. And there are going to be cup cakes (thought: who has decided cup cakes are cool and trendy, is it some kind of ironic 50s revivalism? What next - macaroons?)

I went to see the Francis Bacon exhibition at Tate Britain yesterday. It was quite strange afterwards strolling around the Pre-Raphaelites and their crowd-pleasing, glamorous paintings - after seeing Bacon's images of pain and torment and despair, human bodies reduced to ripped meat. It came to mind: where can art go, after this? It made me think of Adorno professing that there could be no poetry after Auschwitz. It was also a savage depiction of masculinity, particularly the screaming men in suits. And all the bestial twisted teeth and jaws, the rawness of human emotion - a contrast to the day-trippers with their handbags and headphones, wandering around. I thought, what would reduce you, with your iPod and trendy jeans, to a figure from one of these paintings?

Literally one whole person requested to read my Rockabilly Rave feature (thanks Mike!) so if you want to actually have a copy in your hand, and see me in all my pink-haired glory, head to Borders . . . and y'know it would be nice not to just read it on the stand as I -er- never do, of course, as the Nude people produce the magazine without making any profit, and it is such a beautifully produced work of (he)art.

And another thing, what is with all the anti-Madonna rage? Alongside all the gleeful schadenfreude about the Ritchies' divorce, and I doubt she needs my feeble support, the press was vitriolically anti-Madonna. Guy Richie received some flack about his Mockney-twattishness, but most of the commentary was on how her success was too much for him to deal with, with some wags wondering which was "the husband". How is it in this day and age that a woman still can't be more successful than her partner without being called a "ball-breaker" etc etc rant . . .

Exciting

Exciting news. My Rockabilly Rave feature has finally come out, although I haven't laid eyes on a copy of Nude yet. Plus my favourite magazine in the world has at last got back to me about a feature idea, but I daren't mention it in case of jinxing possibilities. I also have an interview here - check out that massive coverline!

And at last I have moved into my new place. It's not perfect-the floor in my room slopes uncannily and the landlords didn't exactly clean it before we moved in-but at last I have somewhere to put my books on a shelf and 'stuff' somewhere that isn't boxes. I also have a desk, which may not sound that monumental, but after several years of balancing laptops on knees, possibly frying any future Allens, or using my sewing machine in the living room, and annoying anyone watching TV, it feels very satisfying.

Kinky boots

So I have some new boots. The lady at the vintage fair swore they were Edwardian, and although they are in suspiciously good nick I am determined to believe her. They remind me of my days of (re)reading Little Women and Anne of Green Gables, and I quite fancy wearing stays and a picture hat with them. I can pretend I live in more innocent times when putting your skirts 'down' and your hair 'up' were the signifiers of moving from childhood to womanhood (and hence, presumably) on the marriage market, and when all Anne wanted was a pair of leg o'mutton sleeves (you can imagine the confusion that cast in my nine-year-old mind). I also bought a royal blue frock, although I am a little concerned that it looks a bit - medical.

Enough about my shopping, these were spontaneous and very naughty purchases in the week I am supposed to be paying extortionate amounts of rent and deposit (denial is a wonderful thing). It was supposed to cheer me up in a weekend of being constantly damp and blown about. Perhaps I am shallow, but it does a bit.

Lovely Dawn

Things are happening on the home front. Met up with potential new housemate last night and he seemed very sweet in a wholesome way. Let's hope he doesn't have some kind of secret crack habit.

I also watched Dawn Porter: Free Love on Channel 4. I think I have a bit of a crush on her (especially after the episode where she careened around London in an open-top bus, naked, to promote real women's figures in the media, as opposed to lollipop strumpets (more parentheses, what a great name for a band)). She's just so pretty, and normal, and yet completely full of neuroses. And look at her lovely pink bike and earmuffs in the photo, sigh.

It was a bit of a shame that despite her earnest exploration of the alternate ways of loving in various free love camps and homes, the people she met were all long-haired, of some kind of Teutonic descent, and a bit Eighties. There were a lot of intarsia rainbow jumpers.

Speaking of intarsia, am going to track down the SnB group tonight, and hopefully not sit next to the rather alarming lady, who to my tremulous 'Is this Stitch n Bitch?' replied: 'Yes. Can you knit?' 'Yes' 'Good. That helps.'

This girl

I have totally fallen in love with this girl. I love the spooky fairy tale things she makes and paints, but most of all I want her clothes, and her house, and to look like her. I am amazed by people who find the time to create such beautiful things. Saying that I got back to the temp flat last night (after finding my first new SnB group!) and for a few panicky minutes couldn't make the TV work. Yes I could have sat and read, or done something creative, but there was something about the panorama of highrises and silent scudding planes that gave me the creeps, and I had to fill some time with garish adverts and a murder mystery. Or I'm lazy, you could look at it that way.

Can you tell what it is yet?

So I finally stopped dithering about with much-folded print-outs of things that I was 'definitely' going to turn into a tattoo and actually did it. I chose a retro, Sailor Jerry-style swallow, symbolic of all sorts of things, and despite being ridiculously (shaking) nervous all Saturday, it wasn't half as bad as I thought it was going to be. With my arm rather ostentatiously bound up in clingfilm I felt a bit like a patient and perfectly at liberty to spend the rest of the weekend eating to 'build up my strength'.

It's been a perfect Brightony weekend too, involving my favourite cafe the Mock Turtle (which has proper china cups and saucers and cakes the size of your head) and sitting in the Pavilion gardens, where I spotted not one but two people reading books about Buddhism and a lot of perfect children in stripey babygros, probably fed on organic carrots and named Daisy.

Eeek, as I type I keep catching glimpses of my tattoo. It's very there. And despite being officially grown-up now, I am still slightly concerned that my mum is going to kill me.

Malta sunshine...

-sigh-

I loved the little old-fashioned haberdashery shop in Valletta, with its racks of old lace and ribbons and beads deep in the shady interior (I didn't venture in, it was staffed by some rather formidable older ladies). Deep in the twisty lanes of Victoria, the main town on companion island Gozo, I spotted a tailor's shop, which comprised an old man bent over his treadle sewing machine, surrounded by suits and frocks.

The stones are part of the city wall in Mdina, which kept the aristocracy safe during the sieges in the Middle Ages. What I found most touching was that ordinary folk hid there during the bombardments of World War II, and carved their names and dates into the stone.

Back again

A man sat next to me on the bus this morning, and I barely had a chance to acknowledge his handknit grey cable jumper than he whipped out (steady) some giant circular needles and continued something complicated-looking in acid green. He was not your 'average'-looking knitter, being big and burly with long red dreadlocks and fisherman's beard, which somehow made it all the more pleasing. I wanted to introduce myself as a fellow knitter, but felt too shy - if only there was some kind of secret symbol or handshake.

So yes, I am now in London, no more trains. It hasn't quite sunk in yet, I am still waking up at 6, only now I am having jumbled dreams about Brighton and work and school and (last night) being massively pregnant and eating chocolate cake. I am staying temporarily in a flat in Hackney, so getting used to sirens and sodium lighting keeping me awake rather than seagulls and the lumbering circuits of the Number 5. The other side of the flat overlooks a canal, so at least I get the rather bucolic conversations of ducks and moorhens to make me feel more at home.

It's strange getting home in time for Coronation Street, it's strange not seeing the sea at the end of my road. I am pretending not to be nervous when I get off the bus in Hackney and it's dark. My stuff is all in heaps of boxes in my old flat. I am a gypsy again.

Sir Cliff

So, I met Cliff Richard last night. When I say 'met', I mean was in the same room as, and had my photo taken with (near) him. I was genuinely, non-ironically, a bit excited about it but thinking about it now I feel a bit sorry for him. 50 years or whatever of having your photo taken with complete strangers just because you're told to, being paraded around and having false conversations. He also reminded me a bit of my dad.

Despite my red carpet evening (Cilla Black was there too, of course) it was a relief to head home and find my housemate having a rehearsal of his folk band. Only a few more days of accordians and trumpets blaring into the small hours.

Here are some photos from Wakehurst Place in Sussex, which I went to with my mother on Monday. A lot of the park is intensely crowded with trees and plants, and there was quite a menacing, prehistoric atmosphere in the valleys, with the gnarled roots of trees splaying across paths, densely packed ferns and the parrot-coloured rhododendrons and fox-gloves. There was a hesitant sense that perhaps an age-old faerie might any minute appear among the leaves, or, more likely an English bank-holiday-er tramping out in sensible fleece and boots. There is some kind of stolid style-blindness about English tourists that impels them all to wear beige or navy, the women strapping leather handbags across the sturdiest of anoraks.

Anyway, there is definitely a hint of autumn in the air now, the scent of bonfires and the occasional leaf crunching underfoot reminiscent of that back-to-school feeling.

Adoorable

Here are some photos from my weekend, proving that my house obsession is getting out of control. Perhaps it's just because the number of weeks I have left in Brighton are rapidly diminishing, and I don't actually have another home to go to, or perhaps I am just a house perve, getting hot and bothered over pink front doors and bookshelves.

It also looks deceptively sunny in the photos, but the weather has since turned to that very British climate of grey and blustery. I actually prefer it being a bit miserable. When it's unnaturally hot and sunny every day, it starts to feel similar to being in a relationship with someone way out of your league: yes you're smiling all the time, but there's a sneaking suspicion it is going to end, and you never know what to wear.

That's just me anyway. I am secretly buoyed by the fact that I am going on holiday soon :)

I just realised what a gloomy post that last one was, so here is a bit of good news. An interview by me is in this month's Knitting. . .

Overcompensating

Someone once told me that in order to have a 'successful' blog you need to update it at least three times a week. I don't know what 'successful' implies, especially as I have no idea whether anyone beyond various pals actually reads this, but at the current rate I am failing miserably. Hence life trundles on uncommented. Although considering the fact that yesterday I managed the three alarmingly middle-aged pursuits of drinking tea, doing the washing up while listening to Radio 4 and falling asleep under the Sunday newspapers, perhaps that's not too much of a loss.

On Friday I went to Dungeness in Kent to see the late film-director, artist and writer Derek Jarman's garden. It is a strange, strange moonscape of stones and windblown grasses, speckled with a community of tough wooden houses, painted black and yellow or black and red, the nuclear power station brooding like a science-fiction city in the background. Derek Jarman's garden itself is composed of wild flowers and plants wringing life from beneath the combed gravel, decorated with rust-red chains and oddments of glass and stone and driftwood. A new incumbent lives there now, and although a sign warned tourists not to gawp in the windows, I couldn't help but look in to see jam jars full of pencils and white-painted walls. It is light, light, light there, a bone-coloured scouring light, and despite the weirdness I felt briefly at ease for the first time in weeks.

It would probably be the perfect environment for writing, but after a brief enchantment with the idea, the endless howling winds and isolation got to me a bit. Talking of writing, I have been reading Michele Roberts' memoir Paper Houses, which is not only by one of my favourite authors but about the '70s and second-wave feminism, and living in London, and all the things I find fascinating, so am trying to take it slowly. It occurred to me this morning that I spend more time reading about writing, not only in the Guardian Review, but so far this year a biography of Rebecca West, the story of the bohemian writers and (half of) a biography of Edith Wharton, than actually doing any writing myself. I think I am too scared of trying and failing, or discovering those vague ideas of myself as being a 'writer' are just that- ideas.

Just to add to the unrelenting gloom, one of my best pals at work left on Thursday (the beneficiary of my acrylic knitting in the shape of a probably very flammable Liverpool scarf). I am really going to miss him!

Things I hate about commuting

People who fall asleep on/near you and snore

People who fall asleep on/near you and dribble

Entire carriages of people reading the London Lite/Metro/londonpaper. Get a book!

Men who think they have the right to sit with their legs splayed and take up half of your space

The two women who get on my train every day, and who bitch consistently until East Croydon about people they work with. I feel like standing up and shrieking: ‘Shut up! Shut up! You are banal! Talk about something else!’

People with stupid little wheely suitcases who weave and dawdle in front of you

The trio of depression that is Burgess Hill, Hassocks and Preston Park stations. I’m sure they are lovely places but I just want to get home and they are delaying me!


Forgive my rage, I am currently knitting something in acrylic and in this weather it makes me feel like my hands are on fire.

Birthday time

I am far too excited about the fact it is my birthday, but look at this lovely tat my friends gave me! (by "tat" I do not mean anything pejorative obviously, only pretty frippery; "tatty" is another thing altogether). My housemate also gave me a mini bonsai kit, I am guessing it is a slight comment on my gardening skills, after the tomato plant went a nuclear shade of yellow, and the sweetpeas turned into stringy, well, string.

I am not thinking about the fact that I am 25, as long as my mother doesn't start her 'I was married by your age' (and my nan her 'I had two kids by your age') commentary. Eek. Anyway who cares, someone has just bought me a chocolate cake from M&S no less, everyone knows they are anti-aging.

Girl power

This week I have been mostly been listening to this - a CD I made for one of my best friends when we were both about 17 and indulging in totally unsuitable crushes (hence the inclusion of George Michael's frankly quite disturbing 'Father Figure'). Actually 'indulging' is both the right and wrong word - I was going to change it for the more stressful-sounding 'embroiled', but then I think we both quite liked being pursued by very Wrong sorts.
Anyway, I digress. The CDs were intended to be an ironic take on those godawful 'Woman' CDs and included such hits as 'Respect' and 'I'm Every Woman', and the more idiosyncratic 'Chains' by Tina Arena. I suppose I am thinking of it now because three of my best pals came to visit over the weekend for my birthday, and it was just so great hanging out with girls who have stood by me through various dramas since maths lessons.

Forgive me for my introspective mood at the moment, a lady can't approach her quarter-century without thinking about scary things such as Where Is It All Going? and What Does It Mean? I will be buying a sports car next.

Speaking of age, how old do I sound making CDs for people as opposed to iTunes playlists. Never mind that the original versions of these CDs were on tape...

Thoughts

There is a storm brewing somewhere over the Channel. Dark clouds are roiling, and the seagulls are swerving and screaming as the wind gets up. Earlier I sat and put my feet in the sea, letting the chill water scour away London heat and grime. I started reading The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies recently, which features the D-Day landings. It was a sobering thought, as I dabbled my feet and barbecues smoked, that they took place in this unremarkable stretch of grey water.

I have neglected a lot of things recently, particularly my dancing and knitting and everything else that makes me feel like 'me', but hopefully I will be getting back into it all again. I will be heading 'home' in a few days, and although when I say 'home' I mean one of the various houses my mum or dad or I have lived in since I was 18, it will be comforting to return to the place I grew up, if only to be glad I don't live there any more.

Sorry

I have been away for a while, and very amiss with my blog posting. There have been exciting developments at work, and emotional rollercoasters at home, so to chat about my usual fluff of kittens and knitting feels a little superfluous to say the least. I'll be back soon x

Getting on a bit

I possibly shouldn't be writing this now, as a) it is too early for anyone to be awake on a Saturday b) my heart is still manically skating on the sugar of last night's wine intake and c) I have already started the guilty putting-washing-on process that usually indicates a hangover is brewing further round the corner.

But I am in a state of total bewilderment - do people of a certain age (and I mean very close to 25 and upwards) not go 'out' any more? My friend and I put on our frocks and headed to an indie club in Brighton last night. I haven't been out anywhere that doesn't involve lindy and dancing with people old enough (at least) to be my father for ages so it was all a bit exciting. But, oh God, everyone was about 17 with rounded, happy drunken little faces. We didn't know the music. We weren't wearing skinny jeans. We weren't snogging with abandon. Plus the only time we were spoken to was by two chaps whose opening gambits were 'How old are you?'. Were our faces that haggard? (Albeit, the second one followed this up with 'Can I kiss you?' so that at least was comforting). Am I condemned, Cinderella-esque, to be heading home before midnight from now on?

It was all a bit of a contrast to certain other social situations over the past few weeks, when I felt out of place in a different way and wanted, like Cassandra in I Capture the Castle, to be forty, wearing black and pearls.

I'm going to stop writing now, I really need to eat something.

Babies

Some lovely green images. I know I intended to put up some pictures from the Rockabilly Rave but I have secret plans for those, which I don't want to jinx by floozying them round on the internet.

So, instead here is a picture of my tomato plant (look! look! babies!) and of the lovely bookmark my friend bought me on the spur of the moment. I love the quote, but just as much love Virginia's mournful little face. Perhaps she is not enjoying the indignity of having her head on a bookmark.

Had a very odd weekend so far, which has included rather guiltily reading a Joanna Trollope in about a day and a half, getting embarrassingly burnt in yesterday's sunshine, and having tea and cinnamon toast with my aforementioned friend and being very shouty about (as usual) feminism, body image and Emily Bronte. I feel a little manically creative now, I am not sure if that is preferable to feeling impotent and self-doubting. I really must STOP drinking caffeinated tea.

Lost and found

So, I am back from Glastonbury. Having spent the previous weekend in the 1950s, and this last one in a field, I am feeling more than a little disorientated as I look out from my window and see high-rise buildings, chimney pots and the elegant necks of cranes. I had written a long blog entry on the back of the Observer on Sunday, but then rather fittingly burnt it in an attempt to keep warm whilst sitting near the Stone Circle at 2.30am yesterday morning.
I seem to remember musing about the lifestyles Glasto not only encompasses but seems to suggest are actually possible, and toying with the idea of being a rock chick banging a tambourine in a band, a hippy mother sitting with her children under a tent hung with lanterns and flowers, or one of the hipster types who seem to emerge from the mud bespoiling their (non-skinny, and held together with duct tape) jeans. The latter rather uncannily tied in with the latest chapter of the Bohemian book I have previously enthused about, which describes the Bohemian's rejection of bourgeois routines of house-cleaning and personal hygiene for dirt and creativity (apparently one creates the other). However I gave up at least on this option, as I found myself reading said book with a torch alone in my tent on Saturday night, listening to the revellers outside and feeling very, very uncool.

Still, I am back, with Jay-Z (brilliant) still ringing in my ears, mud under my fingernails and a massive inexplicable bruise on my thigh. The tomato plant has grown to the size of a small tree and has little yellow flowers. I am feeling creative and it is beautifully sunny outside. The real world isn't too bad.

Rocking the night away

I have been absent again, mainly because I spent the weekend in Rye at the Rockabilly Rave weekender. Lots of jiving, strolling and lame attempts at bopping, plus drinking, dressing up and not sleeping. I have lots of pictures of hotrods (and hot girls and guys) which I will upload asap. It was so great meeting like-minded people and making new friends.

Luckily haven't got too much time for the usual post-festival blues as am going to Glastonbury this weekend. It's going to be something of a sartorial downshift (wellies and plastic ponchos rather than red lipstick and circle skirts) but I'm hoping, travel nightmares and mud nonetheless, that it will be as good as last time. I'm not even going to look at the line-up for Reading, especially as I've sworn off it after feeling like Auntie Emo the last time I went. It was like something out of Lord of the Flies and I found myself wishing 'the kids' would 'keep it down'.

I am currently reading Among the Bohemians by Virginia Nicholson, about a small number of creative types in the early 20th century who turned their backs on strangulating Victorian moral codes and rules of behaviour to pursue freedom and, most of all, creativity, often deliberately abandoning bourgeois ideals to embrace poverty and hardship – and scandal.
In some ways they were proto hippies, ‘dropping out’ of society’s strictures to revel in sexual emancipation and a rejection of the mainstream’s expectations of conformity, work and consumerism (although I note that things were, in both cases, a little less free for women, who still had to bring up the children resulting from all this free love, and also to spend more time being ‘muses’ than actual artists).
They were certainly the rebels of their day, and, at risk of sounding like Carrie Bradshaw, it made me wonder: what would constitute rebellion today?
Our Western society is a descendant of all that Bohemian experimenting, and perhaps we have more freedoms and opportunities than ever before. But it still seems to me there is an ‘accepted’ path, and the true rebels of today would have to reject the 9-5, Eliot’s famous crowd flowing over London Bridge, individually isolated yet stoically en masse; being tied into endless commuterism and consumerism, the endless pursuit of money and promotion, cars and gadgets and houses. Perhaps returning to ‘the land’ if there is any left without tarmac or a Barratt home on it.
I don’t know whether I could be such a rebel. I have been addicted to the traditional acknowledgements of what it is to be ‘successful’ ever since I first realised what an ‘A’ was at school. I am prepared to travel four hours a day just to get to and from work. I can’t help but feel that to ‘drop out’ now and sit around writing unpublishable novels and living off the land in some remote village would be something of a failure, not only in my eyes but others'.
But I feel an intensifying unease at the march of consumerism, the juggernaut of cheap clothes and plastic packaging, by the constant cycle of earning and spending. It would be exhilarating, if terrifying, to abandon all that.

Some images from Brighton's encampment of Knit in Public day - it was nice to meet some new SnBers and to sit around on the beach with my knitting, but the wind was just this side of freezing and I didn't stay long. I didn't really get up to much the rest of the weekend, having even less money than usual, although my friend and I spent a happy hour or so wandering the streets of Hove and ogling the nicest houses. It must mean you're getting on a bit when you start fantasising over pink spatulas and wooden writing desks rather than hot boys.

Smut

My friend recently gave me some tunes for my iPod (the equivalent of the mix tape, anyone else old enough to remember those?). Hence I have discovered a new(ish) band who are excellent to knit to - She Wants Revenge - especially this. The perfect combination of relentless '80s beats, synthesisers and a monotone vocalist similar to a sex-pest Tom Smith from Editors (all ideal for a smooth moss stitch). The lyrics also have enough dark smuttiness to captivate the mind during the often tedious back-and-forth along the needles, and also to add a wry smile to the lips of any knitter who is aware that otherwise she appears rather demure. I particularly like "You taste like tearstains and 'Could've beens'/But our love, like a train wreck/Your hair balled up inside my fist/You tell me, 'Don’t get too attached like this, it’s just entertainment'...". Shiver...

Brighton days...

Lily

How damn cool does Lily look? I love the bleeding Bambi dress too.

Shambles

It's been a whole week since I last posted, and I have no excuse apart from general busy-ness. At the moment, I feel a little like Bridget Jones, listing her achievements and failures every morning. My bedroom seems to signify the 'things to do' list in my head: the stack of books to review, the notebook half-full of ideas for the as-yet-unwritten novel of the zeitgeist, the heap of charity shop clothes 'to adjust', the patchwork blanket looking at me reproachfully, even the secret double-figures of the list emerge as the stash of prospectuses for the Masters in English Lit I will probably never do. And that's not to mention the general crop rotation of physical maintenance: having time to eat something other than sandwiches and go to the gym, ironing clothes, even my hair is a work in progress.

Still, some good things have happened: my Glastonbury tickets came this morning (even if I look like a drug dealer on the photo), as did my new very kitsch necklace from here and also I found half a packet of chocolate buttons in my bag. As Bridget would say, v gd.

Domestic goddess

I watched a documentary about Doris Lessing last night and am buzzing with ideas for various literary pursuits (as well as nursing very sore feet after going to a jive evening and then walking all the way home in heels).

Here are a few pictures to represent my very domestic bank holiday weekend. The knitty pieces are from the slowly growing patchwork blanket. I usually keep the pieces wedged into giant glass sweet jars, although they are starting to look like some kind of gory specimen in visceral shades of pink, red and orange.
The noticeboard is my own creation from some leftover gingham fabric and a cheapo cork board - I glued buttons and some broken Hello Kitty hairgrips onto the drawing pins in an attempt to make organisation a bit prettier.
And the baby plants are a sweetpea and a tomato plant from my friend Steph, currently weaving themselves round some knitting needles. I fancy myself as a lady of leisure, strolling around my vast grounds with a matching pink trug and shears, but for now a windowsill will have to do.

A totally gratuitous photo of my new shoes (of course with some leopard-print goodness (I think you can never have too much of that). Being me, and a) being impatient and b) flustered by trendy/bored-looking shoe shop assistants I bought them in a hurry and they don't really fit. But if I stand still I feel very Dita or possibly even Bettie.

Oh and on Tuesday I went to the demonstration against the proposed lowering of the 24-week time limit on abortions. It was a great atmosphere, right next to the grandiose, priapic towers of Westminster. We all had pink and white placards and chanted and people sounded their horns and waved. It was really inspiring being surrounded by all sorts of men and women who believed so passionately in a cause. I think we made a difference.

Caramel

I went to see the film Caramel on Saturday. I quite like going to films on my own, although sobbing to Brokeback Mountain alone was pretty dismal and there was something that made me feel a little self-conscious and possibly like a pervy old man about sitting on my own amongst lots of pubescent girls to watch Josie and the Pussycats.

I hadn't seen any trailers and the posters of course promised it would be 'charming', but the more I think about it, the more uneasy the film made me. I did enjoy it in a lot of ways; Beirut was brought to life as a hot, dusty, sensuous city, jostling with people and cars, at times as vivid and carnivalesque (with the kitschy Roman Catholicism) as the Verona Beach of Romeo + Juliet. It was refreshing that it was set in a place known recently as 'war-torn' but with no sight of bullet-holes or destruction and only the occasional soldier. The action takes place in and around a ramshackle beauty salon where the generator frequently breaks down and women come in to have their hair and hearts fixed. In a lot of ways it was like Steel Magnolias, with a disparate group of women's separate stories followed, here to a rather meandering effect. There was an actress refusing to believe she was getting old, an aging woman whose romance is scuppered by her dementia-afflicted sister, a secretly blooming lesbian affair. There was a subtle investigation of the position of women in Lebanese society; one tries to book a hotel room and is frequently rebuffed because she cannot prove she has a husband, the female admirer of one of the beauticians cannot get her hair cut because her family would not approve. But it was the storyline of the woman who is soon to be married, but feels she must have her hymen sewn back up to 're-virginise' herself, that made me uncomfortable. It was dealt with in a humorous, lighthearted and 'all sisters in this together' way, that made the film not quite as sweet as its title suggested.

Troubling times

Troubling because I can't seem to upload pictures to my blog any more, and also I have reached a kind of impasse in my life. Having decided that London was the way to go, Brighton, like a rejected lover with a makeover, has started flaunting itself with the bluest summery skies, the sea bannering on the horizon.

I went to a concert by the Daughters of Albion last night; I know very little about folk but it was a free ticket, and mostly I loved it. there was something about the music that was primitive, natural, feminine, and it was so inspiring to see women of all ages on stage for once, rather than the youngest, the prettiest. I experienced an urge to be one of the older women singing, there seemed something wise and settled about their interpretations of love and loss and motherhood and general living, two things I do not feel at the moment.

It did not help that I was sitting next to perhaps one of the most infuriating concert-goers you could imagine; unlike an annoying gig-goer, who might stand in front of, or on, you or perhaps nudge your pint or sing along raucously, this more refined annoyance clacked chewing gum through the first half, and spent the second half nose-breathing, nodding off and twitching.

I tried to lose myself in the music, despite him, and the encore of Who Know Where the Time Goes almost had me in tears. There was a very Brighton wind blowing all the way home.

Oh my goodness gracious

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXJ_C8kQKc0

This gives me a little shiver down the spine. Mmm angry bloody naked Wolverine... I feel like I am cheating on Gambit though.

The odd thing about writing a blog is that it is all too easy to pour your heart out and forget that someone -someone you know- could be reading it. At the moment my head is a whirl of petty anxieties, but then something happened this morning to make me realise that life is too short, and that you should always appreciate the moment. I took these photos when I visited my mum last week. She lives in the sort of tiny village that I grew up in, and although I choose to live in a city now, I miss the balm of quiet days when nothing happens and nothing much changes.

I stayed in London last night, and as usually totally overestimated how long it would take me to get to work in the morning. So I just spent about an hour wandering the streets, flaneuring, amazed as ever as how streets just kept on unfolding all around me. I love the always slightly tatty cafes and kebab shops and newsagents of Shoreditch, the way trendy types in skinny jeans and sunglasses loiter alongside clumps of schoolgirls in bottle green and older African ladies in flamboyant turbans. But I also fancy myself as a Bloomsbury lady of leisure, patrolling the smoky columns of the British Museum, the wide paths and grand squares that open out of the shabbiest alley. I wrote my university dissertation about the streets of London in Virginia Woolf's novels - how they gave her female characters license to be free. Eighty years or so on from Mrs Dalloway, I still find something exciting in being able to walk and explore, to hop on and off buses, to find colour in details: the faded Victorian adverts still blazoned on sooty brick walls, a girl's bright pink shoes, jumbles of fruit sold on the street as they must have been for centuries, the rather sweetly old-fashioned sex-line postcards in very Britishly red phone boxes. 

Of course, I meant 'commuter' not 'consumer'. But of course you noticed that x

Thoughts on knitting

Today I received in the post my lovely new (second-hand) copy of Jane Brocket's The Gentle Art of Domesticity, after months of ogling it in bookshops and feeling tempted to hand over £25 for a copy. It is a little remorse-inducing that it arrived the day after my rent payment annihilated my overdraft, but who cares, it's like a big sticky tray of cupcakes that I know will cheer me up, despite the guilt.

Jane's blog, yarnstorm, is one of the reasons I wanted a blog, it's so bright and colourful and I love the delight she takes in knitting and baking and creating things. My own attempts at cooking are farcical, but I have always enjoyed making things. As a teenager, when most girls were probably in Claire's Accessories, I loved nothing more than perusing glue guns or glow-in-the-dark Fimo. Since then, living in rented accommodation has somewhat curbed my collections of yarn and buttons and 'useful' bits of cardboard, and I have found knitting to be a helpfully compact and transportable craft (although I did liberate some enormous lidless glass sweet jars from someone's recycling box and these are now full of the burgeoning squares for my patchwork). 

I can't help but be a bit defensive about it, although another hero of mine, Debbie Stoller (founder of Stitch n Bitch and the amazing Bust magazine) has probably revolutionised the concept of knitting and other crafts as something for grannies or '70s throwbacks macrameing their own muesli. It still seems to baffle people, but I could argue its eco-friendly, anti-consumerist, possibly punky ethos all day (and probably have at some point - don't even get me started on the retro/feminist issues).

On a similar note, I was knitting on the train today, poring over my p1,k1s, and became aware of a glassy-eyed consumer glancing repeatedly at it over my shoulder, possibly thinking it was an alien copy of the Metro. I am used to people eye-balling my knitting, so I ignored him. The girl next to me was deep in her copy of what seemed to be some kind of Islamic text. And I couldn't help but feel a little jolt of affinity with her; just two people doing their own thing. 

Springy

There is a strange sense of 'give' in the air today. Standing at the train station wasn't like being whipped around the face for once, and everywhere there seem to be tulips and hyacinths and suddenly magnolia trees as extravagant as wedding dresses. Snow is forecast for Sunday, but perhaps at last spring is on its way...

I have been listening obsessively to P J Harvey, whose otherworldy pagan carolling seems to fit the underground rumblings.

Sweaty

I went to a lindy hop club night last night, and am still in a fit of pique about it. I am finding learning lindy really hard. Having been jiving for about two years, I am now back to lurking around the edges of dance floors, wanting to get on there but also being scared of making an arse of myself. That said, I am sick of certain people asking me to dance. I always seem to attract the more bullying - and sweaty - minority. These are the sort of chaps (and I'm sure it's not always intentional) who seem to think it's a manly and impressive move to spin you round four times or simply force you the way they want you to go or -sometimes- involve some kind of pelvis/chest grinding. Of course there are lots of lovely leaders out there, but there are a slight minority (usually of the older generation) who think I won't notice they're looking down my frock.

Frogging

I've come to the conclusion that one should never drink and knit. Even one (and a half) hasty glasses of white wine on Thursday loosened my self-control enough that the same misguided impetus that used to drive me to send inappropriate texts, usually to exes, often at 2am, this time made me haul out my emergency stash of knitting on the train home.

And since then, something mysterious and irrevocable has gone wrong with my neat little square of basketweave stitch, and despite repeated frogging over the weekend I just can't get it back the way it was. Rather like with those exes. If only one could frog back stupid remarks (and relationships). The other day I caught myself thinking 'Apple Z' after making some kind of cooking-related error. That's when you know you've been at work on a Mac too long.

If anyone cares, on this inaugural blog, about my basketweave stitch, I will post a picture soon. My plan is to make a massive heirloom-type patchwork blanket (this may turn into a cushion-cover or possibly coaster, at this rate).