all this useless beauty.

On the move

I wouldn’t like to say definitively that this is a good idea, I really wouldn’t. However, I have signed myself up to run 5K for Cancer Research, on 11th July in Chesterfield (along with my Aunty Kath and my mother, who I understand is under strict instructions ‘not to write anything miserable on her back’). I don’t think my Aunty Kath and my mother are going to run, not if they have got any sense, as most people walk the course: no, it is only me who has jogged for two weeks and now thinks I am an athlete, despite quite a lot of evidence to the contrary stretching back to, well, to my birth. So I think it will be very exciting, as possibly I will pass out en route and will have to be stretchered off, appearing on the local news. And while obviously Cancer Research will benefit from whatever sponsorship money we collectively manage to beg, borrow or steal, there are going to be terrible repercussions for the midlands cardigan industry, as I suspect my mother is currently refocussing her retail efforts into trainers. As ever, sunshine is mixed with cloud.

We (partner and I) are going to go interrailing this summer. I say interrailing. What I mean is, we are going to buy an interrail ticket, and use it for a period possibly not exceeding a fortnight, because apparently you can do this even when you are no longer a student (and have not been for quite a considerable number of years). It turns out (and this was a surprise) that our expectations of the holiday are quite different! Last night we went through the Rough Guide to Europe book and compared places we would like to visit:

Places suggested by me which did not meet with an unequivocally enthusiastic response:
Moldova (‘do you actually understand where that is?’)
Ukraine (‘No no no’)
Transdniester
Romania

Places we have tentatively (and I stress the tentatively) agreed on going to:
Nice (‘there’s nothing there and it’ll be too hot. But if you must’)
Denmark

Methods of choosing destinations which I do not believe to be the absolute best:
Where the best museums are
Where lots of classical things happened in antiquity.

Reasons I am apparently not cut out for interrailing:
I will be incapable of sleeping on a train, and will moan (I haven’t got any intention of sleeping on a train. I am going to sleep in hotels. They managed perfectly well on Coach Trip.)
If the local mafia gets on and leaves their bikes in the train toilet rendering it unusable (apparently this once happened to partner in one of his many interrailing trips) I would not be patient (I would not be patient! I would make them move the bikes!).
I become frustrated when trains do not go fast enough, and it is possible that the trains in Moldova, for example, are not the fastest in Europe (I understand slow trains. I once went to Sussex.)

I think this will be a lot of fun, and character building. Perhaps even at my advanced age I may become a traveller, and next year will see me striding about in sub-Saharan Africa with a backpack and a determined expression.

Goodbye Vogue: I am Leaving Your Demographic

Occasionally I’m seized by the fear that I might be wearing the wrong shape trouser (note the singular). I’m sure we all are. And when this happens I buy Vogue so they can tell me what to think. Well, Partner looked at Vogue nestling next to the organic tofu in the trolley this weekend and raised an ironic eyebrow, but I ignored him, because I’m not listening to a word he says until the vegan jokes stop, and I’m estimating this is going to take us through to August at least. However, in this as in many other things he is absolutely although irritatingly right; because Vogue is no longer the magazine for me. Indeed, I will go so far as to say this: you can learn how not to sound like an arsehole by reading Vogue, and that is the only use it has (unless you feel you’ve not read enough articles in your life on How To Wear Red Lipstick because there’s one in every issue). Make sure you read it all (the interviews especially) and don’t ever let anything you say bear any relation, because otherwise I can guarantee you that everyone’s talking about you behind your back as soon as you leave the pub, and sniggering, hur hur hur.

Here’s a quote from an interview with a model: ‘”An outfit can never be too ‘costume’” she says, putting on a felt wolf mask, looking in the mirror and exchanging it for a Viking helmet.’ You see, why would Vogue let her say something like that? It won’t just disappear, you know, it’ll follow her about for the rest of her life whenever somebody googles her. And then I give you this as an example. This is someone talking about someone she’s in a band with. I can’t give you more details than that because if I did I’d have to read it again and then I’d be forced to despair of my generation (yes, please bear in mind this is not an 18 year old talking. It is someone in her thirties.)

‘”I think, when I moved, it even surprised him,” she continues. […]”I used to do really weird things, like sit outside his window and watch him play guitar. I was there, but I was too shy to say I was there. I wasn’t trying to be creepy, but I was like, fascinated by him. Beyond. We totally lived in a bubble […]. It was perfect. […] “ She says she understands why people might speculate about the nature of their relationship. “People are obsessed with fucking,” she says.’

Well, love, that’s as maybe. But, you know, you are giving an interview in Vogue where you’re trying to give the impression that your “relationship” is more exciting than it is, and saying ‘beyond’ as a sentence and apparently not as a parody. I do just wonder if that’s contributing to the speculation just a tiny bit. If I started saying winsome things about our window cleaner and blushing and looking at people from under my eyelashes whenever somebody mentioned buckets I might start a rumour as well. It’s just the way he wipes the dirt off the windows. Sometimes I, like, hide and watch him go up his ladder. I’m not trying to be creepy. It’s the skilled way he wields that duster. Beyond.

Actually, do they still do Pseud’s Corner?

I am cold!

There is a blizzard outside. Before I brave the weather to put some nuts out for the squirrel, because no squirrel is going to go short of nuts on my watch, I am having a nice cup of tea and a biscuit, and wishing it was summer.

We would see a sign!

On New Year’s Day this year I was driving down the A1, muttering to myself ‘I don’t know why all these people are passing me, it’s really icy and I’m doing 75’ like a disgruntled middle aged person. I haven’t got  any Werthers Originals or vegan equivalent tucked away in my glove box yet but I feel it is only a matter of time. So I was not thinking much about the wonder that was 2009, a year in which I learned many things, including that if you have pampas grass outside your house it means you are a swinger; but now we are in 2010, a year that begins like the sign above. So many different possibilities! (Some don’t exist any more and some are a bit scruffy; but you get the point.)

Which direction will we take? The metaphorical historic city centre or the metaphorical Victoria Avenue Coach Stop? At least there’ll always be a pub in the background.

Tindalls Art & Graphics. I remember when it was Heffers. And they still don't stock procion dyes!

Tomorrow I’ll be jogging at full throttle/ To make myself successful, rich and thin.

Partner has made a New Year’s resolution. Every day he is going to be a little bit worse. I very much hope he has not corrupted my family with his negativity, but I certainly heard my mother repeating this aphorism with enthusiasm as she was leaping about on New Year’s Eve, red wine in hand, watching the fireworks in sub-zero temperatures on an ice-covered driveway like an accident waiting to happen (possibly she thought she had not had enough contact with the National Health Service in 2009.) Anyway, I am not cynical like Partner and I embrace that clichéd January impulse towards self-improvement, so I am excited to inform you that today I have been jogging. I am rather impressed with myself: yes, I am impressed that someone as unfit as I clearly am has been managing to get out of bed in the mornings. I was having a go at Couch to 5k; however I think they need to work out a routine to get you up to this, possibly Utter Inertia to Couch, and I will have a go at that first. Because it was not pretty. A rather woolly black dog watched me in sympathy as I stumbled past it, gasping for breath, being overtaken by a three year old on a scooter. But, as it says on Couch to 5k, you should ease into your running programme gradually, otherwise despair may result. So I will be stumbling about again on Wednesday, posing no threat to woolly dogs. Because when you have paid £18 - £18! For a sports bra, you do not want your investment to go to waste.

This is where I went jogging. It is five minutes up the road but I drove there. I know that is morally indefensible but it was inordinately cold.

Look! Look at the ice on the paths!

The birds live a wild, natural life. They have no need of Nest to 5K regimes.

I am fully expecting to spend tomorrow shuffling about like Mrs Overall.

In the bleak midwinter

This year (i.e. this last bit of this year 2009 and next year 2010) I am going to be marking the Wiccan Sabbats and bringing a new spriritual awareness into this shallow urban life. If this makes you think sarcastic thoughts, do not feel you have to express them, as my partner has already done so quite comprehensively and I now feel this base has been covered. Although, he liked the phallic Yule cards very much and has commandeered them and sent them to his friends (I am hoping not to his mother).

Anyway, today is Yule, which is the shortest day and it gets better from here on in, thank goodness, and one day perhaps I can stop wearing my scarf and blanket in the house and having to pour boiling water on the dustbin every time I want to open it to put the rubbish in. In April perhaps?

Yule (this is the educational bit, pay attention) is about the rebirth of the God. The pagan year is all about the God and the Goddess and they go through a cycle of ageing and death and rebirth which you mark through Sabbats, it is all very exciting. At the moment I think the God is dead, the Goddess is a crone (I know how she feels) and we are ‘journeying in the realms of shadows’, but at Yule the God is reborn and the days start getting longer. That sounds like quite a big deal. So, I have been looking for a ritual to mark this momentous day. I turn to my trusty Hedgewitch book but the ritual in there looks quite complicated, involving anointing your third eye and remembering poetry, and this year I am not up to that. Although, give me twelve months, you never know, I might be casting a circle with the best of them. Anyway, I am marking Yule by cooking a Yule dinner and by lighting candles to welcome back the sun, although it would be not much of a welcome if the candle sets fire to a Christmas card or yesterday’s Observer as seems quite likely since I have not tidied up. So I shall go and clear a space for our ritual and put the potatoes on, and wish you a Cool Yule. Merry Solstice!

... And cancel Christmas.

I am not doing Christmas this year. I am not a Christian, and I am from a long line of godless people, although my mother will inevitably now ring me up and tell me that she once went to Salem Chapel down the road, where they made her hug the man sitting next to her. She will also remind me of the time she and my father took me to midnight mass, to which I will be forced to retort that they took me to midnight mass when we were all drunk on snowballs, and we left half way through, and somehow managed to become entangled in the choir as we were leaving: which was not our finest moment, or particularly to the greater glory of God. No: we are not a family which has any effective roots in organised religion. Although, I myself have, very recently, read the Bible. I was in a hotel room with only a copy of Martha Stewart Living to read and I have to say, thank goodness for the Gideons, because after reading about how you may wish to make pixies out of pinecones, Leviticus came as a light relief: although I cannot remember what I am supposed to do (or not do) with beasts with cloven hoofs.

Anyway, I have decided that what we are celebrating this year is a kind of cod-pagan Yule seasonal thing which will essentially involve any aspects of Christmas I like and will not involve any I don’t, and in particular will not necessitate making anything out of a pinecone. So, I have been to the Libra Aries bookshop, and I have bought some pagan Yule cards to send people. Would you like to guess on what percentage of the images you could put an uncharitably phallic interpretation? Yes, I would say about 40%. I am looking down my card list and I am at a loss to whom I am going to send the one of Pan holding an enormous horn and grinning like Sid James at Barbara Windsor.

Post structuralism VS beetroot

Ironically, after I posted my last rant about Baudrillard and the way academic ‘discourse’ (cringing cringing) obfuscates rather than communicates, I was reading on a message board a particularly egregious example of this function of language theory. A person posted an opinion that something was not very good, using a word for not very good which is kind of offensive to women (it is not a word that is used very often), and was called out on the fact that the word was offensive. The calling-out was done in a friendly and helpful manner, e.g. ‘I think this word might have a problematic derivation? What do you think?’ rather than ‘you are a sexist git, shut UP!’. The original person responded by attempting to use structuralist theory to make himself look cleverer than the person who had called him out. Parole and langue were involved. Saussure was misread and his name taken in vain: it was as if someone had taken all the most risible bits from Linguistic Bingo (I am not googling, but I am sure it exists) and put it together in a paragraph. Well, it is generally dangerous to assume that people on message boards are stupider than you are, and thus it proved, for they all had a good laugh about the person trying to intimidate them with an inadequate use of structuralist theory, and, when I last checked, the conversation had moved on to national language differences (Americans apparently don’t say, throwing a wobbly, because they particularly liked that one.)

Now, I am not going to lump poor old Baudrillard (or any of the other usual suspects) with an inadequate person on a message board, which would be like saying Balmain has had a failure of artistic vision because Bon Marché have not interpreted the sculptural shoulder well (actually they might have interpreted it delightfully, I haven’t been shopping for a while since I am unemployed). But I do find myself wondering about the unstated politics of any theory which deliberately makes itself incomprehensible (there is to me some degree of distinction between theory/ an idiot attempting to use its jargon to look cleverer: although, I suspect this is not necessarily a distinction which would be supported by structuralist theory itself!). Anyway I am going to try not to wonder too much as the last thing I want to do at the moment is engage with structuralism or post structuralism or worse. I want to engage with making more chutney, because Fate has sent me beetroot, and I am sure there is something constructive I can do with it (in a strictly culinary sense.)

Gimme some truth

I am reading Baudrillard because I find myself interested in the concept of hyperreality. I knew this would be a mistake and thus it is proving, because I feel one of my oldest prejudices bubbling to the surface. I hate academic discourse. I hate it. To start with I hate the way it is called discourse. I hate how you have to read it five times and then you wish you hadn’t bothered but had done something like make a sandwich instead. I shall give you an example:

“But it foments the concrete as its ideological ectoplasm, its phantasm of origin and transcendence [dépassement].’

Now in its defence, this is a translation, which I presume is why we get the square brackets and italics (although, who knows?). However, you are not going to tell me that this sentence is the most straightforward and comprehensible way of communicating that idea, whatever it is. Now, I am aware that in saying this I am revealing myself as making certain assumptions about the use and structure of language which, it is probably fair to say, are not shared by Baudrillard: I am also aware that one of the functions of writing like that is (grit your teeth) to break down barriers between academic and other ‘discourse’ (e.g. literary): to deconstruct the idea of language of a transparent communicative medium: to foreground & problematise (sorry) the (sorry!) interplay of the signifier and the signified. (What happened to the referent, eh? Bring back the referent!)

When I was doing my degree in the 90s (I am old), I read a great deal of academic feminism, much of which was written in the style above. As a result I knew nothing sensible about feminism until Cambridge chewed me up and spat me out and I read The Beauty Myth. So you can criticise Naomi until the cows come home, but I would say in her defence that through that entire book there are no square brackets, and, whether she has noticed or not the similarity between the words pen and penis, she hasn’t felt compelled to build a career on it. I think if nineties academic feminists had been wired up so that every time they typed something like ‘inscribing at the level of the flesh with the pen[is]’ they got an electric shock, it would have wiped out a generation and might have given a few other people the chance to buy a nice victorian terrace in Newnham or up Woodstock Road. Anyway you can see that Baudrillard and I have not had the best of starts, and I am now reading Francione for some light relief, but I shall try to re-engage with the Mirror of Production just as soon as there is nothing good on telly.

What not to wear.

When I was working, I won’t say that I looked attractive but I did manage to look most days as if I had at least a nodding acquaintance with Cambridge Jigsaw. How times have changed. This is what I am wearing today and have been happily roaming about in the garden, dealing with the postman, saying hello to the man next door etc:

Stretchy band on hair which I think you are supposed to use for dreadlocks,
Yoga trousers which, and just believe me on this one, do not flatter
10-year-old Boden jumper in a shade of watermelon I do not believe they have ever repeated. Possibly the weight of consumer opinion was against it
Thick handknitted socks
Clogs
Handmade apron (made from – drum roll – African Wax Print Fabric!)

And, to make the whole ensemble even more alluring, my hands are covered in turquoise Procion dye and, because it is now cold enough that my skin will be continuously dry until July, Snowfire ointment. So I have a greenish tinge, like a Martian. And Snowfire ointment, though effective, is surprisingly strong smelling (it has cloves.)