Studio Living

Blurred

So I, along with half of London, went to see Blur on Friday (seriously, who went on Thursday? Shadows? Insubstantial half beings? 90% of the people I've spoken to went on Friday. Thursday was for loooosers) and the band were fantastic. Just wonderful. You can see how brilliant I thought they were in my Londonist review which you can all read and click on the little star icon to say you 'like' it so I look really popular. And needy.

(Actually, a little side effect of the Blur gig is that I'm now desperate to see Graham Coxon live next time he tours. I've had Happiness in Magazines for ages and have been playing it on my iPod all weekend, remembering how brilliant it is, and now The Golden D and Spinning Top are somewhere in the post. My god, how much do I love Graham. The man's a stunning musician; plus, you know, I totally would. Even though he's clearly a total fuck-up. What am I saying? This is me. I totally would because he's clearly a total fuck-up.)

Yeah. Anyway: Blur = fabulous. Crowd = wankers.

The difficulty starts because both I and m'companion in the Arts are both quite small. I blame Michael J Fox for my shortness (I don't know what m'Arty companion's excuse is). Mike and I are both 5'4" you see, and when I was much younger and utterly obsessed with Back to the Future, I didn't want to grow any taller than 5'4" because it doesn't do to be taller than your future husband does it? *ahem* So when it came to pass that I remained a shortarse, it was all down to Michael J Fox, and nothing to do with the fact that neither of my parents top 5'6". Genetics is all lies.

Being short is a real fucking pain at gigs. I quite like being down the front, it's where the atmosphere is, but when you're my height you a) can't see a bloody thing and b) get trampled to death in the mosh pit. As I've got older I've started hanging back at a mid point in the crowd; near enough to feel in touch with the band but far enough away for the chance of a gap in front of me to preserve some kind of sight line. At indoor gigs this tactic generally works; at outdoor gigs, as I was brutally reminded on Friday, it doesn't so much.

First, the crowd is so much bigger at outdoor gigs that by mid way back you can't actually see the stage any more (though this is where Glastonbury comes into its own with its sloping hills). But they put on video screens so at least you have some idea of what's going on. Second, they tend to start earlier. This means extra drinking time. When it's as sunny as it was on Friday, this means people tend to treat the day like a picnic and sit around from about 3pm, slowly getting wasted. And this leads us on to the other problem.

Drunk people at a gig are knobends.

For example, the City bankers (I suspect a real description of their occupation as well as rhyming slang) who declared "oh, this is just the best song they did yah, oh it's so good" then talked loudly all the way through it while barging into us to take pictures of themselves talking through the best song. That's Tender and Beetlebum ruined then; songs that are atmospheric and need you to sink into them, rather than concentrating on blocking out the twattish bleating coming from the side. We moved after a couple of songs.

For example, the guy who spent half the gig with his back to the stage, playing an imaginary trombone for his friends or doing exaggerated Liam Gallagher style dancing (mate, you're at the wrong gig. Oasis are at Wembley). These tickets cost £45. DId he really pay that kind of money to stand the wrong way?

For example, all the people throwing bottles around. Yeah, they were all plastic, but they still hurt when they hit you. Just before the encores, a group of people with kids aged between about 8 and 14 came and stood near us. The youngest was completely bewildered at what was happening, probably didn't know the songs, couldn't see a thing, and looked quite traumatised at all these bottles landing near him and hitting his elbows. Then his Dad picked up a bottle and flung it during For Tomorrow. Way to set an example to your kids, there.

For example - and this is mainly music snobbery,  I know, but it still annoyed me - the huge numbers of people who went mental for Country House and stood around blankly as Chemical World followed on. Cos, like, Parklife was their first album yah?

And that's on top of all the usual gig annoyances like people streaming in and out of the crowd to go to the bar or loo (sometimes I wonder if I have an invisible Exit sign above my head; in reality it's probably again because I'm short, so in the sea of taller heads the space where I'm standing looks like a gap).

I wonder if a lot of these irritations were more obvious because it was daylight. As night began to fall and the stage lights became more noticeable, people began to pay more attention and get drawn in more. Or, we just stopped being able to see as many of the wankers. Perhaps it's unfortunate that these gigs happened so close to the summer equinox; maybe if they'd been held in late August when it gets dark earlier, it would have been more enjoyable. Because as This Is A Low played out with the moon above the stage and the lights sweeping the crowd and Graham's chords ringing out, I definitely had goosebumps on the back of my neck. And it wasn't just the night air.

3 out of 24

It's astonishing how quickly your mood can change, isn't it? From a fairly jaunty start to the day I've rapidly regressed to a state of intense grumpiness, not helped by a train which was virtually empty yesterday being rammed today. Funnily enough, I do not enjoy sweating in a corner with a toddler yelping next to me and the sun streaming in through the train door windows. But while I'm in this frame of mind I thought I'd share with you my Monday, before this butterfly that's gracing the garden lifts my funk (or El Mog eats it).

Such a crappy day, with a wonderful 3 hours towards the end; it might almost be enough to make me believe in divine punishment and reward (almost). Let's start with me getting up at stupid o'clock to inject the cat early, then leaving to catch an early train. I was within a step of standing in the carriage when I realised I'd left the key to my desk drawer at home; this drawer contains my work laptop, and without it I can't work. There'd be nobody in with a skeleton for at least another hour, and since I needed to leave early there was only one option. I'd have to go home and get it. Which would be annoying enough at the best of times, but in a heatwave? By the time I'd hauled myself back and to the station again I was covered in sweat; filmy moisture all over my back, shirt sticking. Yeah. That's the way to go into the office. The train then kindly decided to stop at every signal between Hither Green and Lewisham.

The air conditioning in the office was virtually non existent and then, about lunchtime, very existent indeed - we went from sluggish torpor to the chills - with a bunch of work requests from people who contradicted themselves within the same sheet of A4. I actually needed to wheel out that old chestnut about walking away from your computer after you've written an email before coming back and checking that what you've put down is not, in fact, an incoherent bundle of patronising rage. But, I got through the day and home to inject the cat, bustling through the house like a whirlwind before leaving for the oven that masquerades as the Bloomsbury Theatre.

When one of the things that winds commuters up is a lack of information, it wasn't surprising to get the reason for the train stopping at every signal (again) from the group of women in front of me. Lineside fire somewhere near Charing Cross, they said. Which isn't a brilliant thing to hear on a Charing Cross train (and frustrating as hell when recorded voice woman keeps telling you it's due to "congestion"; yes, clearly, but are we going to be held here for hours while the fire is cleared?). After chugging slowly into Charing Cross, what do we find but that the ticket barriers at the Tooley Street side have either a) had shutters pulled over them (I didn't even know that was possible) or b) are all set to allow people in, not out. With a huge stream of people coming in from the tube (I later discovered the Northern line was also having huge problems), those of us trying to get out were forced to squeeze the wrong way through a permanently opened gate with screams of abuse being flung from people trying to get in. Of course, I eventually got to the theatre a minute after the show had started, and in my sweat and in the dark I managed to get us sitting in the wrong seats. Quickly rectified, but still not exactly great.

But what a show! A benefit for the Rationalist Association, it was hosted by a sleep deprived and manic Robin Ince; gave me a new way to pronounce feh-yuh-urious (thank you, Chris Addison); showcased some brilliant, little known female comedians (Helen Keen and Christina Martin; I don't think Josie Long counts as little known any more, does she? I didn't keep track, but I think the performer gender split may have been close to 50:50 which is almost unheard of for these things), got Simon Singh setting light to a gherkin and had AL Kennedy doing some reading. God, I have such an almighty girl crush on AL Kennedy. She's so brilliantly, insightfully witty and cynical, yet can still see the beauty in the world and turn it into the most perfect phrase you ever read, saying exactly what you've always thought about a particular thing but so tightly, so succintly, that you could never have said it like that yourself. And she does stand up. She's just amazing. (Seriously. Girl crush.) And I'm still singing the Schnapps song. ("Such mishaps because of schnapps.")

It was all just a bit of a shame that the couple in front of us spent most of the evening with their tongues in each others' ears (and this isn't just me being single and bitter; m'companion in the Arts, who is married and everything, also found them intensely annoying). And then they had the nerve to clap Marcus Chown hands-above-the-head when they clearly hadn't heard a word he'd said. They'd totally ignored their two friends, yet sat them on either side of them, so the friends couldn't even talk to each other. They'd have been better off giving the editor of the New Humanist their £20 in person and just buggering off to the Euston Travelodge to screw.

Perhaps you think my day ends with this brilliant, albeit slightly marred by horny morons, show? Of course not; the Gods weren't finished with me yet. I missed the train home by all of five seconds, at the perfect time in the evening for London Bridge not to have any sandwich or pastry shops open, just M&S with a seriously depleted stock. (Yes, when I miss my train and it's 11.15pm, I like to snack.) And OK, I let out a 'fuck' when I saw my train's doors closing but I generally contained my disappointment; unlike the middle aged man in a suit who had the exact same thing happen 10 minutes later. No, he thought it would be more fun to start shouting at the platform guard. "It's 23 minutes past! Exactly!" [And the trains doors may close 30 seconds before departure.] "You could see me coming! Why didn't you wait?" [Because he'd already started the departure before you made your appearance. They're not like buses, they can't just hang around on the off chance. Timetables to keep and all that.] "You miserable c**t!" [Same to you sir, with bells on.]

Things weren't even simple close to home. I walked past one guy up a ladder fiddling with what looked like wiring or a burglar alarm on a building, with his mate stood in the road looking out. Hmm. So like a good citizen I rang the Met to see if any of the Fuzz fancied having a drive past. Or rather, I rang the Met and listened to their hold music for 10 minutes while whatever was happening, happened, finished and went elsewhere.

Tell me, what manner of rites do I have to perform to ensure I don't have to suffer for my pleasures like this again?

Forward planning

If, you are waiting to use a cashpoint on a busy Holborn street.

If, there is a growing queue behind you.

If, the person currently using the cashpoint appears to be doing all their banking through it.

Wouldn't you perhaps get your purse out of your continent-sized handbag while you're waiting, instead of deciding to zip the bag open when you finally get up to the machine?

Home truths

I'm back from the briefest of brief sojourns in the north and, as is so often the way, the wedding wasn't as horrific as it could have been. Don't get me wrong, it was still pretty bad, but in a fairly banal way. And I was only questioned about my intentions regarding marriage and babies four times - and then by close relatives who I'd feel bad taking the piss out of. Though I spent most of the time hanging out with my parents and some of my Dad's cousins from Redcar who're pretty cool people, so there weren't many opportunities for such questions to arise.

The main thing to be taken from the weekend was how much I hate being back in Yorkshire. It was only sitting on the train, waiting to pull out of Leeds, that I realised how tense I'd been. I feel trapped when I'm there, horribly claustrophobic. We are so very different, and the worst thing is that I don't think they realise. For them, the world is very small. You're born, you get an average education, you get married have kids buy a semi-detached house work 9-5 in a job you're indifferent to two weeks in Majorca each year Saturdays shopping Sundays washing the car and Friday nights drinking to pass out. Let me make myself clear: there is nothing wrong with this. What is wrong, is when people spend their lives thinking that's all there is. They cannot comprehend my life, what I do with my time and how I can possibly be happy 'down there'. It is alien to them. When my Aunt brays that it's high time I got myself into the big white frock, I know the question is a cover for wanting to know when I will abandon my strange ways and return to what she considers normal, something she understands. Unfortunately for her the idea of living that life fills me with cold, suffocating terror. And so none of us know how to talk to each other any more, our conversations are a bit awkward and stilted; it saddens them that they hardly recognise the little girl they watched grow up and they look at me and want me to return to their comfort zone. And that makes me want to flee.

A batch of indiscriminate anecdotes for you now.

Watching the Grand Prix toda, discussing the several new races in the Middle East. "Do they stop halfway round and get on their knees, 'praise be to Allah! Praise be to Allah!'" [impression in an Indian accent]

At breakfast in the hotel, my Dad and I go up to give our room numbers to a staff member with a big book. He turns to my Dad: "oh-ho, this is expensive for you isn't it? Both rooms under your name?" Me: "Actually, they're in my name." He looks very confused.

I've never been to a wedding in the south where the DJ is given a mic. It always seems to happen in the north and they're all wannabe local radio jocks. "We're playing you songs back to back!" Well, yeah. It's a party, you're not breaking off for adverts or a phone-in, are you?

When did Stealers Wheel Stuck in the Middle With You become the thing to play at weddings? There were two wedding parties in the hotel last night, both played it. Surely the ear-savaging connotations make this track utterly inappropriate now?!

So many men around Leeds have the same look: overweight, bald or shaven-headed, goatee, gold hoop earring (greening tattoos optional). Have never been able to work out the inspiration behind this.

Robust rebuffs

The wedding of the year is on Saturday (which my cousin has just referred to on Facebook using eight exclamation marks; I also noted the use of "my big day" rather than "our big day"). Anyway, to make sure I'm prepared for any dumb ass remarks thrown in my direction about when it will be my 'turn' or something ill informed about how every woman wants children, I need a stream of retorts up my sleeve to shut people up. I just need to create a few seconds of stunned / appalled / patronised silence to allow me to slip away. So far I have the old favourite:

    Actually, I'm a lesbian

and one bound to go down well in BNP country

    I've been married for several years already, helping a friend get a visa. Shh, don't tell the Home Office!

Amy came up with a humdinger

    I'm in a relationship with a great guy. He's married, but the sex is amazing

Any more suggestions?

Boundaries

A week or so ago I got collared by the Irish guy who lives a few doors down. He wanted to talk to me about some boundary dispute between my neighbour and the neighbours-next-door-to-her - some quite boring stuff about a missing fence and whose responsibility it is. We were standing in my front yard chatting when he ran off, apparently having spotted someone trying to nick something out of his own garden. I wasn't banking on him coming back and ringing my doorbell for a rant about "fucking Gyppos" while I stood in my doorway trying to work out how to get him to go away.

My neighbour has since told me that he's trying to stir up trouble about this fence, despite it being nothing to do with him or any fences or gardens he may have (the guys two doors down may be gay; given the size of the flat I doubt they're housemates. It makes me wonder if this man adds "fucking queers" to his dislike of "fucking Gyppos"), and he got quite nasty with my neighbour when she said she didn't want to make a big thing of it. (He's also borrowed money off her - a pensioner - and not repaid it.) And then on Sunday I was in Lewisham when he stopped me on the street.

He stands too close when he's talking to you; if you move away he follows you and maintains the distance. He immediately took out two photos that looked like shop-bought prints, one of a motorbike and one of a vintage car. He started telling me how someone had taken the bike from behind his house and left it, totally smashed to pieces, in front of a lock-up he has in Lewisham. The same lock-up that someone had broken into and smashed up the car. (This is presumably the same lock-up he has already told me had a load of musical equipment taken from it. This must be the least secure garage in the world).

Are you going to the police? I said. Yes, he said. Ah well, no, maybe not. He doesn't like the police. But he has no enemies, no enemies at all, even though people who don't have enemies tend to have no reason to ever say they don't have enemies, and those same people tend not to threaten "fucking Gyppos" with scaffolding poles in their gardens. But he was going to the police now, after all, to see if they'd take turns with him that night watching the garage in case whoever it was came back. Because Lewisham police have the time to do that. All the while, leaning inwards from about 18 inches away.

I do not want to be this man's confidante. I do not want to be drawn into his local vendettas or his fantasy burglaries. I do not want him turning up on my doorstep. But neither do I want him threatening me with a scaffolding pole. I am going to adopt an attitude of detached firmness, and always be busy going somewhere or doing something else whenever I see him again.

South-east London is chattier than the rest of the city (I nipped out for drain cleaner on Saturday and ended up talking cookery books for ten minutes with the shopkeeper) and this is the first incident in nearly three years of living here that's made me feel distinctly uncomfortable. I'd hate this man and his boundary issues to mess up my sense of local cameraderie.

Responses to responsibility

The thing that finally tipped me over into buying my own place was not some burning desire to get 'on the property ladder' or being seduced by Channel 4 home shows, but wanting to stop being at the mercy of landlords and to be able to take some responsibility for the place I live in. Which sounds good, except it does of course mean taking responsibility.

Last Saturday I woke up and thought I'd finally get round to painting the fence, something I've been meaning to do for about a year but have been putting off (more on procrastination later). I figured it'd only take a couple of hours; oh how wrong I was, as I found myself painting the final panels on Bank Holiday Monday morning following a second trip to Homebase for more wood stain. So while it is a good thing that I am in charge of the fence, and it is in my power to make it presentable and make vague attempts to stop it rotting away further, it is not so brilliant when such responsibilities knacker up your plans for the long weekend.

It was particularly galling since I'd earmarked the bank holiday to get back into writing the novel. Yes, I'm indulging in that most cliched of pursuits and it doesn't help that I keep catching repeats of Family Guy where Stewie rips the piss out of Brian for his continuing failure to complete his clearly terrible novel. I've wanted to be "a writer" since I was tiny - ever since I realised that books only came into existence after somebody created them, in fact - but the attempt still fills me with a certain embarrassed shame. I think I'm capable of producing 100,000 words of literary merit, do I? Hmm? Honest answer: I don't know, but I sure as hell won't know unless I try. And since I outed my attempts on Twitter last week I might as well make a clean breast of it.

I could probably do with the ritual humiliation of public confession since I am simply abysmal at self discipline. This wretched bundle of sentences has been on pause at the 10,000 word mark since I went back to work because I lack the hard willpower to force myself to sit down in the evenings, or at weekends, or even in the mornings before I get properly get up, to add a couple of hundred words here and there. It was slightly gratifying to read a bunch of writers in the Guardian a few months ago (and which I now can't find), talk about how hard they find writing, and I know it's not just a case of bashing out 300 words off the top of my head on a particular topic as I can do for Londonist every lunchtime. This requires deeper thought, an immersion, if you will. I also know that these are excuses, and that lapses in deep thought can be fixed in the editing and revision processes, and that all I'm doing is weaselling out of completing the first draft. Because, what if it's rubbish? What if it turns out I can't write something of that length after all? What if this exercise exposes my ambitions as pathetic and hopeless? I also know that on the Screenwipe writers' special last December, Russell T Davies said you're not a writer until you've written something. I felt personally chastised. And I know that all my prevarications and self doubts are all just variants on the theme of procrastination and that there is a masterpiece within. Bloated self confidence and self doubt; we are all of us a little bipolar, I think.

And then an entire three day period gets wiped out by fracking garden maintenance. Even my best laid plans get derailed by the delaying tactics of fences.

On poetry

I have a terrible confession. When I stumbled upon news of UA Fanthorpe's death a couple of weeks ago, I had to stifle a little cheer. Not because I'm some hideous bitch who delights in the death of others (though there may be some truth to this, given my reaction), but because she can produce no more poetry. It's an easy get-out to say the texts we study in school are destroyed for us forever, but even now I occasionally flick through a book of Fanthorpe poetry in a bookshop and am struck by how predictable she is. Poetry should surprise. She does not.

As an exercise for A Level, we had to write a poem in her style. And it was so, ridiculously, easy to satirise. Take an everyday object, throw in a couple of references to mythology, a few flowery descriptive phrases, a turn of wry humour, let your sentences run on to the middle of the next line and end it by bringing it back to death. I wish I'd kept my poem, but I burnt it along with the photocopies of her poems on results day. I chose a pier to be my subject, Victorian and derelict, once filled with life and now a reminder to us all of how things pass. I can't remember how I got the mythology in there, but I do remember using the phrase "(Wrought iron filigree.)", in brackets, stylised just like that, after talking about the railings. (You probably need some familiarity with her poems to get that one.) I could never get over the feeling that surely there were poets out there we could be studying, poets who didn't return to the same damn themes over and over and over again and yet never manage to say anything new. (Browsing the LRB's shelves this afternoon I came across a collection from 2003, still mining the hospital waiting room theme.)

Mnnngh. Anyway. I've been considering bad poetry, or at least poetry that winds me up, for several weeks, prompted by a poem on the underground:

Brooch
Menna Elfyn (in memory of Stephanie Macleod)

They have their place, accessories
earrings, the odd necklace,
gemstone bracelets...
and yet, it’s from the soft inner depth
we work the brooch of our lives,
that jewelled keepsake set to outlast us.

Yours, it was a brooch ablaze –
the passion-crafted clasp,
the light chain to keep it safe; 

others, now, will wear your brooch –
this jewel fashioned from a golden hear
It will catch the sun. It will dazzle us.

From my Fanthorpe sneering you can probably guess my feelings about a poem that oh, takes an everyday object and ends up talking about death. It's perhaps unfair - perhaps my extensive exposure to UA Fanthorpe has been an innoculation against this vein of poetry. But when I read "and yet, it's from the soft inner depth / we work the brooch of our lives" I wanted to leap up from my seat and scribble 'tortured metaphor' across the poster. Can poetry do no better than this?

Of course it can. Thank you, BBC, for the Poetry Season. I've been looking for video clips of Lauren Laverne and Phill Jupitus doing their little trails because their performances make the poems live - particularly Jupitus, who makes a jar of honey sound melancholy, when the words themselves don't perhaps suggest so much. And while you may question the populist approach of getting slebs to read poetry in the trailers, another trailer that features Simon Armitage confirms the wisdom of the approach. Don't get me wrong: I love Simon Armitage. All Points North is one of my favourite books, but his voice is so soft and inoffensive and ineffectual that I find it hard to focus on the words when he does a reading. Back when he appeared on the late night Mark Radcliffe Radio 1 show (god, we're back to A Levels again) it was his banter with Mark, rather than the poetry, that made me warm to him. Not all writers are equipped to read their own material, no matter how deeply they might feel it in their souls. Sorry, Simon.

In case you wondered what the Laverne and Jupitus poems are, I've dug them out from the corners of the interweb and here they are for your delight (I suspect I may be breaking Jacob Polley's copyright, but Keats is long dead so hey).

On leaving some Friends at an early Hour
John Keats
 
Give me a golden pen, and let me lean   
On heap’d up flowers, in regions clear, and far;   
Bring me a tablet whiter than a star,   
Or hand of hymning angel, when ’tis seen   
The silver strings of heavenly harp atween:
And let there glide by many a pearly car,   
Pink robes, and wavy hair, and diamond jar,   
And half discovered wings, and glances keen.   
The while let music wander round my ears,   
And as it reaches each delicious ending,
Let me write down a line of glorious tone,   
And full of many wonders of the spheres:   
For what a height my spirit is contending!   
’Tis not content so soon to be alone.

A Jar of Honey
Jacob Polley

You hold it like a lit bulb,
a pound of light,
and swivel the stunned glow
around the fat glass sides:
it's the sun, all flesh and no bones
but for the floating knuckle
of honeycomb
attesting to the nature of the struggle.

Thanks, but no election yet please

All this talk of having a snap general election to allow voters to pass their judgement on MPs in the wake of the expenses scandal is horribly misguided. A general election now would be a single-issue election and inevitably completely bypass parties' actual, you know, policies. Which, in a time of economic crisis, would be incredibly dangerous.

Just a thought.

Bee good

I wishI knew how insects keep finding their way into my living room. It's most offputting. I mean, you know how I don't like insects of the yellow-and-black-stripey-and-stingy variety, right? When it's a wasp I just kill the bastard, but today I was at the computer when I heard a buzzing, looked down and there was a bumblebee flailing around in front of the fireplace, with the cat just moving in to have a good sniff. (Note to cat: don't sniff things that can sting you. We go to the vet enough as it is.)

A bumblebee? I can't kill a bumblebee! We're losing enough of them as it is. So I done being very brave and trapped it in a glass and took it outside. And I'm still shaking. (Sometimes great bravery requires great sacrifice.) But I've got to block up whatever vent is letting these things in - I can't be going through this all summer.

Creepy

After just sneaking under Cineworld Trocadero's cut-off point for cheap afternoon tickets to see In The Loop on Friday, m'companion in the Arts and I found the only place we could tolerate being in for more than five minutes was The Maple Leaf bar in Covent Garden. And since it takes more than five minutes to drink a beer, The Maple Leaf it was. We'd claimed a table with the consummate skill of women in need of seats and were happily oblivious to most things. Including the bloke who'd asked if he could sit at one of the spare seats on our table. Yeah, whatever mate, knock yourself out.

An unremembered amount of time later he asked if he could borrow one of our phones; he'd just flown in from the States, you see, and for some reason this stupid American iPhone wasn't connecting to his British friend's cell. M'companion in the Arts has an iPhone with a free calls package and handed it over, because she has more compassion than I do. We were slightly peturbed when the guy then threw what looked like an Oystercard holder on the table and walked out the door, but on investigation (apparently I have no shame) it turned out to be the driving licence of one Dr Paul Friga and about $200 in cash. Oh, right, security.

You know when you just want to catch up with a friend? When you threw on a random t-shirt and cardigan that morning, and haven't washed your hair for slightly longer than it requires to get completely manky? And you've sidestepped the fact that you're in central London, the location's incidental, you just happened to be here and the last thing you want is some management guru from North Carolina trying to ingratiate himself into your evening? He bought a round of drinks to say thank-you for the use of the iPhone, which m'companion in the Arts and I made nervy rohypnol jokes about while he was at the bar; but, like, dude. We're very sorry if you're alone in London and your friend isn't around, but how about bonding with the weird journalist you brought over to the table instead; yes, yes I really do have to be going (never have I been so grateful for feline diabetes) and no, m'companion is not of the mind to go dancing with you tonight. Shouldn't you be on the phone to your wife or something?

After refusing another drink we actually legged it while he was elsewhere. We've probably given him a terrible impression of English people now but I don't care; we'll give offence in exchange for creepy and uncomfortable. Sounds like a fair deal. In fact, we were so creeped and uncomfortable that we had to head into a place that sold pizza and alcohol to scrub the incident away. And possibly, the internet being what it is, the next time he exhorts someone in a bar to Google him, this post might just pop up.

Shahid Malik: a one million percent idiot

I really don't know if Shahid Malik - now former Justice Minster - is more deserving of my ire today than any of the other MPs that have been exposed as avaricious and arrogant, but he had the misfortune to be on BBC News while I was having my breakfast and severely pissing me and (£92k a year) presenter Carrie Grace off. In particular, his repeated assertions about having sought advice from the fees office over expenses:

The particular clip I want doesn't seem to be online, but he spent some time saying that when he was elected in 2005, all the new MPs had a little chat with the fees office and they given advice about what they should and shouldn't and could and couldn't claim for. This, he seems to believe, clears him from spending over two grand on a 40 inch plasma telly (the fees office, incidentally, don't recall him asking about limits according to the Telegraph).

But let's suppose he had asked about maximum limits, and he did receive bad advice. Is it acceptable that an elected representative didn't bother to exercise his own judgement and just went happily along with what he was being told?

Ah, so that's how we ended up in Iraq.

MPs' expenses

Stephen Fry says that the MP's expenses row isn't that important, that there are bigger issues to get angry about and that for journalists to be outraged about expenses fiddling is massively hypocritical. While he's got a certain point on the hypocrisy angle, he seems to be forgetting that journos' claims aren't funded by the public; and I think he's also missing the much bigger problem. Namely, that when we have a bunch of career politicians who view the House of Commons as a place to make some money while they're droning on about whatever issue they think will get them some headlines, we're less likely to get politicians who do care about war and poverty.

Let's take a look at some of the politicians who are so adept at doublethink that they shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the parliamentary system. Take Alan Duncan:

He thinks "every MP should feel ashamed that they've let the system grow up", "the whole House of Commons has to apologise for the mess that has arisen". But look how awesome he is: he's "been calling for this allowance to go for years". He's "in favour of total transparency, [he] got the government to change its mind about publishing these receipts in the first place, [he] was the first MP ever to publish [his] receipts". Yay for Alan Duncan, MP freedom of information fighter! But hang on a moment... Alan Duncan claimed over £4k for gardening. He claimed nearly £600 to overhaul a ride-on fucking lawnmower. He claimed almost the maximum allowance for his second home over the last six years. And now he's paying back almost £5k. So he thinks the system was terrible and shaming, but it didn't seem to stop him using it to its fullest.

Or Hazel Blears. Hazel Blears, who in a recent interview with George Monbiot, denied being a career politician, despite never having voted against the government. That's just co-incidence apparently. No, she's just an honest Salford girl, concerned with housing and health. This downhome honesty didn't stop her repeatedly switching her designated second home and avoiding capital gains tax when she sold her London flat - because she told HMRC it was her main home, while telling parliament it was her second home to claim expenses on it. And now - while she insists she's done nothing wrong - she's dashed off a cheque for £13k and waved it in front of TV cameras. As Justin at Chicken Yoghurt says, how lovely to have that kind of money lying around. How lovely to be so in touch with constituents that she can't see how waving a cheque for more than a year's income for those very constituents is obscene. And still she can't apologise.

Other politicians keep bleating about how they haven't broken any rules, and how maintenance of their second homes is completely necessary if they're to attend to their constituency and their London business. This is true: MPs do often need two homes, and shouldn't be left out of pocket merely for fulfulling their parliamentary duties. This is the point of expenses. When, however, you're claiming for a fucking housekeeper because "for most of the working week my wife and I are in London", or when you try to weasel your way out of the row by saying your house actually costs more to run than the expenses maximum, then I would respectfully submit that these houses are not just little crashpads to enable you to do your constituency duty and that perhaps the taxpayer should not be subsidising your cunting country pile. It's just a thought.

The sheer thoughtlessness of some of this stuff - elephant lamps, glittery bog seat - has served to highlight the reality gap between some MPs and the people they purport to represent. And it's this that I think is the most damaging aspect; not so much the money as the impetus behind it. I know it's hopeless wanting politicians to be in politics for sheer love of public service, but is it too much to ask them to be satiated with power and privilege, without adding enrichment to the list?

The upshot of this is going to be an enormous skewing of the European elections in a few weeks. The main fear is the BNP doing well but Channel 4 News had someone on from Searchlight last night, saying their polling indicated a swing to the Greens and UKIP rather than BNP. We can only hope.

The other, extremely irritating, thing about the expenses fiasco is that I'm finding myself agreeing with David Cameron. Nooo! Of course, he's loaded so his expenses are fairly straightforward and he can afford to take the moral high ground. But at PMQs this afternoon his suggestion, of publishing expenses claims online as soon as they were made, was the first time I'd heard this mentioned and it seems like a good idea. Better than wading through an independent investigation that will surely only slow down full publication even more? Something immediate and transparent. And simple. Damnit, why did it have to come from the Tories?

The 'M' word

Back at the vet on Monday for the three-monthly blood tests and quick panic over a weird lump on the cat's back. I can't watch them take the blood any more, it's too damn traumatic with the struggling and the rowling, so I turn away while they pin him down and stick a needle in his neck. Then, when it's all over, the vet nurse hands El Mog back to me with the words "there you are, go back to your mummy".

Ah. The 'M' word. Being completely ambivalent to children of the human kind, my cat is not a baby substitute (though I suppose it might be possible to construct a convincing argument that it's a boyfriend substitute, but that would simply earn you a punch in the face). Flatmate, fuzzinator, lap-warmer, arse-pain and terrifyer, yes. But I don't think any of these earn me the moniker 'mummy'.

I avoid using 'mummy' at all costs. In conversations with my cat (because that's what happens when you live on your own, you start talking to your cat) I use 'you' and 'me'; when I'm forced to refer to myself in the third person (say, because I've got a hangover and have stayed in bed much longer than I should've and am late for an injection) it's along the lines of "yes, I'm a terrible cat owner" (and before anyone says anything, I'm aware that 'cat owner' is an oxymoron. Did I mention I'm usually hungover when such things slip out of my mouth?).

I have a real, knee-jerk aversion to being called 'mummy'. It's probably deeply Freudian but I don't give much of a shit (Freud again, hello). Just wanted to you know this. Thanks for listening. It's appreciated.

(Where did this 'mummy' stuff, in relation to pets, come from anyway? Does everyone do the mummy/daddy thing? And if you do, don't you find it just a bit, you know, weird?)

Aporkalypse not quite now

It looks like we're highly unlikely to see millions of people dropping dead in the street from swine flu. We're lucky; a vicious pandemic is going to happen one of these days, but our total apathy and inclination to disbelieve in possible seriousness (even my parents forwarded me the joke about 'I called the NHS flu helpline but all I could hear was crackling' 'joke') is, I'm hazarding, a lot to do with the media immediately going into overdrive.

Now, I'm not here to say that the media hyped up a non story. There was risk, and it needed reporting. But instead of a measured analysis of that risk and waiting to hear what the epidemiologists were discovering about relative virulence and person-to-person spread, we got headlines like '140 million could die' and '40% of population could be infected' (note: I tweeted this article in the Independent last week citing an overblown headline; curiously, the headline is now more representative of the article's real message).

Of course, as noted by Ben Goldacre, millions could die in a pandemic. 40% of the population could be infected. Similarly, a tiny fraction of those numbers could be involved. At that stage last week, nobody knew the facts. But those rationalities were being buried beneath hyperventilating headlines and standfirsts, and terrifying introductions to news bulletins. And as new infections emerged slower and slower, and everyone who wasn't in Mexico - where, in all probability, there is less access to decent testing labs and swift doling out of anti-virals - developed merely non-life threatening symptoms, it felt like the media decided it had been cheated. It didn't get its pandemic with Sars or bird flu and now it didn't look like it was going to have fun with the piggies, so it started contacting people with a reputation for media naysaying to see if it could get them to blame the media for stirring everything up.

Make up your fucking mind. Either report sensibly, or don't. But don't go into overdrive and then blame each other for crying wolf.

What's really annoying is that the media didn't actually cry wolf over the core of the story; this had the potential to be serious (still does, if the virus, which is still out in circulation, takes a nastier mutation). But in their need to fill hours and hours of rolling news and the public's 'desire' to be told everything! now! with their/our apparently three-second concentration span, the media thrust the worst case scenario into our faces in big, bright, flashing letters. And then wondered why the normal reading and viewing public looked at the coverage, then looked at what was actually happening, and decided to make its own mind up thankyouverymuch.

The result of all this is another chunk out of the public's respect for the news and, ironically, a public that is less informed about the real risks. There's only so much wide-eyed staring at equally wide-eyed reporters and waiting for the aporkalypse that one can do. By placing parmageddon at the top of every bulletin and scaring the bejesus out of people, instead of running some thoughtful coverage in, say, the third or fourth slot, swine flu has been dismissed as a joke. Precautions we should be taking will probably be ignored. Even I, writing this post as I am, know that I should have bought some antibacterial hand gel by now. I keep meaning to, but there are two conflicting voices in my head: the sensible one that's read the sensible science blogs and is aware of the genuine risks, and the other one that's pissed off by overreaction and doesn't want to feel influenced by hype. I know which one I should be listening to, but it's the same way smokers know they shouldn't smoke and we all know we should eat healthily and exercise. Fuck it: I can't see any immediate danger to my health, so I'll carry on as normal because I'm now desensitised.

Has our media become completely incapable of stopping for a moment and thinking? Is the need to compete for eyeballs in this multi-channel, multi-platform world making it utterly impossible for any reporting other than shouty, attention grabbing predictions of doom? Is it that 'hmm, well, it might be more complicated than that' doesn't play well in focus groups? If you didn't watch Charlie Brooker's Newswipe you can now catch it all on YouTube; sort of a Daily Show for the UK, it's genuinely upset at the state of the news in this country (and the US, because where they've led, we inevitably follow). Swine flu came a bit too late to be featured which is a shame cos I bet it would have been fascinating.

Is it too much to ask that we, the news consuming (ugh) plebs are treated as adults, capable of digesting complex information? That we not be treated like infants, to be distracted with brightly coloured graphics and loud noises? That we be offered the nuances and shades of different situations rather than a choice between "everything's going to hell" and "nothing to see here lalalala"? It's no wonder fewer and fewer people trust the news and are tempted in by crap they read on the internet when they witness their news sources turn to blast and bombast, only to see no connection between what they're watching and what they're seeing in their daily lives. It makes me angry to think the news may have blown its credibility on swine flu by not being more responsibly restrained in its initial coverage - and if the virus does mutate and start spreading across communities, people may be less inclined to believe them and follow advice that could save lives. Now that would be a disaster.