Today I came across an artist whose chosen muse is women's lists. Clearly they are the latest artform - I'm inclined to agree as I love lists, really I do. My first memory of them was less positive - a dear friend boasting of her list of over 100 'boyfriends', including BA from the A-team. We were 8 at the time and I recall we disagreed profoundly over her definition of boyfriend... some things never change... However I just can't get enough of them these days (lists, not boys). I have lists for everything. Music to buy (currently pending: Kubicheck!, Maximo Park, the latest Air album - always useful - a slightly random selection I know but I've been doing quite well at keeping up recently). Things to see - films, theatre, exhibitions. I've really failed this month - still to do (and I'm going on holiday in two days) include the Gilbert and George exhibition, Climates, the fashion exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, After the Wedding, Hogarth - argh I am so annoyed that I haven't managed any of these.
More mundanely I have lists for stuff I need to get for my house like a decent lampshade, curtains that are actually the right length, more coathangers. Boring things I need to do like filing (why does that one never get crossed off??), cleaning my windows, paying in cheques, going through my post - the pile has almost reached the unacceptable 3 month stage. Somehow I think that if it's really urgent, they'll call...
What I like best about my latest system is that instead of all these lists being on poxy scraps of paper I just use one moleskine notebook (conforming to my demographic, moi?) and now it's like a little patchwork of my life for the last 18 months - all there in one glorious jumble of things to do - things that I've done with a satisfied tick through them, although there are also a rather distressing number of things that have yet to be crossed off. Lists of music I ripped out of a magazine whilst in Copenhagen are right next to emails I need to send; a list of pros for a particular boy is next to a shopping list for new years eve. Who needs all this prose when a list will do? Forget blogging, it's all about the lists.
I have a knack of making friends with my exes with the exception of one guy (don't think I'm giving too much away if I admit he's the excel spreadsheet one from an earlier post). Generally speaking I think this is A Good Thing: it would feel weird to not stay connected in some way with someone who you've shared a lot with.
But the other day this strategy was somewhat undermined when I discovered that two not-so-ancient exes had found themselves in a meeting together. God, how I would have loved to be a fly on the wall in that particular meeting room! But equally, how I cringe to imagine what was going on in their heads as they pondered the various titbits of inappropriate knowledge they had of each other...
A lesson perhaps in learning to keep my mouth shut. Either that, or an indication that I need to widen my search criteria and stop going out with men who end up in the same world as one another.
Either way, I smell trouble again at aforementioned Glastonbury. So far I know of three former/semi-current beloveds who plan to be there too. Well if nothing else it will add a certain frisson to the proceedings...
I've got a ticket for Glastonbury! Although my ear is still ringing from hearing the engaged tone solidly from 9 to 11.30 this morning, it was thanks to others efforts that I am now (and I cringe to confess this) going to a festival for the first time in my life.
(well, unless Port Eliot litfest counts, which I'm not sure it does - fantastic and wonderful as it was, it involved better showers than I have in my flat, and at least half the people there had kids of the cute middle-class kind.)
I've just never quite got round to it before, not really sure why. I do remember having a row with my mum when I was 15 and miserable about not being allowed to go to Reading 'in case I got crushed' (??). And I guess I spent quite a lot of my twenties (a) with people who thought camping/music stuff was notso hotso and (b) making paltry excuses based on having too much work. Whatever! This year is different. Give me mud and booze and music, I'm ready (just don't ask me to share my tent)...
I'm not a big fan of guts as a look, but today I've been pondering on why it is exactly that me and my beautiful amazing girlfriends put up with so much crap from loser men. What happens in our head? Why, when they are behaving badly, do we try to understand, to explain it away, to even get excited about the idea of possibly 'saving' this poor thing who's claiming to be afraid, or confused, or whatever other paltry excuse they've come up with for their crappy behaviour?
Whatever, I'm really sick of gutless men. I'm sick of men too scared (oooo!) to ask 'why not?' instead of 'why'. I'm sick of dumbing down so that they don't get put off by half a brain. I'm sick of doing all the work to put people at ease. I'm sick of people who don't think they have a responsibility for their behaviour, it's just not ok (especially at notquitethirty) to blame all your problems and fuck ups on your parents. Get over it boy! - it's your life now, so what are you gonna do with it?
I like complicated people who don't just want the easy life but really, do they all have to be mentalists too? Someone suggested to me today that the solution to my quandary is to look out for older men who've been able to afford therapy to sort themselves out. It's a creative solution, but I like it. So if you see me hanging around outside the Institute for Psychoanalysis, you'll know why...
I spent £30 in M&S today. What on? Not packets of pomegranate seeds. Not ready-washed rocket. Not several packets of their extortionate steaks. No. Tights. Yes, tights, I said.
No one ever told me how expensive it is to do the bare minimum necessary to keep up the appearance of being a woman. I mean I could go for the obvious moan about tampons but i don't want to encourage all those men out there to think they've got a clever answer ('what about razor blades huh?' - well honey if you think women don't need razor blades too, think again). Frankly it annoys me to have to spend so much on tights. Especially as I appear to have a peculiar ability to make a hole in mine within a day of wearing them (what IS wrong with the heel of my right foot??)
Actually more generally, while I'm on this theme, I hate feet, especially mine, but also in general. The best play I ever saw was a Knee High production of The Red Shoes. It's all about a girl who buys some shoes with her grandmother's hard-earned money, and when she puts them on she finds she can't stop dancing - and that she can't take them off. Eventually (look away now if you don't want to know the gruesome end) she persuades a carpenter to chop her feet, and shoes, off. I almost envied her. A life without feet sounds like a good one to me. Except that if you chop your feet off - and this really troubles me - would the stumps of your legs start to resemble horrible feet? Perhaps there is no escape. Perhaps I should think less hard about this.
I hate the Today programme. Really I do. So why oh why oh why have I listened to it every day (including most Saturdays) for the last 8 years??? This really is something of a mystery to me. There are only two (semi) rational explanations: (1) it makes me so cross that it wakes me up enough to drag me out of bed and (2) there are NO OTHER OPTIONS. As I felt the urge to type in capitals I realise the second explanation is more likely.
The most recent source of anger for the programme's shitness is a report on yesterday's programme on the high pregnancy and abortion rate amongst Polish immigrants. I couldn't believe the utter failure to recognise the parallels between this story ('Polish women sleep with our men! Then they use our health services! shock! horror! the wrong people are breeding!') and the fears about working class fertility that kicked Marie Stopes into advocating birth control - oh yes and eugenics - nearly a century ago. It was like Today was tapping into this powerful fear of women's reproductive power, a fear of uneven birth rates and immigration. I guess it's a pretty potent combination but really, is there NO ONE with any interest in what might lie behind these figures who works for the programme?
Leaving aside the fact that apparently most of its listeners are reactionary bigots themselves (for god's sake, the 'Radio 4 law' was to legalise gun ownership for the protection of our properties!), for me this Polish Women Get Pregnant story simply reinforced, yet AGAIN, the utter prejudice and crassness of the programme and the narrow-mindedness of the presenters. Unable to see nuance, unable to recognise complexity or indeed demonstrate any grasp of real life as the rest of us experience it. The utter opposite of good current affairs journalism in my view, which ought to be about making complicated issues understandable, rather than simplistic. Don't patronise me John Humphrys, you wanker. Learn a lesson from that amazing Newsnight when Martha Kearny followed Jack Straw for a week. Now that's proof that journalism can make people want to vote, rather than turning them off from it (and while I'm on this, what the hell was the BBC doing when they appointed spekky thinktank boy Nick Robinson over marvellous Martha as their political editor?)
Anyway. Back to the rant about the Today programme. Don't even get me started on the fucking schmaltzy-as-hell pieces about birds and wildlife. They make me want to puke, almost as much as the 'take me back to 1950' thought for the day from religious nut-nuts. Give me a break. Why hasn't anyone realised there isn't just a gap in the market for a decent current affairs morning programme, there's a bloody gaping void?
This picture here is my new oyster card holder. Loving it. I went to see Dragonette for the second time last week and am convinced they are the best band out there at the moment. Hot singer, with her hot husband on the bass. Very sexy music, and she looked incredible in a jacket, a quiff and fishnets. A look I might try in my day job...
Other bands that are in my good books at the moment: The Sounds, Gossip (what's not to like??), Imogen Heap (some of it's a bit Dido but Hide and Seek is gorgeous), Kate Nash, Metronomy, CSS (going to see them next month), Regina Spektor, Deluka. These have been my soundtracks over the last couple of months.
I find that certain tunes are hardwired to particular moments in time: music is definitely more evocative than smells or photos for me. I'll never forget one memorable conversation at university about the music people had lost their virginity to (can you remember?) The winner was Mr R, with a live recording of John Coltrane playing Naima. We were all impressed by that. Smooth move sir. More innocently, I'll remember Hey as the song I first recall flirting to - this makes me sound cooler than I was; Santana's version of Black Magic Woman being the soundtrack to my first kiss, Ms Dyn-a-mit-he-he-he as the song where I fell in love most recently - not exactly an obvious choice, I know; Crazy as the song that came on (it was almost spooky) both times I was breaking up with people last year - thanks Gnarls for that.
And then there's the hilarious Joe Satriani guitar wank that G and I thought was so cool when we were 14 and on our first parent-free holiday - interspered with the more socially acceptable album Blue by Joni Mitchell. There's Remember Me and He's on the Phone that characterised the gin-fuelled second term of my first year at university. I got really bored dancing to Lust for Life at various rubbish clubs in London and Oxford. Erykah Badu reminds me of being confused and revising a lot. Loop Guru and Portishead are like distant memories through a slightly dope-induced haze. The Cardigans before they got rockier, Orbital and the Beastie Boys were what I drove to as a 17 year old discovering the joys of not relying on parents for lifts.
Could go on but it might get embarrassing... whatever, thank you Apple for giving me joy through my ipod, thank you myspace for reopening a whole world of music for me, and thank you job that requires two hours of sitting on a train each day and passing the time by listening to such talent. I bet every other passenger is glad I've just bought some of those sound-absorbing headphones.
Today I came across an artist whose chosen muse is women's lists. Clearly they are the latest artform - I'm inclined to agree as I love lists, really I do. My first memory of them was less positive - a dear friend boasting of her list of over 100 'boyfriends', including BA from the A-team. We were 8 at the time and I recall we disagreed profoundly over her definition of boyfriend... some things never change... However I just can't get enough of them these days (lists, not boys). I have lists for everything. Music to buy (currently pending: Kubicheck!, Maximo Park, the latest Air album - always useful - a slightly random selection I know but I've been doing quite well at keeping up recently). Things to see - films, theatre, exhibitions. I've really failed this month - still to do (and I'm going on holiday in two days) include the Gilbert and George exhibition, Climates, the fashion exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, After the Wedding, Hogarth - argh I am so annoyed that I haven't managed any of these. 
