Commentary

I am new to having my own blog, although I have been reading other people blogs for ages so you’d think I’d have picked up a few tricks along the way. It seems to me that comments are a blessing and a curse. Like a site meter – the crack cocaine of blogging.

Troubled Diva has written about comment box etiquette, namely should you reply to the comment of new commenter as a matter of comment courtesy. You should go and read it, if you haven’t already. I nearly left a comment but then I was sore afraid, cracked under the pressure and ran away making that funny noise I make sometimes.

Someone once moaned because I didn’t reply to their comment and I told them that I don’t really have a policy of replying to them and please could they not give me a hard time because I had a hangover and felt fragile. I often don’t reply because I have very witty and amusing readers and the comment is too damn funny and to reply would be to invite humiliation. Also, I suspect I know most of the people who leave comments for me. I dread welcoming a new commenter and then, a couple of minutes later, hearing a snort of derision from the other end of the office.

Leaving comments is, apparently, a great way for a new blogger to get visitors. It’s practically the number one helpful hint you get when you start out. I think this is called whoring, but I might have gotten confused about that. I imagine the best place to whore yourself about is a good blog that you like reading; a busy one that gets a lot of visitors (who aren’t all good friends of the blogger).

But I think that those established bloggers are scary. Particularly if they are very, very good and have lots of readers and go on the radio. For example. It reminds me of those terrible days at school when I would follow my Dad’s ‘advice’ and introduce myself to some new kids in a futile attempt to make some friends. Invariably, they would look at me for a long, long time and then laugh and point, laugh and point and then laugh some more. So I often click on the leave-a-comment-link and hover over my keyboard and then bottle it. Particularly if there’s an enormous chain of witty, insightful comments from people I’ve actually heard of.

It’s like being in the ladies at China White and not daring to come out of the cubicle because two members of Girls Aloud and the sex slave trafficker one from Bad Girls are trowelling on their makeup at the mirror. Except with more class and better grammar.

Although I’m not speaking from experience, and I did leave a comment at the fabulous Naked Blog, mostly because I got two thousand times more hits than I usually get because [*presumption use of first name alert*] Peter mentioned me on his blog and I was giddy with joy. He did reply to my inane comment and I actually fell over. I sustained some mild chaffing to my elbow but was otherwise unscathed, thank you for asking.

What was my point? Oh yes; I’m too chicken to leave comments most of the time so if I do and I get a ‘hello and welcome’ it’s like the opposite of stealing my lunch money and ripping the badge of my blazer. But your comments box is not all about me, right? My comments box is all about me.

Leave me a comment now or I will be sad.

That dragonfly story

The other morning I was walking up to the little roundabout at the top of Park Avenue North, you know the one – just at the entrance to the park up from the clubhouse – not St Paul’s Avenue at all. It was a lovely day and I had taken my cardigan off to better enjoy the pleasant morning sunshine. In the park, just a short hop over the traffic island across the road, joggers and dog walkers were staggering and strolling through the sunshine and shadows. A pity to spoil such a day with a trip to the office, but there you are.

I could hear a sound, like a distant motorbike so I slowed to look both ways. There was no motorbike. I looked up to cross the road safely. Then I saw it.

It was enormous.

It was coming straight for me.

It was obviously a giant killer dragonfly as normal dragonflies don’t have bodies the size footballs and the wing span of a light aircraft. It was olive green in colour, as though it were wearing camouflage gear, and in the time it took me to make these brief observations it had surged closer, in a head on attack.

I stopped and did the sidewalk shimmy. The one I do when approaching I’m someone else on the pavement and I don’t know which way they’re going to move and don’t want to bump into them. In case I catch something. The giant killer dragonfly just adjusted it flight path and headed straight for me.

Five seconds till impact.

Four seconds till impact.

Three seconds till impact.

I hit the ground, my bag spilling, keys tumbling into the gutter. It was still coming for me.

Two seconds till impact.

One second till impact.

...

And then it had gone.

Now, there are two possibilities here:

1. I hallucinated a giant killer dragonfly and over ten assorted joggers and dog walkers saw me hurl myself on to the pavement for no reason at all and lie there flapping my limbs and gums for a minute and a half.

2. A giant killer dragonfly has entered my body somehow and is still inside me buzzing around and around, getting the way of all my major organs preventing them from functioning correctly and working it’s evil metamorphosing power over my feeble human form and then slowly so no one will notice or possibly care I shall become iller and iller and iller until one day I try to get out of bed and find that my legs have joined together in a hideous scaly dragonfly abdomen and my arms have become long wings made of razor wire and I shall be a giant killer dragonfly then and be overcome with the terrible terrible urge to eat my family without favva beans or chianti, fine or otherwise.

Either are too awful to contemplate.

The big dragonfly tease

In lieu of the dragonfly story, here is an mp3 of a song Banksy put on those doctored Paris Hilton CDs. You know all about that right? (via kottke)

Verily, it is thusly

So. In summary:

The good
My daughter continues to be quite the most remarkable human being I have ever come across. She is making a great new noise which is virtually impossible to spell but goes something like 'Waaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhoouu uuuuuuuuuummmmmmaaaaaaahhhhhhhoouuuuuu.’ She can sustain it for ages so must have great big lungs, although from the outside her chest cavity appears to be of a normal size.

I can only think of one bad thing and one ugly thing (see below).

Work is not tooooo noxious; an unusual turn of event particularly given it being shit-missed-deadlines-by-days-for-no-good-reason time of the month. My ‘boss’ is on holiday, but I don’t think that has anything to do with it. Much. At all. Oh, okay.

Autumn is almost upon us. I love the autumn, it's much better than that summer nonsense we have to put up with. Specifically, I love days like last Wednesday which, if you recall, was an exemplary example of autumnal fabulousness. Crisp and fresh. Bright sun, sharp shadows. My carbon footprint is tiny tiny, you know. Stop global warming.

I made a spectacular bean curry yesterday and there’s enough left over to feed the entire North Korean army so I’m in for an easy time making the dinner tonight. I’m in charge of the cooking in my house, you see. Scary but true.

It’s Friday. I think that one’s clear, yes?

The bad
My Camper Wabis have finally broken. It's awful - I love them so. The rubber outer shoe is cracked and letting in water. Cricklewood Braodway water too. Shudder. I made the mistake of pulling the orange liner out yesterday and, not to put too fine a point on it, it stank to high heaven of damp foliage. Exactly the way the organic recycling box smelt when I forgot to put it out and it went all warm. The coco foot bed, or whatever is, is almost totally ripped away from the rest of the sock. It was also caked in all sorts of detritus from Gladstone Park and environs. I wondered why they were so uncomfortable. Although I am wearing them as I write this. Poverty ditactes, poor me. Also, please note I have had them long enough to wear them out completely so I’m not one of those evil Queens -park-dwelling-fashion-victim-media-whore-croc-wearing-fly-by-nights.

The ugly
I had a small debate with Cheesy Q which turned a little (okay, a lot) toxic about why I suddenly have a blog given that ‘blogging is so ovah, moron’. Apparently, 'because I want one’ is not an adequate reason and I should have a different, better reason like ‘because I want to be famous like all those other bloggers that were on the radio’ or ‘because I have an ego the size of a planet’. What? The Qs argument fell apart on grounds of logic and basic humanity later in the exchange and I showed no mercy. Let that be a lesson to all and sundry. I shall do as I like. So there.

Right, enough random drivel. Come back for the next installment when I will tell about you all about my encounter with the suicidal giant dragonfly at the top of St Paul Avenue, London, NW2. Heady stuff.

Au revoir.

I wrote this post. Myself.

Just when I thought popbitch had gone a bit stale and, besides, was beneath someone with my parental responsibilities they rock up with this awesome blind item:

Which trendy novelist's last two books are rumoured to have been ghost-written?

Please, please, please let it be true and let it be you know who. I’ve crossed my fingers so hard I think the index one snapped.

I’m too scared to look.

A Surfeit of Squirrels (8)

Me: What are you doing? (pause) Hey, I said what are you all doing? What’s with the placards and banners?
Squirrel: We are protesting.
Me: What about?
Squirrel: You.
Me: Me?
Squirrel 1: Yeah, you.
Me: Why?
Squirrel 2: Because of your stupid blog.
Me: What about it?
Squirrel 3: Read the banner. Just read the banner.
Me: ‘ Blog more squirels stuff.’ You know you’ve spelt squirrel wrong.
Squirrel 4: You can’t even spell stupid. That’s how stupid you are, ctupid. Ctupid, ctupid. And it was in the title.
Squirrel 5: You've posted loads and not one thing about us. What about us, man. You're only where you are because of us. We made you, and we can break you as well.
Me: I’ve never seen you guys like this before. You’re actually…upset. Rather than just scary and angry.
Squirrel 4: Yeah whatever. Stupid ctupid blog.
Squirrels: Blog more squirels stuff, blog more squirels stuff, blog more squirels stuff, blog more squirels stuff.
Me: Hey, come on. Don’t be like that. I’ll blog some squirrel stuff.
Squirrel 2: You better. ‘Cause if you don’t we’ll tell the Sweeney about the Prime Minister.
Me: You did it, not me.
Squirrel 2: He’s in the boot of your car though, ain’t he? There’s nothing to tie us to the scene of the crime.
Me: I think I liked it better when you were marching and chanting.
Squirrel 2: Get blogging, lanky.

(pause)

Bastard: Madame Froosh? I don’t think your blog is stupid.
Me: Thank you, Bastard. You’re very kind.
Bastard: Give us a kiss then.

(pause)

Me: Ew.

Random question

So. Who is funnier?

Darth Vader or David Cameron?

David or Darth, David or Darth? Come on, it's easy.

You got here how?

I have a little notepad document called blog (I know, boundless imagination) and in this I put all the things I think I would like to blog about and then can’t be bothered, or forget about or think better of. I like the notepad action because all the other facilities designed to do this are too exciting and I get distracted by all the pretty colours and things to click.

I like to have a little look through blog.txt periodically for ‘inspiration’. I was scrolling through it going ‘oh, that would have been good,’ or ‘oh, I remember that,’ or ‘damn, should have written about that’ and then I came across this:

picture genitalia hanging on clothesline art

Huh?

Almost worth an exclamation mark, I thought.

I pondered this for a while then remembered; someone googled this and arrived here. How bizarre. I’ve never mentioned a washing line never mind engaged in the kind of strange, possibly sordid activity they suggest. I’m too scared to look at the results and see what else is there.

I hope they are not one of my (two? three?) regular readers. How embarrassing. Which one is it? It’s worse than a sex blog or something. When they visit I’ll be all shy and unable to look them in the face. Perverts.

Anyway, the very moment I have finished with this I’m going to open my little notepad page and write ‘Dessert Allsorts’. Because I have got a bag to sample and I will be blogging my verdict if a) I remember and b) they are interesting enough to have a verdict about. They might be a bit ‘meh’. Fingers crossed gentle reader, fingers crossed.

Update (15:22): They are horrible. Horrible to the point where I would described them as evil. Particularly the strawberry pie and strawberry cheesecake ones. Vomitous. I am outraged. Mind you, the smell that greets you as you open the bag is a bit of a giveway. Sadly, I can't think of the words to describe it - only noises I don't know how to spell. That's all. I thank you.

Stupid view, stupid crane

I used to live on the sixth floor of a 1930’s block of flats in Cricklewood with views across Gladstone Park to Wembley and beyond. It was a nice flat until it got infested by bedbugs then it was evil. I’m saving the bed bugs story for another time when the huge team of therapists and witch doctors in charge of my recovery say I’m beginning to get over the horrific trauma of the experience. Sometime in 2189, they reckon.

When we moved into said flat The Fat Marmoset told us that we would have excellent views of the new Wembley Stadium. Sure enough the stadium slowly grew up and up above the treetops and we had a great view. I waited with rapt anticipation for the arch to appear. Then one day I noticed a long crane. It was a very long crane indeed. The longest crane I had ever seen.

‘Oh, hoorah,’ I said to everyone. ‘Soon they will put up the arch and we will have a marvellous view and be the envy of everyone. Hoorah. Hoorah.’

Then one evening I was on the 266 bus and looking down a road from the top deck I noticed a new addition to the skyline over Wembley.

They had put up the arch.

Apparently it had been up for ages.

We had, in fact, an excellent view of the side of the arch. Being exactly perpendicular to it we saw only a tall crane-like structure reaching above north west London.

And this is the kind of thing that happens to me all the time. If only we lived at the top of the hill in Roundwood Park – we’d then have this view:

But then we would have to live an a tent I expect, and the Froosh does not do the camping. No way.

Not a book review (mighty long though)

I’ve taken the risky step of re-reading a book I loved when I was young and innocent and had hopes for my future. Always a very dangerous thing to do. What would happen if I didn’t like it? Would that mean that all the other books liked then are also rubbish? Would it mean that my taste is a fickle, fickle thing and not to be trusted? Or that when I was a teenager I was a complete muppet? The very thought.

I warmed up for this epic endeavour with a re-read of Sarah Waters’ Affinity which I didn’t like too much the first time round because the end is like being smacked very very hard in the face with a gravel encrusted shovel. And not in a nice way, like the twist halfway through Fingersmith, either. Affinity is a little less painful the second time round, but then most things are.

I’m supposed to be struggling through The Bullet Trick by Louise Welsh and I’m not enjoying it so much that I’m prepared to fully commit to it, but I’m not hating so much that I can dump it and walk away feigning indifference and swearing never to return its calls. So, I’ve put it to one side for a bit...

..And picked up the book in question: Hemingway’s The Garden of Eden. I had to go and buy myself another copy because I lent my careworn original to someone and can’t remember who. I do remember being almost violent in my recommendation of it so they probably took it away from me for my own good.

I first read it when I was about 17. Mainly (by this I mean solely) because it had the words ‘…a young husband and wife who both fall in love with the same woman…’ and when you’re 17 and live in a small village outside a claustrophobic, hicky little town people pass at speed on the M1 those words are rarely found on the back of a book in WHSmiths and therefore to be pounced upon.

So, the other evening I sat myself down, on the floor, in a semi darkened room and tentatively read the first couple of pages. Then I had a glass of wine. I read on. It’s still good.

The relief.

Hemingway worked on it whenever the mood took him (I know that feeling) between 1946 and 1961. I’m sure he would have liked to have worked on it more but he died. Nice excuse Ernesto. So, it’s not finished which lends it a kind of ambiguity that really suits the book. There’s also some controversy about the extent to which is it actually a Hemingway novel, given that the original manuscript was over 1,500 pages long and the book in my hands only has 247 pages, all of them soiled by the publisher’s blue pen. Again, this really works for me. It’s very rough and very lean. It was finally published in 1986, provoking a frenzy of sorts.

There's also a funny story about him appearing with his hair dyed red whilst he was writing it. Just for a couple of days, you understand. He tried it. He didn't like it. Fair enough.

I like to think I am ambivalent about Hemingway, him being so macho and abusive and all, and then I think about what he wrote and find myself going ‘yeah, I like that’ and ‘oh, yes, that’s good too.’ Also, Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises has the most fantastic paragraph in it:

‘The fiesta was really started. It kept up day and night for seven days. The dancing kept up, the drinking kept up, the noise went on. The things that happened could only have happened during the fiesta. Everything became quite unreal finally and it seemed as though nothing could have any consequences. It seemed out of place to think of consequences during the fiesta. All during the fiesta you had the feeling, even when it was quiet, that you had to shout any remark to make it heard. It was the same feeling for any action. It was the fiesta and it was on for seven days.’

I’m also a little in love with Lady Brett Ashley. A little. Who am I kidding?

Little baby tree hugger

My daughter, who is now 15 weeks old or three months and a bit in old money, is obsessed with trees. Her granny said that 'most babies usually are'. Stupid granny. If she carries on like that she will never be called grandma, no matter how much she hates being called granny. As if my daughter does anything usual – she only does incredibly gifted or stupendously talented. Obviously.

We took her, daughter not granny, to Roundwood Park at the weekend and she gazed up at one tree for ages. She is particularly fond of oak trees for some reason. So, I took a picture of it for her. This was a complicated procedure which involved lying on the ground exactly where she had been in her buggy to get the view right, then wrestling with my conscience to reconcile aesthetic sense with parental responsibility. Neither won in the end – as you can tell from the photo.

Yesterday, she was very unsettled and as it was pouring with rain and we couldn’t go in the garden to look at the real trees, I whipped out the photo.

I spent twenty whole minutes wafting the photo as if in a restful breeze and making a remarkably realistic noise like said breeze rustling leaves peacefully. Nothing. No content sighs, no smiles, no falling asleep. At least there was no grizzling, but still. She’s a tough crowd; my kid.

Then I cracked and went; ‘brrrrrrrr’. With extra spittle and everything.

And for the first time she did it back. (I’d put an exclamation mark here if I weren’t so pathologically opposed to them – imagine one if you like.)

I have not been so excited since she passed her linking ring from one hand to the other and shoved it in her mouth.

‘Well,’ said the Divinity watching from the sofa and being no help. ‘You can certainly tell she’s your daughter.’

‘BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR,’ we said.

But she merely smirked.

Smoking, it's bad for y'all, y'all.

Heaven help us all. Trugnugget is giving up smoking. You wouldn’t believe the tantrums. Poor chap is trying all the possibilities. Patches, gum, those funny stick things that look alarmingly like tampon applicators. Sadly, he was using them all at once to speed his kicking the habit– no surprise then when he experienced a tragic nicotine overdose and vomited. He really is quite quite stupid.

I, myself, “gave up smoking” a couple of years ago, (three was it? Can’t remember*) and didn’t use any crutches at all. Just stopped puffing on the old cancer sticks.

I did however find this tally very useful (scroll down almost to the bottom, it’s on the right). I think it the combination of seeing his numbers going up on naked blog, seeing the boggling saving of stopping, and knowing that out there someone else is giving up as well.

I have advised Trugnugget of this and I imagine he is there now, huddled shivering and petulant over his PC counting out pennies and other small change trying to count in the right order above 4. It’s 2 then 3, dear Truggers.

Of course, this good news for Trugnugget’s lungs is bad news for me – who shall I drunkenly bum cigarettes off now*, eh? Who?

*I am the worst ex-smoker that ever was. This is no reflection on the naked blog totaliser which remains, along with the rest of the blog, source of inspiration**.

**Is this a bit creepy? Are three links*** in one post too many? I don’t care.

***Four.