I've really made the effort with The Thick of It, but I'm just going to have to accept that it's over between us. You know how it is. You haven't met yet, but you have loads of friends in common, and everyone is all "OMG you two will love each other! You'll get married and have babies. There is no doubt that you were meant to be a couple," and the other person is being told the same thing, and then you meet and both go: "Ah."

And you might have a little dance together, but it's all a bit awkward on both sides and there's the shine in his eye of "dear god, how can I politely extricate myself from this. I wonder if she fancies me? How bad is this going to get?" and it's painfully obvious that you are both thinking the same thing, viz: I love my friends, but they have about as much of a clue about the sort of person I fancy as my gran. And my gran at least has the excuse of being blind and suffering from alzheimer's.

That's how it is with The West Wing. Everyone was like: "woah!" and "you must!" and "Oh, I love it! You'll love it!" And The Thick of It has had precisely the same effect on me as TWW, and for precisely the same reason: viz, lots of serious looking people speaking at one another too quickly, in way too intense a manner, about something I couldn't force myself to give a shit about even if the fate of the entire universe hinged on my so doing. And the camera work is like the time I woke up after surgery, didn't know they'd given me an epidural, swung myself out of bed to toddle off for a wee, and abruptly discovered that my legs were no longer doing any of the things one expects of a leg. Or indeed, of a coordinated pair of same. But the floor, on the other hand, had acquired the ability to move like greased lightning. And who knew hospital floors tasted like that? Mmm. Lino.

It feels like being trapped in an HR meeting. An evil HR meeting with epidurals and ninja lino.

There are things within the space/time continuum which the human mind was not meant to ken. Lovecraftian geometry - the five sided triangle, the inverse ball - which are made of stuff so powerfully opposed to the stuff of which we are made, that any contact with them causes the natural mind to shut down, to tuck in like a hedgehog sensing the approach of a car, to deny, to retreat, to ... well, alright, in my case to doze off.^[1]

I have therefore downloaded a few episodes, as I'm suffering from periodical insomnia at the moment, and five minutes of TToI is more effective for me than 7mgs of Zopiclone.

^[1] Lovecraft was all: "Oh, things beyond your imagination! Elder things! From Without! Ia! Ia! Madness!" The truth is, if a human being saw a thing from beyond their imagination, an Elder thing from Without, human beings would be like: "I think something just happened, but I can't really put my finger on it. I'm going to take a nap, now. And I think I'll have some beans on toast when I wake up. And a nice cup of tea." The point of human beings is that they can only see things from within their imaginations. That's why dark matter is still dark matter. If we had imagined a means of accurately representing it, it would be perfectly visible by now, probably in double page spreads in the Sun, and it would have a far more satisfying name, like "Monty's Dark Quarkeons".

I have a Liberty loyalty card now. It's just like a Boots Advantage card, but for Liberty. WIN. I love shopping in there. It always feels as if you've wandered into someone's house and are going through their things, and the staff are just lovely. However, I draw the line at a purple knitted scarf I was looking at. It was a lovely shade of indigo, and made of nice enough wool, though not the softest I've touched, and it was priced at over £200!

Dude, the only way I'd pay £200 for a knitted purple scarf is if it was actually made of yarn spun from the pubes of phoenixes.

Please feel free to enjoy these pictures of a heron, on my neighbour's roof.

Oh my totally trousertastic god! I made trousers! And what's more, I was expecting to be distinctly underwhelmed by them, and I'm not! I think they're fricken great! I am soooo astonished!

The only thing I've sewn on a machine before is a pair of pants and one fold over cushion cover, and the cushion cover doesn't even count because a monkey could do that. So it turns out I'm ok at this. Balls to you all, clothing manufacturers! I shall not darken your tedious doors again!

Except for suits. There is no such dress code as "business eccentric". Yet.

A general impression:



Mit BOOTS:



Concealed zip! And plaid alignment! The blue threads disappear completely under electric light, but show up nicely in daylight. Please forgive the incongruent top - I was too excited to change into something that actually, yanno, went:

Blimey, I've cut out my tweed trou and pinned them, and they actually look exactly like trousers. Which is:

a) surprising, to me; and
b) what I intended, which makes it all the more surprising.

Obv there is many a slip twixt hem and hip with this sort of thing, so there's still plenty of room for me to come out of this with three legs and an unexpected arse-hoodie, but for now, hurrah!

One thing I thought about, but hadn't budgeted for how fiddly it would be, was making sure the tweed matches, front and back leg^[1], and - you know - left and right leg. I did it by pinning the layers of tweed together on the intersections of the plaid all over the length of each leg before I cut, and it seems to have worked reasonably well.

I hate poorly matched plaid on trouser seams.

Unfortunately, I have now run out of eyesight and must stop.

^[1] I should clarify: I am not a centaur and only have two legs, usually. What I mean to say is: "the pattern on the front of the leg should match with the pattern on the back", rather than "I need my amazing four-legged trousers to have matching patterns on both my front and back legs."

I have a lot of things to do, a cold, and a lot of things to do. Did I mention the things, and that there are a lot of them, and that I must do them? And the cold?

*a-chooo*

Still, on the plus side, I continue to feel enormously jolly. I have now felt enormously jolly for
nearly three weeks, without a break.

I like this new life. I am filled with tenderly rambunctious affection for ... well, everything, really. Even squirrels. Were you here, I would take your face softly in my hands and rain highly annoying kisses on you, so I would.

And you would hit me and say "get off, you weirdo, everyone's looking!"

That is how jolly I feel.

CLASS.

***

How very sweet some people are - the chap with the Liberty bow-tie I met at last week's wedding has somehow wrested my home address from the famille, and has sent me an absolutely dear card with a drawing of a brown hare on it. I am deeply charmed.

I've got a heart made of tinsel and frost, haws, magpies and the dipping sun, today.

There is frost on the grass and the roofs and I was out first thing in the cold, in my old kimono and sheepskin boots, watching my breath condense on the furry brown antlers of the sumac, smelling the sun.

Something is coming. My life's changing again. My pants have a seat, a sturdy, well-rigged seat that I handle well. I'm compelled to turn it into the wind again. There are words I haven't said, a kiss I haven't had yet, parties to be thrown, oysters slumbering on the sea bed that are destined for my throat. And all these things gild every moment with anticipation, make every door a gap into another world. I could be one of those people who have to go through life enjoying the stuff other people have imagined for them, like a package tourist who only gets to go on the excursions they've paid for.

But that's not how it is.

Bloody hell - my horoscope isn't messing about tonight:

Sagittarius, Tuesday, 1 December 2009
The best times of your life lie ahead of you. No matter what you have done in your life so far, you are going to like your future and all that it brings. Think of the happiest time that you have ever had. The best experiences. The most magical moments. Good though these once were, there are even brighter, better times ahead. You doubt that? You suspect that nothing can surpass a wonderful memory? Or you suspect that it is too late now to expect much joy? Prepare to make a most inspiring discovery.

Alright, baby. I'm ready. :)

Poll #1492424
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 26

Am I coming down with a cold?

SEVEN dreamers.

o_o

***

Took some casserole I'd made for Dad up to him, yesterday. He's been out of sorts and I think the company probably meant more to him than the grub (though, if I say so myself, it is a demn fine casserole). Anyway, it was a lovely visit. On the way back, a man got onto the train with an electric violin. Very exciting looking instrument. He proceeded to knock out something by Schubert and the first two movements of Vivaldi's Four Seasons - classical pop, but he made a nice job of it and people genuinely enjoyed listening and applauded him at the end of each piece. I was watching him play. He had these big, entirely filthy hands - not hands you'd look at and go "Oh, that fellow's a violinist, for sure!", but just big ordinary hands, and yet they did such fast, delicate work. His bow was completely fucked. He had obviously fallen on hard times, and I wondered what his story was. By the time he left he had upwards of sixteen quid in his hat and a lot of good karma points. Not bad!

It was a magic weekend. A.M Anarchy's 40th birthday bash - catching up with people I haven't seen for a year; seeing Daddy was nice; plotting with J and M to go up for J's 30th birthday bash next weekend (all the best Sagittarians have landmark birthdays this year); and I did a lot of walking about. It has been an unusually super week.

Just discovered this - the Smithsonian Institute's flickr photostream (!) with tons of pics of black holes, nebulae and so on. Juicy!

Ok, it's up to six.

***

I woke at ten to twelve. Did we all sleep late?

I had been dreaming about rollerblading with a heavily muscled Janet Jackson, at the third trial Chinese wedding. I was trying out different Chinese wedding stagers to see which one was the most magnificent. The third one was, by miles. They'd brought in a long manufactured lake with leafy islands and bedecked pontoons linked by arched-back bridges, herons standing in the shallows, gold lanterns and red silk streamers, cake, people in uniform, enormous pierced jade balls of astonishing delicacy, and there were tons of people dressed a bit like hopping vampires, running around with bao and cakes and wotnot.

My subconscious knows how to throw a hell of a party.

Ok. I have now featured in FIVE people's dreams. I really like the idea that there's a subliminal me, going around and invading your heads at whim, having strangely chaste sex in the bath with you, working with you and kicking ass, or throwing fabulous parties! Subliminal me is a lot cooler than real me. I am in favour of all this.

Had a lovely night. Coming back along Mortimer Street / Goodge Street, where I used to work and where my XH and I used to sneak off for drinks togehter at lunchtime because he worked over in Cavendish Square. What was Nice Irmas is now re-zoned as a pizza place. The world's best greasy spoon is now a "sushi/fusion" bar; and the cheese shop you had to cross the street to pass in the summer is gone completely. On the train, there was a gaggle of 20-somethings on the tube all dressed up for an 80s night. And Trio's "Da Da Da" comes on my iPod and I suddenly had one of those moments where you feel all happily smug and cognoscenti-y, because that track - any 80s track - for me feels as fresh as those little green leaves you find curled all innocent inside a cauliflower before you cut it. The ones that have never seen sunlight yet, and that squeak when you snap them.

Out of the train like I used to: like a greyhound from a trap, picked the right doors to get up the stairs ahead of the crowd which means I can see all the adverts on the walls instead of having to catch snatches of them between other people's bags and coats and build an understanding of each one in instalments. Up the escalator without breaking stride. All that walking's paying dividends.

I don't know if I get a week like this, or if this is the last day for a month or three. It doesn't matter. For one day I get to hit my normal pace. It's good enough.

I love my new shoes. I love my new shoes. *heavy breathing* I LOVE MY NEW SHOES. I LOVE MY NEW SHOES.

***

Ok: I declare an amnesty. How many of y'all are dreaming about me? Eh? Come on, out with it. I've had three people admit as much in the last 36 hours, two directly to me and one anonymously on someone else's LJ.

It's the wind. It gets inside your head on these cold nights, and you end up dreaming someone else's dreams, stuff that's blown in from the north. There are polar bears up there right now who are normally plagued by terrible nightmares of me, who are currently dreaming about toucans and half coconuts full of punch with tiny umbrellas sticking out of the top. I blame climate change.

Anyway, if you must dream about me, please make it something insanely exciting, involving - oh, I don't know - dinosaurs! Aston Martins! Giant diamonds! Undersea robots! And a very intelligent sidekick parrot! Ok?

Good.

***

I just had one of those very specifically London un-language exchanges with my local shopkeep:

Him: Ayyy!
Me: Hooo!
Him: Fnuh?
Me: Eh ... *flaps hand*
Him: Ah!
Me: Ta.

***

There is a very small mostly-grey cat mostly stuffed up my left trouserleg. She crawled up there while I was writing this. She isn't moving, and her toenails are digging uncomfortably into the arch of my foot, but this is perfectly offset by the feeling of her warm tummy pressed against the inside of my ankle, which is almost unbearably pleasant and makes me want to bite something.

I keep doing that thing where you half write a post and then realise you're doing it out of some sort of internet-related Brownian motion, and therefore delete it for the vacuous pile of pap it is. I don't actually have anything to say. Sometimes I have periods where I have nothing to say because I am sad or struggling under one of those vast stones that rain down on you when your world collapses. But sometimes I have nothing to say because things are going well, I'm busy, and there simply isn't enough time to do Life and The Internet, so I - yanno - choose life.

And mostly, things are great. But they're not very reportable. I'm managing to work really well, and I'm enjoying it. I'm managing to do my walking, and I love it. I'm managing to see people a bit without paying a ridiculous price for it, and that's beautiful, but I can't tell yet whether it's a ten day blip on the radar, or a positive sign. Early days.

Poll #1491189
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 47

Also: is everyone having weird dreams at the moment?

What happens long term if Dubai goes bust, then? I mean, aside from a lot of cheap high-end German cars (one careful owner!) and some unexpected future-archaeology in Dubai?

And is it linked to Borders going bust? I dono, I take my finger off the pulse of the markets for a mere three years and it all goes to shit.

The Eye of Sourpuss turns on women's trousers. Who do you have to fuck to get a good pair of women's trousers in anything other than some variant of black, grey or - in the really avant garde establishments - navy blue? It's nutty. It's as if I've been sentenced to live my life in some sort of nether region purgatory.

I am a London girl. Born and raised proud middle class during the punk era. It's in my jeans. I like a spanky trouser, something with some colour, a stripe, a check, someone's eyeliner smeared on the knee and blood in the turn-ups: as I enter adulthood I put away childish things (I say "away", I mean "I wear them slightly less often, or by request"), and what happens is that the trad punk check naturally mutates into a piece of right lary tweed. If you don't believe me, check out Johnny, who is getting that right, if little else.

So out I go, looking for the very thing. And all I find, wall to wall, is tailoring in black, grey or navy; or jeans, which I consider - with rare exceptions - to be garments fit for gardening in and little else.

Oh, you can buy some stuff with some spunk in its soul, alright! Checks and stripes! Full size toucans holding hibiscuses in their beaks! As many colours as you can shake a stick at! But to wear them you have to be prepared to put up with elastic waists and legs pegged in tight at the ankle, for these are Trousers For The Old, and they are designed with the dual intent of making the slow-moving elderly not only visible to, but frightening to traffic; and for preventing their colostomy bags from migrating into their socks.

No, it's no good.

Broken-spirited, I concluded that there was nothing for it but to make some myself, and walked to Lewisham to check out the fabric shop there. I've only really seen the shop from behind as I've whizzed past on the bus. From the vantage point afforded on the lower deck of a number 75, the shop consists of a window filled with rolls of faux fur in lurid colours, stacked floor to ceiling. It's not going to be any good, is it? And it's in Lewisham. You'll have to forgive me if my expectations were for a place laden with half-unravelled spandex in an assortment of colours and prints not seen elsewhere since they were condemned by the government in 1982: and no doubt the lot would be in odd sizes and shapes with nary a 90° corner or natural fibre in the place.

Well words, I eat you. I was wrong. What an Aladdin's cave! Damn it all, the place not only had tweed, it had the precise tweed I wanted. Proper wool. And less than a fiver a metre, when I've seen the same stuff on sale in all those weird posh-Scottish shops that start "House of -" for upwards of £40 a pop. They have every fabric known to man.

I shall have trousers of joy. After just two or three tries. Probably. :)

Look, I'm just saying: I can't be the only person who occasionally finds themselves hankering for a banjo version of "Another One Bites the Dust".