The goose is getting fat...

...despite the fact this is the least Christmassy start to a festive period ever. It is sunny here in London - the leaves have fallen, but there has been a noticeable lack of both cold and rain (I have been thinking back, and the last snow of any note I can remember in these here parts was in January 1996 - I have vague recollections of wandering back from a pub in Hampstead to my halls of residence. God, I wonder what my drinking partners that night are doing now?).

The only discernable change has been in the erection of Xmas lights (the Regent Street one shave been sponsored by some dreadful Aardman film, and so have images of animated rats/mice plastered all over them) and a sudden quadrupling of the number of people using (in the loosest sense of the word - is it really so shocking to think that you would need your ticket when you reach the barriers!) Oxford Circus Tube between 10 and 11 in the morning. Although this may also be due to the fact that the Tube, especially in West London, has been generally appalling for the last two weeks. I have 3 Tubelines and 1 rail service to get home. On at least 3 occasions in the last 2 weeks, only the rail service has been running.

Even the singalong carol concert at the Albert Hall is being conducted by a certain Mr Cohen. Amazon are offering cheap everything for Xmas, so you can't even enjoy the threat of impending bankruptcy come Boxing Day. I mean, what is happening to our traditions? Christmas tree (German?), Father Xmas (Dutch/American?) - do we even actually have traditions, or would the British Xmas without foreign influence be as miserable as the Cratchitt's?

Reading List

Gutkin, I. The Cultural Origins of the Socialist Realist Aesthetic 1890-1934

Lovecraft, H.P. The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories

Hames, P. (ed.) The Cinema of Central Europe

Barrows, A. Access 2000 for Windows for Dummies

London Review of Books

Playlist

The Clash - Magnificent Seven Album Version - for balancing the soundsystem for the works Xmas party.

Jamaica's Groove Band - Shaft - a reggae-discotastic cover of the classic Isaac Hayes' track.

The Casualeers - Dance Dance Dance - Northern Soul that makes you do exactly what it says on the tin.

Brenda & The Tabulations - A Little Bit Of Love - a late 70's underground disco classic.

Exuma - Obeah Man - warped minimalist voodoo soul.

Beatfanatic - Jogando Capoeira - searing Brazilian rhythms from Sweden!

Odyssey - Our Lives Are Shaped By What We Love - blissful folk-soul.

Hello again

I have had a cold again. Knocked out for a couple of days and I still don't feel human. I am, however, being drawn towards the conclusion that I must, one day, inevitably get an MP3 player. I have avoided for years. Being an consumate audio-snob (yet lacking the funds to really indulge in the more extravagant end of the market), I have soldiered on with my trusty Minidisc. Even with extended play, the compression does not become too intolerable. MP3s, however, as far as I have been able to tell suffer the worst excesses of distortion throughout the audio spectrum. Bass is heavy, but uncontrolled. The middle is wafer thin, and the high's are thin and harsh - all symptoms of the compression, no doubt. Yet now I feel the urge to just be able to transfer several hundred tracks over with no hassle. Without having to record to Minidisc (in the same way you had to with cassettes). A 4GB MP3 allegedly holds around 1,000 songs - enough for a couple of weeks commuting. So what to do, dear readers? I, like Natalie Imbruglia (only far less attractive or female) am torn...

Pain

I ache. My right wrist is not functioning properly. My thigh has alternated between dull pain and a searing burning sensation all day. What is the cause of this dreadful affliction, I hear you ask... A deadly tropical disease? A genetic defect? No, someting far worse. Manual labour. Not even particularly challenging manual labour - no carrying of heavy objects. Simply painting. Walls and ceilings. With rollers and paintbrushes.

My brother is moving into a new flat that requires redecoration (and cleaning, but that is a separate issue - I am constantly amazed at the filth some people can bear to live in). So I helped for a couple of hours yesterday - painting things white, cutting in, etc... Covered in paint, which proves very difficult to removes when one is as hairy as I. And I repeatedly got paint in my eyes. Water-based, fortunately, as I would imagine that white spirit smarts a little when applied to the eye.

So, after a shower, there is still paint in/on my fingernails, and when I retired to bed last night it was with the weariness of someone removed from the comfort of a computer chair and thrust into the challenging world of movement during work. And fell asleep immediately.

This morning, however, I awoke with the symptoms outlined above. A long hot shower did nothing, and I was very concious of usual 15 minutes walk to the Tube a) taking longer and b) hurting much more than usual.

"The worker of the world has nothing to lose, but their chains, workers of the world unite."
Karl Marx

Action Image Exchange

Reeves & Mortimer circa 1990. Enjoy.

Ginger coos

Find the fifty

scary movies...

At work again

Sundays at work are generally the best day. No phones ringing, far fewer customers than usual. A slightly unusual sense of calm across the shop as a whole. And, more importantly, it allows me the time and freedom to get around to the mindless maintainence tasks that are the bane of the network admin's life. Without having to wait for everyone to leave. The joy of running disk defragmenters. And network traffic tools. And anti-virus scans. Now, if every day could be like this...

Edward Said

wrote a very interesting book called Orientalism. I was reminded of this today as a delightfully middle class woman sought to purchase some Serbian language learning materials to converse with her (soon to be) daughter-in-law's parents. She was to travel to Beograd and stay with them, and was concerned that they would not have a bath or shower, that the food would be terrible and that it would be cold. She also stated that she would buy them a washing machine as these kinds of goods are very hard to come by.

Now, the point of this interlude is to query if (and indeed, how), Western European (especially British) perceptions of the former Soviet Bloc have changed and continue to change following the fall of Communism and the expansion of the EU. I have posted before about the Russian middle classes that have appeared in the last 7-8 years, and I note that many of the Central European nations are now home to shopping centres on an almost American scale. Although the exterior of many building have not changed, the interiors would, I'm sure, shame many inhabitants and businesses of this fair isle. So, as I know at least some of my readers have a wealth of experience in said Mittel-Ost Europa, what do you think?

Kazan was certainly a culture shock to me some 10 years ago now, but Moscow, Piter and Petrozavodsk less so. (Although whether this was due to higher material standards, or due to lower expectations, I don't know). Central Europe is now very much part of Europe - the languages and cultures may change, but Pizza Hut is all pervading, as are Ipods, digital cameras, nice airports, tarmacced roads, washing machines, etc. The notion of the launderette still has to take off, I believe, and takeaways are, I would imagine, lagging slightly behind, but what can you do?

Humour?

The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or the Americans.

On the other hand, the French eat a lot of fat and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or the Americans.

The Japanese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or the Americans.

The Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or the Americans.

Conclusion: Eat and drink whatever you like. It's speaking English that kills you.

I don't know why I do what I do.

If I did know, I probably wouldn't feel the need to do it. All I can say, and I say it with utmost certainty, is that I have felt this need since my earliest adolescence.

The rest of Paul Auster's acceptance speech for the Prince of Asturias Prize for Letters can be read here. There is hope, after all.

No comment

Thanks to toothpastefordinner.com once again for the ideal illustration of my life at present.

The difference between false memories and true ones

is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.

Salvador Dali

12.08 East of Bucharest raises a great many questions about the nature of memory and the different interpretations of a single event from the varying perspectives within and without it. In this case, the flight of the Ceaucescu's in December 1989, and the question(s) of the varying degrees of involvement of individuals in the events in a provincial Romanian town.

I found this particulary interesting, not least because (I thought) the images of the dead President and his wife are one of my clearest memories of the collapse of the Communist regimes, along with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The question, however, for me, at least, is how much of this I have (re)created after the event - in fact, I m no longer even sure that the footage of the two dead bodies actually appeared on British TV, and I can't find a copy on YouTube or anywhere else to check, and even if I did, I couldn't be sure that it wasn't simply fulfilling the expectations I have having read about the footage in a number of other sources.

This period, or rather the UK media's coverage of it, was one of the major influences that has fired (and, of course continues to fire) my passion for all parts of the former Soviet Bloc. So, dear readers, can any of you confirm, either way, whether or not the footage appeared on the Beeb?

Scrabble

furniture: