Lying on a pancake cloud in blueberry heaven

The last two days we have both worked all day. We work away on our laptops', Kai in his room, me at the table in the sitting room. Come twelve I am starving so I make lunch. These last two days we have had blueberry pancakes for afters. Pudding for a working lunch, I know, I know, but is it Christmas. I think Kai likes having me home.

The blueberries are chucked in to the pan a few seconds after the ladleful of batter spreads as far as it is going to go and has a slightly crispy light brown bottom. They are ½ inch thick American style pancakes, but the blueberries are extra large, so they stick up out of the batter like plump blue children swimming in a doughy lake.

Then when the bottom has turned a golden brown, and the top of the pancake is pockmarked with a few crumpet-like holes, I flip it over.

The blueberries are still sticking out a bit, so they make the pancake uneven for a few seconds until they cook down. The sticky juices of the berries melt into the batter and form midnight blue crusts in the toffee coloured swirls of the pancake.

And then as the last of the sizzling butter is sucked up into the batter, I flip it onto a plate, pour a generous golden glug of maple syrup and serve with Greek yoghurt and more fresh blueberries.

When you bite into the blueberries in the pancake, the sweet jam like juice squirt into your mouth mingling with the maple syrup.

Delicious.

Pretty woman, ugly trade

The other day a crack whore shouted at me. Or I thought she did. Every now and again, on a corner near my home there are one or two sex workers plying their trade. If there was scale of prostitutes with Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman at the top, these women would be at the other end. The scraping the barrel end of the scale. The only thing going for them, in terms of getting work, is that they are young. But other than that, they are skinny, pale (even the black ones) and angry.

I was looking at one of these women, as I walked by the other day, wondering what had happened to her. What twists her life had taken which meant she had to have sex with strangers to earn money. To stand on a Hackney street corner, two days before Christmas, doesn't indicate a life well lived, full of luck and opportunity. I wondered if she was an eastern European who had been tricked into coming to this country. I wondered if she was hooked on crack or smack. I wondered if she was scared, or more scared than usual, because of the women who had been murdered in Suffolk.

Then she started shouting (at me I thought at the time but apparently it was at another woman nearby who had had a go at her)

'What the f**k? Why are you f**king staring at me, just because I'm standing here. None of your f**king business, you stuck up b*tch..'

She was local, sounded in fact like a Hackney girl. She could have gone to my school.

I have very mixed feeling about these women, I feel sorry for them, but I wish they weren't standing on a street near my house. I think it is appalling that they have to have sex with men they don't want to, in dark corners. That they have to put their lives at risk, from fists and feet and from unprotected sex. Would it be better for them if prostitution was legalised. Would they be safer?

I must apologise for my English

So we've been to the wedding. It was wonderful, romantic and almost entirely in Norwegian.

There were a couple of things that meant this didn't matter and I was able to understand most of what was going on.

In an inspired table setting that impressed me on many levels, I was sat next to my other half, Kai, on one side and by a friend with impeccable English on the other. So as the speeches were made, I leant my head on Kai's shoulder and he whispered the translations into my ear. It was like having my own huggable babel fish. Perfect.

I mentioned my table neighbour's high standard of English. On the whole the Norwegians I have met (including, professors, supermarket cashiers and ski lift operators) have a similar impressive grasp of my native tongue. On top of this they also tend to be polite and considerate. So, at the party after the wedding I wandered from group to group and as I nodded hello, the singsong lyrical sound of Norwegian would melt into lightly accented English. Added to the vat-like proportions of Champagne consumed at dinner, this had a most pleasant dreamlike effect.

When talking in English, they would be chatting away and say something like,

'What is that word for a mixture of salt water and fresh?'

'Brackish?' I'd say.

'Yes, I must apologise for my English.'

Good news

The passport arrived at 11 yesterday - phew - I nearly kissed the postie. So after an afternoon relieved packing and tidying, we got the flight to Oslo and are now happily tucked into boyfriends parents place, over looking the river in Fredrikstad. Fredrikstad is sort of the Brighton of Norway. Without the gay people.

We have been enjoying;

Gløgg - spicy ribena, you can have it with brandy or just water.
Lefse - square floppy potato pancake
Sylte - like a fragrant pork pie without the pastry and scary see-through jelly stuff
Fredrikstad Pils - local beer

You put a slice of Sylte inside the Lefse, pour a little white wine vinegar and a touch of black pepper and then roll in up and stuff it in your mouth. Delicious.

The brother's wedding tomorrow. I've been to a Norwegian/Danish wedding in Italy, a Norwegian/Welsh wedding in London but not a Norwegian/Norwegian wedding in Norway. Can't wait!

People in glass houses shouldn't sit semi clad in bed - & other stories

On Monday morning – 8 am

I decided to get up with my other half, so he wouldn't feel so bad about going to work on a dark and damp Monday morning. Probably not that much better for him leaving the warm flat with me perched on the sofa reading a book. But anyway that's what I did.

When he left I jumped back into bed with a cup of tea and said book (hey, it's homework)
Imagine my surprise when a skinny Rasta with a yellow hard hat walked passed my window. Our flat is on the second floor.

I had totally forgotten that the building was swarming with Bob The's putting in double glazing and a new roof. I nearly jumped out of my tracksuit bottoms and sweatshirt. It gave me a right shock. The builder managed not to look at me as he sauntered along the wooden platform. I was just about to strip off and get in the shower. Holy Shit.

But all this paled, as I did, when I realised I'd left my passport in Cornwall. Due to fly to Norway on Weds, this is a fan hitting scenario.

My wonderful Landlady put it in the registered post, due to arrive at 1 today.

Guess what

It aint here.

After crying on the phone to Royal Mail's customer service they as good as promised it would be here tomorrow.

Fingers crossed

Maybe it because I'm a Londoner?

Back in London, and boy it feels strange. First thoughts coming back into Paddington were,

..ARGH all these people, all pushing and rushing...

Then I got into the swing of it, I am a moody Londoner after all, and started to feel at home. The faces of my fellow passengers on the tube, Black, Asian, European, made me feel at home. I understand London, I am at home here, even though there are times when I want to escape.

At the 106 bus stop I was surrounded by people. We were all huddling under the shelter as it was raining. No one was speaking english. One guy was speaking Japanese into his mobile. Two young women, one with a baby in a buggy, were speaking an eastern European language or possibly Portuguese, which sounds so Russian. Another older couple, sitting on the bench, were speaking an African Language, which I don't know. I got a sudden rush of affection for my dirty ole city, my home for so many years. I felt like hugging everyone at the bus stop and telling them how welcome there were.

Then the bus arrived and there was a godawful struggle to get on. My hugging mood left me. Managed to get a seat though – ha, all those years of busing it to school were not wasted.

I once got told off by some out of towners who could not believe I was not queuing neatly behind them. But there is space for two people to get on the bus at the same time, I thought as I leant across them to press my oyster card to the yellow pad. Plenty of space.

Fresh air vs air freshners

Today, I’ve mostly been thinking about air fresheners. I just can’t stand the stinkin' things.

As time goes on, the Air Wicks of the world get more and more sophisticated. So now the adverts proudly display a plug-in air freshener with three different ‘fragrances’ that alternate every forty minutes.

How much does your house have to smell before you need a squirt of air freshener EVERY FORTY MINUTES.

It is ironic - and not in an Alanis Morissette kinda way - that many of the fragrances used in air freshensers mimick the natural world. We have 'Fresh Pine forests', 'Soothing Lavender' and 'Festive Oranges and Cloves'.

So we've destroyed most the forests and natural places in this country to build our lovely warm boxes. These boxes get a bit smelly cos we don’t open the windows. Then we destroy a bit more of the planet, using up energy, chemicals, metal and plastic, to produce fake natural fumes in a handy plug in dispenser.

What should we do? Throw away the things (or better yet – don’t buy em), don’t smoke inside, give our carpets a good Hoover and open our windows once a day to AIR the place. That is use real air to freshen our homes rather than air fresheners.

That should do it.

Ding Dong

Blimey, it is only gone and turned into December out there. As in, deck the halls, drink yourself into a coma, eat till your kidney's implode, it's bleedin Christmas in a few weeks.

So approaches the festive season as a student, with minus in the bank account. As I've worked in the Charity sector for the last blah years, I've never been rolling in it, but this will be the first christmas in ages where I will be really watching the pennies. I wonder how it is going to be? I have planned a headache inducing amount of home made presents, aren't my friends and family going to love me.

It is going to be strange being back in London with no money coming in. It works ok down here cos we are all in the same, poverty ridden boat. Ah student life. But when I'm home, back in London, I'll be meeting up with people, going for drinks, and them drinks are going to be at London prices, rather than friendly ole Cornwall prices.

Solution - drink less. It's radical but I am going to try it.

Wishing you both the best of luck

Was listening to Radio One the other day. There was a competition, a radio phone in, with two contestants. The DJ, Sarah Cox, said, 'Best of luck to you both.'

And I've been thinking about it ever since. It is something you hear quite a lot, on game shows, Pop Idol and IACGMOFH. But how can the presenter or the DJ or whoever wish all the contestants luck.

If you dont believe in luck, it could be just a nice thing to say to nervous people. A way of saying, 'I dont have favourites.'

But if you do believe in luck, believe it is a real force in the world that affects the outcome of competitions, job interviews, bets, then surely it is impossible to wish all contestants luck. If you wished them all the same amount of luck then it cancels itself out.

There is no point in saying it. Revelation - a Radio DJ says something that has no point - whatever next.

Daily Mail Reader in Self Abuse Shocker

As part of this course we have been advised to read a wide variety of newspapers so we can gain a broad view of the media and get to grips with different styles of writing aimed at different audiences.

So on Saturday, I sat in the Gyllyngvase Beach Café and read a day-old Daily Mail. They were banging on about this new anti-debt campaign the Tories have launched aimed at young people. They are asking them to Ignore the Tosser Inside. Which I agree, Littlejohn, is nauseating. It is like those Maths problems we used to get at school which said,

'Ertan wants to go and watch a Michael Jackson concert with his friend Raj. How much change will he get from... '

Yeah those inner city kids won't notice they are doing Maths if we mention Michael Jackson. But I digress.

The column included a little fact box in the corner of the page explaining that a tosser referred to a person who carried out the act of masturbation.

The columnist was up in arms about the whole thing, mainly because he could not believe they were bandying around a word based on, wait for it, an act of self abuse. I nearly choked on my pint. Self abuse! What century are they living in. No wonder there are huge swathes of the population wracked with guilt about sex, who can only find an outlet in reading the Daily Mail and getting a semi by peering guiltily into the sordid lives of others.

An act of self abuse for me is reading the stupid paper.

To find the article put Littlejohn and Tosser into Google.

In the Nick name of time

One of my classmates emailed me today, called me Snow (as my last name is white or equivalent) which set me thinking about nick names. I've never really had one. Jen Jen at one point at university (yuk) or The Jenster in Namibia - liked that.

But do these count? A true nickname can't just be your first name with a few twiddles, can it?

It can be to do with your apperance....
There was a guy at school called Edward who we all called Mike. He had the most perfectly round afro, just like a microphone.
Piglet was an unfortunate girl who really did look like a small blonde pig
Bam - Was Fat Bam. He was a big lad.

Or it can be do do with your last name...
In our english class we had three Mark's. There were
Nish Nash Nosh - Mark Nash
Bish - Mark Bishop
Keri ac coo, Keri ac coo, Keri ac coo for Mark Kiriacou

Or your actions....
Windy - farted. A lot.
The Pieman - ate. A lot.
The Happy Hindu - smiled. A lot. This Asian kid, was actually a Christain, but the name stuck.

Come to think of it, it was mostly the boys that had nicknames. Wonder why?

Pasty or Party

Using predictive text on my phone, party comes up as pasty. I can't imagine that pasty is a more common word than party. I am wondering if it is because I am in Cornwall, if there is some regional dictionary taking control of my phone. I'll try it in London, see whats what.

Also Pint, Shot and Riot come up in that order, which I quite like.

All the Gest

I was watching I’m a celebrity get me out of here last night. I know I know, I’m meant to be a writer; I’m meant to be filling my brain with high fal-ut-ing literature of the highest calibre and shunning the flickering box, but I’d had a journey from hell coming back from London on Tuesday and I just needed to switch off, eat curry and drink beer.

But now I am totally hooked, mainly because of David Gest. I only know David as the 6th or 16th husband of Liza Minnelli – was he famous before? Anyway he comes off really badly in the press, who just hate him. I had assumed that because he had made himself look so hideous via the magic of plastic surgery that he would be shallow, mean and generally an idiot.

But he is actually coming across really well (or as well as a person can come across on these types of programs) in the Jungle. He seems like he has a cracking sense of humour, he seems open, quirky, interesting and even quite brave. He will endure much to get his hands on a cupcake. Far better than Cherrie’s half sister, that wet sock of a woman, Lauren Booth.

It got me thinking, I would be ashamed to my pinko liberal roots if I prejudged someone because of their colour, race, or on a more superficial level if they had a big nose or loads of spots. So why had I, and I suspect most of the Heat reading world judged Gest so harshly? Was it really just because he looks strange? It just opened my eyes, that’s all, maybe I am not as open minded as I thought I was.

Bird gets Man Flu

I'm back

Just survived a stinking cold that has made me feel like a human kleenex, it got so bad that over the weekend I thought I might have Man Flu; we all know how bad that is.

Come to think of it, it could be the next pandemic health threat, if Man Flu mutated into a strain that women could catch.

But never fear, turns out I was to be spared.

My boyfriend asked me, 'Do you feel like you are going to die?'

I said, 'I just feel rotten.'

'It's not man flu then.' he said

Bless you

The King on writing

I’ve just finished reading Stephen King’s book about writing, appropriate for Halloween me thinks. I loved his books as a teenager, and I love this one just as much.

Five reasons why?
1. I loved the fact that he gives a mixture of practical advice and glimpses into his own life. We get a peek into what it was like for him before his big break, what it was like to write while being a druggy and an alcoholic, what it was like to survive a being almost smashed to bits by a truck and what it is like to WRITE for a living.

2. I loved his view that at times the story takes over, like it has a life of its own and we as writers have to just go with it. I’ve heard this before and felt it myself, but he makes it scary and sinister.

3. I loved the fact that it is a wake up call to aspiring writers. It is clear that he loves writing and that it is not a painful struggle for him (most of the time). He asks the reader to consider, if they are always saying ‘I’d love to be a writer, but I don’t have the time,’ if what they really want is the lifestyle, more specifically his lifestyle.

4. I loved the fact it made me laugh, hard. At one point he considers the merits of ‘being taught’ to write, describing a writers’ retreat where someone silently deposits your lunch tray outside your room, so that your writerly efforts are not disturbed. But he makes the point that it’s not always advisable to shut out all distractions, as distractions equal real life, the grit in the oyster that starts the pearl.

He likens going to writing classes to attending pearl making seminars with all the other oysters. I’ve been to PLENTY pearl making seminars in my ten years in the voluntary section.

5. I loved it most of all because it was inspiring, made me want to write, write and write some more. But also made me want to read some of his books again. V clever Stevie.

Any book, any time

I've tried it and it works. All you do is type the name of the book you want, into the library request section of the intranet and if our library doesn't have it, they will arrange a loan from the British Library.
So added to the bliss of being here, in Cornwall, and doing this, learning about writing, I now have access to EVERY SINGLE book ever written.
EVER
Which book would you want to read, given the British Library to plunder?
I am working my way through a long list of books that I have always wanted to read (or felt I should). This list grows by the day, as almost every lecturer we have, recommends some book or other as a good example of this or that.
And what's best is that reading is actually part of my course. Spending a lazy Sunday in the pub reading a novel is WORK. Granted I now have to read “critically” but Ha ha ha I'm in heaven.
Within a week my book request set off a domino of events. I imagined a pale librarian deep in the filing system at the BL, shelves deep underground receiving my request. He would then push a ladder on wheels along the endless shelves until he gets to On Black Hill.
It is a recommended read from Rule of Thumb as an example of the successful use of omniscience. I have been asked by the book to read it and feel “the lively, even colloquial presence of the story teller.”
I'll have a read and let you know.

Five Things I've noticed about Cornwall

1. The road planners are very fond of the double roundabout, a totally confusing piece of two circled road trickery. There is this one near campus that they've put on a fairly steep hill so that you really can't see what you are supposed to be giving way to.

2. There are a lot of steep hills here. I've just brought my cycle down from London and I am going to try a cycle in the next few days. The journey into campus will be tiring, due to hills, steep hills, almost the whole way. But I am more scared of going home, especially in the rain.

3. It rains a lot here. Big, heavy, drain blocking downpours. Which means I may regard my cycling commitment as folly. I got SO wet yesterday just going to the corner shop to buy some milk. My shoes are still not totally dry.

4. It takes ages for things to dry here. It is really humid and damp, much more so than London. I'm thinking of getting a dehumidifier for my room. I think it's due to the weather. There is a lot of it see above) and here in Cornwall, we are almost totally surrounded by a sea that pounds rather than laps, causing little bits of sea (i.e. water molecules) to fly up into the air – thus my towels wont dry.

5. But the sea is utterly fantastic, 3 mins walk from my house. I've been surfing a few times, once on the beach that is overlooked by the amazing hotel used in Roald Dahl's 'The Witches' and another on the next beach along. I can now control the board a bit, did a turn a couple of times and am getting ready to go “out back” where the big waves are. Am scared of that but will do it when I'm ready.

Extra Mature

On Friday morning at Truro Station, at the grand old age of 31, I bought a young person's rail card. As a mature student, I am eligible, but it did seem to make the railway ticket person's day.
'Mature student,' he quipped, 'isn't that a bit of a contradiction?'
I stood with my rucksack and my hangover and tried to think of a suitably mature response. None came.

'Ha ha ha' I laughed as I handed over my money.

Stranger than fiction

So why is it non-fiction rather than fact? I wouldn't call myself a non-man?

I suppose calling your book a fact book might not be accurate. Your view on the healing power of apple peal and comfrey in an alternative health book, might not be viewed by everybody as fact.
Or a GCSC science book discussing evolution, may not be considered fact by the folk that believe our planet was creatively designed.

I wonder what might be a better word?

It's all in the name

The whole Normal thing (see previous blog) reminds me of two sisters at my primary school, lets call them Jewel and Beauty. Jewel was in the year above us and she was, as far as I can remember, a nice enough girl.

Beauty was in my year, in my class actually. She was about a foot taller than most of the boys, with broad shoulders and strong hands. When she looked at you, one eye would peer into yours, while the other looked over your left shoulder.

She was a bruiser of a girl, with a lumpy face which seemed to loom out of her sizeable head. She wasnt fat, just big, and her parents seemed the most appropriate thing for her to wear was ill fitting frilly pastel dresses. I suppose it should not be that much of a surprise when you consider they named their poor daughters, Jewel and Beauty. These are parents who just don’t get it.

The rest of us were a bit scared of her. She was not malicious, more relentlessly and constantly careless. She'd always be banging into you or holding your hand too tightly or tearing pages out of your favourite book. Once she had you in her sights she would bear down on you like a train and you would not have much choice about who you played with for the rest of the morning. Looking back on it now, I see that she probably had learning difficulties and life must have been pretty hard for her anyway. But I wonder how much worse it made things being named Beauty.

It just aint Normal

I’m reading this great book called, “Rules of Thumb”. It contains 73 short pieces from successful writers on habits they've developed that help them write. At the end of each piece there is some blurb about the author. When I read that one grew up in a town called Normal, Illinois, I closed the book and stared into the middle distance, pondering a life living in Normal.

Does everybody leaving Normal to move elsewhere have to endure endless hilarious jokes on their lack of normalness? It does make you wonder why a group of people, back in the eighteen hundreds, would have saddled themselves and their future generations with such a name.

But would it be any better to grow up in a town called Unique? Oh, it doesn't bear thinking about.

It’s the Real thing - the bottle that is.

Today I’ve been pondering the new Coke ad, you know the one where a bloke puts a coin into a vending machine and we follow the coin into a magical world of wonder, animated fun and sparkles. A cartoon vision of what has to happen to make a bottle of coke the magnificent drink it is. Birds whiz overhead, trains rattle along and all is busy, like a springtime version of Father Christmas’s workshop.

Just over half way through the ad, a small but noteworthy event occurs. In the far distance a squat and insignificant bottle appears containing some unappealing brown liquid. It is held aloft over a gleaming Coca Cola bottle. Empty, the bottle dominates all, like a statuesque glass goddess. The brown liquid is squirted into this magnificent vessel, somehow defiling it. It is then whisked off to undergo further sprinkling with fairy dust and blastings of trumpets, before clunking into the draw of the vending machine.

So that’s barely a second of a thirty second advert on the actual product, the stuff we buy to drink because we are thirsty or tired. The rest of the ad focuses on the bottle, the bit we recycle or throw away.

I wonder if this reflects the thinking at Coke HQ, that the brand and the packaging are far more important than the sugary drink the world loves. It seems that the marketing department, or the creative team they use, have lost sight of something. Even though they know people buy the stuff because of the power of the Coke brand, most people think they buy it because they like the drink.

As instructed by those that know, I am starting a blog. I'll be recording my thoughts, feelings and opinions and presenting them to a world, which is I'm sure, waiting with baited breath to hear what I've got to say for myself.

Why "stick it in your own eye?"? Well, according to my boyfriend I said this to him in the moments before sleep, soon after we had moved in together. He had just rolled over and pulled some of the duvet with him. It must have somehow got in my eye, as apparently I grabbed some of the duvet and shook it at him, saying, with some venom, "stick it in your own eye."

It is now one of those code phrases couples have and we use it whenever it is needed, to defuse a row or to cheer one or other of us up after a tough day at work.

Having it as the title of my blog reminds me that I can say what ever I like, which is what I intend to do.