Diary of a Suburban Squeen

THIS IS THE MOST TRAGIC NIGHT OF MY LIFE, A NIGHT I MAY WELL NOT SURVIVE. A NIGHT OF WOE AND WAILING AND WEEPING (AND PROBABLY THE GNASHING OF TEETH ETC). I (A) CLEARLY NEED SOME SORT OF HAIR CHUM (THOUGH KATIE HAS BEEN DOING HER TINY BEST) AND ALSO (B) NEED TO FIND NEW FRIENDS WHO DO NOT LAUGH AT MY TRAUMATICALLY TRAGIC AND TRAGICALLY TRAUMATIC LIFE AND DEMAND PAINFUL PICTURES OF ME LOOKING A FOOL. I HATE YOU ALL.

I LOOK LIKE A PILLAR BOX. AND OUR SOFA. AND JANICE RAND'S UNIFORM.

♥ Given his choices in life, it’s really quite fortunate, when you think about it, that Nick Griffin has such an eminently punchable face…

♥ So. Tube strike. (Although apparently the Jubilee line is sort of running – what’s that about? Am confused.) I made my EPIC, EPIC journey into work. I could have got the train to Waterloo and attempt some sort of bus-related manoeuvre, but I thought, no, do not be so foolish. Every man and his dog will be attempting to get onto a bus at Waterloo. It will be hideous and all the buses will be packed and all will be trag. So, instead – and follow me closely, here – I took the train to Richmond (ha ha! travelling against the flow!) and there caught the overground train to Finchley – woo! Go me! It was about twenty minutes late getting to Finchley, but that still gave me 45 minutes to walk down to St John’s Wood (which would have been more than enough, except I popped into Waitrose to buy a yogurt or summat, except the Finchley Road Waitrose is much bigger than I was expecting and I didn’t know where anything was and OH MH GOD IT WAS SO STRESSFUL so I just flailed a bit then left, and then I went into M&S at Swiss Cottage and found a yogurt but then some random woman WAS BUYING HER ENTIRE WEEK’S SHOPPING WTF WTF? and since it was 9 am there was only about half a person behind the counter, so I had to wait. But heigh ho, I made it to work WITH A WHOLE ENTIRE MINUTE TO SPARE. Woo. \o/ TAKE THAT, RMT!!!

♥ Further to my EPIC, EPIC journey, on the train to Finchley I was sitting next to a woman who looked like Death! Actually like Death, from the comic books! I texted Katie and she warned me against letting myself be reaped (reaped? rept? anyone?), so I was very wary until Brondesbury Park, when she got off, presumably with a different reaping target in mind. So, there was that.

♥ Also, you will all, I have no doubt, be gratified to hear that I appear to have solved my crap scaly complexion problem by the power of MOISTURISING. I know. It’s like a tiny miracle. Who knew that would work?

♥ In other news, I am reading sarahtales’ book (it’s shaping up nicely, btw), and by page 4 it had an unkindness of ravens. Reader, I LOLed. (Just to confirm, that’s not LOLing in a ‘what a ridiculous phrase! I scorn it!’ way, but in a ‘yes, I know that’s the correct collective noun, but it has an extra layer of OTH-based hilarity’ way.)

OMG I THOUGHT I COULD WAIT.

I TOTALLY CAN'T WAIT.

I WANT TO SEE STAR TREK AGAIN. NOW. RIGHT NOW. THIS MINUTE, DAMMIT! CHLOE, WHEN CAN WE GO? SOON, PLEASE, SOON, VERY SOON...

♥ OMG STAR TREK! STAR TREK TONIGHT! I AM SO EXCITED!!

♥ So, other than a brief cri de coeur over OTH, I have lots of update-y things. Well, not lots. A number of update-y things. Starting with Grandad’s funeral. Don’t worry: I exhausted my descriptive powers by going on at length on the subject to both Katie and Emma, so they have basically taken the bullet for you. Suffice it to say, it was actually as lovely a day as it could have been. The weather was beautiful, which I think put everyone in a nice mood. Grandma coped OK with the whole thing – as did we all, in fact. I read my pome without a hitch. The chapel was absolutely crammed – standing room only, in fact – and it was really nice to see so many people turn out for Grandad, including a load of care workers and district nurses etc, which Grandma was very touched by. Chris and I weren’t that taken with the padre, but Grandma, Mummy and Rosie really liked him, which was the main thing. And Alan Gildersleve (an old pal and medical colleague) did the eulogy thing which was funny and sweet and just right for Grandad. So it was all quite nice, actually. And then the parentals took me out to Ashford in the Water for a rather spiffing pub dinner, so all in all, a good day. Thank you to everyone who sent sympathy and good wishes etc – it was very much appreciated.

♥ I invented another new meal last night, which I am calling Pesto Primavera. Onion, leek, broccoli, spinach and peas cooked in a ricotta/mascarpone and pesto sauce. Vee spring-like and delicious (I thought). The other night I made savoury pancakes with chicken and leek, which was so-so (needed more flavour, I think).

♥ There have been various annoying things in the press recently, about which I have got quite irate, but I can’t remember them now, so you are spared a tiny rant.

♥ I am wearing my Spock t-shirt today. Not right now, of course. No, I’m currently wearing one of my mauve monstrosities. But out of hours – bring it on. “You Are Sooooooo Illogical” – present genius, Katie, my darling!

♥ I still haven’t finished Gossip Girl 1899 vol 2 – I am so slow with reading at the moment! I have loads of stuff to read and am just not getting round to it. I have a week off soon, though, so I might catch up then.

♥ Oh, yes, I remember now. Was reading the Daily Telegraph’s letters page over someone’s shoulder this morning. The first letter was someone frothing with rage over the latest parliamentary scandal, and they did that FUCK ANNOYING THING of being “ooh and our unelected Prime Minister…” OMG WILL THESE PEOPLE PLEASE GET A GRIP AND DEVELOP SOME AWARENESS OF THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION!! Rawr.

Seriously. Oh yes. With my tiny, tiny shiny laptop teetering on top of the laundry basket. Laptops and wireless: they make the world a glorious place.

Anyway, I had some thinking to share, about history and how we understand it and stuff. This was, naturally, prompted by an SGA fic I just read: Written by the Victors, a superlative piece of fiction about Atlantis seceding from Earth, and historical interpretions of the same. It featured straightforward fictional prose about the events in question, combined with "secondary sources" from both sides of the schism. It was a brilliant read, and is actually one of my very most favourite fandom tropes, namely how events and characters will be viewed by history when anyone actually alive at the time is nothing but crumbled dust. I've seen Buffy fic that looked at this (and the Fray comic sort of touches on the idea), and Harry Potter as well, I seem to recall. Babylon 5 actually did it themselves, with the wonderful ep Deconstruction of Falling Stars. I've even written something similar myself in the Hornblower fandom.

And I love it. I love it so much I can't even express it, because they never KNOW. They never can, it's impossible. Seeing how characters in the future construe and interpret the past that we know is just so real, and I can't put this into words, though I've been thinking about it for a couple of days. Because this is how our understanding of the past works: we take the evidence, what we have it. We look at paper and buildings and art and laws made and unmade, and we cobble together what we think happened. And we can be right and we can be wrong, and we can't really know, because we weren't there. And people lie and are unreliable and it's so easy to misinterpret something.

And I love it when characters in the future come face to face with the figures of their history (everyone should read liz_marcs' Living History [BtVS], because it's awesome), because their figures are creations of the collective imaginations of generations, and the present characters are real. I just... meh. I really don't have the words to say what I'm trying to say. Boo.



In other news, this whole 13-year-old boy fathering child / not fathering child / someone else / what-the-fuck-ever: NONE OF MY FUCKING BUSINESS. I DO NOT FUCKING CARE. WHY IS IT ALL OVER THE FUCKING NEWSPAPERS? HOW IS THIS IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST? LEAVE THE KIDS AND THEIR FAMILIES TO SORT IT ALL OUT BECAUSE IT IS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY OF US AND FOR FUCK'S SAKE STOP USING IT TO HERALD THE END (ONCE AGAIN) OF CIVILISED SOCIETY AS WE KNOW IT.

The end of the weekend is nigh. Darkness is throughout the love nest. The lights on the wireless nexus thing, Marjorie's home, flicker in the night. The three of us sit in silence, engrossed in our separate virtual worlds.

All that being so, I thought I'd recap the weekend. Saturday did not go as planned, starting with the grim discovery that entrance to the Tower of London is sixteen of our English pounds. £16, people! What the fuck is that about, hmm? I mean, soak the tourists by all means, but come, Royal Palaces, give some thought to us poor sods who have to live here, and all of whose local attractions (excluding the free ones, of course, because I'm being indignant here and logic has no place) are mindblowingly expensive. Pah. So, we have graciously decided to postpone a visit to the Tower until we have a set of parentals onto whom we can shove the expense. Never say we're not financially canny here in the love nest.

So, the morning and, indeed, the afternoon, was spent in quiet, domestic pursuits. We watched Milo Ventimiglia and Hayden Panattiere on Richard and Judy (a beautiful, beautiful 'interview'). I finished off Watchmen (it was brilliant). Made some spaghetti carbonara with bacon and leeks and mushrooms. And then we walked into Richmond.

This, I am afraid to say, is where is all went horribly, horribly wrong. Our plan had been to go to the comic shop, get some tea, get me a travelcard for the upcoming week (you can't get oyster card things at Barnes station) and then head into London to go to the Globe, possibly stopping off at the National to get tickets for things. Comic shop would have been closed by the time we got there (my fault: I took ages to get ready), so we didn't bother. M&S was unsandwiched. Fucking Richmond fucking we're-not-a-tube-station-despite-the-quite-blatant-and-undisguised-presence-of-the-District-line-which-correct-me-if-I'm-wrong-is-definitely-a-part-of-the-fucking-tube Station REFUSED to sell me a zone 1-3 travelcard, because Richmond is in zone 4. WHAT. THE. FUCK? I cannot BELIEVE how crap they are at Richmond. WHAT FUCKING DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE? WHY CANNOT I BUY ANY DAMNED TRAVELCARD THAT TAKES MY FANCY? WHY, ENGLEBERT? Any, I was so angry that I didn't consider that instead of buying a ticket to Waterloo and buying my travelcard there, I might as well have bought the damned 1-4 travelcard. Anyway, got my ticket, sulked consistently all the way to Waterloo, where I had managed to LOSE my stupid ticket. Cue fifty hours on the platform whilst Katie and I went through my million and three random tickets (Staines to Zone 3 Boundary... Derby to Sheffield... Barnes to London Waterloo...) as there were ticket men at the platform entrance. Eventually found the wretched thing tucked into the side of my wallet with my oyster card. Ticket men were unduly suspicious. Bastards. I HATE SOUTH WEST TRAINS. I HATE LONDON. I HATE PUBLIC TRANSPORT. I HATE THE WORLD. GODDAMN YOU ALL.

I had, you may or may not have gathered, a raging case of pre-menstrual tension. Dammit.

Anyway, we went to M&S at Waterloo to get tea. I sulked some more. We walked along the South Bank to the Globe. I sulked consistently and with remarkable conviction, giving looks of DOOOOM to anyone unfortunate to cross my path. Generally behaved like me circa 1993. Not a good year for me. I do not quite remember at what point I stopped sulking (definitely still was going to the loo at the Globe), but was generally smilier by the time we were in the Yard.

We had gone to see Holding Fire!, which was about Chartism. Chartism, for those of you not fortunate enough to have studied it for GCSE History, was a popular movement in the 1830s and 40s which petitioned for electoral reform. Their Charter had six main points: universal suffrage (well, y'know, vote for all men over 21), secret ballot, annual parliaments, abolition of property requirements for MPs and salaries for MPs. Or I think those were the six things. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. It was a good play, anyway, and they really made fantastic use of the Globe stage and Yard - it was brilliant, though Katie and I did keep getting in the way. Thoroughly enjoyed it, and was no longer in a strop.

We came home via the National (well, as you have to, really, walking from the Globe to Waterloo), and they had some random 'End of the Pier' entertainment in their green square bit, so we stayed and watched this genius acrobatic couple - they were AMAZING. Great fun. I love the South Bank, it's brilliant. And then I bought my travelcard, and we came home.

Today has been fairly uneventful. I finished reading Dying For It, which was really good, and I will try and remember to lend it to Xanthe before she leaves, for I think she would enjoy it. Ooh, and yesterday Katie and I noted a particularly choice passage in Mike and Psmith which we intended to LJ - so keep an eye out for that forthcoming attraction on one of our journals. I played on the internet briefly. Read a bit. Went to Sheen to buy some stuff from Waitrose, as well as some nail varnish remover, razors, face wash, hair dye (semi-permanent), blank CDs, and peanut M&Ms. Came home. Did fuck all. Made spinach risotto (yum). Made garlic bread (double yum). Made pancake mixture (unused as yet). Had a bath. Shaved self all over (as due to hormonal imbalance am living embodiment of she-wolf-man). Took three hours at conservative estimate. Washed face. Am waiting to watch Dexter. Nothing further to report, really.

So, I had a bit of a Conservapedia spiral, and ended up on this entry about the Labour party:

"Possibly due to the war's unpopularity, the Labour party won a much smaller majority in 2005 and has seen key bills defeated by backbench revolts such as the plan to hold terrorist suspects for up to 90 days without charge."

Yep, that decision might have had something to do with an unpopular war, or, possibly, it had something to do with the fact that LOCKING SOMEONE UP FOR THREE MONTHS WITHOUT TELLING THEM WHY IS MORALLY REPUGNANT.

I dunno. Could go either way.



Speaking of detention without charge, once again, WTF is going on at Guantanamo Bay? How, how is this being allowed to continue? It is boggling my mind that the country that claims to be the leader of the free world, the country that is holding itself up as arbiters of democracy and justice across the globe, is detaining people, in some cases FOR YEARS, without charge or any chance of a trial? How? Why are other leaders not doing anything? I mean... I'm speechless. And Tony Blair wanted to go this way - what is he, mental? I hope any attempt by Gordon Brown to extend the time a person can be detained without charge is squashed thoroughly - 28 days is already much longer than most other western countries. A month is a long time to be in prison without knowing why.


ETA: So, according to this article, "But because of a lack of evidence, most of the suspected terrorists taken to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will not see the inside of a courtroom." Oh, OK, we're used to this situation. In the legal systems in which most of us inhabit, when you don't have enough evidence to prove a case against someone, they get to go home. Well, that's nice for them. Cup of tea, bit of a sit down, maybe a repeat of Friends, or Afghan equivalent of the sitcom or whatever... but wait, what's this? You don't have any evidence so you're going to detain. Them. Indefinitely. Riiiiiiiiiiiiight. OK.

I'm backing away. Slowly.

Seriously, don't they realise the effect this has on even shallow, materialistic little westerners like me? Y'know, if the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, or any other similar installation furnished in their hearts a burning desire to bomb the fuck out of George W Bush, I would not find it in myself to blame them. America (and by extension Britain and other countries that should be making far more effort than they seem to be to do something about this situation) is putting itself on the moral back foot. DOES THE RULE OF LAW MEAN NOTHING TO THESE PEOPLE?!

Just came across a particularly entertaining book in the hospital's WHSmiths: The Stargate Conspiracy. See, the ancient Egyptian gods were really aliens, and they're coming back...

(a) Oh, please. Just... tchah!

(b) Hmmmmm. *strokes the beard* Let me see, does this concept ring a bell with anyone? Just a small, Richard Dean Anderson-shaped bell? (OK, that would be a weird bell, but go with it...)

This merely confirms my belief that 90% of this world's inhabitants are complete and utter LOONIES.

And cursed clinic clerks!

CC: I'm looking for some notes.
Me: Mmm? (with an enquiring sorta intonation)
CC: I said I'm looking for some notes.
Me: Yes. And...? (again with the enquiring intonation, only doubled this time)
CC: They're coming to clinic tomorrow.
Me: Yes, I've grasped that, yon FOOL! Why *else* would you be asking for them? WHAT ARE THE PATIENTS' NAMES? You know, that useful information I'm waiting for before I can actually HELP you! (all in my head, obviously) Can you give me their names, please.
CC: They came to clinic last Wednesday... or maybe it was the Wednesday before.
Me: (Yes, fascinating, thank you very much.) Er, their *names*, please.
CC: See, they're booked out to you on the *system* (for some reason clinic clerks always over-emphasise the word 'system' - it's like it gives them some kind of external validation in life, or something).
Me: Just TELL me their FUCKING NAMES!!!!!

And it all goes downhill after that...

Anyway, they're a complete bunch of numpties. Or antoinettes. Whichever word works for you.