Concealed in the cupboard.

1. Me mate Matt's on the Dundee International Book Prize longlist for his novel The Folded Man (he says it's about a drug-addled mermaid called Brian - I remember his starting this one some years back, though I didn't know he'd finished it, let alone brilliantly). I have ALL THE PRIDE. (See? I'm not ALWAYS horrid.)

2. Swimming is quite a good treatment for unmedicated period pain, if you manage not to drown, but it's better not to badly mistime your analgesics, though what can you do if your womb lining decides to make a move at 2am? (Is that the sort of thing I'm meant to cut? Sorry.)

3. When I was swimming the other day, and also quietly moaning, the radio (which is always on my tiny adorable local swimming pool) started to play 'Make Your Own Kind of Music'. Luckily no-one was close enough to witness my Unusual Reaction to this song (hilarity mixed with nostalgia mixed with bitter bitter regret - it's a Lost thing, if that combo didn't give it away).

4. I'm accidentally writing about four different things at the same time, and when I say writing I do usually mean staring.

5. I'm not watching ... masses. But I had a birthday and for my birthday my brother gave me the DVD of Mike Leigh's Topsy Turvy, which I saw last year apart from the last five minutes or so, and I hope to watch that soon. Also my parents gave me the complete Dad's Army, which, be quiet, I love it a bit. And a tiny mini PClet netbook type thing. I'm saying that quietly with shame because oh my the extravagence, and it was a thing I'd stated I was going to buy some time this year with absolutely no intention of that coming across as a HINT HINT type statement and they bought me one and it's a bit absurd and I love him: he's called Hamish; you saw none of this.

6. My shins are cold.

Stephen Hendry's just announced his retirement, which is sort of the unhappiest thing snooker's ever done after the Paul Hunter thing, and sort of wholly expected, and sort of not. I didn't take the sensible precaution of remembering to care about other (consistently good) snooker players after about 1994, so, you know. QUITE SAD. But yes. My instinctive reaction is OH STEPHEN HENDRY WHY MY EYES MY BEAUTIFUL EYES, or something, then I looked at what other people were saying and it was kinder than that, so really I ought just to say thank you to him for being divine and amazing and full of a sense of unwavering entitlement for all those years, and for having such a beautiful back. I've followed his career since the eighties and he was one of the first two players I ever saw live (in 1992 - I was eleven), and I had a poster of him on my wall when I was a teenager (him and Spock, MY ONLY LOVES, I'll stop this soon), and he gave me much enjoyment and then all that AGONY. And why can't it be the nineties again.

I want everyone involved with snooker to stop being so prematurely excited about Hendry. I mean, I MYSELF AM VERY EXCITED ABOUT HENDRY, but you have to expect it all to stop, obviously. You have to LEARN FROM HISTORY.

That's really all I have in the way of thoughts at the moment. What I do have is tea and scones and they need all my attention.

(This - http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bendirs/2012/04/hendry_still_loves_winning.html - is great though. It's an article about how Hendry loves winning snooker YOU DON'T SAY and how sport is all about mashing your opponents into the carpet and how awful it would be if someone made a 147 against him and how he can never be genuinely happy for other people when they win things, even if he loves them. It's one of my favourite interviews ever.)

(And this - http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bendirs/2012/04/the_torture_chamber_hidden_wit.html - is agony.)

✂

What is that? I see it in front of LJ cuts, and what I see is a 27 and 02 in a box (like, one of those unicode symbols you get when your computer can't handle certain fonts), and when I paste that into Wikipedia (which is how I attempt to solve every dilemma) it takes me to 'scissors'. How is 27 and 02 in a box scissors? Are some of you seeing scissors?

I saw Trishna last night. I'm not deliberately seeking out Michael Winterbottom's oeuvre. I'm always worried oeuvre doesn't mean what I think it means and is actually the plural of egg.

( Spoilers for Trishna and Tess of the D'Urbervilles. )

I did rewatch The Trip in an appropriate timescale, by the way - one episode a day; TripCon 2012 ... you should've come - and it was brilliantly claustrophobic.

( Spoilers for The Trip )

Also I watched the Grand Prix today. Let us speak no more of that.

( Trip stuff. )

There endeth the Trip highlights. What else can I put in this SCREEN BASED POST? I know.

( Spoilers for the film of The Hunger Games; ignorance of the books. )

That's it anyway. That's me and visual entertainment for the time being. Maybe I'll watch something with an active fandom one day. HA HA HA. Well, maybe.

And now, gentlemen, to bed.

Hello. I keep meaning to post, but I'm mostly engaged in a sizeable garden landscaping job at the moment, and digging is my life now. When I'm not digging, or cycling to and from the land of digging, I'm trying to meet a writing deadline. Or watching the extras on the DVD of The Trip. OH THE EXTRAS, but that's another post.

This post is actually primarily a photo of Tinker, who died a year ago today, which feels a year too long to be without Tinker. He was 20 when this was taken:



(And that's my lower half, in a supporting role.)

Soak 10oz mixed dried fruit in 2 cups of hot black tea, cover and leave to stand overnight.

Strain the fruit, saving the liquid. Add 3oz brown sugar, grated rind of a lemon, 2 teaspoons mixed spice, 1 egg and 12oz self-raising flour to the fruit.

Add the liquid a bit at a time until the batter is of a soft, dropping consistency. Pour into a greased paper-lined 2lb loaf pan and bake at 180C for 45-55 minutes until firm to the touch.

I'm normally quite immune to the 'let's attempt communication with a celeb' thing over on Twitter, until SRK announces that he's got time to kill before a shoot and is inviting questions. SUCH TWITCHY FINGERS. Mostly I just want to ask him about his feuds. His feuds of beautiful hateful love.

Hello. I hope you're keeping well. I've done my back in by breathing at the wrong angle and I can't quite shake my cough, but I can't complain. I've been mostly turning on Word and then breathing out noisily through my teeth, with the telly on in the background. I'm staying with my brother again, where there are many channels, but there's still nothing much on. So hurrah for DVDs.

I watched the Simon & Garfunkel Concert at Central Park DVD the other day. That might be my first stop-off if I were to get hold of a backwards time-travelling device type thing. Really I'd be en route to the Beatles at the Royal Variety Performance, but 1981 would make a nice stopover. Imagine hearing and seeing John Lennon do his 'the rest of you just rattle your jewellery' line in person. I'm not ambitious. I don't actually know how good a Beatles' audience member I'd make. Obviously the main point of going to a Beatles concert is to put your hands over your ears and scream at them, and that's sort of a marvellous thing to do, but in reality I get quite annoyed when people make noises at concerts. Even singing along. Especially singing along. That man who sang along to 'I'm Your Man' in Manchester in 2008. I really didn't like that man. So maybe I'd just shush people instead. I don't know. Actually, irritating Manchester man aside, all four (count 'em) concert audiences I've witnessed (Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon, Kris Kristoffersen and Willie Nelson, 'cause apparently the only music I care for comes from male American singer-songwriters over the age of 70) have been respectfully quiet during the actual singing. I love that thing people do that I sort of stereotypically suspect might be a British thing, but maybe probably isn't - where they clap in time to the music during the intro but as soon as Cohen/Simon/Kristoffersen/Nelson starts singing, the clapping politely stop. 'Cause we came here to listen to singing, not to clapping. I like that.

ANYWAY.

My point is that it's the first time I've seen Garfunkel sing 'How terribly strange to be seventy' after he turned seventy. I read an interview with him a few weeks ago. I think he interviews rather well, especially for a man still engaged in a decades-long feud with his one true love. Of course the interviewer asked him 'Is it terribly strange to be seventy?' And he said, no, not really. Not after having been alive for seventy years. It's quite normal. It's only strange to be seventy when you're actually twenty-two, or whatever. I liked that too.

('It may be possible to one day create "an unlimited source" of human eggs, according to US fertility doctors.' Oh good. That's just what we need.)

End of interlude.

I can't think what else to say. I've been reunited with all my stuff, and now I need to decide which of it to burn. Not burn. It's just that it's all in a house that's going to be sold and it won't all go in my parents' home and I have no access to a vehicle nor money for a removal service. I should maybe look into storage, or get really really fit and learn to carry nine backpacks all at once. Or just nurture a potent sense of detachment. And burn it all. (My Boglins! My first guitar! My sheep collection! My SRK action figure!) There's some more stuff I want though, like the DVD of The Trip. I'm all about bitter hateful irritated love right now. I don't see the point to any other brand. This is a rubbish update. I've been trying to watch the sort of telly that you watch, but I can't find it on any of the channels or on On Demand. Sorry. I go there now.

'Certainly Paul has rewritten history a bit in terms of our relationship. We were always the last ones out of the bar on a Thursday night.' - Angus Deayton, here (today's Guardian).

(Edit. This interview is quite bizarre.)

(Edit 2. What's he saying about Clive Anderson at the end?)

(I did not make the coat or the bag. Or the door.)

I had my hair cut yesterday, by a hairdresser who is not my usual hairdresser (and who doesn't chat - I felt I ought to ask her if she was going anywhere nice on holiday). I was weirdly nervous, but she didn't mangle it in any way. It's the shortest it's ever been. I look square-jawed and manly. Well, ish. From the neck up, and if you ignore my height. My proper hairdresser warned me when I first got it cut short that I might find it addictive, and I do a bit - I'm glad yesterday's hairdresser eventually stopped asking 'Any shorter than this?' 'cause I don't quite know where to stop. But anyway, yes. Successful hairdressing. Hairdressing is slightly faffing, so I'm glad to get it dealt with. Sometimes I wish I was in India (when I say sometimes I mean MOSTLY, obviously) where you can just find a man with a stool and some scissors on the pavement, and then you're away. Also if you're in India you can ask him to make you look like Shah Rukh Khan. I don't look much like Shah Rukh Khan.

In other news, I'm knitting a bag to keep my wool in. One person of my acquaintance found this disturbing in a turtles all the way down sort of a way.

'Woke up with a bad dream! The word sommelier was attacking me in sleep. Looked it up, it means a wine steward. Have to stop bourgeois dreams.' (iamsrk, on Twitter, eight hours ago.)

Oh Sab ... I don't know what to say. Sorry, Alicamel. I do indeed resolve to spend more time with my hats.

I just remembered the existence of Željko Ivanek Daily after about two months' absence BYE FOR A BIT. (I feel this is insufficient for a LJ update, but also that Twitter wouldn't understand.)

ETA. Back now. It went REALLY NON DAILY while I was away.

And my apologies if my taste in comic songs is even more depressing.


( Flanders and Swann, Jake Thackray, Rambling Syd Rumpo, Two Ronnies, Victoria Wood, The Goodies, Fascinating Aida, Handel. )

It's five years since 2007. Isn't that ridic? Five years ago should be 1997 at the absolute most, and even that makes it 2002. Nothing particular happened in 2007. Nor in 2002. Things happened in them obviously, like wars and stuff, but I mean nothing that's causing me to count back to them every new year's day. It's just they're a pair of relatively unbelievable years in and of themselves, and now they're respectively five and ten years ago. It's absurd. I hope people were just as taken aback in 1912. And 1612. And all the other 12s.

Outrageous numbers aside though, it's been a pleasant day - crisp and sunny with a long walk and a surprising amount of writing. I wrote most of a short film script from scratch this morning. Why don't I just write properly every day instead of procrastinating and then feeling bad about it? It's an eternal mystery type thing. There's no telly tonight, but that's par for the course. (I trust the Sherlock people are seething at me.) I might watch The Man From UNCLE.

I'm going to stand over here now, 'cause I don't know what to say to you.

Hello - I'm not very present in Internet land right now 'cause my computer's decided it doesn't want to do connectivity and will only offer me about five minutes' internetting per day, and nobody quite knows why. My mother's laptop's behaving perfectly well, and that's what I'm using right now, so I'll still be able to check email daily and stuff like that, but I shan't be massively around unless it's fixed. I shall attempt to read LJ though, even if I shan't be able to do masses of commenting.