71. An Early Start

Yesterday morning, I got myself up to the gym for 8.45 and came home an hour later feeling very sorry for myself. The rest of the day was a monstrous struggle. So I decided that today would be better.

And today is already better because it started a little earlier than usual, and I am reminded that I prefer the promise of the early morning to the hard scrabble of the end of the day. I've been bouncing around, making bacon bagels, tidying up, thinking about what to wear rather than just pulling on whatever's nearest, sitting down at my desk, water and apple to hand, thinking about the day's work and how best to do it. Insufferable, isn't it?

But I'm happy! I've got a sensible serious job of work to do today, and later I'm going out to supper and will be fed the best curry in London, so I have a reason to work hard. Carrot and stick, you see. I'm not running today because I've been going too far, too fast so I'll have a day off and lumber slowly round the park in the rain tomorrow. I feel well and bushy-tailed because I almost didn't drink last night and I've slept well, and had an early start and my day is full of promise...

It's Friday!

I'm going to go, before everybody's sick.

70. Completing a Difficult Task

A script report completed, an extra mile run, a desk clear of filing and receipts - what a lovely feeling. Can't imagine how glorious it must be to achieve something genuinely difficult, like curing a disease, or putting Herself off painting the naffing kitchen this weekend.

The completion of a difficult task and its attendant euphoria is all about exams, for me. All those years of end of year exams at my nightmarishly academic school, followed later by serious national exams and then university finals left a long shadow on my psyche. The BF looks at me blankly when I talk about our school being an academic hothouse, but she's cleverer than a wily fox in full chicken costume so I pay no attention.

I don't have to take exams any more, but every now and again a stressful, challenging, deadlined task comes up that causes me to have to lock myself away with bananas and other brain foods and snap grumpily at Herself when she interrupts me. But then the task is completed and I feel like dancing in the moonlight. Today, in case you hadn't already guessed, is one of those days. I will not be doing any moonlit dancing, but I might find my supper more delicous this evening, and that glass of wine more refreshing. And that's enough to make it all worthwhile. That, and my two degrees.

69. Hendricks Gin

When the sun finally crosses the yard-arm, and particularly in the summer months, a writer's thoughts often turn to the Vodka/Gin axis. Vodka is clean, pure, the better-off alcoholic's choice. Gin, as we all know from bitter experience, isn't called Mother's Ruin for nowt. Anyway...

A few years ago a friend brought a bottle of Hendricks gin to an 'all-white' drinks party I was giving, and when we'd all stopped feeling very ill indeed from drastic over-consumption of champagne (I know, boo hoo) I gave it a go. And then it became very difficult to imagine drinking any other brand. It's minty, you see, junipery, somehow more fragrant and herbal than other gins - certainly than that Smirnoff rubbish. It comes in a ye olde bottlee so its aesthetic appeal is high (v. important to the irretrievably shallow) but after that it's just plain DELICIOUS. The BF bought Herself another bottle for her birthday (they conspire over how difficult I am and just how much help they both need to get through the torment) and we have been enjoying its cool libation these past few days. There are some who would drink a Hendricks and tonic with cucumber instead of lemon - they are free to do so, this is a free country. I prefer lemon and I ain't shiftin'.

The one drawback of Hendricks is its cost. Supermarket gin (made of boiled-down car sweets and lighter fluid) is certainly cheaper, but you won't feel all elegant and glamorous while you're drinking it, will you? No.

Tanqueray is very good - a high-quality pub or bar option. Bombay Sapphire will do at a push. But if you really want to enjoy yourself (and you should! you should!) make it Hendricks every time.

PS - For the avoidance of doubt the 'all-white' part of the party referred to drinks. Not (as many thought) to dress code, and certainly not to anything more favourable in Alabama.

68. KCRW - Morning Becomes Eclectic

KCRW is the radio station for Santa Monica College (or somesuch) and Morning Becomes Eclectic is its breakfast show. The DJ, Jason Bentley, who's a bit smooth for my liking but seems to know his stuff, spends 2 or 3 hours every weekday morning playing the kind of music BBC 6 Music can only dream about. The best part of it is that you never know what you're going to get next - and most of the time the bands are obscure or new or long dead - which leads to a genuinely interesting and instructive listening experience.

Part of its joy comes from its (relative) exoticism. Adverts for LA based gigs and for courses at the college interrupt the music at fairly regular (though never irritatingly frequent) intervals, which makes a difference from adverts for DFS sofas or webuyanycar.com (the creator of which will die by my hand if I ever discover his or her identity).

I love MBE for two main reasons, however: the first is that it introduces me to music I would never normally come across, which helps with my laughably exiguous cool rating. The second is that it seems to bring sunshine with it. This is, presumably, as a result of my mind linking Santa Monica with sunshine, but on all those rainy dark cold winter mornings the tiny rays of warmth that MBE brought into the room were welcome indeed.

It's available on the interweb. Have a listen. Thanks to Mr Farringer for the tip.

67. Jason Bateman

From 1985 to at least 1992, Jason Bateman was Where It Was At for me, in boy terms. Then I grew up (a bit), he sort of disappeared, and he became but a happy memory. (Which, as we all know, is never true of real lovers, only of imaginary ones.)

Then he reappeared. Was it Starsky & Hutch? Was it Arrested Development? Who knows, and who cares. He was back, and best of all, he was exactly the same. Hurrah! He hadn't got all fat and drug-knarly like some, (RIP Corey). He wasn't suddenly old and there to remind me of my own advanced age (he's only 5 years older than I am). He was still funny, still sunny and lovely and all-round scrummy. So now I have a good reason to watch all sorts of films I wouldn't normally: The Kingdom (excellent performance, funny and then Proper Acting), Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium (can make even an accountant appealing), I could go on. To watch Arrested Development is to immerse oneself in the joy of Bateman (even if I am occasionally distracted by the actual GENIUS of Will Arnett).

He's a runner, too. Did I mention that? And that's his own very sweet little baby in the picture.

It's difficult to explain the exact nature of my feelings for JB - he occupies a unique place in my heart. Why define something pure? Just let it be. I'm glad he's back.

66. YouTube

Well, it's more a love/hate thing, if I'm honest. I love it because it can fulfill almost every one of my most esoteric telleovisual requirements. I hate it because suddenly several hours have passed and no work has been done. If I had any will-power at all this would be less of a problem, but I don't.

I cannot watch nerd-o-vision. There is nothing more terrifying than the world's lonely losers presenting their 'talents' to the world live from their bedrooms via a Radio Shack web cam. No. I watch telleovision series. And movies. And music videos. All uploaded for me by the world's lonely losers who have yet to unleash their own talents and are still happy celebrating the talent of others. These are my people.

If I had any technical nous at all I would learn how to download stuff off the interweb, but that seems churlish when my people have gone to so much trouble. So today I watched some of that excellent series Blackpool, some Forsyte Saga (the recent one, not the Kenneth More version), Alan Rickman talking about some play or other and a couple of Bronski Beat videos.

Displacement activity, moi?

Tomorrow I must (MUST) work, so no more YouTube... for a few days, anyway.

65. Secondhand Bookshops

I was in Rye on Saturday afternoon - we had tea and cake (we never have tea and cake! But it was lovely) in an old Apothecary, then we went to Henry James' house, and by then it was 5pm and the shops in Rye were, firmly, closed. By chance, on one cobbled side street, we found a secondhand and antiquarian bookshop that was still open. Herself disappeared off somewhere while I stood and looked at the fiction. I found a couple of books by an author I have wanted to try (Barbara Pym) and felt that little fillip of pleasure that such finds always give me. The bookseller was very rude to a poor Frenchman who wandered in wanting books in French, and rather charming to me. She was Irish, and a Barbara Pym fan, so I had a couple of advantages I guess. She even took money off the books, which was unexpected.

It occurred to me that secondhand bookshops, and charity shop book sections, are of quite serious importance to my life. I haven't got the money to buy all the books I buy new (I'd have to be rich, rich, RICH) and I don't like buying them from Amazon even if they're a penny. Don't ask, I can't explain it. Books are a tactile pleasure. And I love the smell of bookshops, so it works with that sense, too. I think the joy of secondhand and charity shops comes partly from the handling, partly from the smell, and partly from the chance encounter - such as finding two Barbara Pyms. I store a list of books or authors I want to read in my head, and thus always have a reason for a quick look at the bookshelves. I also find books I might never come across in a 'new' bookshop, or the library, or on Amazon. I suppose even if Kindle kills the high street bookshop it will take a while for secondhand bookshops to go out of business. Won't it? Average life span for a woman these days is 80-something, so I've got 50-odd more years of secondhand book shopping to do. Will there still be secondhand bookshops in 2060? I suppose I'll have to run one. I'll sell stationery too. Perfect.

But the best secondhand bookshop in the world is, in fact, my mother's house. I suppose it's more like a library, really, because she makes me give the books back - although you'd think she'd be glad of the extra room my pilfering gives her.
E F Benson lived in Lamb House after Henry James, and his Mapp and Lucia novels are mainly set in Rye, so I was curious to have a read. There they all were, on Mother's bookshelves, along with one of the Barbara Pym's I spent money on...
It's like a big lovely bookshop just for me! And the booklender is lovely and very funny and chasteningly well-read so of course that's a huge pleasure in itself. Makes you think about genetics, doesn't it? I'm pretty sure my brothers can read, but they didn't get this gene. It's all mine to share with my parental booklender. Which is fine by me. Now, where did I put those books...

64. Getting nice things in the post

Doesn't happen often. But today, I received:

One iPhone
One copy of The Love Letter by Cathleen Schine - which I'm sure is going to be awful/wonderful.
One boxset of Arrested Development Seasons 1-3

I am going on a writer's retreat next week. Me and the dog, in the little house on the water all by ourselves, with at least 2000 words to write every day, and a variety of toothsome entertainments for the evening.

That's if I can resist the siren call of the iPhone, which is toothsome in itself. I will do my best.

Blogging may be infrequent over the next few days, but I will do my best with that, too.

63. THE GYM!!

Oh boy. You know it's got bad when you're loving the gym. But hold up while I tell you why.

Running (jogging) in the park hasn't been going well. A puff of wind stopped me in my tracks the other day and later I got overtaken by a toddler on a plastic push-along tractor so my morale has been low. I could tell it was getting to the point where I might allow myself to miss a couple of sessions on purely psychological grounds. This is what is known as the Thin End of the Wedge.

It was at this point that I started fantasising about a slightly too-warm gym, and a treadmill, and an elliptical machine, and weights machines, and feeling physically at one in my surroundings, rather than staring with undisguised loathing at all the freakin' smug marathoners in the park. (I'm not proud of myself.)

Problem is, gyms cost money - and too much of it, in my opinion. So imagine my genuine delight when I discovered that the old council gym in Camden had been refurbished at vast taxpayer expense and was sheer desperados for members. I got unlimited gym membership for £20 a month! And I didn't have to do a test or take a bill up there nor nuffink. I simply waved a printed email at somebody and they let me in! And it was WONDERFUL! It was slightly too warm, and running on the treadmill was LOVELY and I watched Cash in the Attic while listening to The Gossip and never has £20 been better spent. So I'm going to go every single day until morale is restored and then I'm going to show that tractor toddler a thing or two about overtaking. Ha! Eat my shorts kid.

62. Rainy Bank Holiday Weekends

If, like me, you live with somebody pathologically opposed to idleness, Rainy Bank Holiday Weekends are rare pockets of sanity in the chaos of doing. Yes, I had to go to Ikea on Saturday (Saturday! Bank Holiday Saturday! At 4 in the afternoon! In Neasden!) but then it started raining. And it didn't stop for 24 hours. This kind of rain can, if I am lucky, bring the Duracell bunny inside Herself to a gradual halt - at which point she looks to me, Queen of Sloth, for guidance. Marvellous.

We ate cake and crisps and olives. We watched The Love Letter, Brideshead Revisited and Roman Holiday. We read the papers and our books. I walked the dog in the rain because I am Irish and therefore immune - then we roasted a chicken. We did not look at our computers, run errands, do jobs round the house or go shopping for clothes. There was a small amount of running, a second short dog walk and a trip to the cinema to see Tina Fey wear a really pretty dress and run around in high heels. (Is there anything she can't do?)

It was peaceful, restful and wonderfully still. And today we were glad to get back to work. These weekends are all too rare in this house, so I make the most of them, especially as she is muttering about painting the kitchen.