Gossip from inside my head

Harmonious confusion

2009-06-10T10:10:40Z

London is all in chaos! The magic tubes that hold it together have failed and inflicted disorder and confusion upon us all. Strangely, eerie packets of order exist within the chaos - streets full of people all walking the same way with the same purpose. It's amusing to watch everyone zoom around like this, their normal pattern disrupted, and everyone is trying to weave a new pattern.

Getting to work took two hours, but was actually fun in a way. Got to Leytonstone tube station, found it shut as expected. Bus stop queue of doom. Meh. Walked to Maryland station faster than the not-moving traffic. First train at Maryland too full to board, next two trains didn't bother to stop there, but 4th train stopped and even got me a seat! Yay. Trained it all the way to Liverpool Street. Walked the labyrinthine streets of the City until I reached the river at the Tower. Then got the free Riverboat, just about to leave! Yay! Got seat right at the front, so lots of fab views. Got off at Westminster, crossed Westminster bridge on foot and walked to Waterloo station for the fast trains to Wimbledon.

Now I need coffee ... I had to get up much earlier than usual. Wah! *stifles yawn*

Tell me tales of YOUR exciting adventures across London today. How long did it take YOU to get to work? Tell tell tell! :)

PORTUGAL

2009-04-14T00:07:49Z

On a whim, I ended up in Portugal last weekend...

One sunny morning I flew into Porto’s shiny new airport and hopped on the shiny new Metro system, climbed up the tallest tower I could find, and had a look what I could see. Porto is a beautiful city. The Douro river forms a steep-sided gorge, and many old and crumbly buildings cling perilously to the sides. Huge awesome bridges span the river. Checked into my nice and lovely room at my guesthouse, communicating in French (AGAIN!) as I spoke no Portuguese and they spoke no English (this actually happened quite a lot during my visit). After having a peek at the all the gold decorations and the grim ossuary of a nice church, and some roman mosaics in a museum, I finally made it to the riverfront (the Ribeira) and promptly fell in love with Porto. It was a hot sunny day (mid-high 20s) so I put on my shades, grabbed the best seat in a riverside bar (Porto was surprisingly devoid of other tourists), ordered a big glass of Vinho Verde and sat there soaking up the sun and pretty views while reading my book. So far, so good.

Across the river from Porto are all the lodges where they make that drink that Porto is famous for. So off I went in search of port and ended up at Taylor’s port lodge after a steep uphill climb. This had splendid gardens, a peacock, and a terrace with awesome views of Porto, and very sweet smelling port cellars. They gave me a free and very informative tour of the lodge and detailed all the different types of port, with free tastings. They seemed to think my 1977 bottle of vintage port should keep for a lot longer, and advised against drinking it soon. Although they also advised mixing Port and Tonic, so they seemed a bit confused. I then had a pleasant stroll back across the river and through some nice gardens, to a port bar “Solar do Vinho do Porto” with fabulous panoramic views of the river mouth. I watched a pretty sunset over the atlantic while sipping 20 year LBV port. Nice. Dinner was hard to find as most restaurants seemed to be closed, but I finally stumbled upon Chez Lapin, a warren of a place decorated with lit tea-lights and creepy wooden rabbits hanging from the ceiling. The cheap but very yummy three course fish meal came with free wine (not just a glass, a whole bottle) so I was quite merry for the rest of the evening. Ooops.

Friday morning the guesthouse provided a nice breakfast (and COFFEE). I then wandered around the shops, until I got very distracted byLivraria Lello, quite possibly the prettiest Art Nouveau bookshop in the world. Certainly it had the prettiest staircase. Then it was back to the Ribeira, where I found a boat willing to take me on a tour up and down the river. Like many cities, Porto is best viewed from the river and the views of the river gorge are wonderful. There followed more Vinho Verde at a riverside bar, then I partook of luncheon at the Majestic Cafe, an art nouveau (spotted a theme yet?) cafe that has the bizarre claim that it’s where JK Rowling first came up with the whole Harry Potter idea. Most strange, but I had to say a sad farewell to Porto as I then hopped on a super-fast train to Lisbon. I adore travelling by train, and this was no exception. The hostel in Lisbon was very well located, my room was on the top floor with a south-facing balcony overlooking one of the main central squares, with a view of the Moorish castle. Win! Just around the corner from the hostel was a famous Lisbon institution called A Ginjinha - basically a hole-in-the-wall bar serving one thing - shots of cherry liqueur. No tables, no chairs, but the entire square in front of the bar was full of people sipping this lovely stuff, and I couldn’t not indulge. A steep climb up many many steps got me to the Bairro Alto district, where I followed the wise advice of robert_jones and found the bar called Pavilhao Chines. Quite possibly the strangest bar I’ve ever been in. More like a museum than a bar, the entire wallspace (and ceiling!) were covered in collections of stuff. Dolls, paintings, decorations, figurines, action men, model tanks and aircraft and much much more. After a drink there, dinner was in a nearby sushi place, and then I had fun exploring more bars.

Saturday I was up early for what promised to be the highlight of my holiday - a day trip to the village of Sintra. It didn’t disappoint. Sintra is a pretty place full of romantic and decadent architecture and gardens - famed for being the one place in Portugal that Byron liked, and I could see why he described it as a “Glorious Eden”. The magical secret gardens of the Quinta de Regaleira cannot be described in words well - suffice to say it was a playful and joyous maze full of beautiful plants, dotted with elaborate statues, stairwells, fountains, bridges, temples, shrines, spiral towers, caves, tunnels, waterfalls, grottos and underground caverns. Eventually, through a revolving stone door, was the mysterious initiation well, spiraling nine times down deep underground to a underground labyrinth of caves, lit by fairy lights, where I finally emerged behind a waterfall. Genius. Leaving the gardens, I then set off on a long steep uphill slog to arrive at the fabulously multicoloured Pena Palace. Romantic architecture at its purest, painted in striking red and yellow, with more than a hint of moorish influences, this is a true beauty of a palace. The cafe on the rooftop has spectacular views of the surrounding countryside and the atlantic ocean, and seemed a good place to stop for lunch and beer. The nearby Moorish castle, while less pretty, was no less exciting, being an authentic ancient but intact crumbly castle with fabulous walls to wander around, and amazing views from the top. It was then a lovely woodland walk back down the hill to Sintra, where I hopped on a bus to head to the End of Europe. Portugal’s version of the lovely Ardnamurchan point, Cabo da Roca is the uttermost west of the European mainland, and is a remote windy clifftop with big waves crashing far below, and feels truly where the land ends, and the sea begins. It was then time to go back to Lisbon for the evening, for more of that yummy cherry liqueur and some nepalese food. I then gave in and tried the "Portonic" Port-and-tonic drink, find it nice and refreshing, unexpectedly (it is made with white Port).

Sunday saw me hop on a tram to the Belem area of Lisbon. Lisbon has some fab old trams, much like the cablecars of San Francisco, they zoom up and down the steep hills seemingly oblivious to the slopes. Belem has the awesome Jeronimos Monastery, which has very pretty cloisters and an even prettier church. I actually entered during the middle of their Palm Sunday service (ooops) although it was nicely done up in lots of purple and palm fronds. I was tempted to stay, but I would never have understood a word of the Portuguese service. At the back of the church is the elaborate tomb of Vasco da Gama, still honoured as one of greatest explorers. Belem is Lisbon’s old harbour, and the riverfront contains many monuments to Portugal’s golden age of exploration, and also a the pretty Belem tower. After lunch and a pleasant siesta back at the hostel, I caught another tram up the hill to the Sao Jorge, the moorish castle on the hill that I could see from my balcony. Surrounding the castle is a very dense labyrinth of small streets that make the castle impossible to find, I got lost several times just trying to locate the entrance. Once in, it’s a splendid castle, with the added bonus of a Camera Obscura on the highest tower, for panoramic views of Lisbon. Returned to the hostel to find some sort of festival going on in the square outside, with music and singing and folk dancing that I could watch from my balcony.

My final morning arrived with an unwanted guest - rain. Until now it had been lovely and sunny, but now it was wet. Although the day was mainly spent travelling - I had to get the train back to Porto, and in the evening I’d be flying home, I still had a few hours to kill, and soaking up the sun in bars was now ruled out, and I was also hit by the monday-all-museums-shut trap. Churches were still open however, so I headed for Braga, famed for over the top Holy Week celebrations. Braga was ... odd. Much purple was on display, as were palm fronds in abundance. There were dozens of shops selling religious tat, and pretty churches to wander around aplenty, including the awesome cathedral. Every street was lined with loudspeakers, and they were piping gregorian chants and churchy organ music into the whole city centre, and the streets were decorated with altars and candles. I was most bemused. A brief lull in the rain tempted me to get to the nearby awesomness of Bom Jesus, with a elaborate staircase, and a fab water-powered funicular train, which was fun to ride on. Returning to Porto finally, the sun came out, so I had one last wander along the pretty river there as a farewell to Portugal.

This weekend has been much more relaxed, catching up on anime, drooling over Doctor Who, eating nothing but hot cross buns and chocolate easter eggs, although today I did make it out to Eastcote with the tubewalkers for a pleasant stroll through a park.

Am already wondering where I should travel to next? The cities of Central Europe are calling me, but so are the deserts and lakes of California. The volcanos and glaciers of Iceland are tempting, or should I go to China for the eclipse? I could always go back to my beloved Japan? Or should I head to Tanzania to climb Kilimanjaro? Belarus and North Korea are also tempting for being weird, but I’m strange like that. What to do, darlings? I fear I have excessive wanderlust.

Wrongness

2009-04-02T22:41:06Z

Am in Portugal on one of my little adventures. They want to feed me Portonic. As in, Port and Tonic. I am not yet convinced this is right. Explain why this exists to me, please.

BELGIUM and LUXEMBOURG

2009-03-27T00:37:44Z

So. Where was I? At the weekend, I fled the country for a little while to those strange little countries just across the water ...

Gosh, the Eurostar is cheap and fast nowadays. Less than 2 hours to Brussels. They even fed me a huge breakfast onboard, as I’d paid a little more. I must do that more often. Now, why was I going to Belgium? I’ve been a few times before, but never felt I’d really ever “got” Brussels. I knew I was missing something, and was just in an adventurous mood to find the real heart of Brussels. Lets see how I did. Arrived at Brussels Zuid/Midi (TWO CONFUSING NAMES ARGH!) and instantly got lost trying to navigate the Brussels Metro. My guidebook map has 2 Metro lines BUT all the maps and signs there suggested there were 6 lines. But those lines didn’t seem to actually exist, or go where the signs said they went to. How was I to know that they’d totally rerouted their entire metro system, but that the new system only starts at the beginning of next month. They’d just put up the new maps and signs a little early, just to confuse me. Meh! Finally figured it all out, and I found my way to Atomium. Yes, it’s a giant molecule, not a giant atom. But it’s still AWESOME. The weather was perfect (and stayed perfect blue sky niceness the whole time I was there) - from the top are lovely views over Brussels, and the Atomium itself is SHINY and allows for good reflective photos. Inside it, of course, was ANTARCTICA, where it was cold.

Art Nouveau was next on my mind, so after a peek at the beautiful Maison Cauchie (sadly not open), I arrived at the pretty pretty Horta Museum (which I finally found open!). Horta (who, you know, practically invented art nouveau) lived here, and they turned his house into a museum. I almost DIED of the pretty. Everything in that house is art nouveau - EVERYTHING. The walls, the ceilings, the doors, the furniture, the lamps, the foppish pieces of art, just EVERYTHING. It was like living inside an art nouveau sketch. Pure escapism, of the most outlandish kind. If I ever become very rich, I’m going to make my house just like that (which I think says something strange about me, but there you go). The Horta Museum made my trip worthwhile all on its own. It’s that awesome.

When I finally pulled myself away from the pretties, I was accosted by huge orange rabbits, wandered around the murals in the gay district of Brussels, and, oh yes, the Grand Place is still very nice, but I’d been there before, and I’d much rather take photos of pacman shop windows instead. I had a drink in a Horta-designed art nouveau bar called Falstaff (an excellent name for a bar, but this was a french-speaking bar, so a bit of an odd choice there!), and then, because odd names were the happening thing, dined in a lovely Indian restaurant called Shamrock (seemed to be an irish pub in a previous incarnation). Here I noticed a strange phenomenon. Belgium is bilingual French/Flemish, right? And you can offend the locals if you speak the wrong language to them. So being a complete tourist and speaking in English is actually the best thing to do. I noticed that even native Belgians, upon entering a place they didn’t know which of French or Flemish was spoken, also try English first. It almost makes sense, in a twisted polite kind of way. Anyways, dinner was delicious, but expensive (ow that exchange rate hurts). I then headed to a delightful cellar bar named “La Porte Noire” (from the picture above the bar, a Tolkien reference), got talking to the barman about which belgian beers to try, and he pointed out he had trappist beer on tap, and then it was all downhill from there really. Ahem.

Somehow, Saturday morning I was awake before sunrise to flee to the next country, catching the first train of the day to Luxembourg. Not been to Luxembourg before, so it was about time to explore somewhere new and exciting. In fact, I’d only ever been to the flat-as-a-pancake Flanders part of Belgium before, and this train went through Wallonia and the Ardennes, and it was all up-and-down and much nicer. Luxembourg city was not my first point of call, I wanted to explore a castle first, on the far side of the country, in the village of Vianden, right on the German border. Fortunately Luxembourg is very small. A one-day travelcard for the entire country costs a whole €4! The hills around Vianden are very steep indeed, and perched imposingly on top of one of them is the lovely fairy-tale Vianden Castle. After a good long walk up the hill, it was lots of fun to explore this awesome castle. It has pointy towers and spiraly staircases and dragons living there, and pretty views across the hills into Germany. Everything a castle should be, so I was satisfied.

Where do I start with Luxembourg city? A strange place, it takes some getting used to. Basically it’s a fortress-city. Around the historic centre are steep cliffs on three sides. That’s a lot of cliffs, and makes for an unusual city layout, where the whole city centre towers above the river that goes around it. It’s really quite pretty indeed, and a joy to wander around, as there are unexpected vistas and views all over the place. The only problem is all the steep climbs. Underneath the city, carved out of the rock the city stands on, there are the Casemates (old tunnels) to explore. But that’s all I had time for, and had to grab an evening train back to Brussels. For dinner I finally found a place serving CHIPS AND MAYO. Done properly in a paper cone with real proper chips and everything. I’d discovered it at a music festival I went to in Belgium way back in 2000, and been deprived of it ever since. CHIPS AND MAYO! I was very happy. Finished the evening with proper lambic Kreik. Yummy.

Sunday was museum-day for me, and I decided to trust my guidebook’s raving reviews, and started off at the Musical Instrument Museum, much to my surprise. I feared this might be dull displays of old instruments, with descriptions in Flemish, and I’d be bored. In fact, it was quite the awesome. Firstly, the building was pure art nouveau, with a GIANT BLUE BRAIN on the roof. Inside it was even better. And there were headphones, and rather than boring descriptions, they had recordings of all the instruments. It was all location-sensitive, so you wander around hearing each instrument play as you pass it. This was so much fun! They had such a wide range of instruments, all the classical stuff, but also instruments from all around the world - Tibetan monasteries, Chinese temples and ... everywhere, really. And they went right up to modern electric music - synthesizers and theremins and the like. On the rooftop, by the GIANT BLUE BRAIN was a cafe where I had lunch, with spectacular views over Brussels. I never did figure out why the brain was there, sadly. There must be a good story in it somewhere. :)

I then might have distracted by chocolate shops, and then stumbled across the DEKADENCE exhibition in the city hall. Art from Bohemia from 1880-1914. So lots of fin-de-siècle paintings about despair, malaise, decadence, tortured souls, vampires, sex, lust and death. I almost forgot about the chocolate, it was that good. Final museum of the day was the comics museum. Again a pretty art nouveau building. They had a special exhibition on about Manga. I was in my own little happy place. In the evening I found a pretty 1920s bar called Mort Subite (instant death) serving Lambic beer and braved the touristy food places near the Grand Place for a nice dinner of mussels. Yummy.

Monday morning I found myself in a brewery. The Cantillon Brewery, where they make lambic beer. I also sprained my ankle badly on the way there, so was limping around it. I got a detailed description of how a lambic beer is different from normal beer (it spontaneously ferments, apparently), and a tour of the brewery, and it was all fascinating and informative. And then got given a glass of Gueuze and a glass of Kreik to try. I acually love the sour lambic taste - my main worry is that it was still morning. Oh well, two glasses of beer for breakfast it was, then. My main destination of the day was lovely Bruges. Bruges is one of my happy places, and I can’t quite say how or why, it just IS so. The cobbled streets, the old buildings, the towers, the canals, the shops selling strange stuff, the climb to the belfry (which then gave me a severe earworm of Beethoven’s 9th). It’s all a bit magical. Even with my limping and hobbling on my bad ankle - and yes, I still made it up the scary spiral staircase of doom in the belfry with that. IT WAS WORTH ALL THE PAIN. And then sad farewells, as with the rainclouds incoming, it was time to go home. It had been a good adventure.

Oh yes, lots of photos. Best ones are up in my photo Gallery. Brussels photos and Luxembourg photos. I already had lots of good Bruges photos, and didn't feel the need to take any more there.

More adventure is on the way, fear not. In less than a week I’ll be in Portugal. Mainly around Porto and Lisbon. WHAT TO DO THERE? Any advice on where to go is welcome, as I don’t know Portugal at all. I’ve heard Sintra is good, and think I might brave Braga in Holy Week. I suspect there will be lots of lounging around bars reading a big book.

The internet is stalking me

2009-03-19T13:19:11Z

Looks like Google streetmap has finally reached London.

And so the internet is STALKING ME. Go to Google Maps, search for Fillebrook Road in London, press the streetmap button, and go to number 37 Fillebrook Road. Find the white van, and zoom in on the person walking past it. That's ME.

EDIT: Direct link to stalking me here

So, to hide, I'm off out of here for a few days on a little adventure. First to the land of chocolate and beer and art nouveau pretties, and then onwards to the land of fairy-tale castles.

Behave yourselves while I'm away. ;)

SNOW

2009-02-02T20:44:22Z

I am enthralled by snow. It makes my brain all fuzzy and happy and unable to think about anything else. It has been snowing nonstop for the past 24 hours, and there is LOTS of snow here. I went for a happy walk hunting snowmen in the winter wonderland that is Epping Forest today, and found some gorgeous snowmen. I then built a SNOW DRAGON in front of doseybat‘s house. It is the awesome!

*happy snow bounces*

JAPAN (part 2)

2008-10-19T16:52:05Z

So where was I - oh yes, just about to escape rainy Tokyo on a Bullet Train ...

Wednesday morning and we were up early yet again, as we had a long long way to travel. The Ninja Hostel was nice and let us leave bags there, as we were returning later in the week, so we could dump heavy items and stuff we thought we wouldn’t need, like sun cream. At least, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Also seeming a good idea at first was a nice morning resevation on the Shinkansen leaving Tokyo station at about 9am. Of course, this meant getting to Tokyo station at 9am on a weekday, experiencing the full fury of the Tokyo morning rush hour. One good thing that can be said, is that the Japanese are obsessed with queueing for trains. The platforms have marking to tell you exactly where each numbered carriage will be, and where the doors are, and what sort of carriage it is. At every marking on the platform, an orderly queue forms away from the platform edge. It’s quite surreal to see it in action. The train arrives bang on the second, and people get off, then people get on. It all out fab in the end, and the rush hour isn’t so bad, and we find our seats on the Shinkansen ... and zoom, we’re off. The Bullet train is a joy to ride - lots of speed, lots of tilting, oodles of leg-room, polite train staff who bow everytime they enter and leave a carriage and who didn’t throw me off when I’d found out I’d lost my seat reservation (ooops!). Breakfast for me was a nice healthy packet of chocolate Pocky. Yum! The view is nice, the pacific ocean on the left, mountains on the right (sadly Mount Fuji was well hidden by clouds), and it was a joy just to gaze out of the window, watching the all the strange buildings go past at super fast high speed. We had fun counting ferris wheels - I don’t know, but the Japanese seem obsessed with Ferris wheels, and there were lots of them visible from the train. We were travelling at light-speed (Hikari Shinkansen) as our magic rail pases wouldn’t let us travel at wish-speed (Nozomi Shinkansen). Wishes are faster than light, apparently (and also faster than echo-speed). As we passed Kyoto, the clouds started giving way to blue sky. Arrived bang on time at Shin-Osaka station, where I had fun ordering lunch in Japanese from numbered menu in a kiosk (Gojuichi got me a very delicious sandwich!). By now, the sky was clear and it was turning out to be a hot day. We still had a long way to go - a subway line across Osaka to Namba, a 2 hour train ride on a private line into the mountains, and then a fun little funicular railway up the mountain to Koya-san. On the way, a friendly Japanese lady from Osaka started talking to me about all sorts of things, asking me where I’d been and suchlike, and she gave us a warning that a typhoon was about to hit Japan tomorrow. Interesting. We eventually arrived at Koya-san, hopped on a bus, which took us to Shojoshinin Temple, where we were staying for the night.

Koya-san (Mount Koya) is a mountain-top monastic retreat for buddhist monks, with dozens of ancient buddhist temples, many of which will put up pilgrims and other travellers for the night. Staying at a temple was the quintessential Japanese experience, and really quite culturally daunting, which made it a bit scary! We wandered into the grounds of Shojoshinin and through some arches and found the box we had to put our outdoor shoes in. Slid open the door and found indoor slippers, put those on. We were spotted by one of the ladies managing the place, who ushered us into a room to check-in, only we had to take the slippers off again. Shoe-etiquette rules supreme here. Slippers were only for the corridors, not the rooms, so confusing, and very hard to walk in too! There were other different shoes to use for toilet cubicles which does makes sense in a way (and they even had special urinal shoes in the gents). Inside the rooms no shoes, just socks allowed on tatami mats. It did mean one has to change shoes twice just to go to the toilet (and twice again on the way back). The room was nice and sizable, covered with several tatami mats. All the doors were sliding screens - no hinges, no locks - and had to be slid to just the right positions to close otherwise there would be a gap. Beds are made up on the floor. There was a window (with sliding covers - everything slides here!). Also a low table with cushions around, green tea with a kettle and teapot, unidentified sweets, and a box full of strange items of clothing, we worked it out to be some kind of yukata (traditional bath-robe), with an additional wool jacket for warmth. It all seemed very alien, but very lovely. :)

We headed out to Okunoin, which turned out to be right on the doorstep of Shojoshinin Temple. Okunoin is the temple where Kobo Daishi (Kukai), the founder of Shingon Buddhism and one of the most revered persons in the religious history of Japan, rests in eternal meditation in his grave, apparently. It is considered one of the most sacred places in Japan and is surrounded by Japan’s largest graveyard, which is why we were there. How Goth are we? The graveyard is simply huge and over 2km across, set in an attractive forest, full of millions of ancient and more modern gravestones, shrines, monuments, statues of Buddha and other obscure alien monuments. We got almost lost wandering up and down forest pathways between gravestones, taking way too many photos. We hurried back to our temple in time for the set dinnertime, where we were called into a large room full of small tables with the food all set out. So we knelt down by our table, picked up the chopsticks and examined our dinner. Buddhist monks are all vegetarian and also don’t eat garlic or onions (to avoid any lustful thoughts, apparently), and the food all obeyed this restriction, which pleased Jodi especially. There was hot soup and green tea and the food was yummy (although I was craving proper sushi, it must be said). After dinner, we felt adventurous enough to change into the yukata and try out the temple onsen (hot bath). Sadly, these were separated by gender (due to nakedness!) but were very relaxing and very hot! It was cold now, being dark outside and on top of a mountain, so the hot bath was especially nice. We then ventured outside again in the cold back to the Okunoin graveyard. This was very different by night, the lanterns along the pathways were lit, and it was much more spooky and enchanting and very pretty indeed. We found a wishing tree there, with lots of yen coins driven into the wood! We then headed back for an early night, as we had to be up for prayers the next morning.

Thursday started with Buddhist prayers at 6:30am, although we were up before then, waiting for the prayer bell. We shuffled (it was impossible to walk in those slippers) into the prayer room, where we sat at the back and watched the monks perform the ceremony. The room was very highly decorated with ... er ... buddhist stuff. Well, I’m not sure what it was, but it was very beautiful. There was nice smelling incence in the air. The monks knelt on cushions in front of tables with books on. The monks spent the next 45 minutes chanting, praying and banging gongs. Which was a very mesmerising experience, although that was probably due to the time of day than anything else. Eventually they finished, and it was breakfast time, more vegetarian goodness. We then had a wander around the rest of Koyasan (wanting to see more than just the graveyard!) which was awfully pretty, although stangely lacking in postcards at any of the shops. We then hopped on the funicular down the mountain, and back on a train to Kyoto.

In Kyoto we were staying at a ryokan. A strangely Japanese varient of the bed & breakfast (although this one had no breakfast, but many do), it was a traditional japanese home where the owner lived but let out the guest-rooms. By now we had shoe-etiquette sorted and other likewise customs, and in many ways it was like the temple, but minus the monks and the vegetarian food and hot baths, instead there were fluffy and hot toilet seats (!) and incomprehensible showers. It was in a lovely area of suburban Kyoto and very much like the Japan you see in anime but I can’t exactly say why - maybe the low traditional buildings, maybe the narrow streets and alleyways, maybe high school kids on bicycles riding up and down the hills, maybe the level-crossings going ding-ding-ding (there were 3 we had to cross between the station and the ryokan!). Typhoon-lady was very wrong, and it was a very sunny boiling hot day despite being October, and we finally hunted down sun-cream (causing much hilarity for the staff when a sock fell out of my bag in the supermarket). We went to the pretty bamboo grove which looked straight out of a film or something, probably one with lots of ninjas. I loved the area around the Bamboo grove, lots of pretty buildings, lots of awesome shops selling all sorts of strange stuff, it was very exciting, but all we wanted by then was ice-cream as it was so hot. Kyoto is most famous for its many temples, and we miscalulated on time and they’d all shut that day before we’d got to any of them, which was sad. So we hit downtown Kyoto, found the Daimaru department store and got enthralled by the food section there. So much insane food! We were hoping to find square watermelons, but couldn’t find any, but we did find melons that cost 22,000 yen (about £120!!) each and boggled. How can a melon possibly cost so much? Tell me now, I need to know. Hitting the streets, we found some pretty covered markets, again selling everything strange and wonderful, accidentally found the red light district and got out of there as quickly as we could, before reaching Pontocho, a lovely narrow but very long traditional alleyway. Along Pontocho were lots of very traditional bars, tea-rooms, ryokans and resturants, and it was all lit up with lanterns and very nice. Here we spotted a few geisha, usually busy carrying stuff into one of the tea-rooms from the alleyway. It was very exciting! Another early night, for an early start on Friday so we could actually see one of Kyoto’s temples before we had to leave. We only had time for one, and chose Ginkaku-ji, supposedly one of the best. After getting squashed in the Kyoto rush-hour, and navigating the bus system in Kyoto, we finally got to Ginkaku-ji, only to find that the main building was under renovation. Argh! Still they had exciting zen gardens with strangely raked sand, and the traditional Japanese gardens were very pretty indeed and well worth the visit. They also had a wishing pond full of yen, and lots of VIP moss (maybe it was called Kate?). Sadly that was all we had time for in Kyoto, I have to go back there and see the place properly, but we had to zoom to hop on a Bullet Train back to Tokyo for a very important appointment with the cat-bus. :)

The Ghibli Museum was one of the highlights of the trip, and not to be missed. Apparently tickets for the museum are like gold-dust in Japan and it’s sold out many months in advance, but they very kindly make it easier for us foreigners to get tickets, although they still need to be reserved in advance. We were running late, but fortunately they run a bus service to the museum, which is inevitably named the cat-bus. Which actually didn’t look much like a cat at all, but at least I can now say I’ve had a ride on the cat-bus. The Ghibli Museum itself is simply awesome - it’s theme is “Let’s lose our way, together” and you are truly spirited away in a fairy-tale like building to a different place. Admittedly, if you’ve not watched any Studio Ghibli films, it wouldn’t make any sense at all, but to an addict like me it was a delight to see all the sketches, drawings, design plans, story boards and script notes and all the other random stuff there. There was a Giant Totoro meeting you at the entrance, a large cuddly cat-bus inside (but they’d only let children on it sadly!) and a giant robot from Laputa was lurking in the roof-garden. The museum shop was full of Ghibli goodness, and I think I may have spent a little too much in there. Ooops. They even had a cinema in there, although it was only in Japanese, we went to see Kujiratori which was simple enough to make sense (or no sense!) anyway. They had tempting trailers for the new anime Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea which is not released outside Japan yet, which looks like a continuation of Ghibli goodness. Yay! We stayed until closing time, and then dragged ourselves back into the real world with a nice 3 course vegetatian dinner with wine at the Pure Cafe in Harajuku.

Saturday was my final day in Tokyo, and it was again a hot day. So the obvious thing to do was to hunt down ice-cream. But not just any ice-cream. We headed for Ice-cream city in Ikebukuro. This is inside a very strange theme park called Namjatown, in a shopping complex called Sunshine City. Ice-cream city is a collection of Ice-cream shops selling all sorts of delicious ice-cream in all sorts of styles, but we were there for the more eccentric ice-cream. This was made harder to find by very few of the labels being in English, but we could have a good guess at contents by pictures. I eventually settled for Shark-fin soup ice-cream and Garlic ice-cream (or at least, this is what I think they were!). And very strange they were to eat too, but still ice-cream and very lovely. We then explored the rest of Namjatown, find it a crazed theme-park full of eccentric food places, bizarre gaming arcades, and odd zones, like a ballroom, a jungle, an ancient temple and a haunted house, and also strange shops. Not sure anywhere like this could possibly exist outside Japan. After nice healthy donuts for lunch, and a Macha Latte (like an iced frappuccino but with green tea instead of coffee) from Starbucks we finally braved the Tokyo metro for the first time to get to the Tokyo Tower. It was a clear day, the views from the observation deck are stunning. Lots of skyscrapers visible, but you could easily make out bridges, temples and even a ferris wheel. It was very exciting. Quite by chance we arrived shortly before sunset. So we grabbed some wine, watched the sunset, and all the pretty lights come out, and it’s even better viewed at night. A landscape of lights, all twinkling in the darkness, and the ferris wheel made pretty coloured swirling patterns. The tower made fitting climax to my time in Japan, for I now had to get back to Nagoya for the night as I had a morning flight back to London. So I said sad farewells to squirmelia, and hopped on the Shinkansen to Nagoya, trying to cheer myself up with orange-flavoured pocky and lots of beer.

I arrived very late in Nagoya, and got to my ryokan at about 11pm. I was staying at Ichi-fuji, an absolutely gorgeous ryokan in Nagoya, even if their use of English is very, um, colourful. That website is a lot of fun. After removing shoes and sliding open the door, I found a note for me from the owner telling me he wasn’t in right now, but told me which room was mine. It felt really odd just making myself at home there without having met the owner or having paid yet, or anything. The next morning I needed to get to the airport early, but the owner had different plans. He was a very lovely and friendly old man, and insisted (in colourful English) that I only pay at check-out, but would only let me check-out after breakfast, and breakfast was being served after I’d intended to leave! In the end, I decided a yummy breakfast is what I needed, and it turned out to be a very gorgeous breakfast indeed, and it was disappointing to have to rush it and not go back for a second helping. I then paid and left for the airport (the owner waving me off, how sweet!) and the frantic rush to the airport involved such problems as how to operate the crazy ticket barrier when changing lines (it wants both tickets at once!) and accidentally boarding a reservation-only train without a reservation. Ooops. But I made it there on time, just, and waved byebye to Japan.

There’s so much I still want to see and do in Japan, and someday I’ll go back there again for a much longer stay. Until then, I’ll miss Japan horribly.

JAPAN (part 1)

2008-10-16T22:12:21Z

Japan was lovely, but the jetlag of doom (and other, ahem, distractions) stopped me writing about the strange land until now, and it’s going to be a big splurge here, so here goes *deep breath*

Flying to Japan on the cheap via a very quick change at Helsinki, as Finnair had some amazing mega-cheap flights. And the service on Finnair very impressive. Sleep on the flight predictably failed to happen (I always get hyper when travelling, just CANNOT sleep) despite attempts and drinking all the wine in the world on the flight. Arrival in Nagoya was fantastic, swooping in low over the mountains and landing in an artificial island out in the middle of the bay. Japan Immigration frustratingly slow - they had a single desk open for us foreigners, and they insist on photographing and fingerprinting everyone. I was about the 6th person off the plane, but still took me 30 minutes to clear immigration. Once outside airport, Lovely beautiful sunny day, very tempting mountains on the horizon all around. I was in Japan, and everything was perfect! :)

Bought a train ticket to the mainland - panicked when i couldn’t understand anything on it, but managed to have a meaningful conversation (in Japanese!) with a nice Japanese lady who pointed me at the correct carriage and seat. Train had a camera on the front and lots of screens everywhere showing you the driver’s view and the speed - lots of geek points for the Japanese and their lovely trains. Nagoya itself is a post-industrial wasteland. Which I’m sure some of you would love, but the only thing of interest to me there, the Robot Museum, sadly closed last year. So I collected my Japan Rail Pass (free train travel for a week!) and headed for the tempting mountains, hopping on a Shinano train to the town of Matsumoto. The train was nice and spoke very polite English, telling me where I was and where I was going. The view from the train was gorgeous, absolutely the best views from a train I’ve ever seen - lots of mountains and tunnels and bridges and rivers. Japan has two types of land - flat, where it’s all built on, and mountainous, where it’s all heavily forested. It makes for a compelling and strange contrast. I wasn’t so lucky with the food - in an optimistic gamble I’d picked up an ekiben - or MYSTERY BENTO LUNCH as I prefer to call it - probably not so mystery if you can read the Kanji, but for me it was mystery food. I don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t that nice, although it was very filling, and I needed to eat something to keep me awake by then! I’d been awake for over 24 hours now and the power-lines were mesmerising me by this stage.

Matsumoto is a castle town, and the castle is where I headed first. Japanese castles are not like English ones - as they look a bit like this and they make you take your shoes off to go inside! I was the only westerner there, which was obvious, the ceiling was too low for me - EVERYONE was being so nice and telling me politely to “mind my head” like it was the only 3 English words they knew. Climbing up some very fiddly small staircases, past some impressive displays of Samurai armour and Samurai swords and the like, I made it to the top, where there was to be found a nice view of mountains and a god protecting the castle (but only on the 26th night of the month). Leaving the castle, I then stumbled accidentally up a street full of frogs. I finally made it to the Museum of Art, where there’s an amazing avant-garde art display by Yayoi Kasuma involving lots of Polka-dots and I got lost in the Infinity Mirrored Room. I then went to my hostel and checked in, and they gave me free socks! That evening, I meant to find a big yummy sushi dinner, buy food for the mountains the next day, and go online. Instead, I fell asleep upon contact with my bed at 5pm. Ooops.

I woke before dawn, and headed for the station, looking for breakfast. Strangely enough, before 6am on a Sunday morning in a small town, nowhere is open. Buy a ticket for the first train of the day to Kamikochi. Hope I’m on the correct train, as this one is the small local Alpico train, and doesn’t speak English. Soon enough, the train becomes a bus travelling up high into mountains. Kamikochi itself is a tiny mountain resort in a valley at 1500m above sea level, surrounded by huge mountain peaks. Am overjoyed to find a shop, so quickly buy lunch snacks for later, and a large sushi breakfast, which I eat sitting on the banks of the Azusa river, admiring the pretty view. I ask at the info office for advice on hiking, and get pointed to one of the trails. Powered by Inari, I zoom off up the trail. Like everywhere else, but possibly more so in Japan, it’s polite to greet other hikers as you pass, so there was frequent calls of “Ohayo gozaimasu” and “Konnichiwa” (and even the occasional “Good Morning” - but I still responded in Japanese back at them) as I passed. I even found my first westerner since I’d left the airport, who responded to my “Konnichiwa” with “Are you from Manchester?” (apparently I speak Japanese in a Northern English accent. Good good!). I’m climbing through a thick forest and the path is VERY STEEP, way steeper than I was expecting, and doesn’t stop being VERY STEEP. There are scary drops at both sides, and there are frequent wooden fixes to the path where the path has collapsed down the mountainside but I keep going, even if I can’t see where I’m going or where I am. 2 hours later, I emerge above the tree-line, and find myself ON TOP OF THE RIDGE I was admiring while I had breakfast. I keep heading up the ridge, and finally summit at Nishiho-doppyo, 2700m above sea level, a climb of 1200m in about 2 and a half hours. The view is nothing short of spectacular. Never climbed so high in my life, and I wasn’t expecting to do so that day (I thought I’d have a easy pleasant walk but not a HUGE CLIMB). Celebrated by eating lunch, and then headed down, pausing to buy and consume beer from a vending machine at 2500m. Yes, that’s right, in Japan, they have Beer Vending machines, which is strange enough, but even in the middle of nowhere on a mountain? Got down, legs felt dead by then, returned back to Matsumoto and while I was starving for a huge meal, collapsed asleep in bed at 8pm.

Monday morning I still felt dead, but was up late enough (7am) to be fed free breakfast at the hostel - Miso soup and Onigiri, and it tasted amazing (or maybe I was SO HUNGRY anything would have tasted amazing). Then to the station to hop on the fast Super-Azusa train to Shinjuku (Tokyo). More tunnels and spectacular views of mountains, except ... it now started to rain. It was supposed to be the wet season in Japan, and I guess I’d been lucky with the clear and sunny weather in the mountains. So I arrived in Tokyo in the pouring rain. Staying in Tokyo at the “Khaosan Ninja” hostel, a hostel full of Ninjas (and very cheap rooms, free coffee and free internet), where I’d arranged to meet squirmelia, just fresh off her plane from London. With mobile phones not working in Japan, the meeting up had a chance of going horribly wrong, but it all went smoothly, and she arrived at the hostel barely 5 minutes after I did, with two huge bags in tow, containing her entire life. Our room was still being cleaned, but they let us drop off the bags, and we went to explore Tokyo. Tokyo has lovely musical trains that play different tunes upon arrival at different stations. We got a bit lost in Shinjuku station trying to find ... THE WAY OUT. Many large Japanese stations have shopping malls attached to them, or seem to be shopping malls, and actually trying to find an exit outside to the street is a bit complicated! Shinjuku has impressive skyscrapers you can view from an free observation floor at the top of the metropolitan governement building. Or it would have been a good view had it not been raining - it was still a nice view, but not the panorama over Tokyo it should have been. I somehow managed to correctly buy stamps, and even used a Japanese cash machine without disaster. By now Jodi was on the point of sleep-deprivation collapse, so we headed back to the hostel for her to have a nap. I planned to head out to museums, but felt ill (I was covered in red splodges!), it was raining, so stayed in the nice hostel kitchen drinking free coffee while flooping at one of the low Japanese tables that you kneel on a cushion to use. Later on, we investigated the scariness that is Japanese supermarkets (just how much strange food can you get in one place!?) and wandered into Akihabara, the electric town of Tokyo. Haven for Otaku, at night it is all lit up with large neon light displays of anime characters, and we found some entertaining vending machines selling Neon Genesis Evangelion anime figureines and plastic pizza slices.

Tuesday we’d planned to go to Hakone for views of Mount Fuji but that’s a very outdoor place, and it was still raining, so it would have been wet and pointless really. So we hit the shops at Ginza instead. Specifically, we got very lost and distracted in a toy shop. Toy shops in Japan are like nowhere else. So many gadgets and gizmos and STUFF. And upstairs there were GIANT CUDDLY TOTOROS and stuff from all the Ghibli animes and they even had a screen showing “My Neighbour Totoro” and it was all good. Imagine Hamleys gone insane, and you’d not be far off this shop. It was too much fun. We left Ginza, stumbled upon Cow Parade Tokyo quite by accident when we found Bondage Cow on a street corner. We found the imperial palace, which has a large impressive moat full of lovely fish, but the gardens are not so impressive. Or maybe the rain made them seem bad. The only good thing about the rain is Jodi’s cute frog umbrella, which produced many shouts of ”Kawaii“ from Japanese ladies we met. Later we headed for Shibuya, somehow found the vegan restaurant we were looking for (was nice and cheap!) and explored the lit up shops of Shibuya that evening, finding a shopping centre named after me, and getting very confused at labelling of music genres and ordering of albums in the local HMV, and getting unfathomably delighted at the exciting displays on the outside of Pachinko parlors.

And that’s all the strangeness I’ve time to write about now!

To follow later - more adventures in Japan including Bullet trains, Temple lodgings with real Buddhist monks, Spooky graveyards, Bamboo groves, Geishas, the Cat Bus and Totoro, Shark-fin soup Ice-cream, the Tokyo Tower and not enough sleep!

New flavours of ice-cream

2007-08-20T20:57:06Z

Not dead. Still reading this, you know, just been a little busy to actually post anything.

So I’m now eating Strawberry and balsamic vinegar ice-cream, and it’s totally delicious, and thought you should all know.

What’s everyone’s favourite strangest ice-cream flavour? *wonders*

GLASTONBURY 2007

2007-06-25T15:27:10Z

Words fail me. The mud. The MUD! *quivers* *twitch*

Glimpses of the past month

2007-04-03T16:55:55Z

I'm standing on a street corner opposite Angel station. It's late Saturday evening, the place is buzzing with people. The night sky is clear and dark. A full moon hangs in the sky, except it's coloured blood red. For several minutes I gaze on the moon, whilst all around me the party-people are having their normal night out, moving from bar to bar, oblivious to the night sky. Nobody looks up any more. It's sad. I move on and drown my sorrows at a place called Feeling Gloomy.

I'm holding a very fancy and pretentious glass, suitable for a special occasion, but it's not a special occasion. A green drink flows from a bottle, soaking the sugarcube resting on the spoon above the glass. A lighter sparks, and the sugarcube ignites. The sugarcube falls into the glass, igniting the green drink. Pretty blue flames dance around the glass. I sip this concoction with care.

I'm at a obscenely hip venue in Shoreditch, a place I'd not normally even consider going, where somehow we blagged our way in for free. The place is swarming with trendy people perched on stools and flopped on sofas, drinking outrageously expensive drinks. I'm feeling a little out of place. A secret gig by LCD Soundsystem is in progress. I don't know the music but move up near the front anyway, where I'm apparently surrounded by gay girls. The electronic sound pulses away and people around me slowly lose themselves in the music. I find myself being absorbed into the sound, and lose myself in the music too. It is fun.

I'm upset as I've had a bad day. I grab a bottle and turn up on a friend's doorstep in the evening. We put on 80s music and drink the bottle, and suddenly my problems don't seem so bad anymore. I feel understood. We grab another bottle later, and drink and make merry into the small hours. A good friend like this is priceless.

I'm in a small theatre in Twickenham, surrounded by a few friends. We're watching a performance of Hamlet, and it's strange to see someone I know well on the stage. I'm impressed by the performance, and it makes me happy. We giggle at inappropiate moments, even though it's supposed to be a tragedy.

I'm at a party in Lewisham, and we're sitting around a table. We're all holding cards, and have a pile of counters in front of us. Strange coloured drinks are floating around the table. I hold nothing in the way of cards, but put counters in anyway, and so do others. I put in more counters, until they give up and I collect lots of counters. Nobody sees my bad cards. Later I get caught out, and lose all my counters. Maybe my poker face isn't what it used to be.

I'm in a greasy spoon cafe with friends and a little bit hungover. It's very full, and it slowly dawns on us why. It's an irish greasy spoon cafe, and today is St Patricks Day. There is Free Whiskey, and I indulge, despite the hangover. The food arrives and the plates are full of everything, and more baked beans than is humanely possible to eat. I stuff myself silly, but still get nowhere near finishing. The food comes to less than a fiver. I must go back to Lewisham more often.

I'm in the kitchen, and it smells good. Very good indeed, in fact! A goddess is a frenzy of activity, baking chocolate brownies. It takes longer than expected, and we turned into pumpkins before the brownies were ready, but the resulting yummies are well worth the wait. My stomach loves me afterwards.

I'm in bed, it's the middle of the night, and I'm in agony. My tooth hurts, and has been causing me pain for three days now. It's only getting worse. I'm scared that the days of bad teeth have returned, after many years of good teeth. I don't want bad teeth days again, and I eventually cry myself to sleep. When I wake, the pain has somehow gone. I'm very thankful, but I look up dentists anyway, as I'm currently unregistered. I think I've had a warning.

I'm returning home from shopping in Leytonstone. Walking down the hill I've a view across London to the City in the distance. The sun has just set behind the towers, and the whole horizon is a warming shade of red and orange, creating a pretty silhouette of the buildings. In the sky above hang the new moon and Venus together. Nature is showing off. The next day it's sunrise, I'm awake, dancing clockwise and burning candles.

I'm in a club below London Bridge station, someone is buying me drinks on the condition I take her little sister home with me. For some reason the absurdity of this amuses me, but I go along with it as it more than pleases me to do so. A game of Dangerous Liaisons is set up, but I deliberately aim to lose. I admire my handiwork, and it is pleasing.

I'm at a party in Archway. We're all sitting on the sofas, wearing wigs, and mine is pink. We're bouncing along to outrageously camp and cheesy songs, drinking something that smells strongly of roses. A game of chess is in progress, except all the pieces are from Midsummer Night's Dream. Later we dance around the room to Rocky Horror. I have this feeling we had a different party to everyone else there.

I'm at home and we're making diaquiris, except none of us know how to. We make them anyway, and emerge with something that tastes like mulched strawberries. We watch that film with Pirates in it. Where has all the rum gone? I think we just drank it all.

It's 8 in the morning and they're using pneumatic drills on the road just outside my bedroom. This is the worst alarm clock ever. I can't get back to sleep at all, my whole head is ringing with the noise. They're building speed ramps, which is absurd, as our road is a cul-de-sac and gets almost no traffic at all.

I'm back in Archway, and I've found rum again, except this is gay rum, which seems appropiate. The room is full of lovely people, all of whom I love, many dressed up, with two pairs of identical costumes. We read the lines of iambic pentameter to each other and play our parts, silly as they all are. Despite me hating that play, it ends up being lots of fun. Later there is a hula-hoop and a game of Oware. When people start leaving I head onwards to another party.

I'm in Finsbury Park, and it's way too early in the morning. I'm getting agitated prodding at a computer that refuses to connect to a website. Connection refused. Refresh. Connection refused. Refresh. This goes on for at least an hour. It's not a lot of fun. My phone beeps to tell me the good news. Everything is sorted, and we have magic passes to enter Fortress Glastonbury. I smile and then go back to sleep.

I'm in a hobbit-like pub near London Bridge, sitting in a pokey little corner. The room is full of fiddles and hurdy-gurdies, plus the odd bodhran, guitar and even a cello. They're belting out a furious mix of english and french music, most of which sounds familiar, and all is very pleasing. Occasionally there is a singalong, but I'm too sober to want to sing, and many there don't know the words anyway, except for the chorus. My friend is a storm of enthusiasm as she plays the fiddle, she's the center of attention, if she bounced any more she'd be Eliza. I'm happily impressed by this, and also happy to find this sort of thing happens in London.

I'm sitting here at the computer and it's RIGHT NOW and I'm still wondering what's happening this weekend, as I have no plans at all. Perhaps I'll defrost the fridge. Joy! So who wants to see me? My email has not been working since Saturday, and I don't know why, and this isn't helping. But I have other more pressing issues, I need to buy more rum for tonight, as there will be more Pirates, and this time the drinks will taste of bananas.

Mob rule

2007-03-08T15:57:31Z

Can someone, anyone, explain to me just WHY democracy is supposed to be a good thing? I could never understand this. While you're at it, can anyone explain just how having elected representatives in a parliament constitutes "democracy", as it still doesn't seem that democratic to me!

Just because a plurality (or even a majority) of people want something doesn't make it right, or even the best thing to do.

When I rule the world everyone will have chocolate, and life will be perfect

Fragile butterfly

2007-03-02T14:58:55Z

It seems really obvious now I've thought of it. Of course there's a huge positive correlation between being a social butterfly and getting ill frequently. It makes perfect sense that it works that way. For at least the last month I've been flitting around in a very un-hermitlike way. I can't even recall the last evening I wasn't doing something with someone, and inevitably earlier this week I fell ill again with some really strange illness and had to stay at home for a few days. Actually it seems that I was probably ill the whole of last weekend but just failed to notice! ooops! I'm such a ditz! I thought my body was just complaining of overindulgence and general decadence, but no, I was ill! Anyway, I'm fine again now, but I have been wondering how it came to be that such a bad hermit. I'm trying very hard to be antisocial and stay in, but failing horribly. What am I doing wrong? *handonforehead*

Still, I had lots of wonderful visitors while being ill, to stop me going stir crazy watching Sailor Stars (eek nasty monster ... sparkly magical girl transformation sequence ... magical girl attack sequence ... yay we win!) all day long, and there has been fun things involving absinthe rituals and the like. That's a point - I've got FAR TOO MUCH alcohol in the house at the moment and anyone who wants to visit and help me indulge is more than welcome. *sparklysmile*

Tomorrow I'll be FINALLY getting to the London - Life in Maps exhibition, and later in the evening doseybat, antipodienne and myself will drowning our melancholy at Feeling Gloomy. Anyone else want to join us being gloomy? Even the moon will be all dark and gloomy! And you know, theres the usual sparkly Games at the Pembury from 4pm on Sunday where we will all take over the world. Or take over the words, depending on which game you play.

Plus, looking ahead, there's a fab Ceilidh next Friday (March 9th) which should be lots of fun. mirabehn, mostlyacat, taimatsu are you still interested? Anyone else?

Um ooops, I'm being a bad hermit again, aren't I? I JUST WANT TO STAY IN AND WATCH ANIME! MWAH! IS THAT SO HARD? *sulks*

SNOW SNOW SNOW!

2007-02-08T08:33:55Z

This is PROPER SNOW. A few inches at least! And it’s STILL SNOWING! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!

happygoff, chewiemonster, clockworkwasp and myself have been having a huge snowball fight in the street, and building snowmen and stuff! FUN!

I wonder if it’s even worth trying to get to Wimbledon? *giggles*

*goes back to play in the snow*

SNOW SNOW SNOW!

2007-01-24T08:32:34Z

SNOW! Here in London! *screams* A little bit, about an inch, but it's made everything so *pretty*!

View Poll: SNOW

*goes out to play in the snow*

Edit: Don't believe all those tales of transport woe. No delays at all from Leytonstone to Wimbledon. I've just done the journey in 45 minutes, which I think is a record for me, as it normally takes an hour. *shocked*

War on Flu! Can my body have a regime change please?

2007-01-16T00:10:57Z

I spent all weekend fighting Evil! And losing. Meh! Well, that’s if evil is defined as sore throat, coughs, sneezes, headaches, stomach pains, fever and a horrible rash. Which is certainly EVIL! Yes, folks, I’m STILL ILL and this upsets me. Wah! Can someone wish for me to get better soon? I’m far from being the only ill person (many get well wishes to all other ill-suffering peoples out there). Much as I’d love to blame verlaine (as I do for EVERYTHING) for this horrible evil illness I have a strong suspicion that certain kissing activities the other weekend may be the real source. I just can’t recall who I kissed! Ooops! *halo*

Huge thanks and much love to doseybat who came visiting bearing food and juice and tissues on Saturday, and watched The Cat Returns with me. I was going a bit nuts being trapped inside on my own, and wasn’t feeling at all happy with myself.

And yesterday, despite feeling terrible and coughing everywhere, I just needed to get out of the house. Screw that to staying in! I went to the Pembury, where there was not just the usual delicious cherry beer, but also lots of lovely people playing board games! I’ve found a new game I love - WAR ON TERROR. One of my favourite board games when I was a child was Risk. See, I had desires for world domination at a very young age! *evil cackle* Anyway, War on Terror is like Risk but with Nukes and Terrorists and you’re fighting over oil! It’s really very silly and very fun indeed. You get to spin the “axis of evil” to see who gets to be the EVIL PLAYER. And the Evil Player has to wear the EVIL HAT! Yes, this game has an EVIL HAT! How fab is that? Sadly, despite all my best attempts I completely failed to get to be EVIL. I’m going to have to play again, just because I want to be EVIL! To this end I have challenged antipodienne to a game at 4pm on Sunday at the Pembury. Who else wants to join us? (I think we'd be looking for 2 more players)

*sniffle* *cough* Wish for me to get better soon, please? I’m sure I’m over the worst of it now. I sure hope I am! There are several of you I wish to see SOON, and I will once I am well.

The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes

2007-01-12T00:01:33Z

Meeeeeeeh! Just what god have I offended??? I’m ill. AGAIN. I could so do without this. Not happy. Not at all happy here. *sniffles* *coughs*

Of course, I was a fool. Yesterday I woke up with a sore throat, and thought little of it. This morning it had reached nasty cough and spinning head stage, but I still thought myself well enough to work. So I went outside. And then the rain came down. Just what sort of crazy storm was that this morning? I was soaked in seconds. By the time I got to work I all my clothes were damp all the way through and I was COLD and WET and most thoroughly ILL. I’d no way of getting warm or dry. How stupid is that? So now I feel absolutely awful, not to mention foolish.

Don’t worry I don’t think I’m about to die, although the brightest comet since 1975 (Comet McNaught) should be blazing in the heavens tomorrow, which would be nice to see, but apparently it’s a bit of a bugger to actually see it, despite it being brighter than Venus (which means VERY BRIGHT indeed).

On the good side I’ve had a doseybat and a casby visiting this evening, and there was comfort pizza and comfort chocolate, and we watched My Neighbour Totoro and that helped make the world seem a nice snuggly place again. More evenings like that, please! *nods*

Hoping to still make it to Feeling Gloomy on Saturday and the evil-boardgames-at-the-Pembury on Sunday, but that obviously depends on me wanting to get out of a warm bed and venture outside. Which at the moment, looks unlikely, so I’m hoping to get better soon. Michael mentioned something about a scary recurring evil bug going around that needs antibiotics to fully cure. Antibiotics scare me. I don’t know why. They just do. Am feeling way too panicy! *eeeep*

Oh yes, yesterday I finally got to the infamous FOUNDRY. Which I’d heard all sorts of things about, it being some sort of bohemian anarchist art-gallery bar thing. And it’s all that, with crazy decor, graffiti, random art pieces everywhere, dolls hanging from the ceiling and so it’s truly a place of wonder to explore. Best of all, and the reason I finally got an excuse to go there, stompyfairy‘s art is currently being displayed there (Well done to you Emily, you’ve finally made it!) so get along there before Saturday to go see her art.

So how are you all? Still mocking me for being so amusingly awful at the anonymous limericks guessing game? Well I’m still guessing, and I’ll get you all in the end. One way or another I will! :P

Limericks Anonymous

2007-01-03T17:25:59Z

I'm trying to recall who to blame for this idea. Quite likely the person knows who they are and wants to remain hidden. For very good reasons as this is all WRONG:

Write a limerick about me or something connected with me. Make it anonymous. I'll try and guess who you are!

If can be about anything at all, as long as it's a limerick, and in some way connected to me. Me me me. Yes it's stroking my ego, but believe me, the alternative suggestion was BAD and WRONG and far far worse, so I'm not doing that.

So be bold and creative and do your worst. Fact, fiction, imagination, comedy, surreal, love, hate, or just something plain normal. Surprise me!

Shaping a new year out of the old one

2007-01-03T17:10:56Z

So we waved farewell to 2006. So MUCH has happened since a year ago I can't even begin to describe it all. What was 2006? For me it started with hugs and fireworks in a snowy suburb in Sweden, and ended with exciting drinks, a mellow jazz band and FAR TOO MANY countdowns in the Pembury in London. Somewhere along the way a lot has happened; I have deepened many existing friendships, in particular the_alchemist, taimatsu, mirabehn and doseybat, and re-established a connection with the prodigal yvesilena. I met several exciting new people in my life, with special mentions going to the charmingly extroverted kerrypolka, the stylish and fashionable blanche_carte, the will-be-famous-one-day elethe, the awesome antipodienne and even that charming bastard verlaine (who I do enjoy spending time with hugely, even when I feel like poking him with SHARP POINTY STICKS). I went on faboulous holidays to Ardgour in Scotland with lots of lovely friends, and also to Finland/Scandinavia on my own (but meeting friends) where I drove on the WRONG side of the road, and enjoyed lots of midnight sun. I was horribly horribly ill on my birthday, but still happy as the cooker and heating were finally installed that day and all was right again with the house. I was left very single and heartbroken when my sweetheart moved back to Sweden (meh!). I did proper Karaoke for the first time and loved it. I took up bridge again for the first time in years, playing socially with friends. I found the best club ever in the form of Feeling Gloomy. I've been to many weddings of pretty people. I've rediscovered my love of theatre. I remain unbeaten playing Oware. I finished reading War and Peace. And finally, I destroyed a planet. I WIN AT LIFE!

So looking to 2007, what will that be like? I've heard this theory that how you start the new year goes on to determine how the year will be. I spent the first few hours of 2007 making strange alien lifeforms out of play-doh with antipodienne. What does it mean? TELL ME. Also I totally WON and trampled all over the opposition at bar billiards, and I'd love to say it was through skill and perfection, but I'll have to admit it was sheer BLIND LUCK. This looks more promising as an omen! I'm wishing for a lucky year then.

Happy new year, everyone! Hope it goes well for you all! :)

Tis magic, magic that hath ravished me

2006-12-30T00:31:30Z

If you like your theatre to be POWERFUL, ENIGMATIC and just to be a plain SURREAL experience, then get out to Wapping to see the punchdrunk performance of Goethe’s FAUST. I went with the always delightful squirmelia, wintrmute and Ramesh last night to see this experience (plus we bumped into verlaine and companion there) and it’s certainly the strangest thing I’ve seen all year, and that’s saying something. *boggles*

So what made it special? First the venue. No ordinary theatre, the production takes place in a huge 5 storey warehouse, with dozens of rooms on each floor, connected by a unfathomable labyrinth of corridors and stairs. Turn off all the lights, all the rooms are dimly lit by candles for that special spooky atmosphere. Now decorate each room as an elaborate and fully detailed set like a totally crazy art installation. Faust’s study, a pentagram, a library, an American diner, several bars, a ballroom, a stable, a cornfield, a wood, a temple, many bedrooms, and many other rooms I never quite figured out what they were. Add random statues, often of a religious nature, and then finish the whole thing off with chilling EERIE sound effects. It’s like being trapped in some nightmarish American haunted house, and genuinely SCARY AS HELL. I guess that’s the point. And that’s just the set. *nodnod*

Now comes the fun and enigmatic bit. The audience all had to wear masks. We are divided up in to small groups, shepherded into a lift, and then spitted out at random floors in even smaller groups. We are then free to separate and wander this strange darkened haunted maze as we may. Occasionally we encounter actors, who often seem to appear out of nowhere, perform something, and promptly run off again. Which character was that? What’s going on? Who knows? Who is that lurking in the corner? An actor, a statue, or just someone else in the audience exploring like us? You see, the whole play is a puzzle, performed simultaneously all over the building. We caught glimpses of events and encounters between the various characters. By its very nature its very fragmented and piecemeal, and impossible to see everything, and that makes it fascinating. Every member of the audience gets a totally different truly individual experience, and sees different bits of the story. Much of the acting is done without speech, which makes it even more surreal and frustrating, yet adding to the enigma. Its extremely hard to even work out who is supposed to be who, especially at first. What few words that are said are then in German, except for the very critical plot points. First we wandered and encountered the actors by chance. Later we decided as a better stategy to catch more of the action to follow and chase various significant actors from room to room in order to follow their own personal timeline. Very slowly the story emerges, piece by piece, but still enigmatically incomplete. This process, combined with the EERIE set, the combined effect is truly powerful. It's totally AWESOME. If it didn’t cost so much, I’d love to go and see it again to get a totally different glimpse at the play. So what are you all waiting for, go grab a ticket to this magical and surreal adventure and head for Wapping! *prods*

That infamous pub The Prospect of Whitby is found just around the corner in Wapping. There was then an succession of pubs and bars, a lot of alcohol, no sleep, and drinking way past the sunrise. Drank an evil Kahlua based concoction for breakfast. Don't do this at home, kids. Never again! (well, maybe ...) We somehow ended up at a house In I-don’t-know-where-somewhere-North-London, and it’s only at about 8AM when wintrmute‘s housemate stumbled upon us still drinking in the lounge there did I realise whose house I was in. For said housemate turned out to be romauld (and why hadn't anyone told me this earlier?), so we stayed up even later chatting until I was even more of a zombie. Small world, big scary hangover of DOOM.

Inevitably after all that fun today was a write-off, no way I was going ANYWHERE, not even the shops, and Cambridge was right out. Stayed in to recover with much needed me-time. Agree with libellum that hermiting with Sugar Rush DVDs is a very good thing. Mmmmmm teenage lesbians. Why would I need or want anything more than that?

For New Year’s Eve all the fab people are headed to The Pembury to see in 2007. See lots of you there?

Happy sparkly christmas

2006-12-25T01:22:41Z

HAPPY SPARKLY CHRISTMAS TO EVERYONE! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! *happysmiles*

Now for the big mystery of the day. Which of course is sprouts. WHY?

View Poll: Sprouts

Roses bring Sunshine

2006-12-19T14:38:35Z

Saturday we had lots and lots of fun reading Rose Rage, an adaption of Shakespeare’s Henry VI (all 3 parts mashed together). I thought I just had some nice relaxing small parts, mainly with silly french accents, but minutes before we started the_alchemist decided that I’d also be Henry VI. Meeep! Somehow that all worked out, and while we had no roses, we did have a box of Cadbury’s Roses, which made do as convenient and very edible props. The War of the Roses make a lot more sense to me if I think about it in terms of chocolates. Chocolate is worth fighting for!

Real roses are not so edible. Try telling that to goths, and they won’t listen. Whitby 2003 saw some people handing out roses to goths, and filming what happened next. Roses bring Sunshine appeared on YouTube a few days back, and many of you are in that video, so do take a look. Just ignore that posing fairy about 80 seconds from the start, PLEASE. Why can’t I remember this, and WHAT AM I THINKING? AAARGH!

You’re supposed to get an idea of my year from me reposting the first sentence of the first post of every month. Let’s see how realistic this is, shall we?

January Sweden was nice.
February Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!
March First day of lent, and someone brought a huge and very yummy chocolate cake into the office.
April It’s all woe woe woe.
May A whole week of ardgour_2006 wonderfulness just happened.
June So maybe it’s the Gin & Tonic talking, but YAAAAAAAAAY my insane holiday to the Norwegian arctic is really happening!
July Am in Turku at isobell‘s nice place, drinking gorgeous banana smoothie while dinner is being prepared by her pretty husband.
August La la la Single again La la la.
September What’s the word for when your head is buzzing full of creative sparks and ideas and there’s no time to get them all out?
October I’m still here.
November Wow I’m so cute in bunchies, aren’t I?
December Happiness is lovely hot shower, followed by a cool refreshing gin and tonic (with lime, of course. Who do you think I am?)

From which I come across as some manic-depressive scandinavia-obsessive who loves his Gin & Tonic. Which isn’t the full picture by a long way, but I suppose I have leanings in that direction.

Anyway, I am still single, and do still look cute in bunchies, so I will wave my virtual stocking in your general direction and see what lands in it. *hopeful squeaks*

Xmas Stocking

leave a gift for fluffymark

get your stocking

Destinations are often a surprise to the destined

2006-11-20T00:05:50Z

The mystery bra vanished the next day. Deeper layers of mystery upon secrets. Maybe the fairies took it back again? I wonder whose it was? Life never ceases to be odd, darling readers, just read on.

When the weekend started with the whole internet dying (well, maybe just my router, but it might as well be the whole internet), and then huggyrei moved out in a big rush, I was left in a big puddle of *stress*. Home turned into this untidy, messy place which suddenly I couldn’t deal with. A highly strung fluffymark is never a good thing, and I very nearly snapped like a um... snappy thing. I went grrrrrrrrr!

So, I went out to catch a falling star. And I kicked a lot of leaves, saw a lot of people, and it seems I also missed a lot of people (you know who you are, now where were you? *waaah!*). Danced the gloomy night away with the beautiful people, and put ever so pretty and girlie bunchies in the hair of verlaine, beingjdc and antipodienne. Now that was something fun!

And this turned me into a mindless zombie of zonk. Or something. Today I’ve been really losing it. Lots and lots of zonk. I had a strange dream in which it was of the utmost importance for the future of mankind that I turn off my bedside light, or there would be big DOOM (it made sense in that dream-logic kind of way, ok?). So in my dream, I turned off the bedside light, but the DOOM wouldn’t go away. It got worse and worse. And I was sat there struggling with the light switch, switching it on and off, hoping for the DOOM to go away, but it kept on at me, more menacing. In desperation i unscrewed the light bulb from the socket, and suddenly the DOOM stopped. And later I woke up and thought very little of this dream until sometime in the afternoon when I glanced at my bedside table. The light bulb was lying there by the lamp. It had really been unscrewed, not just in the dream. So what was that dream? Am I the only one who gets things like this happen? *scared*

Feeling fragile after all this I broke in a fit of loneliness, and flopped. Later I set to things, and got happier when I found a unsecured wifi network in range (muppets, I’m using your bandwidth to post this, haha!), and indulged in comfort food and dvds, and now home is home and safe again.

And life? It’s the things we know who make us what we are. Life is about finding out all the little secrets and the big secrets. The hidden things. Lately I’ve been finding out all sorts of secrets. This game is beginning to get interesting, so let’s see how many more I can find out while this goes on. Oh, the drama, don’t you hate it all? Just make it go away someone (like that’s going to happen??!) I’m laughing, I really am.

Mystery female underwear

2006-11-15T23:08:23Z

Walked back home this evening, kicking lots of leaves about, and got to the front doorstep. There I spotted something most unusual.There is a bra on our front doorstep. Nobody living here admits to it being their bra, so it’s a mystery bra. So I'm all confused!! I’ve tried to construct a reasonable explanation as to just WHY there is a BRA on our DOORSTEP, but have totally failed. So, please, I ask all you lovely readers to enlighten me with stories, outrageous or perfectly sensible, as to why I’ve got a bra on the doorstep!! *confused*

Last weekend was angelcamp (or whatever you want to call it!), spent in a lovely old barn in Kent, consisting of lots of thespiness, very little sleep, many lovely people, and lots of silly costumes. mostlyacat wielded a camera, and so some really scary photos of me can now be found here. Truth be told, I actually spent much of the weekend smartly wearing a suit, which is more than I’ve done in years.

I love autumn, I really do. the air is so crisp and fresh, the colours are just right, and the trees have now dumped enough leaves on the ground to kick around in big piles. So much fun!

You think I can't fly...? Well you just watch me! Watch me!

2006-11-06T00:33:13Z

Wow I’m so cute in bunchies, aren’t I? And look about 12, apparently. I should do that again more often. Eyeliner is always a good thing, never never let me forget that again. *jumps around happily*

View Poll: #861002

I saw the Dresden Dolls perform at the Roundhouse on Friday. If you’ve not heard them, maybe you should - one of those rare goth/mainstream crossover bands with a very dark cabaret sound to them. I was warned the support would be, let us say ... strange, and strange it was. A whole series of several avant-garde performance artists, somewhat decadent and cabaret in style, along with all the feathers, hats and big black eye makeup, ranging from wig jugging to a unique stripper to singalong songs about aardvarks (It begins with an A ...). Um, you just had to be there ok? Put us in a lovely decadent mood for the Dresden Dolls themselves, who decided they’d not just do a gig, but a whole Show (with a capital S!), with guest performance artists on many songs swinging around above stage or prancing around onstage in gorgeous outfits. Mmm mmmmmmm. Very very happy I got to hear all my favourite songs off their 2 albums performed. I’ve been singing them to myself on and off ever since then (and I hope nobody has heard me!)

Had an even more wonderful time at the Oakdale Arms yesterday - everyone, really, everyone was there, and it was a night of buzzing between conversations, playing Jenga-of-doom with a tower reaching higher than myself (and that’s WITH my platform shoes on!), stopping doseybat from stealing my drink, taunting all my evil exes, discussing all the practical applications of Bovril in a seriously brain-breaking discussion and finally drinking tea into the small hours with a very pretty creature indeed (I fear I’m still crushing a little bit. Ok, a LOT. dearie me what am i like? I’m so predictable la la la. Is that bad?)

Finished watching Angel Season 5 just now, and so my brain is still going ooooh! and eeeee! and so so looking forward to what we are doing next weekend. This evening huggyrei kindly baked a gorgeous steam pudding and I’ve been munching that down very happily. Whatever am I going to do when she moves out?

Plans for World Domination are progressing well. Watch this space!