So there was this church. It wasn't a particuarly amazing church in many ways, but it had a fabulous vicar and it also had James. Not long after I met him, he decided that he wanted to rescue me from my life of sin charismatic Baptist church membership, and he started taking me along to this church. Just off Edgware Road it was a bloody long way away from Lewisham, but as I always spent Saturday nights at his in Vauxhall I never really noticed.
I got to know the congregation, joined the choir, got myself on the readings rota and the intercessions rota and the Sunday School rota and the tea and coffee rota. I started working as a Server or an Acolyte on Sundays that I wasn't in the choir stalls. I considered joining the PCC and did join the Church Re-Evaluation Committee1. I did, you know, all the things you do that mean you have Joined A Church.
Then, as you will probably all have noticed by now, he carked it. And first I didn't go very often because it made me cry, and then I didn't go very often because it was so bloody far away, and then I didn't go very often because I'd fallen out of the habit (ba dum, tish). I still Served and filled all the various duties when I did turn up and I stayed in regular contact with the vicar, but such occasions became increasingly few and far between. At Greenbelt I got this nagging feeling that I Need To Go To Church Again, properly, every week. I tried to ignore it, but the damn thing just wouldn't go away and eventually I gave in. 'Alright,' I thought. 'But I'll never make it all the way up there every week...'.
And so tomorrow morning I'll be up bright and early to trot off to St Paul's Deptford2 for High Mass at 10:30. It's a lot closer: walkable If You Really Have To, and a short, simple bus ride from just round the corner to bang smack outside the church usually. I've been there for Ash Wednesday services once or twice and they're about as high as you get, proper Anglo-Catholics. There's a Father Paul who I know nothing about, and a Father John who according to my dad wears a lot of leather and raises money for AIDS charities.
I'm a bit nervous, actually. I'll keep you all informed.
1Look, stop laughing at the back there. It's a well-known fact that one of the things the Anglican church does best is organise rotas to decide whose turn it is to draw up the rota for who's chairing the committee meeting about the exact positioning of the paintings in the church hall during next week's parish lunch, during which behatted old ladies will argue about who is on the most rotas.
I thought it was just the Anglicans who did this. Then I went to a BiCon Decision-Making Plenary. First of all someone proposed that next year we have a meeting to discuss what we're going to say in the meeting in which we're going to discuss what we're going to say in the meeting in which we're going to discuss it. And then we had a vote on whether or not we were going to have a vote. I suspect the reason that I took so easily to handling Bisexual Faff is that I have herded many many cats, and most of them were wearing a cassock and surplus at the time.
2That's a really badly designed website. Give me a few months and I'll probably be on the committee to redesign it. [ahem]
If two people who want to have sex with each other have sex with each other, then there should be no punishment for it. I can certainly see that there is a level of maturity before which people might not be likely to consider the consequences of their actions as much as is necessary. I can also see that there is a level of maturity before which it may be much easier to coerce someone into having sex against their better judgement. I can also see that there is no reliable way of the government measuring this on an individual basis, so we need one blanket age of consent. I think that 13 or 14 is a much more realistic age to choose than 16.
I think that expecting anyone to be psychic is ridiculous. She'd said she was eighteen, she looked eighteen, they'd met on a website explicitly for over-eighteens, she probably wasn't a virgin. What are people supposed to do? ID all their prospective shags? You can only go with the information you have. So long as consent is absolute and not coerced in the case of either party, go right ahead.
We don't need stricter laws about who can and can't shag each other, we just need better sex education from an earlier age and a society which allows people to talk more freely and honestly about sex with their parents, their teachers and their peers. We need a media that provides solid and unhyped information about sex to those who need it. We need birth control to be even more readily available, and we need to find a way of lessening the stigma that surrounds buying it or asking for it.
The good, the bad, and the unbelievably bloody gorgeous
(Persephone Hazard, June 30, 2007, 3:55 pm)
I'm posting this from the Easyinternet Cafe on the Strand. I've done the Pride march in it's entirety, and heard Ken's speech in Trafalguar Square. Other than the general fabulousness of it all and the fact that I've had a brilliant day, two things stand out to me about it - one wonderful and one not quite so.
1. We walked past a small group of National Front members. I accidentally caught the eye of one of them and I have never had a look of such pure hatred directed at me in my life. It was actually really disturbing. I was amused, though, by the fact that there were more policemen standing in front of the NF than there were of the NF!
I was also quite pissed off when I realised that I recognised a few of the heckling Christians, come out with their banners and their bibles to tell us we were wrong. Their expressions were quite different to those of the NF, and both less scary but just as infuriating - their looks were looks of pity, of 'loving worry'. It drives me up the wall to think that I supposedly share a religion with these people.
But, on a lighter note:
2. WE WALKED RIGHT PAST JOHN BARROWMAN. RIGHT PAST HIM. HE SMILED AT ME! RIGHT AT ME! THERE WAS EYE CONTACT!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm quite disturbed by how much of a squeeing fangirl I was. The reaction was actually quite physical - my legs went all shaky and I got very lightheaded. Seriously embarrasing, of course, but OH MY GOD HE SMILED AT ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So yes, all in all it's looking to be a good day. I've walked for nearly three miles without giving up (I'm in a hell of a lot of pain now, but it was more than worth it and I didn't give up, which is the important thing if you're me) I have been SMILED AT by JOHN BARROWMAN and tonight I'm going to go to the pub, drink till I fall over and smoke till my lungs explode, as it'll be the last time I'm able to.
Odd as though it may sound, the one thing that's had the biggest effect on how I use the internet over the past few years is Firefox. I really do have a Highly Personalised Browsing ExperienceTM. I haven't joined a site in ages and not gone to look for addons or userscripts pertaining to it pretty much straight away.
I use scripts for LJ that change how I tag posts, that unfold stacked comments, that make various changes to userinfo pages. I can't remember what KoL looked - or played! - like before I downloaded everything I use on it. My browser has a pink skin and my tabs are multicoloured. I've got a load of stuff for del.icio.us already, altering colours and fonts and options to get everything exactly as I like it. The search bar next to the address bar has all the search engines I use in it (Google, Wikipedia, IMDB, the KoL Wiki, Bible Gateway, Dictionary.com, YouTube) and I've got a script that makes results open in a new tab. Not even Google itself remains immune. I've got a thing for making favicons show up on the results page (I have a Thing about favicons, though god knows why), a thing for opening lots of results in different tabs all at once.
And in fact I'm going to have to stop listing things there - partly because I use so many, but also because I'm so used to them that I forget what's an addon or a script and what's a built-in feature! (And all this is why I still can't understand people who don't use Firefox...)
It's a far cry from the internet of even just a few years ago. It's gone - in my memory - from being this thing that was really cool that not many people I knew did to being completely the norm - in fact, far and away my main method of communicating with people now. I'm crap at writing letters, I've mislaid my mobile somewhere around the flat yet again and the landline's still broken, but if you email me or IM me or comment on my LJ I'll almost certainly read it in minutes and reply immediately.
Even more recently than that, it used to be that there were people who were just offline, people who were just online, people you met online and then offline, and people you met offline and then found online. It doesn't work like that anymore. Apart from the RYLers and the Shipmates I'd be hard pressed to say which of you I met first in the flesh and which of you I saw around on LJ before that. And either way, we've all got so many mutual friends - both fleshly and digital - that it's entirely a moot point now.
So come on then - how do you use the internet? How has it changed over recent years? What do you think about the web as the primary method of communication?
3:37AM in June. The earliest dawn of the year is just beginning outside. My father and I stood out in the garden earlier, staring up at the stars, marvelling at the size of everything Out There. They're all gone now but for one, Vega, the brightest star in the summer sky, the handle of Orpheus's harp.
The year turns ever on, and I am lucky to be awake to see it.
I will stand outside, and watch the dawn as it rises, watch the sun as he brings us into tomorrow. I'll stand and watch Vega's last twinkle as he fades into the morning sky, listen to the birds as they welcome the day. I shan't sleep, not now. But that's alright, because right now it feels as though I am the only person awake in the world, standing in solitary awe as the dawn draws in.
"Night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast,
And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger;
At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there,
Troop home to churchyards."
-From A Midsummer Night's Dream
"THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings."
-God's Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Because obviously, it only matters what the men think.
(Persephone Hazard, June 9, 2007, 4:46 pm)
I posted this as a comment to a friend's blog and was so irritated about it that I'm now reposting it to half the known universe. Er, sorry about that. Original article here and it's all about what men think and it makes me so angry I want to scream. Yes, I'm overreacting, but still.
My goodness, this makes me so angry! If anyone seriously thinks that I am going to wear a minimiser bra just because some bloke thinks that large breasts are too sexualised for the office then that is their fucking problem. Because there's a fair chance that's what it is: Obviously, breasts are about sex. The sex and the office are not compatible. Therefore, we don't want large breasts in the office.
It links in to all the shite we hear about men not being able to control themselves. They can't help it, apparently. It goes way, way back through time. It's our fault if they can't concentrate on their work becuase we have a chest, it's our fault if they fancy us and we won't sleep with them, it's our fault if they rape us because we were drunk or we were wearing a short skirt or we fluttered our eyelashes the wrong way.
And I know I may be getting as bit over the top here but honestly, saying that "all women should sport medium-sized breasts in the office - by either using "a little padding" to boost their bosom, or investing in a "minimizer" to suppress it" really is just fuelling this whole idea that men are the victims of their own irrepressible sexual desires and that really is just a few steps away from blaming a woman for her own rape.
Not to mention it being extremely demeaning to men - suggesting that they're all crazed and out-of-control, nothing more than slaves to their libidos. And the crap that stems from is mostly bullshit in and of itself - from what I can make out, the average woman's sex drive is actually higher than that of the average man. But we Don't Talk About That, do we, children?
I thought I'd see how much was in the change jar, as I need some money for tomorrow and I currently have None. So I got a glass of water becuase I'm thirsty, fetched the jar and went to tip the change onto the living room floor and count it out.
While sitting down, I accidentally took a swig from the jar and a load of coins hit me quite hard in the teeth. I simultaneously tipped the water out onto the living room floor.
Walking down the street the other day, I wandered past the M.A.C shop. Seeing as how they do good makeup and all, I peered through the window and noticed an advertisment for their new range.
It's called 'Barbie Loves MAC', and the poster shows two painted, plastic women with more airbrush than flesh. There they stand, blank and expressionless, their perfectly pink lips slightly parted. I actually had to do a double-take to confirm that they were in fact women and not Barbie dolls themselves.
According to the video on the website, Barbie "represents such diverse beauty-it doesn't matter about ethnicity, cultural background, she is the face of beauty". What utter, utter bollocks. The black Barbie dolls and the Chinese Barbie dolls and the mixed-race Barbie dolls are from the same bloody mould as the white ones, they're just different-coloured plastic. Diverse? Good grief.
Why, as a society, do we do this to women? Why must we attempt to force beauty into a pink plastic mould? Why can we not just accept that women don't look like that, no matter how hard they try?
(Note that of course I'm not trying to suggest that the media doesn't do this to men, too-it was just this particular advert that pissed me off...)
"Damn, where's the Tiny Tea Tent got to? Oh, hang on...yeah..."
(Persephone Hazard, March 14, 2007, 12:03 pm)
Imagine all the stereotypes you ever heard about local pubs, all the stereotypes you ever heard about the working class males of Sahrf East Lhandhan and all the stereotypes you ever heard about the Irish. That's probably a pretty good picture of the Rising Sun. Now imagine that plus a coach, more drink than you can imagine could be fit onto a coach, and the first day of the most prestigious hunt racing event of the year.
We were all given a drink on the house at eight fifteen in the morning, and by the time we arrived in Cheltenham at one nobody was even remotely sober. It was very, very different from Plumpton (sort of like Little League as compared to the World Series...) and in a way, from a watching-the-races perspective I actually prefer it there-it's smaller, and more intimate, and nothing like as loud or claustrophobic.
There was a wonderful, buzzing atmosphere in Cheltenham, though, and it was interesting to see what it looks like when it's not being Greenbelt-I kept going 'gosh, this is so weird! See that betting pit over there-I saw The Proclaimers there! And I went to a goth Eucharist in that room! And I saw Billy Bragg on that patio! My old youth leader did a comedy act in that building! I fell asleep on the grass in the middle of that paddock!'
After the first three races I was tired, claustrophobic and in pain-LACK OF SPOONS ALERT-so I sat in the bar (yes, I sat in the Winged Ox! It was much more crowded than it is at GB...) and happily watched the last three through the window while dad ran around betting, taking photos and generally having a Good Time. There was even more drinking on the coach on the way back than there had been on the way there, and it was great fun. When we got back to the pub there was a party starting-but I was too knackered and spoonless by this point so I wussed out after one last drink and left them to it.
It doesn't look like THIS when it's being Greenbelt-this photo was taken from that bit of the terraces outside the bar where the Ship Of Fools lot always hang around at Greenbelt.
And here's the obligatory photo of me, sitting in the Winged Ox:
Dad emerged from his room at eleven.
Dad: I didn't get up.
Me: No, you didn't. I came in poked you but you rolled over and told me to bugger off.
Dad: I'm going back to bed. But first I'm going to call my boss.
Me: [giggles]
Dad: What? I'm ill.
Me: [giggles more]
So yesterday I went round to see Lucy and Dani. We watched a film, at Chinese, giggled at their astonishingly pregnant waddling cat-all was good. Dani knew that the cafe she worked in would be dead for her whole shift this morning, so I stayed over last night and went with her to keep her company. Not long after we arrive at 8AM, the phone rings and it's Luce, telling us that Treacle's just gone in to labour.
The first kitten was born at nine, the second at ten and the third at eleven. We got back shortly after that and proceeded to SQUEE madly (though quietly and soothingly!) with another friend of ours who'd popped round. Treacle then proceeded to have contractions on and off for hours, and there was clearly a fourth on the way. Lucy and Dani managed to fall asleep while waiting, and I curled up with a book.
Glancing up after a while, I realised that the fourth kitten was just being born and it wasn't looking too healthy. It twitched a little while I woke the girls up, but despite our best efforts he didn't make it and we finally admitted that he was definitely gone after about fifteen minutes.
We all cried a bit and it was very sad, but after burying him we came back in to three very healthy kittens and one extremely proud mum! The third kitten isn't quite visible in this shot, as he's buried underneath his sister and his brother. [grin] Mum is pleased but exhausted. There will be more and better photos when I go back to visit with my own camera tomorrow.
No-one warns you how much *dust* there is in them...
(Persephone Hazard, March 5, 2007, 12:26 pm)
I am a software girl. I always have been. My coding is crap compared to most of you lot but really rather good compared to Joe Bloggs On The Street. I can poke around and do Things with command lines and all that sort of stuff.
I've never been comfortable with hardware, though. It seems too...technical. You know-all those little screws and wires and funny-looking intricate metal Bits. I've always been sort of in awe of anyone who can understand all that.
But this morning, I have been on a Voyage of Discovery. I have Wielded the +3 Screwdriver of...Unscrewing and explored the Murky Depths of our old CPU. I have identified:
-The CD drive
-The floppy drive
-The hard drive
-A USB port
-The kettle lead ports and a fan, that are all together in a metal box I'm nto sure I can open
-A weird plastic Bit that I'm quessing is the computer's on/off switch
These things are now all sitting together, on top of another old PC of ours that will probably be my next victim. I also have:
-An assortment of things that are like a lot of little wires in a strip of plastic, that connect to other things using pin plugs
-The gutted CPC, with what I assume is the motherboard welded to the inside of it and looking all...complicated
-A Thing that I probably shouldn't have taken out that used to be plugged into the motherboard, and I suspect might be a sound card or a graphics card
-A whole shitload of screws, and a few funny-looking metal Bits that used to hold things in place and are now just oddly-shaped bits of metal that have been stripped of their raison d'etre
The Plan is to do this to all of the dead CPUs in the house, and then see if we can turn three broken computers into one working one. I suspect that this might be easier said than done.
First Wiblog entry made from new laptop! She's very shiny. Toshiba Equium, Genuine Intel processor, 60 gig hard disk. Twenty-four hour's worth of music stored on her so far and counting. She's running Windows Vista (which I possibly wouldn't have gone for if I'd been choosing it myself), which is actually very useable and seems to be heavily based on the latest Mac OSs, in that fine Microsoft tradition of ripping everything else off. I rather like it, actually-which I'm sure I shouldn't. I was only playing with her till four in the morning last night... [blush]
Oh, bugger-I've already started referring to her using female pronouns.
She hooked up to the wireless network no trouble at all (old laptop never once spoke to our wireless network), and hasn't yet given me a second of trouble over anything.
She became infinitley more useable once I deleted most of the automatic stuff and downloaded Firefox, Trillian, OpenOffice and iTunes. WinSCP works fine (I had some trouble with it on my mother's comuputer the other day), but I can't get Ameol to co-operate quite right-that's probably just me being thick, and I'll get dad to poke it later.
I am still trying Very Hard to resist the temptation to download Second Life.
I'd seen the two parter-Rise Of The Cybermen and The Age Of Steel-before, but they're still soppier than one would expect. Sobbed when that Cyberwoman got her emotions back and asked where Gareth was. Sobbed at the end when Mickey stayed. Sobbed more when Rose got home and ran and snuggled her mother. I didn't understand what happened to Lumic-why did he still need the chair? Why was he not effected by the destroyal of the emotional inhibitor? Was the inferrence that he didn't have any emotions anyway? But we know that's not true-at least, it didn't seem to be at the beginning of the two-parter. Unusually, the resoloution of the problem is not triumphant-it's horriffic. Watching all those Cybermen fall to their knees, realise what they are, die in agony as they fail to come to terms with the agony they're in-ugh. Not as horrific as that cockney bloke putting on 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' to mask the screams, though. [shudder]
I'd not seen The Idiot's Lantern before, and I bloody loved it. The people without faces freaked the hell out of me (things without faces do that; I hate shop manneqinns too) but the episode as a whole was just ever so well done. I especially liked the doctor's Furious Angry Rage when Rose came in faceless-you could tell that when he said "It's all suddenly become very simple. Nothing can stop me now." he actually meant "It's all suddenly become very simple, because I am going to go and fucking kill the shit out of the bastard who did this, only with Extra Yelling."
Who was the woman in the telly supposed to be? She reminded me a bit of whoever it was that did Watch With Mother, but I'm fairly convinced that's not from the fifties!
Dr Who quote of the day, possibly the series:
"You don't get it, do you, Dad? You fought against facism, remember? People telling you how to live, who you could be friends with, who you could fall in love with. Who could live, and who had to die. Don't you get it? You were fighting so that little twerps like me could do what we want, say what we want.
Tooth And Claw is another one that has its merits but is, overall, really quite dull. The portrayal of Queen Victoria was endearing but tremendously implausible. +3 for Tennant using his Scottish accent, but -5 for him dropping it again.
Is it just me who found SJS really quite hot in School Reunion? And Evil!Giles for teh win. I loved the interactions between Rose and Sarah-Jane, and they proved that the only thing a man finds more scary than watching the missus and the ex bicker is walking into a room and finding the missus and the ex giggling. The Doctor's goodbye to SJS was heart-wrenching. But then anything can make me cry.
The Girl In The Fireplace (the first one so far that I was seeing for the first time) is very soppy, and I couldn't quite understand why the Doctor seemed to basically fall in love with Mme Pompador. She was hot, though-gosh! That yelling! And the costumes were brilliant, and +10 for Drunk!Doctor. This one really was was very soppy. Though if I were the Doctor, I'd have jumped into my TARDIS and gone straight back to 18thC France and picked her up, which surely must be possible once the original time windows had been closed. I loved this, actually.
I think I've worked out my problem with the most recent two serieses(??) of Dr Who. They're too soppy. Dr Who's not supposed to make you cry! And yet, almost every episode has me sobbing by the end. Sure, it's mostly very good-it's just not quite the sort of good I'd expect Dr Who to be, if that makes sense.
We've just bought the DVD box set of the most recent series. I actually missed about a third of it due to life taking over; so it's nice to catch up. I'm working my way through them right from The Christmas Invasion and today I've watched the one in 18th century France (which I'd missed), the Cyberman double episode (which I'd seen), and I'm about to watch another one I've not yet seen that seems to be set in the forties.
(There will be spoilers for everything in the notes to follow-and that goes for each of the entries, and I intend to make one for each of the five discs in the box set. None of these notes are very long-there's about three sentances on each episode.)
The Christmas Invasion is just silly. I refuse to believe that they're taking that seriously, and I'm glad they're not. I did feel very sorry for Harriet Jenkins (she shouldn't have blown up the spaceship, no, but God-she's just so brilliant!) And I do like the way Tennant is introduced here. And tea!!
New Earth has a plot that doesn't stand up to even the vaguest of poking, but then this is Dr Who. I must admit I got a bit weepy at the end when everyone was getting cured. The bits where Cassandra was in the Doctor probably do prove what a good actor David Tennant is. Overall, though, I did find this episode really quite boring.
I do apologise. Nobody's going to read any of this, are they? [grin]
Just lately I've been making a point of taking a melatonin pill whenever I go to bed (even if that's 7am) and getting out into the garden for five or ten minutes within fifteen minutes of waking up (even if that's 6pm), at the advice of this wikipedia article that's about what's probably wrong with my sleep cycle. And, somehow, it appears to be working. Well gosh.
I have the obligitory Monday morning hangover. Everyone always has a Monday morning hangover. I swear, I know teetotal people who haven't had a drink for fifeen years who get the Monday morning hangover. Judging by the state of the Live Journal entry I left last night I can claim no such innocence, but my argument is that if I'm going to feel like this anyway then I may as well have the liver damage to show for it.
Today will consist of getting some work done for RYL, trying to ascend my multis on KoL (and get my main into a position where this run won't take nearly two bloody months, like the last one did!), meeting a friend for lunch and picking up Baby Sister from school. Any of you lot got anything fun and exciting planned?
A friend of mine has just made a post on LiveJournal comprising of two lists: 'Things Arkady Is Not Allowed To Do' and 'Things Arkady Is Probably Allowed To Do (But We'd Rather She Didn't)'.
One of the latter Things is "Make moonrocks by microwaving soap".
I do apologise for this, ladies and gentlemen, but I now find myself armed with a bar of soap, a microwave and a tip-off from Arkady herself that about two minutes should do it.
Take one bar of soap,
and one microwave.
Put the soap in the microwave. It might be best to put in *on* something, but like I thought of that.
Put it on full power for about two minutes.
And then you have moonrock. It's oddly triangular.
I find all this *far* too amusing, and have been sat here giggling to myself for ages now. I wanted to see if putting it in for longer would make it explode, but another friend of mine's exact words were:
[13:52] cookwitch: NO!!!!!
[13:52] Persephone: Awh!
[13:52] Persephone: Wanna!
[13:52] cookwitch: Behave. You made moonrock.
[13:52] cookwitch: You don't need fallout.
Now I'm going to go to the pub, and say "sorry I'm late, I was microwaving soap".
Pulses racing/Faces flushing/Heartbeats speed up/I have never been so keyed up
(Persephone Hazard, January 16, 2007, 8:19 pm)
Yesterday, dad and I went back to Plumpton. We usually put on a couple of bets each, but neither of us have ever won anything.
Third race of the day. No. 2's not the favorite but she certainly has a chance, and anyway this is the Mares Only race and for some reason I like the Mares Only race. Alright, then-tenner to win. She was in fourth right from the start, and round they went, and round they went, and she's not gaining-and there's another horse a good few lengths out in front of the bunch.
We get onto the home straight. Suddenly, she's gaining, and gaining, and gaining. She's neck-to-neck with the leading horse. The atmosphere is amazing-people are screaming, yelling, jumping up and down. They cross the finish line together and a voice comes through the tannoy over the yelling. "Photograph, photograph." There's a few incredulous minutes of everyone looking around, not at all sure what's going to happen. It's impossible to tell.
"The winner of the 2.30 is..." He pauses. God, this commentator knows how to create dramatic tension. The entire grandstand was silent. Nobody moved. I don't think anybody actually breathed. "Number Two, High Life!"
I didn't win much money-I'd only bet a tenner, after all, and the odds weren't that good. I walked away about twenty quid up. But I can see how this is addictive. God, the adrenalin! And the atmosphere! The tension and the excitement! [grin] It's all good fun, and I hope we keep on going back-although it does seem a little odd that I've developed a passion for horseracing, but y'know.
My father and I have been getting increasingly confused of late with regards to the mysterious complete disappearance of the big mug that I use for soup and he uses for tea. We've searched the flat top to bottom for this mug, and were incredibly perplexed by it's total absence.
It probably says something about our living habits that neither of us thought to look where I have just found it-washed, dried and put neatly away in the cupboard...
Today I went for lunch with a couple of good friends of mine who I don't see nearly enough of. It was fun, if a bit rushed, and I got a definatley good deal-I was given a pile of printed JETS ballots, had my phone returned to me, was lent a corset and after they'd both left I realised that between the two of them they'd paid for my lunch! [grin]
I then spent four hours doing All The Shopping In The World Ever. God only knows what possesed me to go to Oxford Street twelve days before Christmas, but at least I got it all done. Well, sort of-out of the nine people on my list I've got four done and three half-done, but for two of those I only need to get a box of chocs or sim. Still no clue about the other half present or the other two people, though*...
I have a sneaking suspicion that my father and I will have got each other the same books for Christmas.
I have A Thing about sheep, so naturally was very excited when Rosamundi sent me this link.
And now to wrapping.
Bugger. I never was any goot at wrapping...
*Secret Santa is evil and of Satan. I have less than no idea what to buy for the person I got in the RYL Supporters Secret Santa draw, which is annoying as I've probably already missed the last posting date!
Once upon a time a long long time ago, When I Was Thinner And Fitter(tm), I used to swim three times a week. Along I'd trot, on a completely empty stomach, and thunder my way through fifty lengths in twenty-five minutes before bouncing out of the pool.
Today I went swimming for the first time in years. I had a light breakfast and somehow squeezed my no longer thin or fit self into my ill-fitting costume. After three lengths I was clinging desperatley to the side of the pool, gasping for air. After five the lifeguard was giving me worried glances. After ten I caved and floated round the jaccuzi for fifteen minutes, pretending that I couldn't feel my thigh muscles involuntarily clenching up. I went back and panted my way through another ten tortuous lengths in utter agony before giving up and coming home, my legs trembling with every step.
I am now indulging in soup therapy while watching my hardened resolve take a long walk off a short diving board.
With her long, black hair/I couldn't sleep last night/With her long, black hair...
(Persephone Hazard, November 26, 2006, 2:26 pm)
(I have, by the way, finally hit on a use for this. My beloved LiveJournal is now friends-only, for various complicated reasons. This means that I will be using this more, as there are no non-LJers reading my LJ. As a result of this, there now follows an incredibly dull entry. About hair. Sorry about that.)
One thing I hate about this house is that we don't have a proper stand-up shower, just a shower attatchment in the bath. Washing my hair with it over the bath hurts my back, but it's perfectly adequate.
The other day it exploded. Seriously; the plastic handle bit split open at the back, sending a sharp gush of scalding water all over me and the bathroom. I screamed and jumped, but eventually tamed the unruly shower beast and told my father what had happened.
"Good."
"Good?"
"Never liked it anyway. Stupid thing."
No amount of persuasion or eyelash fluttering would convince him that this was something we needed to get fixed.
I have just attempted to wash my hair in the bath. (Jugs of water in the sink or over the bath? Pssshw-have you seen how much hair I have? I've tried it, and I always end up in an unsightly mess.) This exercise has taught me several things:
-Gone are the days of long hot soaks. No more bubbles for me, bubble bath makes my hair impossible to clean. And there's all this hair everywhere as opposed to tied up neatly out of the way. And I seem to moult when I wash it, so there really is bloody hair everywhere. Not helpful or comfortable or relaxing.
-It's almost impossible to get all the shampoo out of hair without an actual jet of water.
-It's almost impossible to keep longer-than-waist-length hair out of the water while the conditoner sinks in.
-I don't know what the hell I'm going to do the next time I do my roots.
The moral of the story, boys and girls, is this: don't live with a bald man if you expect helpfulness when the bathroom dies.
Now I've finally got this thing, I suppose I ought to update it from time to time.
(Persephone Hazard, September 22, 2006, 1:23 am)
However, I am having that old problem-I need Something To Blog About.
As most of you have probably noticed, I keep a LiveJournal. This gets updated multiple times daily with cubic tonnes of bullshit, most of which goes something along the lines of "All of my branes is died. Please to be sending more gin.' Absurdly enough, there do seem to be people who want to read this crap, and I usually pull in a few dozen comments per entry, largely from those associated with either the London goth circuit or the UK science fiction fandom scene. LiveJournal is a huge thing amongst these two social groups (No, really. Everyone has one, to the extent that we usually introduce eachother with our LJ tags and even if we don't, they've been swapped and duly noted within five minutes of conversation with someone new.) and as a result I've got into it in a big way.
The purpose of this journal, however, was supposed to be slightly different. More interesting and better written, for a start. But then it occured to me that I don't have a whole lot to write interestingly and well about. Hence-the floor is yours, ladies and gentlemen. Any ideas?
The first entry in these things is always a bit awkward.
(persephone, September 7, 2006, 7:05 pm)
It's a bit like arriving at a party late. You're sure there are people you know in the house somewhere, but you can't seem to find them and someone's already eaten all the prawn crackers.
I'm Abi. I'm on the Ship of Fools as eyeliner, and lots of other sites as Persephone Hazard. I keep a LiveJournal which I update with almost terrifying regularity, though I intend to use this for a slightly different type of blogging which I'm sure will become apparent over time. I am occasinally rather stuck up my own arse, and I have pretentions to grandeur, but I'm probably quite nice most of the time, really. I also cannot spell, and I am frequently very boring. The best way to my heart is through a bottle of Bombay Sapphire, a packet of Sobranie Black Russians, and a huge box of Dairy Milk. Oh, and I also rather like sheep. Don't ask. Just don't ask.
A Monologue Of Perpetual Almosts 
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