Just overheard in the Pret a Manger on Haymarket:

- Why are there so many chicken sandwiches?
- Because a lot of sandwiches come from New York
- So?
- And there's a lot of Jews in New York
- Yeah?
- And they can't eat pig

Simple, when you know how.

If Prince Charles employs 26 butlers at a total cost of £2.5m (averagely/approximately £96k each), then I'm in the wrong job.

Just talking to a friend, I said that last night at a party, I'd bumped into an old friend who's a quant. (I now know this because I've been doing all that capital markets research) What's a quant? He asked. A quantitative analyst in an investment bank. Oh, he says, not a Mary Quant?

Whole new investment bank rhyming slang, we're developing here. "You got a Mary?"

IDB is a TLA meaning he works for his Dad.

Barschak: I've finally seen the footage, and he's wearing a tallis. This is not good for the Jews.

Oh, and apparently his Dad's a survivor, which means this whole thang might be down to Second Generation issues. Excuses, excuses. When he's not being a nutter, he's IDB.

Well, here's a thing. The natural inner-journo checked out where comedy nutter Barschak lived, on Monday. He was listed on the electoral roll (192.com), as sharing a flat with his sister in deepest Kilburn. His parents were listed, unsurprisingly, as sharing a house with each other, in Kilburn. I won't exacerbate their doubtless privacy-free status by publishing it here, as it'll end up on the front page of google, and that's just not nice. But today, Aaron's gone from 192.com; like never existed. Amazing what a deal from the Daily Star or whatever can do. Customer service only works at speed if you've got a couple of zeros on the end of your name/paycheck.

Anyway, what this is really about is that I just got back from a friend's party (M, 21 again), where N was talking about Monday's piece in the Times. Scroll down to the last paragraph:

Jill Ducasse, one of Mr Barschak’s neighbours in Golders Green, North London, said: “A couple of days ago, he was outside wearing an orange boiler suit. He said that he was doing a terrorist character from Camp X-Ray.”

Now when I first read this, I was convinced that "Golders Green, North London" was Times-esque for Jewish. But a bit of judicious 192ing, turns up that Jill Ducasse lives in an extremely noisy street backing onto the Hendon Way/A41, overlooking Clitterhouse Playing Fields (a name, I've always felt, that was some kind of town-planning joke visited on us for generations). So it could be that he rents out his place in NW6, and rents in NW11.

Be very afraid. Of something.

And his Dad called himself, in the Evening Standard, "a small scale property developer" or some such. Why say you're small? Cos you're big, that's way. Conversly, why overstate the size of your investment? Because it's miniscule. You get the picture.

I have too much to do. NY thing. CRM thing. A new thing. Another potential new thing, where they want a third meeting with me for no good reason. Writing. Life.

Turns out Aaron Barschak's dad is a macher at the Canfield Gardens shteibl. See.

Sympathy - required. Looks like it's gonna take six weeks for my ankle to get back to normal, and a bad sprain is apparently as bad/worse than a fracture.

Here's an (updated) list of things I can't do with my (not very long) nail extensions:
take my earrings out
put my contact lenses in
scratch, properly
pick up small items
get a credit card out of my wallet
type, accurately

Boy, do women suffer. This is crazy.

Aaron Barschak - the comedy terrorist. I mean, p-u-leeze. He had a strategic plan to show up the security breaches at the palace. More like, he had a strategic plan to get his name all over the papers.

My Jewdar's working overtime, though. Biblical first name. East european second name. Big beard. Lives in Northwest London. Parents aren't very happy with him (great piece in the Standard interviewing his folks, but can never find their stuff online.) We know the score. Unzerer.

Can't get a Glastonbury ticket? My local is Gladstonbury - this Sunday in Dollis Hill.

NHS Customer Service Prize
No, really. My friend B very kindly took me to the Royal Free, Sunday night, to get my ankle checked out, and the whole thing (triage, x-ray, nurse-practitioner, strapping up) took fifty five minutes. Some say, I was lucky (and I did do waiting-time arbitrage before we left, phoning round three hospitals to see the deal, but they all say it's heaving because they don't want malingerers). And it's not broken, it's just a bad sprain, so you can all rest easy now.

I've noticed a curious phenomenon. As you know, I'm no 2 in that well-thumbed google search, "Nails Inc Bishopsgate" (watch me reach that number one spot, baby). Recently, I've had quite a few hits manicure-searching from City law firms (I can sometimes tell from the IP address). Here's what I think happens: a secretary on her lunch break thinks, "maybe I'll go and get my acrylics done? I've seen a place around the corner. Now, what's it called?"

And all they get is my tale of lost nail tips, allegedly damaged nail beds (all extensions require the nail technician to file down your nail bed a little, and some have to be filed off, too. Mine took six months to go back to the mediocre state they were in before I got so vain) and disappointing service. Such is life.

So I'm on the phone to a client around 8.25 this morning, and when I hang up, there's voicemail from my Dad to tell me there's a piece on blogging on the Radio 4 Today programme.

It was essentially a two minute debate between Cory Doctorow (pronounced, strangely, doc-TOUR-owe, whereas I would probably say DOC-t'-roe, but either way, he's cool and a fab writer, and I just found out has been staying with my friend Yoz and is speaking at the Work Foundation in about an hour, bugger) and Debbie Georgovitch, editor of handbag.com, which is not a weblog, but hey.

Cory defines a blog as somewhere between a commonplace book and a public diary (though I prefer his "outboard brain" thing), but Debbie says "you have to be carefuly what you're reading, because it's not professionally edited, not self-policing". Cory says "it's liberating as a writer to be able to write the thing that interests you for public consumption... and making it easy to link replies". Once he got into pings and trackbacks, they all went "scared of the science!" which was a shame.

What there was little time to say, was that clearly an editor-style person is worried that her job will go out of fashion if too many people write editor-free. And we didn't really get into what I think is the more interesting conversation: the iterative, conversational nature of blogging, and the democratisation of content.

And one more thing in the "what's a weblog?" debate. Sometimes, old-media book-oriented people (and I'm just as much one of those as the next person) say to me, "I haven't read all your blog, yet." I'm at pains to say you don't have to: it's like a box of After Eights - it's nice to have a couple, but if you eat the whole box, you'll be sick."

Yeah, I was on the radio Friday: not quite as exciting a debate as I'd have hoped, but fun to see the inside of a radio station (again - I used to do voicevers for a friend on local radio). The feature leaving as we bloggers arrived was a group talking about working from home, and Mel someone was among them. Can't always tell the difference between Mel from Mel & Kim, one of the Mels from the Spice Girls, and Mel from Big Brother. Think this was the Big Brother variety: apparently she's training to be a barrister, now. Yeah, and I'm Maggie Thatcher.

So, met Jamesand Barney. James and I were kinda on the same blogger-wavelength, but Barney was a bit more diarist-journaller, though he had a fabulous manicure and tights. Man after my own heart. Barney says a lot about what I'd like to say in the ancient weblog v journal debate, so go read him.

The worse thing about being self-employed is that I have a projec to finish this week on NY time that does require me in Central London, a new project just starting that I can do from home, but is with a bloke from Boston. And two projects to negotiate that are suppsoed to start pretty soon. None of these people probably care if I have a sprained/broken ankle.

Not in a good way - sprained my ankle yesterday, coming out of the gym (ironic, I know). Serious pain, in all senses of the word. So much for living in zone two - no-one would help me. There I was on doubled over in agony on Crickewood Lane, when a woman with a kid in a pushchair went past: "nothing broken?" she asked, without even waiting for my reply.

Eventually, I got a lift home from some kindness-of-strangers woman, and called NHS direct who tried to persuade me I had no feeling in my foot, and that there was something wrong with my nerves. Then they said I should go and sit in casualty. I took some paracetamol, and did cold compresses, and was just generally in a very bad mood. Today, it's more swollen and hurts even more, and a friend who's a doctor took a look at it, and said I should get it x-rayed.

Waiting time at the Royal Free is hours - when I was knocked down a couple of years ago and hit my head pretty hard, I spent about seven hours in casualty there, until my headache got so bad from the MTV and saturday-night-party feeling that I went home, threw up, went to sleep and went to see my GP in the morning. Lived to tell the tale, though.

So I found out that waiting time at Finchley Memorial is only a couple of hours, weekdays only, so I'm going to go there Tuesday morning. Have a big meeting tomorrow about a possible column in a real newspaper that even a third world war wouldn't keep me from.

Was just in a conference call with a Boston client - so international, daaahling, I know - a technology supplier, who wants to make sure their messaging is reaching clients for Q4, and we were talking about business, and what levels of sales they have. "They're not buying strategic implementations so much, as buying part of the vision". Last night, at dinner at Maroush with S - a management consultant - she actually said she was helping someone transform their organisation, and she didn't say it ironically. Last weekend, M, a consultant at the same firm, implied that their information services department (formerly known as the Library), didn't have appropriate project milestones to meet their objectives.

Whither old-fashioned jargon-free language.

I think I should say that I'm not sure I'm a journal-style blogger. I think it's my outboard brain (thanks, Cory), or a scrapbook (thanks, Mike), or a place I write things so I don't forget them. Like I used to have a handbag/palmpilot/notebook full of places I'd like to visit and things people had said, ideas I wanted to remember, articles I meant to read. Now it's all here: a happy mishmash of what's going on inside my head.

OK, I'm on LBC at around 3.15 this afternoon, discussing weblogging with some other journal-style bloggers.

Why do you wear anklets on your ankles, but bracelets on your wrists?

The old ones are the best ones, as they say...
Parking For One

I pride myself on parking in the parents-with-children spaces at Tesco, especially post-watershed. I’m not stridently single, just resent paying over the odds for my no-mates portions of everything.

Tuesday, doing some high-speed shoppage, nine-ish, I sinned. Instantly, a North London mother-type (all 4X4, big hair and designer tracksuit) parked across me, and shouted something indignant that I missed.

She had proof – babyseats. No actual children, I noted, but clearly a better manicurist, which warned me off a cat-fight. Anyway, I sat there feeling as if she’d yelled “can’t get a boyfriend? I can hear your bodyclock ticking” across the car park.

Whose moral upper ground is it anyway? For a start, yuppie-single types are much more likely to buy premium and so deserve better parking. Make the Tesco’s Value purchasers park the five-mile hike. In a product-differentiated world, there should be three parking sections: Premium (proximous location, squeak-free trolleys); Regular; and Value (directionally-challenged trolleys for your cheap-food choices).

Mothers might moan about being time-poor and cash-strapped, but at least they’ve got someone to help them carry the shopping: a child or their other half. Ergo, they should be the ones parking in Outer Mongolia. I’ve got no-one to help me unload. And that’s not just emotionally.

And now cost-per-kilo shelf labels provide galling evidence that my bijoux-portion purchases are actually subsidising all those families of five. So while we’re at it, redistribute Tesco reward points to the single people. Parents, after all, have the reward of child-rearing. QED.

Oh, and I think I'm going to be on the radio, tomorrow. Talking about blogging.

Contrary to public opinion, I've never actually had a desire to get a tattoo. But read this and weep: Selfridges has a tattoo/piercing parlour, now. Diversity. Next thing you know, it'll have a gun department and a Mafia consultation services: underground, overground, wombling free. Weird. I mean, everything's mainstream now, and has it's own TV show or fashion retail department.

Just because I feel contractually bound to link everything in the world about weblogging: Catherine Jarvie (who she?) on blogging in Sunday's Independent.

And, er, one of my new pieces of work is about CRM. Anyone know anything?

I read somewhere, that I can't find now - I have such severe information overload that I can't even remember - that Micky Most died. Remember him off New Faces?

Things you should never put on the internet:

Your date of birth - someone'll end up in your bank account

Your postcode - ditto

A photo of you taken at a bad angle - you can be sure everyone you've ever met will see it

Anything you'll regret

Stories with identifying facts about people who don't know you've posted it

Stories with long sentences. Just personal to me, I suspect. Screenagers read at speed, right?

Forgive the ennui; I'm feeling a little victim-culture, today. It'll pass.

Good Hair Day: And The Rest
Literally a good hair day - I have used a unique combination of products - as my hairdresser likes to call them in an effort to sound here-comes-the-science professional - which have taken about half an hour to apply, but give me that effortlessly put together curly look. Men don't even know from serious haircare.

And yesterday, I got paid by two clients who'd been slightly inefficient, and had two business development meetings with potential new clients who both seem keen to work with me. And then I came out of Kilburn station and a bus was right there. You know when everything just happens. Must be global karma.

I fixed my comments. You can all breathe easy, now.

So I get off the train Friday night in Stockport - I've come home for the weekend for my cousin's Bat Mitzvah. My mum meets me at the station, and says, "trousers? Aren't you changing? It's Friday night?" and I reply, "don't you mean, what a pleasure to have you home, Sasha, darling?", We get home and have a quick cup of tea before we go to my sister's for dinner. As I stand up, she says, "your trousers, are they supposed to be short? Or are they hanging funny?" I shlep them down a little. When I sit down, my mum says, "a hole? Is that a hole in your top?"

I ask my mum if there are any other imperfections she'd like to point out. "You don't understand," she replies, "I don't have anyone to tell me these things any more, with Mummy and Auntie Vera gone."

"Mum," I tell her, "your top doesn't go with your skirt," (it does, actually, but I can't find anything wrong that I'd like to draw her attention to). She smiles. "and mum, your hair's not as bouffant as it usually is." "I know. The hairdresser's on holiday."

Do you think Jonathan Sacks is the Tony Blair of Anglo-Jewry?

To all the nice people who mailed me to say my comments are broken: thank you. I'll fix it as soon as I'm back at my own PC. But thanks for all the feedback on my storyette. And I'm kinda feeling like it's a short story, for those people who thought it was a novel. Not least because I have a short attention span.

OK, I'm getting sensitive. I know comments are like a plus, but I'm feeling like you're all too polite to say you don't like my story-ette. Is it too chick lit? Is it, er, cr*p? Comment soon, or it's gone: my delicate artistic ego can't take it.

Woke up this morning, story came to my head. Unfinished, obviously. Feedback welcome.

Someone To Watch Over You

Who knew?

Everyone knew that Tony, her previous boyfriend was a bit of a one. Had an edge to him. Wearing long sleeved shirts in the shvitzing height of summer, people wondered; Amanda had seen the bruises when Sally hadn’t turned away quickly enough when they were changing at the gym.

Sally met Stuart when he moved into the flat next door to her. Fifteen years older, shorter, balding, annoying nasal accent, and predilection for monopolised conversations; he wasn’t exactly a heartthrob. But my Grandma used to say there’s someone for everyone, and Sally’s music had stopped (like in musical chairs: when the music stops, you marry whoever you’re going out with) about ten years previously.

Not so much born to be bad as born to wed, Sally had planned every detail of her wedding since she was fifteen. A prettyish girl, somewhere on the plump-curvy continuum, she dyed her hair a too-brash blonde, and years of peroxide abuse had reduced it to a frizzy, frazzled mess. Blonde, though.

Stuart arrived on the longest day, with a friend, Mike, who unpacked a rentavan while Stuart yelled instructions from his rusting deckchair. In the afternoon, Stuart’s two teenage sons – living with their Mother, his estranged second wife – turned up. Ostensibly to help their Dad, but they ended up in the empty spare room, having silent wanking competitions while the adults argued over how badly built the flats were and why the faded Ikea sofa wouldn’t fit through the front door.

Sally watched faux-nonchalantly out of her spare room window into the concrete courtyard below. Her mandar sensed a recent divorce/separation: an incomplete suite, jangled kitchen utensils, the sense that only half the ark had made it to Shipsdown Close. He was ugly, though.

In the late night sweltering heat - a poor man’s Do The Right Thing – Sally went out to the hall to water her plants. Windowless, light-starved window boxes lined up against the bright red brick hallway, however much Sally watered them, they died. Not exactly green-fingered, Sally.

Stuart’s hall light was on, and Sally was worried about his electricity bill. She buzzed.

- Hi, er, hi. You, er, you left your -

His glazed-over red-bleary eyes stared at her, unseeingly. His black silk shirt, open to the waist, gave him the look of a seventies mid-range rock star on a failed comeback tour. He’d been interrupted mid porn-spliff extravaganza, and was a man who didn’t like to be interrupted.

- Yes?

- You left your, er, your light on?

- What?

His reactions were ten minutes behind reality. He looked at the light over his door. Sally tried to make sense.

- The electricity. If you don’t turn the light off, y’know.

She could smell the spliff, wafting through from the lounge, Tony-style.

- Yeah, yeah. Thanks.

He fumbled around by the unfamiliar front door, looking for the light switch. As she put her hand out to turn it off, he found it. Their skin met.

She had the look he liked. Half-pretty. Needy. He held his hand out.

- Stuart. Hi. Sorry.

- S-Sally? D-do you fancy a c-coffee?

Like two dysfunctional ships passing in the night, they negotiated their way into a relationship of sorts. She cooked, he fucked. He got angry, she kept shtum. Temper to wake the dead, he had.

Went to J and T's wedding on Sunday. Spent a chunk of preparation time on Three Manicures and a Pedicure (should be a film, I know, where an urban chick finds nirvana through sharing her pain with her beauty therapist, turns out they are both lesbians, and they ride off into a rather stylish sunset). My friends seem to think that I was a manicurist in a previous life. Everyone knows that Jane Cohen's mother says you can't wear open-toe shoes without painting your toe-nails: mine were dark purple with pink glitter over them. Dazzling, darling.

So I'm in the shower this morning, and suddenly: no water. I call the Water Board, they know nothing. I call my neighbour, she has no water either, but know's there's a burst water main on Cricklewood Broadway, been there since she took her kid to school at 8am. I can't help but wonder how the Water People get their information. Perhaps she should work for them. Times like this, I think, thank God I bought those thirty litres of water for the war.

I'm tired. And possibly wan. Also, I may not have a pilates licence.