Just saw a bloke on TV who's got disco lights in his cab - the smallest disco in Manchester.

Mad conversation with K, just now, trying to make plans for tomorrow night:

- Basically, I knew what I was doing tomorrow. I was going to a leaving do. My leaving do.

- I didn't know you were leaving?

- Well, I'm a contractor, I was never really there anyway.

Well, how's this for a thing. I had a sudden desire to send someone something nice for Yom Tov, and I thought, a fruit hamper with wine (kosher, of course), would be just the thing. Now there are doubtless loads of shops in Golders Green who do this but (a) I am stuck at my desk, (b) can't face pre-Yom Tov triple parking in NW11, and (c) would like to send something "naice". Like I have an account at Berry Bros - a hangover from the days when I was sending speakers cases of wine wily nilly - but obviously that's not very, er, paschal.

So: Harvey Nicks - don't do kosher wine. Selfridges: probably do do kosher wine, but their customer service operative did my head in, and I had an incoming call on the other line. Fortums - don't do kosher wine. Why? Because - wait for it - they don't know where to get it. They get a lot of requests for it, a lovely girlie tells me, but they have no idea where it comes from. They've looked. So I talked to the wine buyer, and gave them Sussers number, and they thanked me ever-so, and they'll look into it. No, they can't do it in time for Pesach, since you ask.

There really is a school in Indianapolis that has banned the wearing of pink clothes.

Do you think bedroom occultists and armchair zionists are like, related?

Does anyone know the difference between the Wizard of Oz (1925) and the Wizard of Oz (1939)?

Wait, 1939 is the Judy Garland one. That's the one I want. Oooh, ooh, ooh.

Peter Preston on Alistair Cooke in today's Guardian.

Bus shelter: the thot plickens.

My bus shelter has been removed, but the bus stop remains. But - get this - they (whoever they are) have bizarrely placed a temporary bus stop about one and a half meters from the regular one - bang in front of the house next door's driveway. So they can't drive in or out. They don't have a drop-down kerb (like a drop-down menu, obviously), and apparently they have just applied for one. My mole at Camden said last summer they wouldn't get one now because of the bus stop. They need one because it turns out it's illegal to drive over the kerb, because it belongs to Camden and you might break it.

Dontcha love the public sector, rules and regulations and transport infrastructure?

I know what's wrong with IMAP - it's obvious. If I get up early, it doesn't like me. All technology's like that, right?

So I'm up at 6.30 to do a bunch of work and - can't get mail headers. Keeps timing out with my colo when it's trying to update headers. Exit outlook and try again - same. Try putty - tells me folder lock from process 26343, and won't let me scroll down my messages. Arrgh. This always happens when I get up early to work.

Last time - last week - by the time I'd got hold of the guys at 10ish, everything was fine, and it felt like they thought I'd made the whole thing up in a girly not-quite-geek-enough way.

Also, while we're on the subject of mail, squirrel mail doesn't work for me - so I have no interface for checking mail when I'm away from my desk anyway.

Geek rant over. Anyone got any ideas? I'm getting to the end of my tether.

"Every human being is a secret."

--Tzadok the Seer of Lublin

Waddya do in a situation like this? I have a substantial sum of money outstanding from a client, whose purchase ledger don't have any record of any of my invoices, and my client says "he's quite cross about this, he's signed them off, we'll just have to wait for them to do what they have to do." I offered to send copy invoices to the purchase ledger people, but he thought that "would complicate matters." He promised to "phone up and shout at them" (well known management technique) but I have a bad feeling about this.

That's the thing about being self-employed: not only am I my own IT department, I'm my own debt-chasing department, too.

Modernity: you spend so much time trying to reach people, you hardly know what to say when you do.

Clearly one should get these things in perspective (I'm not saying blah blah blah, just that I'm feeling a little overwhelmed today by the universe and all the choices it makes, if it does) but someday soon, I'll follow this thing about Google search and the JEWwatch.com website. In the meantime, I leave you to make your own choices.

I know he was 95, but I'm upset that Alistair Cooke died. Weekends won't ever be the same again. (Also, news doesn't seem to have reached google news: when I woke up and heard the end of tributes, I checked google news and I just saw that he'd retired - which it still says - and then in the shower, they said he'd died.)

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them; disagree with them; glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do."

-On The Road, Jack Kerouac

I have spent two huge portions of today on hold to Camden Council trying to get a reduction on my Council Tax, which I've just realised they owe me. I am listening to a very dull on-hold message, where they don't even value my custom, and I have noted their new opening hours and sitar music about one hundred and twenty six times. Maureen was processing the figures and calling me back this morning. No call. Quel surprise.

Talking to a friend just now, I said that I'm having a hard time concentrating on my work-work, and he's all NLP, so he asked me when I last concentrated on something, as that's how NLP works (methinks - you take something that was good, and use it as a model for doing it again). I pondered. "1998," I responded. It's true.

Weekend update: (for no other reason than I feel a peverse desire to chronicle my life right now) - my Morroccan feast went down pretty well, I think, and my late-addition pistachio cookies were a real hit. K brought me some of his ras-el-hanout flavoured honey, which is delicious, and goes especially well with my za'atar flatbread. We are middle-eastern in NW6, me and K. Other guests brought me very drinkable wine and stylish flowers. The whole thing was very Nigella meets some US-written sitcom. M had just driven back from Shropshire.

A lazy day, Saturday: felt I deserved a rest. Went to a party on Saturday night in a bar in King's Cross so unfeasibly hip that it took me an hour to find it. I only knew two people there, and the other hundredish folks ignored me. I went home, sprung forward, went to bed, and got up bright-and-early to do a little homework, had an Alexander technique lesson, spent the afternoon in a creative workshopping thing, that was supposed to be a favour for a friend (lots of creative/writery/brand-style folk sharing their brains for her project), but was also loads of fun and got the creative juices going. I made some nice words. Ish.

Gone back to work for a break. No, really (my no-really amnesty is over now. No, really.)

Turns out, I have a LiveJournal feed. There's clearly only one thing I can say about this: yay. Yay.

Since I go easy on the refined carbs, and I don't think I've had a gummi bear in a while (maybe a decade, even), maybe less of a deal. But do you think they, like, expand, in your stomach? [link via boing boing]

OK, I have forty-three items on my list today (and obviously that includes item number one, "write list"), and I've only done six. Help.

No sooner do I mention Choice Inertia (OK, three months later) as part of my oh-so-now Sheitgeist Index, than Stuart Jeffries gets all hot under his 57-varieties collar about the very same thing.

And you say - if you do - that I don't have my finger on the pulse?

It can't really be the case that Ann Widdecombe is an agony aunt? Ever since I saw her on the Louis Theroux show on a cruise with her Mum, I did think of her in a soft-and-gentler way, and the haircut/makeover helps. But agony aunt? P-u-lease. That just hurts.

My mate Yoz sends me everything I need...the Ziplinq handsfree headset at Widget UK Ltd. Just because I asked.

You've only got till mid-May to see the exhibition "Cup size is the only consideration" which my current guest regarded as "a waste of time shlepping to the East End for." You have been told.

Saturday's Guardian: the believers - on McSweeny, and the Dave-Eggerisation of practically everything (including Zadie Smith.)

You know, in a strange way, I'd come to love my bus shelter. I feel... bare, in some way, that it's gone. Also, my friends who came over to dinner on Friday night couldn't find my house, as I described it as "the one with the bus shelter outside."

OK, these are the shoes that spoke to me. They said: "we are your destiny, buy us. We remind you of your parents sofa in 1976."

We're so lax in Camden. When I lived in Hampstead Garden Suburb (which I never have - I'm using a little literary licence for mirthful purpose), I had a non-standard bush outside my house, and the Provisional Wing of the Hamsptead Garden Suburb Residents Association gave me a hard time. Handbagging - that's the North London version of kneecapping.

Much Vaunted Bus Shelter Update

As we speak, people - men - are removing my bus-stop. My downstairs neighbour is very excited that it has been removed permanently, because she thinks the people in the house next door applied for planning permission to have a dipped kerb, so their cars could get in properly. I know from the Camden people that they chose this exact site because there's no dipped kerb next door, and it gives them better access to the buses. I said, what if they applied for planning permission? The Camden people said "well, they won't get it now."

I suspect that the bus shelter is being removed and will shortly be replaced with what we were promised in May. Or was it July. Anyway, so long ago that the details elude me. One that is two bay (smaller), and doesn't have an advertising panel, so we don't kill people as we reverse into a major thoroughfare. Although we may inadvertantly stop in the bus lane and receive a fine. Talk about living in the fast lane.

Y'know? In some strange way, I've come to love my bus shelter. Perhaps the bus shelter therapy support group helped, some. I think it signifies that which is imperfect/requiring of change in all of us.

I'm so eighties - this I really need a cassette deck for the PC. I'm so there.

Did I mention that I love my writing class? Tuesday nights.

Getting on a plane to Manchester last week, the kid (as in young-ish, twelve maybe, woman) in front of me, had the most fabulous purple velvet backpack-cum-handbag. I wanted one so much, I struck up a conversation. Turns out it's a Buffy backpack, but I can't find it anywhere.

Today's promise: I will try and not say "really" or "no, really" for twenty-four hours.

That nice bloke who's wife was in the accident yesterday left me a voicemail message thanking me for stopping and helping, and saying his wife has broken her leg, but she'll be fine. It's nice when people are nice. My English teacher at school said you should never use the word nice, so yah-boo-sucks to Mrs Woodward (who had a square head, and was old, or so we thought. I realise now she was probably about twenty six).

OK, handsup. I admit it. IMAP is not that bad. Repeat after me: I mustn't keep individual emails that are 40MB on my server. Slapped hands, sorry.

I am having an extremely witty (if I say so myself) email correspondence with a client, where I signed up to their competitors mailing list under three identities (Donald Duck, Daffy Duck, and Tony Blair). I did this two years ago, and they still send me monumental amounts of mail. Which proves that they never check (AKA eyeball, dontcha know) their mail lists.

Yesterday, I forwarded R something they sent me, saying "is this like your offering?" and he emailed Donald back in a rather entertaining way.

I like being self-employed. I can choose who I work with, and they are all, almost without exception, witty and pithy. Often, wittier and pithier than me.

Yesterday: my client's client talked the kind of crap that only consultants can. Example: "we're hardwiring ROI into the business plan." Like, isn't ROI what business is about, sweedie? And he talked at me for 90 minutes (which makes it sound like an internet business plan, I realise) in a generic way that made me think "have you said anything at all?" Apart from when he .... Oh, I hate meetings like that. Although, to be fair, I did learn a lot, it's just a very vague, boundaryless area.

Next meeting blown out (I'm so efficient that I arrange back to back meetings, but that doesn't always work out), so I did a little shoppage - obviously - had a Costbucks, and met D for a movie: Along Came Polly. It's very, very funny, in a written-by-a-team-of-Americans way. And because the test of a movie now is "were all the best bits in the trailer you've already seen, or does it still grab you?" it's a good movie. We laughed. We admired Jennifer Aniston's over-Atkinsed, toned body. We acknowledged the subtle - some would say stereotypical - characterisation of Reuben as an uptight, risk-averse Jewish guy with a more-than-delicate stomach. We laughed at Polly as the "I'm so unable to commit I can't even finish this sent-" stereotype. But it was cute, really: great cameos, and the obligatory John Hughes reference, which had us both back in 1985. Teenagehood: it can only be a good thing. Followed by supper at Satsuma, which is like Wagamama, but less worthy, and with orange, obviously.

Because I am currently burning the candle at both ends, got home and made my bread, left it to rise, and made my Moroccan dried fruit salad.

Tonight's menu, should you care:

homemade humous, with za'atar and toasted pinenuts

home made flatbreads with za'atar

(am I going a little heavy on the za'atar?)

(slightly sweet) Moroccan couscous, with the harif (hot sauce) on the side.

dried fruit salad, a la Momo, except different because I couldn't remember what was in it

ice cream

mint tea, probably, to complete the theme

Wadya reckon? Should I make a salad? Sometimes, my Mum asks me what I'm making for Friday night (I don't eat meat, and chicken is pretty standard Friday night fare), and whatever I say, she generally says "with what?" - as if my entire culinary repertoire might only be a side dish.

I'm rambling. Hello, Mum.

Now I'm off to meet a client's client in a hotel bar in the city. He insisted. Why, I don't know, he appears to have an office somewhere in London, but maybe he's just time-poor and this will save him twenty minutes getting to and fro meetings. I can't help feeling like some kind of drug-mule in training. If I never come back, look for me at One Aldwych.

I want one of these - SAMSUNG's Digital World . MP3s and an FM tuner. I'm there. But then I've been meaning to buy a digital camera for two years, and have purchase intertia, big time. So, maybe not.

AND the dentist said at 8.30 that the injection would wear off in a couple of hours and I still feel deformed and can't eat anything. Of course, not eating anything is probably a good thing.

So I got up early to work, and then technology conspired against me. On my way to the dentist, I saw a nasty accident (car knocked a couple of motorbike - moderate amount of blood and gore), I stopped, called an ambulance, gave them my number, went to the dentist. Which I hate. Now my technology is teetering back, but I'm behind schedule. In a big way. Rant over.

Accidents: you never really think about the frailty of humanity, in every day life, until you see something. It's just the randomness: say they'd had a longer breakfast, they wouldn't have been there. Say the traffic was different, the car would have gone past already. I like to think that at some point this woman (who probably only - luckily - hurt her leg, but quite badly) will thank me. Because when the 999 people asked me to describe her, I said 40s. But then I heard her husband talking to the first aid people from the West Hampstead fire station (the accident was near that junction with Fortune Green) and he said she was 53.

Help. I think something has happened to my mailbox - Outlook keeps saying it's fetching headers, but I can't read my mail. Even Pine just hangs (trying to get folder lock for process 3094). Any ideas? I have a lot of work to do...

Great new magazine - pulp - that I found somewhere.

Whatever happened to that AnthroBlog blokey? He was doing research into blogs (which often struck me as rather pointless - here's the skinny: some people like writing, some people like linking, some people like both, technology means access). Did he write up his research? Here's someone else researching "increasing an understanding of the ways in which place, technology and social relations intersect." Man, wish I was doing a PhD in social research.

What did he find out? I wonder...

If only I could get the pictures off my phone, I could try out for America's first phonecam art show:SENT.

Dried Fruit Salad Recipe, anyone?
I'm pretty sure I read this in the Momo cookbook, which I don't own, and I've googled all over the webworldthingy. I'm pretty sure it's dried apricots, and prunes, and other dried fruit, and cinamon sticks, maybe almonds, and I think a rosewater and orangewater dressing-type thing. Obviously, I could just make up something like that, but if anyone knows the real recipe, I'd appreciate it.

I hate IMAP. I keep saying this, in the vain hope that someone geekier-than-moi will tell me what I can do so that I can (a) get my email folders on multiple PCs and (b) not have to reboot Outlook twice a day, (c) synchronise with my Palm. I'm not committed to Outlook, it's just what I've got.

Times like this, I wish I had an IT department, although three (full time) jobs ago, I was in constant dispute with the IT Director because his team could never do the things we wanted, and he used to say we had to run the business the way the IT department said. And I said surely the IT department should run the business the way the people in the business want it. We wrangled for two years, and then I ended up project managing a pre-SAP implementation because he didn't believe in ERP. Then I got offered the IT Director's job behind closed doors (I suspect because he was really really good at IT, but didn't get the business, and I got the business, and was better-than-average at IT, and they'd realised that was all they needed), and I thought "do I want to be the person at the end of the phone listening to the person who's me now rant about how they can't get what they want from the system?" I said no. And ran away from my SAP implementation to start a sandwich business. No, really.

Telephone technology update: I now have over a hundred passably good photos on my phone. I have tried to download the stuff some helpful commenter suggested, but nothing happened. I spent twenty quid on a piece of generic wire with software and everything, but the bit of software I need is greyed out. I still can't do bluetooth. Short answer: nothing's happened.

You know how some people get messages from the other side? I get massages. Of the non-earthly variety.

A lives in Putney, and every so often I go and have a holiday-at-home with him. Putney is way nice. Despite regular invitations, he's not yet taken me up on a holiday-at-home in NW6. Wonder why?

I'm... slightly worried that I'm getting a lot of traffic from people searching for a particular, successful British actress, who I was sorta at college with. At college as in we were there at the same time, both had Jewish hair, were often confused, and rarely seen in the same room.

While I've been rising to the ranks of whatever it is I do, she's been a Shakesperean actress, done lots of radio, and increasingly more TV work. I saw her in some fringe thing a few years ago, and she was great.

So what I said about her, was that obviously I know how old I am, and I think she's maybe a year or two older than me. Except now, she appears to be five or so years younger than me. I'm a great believer in rebranding - as many of you will know - so I don't have a problem about it. I'm just starting to feel... ever-so-slightly guilty that if you google on her, and can be bothered to scroll down to page two, that's what you learn about her. Does it matter?

I don't really beleive in taking things down off my weblog. Don't know why. But what do you think?

OK, whoever came in here googling for Sasha FXXX birthday, own up.

So my organic people sent me wild rocket, which I'm having for lunch with za'atar and humous and it's fab. Last night I went to Carluccios in town and had the most glorious pasta and foccaia. Since I've been going easy on the carbs (Stephen Pollard, eat your heart out), it's just a real treat. I feel healthier. And I feel more like those high-maintenance women you see at restaurants in Notting Hill who have the whole meal on the side, which can only be a good thing. Me being like that, I mean. I mean, it's good to be high maintenance, isn't it?

Omigod I've turned into one of those self-obsessed girlies who weigh six stone and talk non-stop about what they have, haven't and might eat. Except without weighing six stone. When I was in the sandwich business (and I know what you're thinking, wasn't she also a headhunter, and some sort of marketing person, and a conference thingie, and research.... it's all true. Until I was freelance I was the sort of person who tried a lot of different things, career-wise, and now I can do that all the time, so it's cool), there were a lot of girls.

We'd deliver to the kind of media-ish, PR-style west end offices that have brightly coloured reception areas and receptionists with directional haircuts, slightly nasal accents and a boyfriend who's a DJ.

What used to get me, was, you'd go round, and all these beautiful, slim, gorgeous, glossy-haired girls would look longingly at the sandwiches, and say "well, I had half a digestive yesterday, and an apple the day before, so I don't think I can have anything." Torturing themselves with the idea of food, but not actually eating. You could see the mix of desperation and self-control as they ran off to their sixth aerobics class of the week. They wanted to enjoy the sensual pleasures of just food, but they couldn't. That, I don't get. And it's a lot of girls, really.

Sometimes, though, I just think I 'm one long ironic sassy urban sentence. No, really.

That Stephen "no carb" Pollard is a hoot. Even his links are funny.

I would like you to know that I currently don't have enough space in my head for everything I need to do. I keep going to bed later and later, and getting up earlier and earlier - I guess eventually we'll just meet in the middle, or round the back - and as fast as I work through my list, there's more. I'm not complaining, I'm just saying.

Any relaxation techniques? And please don't say cranial ashtanga aromatherapy. Anything but that.

I just heard John Humphreys on the Today programme ask Chris Patten "where do we go from here?" I couldn't help responding "is it down to the lake I fear?" although - thank the lord - I'm not on radio, so I couldn't.

Once, I had a hairdresser who said to me "I can sense, on the left side of your head, I can sense that your hair is... unhappy." Let's just say I never went back. Especially after she coloured my hair a horrible brighter-than-henna hue that was a bit too faux for my liking, and when she tried to fix it, it was worse.

It was about a week before I was going travelling to Morocco, and my friend M, I thought wouldn't notice. He is not so hair-enabled, on the girl front. However, walking through the marketplace in Essaouira, a carpet seller yells out to me:

"Hey, lady. Come to my house and my sister will henna the rest of your hair."

No, really.

These shoes have spoken to me. They have said "buy me, we will make you happy."

Zatoichi - quriky, original, not that much blood and gore. Ironically entertaining? Pure slapstick, maybe?

I wonder why Doris Stokes advertises? It's like, I never get why you see posters saying "Psychic Fair," either.

I feel a... certain sense of closure (much as I think I hate all faux-therapeutic wordage) about a project I've just completed.

Anyone know what/where the cheapest pay as you go mobile phone is?

Because, let's face it, what you've always wanted is a Jesus Dress Up doodar. Mel Gibson, eat your heart out [thanks to J for the link].

The reason I'm awake so early (apart from having more work than I can handle in waking hours right now), is that my friend arrived from Oz late last night. I was coming back from Manchester, so I collected her from her friends' house in Belsize Park, but she was delayed, so I had a lovelycupoftea with them, and then we had another one when she arrived, and by the time we'd got back here, and I'd showed her around, and she'd showered me with many purple gifts, it was late. I know she was planning to take it easy this morning, wake up whenever she felt like it, and maybe go into town later. She's in town for a family wedding, and a big family reunion.

Seven-thirty, the phone goes. A woman with an accent that says: I've been through a lot: don't mess with me.

caller: Hello, sorrytophonesoearly, can we speak to H?
me: I'm sorry, I think she's asleep.
caller: then you must wake her up.
me: I know she had a late night last night, I'd really rather not wake her up.
caller: you must. she will want to speak to me.
me: is there a mobile number she can call you on later?
caller: we are leaving the house now. we have to speak to her.
me: I feel very nervous about waking her. She sounds very asleep (whatever this means: I know I'm losing this phone battle. This woman is not to be messed with)
caller: Don't be so nervous. Wake her.
me: (acquiescing) OK. Who are you?

I just heard someone on Radion 4 talk about 911. That's not Nine Eleven the twenty four hour convenience store, it's 911.

Remind me some time to regale you with a fabulous story my Mum told over Friday night dinner about a postal broiges* (it's too late to find a Yiddish dictionary - argument. As in, Eskimos might have 127 words for snow, but Jews have 613 words for a dispute). And how my Mum turned into a postal broiges mediator. I kid you not.

* pronounced thus: BROY-guss (at least, it is in my family). Now you know.

Surreal evening. Went to the Shlock Rock and Eitan G gig with my parents at the town hall. The audience was a mixture of polish noblemen, women in sheitels, old people, young people, the guy who used to be the shomer in a now-defunct kosher restaurant, regular people, kids. The music ranged from Bananarama-alike to James Brown-alike and back to the Beach Boys-alike. I sense a .... B-theme emerging. No, no. Kidding.

Had a lovelycupoftea (a longstanding Cheadle tradition) with my mum and dad, and then just got back from collecting my friend C from Stockport station, as weather stopped play on a train lines out of London, and he's spent forty-three light years getting here via Coventry.

Apparently, deisel trains are the way of the future. I'm tired, I know, it shows.

Critical feedback: my Mother, who generally reserves her comments for how I look, says the following: "your blog. You say 'like' too often."

She may have a point.

Fair comment?

I wonder, if I added up all the time I spend unravelling the stupid wires to the headset for my mobile phone, whether I could get a part-time job.

Why hasn't someone invented gadgetary that winds up the wires, with the press of a button?

So I'm on the heathrow express from Paddington (£25 return, not even first class - proof positive, if you ever needed it of the cashrich-timepoor trade off) and I'm watching their faux-live news, which is a time-lagged version of the news I saw this morning.

Then they have the security shtick - make sure you don't have any sharp objects in your bag (good idea). Then there's little 2D road sign-esque graphics with red lines through them, of all the dangerous items one shouldn't carry in these turbulent times. Like darts.

I can't help myself. I turn to the nice looking, thirtyish business-blokey with beard (geek, I say) sitting next to me.

"Darts?" I say.

"Yeah, I had mine confiscated on my last trip. Forgot to take them out of my pocket," he responds, ironically, quick as a flash.

The nail scissors with the red line through them scroll down the screen.

"Nail scissors?" I say.

"Whoever killed and maimed a person with nail scissors?" he asks.

I realise that on my last three flights I've had my nail scissors confiscated because I had carry-on only (you never know when they might make you leave the country; have your bag packed) and nowhere else to put them.

It comes to me in a moment of inspiration.

"Know what I think? The nail scissors people are in cahoots with the airline security people."

He smiles, knowingly - maybe I pegged him wrong, and he's in the manicure supply business, and just looks like a geek.

"Yeah," I continue - I'm on a roll now, "because what happened was, the nail scissor sector wasnt' doing well. I mean, what's the repeat business ratio in the that industry? The nail scissor people are in cahoots with the security people. It's not about terrorism, it's a business development scam."

He's straight faced. Ronnie Barker to my Ronnie Corbett.

"So I shouldn't invest in the nail scissor sector? Good tip, thanks."

When President Bush calls me this morning to tell me "we're at a crucial crossroads in the war against terror," I can't help wondering if it's wise for me to get on a plane today. Albeit to Manchester (in a strange, un-environmental twist, it is way cheaper to fly than go on the train in the old-fashioned way).

But the wonder of distributed technology is that you won't even be able to tell that I've gone. Well, hardly.

A friend of mine, a leading barrister, once went out with one of his solicitor's clerks. They had regular phone-box trysts (I think this was before the arrival of contemporary open-plan phone boxes). Her family were in the dry-cleaning business.

All I remember about this short-lived relationship was this piece of dry-cleaning trivia she shared with my friend: pillows are more than 50% dustmites.

This random memory brought to you by changing the bed in my spare room in readiness for my new house guest (winging her way from Oz as we speak).

Surely Dakota Feinstein is someone's porn star name?

I'm getting through Rescue Remedy - practically mainlining the stuff - like there's no tomorrow. Which, of course, there may not be.

Today's healthy lunch: homemade humous with za'atar, and cucumber. Carb(ish) free and fabulous. Yours?

Answers to the crucial questions: what's the difference between sultanas and raisins?

In the spirit of full disclosure, I feel I should say R was in town from the Holy Land (aka Cheadle) on Tuesday, and we went to Solly's.

We had lots of fun - people spotting, waiter baiting (just joking, they're very nice), and of course Solly's is the only humous in London worth going out for (in my opinion). I believe that all meals should include humous and/or something middle eastern/mediterranean, although I'm not sure chicken soup counts.

A good time had by all.

What's the difference between a notion and a concept?

There I am, chatting away inconsequentially to N, and she tells me that her online alter-ego wins giant marrow growing competitions in Alaska, or somesuch.

"Google doppelganger!" I exclaim. "No, wait.... googleganger!" I think I'm so funny.

Then I do what any self-respecting twentyfirst century info-speed-freak does: google. Turns out 56 people and counting have thought this before me: not only has Robin Pascoe met her googleganger for lunch - and as I write this I can't help humming gin-gan-goolie-goolie-goolie-goolie-wotsit, or whatever it is - but there's a googleganger website.

So not only are there no secrets in the twentyfirst century, there are no original thoughts, either.

And just fyi - my kinda-googleganger (long story, name-wise) runs an internet consultancy on the East coast of the States. No, we're not related. I wouldn't know the internet if it came up and said hello, although of course I have tried to print it out.

I know more than four people who have funded their move up the housing food chain (ladder, right? why use two words when one will do?) by strategically being made redundant, on a serial basis. I wonder what you call that? Strategic Serial Redundancy Syndrome?

Just in case you're interested - I have an atom feed now. As far as I can tell (and I'm not sure I can) only two people use it.

Fancy lunch? It's this Friday.

Thanks to Elisabeth for pointing me to this great (Guardian, who else) piece on being a celebrity PA. And, in other news, I discover the UK Association of Celebrity Assistants. Check out their launch party pic.

I regard eating as a diversionary activity of epic proportions for all manner of tasks.

I'm getting a lot of spam. I feel like Monty Python (Life of Brian era). It's annoying. My mailhosts get most of it, but there's someone convinced I should be upgrading my logo, and they won't go away. Go away, I say.

MORE FICTION....

So when I get home, Nicola, my flatmate, is lounging around in the living room, halfway through a bottle of perfectly chilled white wine. She’s a little anal. But in a clubby way. She’s the kind of girl who would come home desperate for a drink but wait an hour for the wine to chill. So she must have got home around sixish to allow the wine to get cold to the required temperature, and the flat’s already booming to the latest bass beat from This Week’s Darling (not a real band, one I made up to signify her every changing tastes).

“Hey Nicola!” I have to shout over the music. It’s very annoying. We’ve flatshared for around a year now, and basically get on okay, but we are as different as, well, two very different people. She’s a remarkable mixture of late-night-club-babe wanting to make it as a singer – she works daytime at SmoochFM in marketing, making connections – and anal retentive cleaning fascist who gives me a hard time in my own flat.

“Can’t hear you! I love this bit…” she starts singing and swaying, wine-glass in hand. She’s so fucking thin that when she turns sideways she practically disappears, and for a moment I forget that I’m trying to have a conversation with her. I used to have a rule that I wasn’t prepared to share a living space with any women smaller than a size sixteen, but current protein-rich diet fads make that almost an impossibility. Also, it’s a little unfair to be so sizeist. Downwards. Upwards is OK. For other people.

“Nic! Turn it down a minute!”

The sudden quiet when she turns the music off is a shock, like the aftermath of a volcano. Not that you ever get real silence in zone two.

“Nic, thanks. Listen, Anya and the others are coming round for something to eat later. Wanna join us?”

“You coulda told me. I wanted to just hang before my rehearsal tomorrow”. She’s in a band, like when you’re fifteen and want to be famous.

“Sorry, just kinda a spontaneous thing. It’ll be relaxed, honest. I’ll make something you like.” Bribery often works in situations like this. Of course I have no desire to make anything Nicola likes, partly because she doesn’t have the sensuality to really enjoy food, and partly because she professes to like grilled chicken with steamed vegetables. But I am a better cook than her, so my chances are six out of ten.

“Mmmm, Maybe. OK, is there stuff in the fridge? And did you clean the fridge? You know it’s your turn.”

“OK, OK, I’ll clean, I promise.” I hate getting told off in my own flat. But that’s the price you pay for a certain degree of financial security derived from a flatmate’s rent.

“Or we could get a cleaner.” Nicola is the only person I know who doesn’t have an ethical problem with hiring people to do the jobs you don’t like doing, she just doesn’t think they’ll do it as well as her.

“Talia, you know what I think about that. Let’s not go there, OK? I need to chill.” She turns the music up, end of conversation.

Before I get a chance to try and open up lines of communication, the door buzzer goes. For a long time, I used to have those “hello who is it?” conversations, but you can hardly ever hear who it is because of the noise of the street, so now I just let people in. One of my friends said a while ago that it was dangerous, but I honestly don’t think masked murderers, or even unmasked ones, would bother buzzing. I let whoever it is in.

Anya’s at the front door, all black city suit, clutching two bottles of wine. There’s a guy with her. Now Anya’s a little secretive about her love life, and the rest of us spend a lot of time wondering about what’s going on. She’s like the lawyer in Sex and the City, but shorter and without a personal stylist.

“This is Guy.” She nods in his direction. He’s tall, skinny in a beefy way like he’s done a lot of hiking or running, and has a ruddiness of cheek that suggests a keen interest in outdoor pursuits. He’s clutching a large bag of spinach.

“Hi, Talia, nice t-t-t-to m-m-meet you.” Omigod he has a STUTTER.

“You too, Guy. Come in.” I make that silly gesture people make in bad movies indicating the rest of my flat. Do I feel nervous? I hope not. I hate feeling nervous. I hate not being in control.

lt’s already eight and I have no idea what I’m going to cook. And I wonder why Guy is umbilically attached to a bag of spinach leaves. And I wonder who he is. Maybe he’s one of those men she met on her hardcore Exodus holiday? That’s where they make you run up a mountain in the morning and build a log cabin without tools in the afternoon. My idea of a good holiday is Amex backpacking – small bag, best hotel. Not in a five star way, just in a clean bathroom good service way. Anya is a lot more prepared to rough it than I am, tougher, more motivated, better at outside stuff and just, well, better.

I offer round Nicola’s wine, make the introductions, make small talk, make nice. And I’m wishing that I had had the foresight to go shopping on my way home, but I got caught in a late brainstorming meeting that I would have look uncommitted to the job if I had tried to get out of.

Guy and Anya take a seat on the sofa. They have the unease of people who are interested in each other but haven’t slept together yet. So she’s a little careful about sitting near but not too near to him, and he looks nervous. And he’s still holding onto his spinach for dear life.

“Talia, you’ve got a n-n-nice f-flat.” The lyrics to the late seventies song N-N-Nineteen inexplicably pop into my head.

“Thanks, I built it myself.” I remember when I first bought my flat, for about six months everyone I bumped into would say to me “how’s the flat?!”. Married friends tell me that for the first six months of marriage people say to them “how’s married life?!” (but in more of a nudge-nudge-wink-wink way). Like what are you supposed to say? Fine thanks, we’re thinking of underpinning? But I shouldn’t just the guy solely on the basis of his stutter, spinach, and seemingly poor social skills.

“I hope you d-d-don’t mind, I’m being a b-bit careful about what I – I – I – “

I really wanted to help him. I mean, how frustrating. I find it hard enough getting all my words out because I think about three times as fast as I can talk, and talk about twice as fast as I should. He must be going crazy. He seems pretty calm though. I guess geeing him up is not going to help him any, so I just wait.

“- I – I – I eat.” Thank God. Though hardly earth-shattering. Aren’t most people careful about what they eat nowadays?

“I have t-t-to eat green vegetables every d-day. So I hope you d-don’t m-mind, I brought some sp-sp-spinach. It’s a sp-spinach day, see. M-m-maybe we can make a s-salad?”

“Sure, no problem. I like dinner guests to bring ingredients. Specially when I haven’t had time to shop.”

He hands me the spinach. I try hard not to catch Anya’s eye, because I know that in a parallel universe we are marking Guy down as a league four or five and are laughing at him. Maybe he has a hidden talent? Though it doesn’t look like she’s found out yet.

“So how do you guys know each other?” I just can’t bear the thought of not being privy to all information at all times.

“Oh, we met on a Himalayan trek two years ago, but Guy’s been working out in Australia and travelling, and is just passing through London on his way back to Oxfordshire.” God she’s a dark horse. I don’t even remember her talking about him.

“Uh-huh.” I don’t really know what to say now. It can occasionally be a little awkward when a random group of people come together for an evening. Nicola’s sitting on the floor stretching her calf muscles. Apparently, it helps her singing voice. Don’t ask me how.

Guy asks her what she’s doing.

“Stretching. I have a rehearsal tomorrow, and lots of musicians do ballet stretches now, it’s part of the holistic performer movement. My body is my instrument.”

“I see, b-but, you c-can do a b-better stretch on your b-back. L-look. “

He takes off the belt from his trousers, and for a brief moment I think he’s going to strip. But he lies down on the floor next to her, lifts his right leg into the air, throws the belt over the sole of his foot, grabs both ends and pulls his upper body towards his foot. It looks extremely painful to me.

“H-here, y-you try”, he says as he unfolds back to the floor, helpfully handing Nicola his belt.

She sets herself up for the stretch, and he stands next to her.

“B-breathe into the stretch. There. Good. H-hold it for thirty seconds.” He gently touches Nicola’s ankle, pulling it slightly towards her body. She grimaces. I like to see her suffer.

“Guy, how do you know this stuff?” I like to understand a person’s full CV. It’s the recruitment professional in me.

“I’m an outdoor p-pursuits instructor, but when I was travelling in India I learned yoga for a few months. It’s a g-great way to tone up.” Thank God his stutter fades when he feels a little more relaxed. I was bracing myself for a whole evening of bated breath waiting for his verbal pearls.

“So Talia, what’s for dinner?” Anya gets straight to the point. When we go on holiday together she is massively energetic, and then suddenly fades and requires food fuel. She’s like a car, it stops without petrol.

“Dunno yet. There’s ice-cream in the freezer. Pasta, I guess. Maybe with spinach?” I look over at Guy and wink. I don’t know why, I mean, I never wink, but I just thought that one day my life might get made into a movie and cultural studies students would be able to deconstruct the layers of meaning in that wink. Or maybe I have something in my contact lense.

I’m filling up wine glasses when the buzzer goes again. Nicola is just coming out of her stretch and Anya is walking over to the kitchen to look in the fridge. I buzz the new arrivals in.

“He-hey, Talia!” Tim is often effervescent and when he’s not at work, often behaves and dresses like some kind of nuevo-gangster character; Guy Ritchie meets the Sopranos. He throws his arms around me as if greeting a long lost relative just arrived from the Old Country and envelopes me in a huge hug.

“And this is Milan. Milan, my favourite candidate, meet Talia, my favourite headhunter - apart from me.”

Milan gently grasps my shoulders and kisses me on both cheeks in the European style. I feel a buzz of electricity.

“Bella bella.” In a real Italian accent. “Lovely to meet you, thank you for including me.”

My stomach lurches in the best tradition of Hollywood blockbusters. Milan looks into my eyes, smiling.

My Cheadle-fairies tell me it's UPVC day.

I think Floradix is Baby Bio for humans.

And, obviously - in case you were worried - all my technology came back in about five minutes, but I was already shopping by then.

Update: my mail is fine, but my website (the writing site) isn't well. If you're specifically looking to read my stuff, then mail me, please.

I've never been on the proper how-to-be-a-girl training course. I don't even know how to cleanse, lift and separate, or whatever the hell it is you're supposed to do.

Information notice: There's a power outage in Fulham affecting my co-location set-up, so you probably can't read any of my writing (on my writing site), if you're looking for it. I'm sure all the emergency services are working their socks off to get my personal website up and running, so could be any time.

Seeing as I don't have email either, I'm going shopping.

It's tough working for a celebrity, apparently. Because there's a self-help group for them. No, really. I've googled all over the web on Celebrity Employees Anonymous (why do I feel sure it's a twelve step programme?), and all manner of wordage. Any clues, anyone?

I am going to stop reading blogs for four hours while I write about CRM, IT integration, and the wireless enterprise. There, I've said it.

Rhyme is hard-wired into our souls. (Not mine, I'm strictly prose)

Did you hear poet Ian McMillan on the Today programme? Ironically trying to get something to rhyme with Wilkinson? Great.

I'm in the dentist, this morning. Did I mention that I'm irrationally frightened of the dentist? It took me ages to find my special touchy-feely yoga-enabled Lavender oil sharing set-up, and I love them. But I'm still scared. Not least since the previous dentist disappeared in a puff of alleged malpractice litigation, which did not make me feel great. The new dentist looks like one of the male models in the picture stories in Jackie magazine in like 1983. He's cute, perfectly formed, but you only see him sitting down. He's nice though.

So I'm pacing the reception, awash with nervous energy, making everyone else feel like they'd like some drugs and why don't I just siddown, when the five waiting dentees start a conversation with the receptionist (they all bizarrely seem to be in the same social circle, or are rather un-London and talk to each other) about how her sister has lost ten stone. Ten stone. Ten stone. Hear the sound of that, folks.

We talk variously about how (diet and exercise - how retro), why (like, you need to ask), and is she different (her own mother walked past her in the street). I shared that I had lost some (significant amount of) weight. They all congratulated me. Another woman said she found dieting hard, and we concurred that it's about changing your eating patterns rather than being on-a-diet or off-a-diet.

It was like a twelve step programme, only with dental treatment.

That is all.

Not seasonal, I know, but she's clearly a few elves short of a grotto.

I can't believe that the Friday Five is the best meme at the Bloggies. Sheesh. I mean, who decides? OK, OK, I know who decides (and note, Freudsters, when I was typing "who decides" I kept typing "who decodes") - it's for the people, by the people yadda yadda blah blah.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the Friday Five is pyramid selling for the blog generation. It's taking the meme to its ultimate, teeth-clenchingly dull final resting place.

Come the revolution (or, as we should probably all say nowadays, the evolution), those Friday Fivers'll be the first up against the wall.

Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies. No, really.

Once, in the mists of time, I signed up with meetup - don't even ask me why; the last thing I want to do is meet people off the internet - and now they mail me to invite me to the Judaism meetup. I realise it's all automated, and a real person hasn't seen any of this, and it's the first Monday of every month and all. But surely there's an irony to the April meet-up being on the First Seder Night (Passover) of Pesach. Cultural crossover: think Christmas lunch with Jacobs cream crackers (aka matza), lots of dirgy songs, tired kids, evening timetable, the refrain over the traditional dish of egg and saltwater of "why don't we eat this all year?", and a coupla arguments thrown in. I mean, how could you miss it?

So I'm talking through a project with D. The man who once linked my self-esteem to my weblog stats, but I still speak to him.

me: blah blah blah
him: I don't know what advice to offer
me: I'm not sure it's an advice offering scenario
him: it's a male thing. I have to.

Men, right?

Just in case you can still sleep nights - the Guardian's report on the terrorism threat to the UK.

Julia Magnet on the oys of being Jewish in London/the UK. Short on the joys, we are. [via Stephen Pollard]

Last night: 21 grams: still thinking about it. Shattered, modern narrative that makes you do the work. Which is good. It's about salvation, methinks. Everyone's looking for something (in the words of the song).

So I can't sleep - rare, I know - and I'm lying in bed and I figure, this is the moment I'll register for the new sign-up only Media Guardian. I tell them my inside leg measurement and my maternal grandmother's gefilte fish recipe (OK, I exaggerate), and nothing happens. I don't know if it's an error, if they already have my email address because I signed-up once before (boy is there an opportunity out there for people with sign-up overload. If only I could f***ing remember), or if they're all out to get me. Probably the latter, right?

update: they kindly emailed me my password. I'm in.

My week so far: two Limmud meetings, an extremely early night on Friday, shul yesterday, lunch at F&Ms, curry with S on Cricklewood Broadway (I may have a new preferred curry house, you'll be pleased to hear). So, quiet, then.

Lunch yesterday was a real laugh. Talk turned to my blog, as it invariably does, nowadays. Blogs are very now, very zeitgeist, apparently. Lots of the lunch guests had read about them this week. I know, I know, this has turned into a tale of meta-blogging, where I'm a blogger talking about other people talking about my blog. It's silly. It's self-referrential. It's possibly annoying. A couple of lunch guests were fairly sure they'd rumbled me as someone else, but I firmly told them no.

What was fab was the conversation - about something else, thank the lord - between S and M:
her: It's on the fifteenth, isn't it?
him: No, sweetheart, it's definitely later
her: Are you sure, sweetheart?
him: Quite. Sweetheart.

Imagine this, through clenched teeth, sweetheart. The wonder of marriage, eh?

"We are human beings - and our reach exceeds your grasp"

Cluetrain Manifesto

Wordsmith celebrates its tenth anniversary.

People tell me stories, amazing stories. And I want to write them all down.

Last February I wrote about Taiwan innovalue and their rather strange adverts. Now they don't exist. They heard?

"For a couple of years, I actually had myself convinced that I'd be happier living in the past - the 20s and 30s specifically."

For a reason I don't know, I am currently very taken with the phrase "the grande fromage."

Recipular Moment - Sasha's Couscous and Mandarin Salad

Here's a salad I invented. Impress your friends by how complicated it looks, while knowing deep down that it's dead easy.

Ingredients:

couscous (although you can also use quinoa) - about 400g

salted cashew nuts - 300g bag

tinned mandarins in own syrup - 3 or 4 little tins

dried sour cherries - 3 or 4 100g bags (you can get these in Tescos, or, if you live in Kilburn, in any persian-style shop)

fresh dill

runny honey

balsamic vinegar

salt and pepper

Method:

pour boiling water with a little vegetable stock over the couscous... just so it's almost cooked, there's dressing going later. If you're using quinoa, then you have to boil it for 20 minutes, pretty much

put your cooked couscous/quinoa in a big bowl.. the salad should double with all the other ingredients

drain the mandarins, and reserve the juice

empty in the cashew nuts, dried sour cherries and mandarins

snip quite a lot of dill into the salad

into the mandarin juice, add some runny honey, a little balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper

pour the dressing over the salad, and turn it over a couple of times

this salad is best prepared the night before, so the flavours meld

You can do it different ways... cranberries. Or if you can't find dill, use coriander, and swap the balsamic vinegar for soy sauce (though forget the salt then), and make it a little South East Asian.

I'm in Love with the Girl on the Virgin Manchester Megastore Checkout Desk.

Jack Kerouac would be 82 today. If he wasn't, y'know, dead.

My friend is in a job interview. Senior, board level. Big chance. With the big cheese.

CEO: How good are you?

My friend: I don't have a problem selling myself, but I think it would be arrogant to respond to that

CEO:Only if you're wrong

[friendless banter]

CEO: How do I know you've not reached a plateau, shot your load? What would your referee say about you?

My friend: How do I know you've not spoken to him?

CEO: I haven't

[My friend talks about his strategic vision, sharp cost control, superlative people skills. The CEO listens.]

CEO: I have no idea who your referee is

[my friend subtley sells his referee]

CEO: But if he says that you're in

My friend: I must call him, then

The CEO doesn't flicker.

It's tough out there.

Your intrepid local reporter: there's some kind of incident on Minster Road which includes ambulances (plural) and people being taken away in police vans. You read it here first.

Melanie Phillips and Stephen Pollard on Max Hastings.

Not so much out to lunch as away with the fairies. That's... who is that?

More Fiction...

I call Joshua late on Wednesday night. He's a night person, like me; I know he'll be watching reruns of LA Law on cable, surfing the internet, getting his people in the US to call him. He's like the Chief Executive of his own address book, that guy.

“Hey, Talia, good to hear from you. How’s it going with, er, Martin?”

He pauses while recollecting Martin’s name, as if he’s retrieving it from a vast mental database. I wonder, briefly, how many people he knows.

It’s a constant game, that Jewish who-do-you-know, and it gets tiring. At parties, at work, at family occasions, there’s a dull backdrop of white-noise, buzzing away saying “isn’t he Marissa’s cousin who married that lawyer from Liverpool? You know Marissa, she used to go out with my brother’s former business partner.” Quite often, when you meet people, you go through an initial “who do we know in common” protocol, and it can be quite time consuming. Not to mention dull.

I think there’s a way around this. I’ve developed, but not yet patented, the concept for a new technology which would solve this problem. It’s a utility that you can download to your handheld/PDA gadgetery, called JewishGeography v2.3. it works like this: when you meet someone, you beam your palms at each other, and the technology merge-purges your address books, and comes up with the thirty six people you know in common. You can then work through them, in alphabetical order, saving a huge amount of wasted time on people you don’t actually both know. Of course there’s the perennial Jonny Cohen/David Levy problem: there are a certain number of people who have a one-to-many relationship with the same name. So there are like twenty David Levys. JGv2.3 would keep a website version-controlling these multiple personalities, so Jonny Cohen would become JonnyCohenUK23. obviously users would have to update this regularly, but I think it could be a winner.

Joshua’s still waiting for me to answer him.

“Yeah, OK. He’s, y’know, nice. Course he’s a bit too nice-jewish-boy for me, but it’s ok for now. Don’t tell anyone I said that, OK?”

“Sure, yeah. Why are you going out with him if you don’t like him?”

I am a top return for that fabulous google search: can I print out the internet. And we all know the answer: no - it's bad for the planet.

I would like it to be known that I am having my second good hair day in a row. I mean, my follicles may be filled with parabens, but I'm exactly the position on the curly frizzy continuum (ringletty, but not solid) that I want to be. Clearly a sign from the abishter.

A friend calls me. Well-dressed guy. He has a question.

"What is it, about Jewish people, and their pockets? Always bulging, ruining their suits?"

I suggest that it's not just Jewish men who are prone to over-carrying the kitchen sink.

He responds:

"Is it because they lost their homes? So they have to put everything in their pockets?"

FICTION...

Being a headhunter is basically being an estate agent with a few zeros on the end. Here’s a job/house – it’s empty. Here’s a candidate/buyer – they fit. A bit of high-touch consulting, a few long lunches and hey presto a fifty thousand pound fee.

At work, we have lunches for everything. Lunch in the oak-panelled corporate dining room, for those above the salt, every day. Lunch when people join (we are a friendly firm). Lunch when secretaries get pregnant (we are a family firm). Lunch when we win new business (we are a successful firm). Only we don’t do lunch when people leave to go to a competitor (we are a failing firm) they just disappear.

Tarquin gets promoted from Junior Consultant to Consultant, largely on the strength of parentage and his old boy network connections and breaks open the bubbly at 2pm on a Thursday afternoon. He has his wine merchant send it over, on the basis of a rumour he heard from the management committee.

I hear him on the phone to his wife. She is blonde and they have four identikit blond children. Would they hide me from the Nazis?

“Pookie,” he whispers, “Jamesie told me, strictly entre-nous, that I’m in. Announced tomorrow, but always good to be ahead of the game, eh?”

She whispers something to him on the phone. I love it when people in offices other halves’ tell them they love them.

“Yes, yes, I – “ he lowers his voice to a whisper even I can’t hear “- you too. Now, call up the chappies and let’s do dinner tomorrow night at the Ivy.” A few words at the other end. “Yes, yes, I know, mention Grandpa, he practically owns the private dining room. Can I leave the menu to you? Kiss the kiddies for me. Chow.”

Kimberly and I remain at Junior Consultant level, banging our heads against the glass ceiling at every turn. We talk about setting up our own firm, it’s just a phone, a fax, an ISP and a database, right? I remind her that we’re on the outside looking in, and the people who make it – like Tarquin - are on the inside looking up.


* * * * * *

I can hear Tarquin in the next-door office. He has no sense of volume control at all. Very occasionally he lowers his voice and I know he’s either whispering sweet nothings to his wife (or possibly a string of other women, though that’s pure conjecture) or looking for a job. Given that he’s got “managing partner 2008 onwards” tattooed in indelible ink on his forehead, he’s unlikely to be jobhunting. And anyway, he’d obviously want to be headhunted.

Crispin Carlson, the leader of the Banking practice, whose blood is so blue he’s practically opaque, is leaning against Tarquin’s open door. One of the things that I can never fathom is, the more money you have, the less you should appear to have. So the guy’s from old families who went to the right schools and whose parents have a pile in the country often have fraying (Pink’s, obviously) shirt collars and cuffs, and slightly unkempt suits that look like they could do with a dry clean.

On the other hand, my third-generation immigrant genes require perfection at all times; freshly pressed, not a wrinkle in sight nor ladder of tight. Almost as if there is a diversely proportional relationship between having money and looking like you do. Not that my parents are paupers – they wouldn’t want people to think they don’t make a living – but they’re comfortable.

I can see an egg stain on Crispin’s Turnbull and Asser tie. The voice in my head that is my Mother tuts, silently.

“Tarquin, that idea you ran by me at the practice meeting yesterday.”

“Any thoughts on that, Crispin, going forward?”

The difference between me (and possibly Kimberly) and everyone else at Brothers and Wiggles is that no one ever asks a straight question. And people are always talking about going forward. I mean, what other direction in there to go in?

“I think the idea may have legs, Tarquin. I liked it. Thomas likes it. And Zane was impressed.”

Zane is a young high-flying consultant who just transferred from our Wall Street office, to inject some buzz-word bingo into our slightly ailing financial services practice, and he’s the current golden boy.

In partnerships, personalities go in and out of favour. I know, because when I was a lawyer, the same games were played, albeit for less money and over a shorter period of time. So somebody’s star is never stationary, it is clearly on the ascendant or descendant, and the trick of office politics is to hedge your relationships so that your net interaction direction is an upwards trajectory. Too much hard work for me, I get sick of constantly having to benchmark everyone I’m talking to.

“Glad Zane liked it. He’s impressive, isn’t he?”

Tarquin’s playing the game too. But then he’s a fabulous game player, having had the secret rules imparted to him at Eton or Sandhurst or his Oxbridge College or anywhere, in fact, that I haven’t been. The rising stars’ rating is generated by the number and frequency of vague references to their obvious talent made on a daily basis. And of course Tarquin knows his time will come, and he’s merely issuing credit notes.

“He is, boy. But your idea. Definitely has legs, why don’t you take it for a walk?”

I keep a notebook in my desk for writing down English phrases heard in the office, and that’s definitely going in there. Together with “throwing toys out of prams” and other childhood- and pet-related terminology.

Tarquin’s phone interrupts my thoughts about the alien language the financial services practice in particular, spoke.

“Hetherington-Palmer!”

I hate it when people bark their name at my when I call them up.

“Yes, no problem Katy, you’re a star.” I imagine Katy preening herself at the other end of the line, surrounded by her below-the-salt cheaper office furniture, and saying “no problem, HP.”

I know it’s only a matter of days until some kindly-uncle type asks me to perform a menial task with the sop that “I’m a star”. Yeah, right. A legend in my own lunchtime. Most of the men here only call secretaries a star. It’s not a compliment.

“Crispin, that was Katy. Apparently there’s been a bit of a ruckus at your club, and they just called and said could you postpone your lunch appointment, the place is crawling with journos.”

“How unusual. I’ve been a member of the Athaneum for years, and we’ve never had anything like that. And I’m meeting some old school chums for lunch, thought there might be an assignment in it. Better go sort it out.”

And with a flourish of his poorly pressed suit-tails he’s run down the corridor. I half expect him to jump to the ceiling at the end of the corridor like a naughty schoolboy.

How can I be expected to do any work when there is real, live theatre in my office?

I turn to my inbox, because while I’ve been earwiging I’ve heard ten or eleven signifying pings that tell me I received email. Some joker from the IT department loaded the sound files when they came to clean my PC, and although I probably could find out how to turn it off, I quite enjoy the slight distraction. I’m a short-attention-span kind of girl, so it breaks up my day nicely.

Of course most of the emails I get are of the “have you left a parcel in reception” sort, which are both annoying and uninformative. And of course it’s a global email system: there’s someone in our Chicago office who keeps choosing ALL to send messages that say things like “I left my favourite Snoopy mug on the second floor” which get sent to everyone in the known Brothers & Wiggles universe. I’m surprised she still has her job, or at the very least keeps replicating the same mistake.

One of the things about email is the escalation procedure manoeuvre, which I’m as guilty of as anyone. Before email, you’d never ask your secretary to make thirty-two copies of every memo you sent and just for good measure CC them to the CEO, your mum and God, but somehow, the subtle power of the CC and BCC buttons are endemic now. Peter might as well see this (rough translation: should cover my arse). Tim should glance over this (rough translation: it’ll scare the shit out of Pete to see that Tim’s got this too. That should make him respond pretty damn quick). I imagine in the future there might be university courses of the subtleties of when to blind copy someone (CYA) and when to just plain copy them. The upshot of all this is that when I strip out the mug-emails and the multiple-copy emails, there’s only about two real ones a day left. Like memos, really.

Crispin is bumbling up the corridor like a fading Oxbridge academic. I hear him take up his door-leaning position again outside mine and Tarquin’s offices.

“Tarquin, just looked into the ruck at my club. You’ll never guess what. It’s quite shocking really, especially at the Athaneum.”

Tarquin looks up from him PC, although I don’t know why, as he rarely keys anything, preferring to use the secretaries for manual-labour tasks such as sending emails and checking his diary. But he’s skilled at looking busy.

“Pray tell, Crispin.”

“Well, you know Peter Starr?”

“The ageing B-lister with that Channel Four arts programme? What’s it called? ArtSmart?”

“Never know if it’s ArtsMart or ArtSmart, but yes, that’s him. I was sitting next to him at a table at the Ivy only last week, you know. He was with one of those young model types. You know the sort.”

“I do. But he’s hardly our sort of fellow, is he, Crispin?”

I know that gay people have a Gaydar, and Jewish people have a Jewdar, and that black people don’t really need a Blackdar, although doubtless there are a whole range of other –dar jokes out there. And I can be a little sensitive in this blue-blooded haven, (my Antisemite-dar) but I know what kind of fellow they mean. And I know why he’s not their type.

Peter Starr is Julie Stein’s father. I read a Relative Values profile in the Sunday Times recently of him and his brother (a moderately well-known media lawyer, Stein & Partners, who seemed to have built his practice on the back of his brother’s rather argumentative – ie litigious – approach to being employed). Peter changed his name once he made his way up the BBC, having started out in production, and then crossed over into radio journalism, and moved from there to presenting TV arts programmes. He’d turned into something of a late-middle-age celebrity; apparently he got sackloads of fan mail at his Hampstead home from ladies who get their roots done twice a month. His career now was made up of a mix of TV work, opinion pieces in lesser known magazines, and the occasional talking head/chatshow appearance, where he could always be counted on for good value.

Light on content, heavy on media-camaraderie, Peter Starr looked like an advert for expensive hair implants, with his not-quite-believable thick straight hair hanging in a heavy fringe over his forehead, affording him the chance to sweep it out of his eyes whenever he ran out of something to say. He had a reputation as an intellectual lightweight, and a wife who could apparently run rings around him, Barbara, who ran a small but commercially very successful art gallery a short walk from their Hampstead home.

“Oh, I don’t know, HP, there’s something about him I like. Though hard to place as a candidate.” Crispin smirks, as he says this. The firm is renowned for its discretion, and, even if it did place media personalities, the last thing it would want is a flashy TV star with a big mouth.

“So what’s the connection with the Athaneum?”

“Well, seems that he was lunching with Sir – “ Crispin lowers his voice, but I just hear him mention the name of the director general of the BBC, who the firm’s Board practice had just placed as a non-exec director at an up-and-coming third generation telecoms company.

“Really? He’s better connected than I thought.” I hear Tarquin make a mental note to invite Peter Starr to something or other. Star possibly on the ascendant?

“Yes, anway, they were having lunch, in the members dining room, and there was the most awful kerfuffle. Linda Stanton-Briggs, you know her?”

“Isn’t she a researcher to Peter Mandelson? The one who had an affair with – “ Tarquin lowers his voice this time, and I can’t quite hear the name of whoever he’s talking about.

“Yes, exactly. That was a scandal, that one. But very hush-hush. People in high places have a lot of power. Well, Linda was seated at the next table, I don’t know who she was with, but she’d had a couple of glasses of the old vino – “

“They have a wonderful wine cellar there, you know. My grandfather’s a member.”

“Quite, Tarquin, yes. Quite. Well, on the way out, she was really quite the worse for wear, being escorted by her friend. When she walked past Peter’s table, he apparently ignored her. And she started yelling and screaming “Don’t ignore me, Peter Stein, I’m having your baby!”

“No! I can’t believe that! At the Athaneum of all places. And there must be, I don’t know, thirty years between them?”

“Oh, at least. He must be late fifties at the youngest, and she’s, well, young enough to be his daughter. And he has a wife, you know the Stein Gallery in Hampstead?”

“God, these things are a mess. People have very complicated lives, don’t they?”

Tarquin is so arrogant that I want to wring his neck. He’s twenty seven, and married with two kids already, and has his whole life mapped out in front of him. And it will bear a remarkable similarity to his father’s and grandfather’s. But what gives him the right to be so sanctimonious? Who knows how their life is going to work out.

“Yes, they do.” Crispin says this as though his own life is pretty damn complicated, and years later, I find out that he’d been having an affair with a series of young, male researchers, generally at other firms, for the majority of his professional career. And he has a wife, too. As Tarquin said, other people’s lives…

“So what’s going to happen?”

“Oh, it’s already happened. Don’t know how, but the press got hold of the story immediately, and by the time Starr – “ I hate the public school thing of calling people by their surname “ - got outside, there were hoards of paparazzi there. Methinks it will be the front page, tomorrow.”

I’m so much on the inside here, that I even get to know what’s going to be the top news story in twenty four hours time. Amazing.

“Well, Crispin, thanks for filling me in. Quite something. Always rely on you for an interesting tale.” I can feel Tarquin’s smile through the partition. I imagine it looks something like the Joker in Batman. It’s a smile designed to garner support.

“OK, well, toodle-pip.” Crispin starts walking along the corridor, and turns suddenly, semi-crouches down and mimes pulling two guns out of his holster like a Wild West veteran. “Don’t forget, amigos, it’s a war for talent out there.”

I think this is a reference to the firm’s current mission statement; win the war for talent. It sounds to me like its phraseology has been randomly spawned by a beta-test mission statement generator developed by a failed management consultant.

It's a cat manicure. No, really.

What did promiscuous people do before the internet?

Because, as we all know, masonic rituals can go fatally wrong. [try sashablog sashablog for a password, it's the NYT.]

CNN.com - Spalding Gray found dead - Mar 8, 2004

I had fabulous baba ghanoush(Eggplant with Tehina) with S last week at Maroush (how poetic).

"Google has improved my sex life, tightened my abs, and brought me closer to God." [via Darren]

Well, someone on the Evening Standard seems to have given Norman Lebrecht a hard time.

"Beware of March 15."

No Fear Shakespeare translation.

How news travels through the blogosphere.

Suzy Gold - gey gezunterheyt

[Spoilers, should you care.]

Felt I should put my £7.90 where my mouth is, so down to the Swiss Odeon Cottage last night (when I should have been working, I know...) with M.

Short form: not half as bad as I expected. Gold taps to die for. The plot is meaningless, the acting is atrocious (especially Iddo Goldberg), and Summer Phoenix's mouth seems to have a mind/part of its own. Some cute little observations. Some inspired writing, as well as some crass-first draft type writing. Ultimately, a commercial film that is nowhere near MBFGW or any other such movie, but if you're Jewish, there are gags you'll like.

The premise doesn't work. You don't get why Suzy is all confident and North London one minute and then the minute she gets in a non-Jewish environment she's all tongue-tied and nervous. And the truth about - most - monied North Londoners who shop on Marylebone High Street, dress expensively, have a lot of lattes and work in TV is that they have loads of non-Jewish friends. Of course. And they've probably been out with loads of non-Jews, even if they end up marrying in. And like, her parents wouldn't be over the moon about the NJB being a caterer: they'd rather he was in investment banking. And he kisses the mezzuzah when he goes in the house. Like, p-u-leease.

And the non-Jews are all multi-racial families and hippies and live in bohemian high-rise pads. Or council flats. Low slung furniture. And go to pubs all the time. And Suzy and Darren go and see Guess Who's Coming to Dinner - which is not being revived, except on TV - at the Screen on Baker Street. Suzy's Mum appears to wear the same suit for Yom Kippur as she does for her daughter's wedding, which would never happen. And Suzy has to wear a bridesmaid dress the like of which has not been seen since 1983. And someone who's hair is that straight just wouldn't wear that dress.

And her friends are like fakes of the Sex in the City girls. Only not as well written. And it's a bit too OTT on the "this is a shiva - when people die"... you feel like it's made for non-Jews, but in case we think they're stupid, let's explain. But, weirdly, the Yiddish isn't translated, you're supposed to get it from context.

It's cute, it's partially well-observed, someone I was at Cheder with did the music, it doesn't set the world on fire, it's nowhere near as good as Me Without Your or Wondrous Oblivion (both of which are better films but way less commercial), and you wanted to edit the script. Badly. But, having said all that, it's not bad. The eight people (we didn't know) in the cinema last night had a little seminar on the way out, and we all agreed, so it must be true.

iGod, iPod, who knows? [via Cory]

Sometimes, because I have door-dwell and phone-dwell, and need to do everything at some kind of super speed, I misdial numbers. So instead of 1571 to listen to my messages on my voicemail, I dial 1517. Very Martin Luther, no?

Things that cheer me up: Mark is insecure; Darren is funny.

I hate IMAP. That is all.

Via Lurid, geopolitics, call centres and the Middle East. Sheesh. Because - ob-vi-ous-ly - if only there were outsourced call centres in the West Bank and Gaza the whole of the Middle East crisis would be solved.

"I'm very tribal - I'm Labour." Alistair Campbell in today's Guardian.

Perhaps this blog is the urtext of my life. Then again, perhaps not.

Authentic Kabbalah red string: there's one born every minute...

It's Sex in the City meets Witness. Gah. Stop: stop making more and more TV shows that are increasingly outrageous because what used to be interesting isn't because we saw that last week. Get out more. Please.

From Friday's Guardian: Centaur windfalls 'unfair' to journalists.

Dr Who with, er, a comedy twist?

Belleville Rendezvous: Spirited Away meets Finding Nemo, with a Django Reinhardt soundtrack. "Cameo's" from Josephine Baker, John Malkovitch, and others...

Oh, and - belatedly - Purim Same'ach. Kinda passed me by this year: more when I land.

But driving through Golders Green tonight, I was surprised by the surreal sight of grown hasidim in fancy dress. That's fancy dress other than the traditional eighteenth century Polish nobleman's garb. Just the weirdness of jesters and Ali G's crossing the street, shiker. It's a strange, strange world...

Can't really process any more information: Jewish Book Week, Jonny Freedland, The Fab Four. More, later. Maybe.

So I came back from Manchester on the M6 Toll road; it's like a parallel universe. It's got the barren landscape of True Stories or any other American road movie, and it has tolls (like malls) and a toll plaza and all manner of Americana. The Toll Operative even exhorted me to have a nice day. And it has no speed cameras. When you pay your toll and all the lanes merge I felt for all the world like I was coming out of JFK.

Why do we keep appropriating americanisms? Why does Tony think he's El Presidente? What's happening to the NHS and free tertiary education? OK, OK, it's just a motorway....

Stephen Pollard says everything I want to say about anti-semitism on the Left, but better.

Everything that was good about my Big Fat Greek Wedding has been stripped out of Suzie Gold and given to East is East. That's what I think and I've not even seen the movie.

I have tickets for Jewish Book week on Sunday - Jonny Freedland reading from his new, unpublished novel, and the Fab Four about bright young thing writer-types. I think I'll still be in Manchester, and it'll be too much of a faff to try and get my ten quid back. If anyone wants them, email me, or - if you actually know me - calll me, and I'll arrange for you to get them.

Long story, but I'm in Manchester (Cheadle branch).

He had whiskers on his chin again

For those of you even slightly concerned about my bus stop - I cooled off since the summer when they said they would take down the advertising panel on the shelter, so we could see and not knock people down when we drove out of the path. I waited. Months.

Along came the wind and blew them in again

Then I sent an email every so often to everyone involved. No reply. Then I cc'd my local councillor (whom I have met a number of times over this matter). Yesterday she replied - turns out everyone involved in this at London Buses and Camden has moved on. Start again again.

Poor old Michael Finnegan....Begin again.

Turns out Pure and Simple is neither pure nor simple [thanks, Courtenay].

So, fortuitously, on the way to a meeting in Camden, I saw a mobile phone shop that sells wire things. So I spent twenty quid on a generic piece of wire for my 7250i (120 pictures and climbing). I've installed the "software", so it recognises me, but I can't find the "software" to transfer the pics with. The Readme files has these helpful hints:

"The best step of using the USB Cable is to plug in USB Cable firstly, then to plug in Mobile Phone and work the software.
The sequence is opposite while closing. You have to close the software firstly, then pull out USB Cable . Otherwise, the
computer won??t be work normally or will be cut off.

The operation is probably different because the different model of Mobile Phone has different software to support. Moreover
, the software of different model which can support the functions and has the greatest difference. You will be clear the
detailed information if you check the assistant file of software. "

So, none the wiser, then. I do have a (new?) programme in my programme list called PL-2303 USB Serial Driver, which could be it, but the only option is to uninstall. Duh.

When did life get this hard?

I'm having "coffee" with so many people today that I feel like a cross between an insurance salesperson and Chief Marketing Officer for Costbucks.

I think it should be known that I made superlative butternut squash and sage rissotto last night. I'll post the recipe as soon as I get a chance, but I think the secret is (a) in the nutmeg, (b) cooking the squash in vegetable stock and then using that as the liquid for the rice (with some nice wine, of course), and (c) good company.

Why is no-one else worried about parabens in shampoos and hair products? Say something, please.

Some say baigel (bay-gull), some say beigel (buy-gull) - the capital's vanishing beigel trail (which I am convinced they're spelling wrong. Call me a Litvak, if you must.)

Nextbook.org - a gateway to Jewish literature, culture and ideas.

From yesterday's FT (and courtesy of my Dad) - Business logs on to blogging. I mean, enterprise blogging, isn't that just a shared network drive?

"Along with other potentially disruptive technologies, weblogs or "blogs" have come a long way in a very short time. Now some believe this new form of web-based publishing is poised to enter the corporate mainstream.

While some workplace weblogs are being set up by "rogue" employees, with or without official sanction, a growing number of organisations in both the public and private sector are recognising the potential of weblog technology to streamline communications, reduce e-mail overload and improve co-operation.

"We see this as an enormous potential market," says Greg Lloyd, president and co-founder of Providence, Rhode Island-based Traction Software, one of the emerging market leaders in the enterprise weblog tools market.

"Blogs provide the ability for individuals to be able to write directly to the web using simple Office tools techniques, no more complicated than e-mail, to basically have an archive of their thoughts and conversations automatically maintained in time order," he says.

"This has just enormous implications for how people handle working communications and business processes and we are really at the beginning of that."

Michael Gartenberg, research director at Jupiter Research, the US-based IT consultancy, agrees that weblogging has caught the attention of business, but he cautions that it is still early days. "Enterprise weblogging is attracting a lot of corporate interest as a way of streamlining communications," he says."

Sadly, you have to have a subscription, so there's not a whole point in my even linking. Sorry.

I'm never sure if your pronounce B3TA as Bee-tuh or bee-three-tee-ay. You know, like C3PO.

How retro. Clearly from the pre-suicide bomber era (remember the IRA on the mainland? How there were always evacuations? Five minute warnings? Don't you just wish for that now...) - French railways search for their threatened bombs on foot.

What do KMS HairPlay, Redken Soft Ends, KMS Curl Up, Modern Elixirs Styling Serum, Big Sexy Hair Conditioner,
and even the organic stylee Phytomist have in common?

They all have parabens listed as an ingredient. 100% of them. Sheesh.

A series of good hair days.

OK. Consistent, mild low-level panic all the time. Three unfinished projects? Great idea and no time to write? Time of the month? Slight sore throat, but could just be too many late nights? Mmmm.

Time To Move On?

I know there are geeks out there. Some of them might even swing by here ocassionally (I once had a boss who was always swinging by my office. I felt like Tarzan. Or Jane). Anyway, I need to move on from Micr$s$ft Outlook - it's terrible with IMAP, and it's upsetting me. I need something that looks nice, synchronises with a palm PDA, and does IMAP without breaking twice a day. Ideas?

So just yesterday I set my blog to email me everytime I post. Which is cool; I always think that I must make a proper backup. But now I - randomly - get the post when I post it, then about twelve hours later, and then sometimes some other time too. Gah?

Because you've probably always wanted to read my blog in Russian. At least, I'm guessing it's Russian.

Update: I guessed wrong. Shit happens. It's Greek, apparently (as in it's all Greek to me). Thanks M.

Autism: except I can't help wondering if Simon Baron-Cohen is Ali G's brother.

Milion Writers Award for Fiction.

the Blogosphere?a land where the smart get smarter, the connected connect to one another, and the losers go home: blogging on blogging again. At the Village Voice.