Prince Charles appears to only respond to 43% of his correspondence.

How rude.

And he's in the money. He's costing us 4p each. Great.

And, Duchy Originals makes £1m profit - which appears to be a net margin of 2.5%. Given that they don't have any retail space, that's not great. OK, he gives it all to charity, but it must be run pretty damn inefficiently.

This is the perfect blogging-works-with-journalism piece: diamond geezer was "stumbled upon" by ANdrew Gilliagan, writing about the Bow Road tube station renovations fiasco. But rather than just lifting it wholesale (which I've seen in a few papers) Gilligan went out and did additional reporting. That's the way it should be.

Now, to my bust shelter....

Just so you know, I've heard it said that I talk fast, but not THAT fast. Looks like that second audblog post is buggered. Sorry. And it was so stream-of-consciousness that I don't quite remember what I said.

It was loosely... lists, hipster PDAs, efficient people, inefficient people, procrastination, my Mum's excellent list-making ability. There, that's about it.

Thirteen Conversations About One Thing - what exacty is happiness?

Since I had that little chat with Glenda before the election, I was delighted to read she voted no to ID cards last night.

Just to make things clear, despite my interest in direct marketing, I say no to a database state. In fact, it makes me feel like we'll be in some kind of Hitlerian state, and also, I have to pay for the privelege.

Not safe for work, but great tube train angst. Lotsa swear words: really don't play it in your office. I wonder if Adam Kaye is the one I kinda know?

Well, let's face it The Girl in the F****ing Café is one long advertorial.

We know what happened. The Chief Rabbit Geldof was having brunch in Notting Hill with His Royal RomComness Richard, and was tearing his hair out about not being to save the earth, and as soon as you could say tall-skinny-caramel-machiatto, Richard had said he had just the idea, and Bob had said I'll bike over the little £2 book and the press releases and you can rustle it up before cocktails. Daahling.

Here's how I see it: luvvies should act and musos should take drugs and make music, and politicians should sleep with their researchers. These things are all mutually exclsuive, and the fact someone made a lot of money from their creative endevours doesn't necessarily mean they're an amabssador.

And also, Lord Curtis-stan, we're not stupid. If you make crass gags and knock us over the head with gimicks and the same facts again and again, we don't feel lightbulb-moment, we think who-is-this-prat-and-why-is-he-winding-us-up.

Nuff said. I've said it before: get back in your box, Richard. You've lost it. The messiah, you ain't. You're not even just a very naughty boy.

So I'm watching The Girl in The Café, we're only about fifteen minutes in, and I'm already thinking what kind of Curtisverse (multiverse, geddit) does Richard C inhabit? His crass gags, his one dimensional characters, the over-studied awkwardness of Bill Nighy. The chummy horribleness of Saint Bob getting Sir Curtis (as I'm sure he will one day be, for his disservice to the romantic comedy genre) to write a film about his hobby-horse, and we're all supposed to get really excited about making poverty history. Not that I'm not: I am and we should. I just object to some overpaid past-it writer mucking up a good gig because his ego got the better of him again.

Sheesh.

I feel better, though.

And I thought I had chutzpah/quirky letter writing ability (two not interchangeable). Justin Lee is a master. First laugh of the day.

I love it that I signed up to some mailing lists as Donald Duck, and now I get personalised email.

Dear Mr Duck...

Clerkenwell has a Literary Festival. Don't we all.

I think I'm in shock.

I can't believe the whole lifehack cult/movement/whatever has got the stage of people taking photos of their lists and putting them up on Flickr.

See, I'm so busy organising/colour coding my TODO list, that I'm not doing any work.

Check out the The Hipster PDA (I could spend all day reading 43 Folders).

I am busy. Honest.

I realise I've been a little quiet. I'm knee deep in a couple of truly intellecually stimulating projects. Sorry.

One of them has a slight US angle, and I find myself on the phone, moderating my dulcet slightly-northern tones with Noo Yawk switchboard operators.

Me: Can I speak with Dan Brown please?
Them: Don Braun? We don't have a Don Brawn. Can you spell that?
Me: D - A - N
Them: D - O - N
Me: No, I have an English accent

Let's just say, it's ocassionally frustrating.

It's hot, daaang hot (in the words of the song/DVD).

In a minute, I'm going to a wedding (like you really want to be all done up in your finery when it's ninety degrees in the shade, but I'm happy for the couple that it's such a glorious day), after a super-sociable week/weekend.

Yomtov (shavuot) - the cheesecake festival - where I hung out in shul, and at various lunches/meals and ate/baked more cheesecake than is probably good for me.

Yesterday: shul, kiddush (x 2, noch), two lunch invites, and afternoon tea... that went on into the sweltering twighlight.

Mmmm. Must go shower and change.

The animal’s story is: fear. And loathing. But not in Las Vegas.

From as early as I can remember, all the women in my family have been frightened of dogs to some degree. I read somewhere (the Journal of Jewish Sociology, or was it the Jewish Journal of Sociology) that it was all to do with cross-generational learned behaviour. Your great grandma told your grandma to be careful of the Poles/Russians/Romanians’ dogs during a pogrom, and then there it was, imprinted onto our emotional DNA forever. I don’t know where the men were.

So, I don’t want any kind of four-legged friend, and don’t quite see the point of floating friends or winged friends, either.

If asked to write a list of animals, all I can come up with is:

Dogs smell and shake their fur when they’re wet

Cats smell of wee

Guinea pigs are rats, basically

Dolphins are smart but too big to keep in your house

Goldfish may be tolerable, but I don’t quite get it

What I remember about goldfish and other water-bound pets is that my Mum said we couldn’t have tadpoles at school (because they turn into frogs) and when we did once have goldfish, my Dad on-purpose-by-mistake (we’ll never know, now) let them slip down the drain when he was inexpertly cleaning their house.

I know, fish don’t live in houses. But that’s the point.

When I was at school, we were always having charity week and raising money for horse sanctuaries and the PDSA. I didn’t understand that, either. While I wouldn’t want to do any harm to animals – I’m even a vegetarian – I don’t rate them as more important than human beings.

My boyfriend is always saying that it’s good for children to keep pets because they learn to look after someone else, and it’s a character building experience, and even though I know he’s right, I think he’s wrong. That’s because I can’t bear the thought of some kind of Noah’s Ark in my living room.

Once, a bird flew in my house. It was summer, early in the morning, and my living room has very high windows and is a fairly light and airy room, and – according the RSPCA person I called up for advice – birds are smarter than you think and usually don’t go in houses because they can see it’s darker.

Anyway, this bird got truly shit-scared and shat all over my sofas and was desperately trying to fly out by banging itself against a large expanse of glass. Crazy, but I was petrified. Every time I got closer, the bird panicked more. Eventually, I knocked on my neighbour’s door, who knows something from nature and the outdoors, and after a lot of chasing the bird with a tea-towel, managed to get it outside again.

Because that’s how the world should be – or at least in my world-view – people: inside. Animals: outside. Let’s keep it like that.

Good Hair Day

Sometimes I think my life has been a long, linked, series of bad-hair-days. Or at the very least, that I can reference each pivotal moment by the conditioner-of-choice at the time. Alberto Balsam Moisturising Balm. Ozzie Three Minute Miracle. Something in a yellow and red packet that I bought in a Nigerian hairdresser in Kilburn (yes, I’ve done the black thing). Coconut Oil Intensive Treatment.

If I added up all the time I’ve spent (read: wasted) devouring the back of shampoo/conditioner/product packaging to see if this product is the one that will take me to haircare heaven, I’d have split the atom by now. Or at the very least, developed a good vegetarian chicken soup recipe.


* * *

At university, at the beginning of the first year, some kindly departmental soul put up a photocopied sheet of all the first-years’ passport photos, presumably to help us get to know each other (she didn’t know from the Union bar). A day later, someone had crossed out FRIEZE and wittily replaced it with FRIZZ. My fate was sealed.

As were my hair cuticles, because I was, at that time, experimenting with a deep-heat conditioner that was: supposed to make me look like everyone else.


* * *

Hair is about the politics of difference.

When I took a job in a quintessentially English firm, I suddenly realised I was the only curly-haired person in three hundred employees. I was surrounded by corporate Diana-alikes: trim women with neat blond bobs and milchig musical tastes, the Disney heroines of their own lives. I didn’t fit in. The unruliness of my hair, my moderately feisty nature; let’s just say they weren’t exactly going to hide me from the Nazis.


* * *

Years of telling the hair-washing girl(s) – I try new hairdressers like other people evaluate new restaurants, seeking hairdresser-who-understands-me-nirvana – “no, I’m not growing out a perm,” have taught me the weird wonder of my Jewfro. (Although, despite my occasional infidelities, I do always end up going back to Tim in Manchester, because he accepts me just the way I am).

I go in and out of fashion, like hemlines.

But in recent years, I’ve reached an accommodation with my hair. We have respect for each other, but it’s been a journey. While as a kid my mum regularly used to straighten my hair, in adulthood I’ve only ever done it once – and I looked like a pale, flat, parev imitation of my true self.

Over the years, I realise, I’ve sought out similarly follicuarly-challenged flatmates: there’s nothing quite like a bathroom full of obscure shampoos to help you feel like you belong. The shared friendship ritual of cultural reality: bonding over the intensive curl treatment is like talking about tzimmes recipes with your bubbe.

Now, I love my hair; ringletty, frizzy, curly (on a good day), wild – my hair identifies me. It says I’m proud to be who I am, I’m not going to change how I look to fit the rest of the world.

Unbelievable online/freedom of speech story in China. I am too frazzled by my broken printer and ocassionally-obstreperous clients to comment.

So I'm still working for Huge Conglomerate plc (and LLC). I am now using my own email, because they just can't find a workaround. And (internal) client A says don't talk to (internal) client B about the project, and (internal) client B says don't talk to (internal) client A about the project. Which leaves me with kinda no-one to talk to. I have emailed them all saying I am doing what I can within the time constraints.

The things we do for money.

My spies at Kilburn station tell me that David Mitchell is sitting on the platform, head deep in the Times. He's local. How cool.

So, been busy. The client from hell can't forward my client email address to my email address, and wants me to use their flakey webmail for a project with like 1,000 emails. Because they have to be SOX (Sarbanes Oxley) compliant. I kid you not.

Watch HIGNFY tonight - I saw it recorded last night. Des Lynam in the chair; the regulars not themselves, maybe a little demob happy, and that bloke from Peepshow: David Mitchell? Fabulous: he's the new Paul Merton.

Went to the Jonathan Safran Foer booklaunch at the JCC. He's a smart, thoughtful guy, though there was a slight literary-superstar thang going down. He talked about his emptiness thing. I read a review that said his (less famous) wife has also written a novel about 9/11 and it's better. Vanessa Feltz was there, and she swanned right to her reserved seat on the front rown, brash blonde hair and all. We had protexia: M's boyfriend got us front row seats.

I'm rambling. I'm frazzled. I have too much to do. My neighbours do an awful lot of washing (the ceiling vibrates slightly, if all the stars align).

Somone googled on Limmudistan, and I am the only person to ever say it on the internet. It's where Limmudniks live, largely.