Craft project I must do - Flickr Toys Calendar Jewel Case Instructions.

"Liking grandchildren more than your children is the emotional equivalent of preferring dessert over main course."

Courtesy of B, via email. That B needs a blog.

Faux bombs in Shepherds Bush - but is it art?

I think I may have died and gone to hummus/humous heaven: I have just discovered the existence of Hummus Bros - Give (Chick) Peas a Chance, a fast-food place dedicated entirely to humous. In London. On Wardour Street. I have to get there as soon as possible.

India Knight in today's Sunday Times on that haircare bill. Not that I need to tell you, but Cherie's in the news again. For something that really counts.

Broadly, India is pro large hair care charges for faux first ladies, on the basis that she can't do her own hair.

Here's what I think: it may be outrageous that Sandra Howard has her sidekick's sidekick blow-dry her hair in the back of the campaign van, but let's face it, she's got that straight, English hair. I think it's ludicrous to spend £275 a day on getting your hair done (we're not talking cuts or colours here, just a plain old style), but I can see Cherie wants to look good.

I know that answer. The problem is that Cherie has wavy/curly/slightly unruly hair, and she's trying to get it back in the box. She wants to look like everyone else; coiffed, groomed... done. Cherie needs to reach curl nirvana: she needs to learn to love her curls, and try and be her, not try and be other people.

So Cherie, my advice is simply this (spot the Shaders and Toners of Tony there?): go to a curly hair salon (I recommend Devachan or Ouidad in New York - shit, for what £7,000 you could get their top stylist to come to you). Get the hair cut that your hair needs - the one that's for you, not the one that makes you look like you think you ought to. Buy some decent curly hair products (I heartily recommend Devachan's Angell), leave your hair to dry. India may say the BBC is a curl-free zone (curly hair is "distracting", apparently - read scary/independent/non-conformist) but you need to stop looking like you've got a poker up your arse. We all know you like floaty clothes - real curls and waves are only a step away.

Get with the curl programme, girlfriend, and you'll stop looking like a cardboard cut-out of a PM's wife and start looking like you. And you'll get some respect from the masses who think £7,000 is (just about) a deposit on a first home, a car, a trip of a lifetime, some school fees... something that counts.

I just discovered that there's a Moleskin blog: moleskinerie.

It's been a while...

... a lot's happened.

First, of course, it's the middle of Pesach, and I cleaned (with assistance) my whole house and changed the pots and bought crazily-hecshered food. We had two great sedorim - there's something fascinating about seeing another family's minhagim, and I hung out with family and friends and ate far too much matzah.

I'm in Cheadle - second half only - and have had a great time with my nephews (J told me today his favourite sports are prickitt and goff). They are very excited I'm here, and it's nice to feel loved and wanted, especially by cute kids. We played jenga. We played computer games. We went to shul.

But, there's still something sad about coming back here. Well, to the shul, really. In my mind Cheadle - Yeshurun - is this mythic community, the place I grew up in, that spawned a generation of incredibly talented, creative people. The crowd I grew up with are actors, film directors, musicians, DJs (as well as a fair smattering of barristers and doctors), and I remember - possibly through rose-tinted glasses - a perfect childhood, a perfect community, a perfect shul. It's like every community I get involved with in adulthood is benchmarked against my warmest memories.

But being here now, it's not the same. Most people don't keep the end of Yom Tov - shul was empty. The chazzan was amazing, but contentious (you kinda love or hate that old-fashioned operatic chazzonus). The rabbi was a little shouty (but then rabonim often are). I see my parents and their friends, doing the work in the community that they were doing twenty or thirty years ago, and I don't see the next generation stepping up, and I wonder what will happen.

Also - in a minor way - it took a little time to recover from that gastro bug. Stomach still a little sensitive, not helped by too much matzah.

But what's been in the back of my mind since a week last friday is - and this is going to sound silly, so I'm sorry - my relationship with G-d (which I am still inclined to write that way, even though it's not a piece of paper).

As I get older, I think I have more... faith/connection... whatever you call that. There seem to be reasons for things, and for the things we don't really understand, some kind of context. But - and I don't mean this selfishly - I lost a friend, Melissa, someone I'd been in my Jewish women's group with for fifteen years. Later, I might write more about her, because I'd like to write some kind of ... testament to who she was and what she did. But for now, all I can think about is how unfair it is that someone in their thirties, with a husband and small child, how unfair is it that this should happen. And I feel angry that the good people sometimes get taken, even though I know it doesn't work that way. At least, I think it doesn't work that way.

So, I've been thinking a lot about M, and the life she lead, the things she did, and what it all means. Something of a crisis of faith, almost. Coupled with my shul-dilemma (whole separate conversation), I've been working out anew what I think, what I believe, what's important.

Of course some people know this already.

Until I work it out - and let's face it, this could be a while - I guess I just have to count my blessings. I'm lucky to have wonderful people in my life (hello, D), be part of two warm communities and a lovely family, have interesting work, a self-employed lifestyle that is pretty stress-free compared to my corporate days, time to write(sometimes), a lovely garden, which makes me very happy as I look out of my office window (once I was on the phone in the summer to an investment banker in New York and he said to me "are you, like, in the park?"), and a degree of... creativity/personal wherewithall/I know not what to call it that means I can enjoy every day for what it is.

I don't mean to be boastful. Of course my life isn't perfect, but I think I don't stop often enough to notice what I've got, so I am.

Like I said, interesting times.

Fantastic collection of paschal/sederic links at Jewschool - The Web is Your Passover Oyster (metaphorically speaking) from Shamirpower.

Busy day, busy day. Boutros Boutros Ghali. Peri Peri Chicken Chicken.

I'm not going mad, but I am cleaning for Pesach.

So far today, I have:

• sold my chametz (legitimately, I might add)
  
• done my Pesach shopping in three shops in Golders Green - only thing left to get kasher-le-pesach herbal tea. I have paid stupid money for stuff with hechshers on them, but hey.
• Bought haggadot
• About to clean my car
• Bought lots of wine (for people we are going to seder at)
• stopped in Starbux, crucial pre-paschal activity, of course...

Once, my (second) cousin said to me "what do non-Jewish people do on a Sunday?" meaning that we grew up in families were Sundays were largely (but not exclusively) about stonesettings and shivas. That's the price you pay for being involved in a large, vibrant community; you know more people, more people die.

I know that I'm grown up, because today I (very, extremely, sadly) am also going to a funeral and a stonesetting.

I went a little bit quiet: knocked out with a 24-hour nasty gatro-style bug. I am 90% recovered.

more linkage...

• Microsoft Re-Designs the Ipod Packaging .. hysterical.
• Bernard Shaw's Writing Hut .. Isn't this fabulous - Bernard Shaw's writing hut at the bottom of his garden. Oh, I want one.
• A pincer movement on the papers .. Great Mike Butcher piece: Craigslist is now in 192 cities, and only charges for want ads in three of them, and only $25 , while Craigslist competitors, like the New York Times, charge $300.
• morf.gif .. Fabulous little Escher-like non-flash animation.
• 'I have to stop myself ranting' .. CHAKRABARTI, Shami, (also known as Mrs M. J. Hopper) of Liberty fame.

The Apple Boot Camp public beta (in that web2.0 way where everything is in perpetual beta) might well mean my next PC is an Mac.

Turns out I spoke too soon on the how-cool-is-this-at-Sony front.

I check the tracking first thing, and it's out for delivery today. At 10am, it says "THE RECEIVER WAS UNAVAILABLE TO SIGN ON THE 1ST DELIVERY ATTEMPT. A 2ND DELIVERY ATTEMPT WILL BE MADE."

Weird, I was here all along.

I call my friend Amy at Sony Business, and they have attempted to deliver my shiny new laptop to Flat X, My Street, Rather than Flat X, Y My Street, Kilburn, which is the address on all our correspondence.

I'm busy writing something up today, so I'm available to receive it all day, but now Amy says it'll be tomorrow, and I'm at meetings for lots of the day, or Friday, where I am...

So, I spoke to soon. Amy said, "well, we did only say 90% delivery for Friday," and I said "what about exceeding my expectations?" and I am slightly stressed, and Amy is on the phone to people at UPS to try and get them to change the system. Which is hard. But if anyone can do it she/I can. I hope.

Because when you want something, and you are an immediately-girly, as I am, you want it. Also, I need a laptop.

Will keep you informed. If you care, I realise this is not such a big deal, really.

Had a great fun chilli-laden evening last night, including getting through three bars of Montezuma's fantastic chocolate (three pepper, chilli chocolate and cinamon (white) chocolate, since you ask).

Sony Vaio Delivery

Sony Vaio Delivery

So here's the story - for those who asked on my laptop.

I am a demanding customer. I like good design. I am stuck on the PC platform until Intel and Apple really makes it happen in a way that is Micro$oft-agnostic and doesn't hassle my clients who are mostly corporate M$ shops. I have one client who has kitted all his staff out with old-style macs, but then they aren't allowed voicemail either, and no-one can read my files.

Here's a history of all the laptops I ever owned.

• In the early nineties I bought an Elonex or something like it; the screen was tiny and black and white (or green, really) and I played a lot of patience.
  
• Then I had a sony laptop, can't remember what. It was OK.
  
• Then I ran my own business, and had a beautiful Vaio 505FX with a perfect metal case. But it let me down, and when I called Sony, all they could say is, to be really reliable, you need two. So I bought another one. Sucker for a sales pitch, me.
  
• Then I got made redundant from the Industry Standard, and I didn't have a job, but they gave me my IBM Thinkpad A20p. It's a workhorse piece of kit, but served me well in my early freelance-no-job days
  
• I bought a Sony Vaio TR1MP nearly a couple of years ago. I think I've been unluckly with the number of trips it's had to the Brussels healthfarm, although everything's technically as good as new, now.

So, I was this far from ordering a Toshiba Portege, and had gone through the entire spec with the Gadget Detective (aka my friend who knows everything there is to know about technology purchasing, and then some), and he said to me "Toshiba is mediocre design, mediocre service. Sony is good design, average service, you've just been unlucky. And you really want a Vaio, don't you?"

Because Sony Vaio's are for PC people who want a Mac, but can't handle the platform inertia. Design, without the advantages.

So I called Sony Business, and they had a bundle in stock, and everything was cool, and I was about to order it, and then Amy told me that I couldn't get it for an unspecified time, as they were (a) moving warehouses, and (b) didn't know how much stock they had.

But I'd made a purchase decision. A little thing like no stock wasn't going to get in my way. And I have this great database, called the internet, where I can find out anything. But when I googled for "head of product marketing at sony vaio" in a vicious, circular way, I got myself. So I called up the guy I knew from last time, but he's been promoted, so I found the new guy (it's always a guy) and explained that I was practically a lifetime customer, had a little word with him about lifetime customer value, and he said he could sort it.

Ten minutes later, Amy calls me back, slightly bemused. "We can express ship the item to you Tuesday. You know people in high places."

Which I don't. But I know how to shmooze and do the customer-service-manouevre, and I know how to get what I want (mostly).

So, new latop allegedly winging its way to Kilburn.

I will keep you informed.

Linkage:

• I have seen the Future - and it's Goth .. Is your boss a Goth? 10 telltale signs. Archly inane article from the Guardian - is there no real news?
• Open Letter - Public Geo Data .. State collected geodata is public property.
• 'Gang leader' held in Africa after Murder of Kidnapped Jew .. Seems like antisemitism is alive and well in France.
• Car sharers to get a Lane of their Own .. Carpool lanes on British motorways, sounds sensible to me.
• Killing me softly with salad dressing choices .. I'm trying to buy a TV, but I have choice inertia. Turns out I'm not the only one...
• British Gas chaos leaves thousands without heat .. Turns out I'm not the only person who's more than unhappy with British Gas (don't even say "three star contract" to me).