From the Department of Vague Emergencies.

My brother's just discovered instant messaging. He thinks it's amazing. Is it like the telephone. It's a whole voyage of discovery. No, really. He says I musn't take the piss.

Know what I can't find out? No amount of googling will tell me where to get a shredder for less than £65 that does CDs as well.

You just know that Vanessa Feltz updated her own IMDB entry.  Sheesh.

How anti-semitic is the City?

Forget New Jew: this is Who Jew?

Well, I can't wait for this pamphlet to drop through my door. It's bound to make me feel better.

And also, as practice for my Proper Holiday, I'm going to go off-net and not look at my email or the internet for 48 hours. One minute at a time, as they say.

Just a very brief note to say I did go to BH's poetry reading last night, and it was great. The Guildhall Art Gallery is a beautiful building, and the whole event had a genteel Englishness about it that I loved. Albeit from my outsider perspective. And I feel slightly guilty about the stuff I posted about BH's website, because he's a very insightful poet, and quite a self-effacing, almost shy guy. He even signed my book. I felt like a groupie. And Harold Pinter has the most amazing, resonant voice. Random thoughts over. I'm going to Bournemouth now. OK, in a couple of hours, then.

I know I'm a little late to the party on this stuff - UKIP's Godfrey Bloom's weirdness over women - but it reminded me of a story in my own life.

Two, actually.

I used to be on a large representative body for Anglo-Jewry. Once, when we were debating "the role of women" or some other such retro over topic, someone stood up and said "the role of women in my house means that if we don't wrap this up so I can get home in time for tea, my wife'll kill me."

Also, I was co-opted onto the Women's Issues Social Action Group - WISAG for short. Pronounced we-sag, like a collective of women who could have better bras. Anyway, because we were all women, unlike all the other sub-committees we didn't get adminstrative assistance, and had to take our own minutes and suchlike. I was aghast, but the other women felt it wasn't worth rocking the boat. Suffice to say I didn't last very long there.

The 95% humidity. The heat hanging in the air. The monsoonesque weather. Hot rain. Short bursts. It's all very Singapore, frankly. Except without the ex-pat banking sector remuneration packages, the Philipino maids/slaves, or the 95% majority in the election.

I used to live there, and a few other places in South East Asia. And now, I can't really go in a sauna without feeling how I felt then: the damp hotness takes me right back there. And now, here.

How an avocado bathroom can slash your home's value by £8,000 in today's Guardian. I don't do any of them. Oh, hang on... I have some pine furniture. That'll be £1,000 please. (It's a hangover from a previous interior design identity, honest. And it's antique. OK, collectible. Really.)

www.haroldpinter.org.

Those Metafilter readers get around. I was just going to blog Cuddle Party (which does sound to me like the sort of people you meet at a self-discovery weekend, all urgently trying to get intimate, because they don't have any social skills), when I discover GreenFairy has said everything I probably want to say but better. That's always the way.

Wanna go tonight? Here's the details.

Here's another corker from BH's website:

The Spectator: (June 03)

The Spectator's Notes

By coincidence, after years as more or less the only member
of the Fraser Gang (Lady Tony's mob, that is, not Mad Frankie's)
not to have published his literary efforts, young Benjamin Fraser
has at last cracked and tumbled into print. His debut collection
of poetry, City Poems (Greville Press), is dedicated 'To Harold',
though there's scant sign of printer's influence in the poems.
Much less swearing, and one even begins, 'Pray Americans
come./Booted. On. Now.', which if memory serves, is not quite
Harold's line. Anyway, jolly good they are too.

We'll never know if a Spectator copy editor couldn't Pinter from a printer, or whether it's BH's own personal faux pas.

Remeber the flowerpot people? I ended up not doing the project for them, and I was angry because the week later I had to do the it's-signed-off-no-it's-not song and dance with accounts about my invoice. Again. But I decided that goodwill and client relationships were paramount, so I called Ben and asked him if he'd like to meet for lunch, talk about our last project and the feedback. Sure, love to, I'm handsfree right now, but send me an email, he said.

So I did, suggesting some dates. And I didn't hear back from him so I figured fine. Waste my time. Then, when it's out of my mind, he calls me a coupla weeks later, all sweetness and light, let's do lunch. We make a date for today. 6pm last night he calls me, "gotta cancel, sorry."

Gah.

At least I can have steamed vegetables for lunch, now, though.

9/11 Commission Report out today - National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

Had a real laught last night - met up with some old friends for a curry.

T regaled us with an hysterical story about how she has to go to Lincolnshire for her hols because family are visiting the UK and that's where they're going to be. Needs must, I guess. So she checked out the Lincolnshire Tourism site at www.visitlincolnshire.com.

Not only do they make you register to get a brochure, but when you do (and I hope the link above works, otherwise, just randomly choose a brochure, and click register. It's worth it. Then go to title... and choose from Admiral... Prince... Princess. No, really.

Next, go to country.. and choose from the vast drop-down menu that starts with Afghanistan. Because people from all over the known universe probably don't visit Lincolnshire, because frankly getting a brochure is to onerous, but they sure do consider it.

City Poems by BH Fraser. He's the bloke I heard on Radio 4 this morning.

Great site, but "B.H.Fraser works in banking in the City of London. His latest poems can be find on this website." Oh dear.

So, no hurry to replace my analogue TV, then.

On a muggy day like today, I think it's terribly important to wear unnatural fibres.

Don'tcha love the internet? So I just heard a great little snippet on the Today Pogramme about Benjie Fraser, who's "the managing director" at the Bank of New York, and also a Poet in the City. He's got a reading tonight.

Coupla things - first, I love how most people call someone in the City "the managing director" when in most financial instituations, it's just a job title indicating level, and there could be loads of them. Like once, a friend asked me to go out for dinner because her husband-in-the-city (as opposed to sex) got promoted. So we go to some flashy restaurant, about six of us, and over desert, I ask him how many Vice Presidents there are. And he responds, "on my floor, a hundred and six". But I digress, which is my speciality.

Second, the hook they used on the radio was that "Harold Pinter's going to be there." Two micro-seconds of googlejuice tell me that Harold is Benjie's stepfather. So it's the poetry protexia, rather than any kind of judgement that's making this happen.

I mean, he still might be a good poet. I might try and get tickets. You up for it, S?

The bloke outside Kilburn Tube sells rasberries so juicy and ruby and ripe and perfect that I'm sure they must be genetically modified. They are exactly the colour of the Benefit LipTint.

So for lunch today I had fridgeovers: rocket, parmesan, felafel and rasberries. Actually, nicer than I imagined. I love that whole sweet-sour thing going on.

In a week where all the news is about road pricing, congestion charging and the ever en-carparked nation we live in, I did something that I haven't done in a long time.

I "commuted" by car. I had a client meeting in West London at 9.30, and it's in a place that takes 90 minutes by public transport, and about 20 in the car, so I drove.

Driving around the North Circular (and just tangentially, I believe that "new" universities - AKA polys - would be a lot easier to recognise if they were named after major roads, so Middlesex Poly would be the University of the North Circular (A406)) I looked in all the other cars. And guess what. All bar two had just one person in them. So, anecdotally, about 95% of people driving to work at 9ish on a weekday are driving alone. What a waste of the earth's precious resources.

Now I know that cars are about convenience blah blah blah, and I don't know if I would want to share my journey with random strangers, but there must be better ways of doing this. I know the taxishare scheme at Paddington Station seems to work pretty well.

I'm worried that the world (my world) will turn into a Radio 4 play I heard a couple of months back, set in the near future, where people only drove on very special occassions, and had to get a licence and it was a big deal to drive from say Manchester to London.

I don't know what I'm say except I think we clearly get something wrong.

FICTION...

This is a character I'm thinking of writing about... what do you think?

So my sister broke up with her boyfriend – here’s the skinny (as she’s so fond of saying. She thinks living in Belsize Park is like living in the Upper West Side, except there’s no Zabar’s).

But first, here’s the deal with my sister. Lisa. She’s the oldest, got those weary first-born responsible blues. Also, those bossy got-here-first habits. But she’s my big sister. I love her. In a wouldn’t-really-rely on her way.

She’s everything I’m not. She’s straight (not as in gay, as in dull) to my edge-living, she’s a lawyer to my computer games developer, she lives in a posh flat to my not-so-posh, she’s uptown to my downtown, she’s… different. Maybe it’s being older. Maybe her crucial six year head start make me a little more Generation X/Y to her Generation-Must-Be-Grownup.

Also, she relies more on Mum and Dad. Whereas I’m at an entente cordiale place – respectful, but distant – she’s constantly seeking approval. Which is crazy when you consider she’s totally self-supporting, got a fairly flashy job as an employment lawyer with a big city firm. Oh, and she’s single. Which she talks about with all the fervour of a woman with a plan. She’s an online dating machine , fine-tuning her choices to such a degree that no-one meets her criteria.

One other piece of data about her. You know what they say – FILTH: failed in London, try Hong Kong? She ditched her husband in the Sin City, as part of a life-changing de-cluttering exercise in the early nineties. Although I suspect that they ended up out there as a sticking plaster to an already fractured relationship. Least they don’t have kids.

I am number four on google for Google Search: "twenties hat". I can go to bed now.

OK, I said I was going quiet, I know. Everyone's allowed a bad day or two, no? Duvet days, they call them in the states.
 
I think what I need, because you don't get it when you're self-employed, is a virtual team-build day. Where you get feedback from people about where you're at and stuff. I never get that from clients: they're either happy (mostly) or unhappy (rare), but they pay me to get the job done quickly, and not to have to do all the touchy feely with me. Some people don't even say thank you, but they do cross my palm with silver, so I can't complain.
 
What I'm saying is: I need positive feedback. Please. If you have the other kind, can you wait a little while?

My Night On The Town in NW4
 
No, really. It's not often I leave zone two, but when I do it's for the heady countryside that's Hendon Central.
 
When I first moved to London, it was my dream to live in Hendon. I wanted to live in a Really Jewish Area. Growing up "south" (Manchester, Jewishly, anyway, has a big north/south divide) meant that I was destined to live in a place that had a Jewish community, sure, but not a majority. My parents had escaped from the insular north (I'm not sure this is the language they'd use) for the freedom of the south, and didn't understand why I would come back from Bnei Akiva (yep, I was a BA-girlie. I can crochet kippot at a rate of knots) with house details because I wanted them to move to the ghetto and get me some of that boy-there-are-a-lot-of-Jews-here-I-must-be-at-home-blues. Of course they weren't having any of it, perhaps wisely so, but I yearned to live in a semi on Park Road in the thick of things.
 
So as soon as I got my coveted job in London, I found a houseshare in Hendon with three lads I should probably say little about. Let's just say cleanliness wasn't even next to anykinda-ness, and I ended up moving out because we got mice. But I loved Hendon. I loved walking down the street and seeing loads of Jewish people and not even knowing who they were. I loved it that all the local shops were full of slightly pushy people angling for a deal. I loved it that there were a dozen flavours of kosher restaurants, even if I would eat out anyway. I just loved it.
 
Of course it faded, and the faction-fighting gossipy stuff got to me in the end, and I moved to Kentish Town. But I still have fond memories of a flat I couldn't afford on Brent Street, the friends I made and the general sense of belonging.
 
This is all a very long intro to say that - don't ask me why - I went to Isola Bella on Brent Street for dinner tonight. From the very moment J and I parked the car (legally, I'll have you know), and we heard overdressed women barking at each other "darlink, don't cross there, it's not safe" I had the feeling I have when I go to the bottom of the Edgware Road. It's like being on holiday in your own town. It's like being in Hertzlia or Tel Aviv and out for dinner with your whole extended family and everyone's in a bad mood and no-one knows why. Because of the war, perhaps?
 
So even though it's the nine days, during which life is technically slightly subdued, it's also a real ocassion to eat out milchig. Apparently. It was like a party in there, I tell you. Kosher restaurants are strange, in London, anyhow, because there are not so many of them, so they have to be all things to all people. We got choice inertia just reading the menu: thai, italian, french, salad, fresh bread, diet... take your pick. Tough to decide. There's a sense of slight panic in the whole place while people tussle with their choices. And the portions are huge. And the service is "Israeli" to say the least. And it's loud. Louder than being in an East End club on a weekend night. And there's more curly hair than you see in any other postcode. Which obviously, by me, is a good thing.
 
I feel: both at home and alien. Part of me knows and is this world. Part of me wants to be in a hip bar in Camden. There's a sense of urgency about the whole place: the conversation about property prices and business deals, chassanahs and shul business floats above us all.  And of course if any of you say these things I will probably regard it as anti-semitic.
 
So I'm saying: I'm past and present rolled into one. I'm a New Jew and an Old Jew at the same time.  I'm men in shtreimels and women in funky sheitels, I'm English, I'm Jewish, I'm yiddishist, and maybe a little bit Israeli, and loud and quiet, and shy and confident, and sure and not sure. I'm a heady mishmash of all manner of things.
 
And all this because I went out for dinner.

More eBay silliness. I mean. The bloke changed his name to DotComGuy (how late nineties) and now wants $100k for it? Pull the other one, it's got a business plan on it.

I think I may have gone... quiet, for a little bit.

Weather. Whether. Whether.
 
It's close.
 
As I kid, I heard grown-ups saying "it's close" and I never knew to what. But then I thought a well-endowed woman had a lot of money.
 
Now I know. There's a rich sense of foreboding. There's a slow-motion windback stillness like an eighties art house movie trying to show us that the worst is yet to come.
 
And it's hot. In an unsunny way.
 
People on the tube gulp for air like their asthma is playing up.

A faint perspiratory glimmer on the collective top lip of the city.

A kid in the street tells his father "he's firsty."
 
It's hot. Close. Windless. Warm. Waiting.

:: Club Zero-G ::

My flatmate says I have bad technology karma because since he's lived here his mobile phone, palm and laptop have all died. This morning, his electric toothbrush died.

I say he has bad tech karma, and shouldn't be bringing it into my house. Keep away from my technology, I say.

Jokingly.

Is Apple Martini* the cool new drink? And if so, why has Gwynnie called her kid Apple Martin?

Here's what I think: when you reach A-list celebritydom, they - whoever they are - take you into a small room, and impart celebrity secrets to you. Saddle your children with a patently ridiculous name. Only eat orange food. Eschew sandals. Whatever. It's obvious, really. I mean, why else do people do all these mad things?


* My local makes a meanButterscotch Appletini.

How nice is that? My cousin just phoned me, he's in London from Paris for the day, and he wanted to meet up. Which would be so great, but I have to go to the FSA AGM. Don't even ask.

Although I could, obviously, mention to them two financial instituions who are making merry with my money, it appears.

The 316 bus stops at my personal bus stop.

More Tales From the Financial Customer Service Cutting Edge

Thursday, I paid a chunky cheque into my business account. Should arrive in my account by Tuesday. Now I'm all offset mortgage (albeit, in a cock-up, can't really get your money way) I call up today to transfer it to my building society. I am so efficient. The call centre operative at my bank tells me that "such a large cheque" (not that large, really, of the magnitude I and other businesses generally pay in) can take up to 14 days to clear. For security reasons. No, she can't say when it'll arrive.

So I call my branch, and my friendly bank manager doesn't call me back. At 5pm, I call again, and speak to his sidekick who tells me that it should be showing on my account, but isn't. Except now it's after 5pm, so the branch is closed. They'll call me back tomorrow.

Because I'm all flexible-offset enabled, I now know exactly how much lost interest this is costing me, too.

If I added up all the money that's technically mine that I can't quite lay my hands on right now, due to the collective cockups of my finance providers, I'd be moderately well off. I've had five letters from Stupid & Pointless plc which don't quite address how much interest I've lost by their mistake. But are works of art in themselves. Conceptual, of course.

It's the Kilburn Festival at the weekend.

I just had harira (veggie of course) for lunch. I didn't make it, but this recipe is a scream.

I get a certain, albeit childish, sense of satisfaction from signing up to business mailing lists as a host of Disney characters, and then getting regular email to "Dear Donald" and "Dear Daffy." It's the little things...

It's all very well me joking about hailstones in July, and all kinds of post-biblical third millennial kinda weather, but it turns out, Houston, that we have a problem.

Short form - and this has been all over the newsshop, so you know it already - there's more carbon dioxide in the air than there has been for 55million years, and that's bad for the planet. Too many cars, too much travel. Just too much. And London will be the first to be submerged (along with New York). I've googled everywhere, and can't get a sense of timescale. Like, should I move back to Cheadle now? Or would next year do?

The Cybersalon.

WiMAX is coming.

Lucky I'm a vegetarian, otherwise I'd be taking it easy with thoseHebrew National hot dogs.

I have just discovered the Guardian Film Moodmatcher. My life is complete. Well, almost.

Would You Like to Buy An A3 Printer?

I have been having a life-tidying, workspace-enhacing week, and have decided to part company with my lovely A3 printer which no longer meets my needs as I'm an A4 girly now.

So, it's a Hewlett Packard HP Laserjet 5000, it's about five years old, and has had light office/moderate home use. The only imperfect thing about it is that it intermittently picks up more than one piece of paper - something that if I was more geek, I could probably fix.

They don't make it any more, so the nearest one is the Laserjet 5100. You can get the spec, drivers and manuals for the 5000 here. It also comes with (I'm guessing) about a 2/3 used toner cartridge.

New, they're £1,000+. I am willing to accept £150 of your earth pounds, which includes delivery to somewhere that's not too far from North London. Email me/leave a comment if you're interested.

I don't know if I have my contact lenses in the wrong eye, if I have become some kind of (slightly blurred) visionary, or if it's just a bad day. Do you?

Welcome to photshop hell. Just makes me relieved that I'm crap with a pixel paintbrush, so can't even try. I mean, don't those women look like Stepford Wives from Joker Hell?

[via Shim]

Thank the Lord. Just when I get into comics (sorry, graphic novels) the New York Times says it's OK. I can sleep easily, then.

I wasn't entirely sure that Rod Liddle was losing it till I read this. The cult of celebrity just goes to people's heads.

It's hailstoning. It's July. It's weird.

This brings a whole new meaning to aerobics.

The international Federation of Competitive Eating. No, really.

Fun and games at the BBC. Greg Dykes payout, shortfall in the pension fund, 0.1% reach for BBC4, only 15% of investment on digital programmes. For this, we pay a licence fee?

Here's a thing. A bank's shareholders basically pay $7 billion so one guy gets the job he wants. Some people...

Tales From the Consumer Heartland

It's been that kinda week, frankly.

You know already about the mortgage company from hell who have acknowledged that everytime I talk to them they've cocked something else up, and they're sorry, and they're considering sending me more than £50.

Then, in September 2001 (the past, I know), a car drove into the back of me when I was stationery at the lights. He admitted liability, gave me his insurance details, my insurer got my car fixed, sorted. January 2004, when I change my car, I discover that this is a fault against me because my insurer never collected the money. No I've had to reopen the claim, and have discovered that I have been paying over the odds for my insurance because I've got a "fault" on paper, anyway. Gah.

Then, a new flatmate moved in, and I called the Council Tax people and told them so they could re-organise my bill now I don't get the 25% discount for living on my own. They managed to change my account number three times, and send me and him loads of paperwork that didn't match up. I suspect that I now owe them money. Then I sat around on hold for a few days. No luck. Then I emailed them. No reply. Now, I discover they close on Wednesday afternoons. How 1953 is that?

I'm getting so I don't even like blogging, anymore. It's not the actual blogging, it's the process. The technology is not an enabler here, I tell ya. About four times a day for a week now, I've wanted to post a quick thing, and I've hung around so long while the servers crank up that I've either (a) forgotten my great idea, (b) lost interest, (c) had to go do real work, or (d) some combination of all of the above.

Get your act together, guys. What gives?

School sorry for mountain blunder. And so they should be. Only last night I had a conversation with a friend about the "silliness" of some Jewish practices. Sure, you want to dress modestly, but to kike mountains in a skirt? Please.

This I love. She was remodelling her bathroom (obviously getting a man into do it), when she discovered the marble donor boards from the Hebrew Union College in like 1870something. Priceless.

Data is plural.

Did I mention that you should never lie in psychometric tests? Well, you shouldn't.

I know it looks like I've been quiet, and partly I have.

Also, blogger has been more obstreperous than the most obstreperous person I know, eating posts, being s-l-o-w-e-r than slow, just being crap, really. Since the redesign, frankly, it's all been down hill. Moveable Type, here I come, as soon as I work out how to move everything.

So Azeem has reached a milestone revenue with his weblog. But at whose cost, exactly? I don't quite get the whole blogger-is-brand-sells-ads thing, because it seems to me that once/if everyone starts doing it, the advertisers'll just sell less.

Toby Young on Graydon Carter - how the other half live?

Google bans GMail sales. There's a market for everything, it seems.

Did I mention that I'm a Knowledge Worker?

It's Friday. It's raining. Is there a person to be found at the end of their phone in London?

I had no idea there were so many literary festivals.

The Guardian's list of top 100 intellectuals. Women, I mean.

I get so confused between a step-change and a sea-change.

So I'm one of only seven searches for shvitzing bbc. No, really.

What meaneth this? Aircon broke at BBC? New TV show, someone wants to check out if the phrase has been used before? Who knoweth at all. Watch this (or some other) space.

Mr Manager called me back to tell me that he can't stop the "thanks for the huge capital payment against your mortgage that you can never get back" letter going out, "it's the system", but I shouldn't worry.

OK, sorted. A manager who isn't really allowed to receive incoming calls spoke to me. He didn't actually say he was sorry, but he'll sort it and I won't be out of pocket. He offered me £50 "for my phone calls." You think that's reasonable?

This I don't believe.

I am on hold with Crapston & Ridiculous (my mortgage provider) for my tenth minute. Remember last week? Well, I switched to a flexible mortgage, because I'm self-employed and I can set my tax against my mortgage until I have to pay my tax bill.

So I sent off all the paperwork to switch from July 1st, and made a significant overpayment that arrives today. I get a letter this morning telling me I've switched to their two year fixed rate at some stupid rate I would never even go for. And, I'm a flexible kinda gal, a current-account-mortgage-offset kinda gal, but they don't do that and I have slight intertia right now. So this was a good compromise.

Her "system" tells me the paperwork I sent back was for a two year fixed rate. I am looking at my photocopy of the "flexible base rate tracker mortgage" as I type. I'm also feeling (a) hassled, and (b) a little unwell. What if I've imagined this whole thing, even if I have documentary evidence, and they think this is an overpayment and I can't ever get my money back?

I know, I was born to worry, it's my heritage. I'm sure it's fixable (although not fixed, ha ha ha)it's just hassle. And who needs hassle.

On hold update: 14 minutes, and she's still "finding out".

Only five hours left to bid on your Glastonbury mud. And they say we live in an acquisitive society.

One pee? Once pence?* One penny? whatever; do we need it?

*The guy's just apologised for saying once pence: it's two pence. And one penny. So there.

Life mirrors art: this is like Notes On A Scandal.

On an entirely different note, I have made a mammoth sized batch of green curry paste (I feel mucho Thai green curry coming on), and have six jars in my fridge. That's because I went to Wing Yip, the chinese supermarket, and all the ingredients were so fresh and reasonably priced. And it's hardly worth making a small batch, for the hassle. So, if you live near me/know me - have a jar of green curry paste. I suspect it's fairly hot.

The last time there was a tube strike - which was I think 2001 - was the last time I was in real, full-time employment. I remember being in the middle of a huge deal, and not wanting to miss a client meeting, calling the day before, yes they were going to be there. I spent two hours getting into town (and I only live in zone two). Turns out the client couldn't make it after all.

Now, it's different. While there are lots of crapette things about being self employed (I am mine own IT, Finance, and HR department, for example, and it's giving me a multiple personality disorder, especially after I did my own performance review), but today was great. I emailed my client I'm working with right now yesterday, no, no big deal to do the update meeting today, they're all going to struggle anyway. Thursday afternoon? No problem?