I made this bit up...
So I'm at a client site this afternoon, and I get a call from F on his mobile phone.

- Hey, Sasha, how are you?
- Hey, F, you in London? (I'm guessing he is, because it's a UK cellphone number. He lives in NY)
- Yeah, I'm like here, with W, and wanted to know if you wanted to hang out?
- F, why do you talk like that? You're from Manchester.

I can't help thinking that hanging out sounds so... male, frankly.

This bit's true: got home from work, had the last two of my junk-shop-find chairs delivered, did an aerobics class (which may have been a mistake, as my back has been really hurting), and went to hang out with F, W, their cute little J, and S, another Cheadleonion. That's someone originally from Cheadle, as oposed to an onion from Cheadle. Fun, although we realised that we are the grown-ups our parents were when we were kids. And - personally - I'm only seventeen.

And we worked out that it's cheaper to dial-up AOL in NY on a telco account for 2p a minute, than it is to have a regular UK dial-up account at say 3 or 4p for an 0345 number. It's a crazy, miced-up telco world, I tell you.

Got Those Post Millenial Blues?
Feeling purposeless? Thinking of downsizing? Aren't we all.

Read this piece by Milly Jenkins (who I'm sure must be Milly Molly Mandy's second cousin) in last night's Evening Standard about Common Purpose, a not-for-profit dedicated to inspiring people to do things for their communities. Their website is called JustDoSomething.net. Cool, huh?

In the same vein, there's the Public Appointments Unit, who run this appointments website. And there's a new Office of the Commissioner of Public Appointments, although I'm not sure what the difference is. And, here's the Cabinet Office's agencies and public bodies site. You are verily awash with information.

When I was a kid, a friend of my parents who was Chair of the local NHS Trust, or whatever it was called before regime change, was described by the local paper as having "an outmoded sense of public duty." I may have that, too.

Just heard some bad, sad news.

When I was a headhunter a couple of years ago, I was something of a fish out of water. I made two good friends in that place; S, with whom I'm in regular touch, and Claire, who I would ocassionally email with and meet up for Lebanese food at the bottom of the Edgware Road.

I heard a few weeks ago that Claire had pneumonia and was in hospital. I sent her a get well soon card - pneumonia's not serious, right? This morning, I got a call from S to say that she died on Easter Monday. So - as I'm no longer really in touch with people who knew her, I want to remember her here.

Claire was a someone who helped keep me sane during a tough time in my career. She had a wonderful, down-to-earth sense of humour, and was amazing at her job. There was truly nothing she couldn't find out. She was dedicated to the company, and worked incredibly hard - she really was someone who took pride in a job well done. She shone competence. There are some people you meet who you know, straight away, you're on the same wavelength, and from the moment we met, we had an easy, relaxed working relationship, as well as a fair few evenings putting the world to rights over a bottle of wine. I know Claire had had a tough start in life, and she really made the most of everything she had. She was only 31, and leaves her husband and nine-month old baby.

I hope that she finds peace.

Regular service resumed.

Here's a thought: you're teetering on the edge of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and then you read in any old regular newspaper that the best way to avoid SARS to to continually wash your hands. OCD here you come....

S A S H I N K A
Yep, I know all my images are buggered. There's something wrong with my webhost, and by the time I move the images
somewhere else, it'll probably be fixed. Sorry.

Did I mention that I collect Crown Ducal thirties pottery?

When you want to be in a TV recording audience....

Friends keep teasing me because I took the war and associated impending doom too seriously. I wanted to stock up on bottled water. You never know what's going to happen. Tesco's had a whole empty aisle with stickers on the shelves saying "no water, sudden rush because of the war" or words to that effect. Eventually, I found five-litre bottles of water in a small grocery shop in East Finchley where news of the war clearly hadn't reached them. I bought six. Then I stocked up on other essentials: gaffer tape (no idea why), think plastic dustbin liners, battery-free radio, torches, you know.

One friend, P, kept teasing me. "Sipped your water yet?" The bottles and other stuff are stored behind my bathroom door. I figured in the event of war, my bedroom/ensuite would be my combined sealed room.

Of course now, it looks like I might have been premature in all this planning.

But I figure, what I could do, is when I start a film production company, in recognition of the hard time I went through, I could call it Thirty Litres and a Wind-up Radio. What d'you reckon?

Haven't got time to tell the whole tale... but suffice it to say that I have a lovely stay in Manchester, and a fascinating train journey which I don't have time to do justice to now. Off to stay with some friends for the end of Yom Tov - pity me having to eat all that matzah. Back soon (real soon). Say hi.

Decoid Sutton
   

 

Remember I went to a meeting in Sutton Coldfield a few weeks back? Here's the deco evidence. Sutton has (had) one of the finest Odeon deco cinemas, so I stopped on the way out of town, bought a disposable camera, and preserved it for digital posterity. When I went inside, I had a rather bizarre conversation with a lovely, older, woman working there, who told me they'd just "ripped out all that old-fashioned stuff. Got to move with the times, love." That's what she said. I, of course, disagree. But then I used to frequent the Tuschinksi Cinema when I lived in Amsterdam.

Pants. Knickers. OK, tights, then.
I didn't buy these, honest, because I'm fairly sure the worthy M&S no longer make them, but when I unpacked my regular tights, they were wrapped around a piece of cardboard that proclaimed:

Slim & Shape

15 denier, soft satin leg and sheer toe

Secret microencapsulation of vitamins and minerals continually released on the the skin, smoothing legs

Graduated compression to massage and energise legs

You know what I'm thinking? My bullshit detector has gone off the scale. I mean, there's even a 6 pair treatment pack". Why go on a diet and exercise regime when you can just wear tights? Day 10 apparently offers you "slimmer and firmer skin with grainy appearance reduced." You can't help asking what happens if you don't have a grainy appearance to start off with. Or, alternatively, if you don't give a shit.

It's the "tights and beauty treatment all in one". Yeah, right, because I'm always getting a beauty treatment for my legs. Reminds me when Boots used to market their tights as "makeup for legs", which makes it sound like some kind of disability aid. I'm guessing that M&S have stopped peddling this quite ridiculous product because the only reference I can find to it is a September 2002 press release, and even then it's a generic phrase, rather than a product name.

See, this is great. I'm still in Cheadle, but I managed to - as Vaughn so witilly pointed out - invoke blogger's pants filter. So I called Mike, and he fixed it from wherever-he-is. I love technology. And also, how it interacts with both people and mobile phones.

I really want a strapless heart-rate monitor. Don't ask me why.

Oh, now something weird's happened to Blogger, just when I had fascinating stuff to say about underwear.

Via Tom - temporarily out in California- great Wired piece on the sociology of google.

Nina Simone died. First generation soul diva.

Technical assistance required
So I'm helping my Dad set up his new PC, and obviously we've got the internet connection working. But there are a couple of problems:

he's running on XP Home, and I can't get it to recognise his hp officejet d135 all-in-one printer. Loaded the software, checked it's all XP/usb compatible, just doesn't happen.

that's the only one, so far. Except printing is pretty important, obviously.

Oh, and when I set up outlook express, put in what I know is the correct password, it keeps asking for the password. No idea what to do next.

Ooh, I could crush a grape
Still in Manchester. Saw Blue Crush last night with my sister - it's kinda Pretty Woman meets a sports (surf) movie, with a comedy overweight black character thrown in. Cool soundtrack.

A little like Adaptation, Blue Crush is also based on an article by Susan Orlean - this article, in fact. (Isn't the internet wondrous? In 1987 I would have had to go to the library for about three weeks to find that out.) Side stuff: apparently, Jason Kottke designed her website, and kept a little weblog for her about Adaptation the movie. Funny how famous people find each other. Maybe they were like in High School together, or something?

The photography is incredible: I've never seen inside a wave. And here's something I didn't know: Saturday Night Fever was based on a piece of journalism by Nik Cohn about how working class kids blow everything on a saturday night out. You live and learn. Except that it later turned out to be a fake - the piece of writing, that is.

The script sucks in a high-school girlie style: Way? No way? Oh, that's cool. You know the kind of thing. And some of the characterisations are completely two dimensional. And no-one wears socks, even with proper shoes. It's not like that in Cheadle, I tell ya. But I'm being negative here: it's a fun chick-flick, and I have to admit I had a tear in my eye at the end. But you could wait for video.

Kinda disturbed by the looting in Bahgdad: especially the Iraqi National Museum. Iraq is situated on the "cradle of civilization", Mesopotamia. Niniveh is at risk. Nineveh! It's a biblical land (Jonah went there), and home to the birth of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I don't know how history still exists if the artefacts are gone.

Chag kasher ve same'ach
That's the (frum - orthodox) greeting for Passover, meaning literally "have a happy and kosher festival". I won't bore you with the details now, but basically it's a bit like the wheat-free diet a did a couple of months back: no bread or leavened food for eight days. So it's matzah (flat bread, tasteless and gives you constipation and bad skin, frankly), and cakes made from potatoe flour. It's crazy the amount of effort people go to for eight days: you have to change your pots and pans for another set that have never had any chametz (leavened food) on them. And frankly, there are no nice cakes without flour, so everything you eat is a bit poor-man's-relative-stylee.

My sister has made coconut pyramids with her specialist Coconut Pyramid Maker she bought from the Lakeland catalogue. It's a short season for Coconut Pyramid Makers, as they are seriously paschal sweetmeats, and I'm going to try and not eat four squillion of them (I have already heard on the Cheadle grapevine that they are a superlative batch).

So, it's a late night tonight remembering the exile from Egypt (yeah, that's what it's all about), and I'll be trying to keep of the matzah and crap cakes and stick to fruit and vegetables. Not that you need to know my eating plan.

Chag same'ach, and in this, the festival of freedom, may all the peoples of the world experience peace and freedom in the coming year. God, I'm turning into a hippy.

So I've been dashing around running errands all day, and have nothing interesting to report. My three year old nephew is not entirely sure who I am, because I suspect he thinks I live in the phone. I've made the tableplan for our shul's communal seder tonight: it's an epiphany in pink and purple with seventies style flowers. I quite enjoyed the craft element of it - it's not something I get to do very often.

Quill (sorry, not at home, don't have your link to hand) sent me this piece from The Washington Post about Mimouna, a sefardi (Jews of eastern/african orgin, rather than my ashkenazi, eastern european origins), which is a fascinating post-paschal feast, that, sadly, I've never participated in. When I get home I might post my new-improved recipe for Moroccan couscous. But until then, you'll have to wait.

I'm in Cheadle! Home of the brave/well-co-ordinated. I hardly every/never use exclamation marks, but I think my return to the land of my birth merits it. And, I'm typing this on my Mum and Dad's new computer. Flat screen, noch.

I can kinda Charleston, but I'd like to do this weekend thing at Burgh Island.

I say fabulous too much. Sorry. Any suggestions on a new word?

My (not so lost) Weekend
... was fun. Friday night dinner at L&S's, where we were all pretty zonked. But their eight year old son kept saying my conversation (with his mother - house prices, the underground, friends' weddings) was boring. And it might be: not often the truth is told to me by one so young. Saturday it was a toss up between shul and the gym, so I walked to the gym and did a pilates class (on the ball - my abs still ache), and then went to lunch at F&M's in their new, shiny house.

Saturday night, went out for noodles at Wagamama with S and then onto a party in Camden. Wagamama was especially fun: the waiting staff are sexually ambiguous, and we got chatting to the people next to us, who were rather "Camden": one guy had a spiky black mohican with bleached ends, which matched his black jeans with yellow edging. One of the other guys, when he got up, was wearing fabulous red velvet court shoes with his regular male-style clothes (portobello market, if you're interested, large sizes), and we had a long chat about cross dressing. Then onto the party, where people were not so avante-garde, but was upstairs in a very cool bar, with little nibletty-type food (our hostess is a very serious party-giver) and we danced till dawn. OK, 1230.

Sunday, I got up early, because - surreally, see previous post - on Saturday at lunch, some friends had said "we've got our whole family coming to stay, we've got a mattress, does anyone have a 4'6" bed base?" And I said, "yes, I've had my old one under my bed for about four years." So he came round to collect it. What are the chances of that happening? Then I ran around like a headless chicken, packing and running errands, and went to J's birthday in the Landsdowne in Primrose Hill, where I bumped into all my flatmate's friends.

A nation of shopkeepers?
You can't have a nation of shopkeepers, because some people have to be wholesalers, and some people are customers. You can have a nation broadly interested in retail, though.

So I've been calling my friends to say hi and good yomtov and stuff, and one friend said to me "last time you rang, Jason Donavan was in Joseph", which I suspect isn't a compliment. Caught up with J, in Israel, and we had a long chat - we were in the same class at school, and did similar A levels and the same degree - about how the strangest thing with the war is that we regard the Rivers Tigris and Euphrates as biblical place names, and now they're like the Theatre of War. We studied something on the theology-philosophy-comparative religion continuum, by the way.

Got email from my cousin to wish me good yomtov, and he asked if I'd seen Adapatation - it reminded me of this article in the Guardian (of course) - an interview with Susan Orlean, where she talks about the confusion between her real self and her onscreen self.

At the weekend, I talked to my friend T, who is a surrealist, I am sure.

He told me that he had a dream, and Joan Bakewell was in it (he's about 25, so I doubt if it was one of those dreams), and said to him "he leaned so far back he banged his head on the twentieth century."

Like I said, it's yomtov tomorrow night (Passover), and everyone's cleaning like crazy and hassled. Well, the people I know who keep Pesach are, anyway. My house is cleaner than it's been for a long time, and as I mentioned before, the clutter fairies tidied under my bed. Serious deja vu: I just wrote - almost verbaitm - the exact post I wrote on Sunday, and then realised I had. It's like Groundhog Day, but without a resolution.

Living life in the bus lane....
Wish I'd thought of that, Des.

So I get a £100 ticket for being in the bus lane. And guess what - when I check out the camden website to see the pictures? It's my bus lane. The one I live in. Imagine if they caught me every time I was in it. That bus shelter'll come to no good....

I had all these really interesting things to say at the crack of dawn this morning, and blogger was buggered. Oh well. I've been doing my pesach cleaning this morning (which is good of me, as I'll be away for most of it) - I just cleaned under my bed, and let's just say it was: dusty. I am spiritually uplifted. Also, I raised my heartrate to 140.

And sorry I've been out of action, here, yeah? Combination of jugglings lots of work/personal things, and not being sure I've got anything interesting to say, anymore. I know it's not OK to ask for comments, but I don't know who's out there anymore, and while I might say I do this for myself (which I 63% do), the rest of it is the thrill of people reading, so say hi, yeah?

I had a really disturbing dream on Wednesday night, where - bizarrely, you might say - a gang of about twenty teenagers moved into my house. Except it wasn't exactly my house, it was more loft-like and tidier. To start off with they were cool, but then they started looting the place, and nicked my laptop. The ringleader was a girl with blonde hair and she wouldn't return it to me, and I was desperate because I'd done loads of work but no backup for about a month. I got up yesterday morning and did a complete data backup, as well as my diary/contacts. I feel clean/purged: three CDs of data, though.

I think it's connected to the looting in Baghdad, but I can't be sure.

I'm probably going to think more about this, but a friend pointed out today that the planet is running out of oil: apparently some academics think we only have till 2008. Get on a plane quick and see all the places you wanna see. We could be back to three weeks to get to New York stylee life. Good for those who think the modern world moves too fast.

Life Update
I realise that I haven't posted much of interest recently - life seems to have taken over. I'm really busy with work, which is good, but doesn't leave me time for other stuff. Like next week, I had planned a week with me and my laptop somewhere (cheap, probably), and to finish the book, but then a client wanted something in a hurry and I didn't like to let them down. So I'm here. But I'm promising myself (you) that I'll write 1,000 words a day, minimum next week. 5k words by next Friday, do-able, right?

What've I been doing?

• Working out can you believe? I've been running twice a week, and doing two aerobics classes (Friday morning and Tuesday night). I've become such a regular that I'm no longer the worse person in the class by a long shot, and I try and keep my heart rate above 150.
  
• Crossing Jerusalem, not in person, mind. At the Tricycle, last night. Got there a little early to meet S, S, and J, and as I walked in, saw a familiar looking face, so I smiled. Then, I realised it was Lenny Henry. The play's miserable: badly written (four people say "stop f***king with my head" in two hours - that never happens in real life), badly characterised, and can only skim over a bunch of complex issues in the time. Best bit was the betting who was going to end up in the hospital in the last act.
  
• failed Lao rolls
  
• Rules of Attraction
  
• Daredevil
  
• New dining room table
  
• Day to trip to Sutton Coldfield - for a meeting, but managed to visit the best example of Deco Odeon architecture en route
  
• Having a deco-oriented life in general
  
• Interviewing for a job I had five years ago - really just because I was curious
  

Hello Dutch Speakers
Can anyone translate this for me?
"Een diplomaat is iemand die de verjaardag van een vrouw weet, maar haar leeftijd vergeten is."
My Dutch is a little rusty. Thanks.

Just reading the class timetable for the gym, and I was very sure that I saw
Marital Arts Dervied Fitness
That sounds good.

I have a sudden, irrational desire to get hold of Me Without You on DVD. Here's the trailer, here's the Guardian's review. I can't help feeling it's partially based on Sandra Goldbacher's presumably North London life. But what do I know.

From my friend M: all those stupid jokes about micro$oft products rolled into one page. It's good, honest.

Hysterical new piece (although I do think that news journalists shouldn't be allowed access to the exclamation mark key).

This bloke, Carlssin claims to have time-traveled from the future, to take advantage of our era's "worst stock plunges in history". The SEC caught up with him after 118 consecutive trades where he turned $800 into $350m in only two weeks. Beginner's luck?

Obviously, he might turn out to be Michael J Fox with financial whizz-kidery, and then we'll all be laughing the other side of our faces. But this is the best bit:

In a bid for leniency, Carlssin has reportedly offered to divulge "historical facts" such as the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden and a cure for AIDS.

That'll learn 'em.

[via Kookymojo]

Does anyone know how to get real information from the train people? I'm supposed to be at a meeting in Sutton Coldfield on Monday morning and neither thetrainline.com nor the phone people know which trains are running or when. Do you think it'll be chaos on the M1/M6?

And got home early enough last night to fall asleep to Newsnight. But not before I'd seen Yasmin Alibhai Brown accuse a female Iraqui audience member, who'd talked about being inprisoned and serially raped by the current regime, and how much the Iraqui people want the war, of "emotional blackmail." Put aside issues of right/wrong/war/peace, Alibhai Brown is just plain rude: she doesn't let anyone finish a sentence and throws her toys out of her pram if someone interrupts her.

Also, I've got a really annoying cold (or as it sounds when I say it, code).

So after I got my Sony Vaio back - I feel like the junior doctor in ER who brought the patient back after the senior doctors had "called it" - I returned the CD drive and external floppy drive to my Dad, because I had installed my Disgo (and don't all start singing D - I - S - G - O, willya?). Except it randomly stopped reading it, and the WIFI network is broken so I can't get it offline, and it needs a floppy drive. The original had a stupid proprietary port, but there's also a USB port, so I ordered an OEM external floppy drive off Dabs for twenty quid. Just arrived: guess what (you probably knew this) - it comes with the drivers on a CD-ROM.

I think it may be time to say goodbye to this machine.

Friday Night With Jonathan Ross
Was in the audience for this last night at BBC TV Centre in White City, which is frankly a bugger to get to with the Central Line down. Amazing evening: after a lot of hanging around, we were ushered in, and Jonathan Ross welcomed us personally! Jonathan clasped my shoulder warmly and said "welcome to the show." He spoke to me.

Great guest line-up: "that bloke off The Office" who played Tim (he called him that so much that I can't remember his real name), Jo Brand and Yoko Ono. Yep, I've been in the same room (OK, studio, as Yoko Ono). Tim was great, with lots of banter about Jonathan being mates with Ricky Gervais, and could give as good as he got. Jo Brand was - as ever - a real laugh, and said that she'd given Trinny and Susannah a hard time, which I'm sorry I've missed. She's touring in April/May, and she'll have new material when she's written it.

But Yoko Ono. First of all, you can't believe she's seventy: she turns up in a whole hip leather ensemble, and kept - for some reason - lifting up her t-shirt and flashing Jonathan. While she's clearly an icon of some sort, she's utterly humourless, and Jonathan spent a long time talking to her, because she just didn't get a lot of what he said. It comes across like some kind of language barrier, but I suspect she took too mnay drugs during the sixties. She's just bought Lennon's childhood home in Liverpool for approximately £150k and given it to the National Trust, to save it from becoming a B&B. She was fascinating: clearly sees herself as both some kind of installation artist, as well as the guardian of the perfect memory of John Lennon status as the prophet for the twenty-first century (as in all religions have a prophet). I hope they leave in a mad bit where Jonathan talks to her about pottering, and she starts pacing the stage.

Show rounded off with live music from Moloko, "Forever More". Fab sound, but I had an extreme desire to send the lead singer off with Trinny and Susannah, or at the very least, me. She was wearing a strange, cheaply-cut, eighties-skirt-version-of-a-boiler-suit, with a slit up the front, and some kind of billowing parachute at the back, with floppy boots that made her knees look fat (and that's hard). She looked like she'd gone down to Stockport Market in 1983 with her spending money and this was all she could get. Someone tell her.

Anyway, watch tonight.

Art Deco update
Was (almost) first in the queue this morning, collecting my brand-spanking new (gift from M) Friend of the V&A membership. Great exhibition: covers the influences of the deco style, rebuilds the Rhulmann room from the 1925 exhibition, and the original entrance to the Strand Palace Hotel (not seen since it was almost destroyed in 1969). For my tastes, would have had more twenties clothes (there was a fantastic showcase of post-Vionnet thirties bias-cute dresses) - there was only one "flapper" dress, which was originally on show in the 1925 exhibition, and I would have had more "mainstream stuff" - the furniture and mid-market jewellery of the era. But I'll be back.

In fact, now I am a friend, if any fellow Deco-lovers want to see the exhibit, providing - if we don't already know each other - you pass a rigorous e-mail security questionnaire (that's mostly for the benefit of my family-readers, who are bound to say "how can you meet someone you don't know?), let's do it. Mail me.

Fame at last
Sorta. People come here from far and wide to find the solution to that pesky SymRealWinOpen error (basically a Java error created by using Norton firewall with Blogger, go figure. Turn off your firewall before you edit your template and you're OK, though you have to make sure you've taken out the offending code from previously edited versions). Now, I am linked from a Dutch webdesign forum. I have arrived, in a web-friendly kinda way.

Here's a thing. It's Passover/Pesach over Easter, and I'm spending most of it in Manchester, but the last two days back in London, because I've got some work to do on the Friday. Friends locally have invited me to stay, so I don't even have to do the whole Pesach cleaning thing (my Mum used to sit down, exhausted, on the first Seder night and say "call this a festival of freedom?" and she has a point).

Yesterday, I get email from one of their neighbours claiming to be mounting a reverse takeover bid for X&Y's Pesach lunch (which I think means that we're all invited over to the neighbour's house). I would reprint it here, but I don't think I - morally - can without their permission. Let's just say, while it was entertaining, business must be slow if they have time to craft such humour during the working day.

Gawker.... because, sometimes, you just like to gawk. Or, as we Briddish say, gawp.

FT.fabulous_customer_service
I feel it's only fair to say, after yesterday's post, that a bunch of IT people at the FT have responded with high speed to my problem, after getting a screen shot, and have now solved it. What was it? Norton's ad-blocking. Which is also (well, the firewall, anyway) giving me terrible gyp with Moveable Type, too. Any ideas?

Virgin? Shmirgin
So Virgin Trains usually release their 14-day advance tickets six to eight weeks before the date. I've called a couple of times - I'm going home for Passover over Easter - and keep being fobbed off that the ticket allocation will be released "tomorrow". Yesterday they said today, and today they said they have no f***ing idea at all. So I called Virgin Customer Relations (0870 789 1234) who tell me it's because, apparently, Network Rail haven't told them for months whether scheduled engineering works will be going ahead or not. And you just know that the minute the tickets are released it'll be the day you don't phone up and you'll be buggered and have to pay £49 instead of £10. Which I resent: the service gets worse and the prices go up.

So I called Network Rail (whose website is still called railtrack.co.uk), and after a couple of dead ends, speak to the Chief Engineer's secretary, who tells me that decision would be made by the track, rather than structure people, in the North West zone. Sadly, the only number she has is the press office - so far I have skillfully managed to avoid all people with community, customer or public affairs in their job-title, who invariably are full of PR puff, and say things like "they don't talk to members of the public" or "can you put your query in writing". Nice woman in the press office tells me: it's not their decision: all that information comes from Virign Trains Customer Relations. Would I like the number? 0870 789 1234.

I judged from her tone that there's clearly something political going on but I guess I'll just have to let this one go.

I just discovered the Be Good Tanyas as muzak at the Gate in Belsize Park. Blue Horse - mindblowingly mellow.

Someone left this leaflet on my car - gas masks are only £99. Well that's a relief then: well within the reach of everyone, and guaranteed to work, to boot:

How long will a gas mask protect me?

The effectiveness of a gas mask depends on a range of factors, including but not limited to: the hazard encountered, the concentration of that hazard, the filter type being used and the breathing rate of the wearer. Depending on circumstances, a mask could be effective for minutes or hours.

So, er, that's not very long at all, then. And what about the rest of your body. I read somewhere, but can't find it, that masks are useless without whole suits, and this whole industry is preying on people's insecurities.

The Art Deco exhibition opens at the V&A tomorrow - here's what the Guardian and BBC say. Decadent is my middle name.

But of course what I still haven't done is work out which is the best tarriff for me - tarriff inertia. Still there.

Good Customer Service Karma
Friday, my 8310 finally packs up for good. For a coupla months it's been all odd - in the middle of any important conversation it would randomly stop reading the SIM card, and the battery life was getting silly. And of course it's always had that stupid text-message bug where it crashes when you press send. It's like they fixed the squashy screen problem from the 8210, but gave you a new bug instead. I figured I couldnt be bothered to sort it, but then Friday it stopped both ringing and vibrating - the only way you could tell someone was calling was by looking at the phone.

That's not good, really. I called Customer Service, and they put me through to diagnostics (AKA asked me a bunch of questions), and then told me my phone was defective. Like, DUH. That's why I called. They would replace it but, I don't have any insurance, so it's either £X00 for a new phone, or £70 one-off insurance fee to replace it and go on the insurance plan with a £2 monthly fee.

But I know this game - I'm your telecoms fairy godmother, really. I was so sure my phone came with insurance in July, because that's what they told me. So I just said those magic words "I'll have to leave Orange, then, if ....", and they put me through to the rentention department, who waived the £70, and sent out a phone the next day. Same model of course, still can't text. BUt good karma, nonetheless. You know when you're poised for lots of yelling and shouting and then you just get what you want anyway?

FT.crap
So I persuaded a client to give me a second level FT.com subscription (the one with all the bells and whistles and mulitple information sources) as a kinda-bonus and because I'm an information junkie.

Password came this morning - I rush to log on, but when I go to advanced search, there's no search box. I reload - still no search box. I call the helpline, and Alan helpfully tells me there's a problem with searching in IE, particularly IE6. I point out that it's the essence of the product. I ask him how long they've had this problem. A month. A month! I retort. Yes, they feed it back to product development, but they don't seem to know what the problem is. If I'd paid for my subscription, I'd certainly feel that it'd been mis-sold and I'd want my money back. If I'd paid for my subscription, Alan tells me, I should get it put on hold. It's fine with other browsers, he tells me.

So I try Mozilla, and it's the same, and he asks me "if I have any other browsers". I point out that Netscape is Mozilla. I say I'm frustrated and disappointed. He says he understands where I'm coming from, but there's nothing he can do. I get the names of people up the food chain - Ian Cohen, IT Director, and Ian Gill (called FT site manager by the helpline, but actually Head of Service Development). Ian Cohen's secretary says of course it works, someone will call me back. Admittedly, that was only ten minutes ago. Watch this space.

I can't help feeling that this is bad customer service karma to offset my slight un-humility over dinner last night (at The Gate in Belsize Park - unbelievable vegetarian food), about two great customer serviceexperiences I've had this year. What goes around comes around.

Update:In the time it took to write that last paragraph, Ian Cohen's secretary has been back on to me to get Alan's details. "Of course the site works", she tells me. Can't help feeling Alan's for the high-jump, but hey, at least they're on to it.

I can't help feeling that the clocks have changed without me noticing - I've had three phone calls already this morning, and it's only 8.15. None of them prefaced their remarks with "sorry to call so early..."

Equilibrium
Saw this tonight at the mostly-plastic O2 centre, after a butterscotch malt shake at Ed's Easy Diner. (We felt so 1953, although it's not been the same since I found out where they get their furniture from).

Equilibrium is a scream: it's 1984 meets The Matrix, it's Prozac Nation meets the Muji catalogue, it's "Bond, James Bond" meets every recent Madonna video. It's cliche-ridden in an oh-so-clever refferential wank fest; you can hardly watch the action for spotting the action-movie reference. The audience to a man - and yes, they were mostly men - loved it: spontaneous clapping at the end of two outrageously unlikely one-to-many fight scenes. The hipper-than-thou crowd (pretty much all wearing their gatkes (trousers) round their pupik (belly button - although hips, in this case), were post-hip to a DJ, you just knew they all had at least one X-box apiece) lapped it up. The goodies turn into the baddies and back again, but thankfully in the last scene Christian (Bale - looking very faux-Tom Cruise) wears a white suit to make things easier.

If you don't care about plot, love special effects fight scenes, can live without a serious love-interest, can handle poor characterisation, accept the fact that the protaganist has no real motivation as a character, and that the basic premise of the film is fatally flawed (in the post-Saddam future, sense crimes, ie feeling any emotion, are a capital offence, except the people who find them intuit it. Like, yeah, that's not a feeling), then this is great Sunday night entertainment - although will be much better on video/DVD because you'll be able to go straight to the cartoon violence.

Just watching a docu-doodar about the seventies before I go out, and this combined with news about the war, marches et al, puts me in a strange mood. A puts it so muich better (he's an academic):

"...feel I'm in a time warp. Students wearing flared pants are sitting amidst the daffodils on the lawn outside my window, the Marxists are shouting "I, 2, 3, 4, time to stop the f***king war", the hippies are singing "Give peace a chance" ... and rather worryingly, in the distance someone seems to be testing an air raid siren. Strange times."

The strange vicissitudes of those in the creative arts: Stephen Pollard is truly hysterical today.

Well, I finally managed to procure some Lanique Rose Petal vodka (which is apparently going out of style/production, which would explain why it doesn't feature on the Lancut site). It's like liquid turkish delight, and as pink as that revolting stuff they make you wash your mouth out with at the dentist.

Forgot to say the other day, I am now the proud owner of www.jewishhair.com (there's nothing there yet, but read this).

Raed in Baghdad: blogging from the virtual frontline.

Word document parsing. Because the world goes on.

Mr Greens. For creative types.

I'm trying to develop a vegetarian recipe for Moroccan Chicken with Pickled Lemons.

There's a bomb scare at Cavendish Square on a number 25 bus. So much for not going on the underground.

And, of course, it enhances the ongoing bus-theme of my life.

Update: 1245 - it lasted about an hour. My local informant has lived to fight another day at the forefront of pharmaceutical strategy development.

Cold Feet is thirtysomething.

And I Ask Myself: How Did I Get Here?
Tired this morning, as I was up late watching the war, and then - extremely rarely - actually couldn't sleep worrying about it. Yesterday, I called my Dad for some reassurance, and he replied "I'm a fatalist: if your number's up, your numbers up". That was useful. Then, last night, T said that M had persuaded her that there might be a scare about something in the water.

Check out the Home Office website:
It is sensible to be prepared for any emergency in the home and to make plans for any major disruption, including severe weather and floods.
In any type of emergency, you could lose access to power, water, telephones, and roads. Therefore:
Have on hand such items as:

• batteries
  
• a battery-powered torch
  
• a battery-powered or wind-up radio
  
• some ready-to-eat food, e.g. tinned food
  
• bottled water
  
• blankets

Have the phone numbers of your local police, council, utility companies and family members handy in one place.

Here's a few problems: what's the point in having phone numbers on hand when you "could lose access to telephones"? And what have severe weather and floods got to do with terrorism? Or is Saddam/whoever godly on the weather front now, too?

And what is the war? Some kind of bizarre fancy dress party where you have to make a costume out of a blanket, water bottles, batteries and the like. The Tin Man for the twentyfirst century?

Here's what worries me - for some reason, I feel that in the case of acts of terrorism or war, everyone should return to their birthplace (Manchester in my case), but obviously with all the transport infrastructure out, how will I get there? And maybe at times like this, it's only family that counts. I have some second cousins in East Finchley, maybe they would take me in? And then I think, my immediate family, we're not always that great at Rosh Hashannah: like all families, when we're locked in a house together, we're bound to argue. How much worse would it be in a sealed room?

I'm worried that all my friends locally, when the chips are down, would be all on-yer-bike, looking after their own, and I'd have to get into my sealed room on my own. (Of course when I said this last night, my friends immediately said I should come over to their house if there's a war, and if there's not, could I at least come for Pesach). Last night we also talked about the wind-up radio thing: I explained that it's better, as your batteries might run out, and M said, by the time the batteries have run out, surely you'll be completely out of bottled water and Heinz baked beans. I'm scared.

Of course I may be over-reacting, but times like these make me think about what's truly important: family, good friends. I may have a nice house, and car, and my own personal bus shelter, but what it really comes down to is, do you love? Are you loved? It's like the global version of "would they hide you from the Nazis?" but with a universalist edge, some kind of bizarre Reality TV game, only it's really real, and it's not on TV.

My Mum is going on a PC/internet course after a lifetime of un-tech-ness (I'm sure it's nothing to do with wanting to read my weblog). So last night, when the instructor talked through the symbols on a Word document toolbar, he said "that symbol, is for Cut and Paste."

And a woman - who may be one elf short of a grotto, or at the very least slightly out of season - said, "you mean there's glue and scissors inside that computer?"

And, my video-fairy godmother has very kindly taped the first ER of the new season. Oh, happy life.

Just spent a delightful evening at Day of the Raj in Mill Hill, which did serve mutter paneer, which was a relief. In typical fashion we ordered far more than we could reasonably eat, and then didn't. My "women's group" as we call ourselves, is a group of women who were broadly at college or loosely connected together, and we have been meeting up kind-of-monthly for about ten years. More, maybe. We've been through a lot together.

Tonight's conversation covered everything from whether you need bottled water for the imminent war (there might be a scare), tales from the workforce coal-face, discussions about tupperware (we are all feminists, honest), Manolo Blahnik's, and the returning of S's son's shoes which he had conveniently left at some friends who live near me. I never go anywhere without a small child's pair of shoes, honestly. We're like Sex in the City, but less thin, and don't have our dialogue written by a cadre of gay men. At least, I don't think we do.

That google trademark question? Don't even think about it.

I'm scared. Of war.

Apparently, we'll all need a non-mains powered radio in case there's terrorism.

Bus Karma
So Monday, I met with Head of Bus Strategy, London (northbound routes). OK, I made that bit up. A nice bloke and his sidekick who sincerely discussed the proximity of bus stops on the southbound number 16 bus route, and agreed about the traffic-obscuring dangerous nature of my (current) bus shelter. Did you know it costs £6,000 to put in a bus shelter? They're terribly busy, so they'll get back to me in mid-April (hopefully 2003, unlike the NHS) with the results of their strategy review.

My friend H is a management consultant in a niche firm that's falling apart, although forunately she has lots of alternative offers on the table. Her out-of-town boss called her last night and said - in response to her hard-nosed questions about what they'd offer her to stay -
"it's not about strategy. It's about getting the right people on the bus, and seeing where the bus goes." Quite. What goes around comes around, as they say in the bus-strategy world.

Whoops. Bit of judicious searching, and hey presto:
United Kingdom Sales Office
18 Soho Square
London W1D 3QL
phone: +011 44-2070258010
fax: +011 44-2076811995

Anyone know where google's UK office is? I'm figuring somewhere in W1, Soho-Squareish, but actually no idea.

Realise I have been brief to the point of boring, recently. It's not that I haven't been doing anything, honest. More that I've been... oh, so busy.

• Chicago The Movie - as an offical twenties/thirties person, I can't believe I didn't see this earlier. It's fun, but unlike the stage play, where the sheer energy of live performance keeps you enthralled, despite it's perfection and cleverness, I got bored. I picked up my voicemail during the court scene. It's very cold - it's a satire on celebrity with songs, and that didn't really keep me going. Great costumes, though.
  
• Purim Megillah/Shpeil
  
• Limmud - did a couple of Limmud-style things recently, that made me realise quite what a fabulous organisation it is. I'm honoured to be involved.
  
• J & A's party - was just about to write that folk played Titanic-esque music, when I realised that's what I said last time they had a party. More DJing this time, from a host of talented proto-DJs, and J took video on his camera and put it up on the screens, so you could see the party like in two dimensions. Man.
  
• Friends staying for the weekend - Yand B came to hang out, and I made totally-steamed food on Friday night, but made up for it with a mezze extravaganza on Saturday.
  
• Aimee Mann - at the venue formerly known as the Hammersmith Appolo, but now branded like everything else in the world. She's great, but such a huge venue is at odds with her intimate, soul-ly sound. Last night of the tour, so she was very laid-back and uber-chatty between songs. I'd like to hang out with her, although that seems unlikely.
  
• Mslexia course - as part of the Spit-Lit week, celebrating women's writing, I went on an afternoon course about how to pitch your book to agents, which was fascinating. For both the insights, and the complete characters there. There was an older women - she "shared" that she was 85, but she only looked 83 - who wore tights that looked like fish scales and had clearly lost most of her marbles.
  
• Fabulous fondue - girls night in last week, best cheese fondue I've ever made. Jaq jetted in for the evening (no, obviously she was here already) - we giggled, guzzled, and put the world to rights. Wasn't even that much alcohol (apart from a ton of kirsch in the fondue).
  
• Maid in Manhattan - girl movie par excellence, and I mean that in a good way. Fast-paced, funny, great script, girl-power ridden, J-Lo is great, even is she does have a stupid name. There's two interesting things that grabbed me - the opening line is where she tells her son he can "google on" something at school, which was the same week I read about google trademarking their name, and allegedly suing infringers. Wonder if they got permission. Also, on the bus she's reading the Drama of Being a Child, which synchronistically, I had been discussing with B the previous weekend. Great, great, girl movie, loved it.
  

I should say more about these - this is just a note. I'll fill in when I get back from my meeting.

If all Jewish festivals are losely based on the premise "they tried to kill us, we won, let's eat", then today is no exception. It's (the tail end of) Purim, where it's traditional to eat triangular shaped pastries, though frankly it's a long story that I can't go into now.

Purim Same'ach, or, as A pointed out to me, if you think that's far too modern, then gutten Purim.

The Art Deco exhibition at the V&A opens on the 27th March. I am so there.

Sorry, just a bit hyper - bus shelter bloke is coming in a minute.

Do you think if you google on google you'll break the internet?

In my head, I'd completely confused - for no good reason, just eightiesness - OMD and that seminal album, From the Hell Holes of Mars to the Tea Rooms of Uranus. Go figure.

I realise this might be in slightly bad taste on world-changing War Day, but do you think weapons of mass destruction (WMD) are related to Orchestral Manouveres in the Dark? Kinda apt, if you remember Enola Gay? Or perhaps, they're like second cousins to WD40?

I don't bake (bread) that often, but there's something wholesome and earthy about it, but I discovered recently that you can't buy fresh yeast anymore, apparently, because of some EU-ness. Mad, right? I mean, women in my family have been cleansing their skin with a 50/50 mixture of witch hazel and rosewater for generations, but now when I go into a pharmacy and ask them to mix it for me, they can't, because of some EU Regulation about ... something or other. So I have to buy a bottle of each and mix it myself. What is the world coming to?

A friend just told me she's stopped guru-shopping, now.

So a friend asks me how to fix his spreadsheet, and after a 20-second conversation on the phone, I say I can't really do telephone diagnosis. He mails me the spreadsheet, it's a border problem, which I talk him through how to fix in the second 20 seconds.

Like all Microsoft goodness, if you know, it's easy, if you don't know, you have to phone my friend M, who is a Microsoft accredited trainer. I feel like I know very little myself, but I can find out anything. That's the new kind of knowledge - no knowledge at all. We're all hubs. Or, like, a thin client (ironic, in my case). Or, perhaps, just a thin brain.

Remember those people I didn't take a job with? Well, I sent them an (agreed) invoice for the work I did six weeks ago, chased it two weeks ago, and was faithfully promised a cheque by last week. Today I get a call from some gopher. They can't process the check because... I'd addressed it to Stupid Company plc, and it needed to be addressed to Stupid Company Business Group plc. Am I happy I don't work there? Guess?

In April 2002 I went to my doctor about a small bump on my body I wanted to get removed. He got me an appointment at the Royal Free in about August. I saw a dermatolgist who said it wasn't urgent, and I would have to get a routine appointment. They gave me an appointment for the end of March 2003 (eight months). Today, I get a letter from the hospital dated 28th February and allgedly sent first class, saying my appointment has changed to the end of March 2004. Which is pretty much two years since my first enquiry. I called up to see if there was anything they could do, and was told that on the 7th March the hospital changed my appointment again to October 2003. That's good, apparently.

I know it's non-urgent, and that we have scarce medical resources, but I'm committed to the NHS, don't have health insurance, and just feel like it's a shame that I have to wait eighteen months to get an appointment to talk about getting something done. In fact, it's this kind of stuff that health insurance is good for.

The House of Elliot - my all-time favourite TV series. It's Pollyana, but with better clothes, for the twentieth century.

Terence Conran's new baby, sorta.

Things I've done recently:

• The Magdalene Sisters (last night) - or, as it should be more rightly known, the Maudlin Sisters. It's good in a holocaust-movie-no-they-didn't kinda way, but the narrative doesn't really hang together, and there' sno payoff. You go through all their really shit, sadistic experiences, and then: nothing. Geraldine McEwan was fabulous though. Sacry, but great.
  
• The Hours - a week or so back, with S - I think I'm the only person I know who didn't enjoy this. Worthly, overhyped, and I could see the join in Nicole's nose.
  
• Jewish Book Week - Tom Segev being interviewed by Jonny Freedland. I didn't even know about post-Zionism or the New Historians Went with Jaq, who is back in the country for a week or so, and because I wore my (new, pink, Tevye meets Huggy Bear) hat for fashion reasons, but she wears hers for other reasons, we looked like a hat marketing company.
  
• Tupperware party - I misinformed you: they're stopping trading in the UK. Turns out I'm a tuppersoul, in a post-feminist, ironic way, of course.

And I just hear some (war enabled american) talk about clear and present danger. Next thing we know it'll be apocalypse now.

You've heard about Eye-raq (to rhyme with irate) - this morning, Radio 4 brings you...... I-wrock.

Tom Got Me Thinking
Don't I ever? As you know, I write quite a lot about ladies' underwear (which is clearly better than travelling the world in ladies underwear) and so I come in the top ten for quite a few underwear-related searches. Someone mailed me saying "hey sasha, I'm a UK-based underwear retailer, would you write about me if I gave you a free thong?"

My first thought was, I'm not a thong kinda gal. I won't go into detail, but there just not very comfortable. We emailed a little, and she's happy to send me any underwear in my size. So then I thought, maybe I could write about them, because they're a cute little company, and I like independent women and growing businesses. But I'd have to say they'd given me a free gift, otherwise it would be disengenuous. I've never got anything free in my life (unless you include when I worked for a company that incentivised you with House of Fraser vouchers: company - £23m profit, you - £75 of vouchers that you have to declare on your tax return anyway. Gee, thanks).

Then I did what I always do when I don't actually know what to do - nothing.

What do you think?

Here's a thought: you're a guy running a business in a slightly gritty area of north London. Then someone gets murdered on your premises. The police come, seal off the area, close off your business. How long does that go on for? Do you get compensated for lost business?