Thirteen Conversations About One Thing - what exacty is happiness?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sheesh.

I feel better, though.

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

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

Dear Mr Duck...

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

I think I'm in shock.

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

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

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

I am busy. Honest.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mmmm. Must go shower and change.

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

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

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

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

Dogs smell and shake their fur when they’re wet

Cats smell of wee

Guinea pigs are rats, basically

Dolphins are smart but too big to keep in your house

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Hair Day

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

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


* * *

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

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


* * *

Hair is about the politics of difference.

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


* * *

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

I go in and out of fashion, like hemlines.

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

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

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

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

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

The things we do for money.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Value of Failure Symposium at the Tate. This, sounds right up my street. What with my consistent failures. I'd like to get some value out of them.

I know self-googling always comes to no good, but I had a legitimate reason.

Honest.

Turns out I came 1,578th out of 1,700-odd people in the Southend 10k race in 2003. I always knew I wasn't so good at sport.

The Women's Torah Project - the first sefer Torah scribed by a woman.

Anne Widdecombe and Esther Rantzen are talking about sex education and it's hysterical. Anne's position (the kids are having sex because it's "cool") is the voice of someone who lives at home with her mother and clearly never had the faintest inkling of teenage sex.

An abstinence campaign works well in "some areas of the States" because - I'm guessing - it's the bible belt, full of people with religious convictions. What Esther calls "the more authoritarian morality". While her phrase is laden with personal angles, I think it's true.

And I really think Anne Widdecombe sounds... frustrated? About something, clearly.

Urban Junkies made the Guardian on Monday.

Juggling a squillion and two projects, but took a couple of hours out this afternoon to go to the Netimperative Blogging Roundtable. Felt something of a fraud, because I was "just a blogger" and everyone else had a corporate/business model agenda: Six Apart, MSN, the BBC, Shiny Media, the ubiquitious blogging consultants and a couple of super switched on PR people.

In a very old-media way I probably need a bit of time to process the conversation instead of blogging straight out of my head. But there was interesting information about new platforms and technology, moblogging, RSS feeds to your phone, and great discussion about who's gonna read papers in the future (me, since you ask).

Even though I probably knew this already it became clear to me that there is a bunch of people making serious money out of weblogs. While that is not my agenda and I blog for fun rather than profit, I think I've started a process running in the back of my mind ("kill -9 moneymakingideas").

I also discovered Treonaut, Longtail, that people use the phrase "the blogosphere" not ironically, and that after all these years of saying NO-key-a, it turns out I should be saying no-KEY-a.

So I'm watching the news on London Tonight right now, and I want to know who's bright idea it was, for the London Eye story, to have the presenter standing in front of an image of the Eye, and put the text to the story in an arc over the Eye. Artistic, sure, but unreadable.

I am unspeakably delighted to hear that the OFT is finally onto the banks.

Here's what happens. I'm self employed, a good chunk of my client still - archaically - pay by cheque. Whole separate issue about how cheques never really clear and they can get the money back like a year later.

So let's say I invoice someone on 1st May, 14 days terms. They usually pay in three weeks or a month. Fine. Then they post me the cheque. It takes a few days. Then I generally wait till I'm next in town to go to the bank.

It takes "three working days" to "clear". So if I pay it in on Monday afternoon, it's not in my account till Thursday. Then, if it's over a not so huge amount, it takes four or five working days.

Because my work is project based, I tend to invoice for largeish sums, not that often. A couple of months ago, I paid in a chunky cheque, waited the three days, found out from my branch that it's five days if it's a largeish sum. Six days later, no money. I call my branch, they don't know where it is, "out there in the ether" is the phrase that - from memory - they used.

Eventually, it turned up. I worked out that the lost interest for the three missing days was around £4.10.

If there are 60 million people in the country, and this happens once a year (and it happens more often to me) to just 10% of them, that's £24.6m.

And banks make you pay charges.

Wot no Today programme? I was lying in bed thinking "Dizzy Gillespie's nice, and all, but surely there's some real news?" when I realise that people at the BBC are on strike. Power to the workers and all that, but I know people at the BBC. Surely someone would have told me? My day is all out-of-kilter now: I'm having to watch TV and I have to be at Aldgate to talk about project finance in Somewherestan at 8am and I've not even heard the news.

I'm a delicately balanced creative flower. Don't change anything without telling me, OK?

Somebody - looking out of my window, it looks like the people on the corner on Minster Road and Shoot-up Hill - is having the loudest party known to man. And I should know: from my bed, the bass beat is so loud, I thought it was my neighbours upstairs. They who woke me up this time last weekend. I just called Camden's weekend noise service, where the website says they're around till 4am. Turns out, they're around only till 3.30, because they do their last call then. "You should update your website" it what I said to the friendly - ozzie - Camden phone operative. Although not quite as politely.

You know how I've written a lot about encoded antisemitism (for a while, I was the only person on the internet who said it.)

Well, something happened the day after the election - a Friday - that had me thinking.

So I was sitting in Starbucks in Hampstead at 5pm, waiting to meet my cousin. (She is 17, and didn't want to be seen with me in Golders Green Starbuck. Let's face it: I'm not 17).

The place was heaving with kids. Really heaving: like two hundred young people aged twelve to fifteen or sixteen, I'd guess.

Why? Some famous North London B-lister (Cat Deely? They've all merged in my mind) was there, and they were all running around getting her to sign their exercise books while she drank her non-fat decaff coffee-free beverage. Because she is about two inches wide, I do not exaggerate. She clearly doesn't eat. Zaftig, she's not.

So the nice ozzie and kiwi women who work in Starbucks were tearing their hair about it, because the real customers were not having a nice time, and we pay like five earth pounds for a cup of coffee, so it should at least be calm, like the advertised third space.

The Starbucks people started moving the young people on, "time to go folks, nothing more to see here," and they were friendly and charming about it in the way that only antipodeans can be.

Eventually, there was one gaggle of three gangly boys, not drinking a Starbucks beverage. They looked to me like the kind of North London boys I see all the time: the kind of cocky swagger and radiccio that comes from a private school education. Some call it polish. I disagree.

She went up to them. "Time to go, boys," she smiled. "Why?" One of them retorted. "Cat Deeley's gone, and you're not drinking anything, so it's time to go."

One kid stands up, and shouts at her, "you're just being anti semitic."

I am open mouthed. The Starbucks worker is shocked and embarassed.

The kid continues: "it's because I'm Jewish," he says in no imitation at all of is-it-bicoz-I-is-black.

I'm not prepared to be a bystander, so I go up to this group, and say to the boy, "she didn't say anything anti semitic."

He thinks he can mess with me. "Yeah, she did. It's cos I'm Jewish."

I turn to the Starbucks worker and say I'm sorry, and that I didn't think she was being anti semitic.

Then I say to the kid: "people like you cause anti semitism. This woman hasn't said anything wrong and you should apologise to her."

He looks like he still wants to have a go.

"Look," I say to him, "you should learn to behave with more respect to people, and just leave before I ask you who you parents are."

He ran, with his mates.

And they looked to me like kids whose parents had never said to them, "you know, son, you might sometimes be wrong."

Oh, I wish I'd entered the Cooling The Tube competition. Handing out ice-lollies. Posters of snowmen. I'm sure I could have come up with something.

I love the internet.

This is why I love the internet.

I am number five for the google search "Jewish record Does that mean youre not coming."

And finding me, someone who was sitting around in their house saying "what was that record my parents used to listen to? You know, with that gag? Does that mean you're not coming."
And then they thought hey, I'll check out that interwebnet thing and now they know it's You Don't Have To Be Jewish.

QED.

This is great.

Art of sorts..

Image(261)
Originally uploaded by sashinka-uk.

I took this underneath the Trocadero by Haymarket: it's one in a series of adverts for Lillywhites (the sports store).

I'm loving the limitations of my camphone. Only a month ago I was moaning that I had a phone that thinks it's a camera (Nokia 7610) and now I feel like an intrepid photo-journalist.

A bit.

But, most fun you can have with your clothes on etc.

So you're dying to know which carrot cake recipe I used at the weekend, I know. In the end, I made Delia's Low-fat Moist Carrot Cake which was nice, but not overwhelming. I think I made a strategic error not making the High Fat/Ultimate Version, which I later discovered is the one B makes. And he's a guy who knows from recipes.

Did you watch Paul Abbot on the South bank show? You know, the Shameless guy?

I think - judging by the image of his house we saw - he lives in Didsbury.

Didsbury is the West Hampstead of Manchester, but with nicer houses.

I have become obsessed by Sudoku - even though I haven't finished one yet. But better, is Japanese-English: Let's go to WHSmith, clasping £2.75! Yes, let's.

I think it's good for my brain: I read somewhere that crosswords and the like can stave off Alzheimers, even though it's - probably/hopefully - a way off. So I'm still training on the Evening Standard easy crossword - it's basically just vocabulary - and I never get more than 75%. Call myself a wordsmith. But last night's ES sudoku, I couldn't even get started. I've been doing them here, and at least I can get started, but I can't finish those, either.

And I market myself as a completer-finisher. That could be a lie.

rainbow babe

rainbow babe
Originally uploaded by sashinka-uk.

That's me; well, my shadow. Great weekend: people over for lunch (must write more about my recipes, I know), mellow watching-TV kinda evening on Saturday, great walk to Hampstead and the Camden Arts Centre, winding out way through West Hampstead and ending up at Yo Sushi. Summer was made for this.

You know, they offered me a slot on the Canne judging panel, but I was washing my hair. In a kabbalistic fashion, of course, Esther. Sheesh.

Perhaps I'm showing my age, but I liked the old BBC weather symbols.

purple chocolate flan

purple chocolate flan
Originally uploaded by sashinka-uk.

Let's just say: I'm discovering my creative side.

Here is what I have surmised about my neighbour from this brief interlude:

She is going on holiday with her brother, even though (a) she is an adult woman with a partner, (b) he is wearing a trilby at 5am

They are going abroad, or at least somewhere that involves an airport. Because there is no reason on god's earth to get a taxi at 4.45 if you are not

Also, it is the airport, because he has that irrational panic people have when they think they are going to miss a plane. "Where's Lucy! The taxi's here!"

It's very possible her brother has Asbergers, or some other form of low-functioning autism, because the only way I could get him to stop was to go downstairs and talk to him through the glass door. I clearly told him what flat she lived in, and then he rang someone else.

Or, he's eccentric. Hat, that early in the morning. Even I don't do that.

She doesn't read her emails, because we are in the middle of buying our freehold, and if she's gone somewhere that involves airport travel, she won't be coming to our leaseholders meeting on Monday.

She has gone on this holiday - if it is one - with her brother, leaving her partner at home to play loud music and invite girls round. I have seen these girls: they have flat stomachs, pierced belly buttons and wear hoodies. If this was Bluewater, we'd have to arrest them.

I know, I should stop my brain working and go back to bed. And I also know that when I tell my friends with children this story, attempting to elicit sympathy, but not in a passive-agressive way, they'll just - perhaps a little competitively - say, "that's nothing, I haven't slept for 2/3/5 years."

D, on the other hand, has slept through most of this. I'm glad it wasn't the Nazis.

On the other hand, this time of the morning is quite nice. The light is pink and hazy and the city is strangely quiet. There's a stillness, even in zone two, that's eery. Like I'm in some kind of Doctor Who eposide where the time warp has taken everone away. Even the buses.

There's a top lip of frost of my neighbour's roof, and the only noise I can hear is the whirring of my hard disk. The reviews at the time said it was noisy, but I never knew, until now.

Someone rang my front doorbell at quarter to five in the morning. On a weekend. And then they were rude to me.

It's my neighbours brother. He's wearing a strange hat. He has the air of international travel about him. He doesn't appear to know which flat she lives in. After I told him which flat, I heard him ring someone else.

People are strange, in the words of the song.

Someone googled on "tall Jewish men" and found this post in my archives.

Man, that feels like such a long time ago. Obviously I've not heard from H for aeons, or even had him cross my mind. Last I heard he'd sold his flat, dropped out of the city and was living off the capital, earning his crust through a combination of property-get-rich-quick schemes and offering his services as a counsellor. Hearsay: that might all be fifth hand.

But through the power of the internet I know exactly what he's doing at the Irish Institute of What The F*ck.

Hugh Hands volunteers two days of his time a week, counselling clients on a one-to-one basis and facilitating group psychotherapy and healing sessions. "I have regular clinical supervisions with the lead therapist or project director, and after each group there is a lengthy debriefing where we share information about what has surfaced and they check in with me around how I'm feeling around what has come up," he said.

Glad to see his still talking cr*p, then.

Turns out I'm not the only person who thinks Mork had Aspergers.

I heard that Jennifer Willbanks is toast.

Richard the Lionheart

Richard the Lionheart
Originally uploaded by sashinka-uk.

Yesterday. On my mobile phone (Nokia 6710) and played around with it in micro$oft paint. I am happy. I can make things.

I can't believe I'm already getting Flickr spam. Anyone for Nichiren Shoshu?

Recent stuff:

The Vagina Monologues with S: fun, but like being at a very large hen party for a former work colleague where you're a little surprised she included you

Hitchhiker's movie: good, yeah, and while it's unfair to say "you know all the jokes" you kinda do. Worst thing: half the people have inexplicable american accents, and it's turned into a love story. P-u-leese.

Turner Whistler Monet yesterday at the Tate Britain: enjoyable, but really really overcrowded.

very into my flickr/phonecam combo: I mean, so far, I haven't had to pay for anything (though I'm getting near my free limit), I'm a truly crap photographer, but I'm really enjoying accessing my visual creativity. Even if it is largely in closeup.

Howard stands down as Tory leader. They'll probably live off Sandra's advance (apparently, she's a romantic fiction writer.)

Originally uploaded by sashinka.

Showing my age, clearly, but today, we're going through the ARCHED window.

One of those days: late night/early morning with the election. That, coupled with the most evil PMT is conspiring to put me in a head-down/hide-in-the-corner mood.

I guess one of the good things about being self-employed is that when you have a bad hair day/just a bad day, you can "take a day off".

I've got loads to do (three new clients in as many weeks, so can't complain), and I've churned through some stuff this morning after my 8am start, and had an OKish week, work-wise, so maybe I'll just: you know.

Do people still read this? I had a lot of stats-spam this week, and it was kinda hard to tell who was real and who was some kinda bot.

I feel delicate.

Humour me.

What's it all for?

local graffiti
Originally uploaded by sashinka.

Picture says it all, really. On the way to the polling station opposite Kilburn tube.

Obviously I'm not always up at 6am, but I found myself half watching the election results all night.

So Labour have an historic third term. Let's hope Tony's got enough of a shock to listen to the electorate; yes to new green strategies; yes to pensions reform and filling the savings gap; no to council tax reform; no to more stupid piblic sector bean-counting style jobs. And no to war: apologise for all those lives you lost for some kind of oil-related jingostic presidential kick.

A president you're not. On the way home last night I saw a sticker that at first glace said Blair, but on closer inspection said BLIAR. Let's hope Tony learns some humility and honesty, stops sweating guiltily, and does something to earn my trust back. Let's hope "govern responsibly" isn't more spin. 'Cos frankly, Tony, I can see right through you.

I go on about this all the time, but I just think that things are less... accurate than they were in the old days. You know, the eighties. Nineties, even.

More typos. In books, even. Often in newspapers and increasingly frequently, bad grammar/punctuation in adverts.

So check out this Transport for London red route PCN Payment site. It asks for your PCN (penalty charge notice) number and your VRM (vehicle registration number). That should be VRN, right?

Sheesh. And we're just about to vote in Labour for an unprecedented third term. Not that it's relevant. But they have created loads more public sector jobs, and there should be a Director of Spelling and Accuracy at TFL, for sure.

So The Apprentice is over. Gripping TV. Although, if you really wanted a job like that you'd network one, you wouldn't go on TV, so they're all flawed in some way.

Not least, Sebastian Schrimpff, a Cambridge-educated investment banker who set up Heritage Capital Partners but can't spell independent. Call me a pedant, if you must.

Kinda weird news of the day: Jewish comedy favourite in German 'Oscars'.

Don't get me wrong - I love Desperate Housewives with a passion not seen since the second series of ER, but there's one thing that does my head in.

Can you guess?

I love the characters, and the dialogue, and I'm totally enthralled by the plot (who knew Dana was a boy's name?), but I just can't bear the Jerry Springer moralising voice-over at the end of each episode.

I'm not dumb. Writers: you never heard the "show don't tell" mantra of every single writing course I've ever been on? Leave something to my imagination/brain, don't dot all the i's and cross all the t's.

Unless... it's not designed for a British audience?

I'm not saying you're not bright. Just that stating the obvious is often the middle name of our friends across the pond.

Watching a BBC4 thing on BBC2 about Russell T. Davies. He's got a great accent. He lives in Manchester (judging by the exterior shot of his house, in a thirties semi in Didsbury/Chorlton). He's buddies with Christopher Eccleston. He's the (new) Dr Who writer. He used to do Why Don't You... I've learned a lot, tonight.

i love shoes
Originally uploaded by sashinka-uk.

Absolutely true. Did I mentioned I have a flickr?

the weeeman

the weeeman
Originally uploaded by sashinka-uk.

Bank holiday Monday, D and I made a trip to the southbank, and checked out the weeeman, the You Are Exhibition at the Design Museum and wandered along the river with the hordes of other people who couldn't believe how nice the weather was.

I don't even know what NNDB stands for, or whether the Data Protection Act approves of keeping people's religion (sensitive data) in a public database, but it turns out Patrick Marber's Jewish.

Who knew?

Guess what? I just got a personal, hand-delivered and hand-signed letter from Glenda Jackson begging for my vote ("a vote for any party other than Labour is a vote for the Conservatives").

Speaking of the election, here's a thing.

My MP is Glenda Jackson in Hampstead and Highgate.

Now, I probably would like to vote Green, as I can't believe that global warming/carbon emissions/road pricing/energy/etc is not top of every single election agenda. Who will care about the NHS and education when we are all knee deep in an artic winter and have run out of fuel or it cost £100/gallon?

Of course, some say I'm just glass-half-empty/expect the worst. Some may be right.

So my Properly Green Friend (PGF) used to be a road protestor and knows his stuff, and he tells me the green party haven't been up to much since Jonathan Porrit left in the early nineties. I believe him. Glenda has a stonking majority, so I don't know whether a tactical vote (I'd so like to teach Tony a lesson) will help, and frankly, I can't bring myself to vote Tory on their current immigration platform (of which more later), so I decided to find out Glenda's record on the green stuff.

I check out online, and find nothing special, try Camden town hall who tell me to call Westmister, so I call the Houses of Parliament, and they - quite rightly - tell me she's no longer an MP, but give me a local constituency number. It's voicemail, and I leave a message to say I'm interested to find out if there are any local hustings, and I leave my number. This was Friday a couple of weeks back, just after Parliament had been dissolved, about 1.45.

At 2.15 my phone rings.

"Hello, may I speak to Sasha F____, this is Glenda Jackson, with information about hustings."

Glenda Jackson returned my call. Hell, with a 27,000 majority, who wouldn't chase every vote?

"Hi Glenda," I respond, "thanks for calling me back. I was really interested to know your views on a couple of issues, so seeing as you're on the phone, can we just talk?"

Glenda trots out Labour received wisdom on Kyoto and climate change (all front, no behind) but does the business. She says she can "print out their green stuff" and post it to me; I suggest she emails it, to save some trees. She asks me for my web address. I say does she mean email? She says she's not very technical (like, yeah?) and as I tell her my address, she says "is that all lower case?"

Yeah, Glenda, all lower case.

Now this isn't fair, because she did everything I asked, and charmingly, but I asked her one more thing.

"Glenda, I wondered if you have a weblog?"

"What's a weblog?"

"A blog, an online diary, of your thoughts and stuff." I hate saying online diary, but when someone doesn't get it...

I sidetracked by telling her I'd found a fake blog and she really didn't understand me and told me that of course she has a website on that internet thang.

So I'm impressed she called me back, but we need to get her to one of those LearnDirect internet classes. This is the online era, and you want my vote. Work for it, baby.

I don't usually even read indymedia, and probably wouldn't link to it, but a buddy (J) sent me this, and I googled around for it... island in the sun // dj moniker election special.

As a person who's just returned from Cheadle, the UK's most marginal seat, the election is surely on my mind.

JibJab's "Matzah!"... this is how I feel.

My friend S is in town from NY and all I can do is meet her for a drink of water.

However, the allegedly simplicity of pesach is doing me good.

Another weird google maps thought.

Say you google-map sashinka.

Go on.

Well, what you find out is

that I went to the Dolphin in Euston in 2002 to go to some geek event... so it's linked from XCom to Haddock to me...

that I'd like to go to Dennis Severs House...

and that I'm involved in Limmud...

So all these things are about googlejuice. I've linked hundreds/thousands of sites in my time, but these are the ones with the most linkly-love and that's what makes them google map results.

I'm guessing.

And I'm slightly nervous.

I've tried it on a few famous/online types, and I don't want to mess with their privacy, but you can find out a lot about people from this. A lot.

You can run (or in my case, not) but you can't hide.

And I wrote Urban Junkies a coupla weeks back.

I wrote Urban Junkies yesterday.

So I've pesadickied my kitchen (aside, when I was a kid, I thought there were a few people my family knew, called Pesach Dick and Yomtov Dick), bought more chopped fried fish balls and cheese variants than I really need to, (sub-contracted) the cleaning od my house from top to bottom, and valetted my car.

I am spiritually cleansed, clearly.

And I've covered all my work surfaces with heavy-duty kitchen foil.

I followed Jonny Cohen (which one, you ask?) around a series of kosher shops in Golders Green, Tescos, the toothbrush section. We are leading parallel lives, except mine is in Kilburn and his is in Finchley.

I believe Pesach is about simplicity: it's more about not eating cake and remembering the Exodus (from Egypt, since you ask) than about making seventeen different kinds of potato-based faux cakes.

So I have four place settings of cheap crockery, one pan, and two serving dishes. It's kinda nice. And I've resolved not to eat cake. And go easy on the matzah. Because, as we all know, it's not exactly good for your gederim.

But this is the best: ShaBot's Seda' Club.

Peace, man.

The word on the street (get that pun?) is that google maps is here in the UK and multimap are dead in the water. And streetmap. And whoever.

But I'm feeling like it's still in betatest. Functionality is still a little, er, shit. I fancied sushi in W1 tomorrow, and typed sushi wigmore street. I know, Kurt Geiger is the perfect place for sushi. Or maybe Nordic Interiors or Amplivox and Ultratone?

Guess that algorithm needs a little work, fellas.

Here's a little pre-Paschal fun: I'm number one on google for COCONUT PYRAMID.

It's a cliché-driven election, dontcha know. Checkout Clichéwatch.

And, I can't even delete comments spam.

All my technology hates me.

I am in technical melt down.

I have a stuck message in my mobile phone outbox that leaves an annoying icon and means I can't send texts. I have not received any of the six simcard updates my provider tells me they have sent, but I have been on hold for like two hours

I can no longer synchronise my palm and outlook so I am living in two parallel universes

My IMAP is broken in a way I don't quite get, but it's terribly tempermental

The Institute for Backup Trauma. John Cleese at his best.

Nike are disclosing their supply chain list, in an effort to jumpstart disclosure in the industry. So, no pressure from the anti-globabalisation brand haters, then.

And we'll all be sure to nip down to Davenport Knitwear plc in Hinckley, Leicestershire to check there's no slave labour going on. Don't want to devalue the fight, just wonder why they're doing business with one of the UK's most successful manufacturing companies, if it's all about squashing suppliers.

While I don't really believe in writer's block, I'm getting increasingly interested in the whole Lifehack Movement.

Remind me to write about my personal hacks (start with writing a list. Put write list at the top of the list. Cross it out when you've finished writing your list. See, you've done x% of your tasks).

I never knew that Frankie McCourt's brother Malachi wrote a book too:A Monk Swimming.

Like me, you probably heard the frankly barking debate on this morning's Today Programme about One Book For Stevenage - where Stevenage, a small town in Hertfordhsire is encouraging everyone in the town to read the same book, to increase literacy. All well and good, what's barking is that - after rejecting Nick Hornby - the book chosen is Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn, set in a mythical land resembling medieval Japan. So magical realism wins the day.

I'm going to start One Book For Kilburn, and it's going to be Angela's Ashes.

This is a really sad day: the final demise of MG Rover, the last British car manufacturer in the UK.

I know that the UK is a great place to make cars, and lots of overseas manufacturers tak advantage of that, but I'm biased. I drove an MGF (British racing green, of course) for nearly ten years, selling it last year when my environmental genes got the better of me.

I never get jingoistic - I didn't care about the Falklands, or the Empire, or anything else British - but I had immense enjoyment driving a car that was a classic of British design (even if the engineering wasn't quite up to scratch). I know all the arguments about how we can't maintain a competitive manufacturing base anymore, and we're a service (read: call centre) economy, and I don't even think the Government should necessarily have bailed them out, but I just fee sad. It's an ending. Endings are always sad.

Competition Time (it's a real one)

I went to see Brazil at the Abbey Road Film Festival yesterday - it's kinda cool, they don't open up the Abbey Road studios very often/at all, so you get to breathe that Beatles-infused air.

People often say to me that I don't do much in the way of drawing readers in etc etc, so I am running a competition. Except in true sashinka-style, you don't actually have to do anything. Not like that Troubled Diva bloke who makes you work for your prizes.

So, it's simple. If you'd like to see Aliens at the Abbey Road Film Festival (in St John's Wood) this Thursday at 7.30 (doors open at 6.30 and you may want to check out the exhibit), then email Cathy before 2pm this Thursday (31st) mentioning you saw it here. The first five respondents win a pair of tickets, worth £40.

Don't say I don't make your life easy.

A public service announcement: because I am number five for that well known google search west hampstead synagogue megillah, I just called them and it's at 7.15 tonight.

It's Purim (tonight) - the (minor) festival of drinking and noise and fancy dress. Get your nurofen.

I love Aussie 3-minute miracle. I know, I should talk less about my hair.

Unbelievable story in today's Guardian: Will Mark Thompson be toast over the day he bit a BBC colleague? I mean, is this a Purim shpiel or what?

I didn't even know from Digital Lifestyle Aggregation.

I'm not 100% persuaded of this, but in the interest of debate/free speech blah blah blah: 10 Reason's Why Blogging is Good for Your Career.

A fascinating article in the Jerusalem Post about orthodox women Rabbis. I remember, as a kid in Bnei Akiva, being told in a hush-hush kinda way that in our lifetimes this might happen. And now it kinda is.

Danson House in Bexley reopens this weekend after a £4m restoration. Could be a fun day trip?

Every time I go into Starbucks (I know, I know, I shouldn't....) I get the needle when I see that ridiculous book The My Sister's a Barista for sale at the counter.

First off, the sub-title - How They Made Starbucks a Home From Home - makes me feel ill. I mean, it's not the third space, it's a coffee shop, for crying out loud. I'm not spiritually changed from going there, I'm just having a sitdown and a cuppacoffee.

But the thing that gets me is that I always think I should write a competing book, for sale at my very own bus shelter, entitle My Brother's A Barrister.

Dawn Airey is truly a mediocre speaker - I'm just watching her on the RTS Huw Wheldon Lecture 2004 . I mean, great speechwriter - but she needs some serious presentation skills training. Excited, I'm not.

So I'm in the top ten for that well known google search: donal macintyre smug. And you say?

Fnacy going to the Institute of Ideas debate on The Right To Be Offensive at the Soho Theatre next Wednesday (late)?

Just what you've always wanted: My Twinn: twin collectible dolls. Mmmm, must get one of these.

Age Concern have got a fabulous new campaign: 20 Million Votes.

Of course, we don't know when the election will be, do we? And the campaigning hasn't started, has it?

Transparency is our middle name, in this country.

I know that was a bit of a rant. Sorry. I wrote it while I was on hold for the Resolutions Team. Who are permanently away from their desk. I am unresolved: perhaps I should get therapy?

Another thing: did you know you could get nectar points just for having electricity?

I mean, how silly is that? We're constantly collecting our valueless points and spending aeons cashing them in for things we probably don't need.

But I am tempted.

Kinda sorta maybe.

LiveJournal voice: today, I hate Amazon.co.uk.

I ordered a birthday present for my sister-in-law three weeks ago: Amazon gift vouchers so she could choose something she likes. I chose a paper gift certificate, because I think it feels more like a real present (turns out unwisely). Seems like she didn't receive it, but when I checked the website, it kept saying sent.

I missed her birthday.

Today, I think I'll call up and see where it is. I speak to Thomas who tells me that he's sorry, but there's an issue with processing their gift certificates, and there's currently a backlog, and mine won't get sent for at least a week. He's sorry they've taken the money off my card. I say that's a bit crap, because I've missed my sister-in-law's birthday. He's kinda sorry, but can't help. I ask him to turn it into an email certificate, and he says he can't do that.

So I speak to his supervisor, Matthew, who tells me it has been sent on Saturday. I say that I haven't got a confirmation email. And also, how do I know who to believe because his colleague just said the exact opposite.

The customer service director is never there - he's an audix box - and the switchboard won't put you through to anyone, and they when they put me through to the resolutions team, that just goes to someone's voicemail.

I know I spend a lot of money with Amazon, because they usually send me a Christmas present, and that has me scuttling to my past orders and adding up how much I spent, and resolving to buy less books.

Anyway, I held for a while, being told I was in a queue, and then I gave up.

As you know, I just can't bear bad service. I don't know if it's because I'm self-employed, so I just wouldn't get away with it, or what. But anyway.

First day of summer: I have seen more flabby flesh walking through town than I think is healthy. For me, I mean.

Glorious: I walked from a meeting at Charing Cross to one at Haymarket and it's sunny and lovely and I feel that spring has sprung and it's time to get my legs waxed, and do I have any other clothes apart from black?

I wonder.

Listening to the news this morning, you'd think the world-at-large had only just discovered keylogging, judging by the new about how Police foil £220m bank robbery. Ah well.