The PowerBook @ The Lyttleton OK, here's my stream-of-consciousness considered view. Based on Jeanette Winterson's novel of the same name, it's a fully sensual experience (in that it's visual, cerebral, audial) that doesn't quite make it. It was the second night, and it showed; there were a few little, tiny production glitches that supended my suspension of disbelief. And Jeanette Winterson says (quite arsily, I think) "my work sits better int he European tradition of Borges and Calvino, than it does in the Anglo-American tradtion of realism and narrative."

There's no doubt that Winterson writes magically, lyrically, and often humorously. How this tranfers to the stage is a little, well, wordy. And despite her claim that she doesn't do realism and narrative, it's a straightforward tale of two lovers where one's married. Which gives some of us a certain sense of deja vu, since Jeanette had a very public affair with Pat Kavanagh, her agent and Julian Barnes' wife. And now, of course, the two leading ladies, Saffron Burrows and Fiona Shaw are rumoured to be having an affair. Not that I have a huge problem with writers using their lives as some kind of raw material.

Slightest accidents open up new worlds: themes of randomness, borderless worlds, interconnection and love abound. (On a completely separate thought: when I was a technology headhunter, we'd spend hours in client meetings trying to understand the clients' needs. Inevitably it always came down to two things, which I codenamed WEBBINESS and GLOBALITY - that's really what the play's about. Maybe that's what the whole world's about?)

With overtone's of phone/cyber sex and fantasy worlds, it's a little bit Vox , and probably cashing in on the millennial global village thang. It's slick (or it will be, by the end of the run), it's funny, not a little weird, slightly over-acted for a contemporary piece, and has an eye-candy set for the net generation. But the last word goes to my theatre companion, S:

"Sasha - thanks for organising last night. This morning I remembered that I
forgot to say that I found that manic dancing to Blondie between scenes
really irritating - what was that for?"

More about Q: Q is an old friend who was feeling powerless in the face of technology as B (her ex) wouldn't take down the posts referring to her. So I started commenting on his posts, talking about intergrity, friendship, trust. Then, unbeleivably, other people I don't know started commenting on his posts saying the same kind of thing; "Also, I wouldn't like my 'friend' to gamble my secrets with total strangers". Part of him got excited: "since when has my blog actually started gaining readers." And he capitulated; last night he posted this:

" Alright alright. I give up. You win. I'll watch what I say... (may you also be kicked when you're down by a group of people.) Several people have forced me to eat my words. Talking to a computer screen, you don't always think who's reading what. But spilling secrets is spilling secrets, no matter how veiled it seems. You may or may not have noticed, but I have pulled some posts. I don't have time right now to go through everything, but I have pulled the worst offenders already."

So peer power reigns. Or something. It's like out of Lord of the Flies. Or some group psychology text book. Only no-one dies.

Neighbours: Last week I talked about the next door flat being sold and my Jazzmatazz poster going on holiday. My new neighbours are a couple; met the girl Monday, and this morning, the bloke knocked on my door and said they had a leak in their kitchen and might it be from my flat and stuff. We talked a little, and worked out it's probably from upstairs. M downstairs had told me someone famous had moved in, but I'd never seen this guy before. So I said to him: "Are you famous? It's just I heard someone famous bought the flat." He laughed. Said it was refreshing. Turns out he's in East Enders. I told him I'm a Brookside kinda girl.

Cognisant of everything I implied yesterday about privacy, I'll say no more.

Tomorrow night is the start of a Jewish festival, shavuot. Pronounced Sha-voo-ott. There's a custom to stay up all night learning, like you're at Mount Sinai receiving the ten commandments. It's generally like having a very long after dinner conversation with some intelligent people; I'm going to stay with D&C (not a couple, they share a flat).

One of the major customs is to eat milky food, to celebrate receiving the commandments, which include not having meat and milk food together. I make a fabulous cheesecake, which is the secret family recipe of my mother's now estranged next door-neighbour's now deceased mother-in-law. I know, you have too much information already. Imagine someone calling you every day with stories that contain that level of detail.

A couple of years ago when I was working at a top tier, terribly English headhunting firm, the day after Shavuot I took my cheesecake into work, and not wanting to email people the whole story, just said "It's the Jewish cheesecake eating festival, I've made a cake, and left it in the second floor kitchen." I did not write "enjoy!" at the end of the email.

Later, I got email from one of the secretaries: "Dear Sasha, the cheesecake was delicious. I hope you won the cheesecake eating Festival."

And they say we live in a multicultural world.

Book update I wrote 1,000 words (which is not great, for me) and about 800 of them are shit. N, on the other hand, sent me prefectly formed prose that had me laughing out loud. I haven't posted mine because; I'm shy. Honest. But I could be persuaded...

I'm not that green , like I still have a car and feel like Ecover washing up liquid won't do it properly, even since they repackaged it. But I can't bear buying Tesco's roasted red pepper spicy humous for two reasons.

One is, that I've travelled all over the Mediterranean, and humous is humous. More or less lemon, or garlic, or olive oil, sure, but roasted red peppers? Chilli? No. It's a marketing construct, it's not an actual dip. And it's not even that nice. I like real food; pitta bread not garlic pitta bread. Yoghurt not Forest Fruit Yoghurt. Cheese without apricots and other un-cheese-like additions.

Second, though, is that they now sell it in an oh-so-generically-handcrafted pottery dish. So over a period of time, you could rack up a lot of these little dishes. Which are only really good for serving dips (or possibly, olives). Which you're buying, rather than making. So then you have to leave your job and open a dip shop; it'll all get out of hand, believe me. The new portions are smaller, for more money, with a piece of ceramic thrown in. Why, why why? I know we're all off packaging , it's so wasteful, but what's the point in this?

Talking of computers where do dead computers get buried? I have an IBM ThinkPad (my getting-laid-off gift from The Industry Standard), which is my main machine, and a two year old Sony Vaio which is my coffee-shop, travelling machine. Then I have two clunky desktop Dells that have done trusty service but need to move on. I just don't know where to. So I'm doing what I usually do in such situations: nothing.

I just got back from The PowerBook at the National. Will say more about it tomorrow, as I think I need to sleep on it. Suffice it to say that it was post-modern Shakespeare meets visual fantastica and a not-quite-ready-yet cast with a technology twist. And, of course, I reserve my right to change my mind tomorrow.

We did Yo Sushi first, as the play didn't start till 2115. That's the time, not the future. Apparently a new experiment in theatre timing and delivery. I love London; walking from Waterloo to the Eye, seeing the river and the Festival Hall and the NFT, made me almost proud to be a Londoner. Which is stupid, becuase I'm from Cheshire.

On the tube home, my inner geek noticed a sleek sub-notebook poking out of S's bag (she's a management consultant, you never know when you might need to make a powerpoint presentation); I asked her if it was a Vaio or a Portege and she seemed mightily impressed that I could tell so much from such a looklet. Then she found out that I'd been online since 1993 (which I don't think is so long compared to most of my friends) and was even more impressed. I can still reel off my ever-so-memorable compuserve address which I expected to faithfully serve me for a lifetime: 101647.235@compuserve.com. Even now, it looks like home.

Interesting dilemma Q called me last night. She lives in a small university town, and just discovered that her (now, unsurprisingly ex-) boyfriend has been blogging about their sex life and talked about something she regards as secret. She's not a tech-lit-chick, so didn't know what it meant, till she read it yesterday. He's used her name (which he's now changed to a silly code name), revealed details about her life, her family and her financial situation which she regards as personal. For her, the whole thing is a mass invasion of privacy; "a very big version of gossip, with no social controls".

I took a look at his blog; it's shit. Lousy design, worse writing, an utterly navel-gazing experience with not a link in site/sight. The whole information democratisation thing means that I'd be surprised if two people read it. And one of them's probably him; it's mostly a vanity site to show off to his mates about him getting some. But Q feels like "the internet" is the front page of the Guardian, and I tried to explain that his blog (and mine too, no doubt) is like a trade ad in a local paper. Now he's changed her real name, it's extremely hard to know it's her, but Q's upset by his mates adding comments like "she sounds like a selfish cow".

But it's made me think; I'm extremely careful about whom and what I blog, and there's still a fine line between what's his experience, and what's hers. Is there a difference between a conversation you might have over a beer/glass of wine, and publishing it online? Or do we live in a Jerry Springer world, where what you say only counts if you have an audience? It's the attention economy meets epistemology theory. I think.

Or is the very fact that I'm blogging about Q's ex blogging about her just, well, up somebody's arse? The personal, it's no longer political, it's public.

Something I hate: people who say "here come's the science" like they're Rachel from Friends. It's laden with all that I-know-but-you're-stupid-stuff, and I just hate it. Rant over.

Here's what I've been thinking; I talked to N today, and he agreed that maybe I'm blogging when I should be writing, and we have a June 15th deadline to finish our books. So tomorrow, I'm only going to post once, and then write the rest of the time. N said I should post my writing from the day, but I'm not sure I'm brave/confident/anyone's interested enough. But if you are, say. And F said I'd have a much healthier life if I was in bed by midnight (he wasn't very happy when I phoned him at 0130 this morning. He used to be a night person, honest). So I'm off to bed.

Apparently Guilt-Trip Lit is The Next Big thing. After Chick Lit, Mum Lit, Sick Lit and the like. What's with the rhyming slang soundbite thang? A friend called me a Tech Lit Chick last week (thought I think he might have been overestimating my skills).

It's almost like, if you're a journalist, you're not so bothered about delving into the texture and subtlety of the Big Idea, more about googling on the soundbite-enabled headline before you write a thing. The whole PR hook gone crazy world. Like, even nail varnishes have fifteen minutes of fame now.

Has saying sorry taken on epic proportions? In a fascinating article on the Second Generation, Frank Furedi says:

"Politicians have been quick to embrace the ritual of the apology. The Australian government organised a National Sorry Day on 26 May 1998, when Australians were exhorted to express their sorrow for the injustices inflicted on Aboriginal people. A month later, the German government apologised for the 1904 massacre of African people in Namibia. UK prime minister Tony Blair has apologised to the Irish for Britain's role in contributing to the suffering that people experienced during the potato famine. And the Vatican has apologised for the havoc that the Crusades wreaked on the people of the Middle East."

Is the nationalised apology a response to the politicising of memory? I know, I know, I should get a job.

More body image stuff. Should she have a breast enlargement? I've said it before and I'll say it again (and I'm not going to say it's not big and it's not clever); both enlargement and reduction surgery leave you with seams, no sensation in your nipples and the inability to breastfeed - should you want to - in later life. You've got what you're born with - deal with it.

[via the breast chronicles]

I wonder where Hayley's gone. Her piece about her relationship with the bathroom scales was truly - forgive the pun - food for thought. And now, via crazy beautiful, some thinking from Heather on body image stuff.

This, especially, scared me:
"A size 1/2, which is purportedly the average size of your run-of-the-mill Hollywood starlet now is the same size as a 6/8T. That's right, the size for your average 6-8-year-old girl."

Don't know if this is the most fun you can have with your clothes on, but it made me laugh out loud.

[via Luke]

Phrase of the day: fauxhemian. It says everything my former phrase "post-bohemian reconstructed Victorian hippy, with a Trustafarian edge" says but more succinctly. Clearly. The essence of the piece is that "you can be mainstream and alternative, a grown-up and a hipster, all at the same time"; just an old-fashioned Thatcherite on-yer-bike I-want-it-all thing, then.

Coined by Rob Walker, a freelance writer in New Orleans, and first used in his fab article Fauxhemian Rhapsody in the New York Times a couple of years back.

Think I might be in love with Mark Simonson (though I suspect he is Grown Up); his stuff on the anachronistic use of typeface in film meets all the requirements of font-geekery. Oh, and it has beatiful type/layout. There's another guy who's into it too, but not sure I'm in love with him.

[via virulent memes via plastic bag via...]

When we were in Derbyshire, - Ashbourne - I bought a thirties bakelite clock from Smith's English Clock Company in Cricklewood. I have a curious sense of bringing it home.

Feeling pleasantly woozy after a merlot-induced evening at La Brocca with D. Ran into a couple of former Cheadle dwellers with whom we had the hi-how-are-you conversation. D is a recent Cheadle neophyte. There was a guy two tables along with a Hoxton peak; rare in NW6. Walking through West Hampstead, we saw a bright laser beam coming from somewhere towards Camden, making a blue-only rainbow shape across to Hamsptead. I tried to persuade D we should walk to the foot of the rainbow, in some Kafka-esque Breslover way, but she thought it was too far. D was convinced it was something to do with the Queen's imminent Jubilee. I, on the other hand, thought the whole thing was a little Mulder and Scully.

And at some point in the evening, D pointed out that Sophie Ellis Bextor looks like she's been photoshopped. Never a truer word.

Whilst I remember, I really want to read this.