I'm not on commission from Primark, honest, but I saw these yesterday and they're reduced from £12 to £6, and I took the photo because they have my flatmate's name written all over them.
Which reminds me of a Primark story overheard in the (long) queue: one woman says to another, "this is the only place you'd shoplift to save time, not money."
Of course that's not true. There's Matalan, as well.
Friday, January 12, 2007
Thursday, January 11, 2007
In a surprising move (most City commentators expected rates to stay at 5% for a short while) the Bank of England raises interest rates to 5.25%. Not great news for un-fixed mortgages, but good news for savers and the next cash ISA season. Might even dampen property prices. They wish. It's all about lack of supply, in a macro sense.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
The Jewish Book Week 2007 programme is online. It's good. Book tickets quicky. Although not so quickly that I can't get any.
Two great pieces from the New York Times* from angst-ridden (but cool) writer Shalom Auslander** Celebrity Crazy and Love Child.
***
* Use login/password sashablog/sashablog.
* Also, isn't the internet great? I can read the New York Times in Kilburn. A few years back, I was a techheadhunter, and we were very high end and I had to wear a suit everyday and they made me tie my (slightly unruly) hair back and not wear chunky jewelry. It was a very silly, oak-panelled business. Kinda like being an estate agent for people, but without the intellectual stimulation. Anyway, me and my lead partner used to go to week-long lunches to "get the brief" for the new CTO, and we'd come out and look at each other and say "webbiness and globality" then, which was what most people wanted. And also, it doesn't matter what the brief is: usually people hire the person they like, even if they don't quite fit the brief.
** I heard Shalom Auslander speak on a panel at Jewish Book Week last year, with Naomi Alderman. He was so very angry that you could feel the tension in his life just from watching how he sat in his chair, even. I don't know if that much anger is good for a person. Even though he says in the Love Child story that he doesn't like anger anymore, so maybe the therapy's working.
** Also, in the Therapy short story, I don't really get why he keeps making a date with his therapist? Can you do next Tuesday? How's Thursday? It's not coffee with a friend, it's supposed to be a regular commitment. Like Woody Allen says; with strict Freudian therapy, if you die, they make you pay for the sessions you missed.
*** Yes, I'm rambling. My mojo went to Marbella, but it may have returned****.
**** Or may not have done. We'll see.
***
* Use login/password sashablog/sashablog.
* Also, isn't the internet great? I can read the New York Times in Kilburn. A few years back, I was a techheadhunter, and we were very high end and I had to wear a suit everyday and they made me tie my (slightly unruly) hair back and not wear chunky jewelry. It was a very silly, oak-panelled business. Kinda like being an estate agent for people, but without the intellectual stimulation. Anyway, me and my lead partner used to go to week-long lunches to "get the brief" for the new CTO, and we'd come out and look at each other and say "webbiness and globality" then, which was what most people wanted. And also, it doesn't matter what the brief is: usually people hire the person they like, even if they don't quite fit the brief.
** I heard Shalom Auslander speak on a panel at Jewish Book Week last year, with Naomi Alderman. He was so very angry that you could feel the tension in his life just from watching how he sat in his chair, even. I don't know if that much anger is good for a person. Even though he says in the Love Child story that he doesn't like anger anymore, so maybe the therapy's working.
** Also, in the Therapy short story, I don't really get why he keeps making a date with his therapist? Can you do next Tuesday? How's Thursday? It's not coffee with a friend, it's supposed to be a regular commitment. Like Woody Allen says; with strict Freudian therapy, if you die, they make you pay for the sessions you missed.
*** Yes, I'm rambling. My mojo went to Marbella, but it may have returned****.
**** Or may not have done. We'll see.
Five Things People Don't Know About Me
I am bad when people tag me for things, because I suspect I'm meme-resistant, but hey, Meg's my buddy, so, here goes...
1 I'm going to Moldova in May on a humanitarian mission
Yes, Moldova, a country immortalised by comedian Tony Hawk's book, Playing the Moldovans at Tennis, used to be part of Romania, and is next door to where my maternal great grandparents came from at the turn of the previous century. They left because of the pogroms in around 1897, which makes me third generation. There's a tiny Jewish community left there, and I'm going on a trip with a dozen or so other people, and we're buying four vans (which we leave there for them to use as minibuses/ambulances) filled with clothes, medicine, aid in general. I have to raise £5,500, and if you'd like to support me, you can do so here.
2 I was a charity trustee...
For a couple of years, a couple of years ago, and because I'm self-employed, it was only when I did my accounts I realised how much time it had taken, and I'd actually earned 40% less that year. And I'd felt really busy. Learn from this what you will. I don't - obviously - disagree with charity, I just learned that I have to learn where to drawn the line.
3 I have multiple names for various reasons
It's a long story, that I won't go into here (because I'm not that interested/don't want to bore you/it's late) but it ocassionally creates entertaining scenarios like "do you have a sister?" etc. The complex life is not worth living.
4 I wrote a book by accident
This can happen. As you know, I've been working on my novel for three years and blah blah blah. I got into a diversionary project by mistake this summer (and bear in mind that Google tells all its employees to spend Friday's on their interesting diversionary projects and it's a very creative/lucrative thing, viz gmail, froogle etc). And my diversionary project turned into kinda a book, and I wrote 75,000 words when I should have been doing something else. Washing my hair?
5 I used to be a telephone counsellor
I really enjoyed it, although I did feel slightly out of place. Like everyone else was a social worker/advice worker/nurse, and they spoke Public Sector and I spoke Bottom Line. So they were all really good at the "I'm wondering how you're feeling about the issue around the issue..." I'm a straight talker, and that's what people pay me for, mostly. I learned some good listening skills and how to reflect and be empathic and that was good. And it's stood me in good stead: I'm the sort of person if someone's having an affair/thinking of leaving their partner/done something terrible, I'm the person they call to talk to. It's happened to me a lot of times now, so there's not much left that can shock me. The human condition is: painful, sometimes. People have hard things to think about. And when I go on long train journeys I try quite hard not to sit next to someone who looks like they have a big secret, although, as we all know, most people have big secrets, especially the ones who look like they don't.
So there you go. It's tricky with my kinda blog, because a lot of what I write is personal, to a degree. And the stuff I choose not to say, there's a reason for. Also, I have a terrible memory, so it's possible I have said these things before and therefore you already know them... I hope not.
I am bad when people tag me for things, because I suspect I'm meme-resistant, but hey, Meg's my buddy, so, here goes...
1 I'm going to Moldova in May on a humanitarian mission
Yes, Moldova, a country immortalised by comedian Tony Hawk's book, Playing the Moldovans at Tennis, used to be part of Romania, and is next door to where my maternal great grandparents came from at the turn of the previous century. They left because of the pogroms in around 1897, which makes me third generation. There's a tiny Jewish community left there, and I'm going on a trip with a dozen or so other people, and we're buying four vans (which we leave there for them to use as minibuses/ambulances) filled with clothes, medicine, aid in general. I have to raise £5,500, and if you'd like to support me, you can do so here.
2 I was a charity trustee...
For a couple of years, a couple of years ago, and because I'm self-employed, it was only when I did my accounts I realised how much time it had taken, and I'd actually earned 40% less that year. And I'd felt really busy. Learn from this what you will. I don't - obviously - disagree with charity, I just learned that I have to learn where to drawn the line.
3 I have multiple names for various reasons
It's a long story, that I won't go into here (because I'm not that interested/don't want to bore you/it's late) but it ocassionally creates entertaining scenarios like "do you have a sister?" etc. The complex life is not worth living.
4 I wrote a book by accident
This can happen. As you know, I've been working on my novel for three years and blah blah blah. I got into a diversionary project by mistake this summer (and bear in mind that Google tells all its employees to spend Friday's on their interesting diversionary projects and it's a very creative/lucrative thing, viz gmail, froogle etc). And my diversionary project turned into kinda a book, and I wrote 75,000 words when I should have been doing something else. Washing my hair?
5 I used to be a telephone counsellor
I really enjoyed it, although I did feel slightly out of place. Like everyone else was a social worker/advice worker/nurse, and they spoke Public Sector and I spoke Bottom Line. So they were all really good at the "I'm wondering how you're feeling about the issue around the issue..." I'm a straight talker, and that's what people pay me for, mostly. I learned some good listening skills and how to reflect and be empathic and that was good. And it's stood me in good stead: I'm the sort of person if someone's having an affair/thinking of leaving their partner/done something terrible, I'm the person they call to talk to. It's happened to me a lot of times now, so there's not much left that can shock me. The human condition is: painful, sometimes. People have hard things to think about. And when I go on long train journeys I try quite hard not to sit next to someone who looks like they have a big secret, although, as we all know, most people have big secrets, especially the ones who look like they don't.
So there you go. It's tricky with my kinda blog, because a lot of what I write is personal, to a degree. And the stuff I choose not to say, there's a reason for. Also, I have a terrible memory, so it's possible I have said these things before and therefore you already know them... I hope not.
Monday, January 08, 2007
So, State of Play IV is happening now in Singapore, and I didn't go because (partly, apart from eco-footprint etc) they're were putting videos live online. So, er, podcasts and recorded videos? Empty. Great, the on-demand age, isn't it.
I'm very sad that Magnus Magnusson died. For a reason I don't totally understand, I have a very warm spot for the Mastermind host. Maybe because one of my little catchphrases is "that'll be your specialist subject on Mastermind". Mine, of course, will be UK blogging 2001 - 2004.
Friday, January 05, 2007
I know it's five year's old, and I stumbled across it in a typical web way... (I was looking at the site of the artist Zoë Mendelson), when I happened on this brilliant piece she wrote when discovered she had type one diabetes at the age of twenty five.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
I am Angry of Kilburn when it comes to this year's round of fare rises.
In fact, I went out to lunch on new year's day, and think I bored a (potentially new) friend rigid with my mini-rant on fare rises and poor transport infrastructure. Frankly, the woman couldn't gather her handbag quickly enough and jump into her 4x4 (this is dramatic licence: I don't know what car she drove, or even if she drove a car.
But it's crap that they made us get Oyster cards because they're "cheaper" and now bus fares have risen 20% (£1 from 80p) and we're now the most expensive place to travel in the world.
Great.
Which is why I love this entertaining piece in the Guardian; An insider's guide to cheap railwaty tickets. Especiall this bit:
The most stylish and ridiculously brilliant fare-saving tactic, however, is this: do you travel around the country reasonably regularly after 10am but don't qualify for any discount cards? Wherever you live, march into your nearest station and demand a season ticket for the three-minute journey from Ryde St Johns Road to Ryde Esplanade on the Isle of Wight.
This, the cheapest season ticket in the UK, will set you back £116. Buying a season ticket automatically gives you a "Gold Card" - which entitles you to a third off almost all off-peak UK fares. You can also upgrade to first class for £5 return on most of your journeys if you want to give yourself a treat.
I am so thinking about getting an electric car. There's even an electric car hire company, although their pricing seems a little.... well, unclear. Anyway, here's TfL's green-y stuff. All well and good, but soon we'll all be spending so much on our travelcards we won't have a penny left for anything else anyway. Not even, say, Green & Blacks chocolate. Or Boden clothes. Darling.
In fact, I went out to lunch on new year's day, and think I bored a (potentially new) friend rigid with my mini-rant on fare rises and poor transport infrastructure. Frankly, the woman couldn't gather her handbag quickly enough and jump into her 4x4 (this is dramatic licence: I don't know what car she drove, or even if she drove a car.
But it's crap that they made us get Oyster cards because they're "cheaper" and now bus fares have risen 20% (£1 from 80p) and we're now the most expensive place to travel in the world.
Great.
Which is why I love this entertaining piece in the Guardian; An insider's guide to cheap railwaty tickets. Especiall this bit:
The most stylish and ridiculously brilliant fare-saving tactic, however, is this: do you travel around the country reasonably regularly after 10am but don't qualify for any discount cards? Wherever you live, march into your nearest station and demand a season ticket for the three-minute journey from Ryde St Johns Road to Ryde Esplanade on the Isle of Wight.
This, the cheapest season ticket in the UK, will set you back £116. Buying a season ticket automatically gives you a "Gold Card" - which entitles you to a third off almost all off-peak UK fares. You can also upgrade to first class for £5 return on most of your journeys if you want to give yourself a treat.
I am so thinking about getting an electric car. There's even an electric car hire company, although their pricing seems a little.... well, unclear. Anyway, here's TfL's green-y stuff. All well and good, but soon we'll all be spending so much on our travelcards we won't have a penny left for anything else anyway. Not even, say, Green & Blacks chocolate. Or Boden clothes. Darling.
Always late to the party, me (although it's apparently sometimes fashionable). Did anyone see Second Lives on Channel 4 in the summer? Thanks to the joy of Youtube, this looks like the Tim Guest segment.
Have I ever mentioned that I love Sunday morning's Heaven and Earth show? I think it's partially because I have a degree in comparative religion, and I never thought it could be TV. Sometimes, even, cool TV.
Anway, Sunday, I discovered that Fiddler on the Roof is on at the Crucible in Sheffield, and I really want to see it. Check out the Guardian review.
Anway, Sunday, I discovered that Fiddler on the Roof is on at the Crucible in Sheffield, and I really want to see it. Check out the Guardian review.
The last few years, I've been very taken with voluntary simplicity, and the slowness movement(cooking, life, travel) and all that jazz. Now I discoverLong Now.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
This Life (reprise)
So I had a group activity last night (watched with a bunch of buddies, having seen the end of the last series on video - how last century, I know). It left a lot of questions unanswered - what happened to Miles' first wife? How did Ferdy die? Why wasn't there an apostrophe in the Writers Week (sic) poster at the British Library talk?
Criticisms? Well, Amy Jenkins hasn't had any serious success since she first conceived the original series (despite her fulsome wikipedia entry), and last night felt a little formulaic. Almost like she wrote a list; war in Iraq, ipods, fertility, yummy-mummy angst. So there was some of the old magic, and the script was pretty good... but you can't help wondering about the meta-ness of the whole thing.
At the time, I remember Amy Jenkins being censured to some degree for basically writing about her own friends sharing a London house, and when she came to write about other things, they apparently were not so critically acclaimed. And now, that's what Egg's doing; it's kinda like Amy's writing about herself, and Egg comes out all OK in the end, even though you don't totally know what his and Milly's relationship is really like.
The great characters were still there, but they've turned into caricatures; Anna is a desperate single; Warren is a hippy life coach; Miles is a failed hotelier ... Hobotel just sounds like Habbohotel for grownups, right? (not everything is entirely clear, like a lot of Amy's stuff, too many loose ends. She prides herself on being "plotless" in a modern way, but it's slightly unsatisfying).
Amy's clearly been reading Malcolm; I so recognised Anna's little monologue about some scientist who can tell how long couples will stay together from analysing fifteen minutes of conversation... and then a friend texted to remind me it's from Blink.
There's a great Telegraph piece (commenting on Tony Garnett's ground breaking direction), and the music (apparently selected by Ricky Gervais) is brilliant, spot-on. And there's a whole BBC microsite (which N last night described as midrash) where you can find out everything about everyone... like, did you know that Egg and Miles are best friends in real life and really were best men at each other's weddings?
Like all modern TV, it's a commentary on everything that's gone before; there's shades of Friends (opening shot in the fountain), Peter's Friends, Big Brother and every other celebrity thang... but for a brief moment I felt like it was ten years ago, and that may or may not be a good thing. Although, even though they're in a £7m mansion, they still all wander around in their pajamas like there's only one bathroom. Some things never change.
So I had a group activity last night (watched with a bunch of buddies, having seen the end of the last series on video - how last century, I know). It left a lot of questions unanswered - what happened to Miles' first wife? How did Ferdy die? Why wasn't there an apostrophe in the Writers Week (sic) poster at the British Library talk?
Criticisms? Well, Amy Jenkins hasn't had any serious success since she first conceived the original series (despite her fulsome wikipedia entry), and last night felt a little formulaic. Almost like she wrote a list; war in Iraq, ipods, fertility, yummy-mummy angst. So there was some of the old magic, and the script was pretty good... but you can't help wondering about the meta-ness of the whole thing.
At the time, I remember Amy Jenkins being censured to some degree for basically writing about her own friends sharing a London house, and when she came to write about other things, they apparently were not so critically acclaimed. And now, that's what Egg's doing; it's kinda like Amy's writing about herself, and Egg comes out all OK in the end, even though you don't totally know what his and Milly's relationship is really like.
The great characters were still there, but they've turned into caricatures; Anna is a desperate single; Warren is a hippy life coach; Miles is a failed hotelier ... Hobotel just sounds like Habbohotel for grownups, right? (not everything is entirely clear, like a lot of Amy's stuff, too many loose ends. She prides herself on being "plotless" in a modern way, but it's slightly unsatisfying).
Amy's clearly been reading Malcolm; I so recognised Anna's little monologue about some scientist who can tell how long couples will stay together from analysing fifteen minutes of conversation... and then a friend texted to remind me it's from Blink.
There's a great Telegraph piece (commenting on Tony Garnett's ground breaking direction), and the music (apparently selected by Ricky Gervais) is brilliant, spot-on. And there's a whole BBC microsite (which N last night described as midrash) where you can find out everything about everyone... like, did you know that Egg and Miles are best friends in real life and really were best men at each other's weddings?
Like all modern TV, it's a commentary on everything that's gone before; there's shades of Friends (opening shot in the fountain), Peter's Friends, Big Brother and every other celebrity thang... but for a brief moment I felt like it was ten years ago, and that may or may not be a good thing. Although, even though they're in a £7m mansion, they still all wander around in their pajamas like there's only one bathroom. Some things never change.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
I just came acorss The Right Ingredients, who bill themselves as "food and drink delivery", although in market parlance, they're in the semi-cooked marketplace. You know the deal - you choose a menu, and they deliver all the weighed-and-measured ingredients. You have all the thrill of cooking without the hassle of shopping and preparing. Well, maybe a little chopping.
Reminds me of Leaping Salmon... but then they went out of business, apparently. Do you remember, they had a little shoplet on the forecourt at Victoria?
Reminds me of Leaping Salmon... but then they went out of business, apparently. Do you remember, they had a little shoplet on the forecourt at Victoria?
So are you watching the This Life ten year reunion? It's tonight at 9pm.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Hello. Still here, just having a bit of off-net time, which in these 24/7 times can be very relaxing. I've gone out. Seen people. Went to the Hampstead Comedy Club Jewish Xmas Eve show at the Adelaide. Stayed in. Watched TV/DVDs. Done my accounts and tax return. Dry cleaned my curtains. Made a number of batches of roasted butternut squash and split pea soup (my version of a Claudia Roden recipe). I've walked (some) although my back still hurts and I still have a trapped nerve in my leg. Which, frankly, has put me in a very bad mood for six weeks, which I'm sure partially accounts for my post-paucity.
My wishes for 2007? Not entirely sure I do New Year's resolutions, but I fervently hope that the universe takes on my minhag of calling next year double-oh-seven. All year.
See you on the other side. Unless I have more to say before then.
My wishes for 2007? Not entirely sure I do New Year's resolutions, but I fervently hope that the universe takes on my minhag of calling next year double-oh-seven. All year.
See you on the other side. Unless I have more to say before then.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Vecosys.com - a new blog tracking European startups.
Monday, December 18, 2006
I'm leaving, leaving on an airtrain... see you on the other side.
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