Prague

Today was the day, we met at Tottenham Hale station in time to catch a 5.45 train to Stansted Airport. Before the crack of dawn. Very unsociable hours. Flight with Czech Airlines, a basketball team flying in the rows behind us - big boys, long legs, fidgety, very keen on the blond air hostesses (who we didn't think were anything special but for adolescents they were obviously the height of class). Arrived in Prague to find Bails' suitcase damaged beyond repair - one wheel torn off causing the body to crack. Caught a 119 bus to the Metro and a tube to Museum. Found our hotel and decided we needed lunch and short stroll.

Ate at the Cafe Tulip where a languine pale faced waiter with long ponytail hung behind the bar. Everyone in the joint was in possession of a Time Out Guide to Prague. We tried to hide ours. The girls both had beers with big heads on them. Big creamy heads (so Bails said).

Our short stroll turned out to be rather long for people who had only had 4 hours sleep but we saw great buildings and fab river views. Passing over the Charles Bridge stopped briefly to watch a jazz band (Bails said she liked the one on the end playing the CD case).


One particular statue has a queue of people waiting to touch some gold paint - it was only on relaying this observation to the girls that I realised actually it wasn't gold paint at all but rather so many fingers had touched the statue that the patina had worn off.

I decided to end the day with a glass of Absinthe - always wanting to test local stuff and all. Frightful stuff I have discovered, quite nice the way it warms your oesophogus but tastes like medicine. I'm wondering whether the red one will taste any different. Hummm.

Date Bails

Are you longing for a good date? Single life getting you down? Desperate for a bit of fun? (I know I know - this is sounding more girly by the minute). You still have time to apply for a date with Bails. See here.

Pigeon and the Skylight

Frequently I hear this strange scratching noise coming from the roof over my bedroom. I have imagined its a variety of things but the other day I discovered it was a pigeon walking on the skylight. Imagine that music from Benny Hill where he invariably chases a long line of nurses in miniskirts - the pigeon got on the skylight and walked around a bit, then got off, came back, then left again, then got back on and scratched around some more. Don't know what he finds so attractive on the glass but he certainly has a good time up there.

Brain Overload

Its hard being a grown up. Even without dependents. I'm knackered from constantly having stuff on my mind. If its not work shit, its MA essays, if not that then its job applications, if not the applications then the prep for interviews. Persistently having stuff to do.

I'm sitting outside a cafe on a quiet side road, with a hot chocolate and an amaretto biscuit, the sun warming the side of my face. The sky blue. Blossom trees coming into bloom.

More of this is needed. I've ignored the urge to buy a paper that my eyes would devour with ferocity. I need to rest my brain. No input needed. It would be great to have one of those exceedingly dull 70s Sundays that dragged forever.

I'd like to take small steps. Not be in a rush. Sleep til I wake up naturally. Look at the scenery. Be free of deadlines and pressure. Read a novel whose words paint a picture in my head that needs no additional interpretation.

Needing a holiday perhaps. Lucky I'm going to Prague next week.

Date Bails

Having declared that she was afraid she was going to have to be a bit lesss fussy on the men front I decided to help my friend-in-need and offer her up on the internet (for a date) to the good men of the blogosphere. So for all of you waiting with baited breath...





She's nice with a twist of nasty.

Interests include: growing cacti, zombie movies, thrashing guitar music, Shakespeare plays, collecting scarfs, cooking.
Latest hobby: Bonsai
Favourite film: So I Married an Axe Murderer
Favourite book: Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
Favourite album(s): Quadrophenia - The Who, Wiser Miser De Meltza - The Prisoners, Jimi Hendrix.
Listening now: Katie Tunstall, The Killers
Favourite beer: something called something like Leibsmanfs Kreik
Favourite dinner: Thai, oh but, well anything really
Favourite holiday destination: South America
Worst Date: dinner in pizza hut (dumpable), or home-cooked dinner made from pre-prepared packets (no marks for effort)
Eyesight: -7 (not blind though, can see clearly with corrective lenses).


You are:
30-45 (ish)
hair - unimportant (no comb-overs)
interesting, eclectic tastes
preferably with a job (although all circumstances considered)
single, male


To play please email to harrietsblogg at gmail dot com sending a picture (jpeg) of yourself that you are happy to have on the internet and the answers to the following questions:

1. Tell us your best joke
2. Black or white cowboy hat?
3. What do you like doing?
4. Favourite dinner?
5. Describe yourself in 20 words (full sentences not compulsory)
6. Favourite mode of transport?

All interested parties make themselves known by 22 April 2006 and be available for a date in London on 26 April (subject to negotiation if absolutely necessary).

Successful candidate will be required to provide brief post-date feedback for publication (not Blind Date style - constructive rather destructive, we all want to remain friends here).

Peckham Stroll

A striking woman wearing cream linen flares and a cropped cream leather jacket strolls along the street in the early evening spring sunshine with her husband. He puts a strong arm around her waist and lets it slide down where it lingers on her large bottom.

Favourite London Places
The Natural History Museum






I still get something of the childhood excitement about entering this great gothic building, purpose built with its creatures crawling up the brickwork and protruding like gargoyles from the guttertops. Going inside through its dark doorway to stand in front of the diplodocus, changed from the 70s when they thought it would hold its head upright and drag its tail on the ground, to an altogether more active seeming skeleton. Love the staircases that lead up and break into two, depositing you on the walkway-balconies, walk along past the skeletal monkeys swinging along the ceiling to a bridged stairway that joins back together to take you up to the slice of Sequioa with dated rings.

Remember school trips (clip boards and questionnaires to fill in) and silently walking through the gem galleries with mum. Visiting the back rooms with EP to take some donated skeletons from the Zoological Museum of the University of Wisconsin. Huge wooden drawers full of specimens. Watching a puppetshow with weird music in the less distant past (lucky enough to be in the museum after hours).

Ducks

The bus takes a spin around Parliament Square outside the Palace of Westminster. Past the Brian Haw with his banners and signs. Past Lady Margaret's Church and Westminster Abbey. Two male mallards roost (what is it that ducks do?) on the grass. Oddly out of place in the absence of water and in the middle of a major city roundabout.

Man about Knightsbridge

Yesterday was spring-like, sunny, April showers and warmer by far for ages. Man boards the bus - older, glasses, wearing a cricket jumper which has rainbow stripes around the bottom and cut-off jeans the length of hot-pants. Long pasty hairy legs. When he got off I noticed he was wearing a bagpuss badge. I used to love bagpuss.

H

I met a woman called Helen today. I used to work in an office full of H girls, there was Heather, Hannah, Hazel and me (Harriet). We never had a Helen though. I currently work with a Hilary. I wonder if H has the most different girls names.

Windy

Warmer than for ages but a great bracing wind. Birds thrown around by strong gusts. Bright sky. Occassional sun. Pigeon strolling nonchalantly on the train tracks gets his feathers ruffled as the wind changes direction. This is thrilling weather. Hair whipped about the face, coat blown about your legs, not too cold.

Spring Forward >>

I've spent all day trying to catch up the hour that I lost by not turning the clocks forward before I went to bed last night. And Sunday's are supposed to be relaxing. One of these days I'm not going to have anything to do on the weekend. Its too soon to go back to work, and its too early to go to bed (in my body's clock anyway).

Scary

Its menacing when men in suits without coats wear black leather gloves on the tube. I followed him down the escalator, he had a big hard briefcase and red watery eyes.

Maybe he was just cold, or had a cold.

Day

The day began badly. I woke up with poor attitude. Couldn't be bothered to wash my hair. And I really haven't been to work with third-day unwashed hair in probably a decade.

On the London news they announced that WAGN trains were suspended between Finsbury Park and Moorgate, so I had to chance the tube instead. Frequent but packed. Kings Cross Northern line was heaving. Couldn't get on the first train, but got into pole position for the following one. Carriage was full but still one man decided he couldn't wait and bundled on, with rucksack, crushing forward until the doors shut. If we were a crate of fruit we'd've been bruised and ruined. Man with rucksack decided to read the paper which meant that he couldn't hold on. Wedging himself between me and someone else to hold himself up. Behind me a short man was holding the overhead bar and leaning against me for additional support. I felt like a leaning post. Men on the tube are rocks. Solid. Unbending. Heavy.

So I arrived at the council-run training session, pleased to be doing recruitment and selection for the third time (3rd company), but happy to be out of the office and given some recognition for prior experience (1 day only as opposed to the longer 2 days). The trainer sat chatting to his assistant while we waited for the rest of the participants. The time ticked slowly by, past the start time of 9:30. Eventually I asked how many we were expecting. The man in the red shirt who I had taken for the trainer said he didn't know but having counted the stack of packs next to him he'd hazard a guess at 11. So you're not the trainer? We'd sat like dutiful lemons for quite long enough, so I went downstairs to enquire after our trainer. It transpired she was home in bed with the flu but had failed to call in. A sappy chap came up to apologize promising to rearrange as soon as possible. I got back to the office for 10:05.

Oh joy, more time to spend on preparing for my performance management interview. Sapped of the will to live by 5.00pm I left. Glad of the extra daylight. Saw a blossom tree on the way home in full bloom. Yearning for spring, as promised by the weatherman on the weekend, I might take out a greivance against him if he's wrong.

Fidget

While we wait for a delayed train the man near me rolls a joint with very pungent marijuana. He sits down heavily rocking the bench. Stands up again, walks away, comes back slumps back against the bench. Wafts of ganga drift over.

On the bus the woman in the seat ahead of me is repacking her shopping, transfering rustly lettuce bags, salmon steaks, mushrooms from one crinkly plastic bag to another. Eventually with it all sorted she pulls a pen from her pocket and noisily folds the crossword in the newspaper open.

I turn up the ipod and stare out the window.

Evening Light

Its 6.00pm and its light. The crazy man with the resonant raspy voice who's normally outside the cafe round the corner from my office window is talking to a naked mannequin in the window of the hairdressers. The women inside stare out at him frowning.

Early London (2)

I had an idea that if I looked at old photos I'd find something of the old london I remembered. A little dowdy but definitely london.






From top: Myddleton Square, looking over to the Embankment, Coram's Fields, a telephone box, caff sign (toast 8p, and remember Tab?), view off Waterloo Bridge (no Gherkin, Natwest Tower or Lloyds building, amongst others), Covent Garden hordings.

Early London

A reader's email reminded me of some early London memories. The particular memory was as a kid in the 70s cycling with my sister and dad to Dunkin Donuts (for at least two decades I thought it was Duncan Donuts) on Farringdon Road on Sunday mornings to collect 8 donuts - two each a white iced one and a brown iced one - to take back for breakfast. The streets would be deserted, not a soul around, just the buildngs, the sunlight and a very occassional car.

We would sometimes pass Smithfield meat market, stopping to peer inside at the men carting big slabs of beef around on wooden trolleys or over their shoulders. Sawdust and the smell of raw meat.

We would also walk around Covent Garden which at the time had many open spaces, where buildings had been demolished, that were turned into public gardens - sunken, below street level, full of hippies. Covent Garden is claustrophobic now by comparison.

I remember riding routemaster buses down Pentonville Road from the stop by the reservoir on the corner of Amwell Street. One time there was a man with one leg - his trouser folded up where the other leg was missing (caused much embarrassement asking my mother why he only had one leg). I also remember a man in a sheepskin coat who got up from the bench seat to stand when it got crowded, his coat being too thick for 4 to sit comfortably.

We used to go to Regent's Park for picnics in the summer. I wanted to live in one of those cream coloured houses with two columns outside. In the summer of 76 mum's flip flop got stuck to the melted tarmac and broke. Which I expect was funny, although I don't quite remember.

Our local grocer was Mr Lloyds (commonly known to everyone except me as Fatty Lloyd on account of his rotund figure). A large man who wore a navy blue and white stripped apron. The counter was wooden (I think) and they stacked the goods in triangular configurations. We also bought 10p mix bags of sweets from the sweet shop. You'd get fried eggs, spaceships, liquorish, buttons with sprinkles, coca cola bottles, bubblegum, marshmallow banana thingys amongst other things. My sister was always fond of a sherbert dip.

Tiger Lilly Love

2 people in white jackets and white straw hats come onto a large balck stage and twiddle with synths making musical sound while we watch the tops of their heads, since their faces are down to the deck. Large screen images don't enhance the music or catch the interest. This is music for movement. It feels very odd sitting silently watching when this is a much more kinetic feeling sound. Those making it seem rather disinterested in it and their audience who in all likelihood are here for the Tiger Lillies.

The sound of a cigarette lighter (the stroke and the flame) is similar to a motorbike's roar but on a synthetic level. Other sounds used were mic feedback, white noise and synthetic drips. Sort of decided you needed drugs to really get into this music. After half an hour that was that.

Its hard to watch the Tiger Lillies in a concert hall - their roots in the two-penny street opera and their early days in the Kings Head competing against the hubbub of a crowded bar and an audience who danced their own version of the waltz whilst drinking and screaming felt closer to the filth, debauchery and desperate-slum-ecstacy that the music evokes. Much harder to feel that in the comfort and quiet of the Queen Elizabeth Hall where the stage, lighting and conventions of the concert divide the musicians from the audience and decree that those listening sit still. However, Alexander Hacke's sound effects, horror voiceover and general demeanour worked very well against Martin's falsetto and the sound of the band. So while I miss the riotous early gigs its still a treat to see them.

Waiting

While I love not having to get up rush out the house cram onto a crowded train fight for a handrail change to the tube fight to get onto the train rush the escalator run up to platform 15 to catch the train for the final leg stomp along the chilly road to the office, I resent having to take a day off to wait for the washing machine repair man. Be here between 8 and 10 she told me. I joked to the boyfiend about betting it'd be 09.55. Its 09.55 now and he hasn't shown up yet.