Alien Spouse

Thirties Style.

I keep forgetting to say that we met one of our neighbours, Steven (and his very sweet dogs Twiggy and Coco), from the rather nice house next door, he told us that he had a friend who had lived in our house decades ago.  Apparently it was built in the Thirties and has always been appartments.  Fascinating!

There are several elements, like the living room's light fixture, that are clearly original features, and it also explains the layout and design of the flat itself.  All of the rooms, including the hallway and except for the bathroom, have a large cupboard built in; it makes so much difference, and I don't understand why more modern houses forego this type of functionality.  Well I suppose that it must be much cheaper to build that way, but why don't people insist that houses need proper storage? 

There is never anywhere to keep the ironing board or the vacuum cleaner anymore.  Actually, in this appartment we have an original murphy bed style ironing board in the kitchen which I would have tried using, but Doc C thought it would be a little bit impractical as it butts up against the gas stove in the kitchen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Still, isn't that fab?

 

 

A Portrait of the Queen.

We've been meaning to get a portrait of the Queen for a while, and this week we actually got it organised. 

First of all we found a portrait of the Queen that we liked on-line (It's a Dorothy Wilding photo, that was hand-tinted in those gorgeous fifties colours), downloaded it to a zip drive and took it to Staples to be printed on shiny card stock.  That cost a dollar.

Today we went in search of a frame, and we very specifically wanted something a bit tacky.  In one of the local antique markets, after some thorough searching of the aisles, we found a faux mother-of-pearl frame of exactly the right size for $6.50.

It's so fabulous, it goes with our red mid-century modern living room beautifully and it cost us under ten dollars.

 

Happy 60th Liz!

We went to Asheville for my haircut on Saturday, and we had a few other things to take care of as well. Mostly this involved going to shops that we do not have in our own small town; for example, why would we need a maternity shop actually in our town?  I mean, who gets pregnant here?  Aren't babies just found in a cabbage patch?  It's stuff like that about living in a small town that drives me crazy!

Anyway...

We also decided to go to World Market and buy some British food.  We are fully stocked with Hobnobs, Branston Pickle, Malteasers and Tunnock's Teacakes (although I've already eaten all the Wine Gums).  I also wanted to find a small dish, so we went to look in their kitchenwares section - And discovered a display of Diamond Jubilee related nonsense!  Oh deep joy!  Naturally we snapped up a commemerative mug, and if there had been a tea towel I would have bought that too.

This lucky find meant that for the actual Jubilee I was able to sit on the lawn eating scones with jam and clotted cream and drinking PG Tips out of a proper Diamond Jubilee mug. Brilliant!

The Week in Review.

The Good : Doc C is having the best week ever, professionally speaking, and has got papers accepted by two of the top journals in his field. My husband is a philosophical rock star.

The Bad : Nancy Wake-Cat was named after the WWII heroine Nancy Wake, and I was very sorry to read about her death at 98 this week. The White Mouse was an incredible woman. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/08/nancy-wake-white-mouse-gestapo)

The Ugly : Following my minor surgery for further mole removal I've posted a photo of my potential scars on Flickr! Yay!

To Much Historical Accuracy in Fiction.

One of my previous jobs was Archival Footage Sales officer for the British Film Institute, so I'm always interested when I spot an obvious archival clip in a film. Today I watched a truly bizarre Bela Lugosi film called "The Phantom Creepa" (1939), and when the villain, hammily played by Lugosi, was making a bid for freedom in a bi-plane (piloted by his heavily accented henchman, naturally)it was interesting to note that the damage he caused by dropping test tube bombs was documentary footage.

In fact one of the things he destroyed was the Hindenberg, but it wasn't mentioned as a plot point later so I don't think the film makers intended for the villain to be specifically guilty of the that particular disaster; it was more like they just thought the footage looked, well, cool.

It was actually sort of horrifying, because really how callous is that? Imagine going to the cinema to see a cheesy action flick and seeing news footage from, say, the earthquake in Spain spliced in instead of shelling out for CGI? To be fair, the height of the special effects used was a ray-gun that shoots what was clearly scratches made directly on to the negative. Now that is low-tech ingenuity!

Death of an Extremist.

I meant to write another post yesterday about the execution of Osama Bin Laden, but I don't really know that I have anything to say on the matter that would provide much insight. Doc and I were pretty much asleep when the announcement was made, I say pretty much because I was just in the dozy stages of dropping off when Doc's phone rang and it was his brother calling to to pass on the news. I always seem to be half-asleep when this type of news breaks, so it feels unreal to me until I've seen a fully fledged newspaper report or a post on the BBC website.

There are many implications to Bin Laden's death, and I don't mean to trivialise any of it with comparisons to cheesy action movies and revisionist historical fiction; having said that I do have a BA (hons) in film studies, so naturally I think it's interesting to contextualise events given the cultural values that popular entertainment engenders in it's audience. You can do the same thing with the Royal Wedding and the current vogue for Princess role-playing that small girls are encouraged to revel in, in fact this entire weekend has been fascinating from a culturally analytic viewpoint.

Even with an admittedly inattentive knowledge of world politics it appears to me to be over-simplistic that the death of one man will solve a legion of political problems and heal ideological rifts. The jubilant reaction to the news (I've been told that fireworks were let off down town, and I've seen a YouTube video of hundreds of our students singing the Star Spangled Banner whilst waving flags in the atrium of the library) brought to mind a Schwarzenegger or Stallone movie from the 80's, where one bullet can save the day and sometimes even the world.

Given all the many fantasy histories in which Hitler is killed and the Third Reich is therefore stopped before it can perpetrate more horrors, is it really so surprising that the reaction of many people to the death of a man, who was often presented as a Hitler-like figure, is euphoria? That is really what I think this frenzy of joy is mostly about, it's a reaction to the type of closure that we only usually get from fiction where we see the crime solved, or the crisis averted, or the dictator toppled; and it's satisfying to get that type of closure in a real news story because it is actually so very rare. 

World History and It's Effects On Knitting.

As you may have gathered from the photo illustration for today, I've been doing some knitting over the holidays.  To be precise, I think I've added 4 diamonds in length to the scarf which I've been working on for... Oh... Three months now... To be fair to both the scarf itself and my own knitting ability, this hasn't been my primary project at any point over those months and it is the first intarsia pattern I've tried and, let's not forget it's double-sided, so really it's twice as long.  Sort of.

Anyway, the most exciting knitting development whilst in Boston was that I bought another knitting book, and was persuaded by it's glowing accounts of the high speeds that were achievable by knitting according to the Continental method. The main difference is you hold the yarn in your left hand instead of your right, so both hands do an equal amount of work and there are fewer steps involved in each stitch.

According to this entry on Wikipedia the Continental style fell out of popularity in the UK and America around World War II because of it's associations with Germany, which I find very odd.  I understand not wanting to look unpatriotic during a war, but why switch to a less efficient method of knitting just when it seems likely you'll have less time to waste when producing very necessary items of warm clothing?  It's most peculiar to think that a change in the way people knit was a lasting effect of the Second World War, but then this could easily be an urban knitting legend don't you think?  How on earth would one go about researching such a thing anyway?  Fascinating!

Dinner and a Movie.

It's Sunday.  

I have eaten my dinner, which included the first smores of the summer, and now we are settling down to watch "All The President's Men".

This is made slightly problematic because of the seventies sound (which won an Academy Award, that seems a little ironic), so Redford and Hoffman are having difficulty competing with the dishwasher in our kitchen despite the TV being wired through our stereo for the best possible audio quality.  Marry a former sound engineer and you too can hear a pin drop on any reality show you fancy.

Still, it has been a very pleasant evening.

Election 2010.

The results of the UK election have started to come in, and I can hardly bear to look.  I found out far too late that I can actually register from the US for a postal vote, but it involves tracking down a fellow Brit and so I only discovered this when I was asked to vouch for someone else as a matter of looming deadline urgency.  This means that I haven't voted this time, but next time I will!  

One of the things about learning about the Suffragettes at an all girl school is that there was a classroom wide feeling of indignation at the idea that women were once considered incapable to wield a political vote, it makes quite an impression on a pre-teen.

My main hope for this election is that the Tories don't get in, not that I'm mad keen on Labour right now; either way Doc will tease me about having a less cool leader of state than the US does.  In any event it looks as though Brighton Pavilion has elected an MP from the Green Party, which is really good news.

"Keep Calm and Carry On" - Black and Gold.

Last week I found a company on-line selling framed prints of "Keep Calm and Carry On" in a wide variety of colours for $20.

I'd already been thinking about getting a framed print  for my office, because it is a particularly great motto for highly-strung students to bear in mind in moments of stress.  Not to mention staff in an office that deal with highly-strung students in moments of high stress...

This particular colourway choose itself really; black-and-gold are the University's colors.

The print arrived this morning and I hung it up on a nail that happens to be protruding from the wall above my shelves.  It's not it's intended permanent position on the wall, It's going to be centered on the feature wall, but I just had to see how it looked against the stone!

I rather like it.

Get Excited and Make Things.

Making stuff is one of my favourite things, so naturally I love this version of the "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster.

Even better, the designer Matt Jones is happy for this image to be used for non-commercial purposes under a creative commons licence. He's put several different downloadable formats up on his blog, and also has links to sites that are selling t-shirts and prints to raise money for some great causes.

Jens Of The World Unite!

You know how there are trends in baby names, and there are noticeable fashions and trends?   I am personally aware of this because I'm called Jen and so are thousands of other women.  This has lead, at different points in my Jen career, to the only two real nicknames I've ever been given - "The Bond Blonde" and "Frank".

This is clearly because Jennifer, and variations of Jennifer, has been a very popular girls name for decades. Look, I have facts to back this up:

Popularity. (Data relate to England and Wales) Although no longer in the top ten girls' names, Jennifer is one of only seven names to have been in the top hundred every year between 1944 and 1994, the others being Sarah, Elizabeth, Catherine, Heather, Helen and Maria. The ten year rankings are:

	1994	1984	1974	1964	1954	1944
Jennifer	Rank: 42 (1 in 214)	Rank: 11 (1 in 67)	Rank: 34 (1 in 147)	Rank: 45 (1 in 162)	Rank: 23 (1 in 109)	Rank: 18 (1 in 66)
Source: First Names. The Definitive Guide to Popular Names in England and Wales 1944-1994, and in the Regions 1994 by Emma Merry with support from Kay Callaghan and Chris Cotton. HMSO, London. 1995

Fascinating, right?

This has a particularly satisfying knock-on effect, which is that listed on the International Rollergirl's Master Roster there are some fantastic Roller Derby sobriquets for Jens, Jennies, Jennifers and Jennys.  It's hard to chose a favourite, but I really like Jenniferocious, because it's the only one that uses Jennifer in it's entirety, but I also really like Jen X, because it's punchy.

And now we've segued over to Roller Derby, yes, I am SO looking forward to Drew Barrymore's directorial debut "Whip It".  I cannot wait!

Alan Turing Gets His Apology.

I was at work this afternoon when Stephen Fry mentioned on his Twitter feed that there was breaking news about the petition for Alan Turing's official apology.

SO naturally I skipped over to http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page20571 and there was a statement from Prime Minister Gordon Brown saying the treatment of Turing had been appalling, and he actually said sorry.

Go Gordon!  That was nicely done sir.

You can read the whole statement after the break.

Turing.

Alan Turing.

He's synonymous with Bletchley Park and the breaking of the Enigma code that ultimately secured the Allies' victory in WWII.  To give you an every day example of the effect his work still has in the modern world, when you leave comments on a blog you might be asked to complete a CAPTCHA, that is when the site displays a distorted word and asks you to re-type it.  This is based on the Turing Test for artificial intelligence.

Turing was also gay, and in 1952 he was convicted for that.  As though this wasn't humiliating enough, he was chemically castrated and also had his security clearance removed, meaning he could no longer work on cryptoanalysis for British Intelligence.  A man who had been instrumental in code breaking in the fight against fascism was suddenly deemed an unacceptable security risk because of his sexual orientation.  Don't Ask, Don't Tell indeed.

Two years later Turing died of cyanide poisoning, and it was likely suicide.

If you want to learn more about him you can read the Wikipedia page about him, or watch the BBC production of "Breaking the Code" which Derek Jacobi is amazing in by the way, or there are websites dedicated to him.

Mainly though I think you should sign the Turing Petition, which asks that the British Government issue an apology for the prosecution that many people believe lead to his death.

I think Alan Turing should really have that apology, even if it is 55 years too late.

Back to School: Weirdly Yay!

I LOVED my first Eng. Lit. MA class last night.  It was really interesting and my brain was engaged by the discussion.  I know this because when I woke up this morning it wasn't my usual internal monologue of "Ugh! Work!  I really don't feel like it today.  **yawn** " (Nothing against my office it's just I'd prefer to be independently wealthy and spend my days wafting between Cinemas, bookshops & Pilates classes, when I'm not lunching with friends or sleeping), instead I found that I was thinking "Ooh! I wonder if that could also be tied in to perceptions of class structure in 17th Century England?  That would be interesting to do some more research into, hmmm..."

It's just really nice to be learning stuff again, although now I've seen David's syllabus and grading policy I am more nervous about disappointing him.  I really need to buy all of the books on the reading list and just highlight the hell out of them.

I Survived Tonsillitis. Again.

Tonsillitis (American Translation: Strep Throat) is my Achille's heel and I suppose I've got quite blase about it now.  It's horrible knowing I'll be croaky and exhausted for about three days, but if I get plenty of sleep, drink lots of warm drinks and watch really formulaic detective shows, I'll feel better quickly.

Right on schedule I'm pretty much over my tonsillitis from last week, but one of the problems with having a boss with a medical degree is once I'm back in the office she can explain to me exactly what the problem was and why that can sometimes be really dangerous.  Now the BBC News website have piled on the historical paranoia with recent research which speculates that Mozart died of complications from a sore throat.  I mean, really!  That timing is uncanny!  I still have a slight sore throat and the usual post-illness ennui, so this is not what I need to be reading. 

Mind you I also just started "The Virgin Suicides" and we watched "The Wrestler" at the weekend, so right now what I really need is for cartoon kittens to be streamed into my cerebral cortex, preferably to the soundtrack of a new Ok Go album featuring guest appearances by Kylie Minogue, Tim Curry and Dusty Springfield.

That would be really rocking now I think of it.

Agatha: Novel (1978), Film (1979).

When I was 9 I suddenly developed a taste for Agatha Christie novels.  I'm fairly certain the first one I owned was "At Bertram's Hotel", but I don't remember if I got that before or after seeing the BBC adaptations of the Miss Marple stories.  I could still hum you that theme tune, and for me Joan Hickson is the definitive Marple.

I must have been about 12 when the film "Agatha" (1979) was shown on TV, but I was thrilled to be allowed to stay up and watch it with my parents because I was fascinated by Agatha Christie's 11 day disappearance in 1926, which she never really gave a proper explanation for.  Dad teased me that there was bound to be a sex scene in the film because it starred Vanessa Redgrave and Dustin Hoffman, and, as I was a very pure minded 12 year old, the mere suggestion was completely outrageous to me!  I don't actually remember much about the film now, except for the main plot twist, and it being the main reason I developed a distaste for Timothy Dalton that I've never quite got over.  He's probably very nice in real life, but as Archie Christie he was a cad and a bounder so I could never buy into him being a romantic lead after this.

Last week I spotted the book that the film was based on.  It was published two years after Agatha's death, so she didn't have a chance to respond to the solution posed by Kathleen Tynan.  I'm only on chapter three, so she's only just vanished mysteriously and there isn't any indication of where she might have gone.

The art work on this is particularly 70's film tie-in, isn't it?  Hideous, yet intriguing.  Those are great portraits of Redgrave and Hoffman, but it's a weirdly composed image and I have no idea why they are peering off in different directions through wet glass.  I'm pretty sure that doesn't end up being a plot point, but I could be wrong there.

Smoggy Old London.

In the comments of my last fascinating post on the weather, Miss Joules (Hello!) mentioned that when she tried telling her family in America that "...England gets only a bit more rain than they do, only they get it over three weeks instead of three days, but their preconceived notions are stronger than my factual information."

OMG!  I know exactly what you mean!

Have you ever tried telling an American that London is not foggy?  They will look at you as though you are pathological liar.  They have seen Sherlock Holmes movies, thank you very much, which means they are well aware that London is foggy, so why would I say any different?  Well, because London really does not get "Pea Soupers" any more.  The thing is that actually what London used to get is smog, and  there is much less coal smoke in London, which means that you don't get the same impenetrable fogs in contemporary London. Sorry, I know that is slightly less romantic but it's also a lot better for your health, so there is that.

When I started writing this post I was intending to include a finale in the form of a hilarious anecdote about my lovely Mother-in-Law, but it has been vetoed by Doc C.  This leaves me without a big finish to this post, but trust me it was comedy gold.

A Most Varied Saturday.

 This morning when I came down to feed the cats I immediately noticed that the cat tower had been knocked over, because I am perceptive like that.  What I don't understand is how the thing fell on it's side without waking me or The Doc up.  I mean it's pretty big, wouldn't it have made some noise?

Anyway, then Doc made me crumpets for breakfast.  This time I had jam on mine.  It was nice.

Then we went food shopping and on the way we stopped off at the pet shop.  We wanted a food container, but they had none in stock.  However they did have cat harnesses and leads.  More of that later...

On the way to the supermarket we were walking passed a small bookshop and I spotted Tori Spelling's autobiography "Stori Telling" on the sale table.  It is now mine.  It turned out that it was actually a bookshop, newsagents and cigar shop.  We browsed the magazines, and Doc asked me who the little old lady sitting outside was doing out there; on the way in I'd seen that she had a stack of books and a sign saying she was doing a signing.  Doc went back outside to chat with her, whilst I was asking about the empty cigar boxes they had on top of the shelves.  It turned out they were all for sale, and I have found a fantastic square box with a open front to it for $3.  I have no idea what I'll do with it, but it just looks really useful for something.  When I went back out, Doc had decided to buy two books from the author outside, she was a Russian emigre who had moved to the US when she was 8.  Her first book was about that experience, and the second book was a collection of the letters she and her husband wrote to each other before they married.  Doc asked her to sign the second book and bought it for me; she also gave him a copy of her husband's poetry, I think just because he was interested in it.

After doing the food shopping we came home, and put the harness on the cats one at a time.  They had no idea what the hell was going on, and as you can see Nancy looked particularly comfortable in it.  Poor Nance liked the going outside part, but hated the harness, so she kept walking backwards to try and get out of it.  Edith mainly just rolled around on the front path.

Then I came back in for my movie marathon.  "I Married A Monster from Outer Space" was fun, Doc went so far as to say it was "Rocking", mainly because of the surprisingly good special effects and some good solid performances.  As planned I then watched "Cheaper by the Dozen" which Doc wasn't interested in, so he cooked and just caught the odd scene.  Straight after that on TCM was "Funny Girl" OMG!  Doc lasted about 15 minutes before declaring he had enough.  I can't think why.  I mean I'm not a huge Barbra fan, but her early movie career was pretty good, so I watched the start and end around the "Ashes to Ashes" finale.  It was a very good evening for film and TV.

Oh, That picture in the bottom left hand corner?  That would be Edith killing her crinkly shiny ball toy, because I think it's hilarious when she does that.  She takes it so seriously!

Was Philadelphia's Gravity Different in the Late 1700's?

I am a big fan of Picnik, today I thought I'd see what treasures the fancy collage package has and I found the perfect backdrop for my photos of The Signer.

This statue commemorates the signing of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, but it is not of one specific person.  Bearing that in mind, and with all due respect to those makers of history, I would love to know how the man depicted here is intending to sign the thing?  For one thing he's going to get ink all over his sleeve if he is not careful.

The Gay Rights History of Philadelphia.

On our way to get our breakfast Dunkin' Donuts on the last morning in Philadelphia, we noticed a historical marker which marked the Gay Rights demonstrations that took place in Philadelphia in the 1960s.

Naturally I had to take several photos, and this shot with the blue sky and the lens flare from the sun is my favourite.

This may well be the best historical marker I've ever seen.

Philadelphia: We Take Our Leave.

We will be leaving this morning to head back to North Carolina.  I've had a lovely time, and Doc C seems to have found the conference useful.  It's a pity he won't get the chance to explore Philadelphia, but I promised that we could go to Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast (and, by the way, despite walking past a Dunkin' Donuts roughly every 50 metres, I have yet to eat a delicious morsel of sugary pastry.  I have been remarkably restrained.)

Philadelphia has been fun, and I recommend it to anyone who is starved for retail therapy outlets.  Thank goodness we visited just after pay day.  Usually I'd have visited more museums and art galleries, but I found that just walking around a big city with some beautiful architecture, jostling with run-down businesses and new construction sites was really quite fascinating.  I walked past the Liberty Bell every day, and I saw Betsy Ross' house too but I really didn't feel the need to study them in great detail on this occasion, it was just lovely to casually walk past history again.  It was like being in London and spotting a blue plaque that you can't quite read as you go past it on the bus, but it's still nice to know that it means something interesting happened on that location.

By the way, I have pre-posted a picture post which should come up this evening, and I will probably post or twitter when we get home just so you know I got back in one piece.  I know how you worry.

Philadephia: View From Our Hotel Window.

I don't know what those buildings are, but I'm sure I can find out. (Post Script: The building on the right is Custom House, and the structure on the left is clearly a large bridge)

Although, to be honest, right now I am more interested in why it always stops raining only after you've got drenched, and then decided to spend the rest of the afternoon with police dramas, a cup of coffee and a face pack?

Does Anyone Know When I'm I Legally Required to Start Talking Like Katherine Hepburn?

Ok, so Doc has finished messing around on the laptop and looking up his silly conference stuff, so I'm back now to give you a longer post.

Now usually I would just have cobbled something together on the iPod, and then gone back into the post from the laptop to edit if necessary.  I can't do that though because the hotel doesn't have wi-fi.  I know.  We actually have been forced to connect the computer to the internet via a cable.  What is this?  The dark ages?  It's just barbaric.

True, the room is comfortable, there will be a free breakfast tomorrow and they do serve complimentary afternoon tea with cookies every afternoon at four, but if we can get wi-fi three thousand feet up a mountain in a place that doesn't even have a Starbucks for crying out loud (which is good, I know, Starbucks are corporate bullies blah blah blah) then I really do not know what Philadelphia's excuse is.

Anyway, the main problem is that without wi-fi I can't use my iPod to blog, or Twitter, or check my e-mail, or the weather, or look at maps, or breathe.  I've set up my Twitter account so that I can send updates to it from my mobile phone, and I will just have to wrestle the laptop from Doc C occasionally to blog, because I am not going to drop the Nablopomo ball now just because I'm on a city break.  You don't get me that easily Philadelphia!  This is one British woman that you shall not defeat, whatever your history books may lead you to believe!

By the way, because of the difficulties of being a vegetarian when on a road trip, today I have eaten carbs pretty much exclusively, which also happened to involve a fair amount of sugar and caffeine.  Can you tell?

Keep Crocheting and Carry On.

The Green Queen's tour of Doc's office naturally included the iconic "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster.

Which, in case you were wondering, is the banner on my mobile phone's home screen.  It's a good message to read every now and then.

Inauguration Day.

I am watching the Inauguration on-line, via the BBC website, purely because I can't get any of the others to open I think they are totally overloaded with viewers.  As it is the sound is really good, but the pictures are timing out like mad.

Still it's pretty impressive, I can watch/listen to history being made at work, and blog about it at the same time.

*Update*  I worked out that if I used the pop out viewer that it streams a lot better, so I saw the whole inauguration and President Obama's first speech.  Hoorah!

Three Men on a Blog.

When writing a blog you also tend to be a regular reader of other blogs, and then you tend to find yourself experiencing post envy.  Sometimes the blog you are reading is about a lifestyle that you wish you had, but more usually the envious reaction is triggered by a nicely turned phrase, or a particularly good observation, an excellent joke or even just a well chosen subject.

The reading blogger then thinks to themselves "Damn it!  I noticed [...Fill in suitably fascinating observation here...] too, but did I write about it?  No!  I wrote a post about how my cat chatters at the birds when they land on the bird feeder, as if no other cat has ever exhibited this behavior!"

To add to my feelings of blog envy, I have recently been reading "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" by Jerome K. Jerome.  It is a damned shame that man died in 1927, because that necessarily means he couldn't have even considered the possibility of the existence of blogs, and yet, I firmly believe, he would have been a phenomenal blogger.

It's quite something to be envying the blogging capabilities of a man who has been dead for over 80 years, especially as you'd think observational comedy from 103 years ago would lose a little something, but it is still hilarious.  Not to mention free to download from the Guttenberg Project (if you are in the USA, if in other countries your copyright laws may vary), which is another distinct point in it's favour.

Enchanted April (Book 1922, Film 1992)

This morning I woke up wanting to read "Enchanted April" a 1922 novel by Elizabeth von Arnim.  It's quite charming, and occaisionally I just feel like reading about terribly nice upper middle class ladies (and a minor member of the aristocracy, who is slumming it), in the 1920s, swanning off to Italian villa for a month and finding that it solves all of their problems.  Because wouldn't it just?  It's one of those stories that's very much of it's time and class, so I'm sure any hard-core socialists would hate it, but, if that doesn't bother you unduly, it's a nice light read.  Not a lot really happens; except everyone starts off sad and ends up happy.

I first became aware of it when I saw the film adaptation, which is perfectly cast and beautifully shot.  If you haven't seen it I have to say it's a very sweet film that you could safely watch with your grandparents (bearing in mind my socialist caveat) and feel a lot more relaxed by the end of it.  I didn't read it until a few years later when I found a second hand copy from the book stall by Brighton Pier (Oh, I miss Brighton!)

Maybe it's because Christmas is over and I have to be back at work tomorrow, and the weather forcast is grey for the next few weeks, but I really feel like reading descriptions of gorgeous Italian gardens, and a plot that revolves around the premise that being a little bit of selfish pampering of yourself can be a very good thing for everyone around you, because it makes you happier and therefore more pleasant.

So I glanced at my bookshelf and immediately I knew that that particular book wasn't here; because, as an ex-bookseller, I tend to memorise the spine of books for ease of location, and there were no tall dark green ones on my shelf.  I think it must be in the attic at Mum's house (Mum, find and read it!  You'll like it!)

Rats!

I mentioned my book sadness to Doc C and he asked if I'd tried to find it vfor the iPod.  Which I hadn't thought to do.  So I went to Project Guttenberg, via the iPod Bookz app, and there it was!  Yay!  Wisteria and sunshine will be mine after all!

Crackers.

Last night we went to the local Thai restaurant to have dinner with friends from Doc C's department.  Usually at these sort of things it's only possibly to get a few people together at one time, but last night there was a great turn out and we had to keep adding tables to get enough seating.

Even better Kim and Jill had brought Christmas Crackers!  These are sufficiently unusual here that I had to explain how to use them; "Hold on to the end bits and pull! " I could have added to then put on the hat, read out the joke and commencing swapping the presents around, but everyone seemed to work that out for themselves.

It was really fun!  I got a pen, which I swapped with Doc for a little round purse, which then fitted Laura's silver yo-yo so perfectly that she insisted I have it.  So I did very well! 
I hadn't really tried to get crackers myself over here, only because it seemed so unlikely that I would find them, but they are one of the things that really make Christmas for me.

Funnily enough I was asked the other day what Christmas traditions my family had, and I said none. This was clearly disappointing to the person who asked me, I think she was expecting that I say we dress up in hoop skirts and bonnets to go caroling before midnight mass, but really we never did that.  Because we did not live in Dickensian England, mainly because that was over a hundred years ago and was, you know, fictional and stuff (end of rant). 
When I was a child Mum would decorate, we always had a lovely tree and then ate really well on Christmas day; but none of that was really what I'd call  a tradition.  It just seemed fun!

 Not being at home again for Christmas I have been determined to have some of the things I take for granted at Christmas in England, like mince pies; and whilst I may not be able to find a proper Christmas cake, I can now cross Crackers off the list.  Excellent!

Pre-Christmas Jaunt to Winston-Salem.

We went to Winston-Salem on Saturday, and we didn't leave our house until around two so we got there at about four.  Mainly we just wanted to wander around somewhere quiet and pretty, so Old Salem was exactly what we were after.  It's just lovely.

 I particularly like that many of the houses have electric candles in all of their windows.  That may sound tacky but the effect is really quite lovely.  It made me think of my Mum!

Fortunately there was some sort of special Christmassy event going on in ye olde Salem, so all the shops were open late.  Doc C found some quaint but not religious Christmas cards which he has sent to his family and we both enjoyed gawking a the shop full of kind of cool, but super expensive and very faux antique things.

We then went to Borders and went a bit crazy with the freedom of browsing books, CDs, games and cool stuff.  They had a reasonable range of Paperchase merchandise, which whilst it could not compare with the flag ship branch of Paperchase on Tottenhamcourt Road, was still very welcome.  I may have got a little bit misty.  I somehow resisted the black flock reindeer (which also wore feather boas and had a heavy sprinkling of glitter), but I did buy a black foot high fake Christmas tree and a box of the red and pink mini baubles.  It doesn't go with any of our house decorations, so I might have it on my desk for the rest of the semester.

I also bought three boxes of Paperchase Christmas cards, which I have spent so long deliberating over who gets which that I am pretty sure none of them will arrive on time.  But they are still super cute!  Damn it!

Remember, Remember...

In all the Obama fever I failed to mention Bonfire night yesterday.

One of the dorms decided to celebrate mainly as an excuse to bake scones (I didn't tell them that scones weren't really the traditional food stuff of the occasion), and I thought that was a great idea so they invited me along.  And then they asked to talk to a group of students about Guy Fawkes and why we still celebrate the 5th of November.  Which I agreed to do, and then didn't really think about until the morning when I stuffed my Union Jack T-shirt, Buckingham Palace Apron and a jar of Marmite into my bag.  The student who invited me encouraged me to just make some stuff u, and maybe even add in some spurious family connection, but I opted to wikipedia some data and then wing it.

That turned out to be a fairly good idea.  I think I may have been a little bit stream of consciousness about the whole thing, covering religious intolerance, ye olde Tudor torture methods and the fondly remembered indoor fire works of my childhood all in about 10 minutes at most.  I finished off by describing the Lewes celebrations, and saying that the reason I thought it was still such an important holiday was that it was just really fun to watch fire works.

Afterwards I got the students to smell the Marmite and some of them even tasted it, and that was when I discovered that two of them were British themselves.  So I am so glad I didn't spout total nonsense, because that would have been SO embarrassing in front of fellows Brits.

There really wasn't anything for me to take a picture of, so here is a completely unrelated picture of Nancy looking cute.  She is looking a lot better since our last visit to the Vet!

Ngaio Marsh 23: Dead Water

I quite like this one; it's a great shade of blue with nice creamy yellow leattering and a very atmospheric bit of cover art.

My only minor quibble is that this design has been styled to look very thirties, where as this book was written in 1964.  As I've mentioned before where Ngaio Marsh succeeds brilliantly where, I would argue, Agatha Christie fails, is that Marsh is quite brilliant at keeping her plots up to date and full of contemporary detail.  This juxtaposition of cover and content could be very confusing to a new reader expecting a classic thirties drawing room whodunnit and getting a mid-sixties description of conflict in a small village.

Ngaio Marsh 20: Singing in the Shrouds.

So this is the cover that should have been on "Spinsters in Jeopardy", and the blurriness of the photo is nicely atmospheric I think.  It also has one of Miss Marsh's most enigmatic dedications; what looks to be a hand drawn triple X.

(Limited SPOILERS from this point - Killer not revealed.)

This book really encapsulates what I like about Ngaio Marsh mysteries (This particular plot is set in the ultimate in remote and secluded settings, a cruise ship), with one of the aspects of her writing that I find most difficult to read and almost impossible to defend:  blatant homophobia.  Several times in her books she has secondary characters who she specifically indicates are gay, and they are always described as having almost no redeeming features.  In this title a gay character is killed in a case of mistaken identity, and it's actually received as good news by the other characters when this plot twist is finally revealed.  I fully understand that an unpleasant side effect of reading vintage fiction is that it will necessarily feature vintage prejudices; however Miss Marsh was heavily involved in theatre and there is no way on earth that you are telling me that she didn't have contact with gay men and women in that sphere of her experience if in no other.  Of course another possibility is that she was gay herself, and is expressing her self-loathing through her work; but really homophobia is an ugly, ugly thing no matter what the reason for it.

So, I have issues with this one.

Humming Birds and Halloween Fripperies.

The weather has been behaving itself beautifully (knock on wood) and we've had some nice bright sunny days.  Jason has been enjoying sitting out on our deck and watching the hummingbirds putting on their aerial displays.

After work today Doc C and I came home to have a cup of tea, and then took Jason into town to see all the Halloween stuff that's on sale.  We went to Kmart first of all and explored all the Halloween themed baking goods, candy and costumes.  Then we went over the Lowes hardware which has a great life size animatronic witch (stirring a bubbling cauldron) and some utterly ridiculous inflatables, but unfortunately the life-size mummy (with moving eyes, that mumbles at you when you move too close to it) had already been sold.

Tomorrow I still need to be in the office, but then I can take Thursday and Friday off so Jason and I are going to explore our town and the next town over.  Then on Saturday we'll see if we feel like exploring further afield on a day trip, before we take Jason to the airport on Sunday afternoon. 

Heave-Ho Me Hearties!

Scurvy curses!  Yesterday was International Speak Like A Pirate Day, and I didn't know until it was way too late.  Why does no-one tell me these things?  I love a good "Yarrr!"

Of course if I did speak like a pirate round here people would probably just assume it was some quaint English phrase they'd not heard before.  This was something I realised the other day when I got tongue tied in the middle of a sentence, and as a result completely mangled a perfectly normal expression; later in the conversation the person I was talking to then repeated the phrase exactly as I had said it, clearly under the impression that was the British way of putting it.  I managed not to laugh, but how funny would it be to convince people that Pirate speak is in fact just the way people talk in South London?  It is SO tempting!

Ngaio Marsh 12: Colour Scheme.

Is it not ironic that this cover has such a limited palette when it is for a book called "Colour Scheme"?  It also feels very nineties to me, in that it wants to have it's cake and eat it too by bunging a melodramatic cover illustration (which seems to have been nicked from a poster for a low budget zombie film) into a very stylised cover design.  Just pick one, and go with it!  Jeez!

This was written in 1943, and it's a great example of one of the things I find fascinating about the Queens of Crime; which is how they observed and recorded the period of history proceeding, during and following the Second World War.  Marsh set the majority of her mysteries in London, but clearly couldn't travel to the UK to do the necessary research during the war, her ingenious solution is to have Alleyn doing undercover secret service work in New Zealand.  It makes no sense that he would be doing that if you think about it for any period of time, but it is a very nifty fix to Marsh's real life problem. 

One other thing I would note is that this happened to be the first Ngaio Marsh mystery that I read when I was still at school, and I didn't like it at all.  Fortunately I completely forgot about it until I re-read it, having then read some other Alleyn mysteries.  Once you are familiar with Alleyn it is fascinating to see him out of context, but it's not the ideal book to kick off with.

Flags.

 

Today the Quad at the center of the university campus was covered with hundreds of miniature American flags.

Photo Opp.

Today Doc C came up with a three point plan for the day, which I was free to pick and choose activities from.  I turned down the chance to put air in the tyres, and get a new gas tank for the grill, but I accepted the invitation to go for a walk to Linville Falls and see a lovely waterfall.

It was only a half mile stroll, and it was through a very pretty forest.  I enjoyed all of that, and the falls itself were quite lovely.  When we got there Doc asked if I had my camera, which I always do, and suggested I take some photos.  I took a couple of the river and the falls, then a few of the Doc in front of the falls.  Then Doc took the camera and got me to pose for a photo, he took two and then handed me the camera.

I deleted those pictures, and handed the camera back whilst correcting my posture, and re-adjusting my t-shirt so that it didn't cling exactly where I didn't want it too.  He took two more, handed back the camera and turned to leave.  I deleted those pictures too, and gave him the camera for a third time, then I very clearly explained how I needed to be framed, so as to avoid us being there all freaking day.  Essentially I wanted a shot from the shoulders up please.

Honestly I don't hate having my photo taken (not that I'm about to post any here to prove that!), but I do object to Doc C taking a photo of me in an unflattering pose, and not telling me that I need to straighten up, or raise my chin slightly.  Anyway, I simply art directed myself based on the photos I deleted, and we ended up with a single shot that I didn't absolutely hate.  As I believe I said yesterday, I am my mother's daughter in many many ways, but I don't seem to have inherited my great grandmother's fondness for portraiture, we have some amazing photos of her posed in some fabulous fancy-dress outfits from the twenties (I think).  Hmmm...  Maybe if I had an art deco head dress, or a pet dove I'd reconsider...

The Hope Diamond.

This is the Hope Diamond. 

It is very big and shiny.

The crowd to see this at the Smithsonian was enormous.  It's displayed in a four-sided glass display case, and the plinth it's on revolves; stopping for ten seconds at each side to accommodate photography.

Which you have to admit is very thoughtful, especially for a diamond with a curse on it.

Washington 10 - Bullet Point Number Five.

We had a difficult choice between the Museum of Crime and Punishment (which has a CSI crime scene to investigate!) or The International Spy Museum.

We went for the International Spy Museum, and it definitely has the potential to be really fun, but there were too many people in there when we went.  It's odd because to get into the museum you have to get into a lift (American translation: Elevator) in small groups, so presumeably it would be fairly simple for the museum staff to control the flow of visitors very easily,  Given that, I don't really understand why they allow it to be such a scrum. 

Somewhat ironically most of the visitors to the museum on that day would make terrible spies, because they were totally unaware of the people around them.  At one point in the museum you could crawl through a mocked up air duct that looked out over a room in the museum, so you could see other visitors through a grill.  This was made apparent by people in the air duct thumping on the sides to get the attention of the people in the room below them.  Hello?  Does the word "covert" mean nothing to you people?

It was a fun museum though, they have some really cool exhibits and they have done a really fantastic job on the displays.  The recreations of rooms, street corners, and tunnels are especially atmospheric and impressive.  I would recommend going, but perhaps mid-week when there would be a lot fewer people.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity-Jog.

We are safely back in NC, enjoying the deafening sound of crickets and their insect friends.  The 24 hour traffic of Capital Hill was distinctly quieter.

Remind me to tell you about:

1. How brilliant the new Diana Wynne Jones book, "House of Many Ways" is.
2. The Ethiopian restaurant we went to on Saturday night.
3. Why pavements (US translation: Sidewalks) are A Very Good Thing.
4. The amazing brunch we had on Sunday that involved both crab cakes and oysters.  Yum!
5. The International Spy Museum.
6. How we came to realise that Doc C really does have far too many siblings.
7. Why a good curry is just the best thing ever.
8. The foresight of BMW to provide little plastic valet keys.
9. Georgetown, and how nice it was to find a Lush, an American Eagle Outfitters and a Barnes and Noble within walking distance of one another.
10. Which shop Doc C describes as have the type of clothing that "...Frat boys would think of as witty".

There is other stuff as well, but those ten will do to be going on with.  It was a very fun trip!

A Saturday in Washington.

My feet are aching.  It was such a fun day, if a little too blazing hot for me.

We left the hotel at about 10.30, and we haven't stopped since.  We've been walking everywhere, past the White House, past the Treasury, through the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, through two art galleries and a sculpture garden, before finally investigating every square inch of H&M (We needed new clothes for work, we now have them).

I took the most photos at the Smithsonian, because they allowed photography and they had so many interesting things.  The moment we walked in I was immediately impressed by the Easter Island Figure they have just sitting in the Constitution Avenue entrance lobby.  I have always been fascinated by those statues, and this is the only one in America.  Inevitably I have a new Facebook profile picture with my stone-faced buddy.

I also fought through crowds to take a few shots in the Harry Winstone gem gallery, why hello there Star of India and Hope Diamond!  

Surprisingly it wasn't the gem room that I got completely snap happy in, mainly because there were just too many people in the way; in fact I took the most pictues in the skeleton exhibition.  I mean, who doesn't love skeletons?  Right?

Anyway, it's been a very exciting day.  I think I need a nap.

Stars and Stripes.

I'm not working today so we decided to go for a walk around one of the local lakes; at least that was the plan.  Unfortunately we couldn't park the car anywhere, because everyone else in North Carolina had decided to go for a picnic. 

So we ended up just driving around to see what our town and the next town over were doing today.  The answer was mainly displaying an impressively varied selection of American flags, or red, white and blue banners.

There are going to be a couple of big fireworks displays later, but I'm not sure if we will be going officially to either of them.  For one thing parking is going to be a nightmare, and for another there will be huge crowds of people, and I'm just not a happy bunny around huge crowds of people.  We are thinking about driving up to one of the overlooks on the parkway, and seeing what we can see from there instead. 

It's going to feel really odd watching fireworks on a warm night in the middle of summer.  I'm used to associating fireworks with bundling up warm on Bonfire Night in November and wondering where I can get a baked potato, or a hot drink.

Happy Birthday America!

Today is the Fourth of July, and it's my first one in America. 

I already had a fairly good idea of the history behind American Independence; you try being British and moving to America without being told chunks of it at really odd moments.  However my husband being the very thorough man that he is, Doc C prepared me further for this holiday by bumping "John Adams" up to the top of our Netflix queue.  

I can't pretend have been anywhere near as captivated by this as the Doc was, but it was a very good series, particularly as I do like Paul Giamatti and it was nice to see so many British actors in full American drag (David Morse as Washington gets a particularly fine prosthetic nose).  I was also pleased to see that, on this occasion, the British weren't being stereotyped as effete yet sadistic swines; we were merely wrong, which was a pleasant change of pace. 

As the series was fairly long there were three disks to go through, and also, for once, Doc wanted to watch almost all the features, so it has sort of felt like we've suddenly discovered the American Revolution Channel. 

All Wigs, All the Time!

Rah Rah Rasputin!

Monday night is pub night, but this evening the fine establishment we frequent had run out of my usual stout.  As an alternative our waitress brought me over a bottle of each of the two other stouts they serve, and my choice was immediately clear.

How on earth can you pass up a beverage called "Old Rasputin:  Russian Imperial Stout"?  It might just have been possible before I saw the label, but after having seen the artwork?  No, not possible.  I want the Mad Monk please.

For the record it was quite a decent drop of stout, I'd happily drink that again.

Alien Spouse Supports Gay Pride!

This weekend is Pride, and it will be our first Pride in North Carolina.  Bearing in mind last year we were working in Leicester Square, right behind the main stage and therefore utterly surrounded by the fabulousness that is London Pride, it's going to be very interesting to see how they do things round here.

There seems to be a lot going on and we are planning to attend some, but probably not all of the events.  There are quite a few that our friend Crys will be playing at, and we haven't heard her perform before, so we definitely want to catch that.

Our attendance will be to show our support for the local Gay community, naturally, but I really wish that I'd thought far enough ahead to have ordered myself a Pink Jack Flag in time.  Ah well, next year!

Genealogical Error.

I changed my surname when I was 18 because my Father and I Do Not Get On, to put it politely.  Alternatively one might say that he is a self-centered whiny excuse for a man and I disdain to be associated with him, which is simply another way to phrase it.  I haven't spoken to him in over fifteen years now, nor do I ever intend to again.

When I changed my name I spent a long time deliberating over it, and eventually chose a name that had a very vague connection to my Mother's family.  When I got married I felt strongly enough about that surname that I decided on double-barrelling it with the Doc's; because that name was mine, all mine, and it's been a large part of who I am for my entire adult life.

Recently The Doc's Dad told us his sister was putting together a family tree and we received our copy yesterday.  It's a ring bound book comprising of charts, reminiscences and some photos, and it goes back to Doc's Grandfather who was born in 1905.  

We sat down to have a look at it and when we turned to the page with Doc and my details on it, we found that Doc's place of birth was wrong and the date of our wedding was completely wrong too, it's not even the right year.  As the daughter of a genealogist (Hi Mum!), I have to say that is very shoddy work indeed, even for an amateur.  I mean if you can't accurately record an event that happened less then eighteen months ago, how can anyone be sure the rest of it is correct?

To cap it all off I am listed under my birth name (we think they got that from our wedding certificate, I hated having to put my Father's name on that!), and, to add insult to injury, it's been misspelled.  It was such a shock to see my old surname there, it was almost like being slapped.  To start with, that has not been my name legally for quite some time, I have paper work to prove it, and, even if it were, that is not how you spell it.

I found it surprisingly upsetting and frustrating, perhaps because I know Doc's family has never really got their heads around the double barrelling of my name and, if it's totally different to the one now listed in their copies of the family tree, they probably never will.

sigh.

Boston: Eating On The Road.

On the road trip we had the usual dilemma of what exactly is a vegetarian supposed to eat on the highways and byways of the US of A?

It's not easy, and it really comes to something when you are profoundly grateful for a McDonald's, even if you are totally sick of fillet of fish and they inexplicably have chosen to cover all of the salads in chicken.  Because chicken is now a vegetable?  I don't understand why they can't have one single solitary meatless salad, but there we are.  I expect it's that lack of vision that's holding me back from running a multi-million food conglomerate.

As a change of pace on the return run we stopped off at a Johnny Rockets.  They are a faux-fifties chain of burger joints, but despite the slightly punk name they favour the anodyne version of the fifties which fortunately includes 100% soy burgers.  This particular burger joint was located on the edge strip mall on a highway in the middle of nowhere, and frankly it could have done with a lick of paint.

All of the waitresses wear khaki trousers, hefty lace-up boots, white shirts with bow-ties, a full apron and one of those little hats.  This quite suited our waitress, Shannon; she seemed nice, looked about 12 years old and had an adorable face full of freckles.      

As part of her minimum wage job Shannon was required to do the following things:

• Show us the two foot from the door to our booth
• Prominently place two five-cent coins on our table for our own personal miniature juke box (which I don't believe actually was wired up to the sound system). 
• When serving our drinks she had to pick up the enormous straw dispenser that was sitting on our table, open it for us and brandish the straws in our face.
• When our food came she had to provide us with individual paper dishes for the ketchup, the dishes said "Hope You're Smilin' too!".  Shannon was politely stone-faced for the whole time we were there.
• She then had to draw a smiley face in the paper dishes with the ketchup.

The worst was yet to come.

Through out the meal fifties and sixties music was playing fairly unobtrusively in the background, but when "Love Shack" came on I barely had time to register that it was totally anachronistic (although otherwise utterly fabulous) eighties pastiche of sixties music before the volume was abruptly increased.  At first I thought maybe it was the chef's favourite song or something, but then I noticed the other patrons clapping and staring at a space by the counter.

I turned to see poor Shannon and another waitress doing the most lacklustre dance routine ever.  They were clearly mortified, and neither of them could manage even a fake smile.  I couldn't watch it fully, because I was blushing so furiously on their behalf.  On the other hand I felt obligated to occasionally turn and look, because I thought it might be even worse for them to have to dance and be ignored.

Shannon got quite a large tip from us, but I doubt it will pay for the crushing of her soul.

Men Choosing Home Furnishing Colours? The Very Idea Offends Me.

This sign is prominently displayed in the window of a local shop that sells blinds. 

I've noticed it several times, and decided I had to take a photograph because I find it so jaw dropping that an otherwise apparently professional place of business would chose to have a two foot high sign with this completely unprofessional message as a major part of it's shop frontage.

I could get into a whole tirade about the stereotypical assignment of supposedly traditional gender roles, right here, right now, but that seems a little seventies.

I'm guessing from the exclamation mark that it is intended to be humorous, but even giving it that, it's at best reminiscent of a punchline in a bad fifties comic strip.  I'm sort of surprised and, ok, a little disappointed, that the next window along doesn't have a similar mother-in-law gag in it.

Mid-Afternoon Snack.

My new favourite snack is a sliced apple, dipped in a teaspoon of peanut butter.  I got the idea from various different books on nutrition, and one breathless article about how Demi Moore stays looking so fabulous (Answer: She works damned hard at it, and has amazing self control when it comes to pastry).

Obviously it's an easy snack to prepare at home, but now I'm taking it in to work so I wanted to find away to stop the apple turning brown and manky looking. 

I turned to the font of all knowledge that is "Trade Secrets" (a brilliant book compiled from the equally brilliant BBC TV series of the same name) and found I could dunk the slices in a bowl of water with a squeeze of lemon, or a pinch of salt.  I thought I may as well use both, and it works really well.

Now I have a little Tupperware container full of tasty healthy goodness, and I therefore am not tempted by anything in the nearby vending machines of calorific doom.