Falldog

Herewith, a publicity pic for the new Tori Amos album:

Who let Nicola from Girls Aloud in?

Ten days and no update. Sorry. Neil is putting me to shame on his new blog, so I feel all the worse for it. If it’s any consolation, I’ve been up to loads of stuff – it’s just that none of it involves writing anything here. The third holiday video is (still) on its way, and there’ll hopefully be more to follow: they were really good fun to do, and I think I’d enjoy ‘videoblogging’ some more, more mundane stuff.

So what has been taking up my time? I’ve been to the cinema, out boozing, gaming, playing with novel plots and short stories, house-hunting, making Big Decisions about stuff, fighting with the cat over a footstool… The usual. I also mashed my finger in a door jamb (I love that word) two days ago, and typing is still difficult and slightly ouchy. But through it all, none of it has felt terribly worthy of blogging about. Except the finger. And I’ve just done that. Er.

I’ll try to write a bit more this week, and I’ll definitely get that video up soon. Promise.

*Crosses fingers.*

Lovely moment on Relocation, Relocation last night as Kirsty showed the local amenities to a buyer interested in the area:

Kirsty: You’ve got your post office over there, greengrocers there, there’s a butcher, a cafe that way, a Co-op over there…

Punter: So, it’s my one-stop shop!

There’s a French and Saunders sketch set in a magazine office that is fondly remembered by my friends – probably because lots of us work in publishing and/or are word-perfect F&S databanks. In the sketch, Dawn and Jennifer are busily compiling the contents of an issue of a typical Hello-style mag: Jean Boht’s hats, Timothy Dalton’s home decor, cakes by Jane Asher… Halfway through their work, Dawn has a funny turn and starts to doubt the seriousness of what they’re doing.

“It’s all so pointless,” she whimpers.

Jen soon snaps her out of it. They’ve got their Bride of the Year coming up, and that means something to someone. That’s someone’s special day.

I was just in a lift when someone barged in carrying a box of opened bottles of lots of different tomato ketchups. She had a face like thunder, ultra-serious, and very determined to get her ketchup to wherever it needed to be with the least amount of delay. She even tutted when other people had the temerity to get out at floors which weren’t her intended destination. Eventually, she barged her way back out, huffing and sighing, and practically sprinted down the corridor with her oh-so-urgent delivery.

This place is full of the kind of magazines spoofed in the F&S sketch, and it was clear that this woman’s urgent concern was… God help us… some sort of ketchup taste test. I shall repeat that: a tomato ketchup taste test. It couldn’t have been anything else! And here she was, wound up by it, struggling under its gravitas, behaving as if her cargo was the most important thing in the world.

I wanted to scream and scream and scream. Instead, I just moved on and went off for my peppermint tea.

The sooner this freelance stint ends, the better.

I’m sure there’s something special about it that makes it the perfect ingredient in an explosive, but did they have to say it was chapatti flour? That’s the comedy stylings of thousands of lagered-up louts in Indian restaurants sorted for months.

I, like much of the internet, have come to love pirates. So imagine my glee when, on a quiet evening telly-watching on our recent Florida trip, an episode of the truly histrionic US version of Wife Swap cropped up featuring the scurvy, um, dogs themselves.

As ever, one wife was a typically uptight WASP, with a love of organisation and a heartfelt belief that appearance is all. The other wife came from a family of pirates. Not real pirates, you understand. That would be strange… and wonderful. No, this was a family who (one suspected, mainly for the cameras) lived like cartoon pirates: all skull-and-crossbones hats, plastic cutlasses and ruffled velvet pantaloons.

Early on in the show, it was announced that Mr Pirate, John Baur, was the instigator of Talk Like a Pirate Day, and had written a book on ‘Pirattitude‘, or how to live your life like a pirate. He was a bit of a joke – but crucially, and this is where our highly-strung WASP fell down, he knew he was a bit silly. That aside, however, his thinking was built on some sound principles, and the differences between the pirates’ life and that of the WASPs was truly something to behold.

Mrs WASP got very hung up on the eldest pirates’ daughter’s use of the f-word. She was 16, too, so it’s surely not that surprising. John explained that he let his children run free and live life the way they wanted to because he wanted them to discover for themselves who they are and how they want to present themselves to the world. (”That’s what pirattitude is all about!” he would unhelpfully bark.)

“You’re messy, disorganised and wilful,” Mrs WASP told one of the daughters. “How do you expect to be a good wife and mother?”

Somewhat (rightly) shocked and appalled, the daughter replied, “But that’s not what I want to be! That’s not what I am!”

This concept was lost on Mrs WASP. (It was around this point in the show that I found myself suddenly and very deeply grateful to my own parents for, while (sadly) not being pirates, letting me live my life by my own rules, and supporting each and every one of my major decisions.) Mrs WASP wanted her own daughter to grow up to be just like her: pretty, slim, clean and tidy, and a good wife and mother. Horrifyingly, Mrs WASP Jr seemed to relish this hard outlining of her future.

In one of the programme’s more distressing moments, we saw how much the daughter had already picked up some of the highly-strung nature of her mum, as she was sent into a crying fit when she was told that she was no longer allowed to keep her room tidy. She was a mean little bitch to Mrs Pirate, too – she was only 12 or so, and I’ve rarely seen someone more quick to judge on looks alone. “You’re pretty,” she said to Mrs Pirate on her arrival, in a tone of voice that said, “Looks are the most important thing in the world to everyone, and I have now dazzled you with that compliment and so will have COMPLETE CONTROL OVER YOU!”

But it didn’t take long for the veneer to crack, and she proceeded to call Mrs Pirate smelly and rude and mean and what have you, and was unremittingly evil right through to the last minute. All of her behaviour was informed by an upsetting mix between the strains of her own crack-of-the-whip upbringing and her split-second, appearance-based judgements.

To see someone so young be so narrow-minded was terrible. Truly awful. But then again, one day, she will make a great wife to some emotionally unavailable bully (don’t get me started on Mr WASP…), and churn out plenty of screw-ups of her own. Job done, therefore, and slapped-backs all round.

Meanwhile, back in the pirates’ house, they finally learn that maybe putting things in boxes and hoovering once in a while might be a good thing. But, on Mrs WASP’s departure and the reunion of Mr and Mrs Pirate, we see how messy, and proper, and real their love and life is, and… well, I know which I’d rather have.

I know these programmes are very carefully engineered by their makers to make two extremes clash as noisily as possible, and so we should never take them as any reflection of reality, but seeing this show was the perfect punctuation to a week where I got some idea of how schizophrenic the US can be. From the rich-bitch mansions of Palm Beach to trailer trash on the outskirts of Orlando, Florida contains its own explosive extremes. It’s no wonder this is the state that was the source of much of the political problems the US has experienced over the last few years. That said, it is the country that brought us John Baur and Pirattitude and the perfect platform for showing up a shameful family of tightasses.

God bless America, indeed.

There’s one more holiday video to come, but I haven’t cobbled it together yet. Soon, soon – at which point, I’ll write more fully about what we agreed was one of the very best holidays we’ve ever had.

We were back in Blighty yesterday morning, and said goodbye to the whole of the day in a haze of jet lag. And today, I am back at the Longest Stint In Freelance History, grinding my teeth away, waiting for the next five weeks to whoosh by. Please.

Looking back at February, I had quite a busy month, none of which I wrote about here, though I fully intended to. There were concerts by Eddi Reader and Rufus Wainwright, there’s the Mika album’s slow takeover of my brain, there was a film… I think… though I can’t quite remember now if there was after all. Me and cinema: not the best of friends. Anyway, it will all return to me, and I shall spend the rest of this month writing about it, while jamming in quite a few other, new things.

It feels like spring is quietly springing, too, which is always a lovely feeling.

EDIT: It was Hot Fuzz.