Lightweight!

Apologies! Apologies! This is lightweight central recently and it probably isn't about to improve with this post.

I have decided to forgive Aunty Beeb for killing Guisbourne (YOU BASTARDS!) because they are giving the world another chance to appreciate the beauty of one of the screen's rising stars - Aidan Turner aka Mitchell in Being Human, the hottest vampire on the box since Spike in Buffy (sorry, Angel never really did it for me...)

The lovely Mr Turner will shortly be gracing our screens as Dante Gabriel Rossetti in Desperate Romantics. Set in and among the alleys, galleries and flesh-houses of 19th-century industrial London, this follows the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a vagabond group of English painters, poets and critics as they basically charm and screw their way into the history books. With a redhead as their muse! Makes this redhead very happy – we always need positive press. Also goes to prove that once again I was born out of time (though thankfully in an age of medication).

If I am ever unfortunate enough to have a boy child, that’s his name sorted. No more Guy or Aragorn: Dante Gabriel it is! Though given that these loins are no more likely to spawn man flesh than mermaids, he’ll probably have to remain confined to the more salacious corners of my imagination.

In other news, the reading campaign continues. I have just finished MFW Curran’s ‘The Secret War’ which I rather enjoyed. This is a first novel (I think) and occasionally shows it’s greenness with some very basic language, but it has a good tale to tell, with demons and warriors, set just after the Napoleonic Wars. The flow of the book really kicks in about halfway through and I’m looking out for the sequel as a good commuting pot-boiler.

I’m currently reading Jacqueline Carey’s ‘Santa Olivia’. I am a fan of Ms Carey’s Kushiel novels, which are off world fantasy written in the first person with a bit of a perverse kick to them. I’m not yet sure about this, which is on world future and written in the third person. I’m just coming up to the part where the protagonist gets going and it’s an interesting story, just not quite as fluently told as I expected. Still, I’ll keep going.

I’m listening to the Mummers, Bat for Lashes and La Roux respectively: it’s a bit of a girl thing going on here at Whitley central. I have also joined a writing club at Borders Books locally and have discovered that a new character called Cherry wishes to come out and mess with my head. She’s narrated by a bloke, but I can’t quite define who he is yet…she’s basically a force of nature leading him astray!

I’ve been having some perturbing dreams: last night I was twisting in pain when I realised my torso had been pierced with hundreds of suspension needles that were being pulled for other peoples’ pleasure. I’m pale: the blood was vivid, red against my ribs. I’m stealing this dream for Caitlin’s story, I’d been thinking about what she could have suffered at Cain’s hands for the next part of her story. The dream was beyond what my waking mind could conjure: why waste?

Enough!

GD: repenting excess on Friday night when rather worryingly a work colleague kept saying ‘I’m seeing a complete different side of you tonight’…this is not good; thinking ‘does my new frock make me look like Rosie Webster?; drinking Como Sur red wine and sad the bottle is empty; laughing at the fact my ‘hip’ sixteen year old niece will not add me as her Facebook mate because I’m no longer her ‘cool aunty’….!

The British Bugger Corporation

ARGH!!!!!!!!!!

YOU KILLED GUISBURNE!

YOU BASTARDS!!!!!!

And don't tell me Spooks will compensate for all that gothic magnificence and gratuitous use of leather clothing. Even if he does look just a tad gay in this pic...

(...I promise I will post something serious sometime soon, but right now I'm painting my nails sparkly green)

Needful Things

I think its becoming a little obvious that I have a bit of a book addiction. My only regret about shelling out £45 yesterday on reading material was that I didn't buy more...this is on top of the pile unread from the charity shop. Also, the ratio of books in versus the ratio of books out (to charity) if becoming heavily distorted and storage space limited. What's a girl to do? Visit the library?

Here's the rub - I do that too. I read the papers in the library (and Q / NME) on a regular basis. I borrow books and CDs that I have no wish to buy but I'm happy to visit. Try before you buy (because if I like the bloody things I then have to buy them and all their constituent sequels). The library itself is a microcosm of local life which I'm only too happy to observe from my lurking spot in an armchair by the window. If they only sold coffee I'd be there all day; as it is I have to make a detour to Costa to read the Telegraph (Costa for some reason has either super high brow or super low brow - The Sun - in terms of papers for customers. I'll be honest and admit that on low brow days I dip my toes in the murky waters of the tabloids with some guilty relish).

But nothing beats the actual act of choosing, smelling, examining a book for purchase. Nothing beats getting it home and weighing up the promise inside. It doesn't matter that the best book I've read all year came from a charity shop (David Mitchell's Black Swan Green, if you're interested) - it's the thrill of the chase. Maybe I need to get out more. Or be seduced by a dark handsome Spaniard (someone pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease take Rafa's spectacular arm muscles off the telly - they are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to distracting for this failed author). The books I purchased yesterday hold that same promise. Each was chosen to fulfil a different need - humour in comic form, high fantasy by a tested and trusted author, light hearted biography and naturally the war between heaven and hell, featuring daemons.

Thus we have:

Nemi Vol 1 by Lise Myhre. Fabulous, irreverent take on the 'modern life is rubbish' theme, narrated by a feisty goth girl basically making the same mistakes I made at the same age. have managed to read half of this already, need vol. 2 already. Pah!

For our biog, we have carefully selected a serious tome by the title of 'If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor'. Bruce Campbell. Elvis impersonator. All round chainsaw wielding hero of the Evil dead movies. Cast staple of Xena: Warrior Princess and close friend of director Sam Raimi. I love this man. I love this book, peppered with pictures and anecdotes, and I'm rather fond of this actor and his humour so this purchase makes GD a very happy doll indeed!

For the fantasy channel we went for good old Robin Hobb, author of the Assassin's Apprentice etc. Good old fashioned fantasy, swords, sandals, dragons, cretins etc. I've only read six of her books, so I'm now starting on the Soldier Son trilogy which I'm a bit wary of, due to poor reviews. But what the hell - I'll give it a spin anyway.

Finally we have the Secret War by MFW Curran (thought I had a lot of initials...). I'll nick the Amazon blurb as this is a new author for me: "For thousands of years a secret war has been fought between Heaven and Hell. Daemons and angels, vampyres and knights, clash for the future of mankind, and as the two sides wage war across the world, innocent people are caught up in the conflict". So there you go!

I'm still finishing The Black House (Stephen King and the other fellow), only 400 pages to go, before I can start properly on the above. This is actually the best King / Straub book I've read in eons, I kinda grew out of him but life's sucked a bit recently and I needed some good old fashioned child disembowling with supernatural elements.

Gods! Life is a peach, even with gummy eyes!

And now it's Costa Time! My cup overfloweth...

GD is: self indulgent, listening to radio 2, snotty and gooey, and a cake monster.

The Eyes Don't Work

The eyes have gone on strike today making typing somewhat of a challenge. This is not really anything to worry about: rather it is a combination of pollen and overindulgence that has rendered them stickily gunged together with fetching yellow crusts. Given that I spent a large proportion of yesterday slathered in sun cream in the back yard with red wine and the weekend papers (gods, my life is just sooo hard, non?) I have no sympathy for myself. Particularly as I've managed to lose my anti-histamine eye drops.

It's a queer day in other respects. I'm used to having Monday as my chill down day without human intervention, but the boy is on holiday working on his dissertation. Whilst not unpleasant to have company, its company that's looking for distractions that can be blamed on me and not on their reluctance to commit words to paper: thus we are heading to Borders in the next thirty minutes for books and coffee indulgence. Plus a substantial amount of people watching through my gummy eyes. Which will frighten small children from ten yards. Bollocks to lying in a dark room with a damp cloth over my eyes - I want book porn!

The credit card is burning, mine eyes are yearning. God, I'm a bloody awful poet and don't I know it?

Enough! Desist, woman! It is enough to look upon the glory of the face of gothic Guisbourne (aka Richard Armitage) and know the pain is worth it (gratuitous hot man shot alert):

GD is: mooching, salivating at the prospect of book excess and coconut cake, repenting red wine and having really fun mental conversations that involve being rescued from wet graveyards by strapping men in black leather trouser. And listening to Bats for Lashes.

Itchy Mind

This is one of those days when you’d far rather be elsewhere than where you currently have to be. Which is a convoluted way of stating that I’m at work, nominally working through the huge pile of detritus that has gathered upon my desk during my recent extended three-week leave (NB I am well aware that this is a wholly indulgent span to take off work, but in fairness it was last year’s leave I was using up!).

Un-inclined to blog or write, I’ve mostly been lurking in coffee shops, in dark alleys in Edinburgh or drinking copious amounts of red wine in the back yarden. Naturally on our trip to Edinburgh it rained torrentially, whilst the sun was apparently streaming down on Whitley Bay. Naturally…

Still, Edinburgh was not without highlights, namely visiting the Titians in the National Gallery. They’re quite spectacular in their own right but I did find the Gallery overwhelming in it’s sheer content. Everything is on display. Everything! The building itself is gorgeously over the top (poshest toilets I’ve been in in a long while) but it’s all a bit too much. I found the prominence of the European painters over the Scottish painters (stuffed in the basement) somewhat displeasing. Some of the Scottish stuff was great – I particularly liked the Quarrel of Oberon and Titiana by Paton (below), with the multitude of fairies and strange animals spilling out at all angles of the painting. The He got rather upset with viewing all of the family portraits (dead people).

They also take the prize for the worst service ever in their fancy restaurant overlooking Princes Street Gardens. It was particularly shaming how badly one man in a wheelchair was firstly ignored by the staff and then rudely sent the wrong way to a place where he couldn’t get a seat. Not recommended.

Rain persisting, we hid in the Writers’ Museum and marvelled at the low doorways (which incidentally did not pose any kind of threat to my head at all) and then trolled off to the Black Rose in search of gin. There are some very drunken pictures of me splatted out on the cushions in there: they won’t be on here anytime soon!

I have also managed to read the following: Masquerade by Terry Pratchett; The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry; The Room of Lost Things by Stella Duffy; and the cruddy next volume for the book club – Welcome to Life by Alice De Smith, which is a witless meandering through the blandest of teenage lives in the 1980’s. Chick lit at its most horrific. Burn after reading, I say. Read Barry or Duffy for some absolute pleasure. Next on the pile is Sarah Waters Affinity, Late Gothic Short Stories and Wilkie Collins The Woman in White.

GD is: currently stuffed full of pasta and aubergine, listening to the dreadful new Green Day album (off cuts from American Idiot and Warning…), itchy of nose and restless of mind.

Teeny Bit Bored...

The dog didn't really get this when she kept trying to run off with the boys. Oh well...





...she did bring about the death of the Wicked Willow Doll....the Bitch!

Firsts

Hooray! I just had a completely new experience, which doesn't often happen at my time of life. Yes folks, I just received my first EVER rejection letter for a writing submission! A landmark development. After all, I was tentatively published for the first time in 1986 in 'Horse and Pony' (young men, don't smirk. Every teenage girl has a dream horse inside of them). But an outright rejection rather than nil response? New thrill!

Actually to be fair, it was pretty decent of them to write back and give me some very constructive criticism about how to improve the submission, which I have duly noted and taken on board. I then trolled off to the library to pick up a short story submission form to allow the pain and humiliation to continue, within whose warm confines I had an encounter with the Swamp Donkey**. Perhaps my story should be entitled 'Weasel plays Swamp Donkey High Notes'. Or perhaps not.

I seem to recall I spent one day this weekend rather drunk and lairy in Whitley's premier biker bar on the rather dubious terrain of South Parade (had to restrain P. from verbally abusing the chavs that live in the B&Bs down there, no expense spared at the working populace's cost, and who spend their days hanging out of windows spitting on passersby. Mind he calmed down when I gave him some bike porn and Southern Comfort in the pub. The words 'Kawasaki Ninja' have an amazingly soothing effect on him).

Anyway, I'm idling away time here when I should be working on my magnum opus. Which isn't an ice lolly with chocolaty bits, like I'd hoped.

GD is: Listening to Blondie and Altered Images; crippled with neck trauma and about to become £32 poorer at the osteopath's; snotty; eating too much lemon cake from Costa.

** Swamp Donkey = failed actress = my ex next door neighbour from hell. I've seen her die on Holby City AND League of Gentlemen! Whoooo Hoooo! The Weasel is her 'lover' Eric 'The Groovemeister'. Avoid at all cost, particularly if you hate the sound of drums at 3am.

When letting go just isn't happening

The title doesn't refer to anything specific. Well, it does if you apply it to one thing, without examining all the minutiae that make up that overarching concept of a decade. What is a decade? A ten year span, as humans define time. Barely a ripple across the fabric of the cosmos in terms of impact (unless we wish to talk CO2, which we don't. Not today, anyway).

The decade that I can't seem to let go of is the 1980's. Start to finish, I'm still caught there with people, places and my evolution carrying on it's own merry dance behind my eyeballs and it just doesn't appear to want to let me go.

This isn't helped by the constant reminder of the decade that are splurged out across shops - namely the '80's trends that are cluttering up our clothes shops (Topshop, I blame you!). It's like stepping into a weird machine that reconfigures time and takes you back to the decade that gave us Pretty in Pink, the Cookie Monster, Back to the Future and...erm...Def Leppard. You can buy all of these things (plus Slayer, for gawd's sake) emblazoned on Topshop / River Island t-shirts. I did note the time machine failed to return me to my much missed size 6 (US2) figure but we can't have everything!

But then I came across style nirvana. Admittedly it was adorning my much skinnier, trendier sixteen year old niece, but it came in the stylee of the student cardigan. Namely, that staple of university students world over at the end of the eighties, the Marks and Spencers Grandad cardigan (in dark grey, russet or dark green) available from their men's department and worn by student women with their doctor martins and rolled up jeans the world over (well, probably just the UK, but you get my gist).

I succumbed. And wore it naturally enough with my shiny new doctor martins (I am proud to say I will never, ever roll my jeans up a la Tiffany ever again). HE laughed and accused me of becoming retro queen. He's probably right. What with soaking up books based in either the 1980's, academia or both (The Secret History, Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now, Black Swan Green) I'm becoming a little obsessed with the past. Not helped by sodding Facebook, which is like a labyrinth of all those faces you'd hoped had been squished into oblivion (there's something strangely comforting in seeing that the evil bitch that hit you with her white stilettos on the back of the 631 has developed into an ugly grog monster with 6 kids and no teeth).

I've been so hung up on myself recently, just falling down this avenue of self loathing and disillusionment at the fact I am so CRAP at everything. I realise this is a perfectly normal human state of mind but I really want to stop the turntable and get off this trajectory. I've been unable to write for weeks, it would be too self regarding to call it writer's block, but I've come to a very slow and dim realisation that what I actually need to do is write what I know. And then let it go.

And that's the decade that style forgot. The nineteen eighties. And I have her here in my head and I'm using this post to tell myself its OK to let her out, so that I can ultimately let her go.

Phew!

GD is: listening to Kate Bush's Hounds of Love on vinyl, trawling charity shops for vinyl because it feels better even though its big, clumsy, easily broken and just not cool, reading Persepolis by Marjane Sartrapi which is superb (thank you Husband!). And being obsessive but weirdly non productive. (note: by the end of this I'd finished with Kate and how now moved on to Nik Kershaw's The Riddle. The video linked here is a complete homage to the '80s and the lips poking through the wall are just a bit freaky...Which I will not apologise for loving!)

Everything is Italicised!

When did that happen?! The blog went wonky!

I'm too cold to blog, so I'm off to snuggle up under a duvet and watch Bond. Mmmmmmm!

Teaser Tuesday: Book Related

I pinched this from Just One Page, and it may work better for her reading in a more literary manner!

Grab your current read. Let the book fall open to a
random page. Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12. You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book
recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given : ) ! Please avoid spoilers!!!
OK then....:

'Not as much as it freaked me out when a voodoo doll turned up'

'The fun transfers to one of our rooms, usually mine (I can be persuasive like that), and never Sam's (who might have a body in there for all we know).'

From Andrew Collin's 'Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now (My Difficult '80s)'


Now this is a good, lightweight fluffy book if you wish to read it on public transport. But it probably is only interesting if you were a teen in the '80s (like me!).


I thought I'd do the same with Per Petterson's Out Stealing Horses, this month's book club choice. But each sentence is about a page long so I abandoned that swiftly. I have managed a total of 27 pages in three weeks. Panic reading starts in about twenty four hours.


GD: is stuffed (with food that is!), trying to balance on a computer chair on which the back has just fallen off, about to be technically a whole year older in 5 and a half hours time, listening to Radio 2 and wondering why....