A Very Long Way From Anywhere Else

While driving, what's your biggest pet peeve?
Submitted by Alexandra

The fact that I don't know how to drive is irksome.

I am staying in a £175 a night hotel room for work.  There are no herbal teas.  What kind of a place is this???

PS Thanks to all who made my suffering that little bit easier tonight.

Life is good!

I don't usually do memes but this one is infectious.  Here are the rules:

1.  Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.

2.  People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own 8 random things, and post the rules.

3.  At the end of your post you need to tag 8 people and include their names.

4.  Don't forget to leave them a comment on their blog and tell them they've been tagged, and to come back and read your blog for the whole story...

Facts (random, I am trying to keep these interesting...)

1.  I can't give up biting my nails.  They don't look that bad so I've never really worried about giving up.  I actually don't like having long nails either, it makes me feel ill, in the same way that having long hair makes me feel ill.

2.  I don't like long hair - on men or women.  I have tried having long hair myself but I hate the feeling of having it down.  If I am on the bus or subway and a stranger's hair touches me I feel physically ill.  I also hate it if I have random hairs stuck to my coat.  Weirdly though, this only counts when it is human hair.  I have no problem at all with animal hair, even horse.

3.  I am one-quarter Sorbian.  The Sorbs are apparently a slavic minority group from north east Germany.  They were persecuted at different times in history.  This is as much as I know about them.  When my sister worked in Poland they thought she was Polish.  My Grandmother (she of the Sobian parents) hated the fact that she was German and not even a 'proper one' at that.  So she pretended it wasn't there and traced her husband, my Grandfather's lineage back to the Mayflower and claimed it as hers.  I like the idea of having a secret family history that isn't even that secret.  I don't think it makes me interesting, but one day I would like to find out more about it.

4.  I never really want to travel outside of the West.  I don't think I have any business going anywhere else.  It irks me when people go to India or China or something and act like they have found the answer to life itself.  It's patronising and orientalist and I don't like it.  You don't have to leave your bed to go on the longest journey and 'find yourself.'  Read a book, listen to music, it's all there.  We are all just brains with bodies.  Travel might broaden the mind, but other stuff does the job just as well and doesn't damage the environment/expolit people in the 3rd World.  I've had lots of arguments with people about this.  I know that tourism supports economies overseas but really it mainly supports the fat cats and the ordinary people don't usually benefit.

5.  Anyway, on a lighter note, I was talking to my sister yesterday and we were saying how nice it was that we have always had each other.  (Well, she has always had me, I had my parents to myself for 2 years.)  Our brother is like an only child because we are so much older than he is.  He reacts badly to people touching his toys or distracting him from a computer game.  This is because no-one has ever a) made him drink tabasco sauce, b) thought his goldfish might like to see out of the window and removed it from the tank, c) made him eat a slug, d) trapped him behind a door and slammed it repeatedly, e) thrown a jam jar at his head, f) peed on him, g) made him climb the scaffolding outside their house, h) made up a bucket full of wet mud, taken all their clothes off, covered themselves in mud and gone round all the neighbours' houses asking for money with him, or g) taped over his favourite video with one episode of My Two Dads and then whatever was on there for another three hours.  All of these things are important aspects of growing up and it never did us any harm.

6.  I still have my engagement ring from when I got engaged when I was eighteen.  It cost £109 from Ernest Jones and it has a sapphire and six tiny diamonds.  I look at it about once a year and feel glad that I am not wearing it now.

7.  I have been run over by bicycles quite a lot.  I don't think I am very good at crossing the road.  Luckily I have only been hit by a stationary car.  I guess I walked into that one.

8.  I really like Christmas pop songs.  My favourites are 'Last Christmas' by Wham and 'Wonderful Christmastime' by Paul Macartney.  Don't tell anyone.

I am passing this meme onto anyone who wants to do it - and I hope you can think of more interesting things than I can.

1.  The swings (I would have had a swing at Dowanhill Park this morning if I hadn't been late for my leg wax)
2.  Cigarettes
3.  An evening in the pub instead of the gym/dance class/university work
4.  Red shoes
5.  Dancing to Nutbush City Limits
6.  Creme Eggs
7.  Programmes on TV involving house buying/fat people/animals doing the funniest things
8.  Looking at cute animals on wikipedia, for example, polecats:

Marbled_polecat

9.  Blogging when I should be preparing the weekly sales action report

1.  Verbs in foreign languages
2.  More than the basics of computer programming languages
3.  Some of the universe's secrets
4.  Is there a God?
5.  The West Lothian question
6.  Vectors
7.  The rules of cricket
8.  The rules of rugby
9.  The rules of any American sport except for softball
10.  Measurements in science e.g. mols per litre
11.  Light years
12.  Giving people the right change when using foreign currency e.g. Euros and Dollars
13.  How to concentrate on just one thing for longer than twenty minutes
14.  How can some people not like reggae?

It's Friday night.  I caught a train to Aberdeen this morning at 7.41.  Arrived in Aberdeen about 12.  Worked.  Got the 5 to 6 train home.  Got home at 9 pm.  Cracked open a bottle of Jacob's Creek leftover from Hoggers.

FOUR DAYS WITHOUT A GLASS OF WINE.

Americans would call me an alcoholic, I am sure.  (My American weird religious rellies anyway.)  I call me a hard-working career gal who actually doesn't think she has a whole lot to worry about.

2008 is going to be the year I don't give a shit about my weight.  (And therefore will probably become a size 10 just through spite.)

It's SNOWING!

How can I get any work done when there is SNOW to look at?

Now it's stopped.

Now it's started again.

Oh, snow, please snow properly and cover Glasgow in grey slush.

In other news, my Christmas indulgences have turned my skin into a good reproduction of the surface of the moon.  I am thinking of going to have a facial.

What's your musical horoscope?  (Put your player on shuffle and write down the first 10 songs that come up.) 

1. Rolling Stone by The Psalms
2. Slow Jam by Four Tet
3. Flying by The Beatles
4. After The Smoke Is Clear by Ghostface Killah
5. Tradition by Burning Spear
6. Spiders by Wilco
7. At The Feast by The Congos
8. Get It Together by The Beastie Boys
9. Destruction by Vex'd
10. The Weaker Soldier by Palace

Is that ten?  I am too RAF to actually interpret this into some semblance of a horoscope.  Seems to me like this "predicts" I just like a lot of reggae and hiphop and I am trying to be cool by having some dubstep on my iPod but actually I always skip the tracks when they come on.

I think these questions of the day are a bit stupid.

I went to see Kula Shaker last night.

I last saw Kula Shaker at Glastonbury in 1999.  It was a sunny Glastonbury.  Everyone went to see REM at the main stage and I went on my own to the other stage to watch Kula Shaker.  I've never been a fan of REM - I know they'd hate this description but to me they've always just seemed like boring whiney old corporate misery merchants who have made their fortunes by playing to the tastes of teenagers who don't have enough real stuff to worry about.  (Mind you, this is also true of the Cure, and I loved them, so whatever, I am entitled to be a hypocrite in my own head.  And in my blog too for that matter.)

So I went on my own at Glastonbury and wigged out to Kula Shaker and watched the sunset and all my friends went to the main stage and probably got bored but couldn't admit it because the hegemony was that they were in the presence of greatness.  That was also the Glastonbury of Orbital and I'm sure some other great dance acts of the 1990s, where I danced in my wellies and got fabulous blisters all around my calfs.  I went to a lot of those alone because my friends were fond of their geetar rock.  Embrace and shite like that.

Anyway.

So.  Kula Shaker last night at the QMU.  It was really fun.  They were dressed like extras from 'If...'  I thought Crispian Mills may have been wearing make-up.  I wondered how old he was.  I always thought he was quite old but actually he was born in 1973 (accoring to Wikipedia) and is only 4 years older than me.  This fact makes me feel old.  And young.  I am dichotomous today.

The crowd were mostly my age.  It was like a school reunion.  Oh, you've gone bald.  And you have a beer gut.  You've lost your baby weight, very good.  I like how you've dyed your hair.  We all still hold on to elements of our former Britpop uniform but our clothes are more expensive and our jeans fit more snugly. 

And most of the crowd were huge fans - they even knew the words to the new songs.  I was standing next to Crispian's greatest fan in the whole world, and he was really Weegie.  He had a fine singing voice, as clear as a bell.  The upshot of which was I only heard Kula Shaker songs sung in a Scottish accent.  Which, I'm sure you will agree, gave their songs a new dimension because Mr Mills likes to sing in a kind of Raj-mystical way.

So.  The band was good and I was happy to see so many thirty-somethings out and about.

But I have some major complaints.  I must say that in the last six or seven years I have been to very few gigs indeed and a lot has changed since I was a regular gig-goer.  I have spent all of my gig money going to the ballet.  Indeed, I had to check myself at the bar and not ask if they did champagne by the glass.  I had a bottle of Corona which was decanted into a plastic pint glass.  I bought a round of 4 lagers and it cost £8.80, which was not bad at all.

But this is not what I want to complain about.  I want to complain about:

1.  Security.  Security seems to have gone crazy, although maybe it's a Glasgow thing.  The last gig I went to before this was part of the bloody Celtic Connections festival - hardly a rough crowd.  My friend dropped her plastic pint glass there and suddenly she was surrounded by people in fluorescent vests asking her if she had had too much to drink and should she perhaps go home.  They put one of those yellow hazard don't slip signs down. The glass had about 2 gulps left in it when she dropped it.  I thought that this was a one-off but no.  At Kula Shaker we had to get frisked and ID'd and given wristbands which meant we'd been cleared to drink alcohol.  In the crowd, dotted around, were more of the yellow t-shirt brigade who kicked people out for being rowdy.

It's shite, it's hardly rock and roll to feel so scrutinised.  Do we really need this sort of supervision?  Are the youth of today so awful that they need policing like this?

I was overjoyed when I got a whiff of weed and realised that some people still flout the rules.  Yeah, keep going my babies, we shall overcome, etc.

2.  The smell.  I've not been in such a crowd since the smoking ban.  Oh my God, people smell.  Alright, blokes smell.  Beer.  Fag breath.  Garlic burps.  B.O.  It's like going on the Underground but louder and lasts way longer.  Argh.  I think I would rather risk lung cancer and have to wash all my clothes after a gig than have to smell blokes who don't have girlfriends.  I don't know if non-smokers agree with this.  But.  Yuk.

Anyway.  I did have fun, and I will be going to more gigs as I had forgotten how nice they are.  And there's not so much ballet up here, and besides, it is way cheaper.

So, oh, I didn't talk about my holiday on the Island of Cats.  It was ace.  I am freckled and still quite relaxed, and very motivated to get on.  The Guide Dogs interview was cancelled but I have some other things going on so watch this space...