Everything means something or other!

Am I a simpleton? I seem to miss everything. Apparently the hymn Jerusalem is also a critique of the industrial revolution! I always thought it was some kind of fascisty type thing (but secretly, guiltily, liked its stirring melody nevertheless). Now I can happily sing along in the knowledge that I am being fashionably Luddite rather than, um, unfashionably fascist.

Whatever next? The Pussycat Dolls classic 'Don't Cha' is a critique of the military industrial complex?

Apocalyptic scenes!

Reports of the complete breakdown of Newcastle's infrastructure may have been somewhat exagerrated. Panic can be traced back to the moment when Shelley found there were no taxis available in Benton at half past six.

'just...a little bit...further...'

What happens when you move to London

The Parker family are sitting down at the table enjoying a Christmas feast and attempting to find some innocuous subjects to chat about. The subject of Narnia crops up.

Me: Was I a thick kid? I don't think I had any idea that the books were based on the Bible...
John: Well, I was eight when I read it so, no, I don't think it was terribly surprising that I missed its allegory. I was older when I read Lord of the Rings and had no idea that it was a critique of the Industrial Revolution!
Dad: Wha?
John: It's a critique of the Industrial Revolution. Well, of industrialisation anyway... It's not just me that thinks it! It's obvious!
Dad: Well, maybe in your mud-huts down in Putney, but...!

Mud-huts? In Putney? Eh?

I daresn't tell my mother

... but if you type christmas disappointment into google images the very first - VERY FIRST! - picture that comes up is of me as a child. With an achievement like that under my belt this is set to be the best Christmas ever!

Narnia

What a rubbish film! Totally unrealistic.

I await the next Dan Brown book that is sure to uncover Aslan as the father of the Pevensey sisters' half-human/half-lion offspring.

Lost frosty mittens

Christmas excitement update

For Mary, for the overseas Helen, and for anyone else who is wondering how my levels of festive excitement are faring, a quick update. I am stuck in a little routine. I listen to the von Trapp Children singing 'Please Don't Send Me Fruitcake', I smile with glee at the ludicrous song and at the fact that I seem to like such a ludicrous song. This is swiftly followed by an effort to counter the glee by listening to Malcolm Middleton's 'Burst Noel' ("last year I got knives for Christmas..."). An unsuccessful effort, it must be said. An effort which largely results in me wanting to ruffle Malcolm's hair and force him, at knifepoint if necessary, to pull a cracker with me. So, yes, I'm quite excited.

Bloody good show, old bean

So, last night when I was, as the French would have it, mortalez, the above seemed like the most amazing piece of photographic genius ever. Apologies to everyone who was forced to look at my phone and listen to me going 'see, it's not him, it's his shadow... cool or what?!'

Seriously though, cool or what?!

The Maximo Park concert last night was just one step above fantastic. I don't think I have ever seen anyone so very visibly enjoying themselves on a stage as much as Paul was. A stranger standing behind me said 'God, I can't even begin to imagine what it must feel like, to be up there'. Too true, stranger man. Although I have experience in wanting something pretty modest, going for it, getting it, and being delighted, I have absolutely no experience in wanting something pretty amazing, going for it, working really hard and then getting it. I had a little tear in my eye.

It doesn't matter how big you get though, a bit of constructive criticism is always useful. Paul, Susie and I agree, less clingy pants next time please. I mean, howez!

"amateur documentary makers"

Amateur? Surely not. You always hear phrases like 'is this Satan here on earth???!!!' on Panorama.

Top five 'Helen' songs on itunes

1. As Happy As Helen - Moth Music, vol 5
2. Drunk Helen - Apocalypse Hoboken
3. Helen's Clitoris - We're Not Really A Group
4. Riffin Without Helen - Lester Young
5. We Are Sellin Helen's Hearse - Granfaloon Bus

(On a names basis only of course.) My favourite Helen song on i-tunes would be Hey Hey Helen by Abba. The Lush version is more fun but it's not on there. My teenage years penpal, Lorraine Lelis (where are you now?!), sent me a tape of Lush's Hey Hey Helen being played on the radio in Joizey City 'this is for Helen, who's all the way in Ing-er-land... go figure!' Sadly, I lost the tape some years ago, but the box has stuck around to remind me. 'Side one: Songs for Helen, Side two: Nitzer Ebb/Hardcore'.

Coming soon - new dead things

Classy joint

The worst thing

The worst thing about falling off your bike after skidding on ice is not skeetering along the icy ground on your knee. It isn't the way that your handlebar twists sideways and digs into your inner thigh (although that really smarts). Without a doubt, the worst bit is the surreal sense of embarrassment you feel after you have just shouted 'WHoAAAH!' at the top of your voice to an empty moor.

Please can I come round to your house for tea?

Gosh!

I couldn't let the demise of insangel happen without saying anything. My favourite internet home has shut up shop in a fit of pique about... what was it about? I feel quite excited! I know that the rest of the forum has migrated to the Mekong Delta site where they are all bigging it up blitz spirit style, but I am tempted not to register there and, er, try to do something more interesting instead. We'll see how long that lasts.

Doing things that are more interesting fits in quite coincidentally with my realisation that I am a completely predictable model citizen. I realised, with not some little distress, that my behaviour of late is perfectly in keeping with Maslow's heirarchy of needs. I was then informed that Maslow's model is on the GCSE Business Studies syllabus. It's one thing to have your behaviour predicted by a bearded university social scientist, but a GCSE Business Studies student? Crikey. Anyways, it's apparently all about self-actualisation today so if anyone needs me I'll be in the shed at the bottom of the garden, um, creating. Or possibly just contemplating my breasts.

Caught in a trance

Going shopping for clothes pretty much straight after night shift probably wasn't the greatest idea I've ever come up with, what with sleep deprivation being linked with staring vacantly for long periods, and having difficulty in making decisions.

I found myself in some changing rooms, wearing a bright red jumper (which was not what I had set out to find) staring at my breasts in the mirror. Wondering 'are they good breasts or bad breasts?' for quite some time. My newfound breast insecurity comes from my having lost a little bit of weight and realising, to my horror, that I might not be able to shop in Bravissimo anymore. I was always at the bottom rung of Bravissimo's scale but I fear I may have dropped a cup size and thus made my breasts, well, average, as opposed to slightly bigger than average. Of course, I should just go to the shop and have them do that twanging, looking, frowning thing that they do in lieu of measuring, but I don't want to have to hear them say 'we don't sell bras in your size'. Is that what they say? I always wonder if they have embarrassing moments where small breasted girls go in, ask for small sizes, and have to be shown the door? Do the diminutive-breasted ones get the same kind of look that a size 16 gets asking for a larger size in Tucci? A mix of pity and embarrassment? I guess I'll find out soon.

Once the breast crisis was over I had to continue to stare at the red jumper for some time, wondering if I wanted a red jumper because it's Christmas or because bright colours make me feel like I'm ten years old. So, in future, sleep first.

Book Review

My Grandma was telling me about this book that Auntie Tricia had sent her. 'Honestly Helen, it was nothing but sex.'
'Really?'
'Oh yes, it was about students and it was all just sex! I couldn't read it in the end...'
'Oh right.'
'Yes, there was this girl, well, she was a first year and she was a virgin. But then she fell in with this crowd who were second years. Well... She went to a party and met this man. He said "why don't you come back to my house for a drink?" Well, she didn't know any better. So he said "are you one of these virgins who doesn't know what it's all about?" Then he sat down on the settee, next to her. Oh! And he pulled down his pants! He got her hand, so she couldn't move it, and he put it on his... on his... his... doofer! Well...'

Some other reviews:

"The happiest, saddest, funniest, most perceptive truth about growing up since Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye."
(Over 21)

"Assured and successful…a complex story, with many ironies and surprises, but it is told with touching and unaffected simplicity…altogether a most satisfying and intelligent first novel, and something for the author to be proud of." (Financial Times)

"Warm and witty…family life most achingly bared."
(New Statesman)

A slippery slope

Imagine my delight when I received a prompt response from Marks and Spencer with a delightfully apologetic letter and £35 of gift vouchers. Naturally, like a scratchcard winner, I spent all £35 on roasted vegetable count on us lasagnes, in the hope of repeating my success several times over.

The unexpected rewards of complaining have proven rather addictive. I am not an anti-complaining type of person, but I am rather a lazy person so I tend to compose elaborate letters of complaint in my head but rarely get round to sending them. The satisfaction I got from complaining to Marks and Spencer, however, has spurred me on to address some grievances I have with Virgin Mobile and Asda. The Virgin Mobile email was quite sensible but I'm not sure that the red wine I'm sipping hasn't made my Asda complaint a little too colourful: 'Despite my having very small hands...'

Nisha in the grass

Honestly, I am a real nurse

'I feel really rough'.
'Yes, that's quite normal.'
'Why?'
'Erm, good and evil are doing battle in your body.'
'Oh, right, I thought so.'

Wow! A real-life trading standards issue!

I have never had a kit-kat that was all chocolate, or a tube of rolos without the caramel inside. I am led to believe though, by Paul Dewhurst (who is brilliant because he is the only person on my school's friends reunited site whose profile made me swear with surprise - his time in the dungeons and dragons club prepared him well for his career as an award-winning magician!), that if you send products like these back to the manufacturers you will get hampers of free stuff. His dad did it all the time apparently. My brother once found some glass in a pasta n sauce but he accidentally threw it away. Or did he get a ten pound voucher? One or the other. I did once find a hair in some cheese and was reimbursed. But a foreign body is not as exciting as a foodstuff being perfectly edible but not quite right. It's like finding the only stamp ever printed where you can see that the Queen has a moustache.

Today for my tea I thought I was having a roasted vegetable lasagne from Marks and Spencer. On my first bite I thought 'gosh, that vegetable tastes terribly like chicken. I went through quite a few vegetables in my head, trying to imagine which one could easily masquerade as a bit of chicken. None, really. 'Maybe it's bit of halloumi cheese'. Except that still wouldn't be inside a roasted vegetable lasagne, would it? Then, when every mouthful contained the vegetable which looks like, tastes like, and shares the texture of chicken I came to the astute conclusion that it was actually a chicken lasagne. I emailed them so they can send a chopper out to scoop up chicken lasagnes before innocent vegetarians eat them. Not that I am a vegetarian of course, but I'd hate to see someone else's principles violated. By which I mean, do you think they'll send me a hamper of nice things? Maybe I should also have pointed out that the roasted vegetable lasagne was in the Count on Us range, God only knows if the chicken one was. People may have been subjected to high GI index foodstuffs!

Canine porn!

The good thing about saving for the sake of buying a dog is that, every time you take your eyes off the prize and are thinking about spending some money on, um, the trainers with the pink velcro bits for instance, there are dogs all around to remind you what you're really after. On the metro yesterday, a woman sat down with a very wet-looking (well, I presume it was actually wet (I'm not aware of a fashion for using 'wet-look' gel on dogs yet), scruffy, curly-haired black dog. It was exactly the kind of big-eyed, tilted head dog that makes me want one. I gave the owner a 'what a lovely dog!' smile and she proudly beamed back. She beamed back little knowing that I was thinking 'what a lovely dog! If I punched you I could snatch it and it would be mine for ever!'

The dog was wearing a very natty pink lead which has lead to me looking at web pages for dog accessories. Promise to my future dog: although it will be an unbearable struggle, I will not dress you as another species. Well, probably not.

Last week at work, one of the consultants came across me checking out the Battersea Dogs Home website. "Could I possibly drag you away from your canine porn to talk to you about one of your patients?"

("No, get lost.")

Lovely kisses

I was in Boots the chemist today (thank you for the Boots tokens, Grandma), perusing the foot moisturising products section, when I thought 'foot moisturising products?! Gosh, I must really like him.'

She's got her daddy's shoes

Back home at my parents’ last weekend, I took off my new trainers as I went in the house through the kitchen. They're the third pair of Adidas Stan Smith's I've had. I keep buying them because I really like them and they won't make them forever and, anyway, this new pair is a bit different because the velcro bits are green.

By the time I went to leave, some hours later, my Dad’s Green Flash were sitting next to my Stan Smith's. With the new green velcro bits they really matched. My brother and I spent much of our childhood being in turn embarrassed and amused that my Dad has always worn Dunlop Green Flash trainers. He started wearing them when they were sort of in fashion, way back in my middle school days, he wore them right on through the eighties, then the nineties and still wears them now, after they've actually come back into vogue. I never understood why my dad wasn’t striving to get better and better trainers. It seemed so horribly basic and functional to say 'this will do, these trainers are good enough, I need never try the ones with the air bubbles or the velcro or...'

You could hardly spot the difference between the third pair of Stan Smith’s and the tenth pair of Green Flash.

My next pair of trainers will be totally different though, because I've just seen the new Stan Smith’s and there’s a lovely pair with pink velcro bits.

The tenth child

My mum saved this for me as she thought it would amuse me. Apparently she always reads the birth columns to giggle at daft names and funny adjectives ('a tiny son', for example). She doesn't read the deaths column because there aren't so many funny names to be found there. Just old ones.

Mum: You should always give a child one bog-standard name and one exotic one.
Me: So, is my exotic one Helen or Catherine?

Reasons to love grandma

For saying 'put some nice music on for us to talk over'.
For giving me my first mince pie of the festive season.
For using the sentence: 'so the man next door said "don't you pay them", then Sid on the other side came back from his holidays and said "I hope you didn't pay them", and the man two along on that side said "you shouldn't have to pay them you know", and the fella on the other side of Sid said the same... I didn't pay them.'
For being pleased that there's a picture of herself on the internet, even though I'm not sure she really knows what that means.

Conkers

Walking along Christon Road today, I saw two children shuffling forlornly around in the grass as their dad looked on. I thought they must have lost something, then I realised that they were standing under a horse chestnut tree. Evidently they were looking for conkers.

Let me take this chance to say sorry to all the children of Gosforth. There are no conkers on the ground because I pick them up every time I come home drunk. They're so shiny I just can't resist them. Tonight I might take my haul and scatter them about on the ground. Maybe under an oak tree, to confuse budding botanists.

Some notes on public transport

Firstly, an apology. To the conductress of the arriva trains service from Sunderland to Newcastle late on Sunday night, I am sorry for what I said. You see, it had been such a lovely evening. The kind of evening where it seems like everyone in the world is friendly and kind and nothing will be bad ever again. Those station men being so friendly and telling us we could get on that train and get home more quickly only added to the glorious sense of everyone being in it together. And then you ruined that and made the world seem like a horrible, petty, unfriendly place again. Still, I shouldn’t have said what I said. I went a bit too far when I said that you personify everything that is wrong with the world. You do, though.

Secondly, an explanation. To the man sitting on the very front seat of the 12.27 metro home last Thursday. In case you were wondering, when I sat down next to you and said ‘hello!’ it wasn’t because I found you sexually attractive. What I really should have said was ‘hello! I love sitting at the front too! Especially when it’s dark. Have you ever seen a rat or a mouse in the tunnel? Me neither, but I hope I do one day.’ You looked at me suspiciously and I wondered what you thought my intentions were. Still, if you got off the metro and thought ‘Ha! I’ve still got it going on!’ that’s nice for you too.

Is it ok to eat crabsticks for breakfast?
Not even on a Saturday?
Not even if I simultaneously watch Jamie Oliver making fresh pasta on Saturday Kitchen (thus raising the sophistication of the meal)?

I know it's not nearly Christmas. It's not nearly Christmas enough to think about presents or to buy cards or to find out whether I'm working or to make plans. It is near enough though to decide what the policy is going to be this year. In recent years I have been experimenting with not getting excited about Christmas. It has been a dismal failure. It has done little to reduce the misery of Christmas and has served only to eradicate the enjoyment of being excited for two months. This year I choose to be thrilled for two months and to cry with bitter disappointment for one day.


"It's funny, we always thought you'd be the one who did well." Cheers Grandma.

Today is the ninth consecutive day of being at work. Five is the average working week. On the sixth day I was saying "funny, isn't it? I've just had a week at work and now I'm starting another one straight away!". On the seventh day:"This almost feels like the end of the week but to people who'd just come back it would still be the first half of the week!" On the eighth day: "I don't know why I feel so sad and I've got a cold and I can't face the world". It takes its toll, in other words.

In the eighth-day-feeling-rather-low mood I noticed what tiny, tiny things make me happy or sad.

Riding up Hunters Road on my bike I was whistling, daydreaming about something nice. A car went past and beeped its horn for a really long time. Like BBBBBBBBBEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP. I wasn't doing anything wrong it was just a rowdy group of boys being boyish and rowdy and reminding me that their car was louder and faster than my bike. I was absolutely infuriated. I memorised the number plate and repeated it in my head all the way to work while fighting back tears of pure rage. I forgot the number once I got to work and was distracted by old ladies with zimmer frames smoking in the bike sheds (the smoking shelters went down the day before for the new no smoking policy).

The day after the horn incident, feeling pretty bleak, I was standing in the queue at the post office and overheard this:

Post office lady: Ooh, do you mind if I ask what perfume you're wearing? I really like it.
Customer: Do you? I think I smell of oranges.

I've no idea why but hearing someone tell a complete stranger "I think I smell of oranges" made me quite, quite glad to be a human being.

I want a dog! I want a dog! I WANT A DOG!

I read a magazine article last week where the writer was going on about how much she loved her dog and I am now aware, every waking minute, that what my life is missing is a dog. But I can't have a dog til I have a house. I can't have a house til I've paid off my debts. So I bought Asda Smart Price squash last night (16p) and I'm never going out again and I'm working extra shifts. This is the dog I'm going to get (not the actual dog of course - so if it's your dog don't worry I won't steal him).

Down with Art! Up with Bingo!

I experienced my first sniff of bingo this week and had been sufficently seduced by Gala's advertising campaign to expect 'a right laugh' and people throwing tenners in the air. That all goes on, of course.

What the advert doesn't show is that there is no one employed by Gala who will explain how to play the game to you. In fact, the two people we asked questions to ('we've never done this before, what should we do?' and 'where do we get pens?') looked at us as if they had never even conceived of the notion that anyone might dare to enter the bingo hall without being fully conversant in its ways. Maybe you have to go to classes if you want to marry into it? But you can only convert if you're a man. Or your mother went. Or you're from Byker. Or something.

Luckily, the other players were more keen to assist. A lone woman who sat across from us was particularly helpful. She had a pirate's facial expression, sort of screwed up and oo-arr-ish. Instead of oo-arr she said things like 'this one's one line, two lines, full house' and 'yous aren't having much luck'. After every game she told us the number that would have won her her fortune if it had come up, so for most of the night the conversation went along the lines of this: pirate lady: 'forty nine!' sarah: 'ooh, nearly'! me:(sympathetic noise).

Pirate lady also stacked up a line of pints to get her through the main session. I saw a horrible vision of the future.

Still on for next week?

I got an email from a friend yesterday:

I've just been looking at your website. It's rather like a public journal, isn't it?

Gosh, it is, isn't it? I hadn't intended to catalogue my feelings quite so much. The initial idea was to talk about arts and music and films. All that. So, here's an effort to right that wrong. I went to the Baltic today to see the new exhibition, British Art Show 6. We didn't 'do' all of it because, quite frankly, I was hideously hungover and became obsessed with seeking moisture halfway round. I wouldn't have done justice to the artists had I continued to look at their work while fantasising about slush puppies. I think that most people would probably find something that made them think or smile or yawn or something. The works I enjoyed today were probably influenced by my hangover rather than anything else (or rather, my enjoyment was influenced by my hangover, even from my helencentric viewpoint I can see that the artists probably didn't have my hangover in mind when they were making their art). I loved Saskia Olde Wolbers' short film, Placebo which featured a syrupy voiced man telling a story about an old picture house with pictures of sumptuous red velvet seats and gloopy images of nature. I was sinking into it. Later, I was a arrested by a resin cast of what I thought was a bottle of pop. 'It's teasing me!' I said. 'It's meant to be a bottle of piss', Ross pointed out. Still, I was very thirsty. Other highlights included telephoning Alison from the carpark to say 'look out of the window, ha ha I can see you waving', the girl in the shop asking if I required a student discount (I trust her thoughts did not involve the words 'mature student'), and taking pictures from the top of the stairs with me at the bottom.

With that in-depth analysis I think I have re-established myself as an arts correspondent. For those of you who prefer to read about my thoughts: today I hate myself.

Someone is getting better, and that's always nice. He sang me a little bit of a song today when last week he couldn't catch his breath. So that pretty much made up for the last four weeks of post-holiday gawd-I-wish-I-worked-in-an-office-and-could-mess-about-on-the-internet-all-day feeling.

I'm up late tonight cause I've stayed awake to finish reading Sputnik Sweetheart. It's one of Haruki Murakami's lovely books. I'm a little bit hooked on him but it occurred to me the other day that, although obviously the story comes from him, maybe I am actually a fan of Philip Gabriel. Philip is his translator and I wonder if it's he who really imbues the stories with the serene quality that I find so seductive. It's weird reading books about people suffering despair and feeling suicidal - all expressed so very calmly.

The only way I'd know which writer is the one I really admire would be if I was to learn Japanese myself. Pffft.

I was talking to one of my patients about this the other day and he was telling me that a new translation of War and Peace has come out which is radically different to the standard translation. Apparently it's more working class. How odd. And interesting. If I had read the normal translation it would be good to compare and contrast. But I haven't. And, I suspect, if I couldn't be bothered to read it when I was seventeen, the chances of me finding the enthusiasm now are slim.

I bought three new fish today. Three fantail goldfish - a black one, a white one with an orange forehead (is there an official fish word for that bit?) and an orange one. No names as yet. I wish they were a dog.

Something that made me laugh today.
Imagined scribbler: There, that's better.

Last year my friend went away. There she goes. She's coming back soon. Yippee!

I went to see Laura Cantrell singing on Friday night. I've been trying to write something about it ever since, but I'm sort of scared I'll ruin the magic with some ill-chosen cheesy words. I could list all the things that were great about her (mostly coming down to her being a lovely, lovely, lovely woman with astonishing poise, warmth, tender song-writing skills and a lovely, lovely, lovely voice) but I don't really want to miss the point through over-analysis.

One of my favourites of her songs is one that reminds me of a particular person and a time. The who, or what, or why isn't terribly important but I had wondered if I would feel a bit wistful and sad if she performed it. Does it sounds stupid to say that seeing her perform live was such a beautiful experience that it felt that none of that mattered? Or maybe that everything mattered? Gosh, I'm trying to say that listening to her made me feel sort of like everything was going to be alright. I left feeling full of enthusiasm not just for her music but for everything beyond that too. Maybe all great music makes us feel like that, but I know I haven't felt that way for a very long time.

Ill-chosen, cheesy worded message ends.

I visited my parents yesterday, largely to celebrate my mother's birthday. While there my mother challenged me to explain why, for the past three summers, the postcards I have sent them have always featured a donkey. "Are you trying to say that we are like donkeys?" I don't know what I find more odd: that I have unintentionally favoured donkeys as symbols of relaxation and fun, or that my mother worries that her daughter thinks she is like a donkey (she is not, for the record).

I came across this in Church Road this morning. I'm feeling a little bit like that spacehopper today.

Moments in which I have felt embarrassed today (in chronological order)
On waking, thinking of things said/done the previous night while tipsy .
Seconds later, when the embarrassment reminded me of much more shameful moments from the night before that.
Whistling tunelessly in the bathroom and realising that someone was in next door's garden and would be able to hear through the open window.
On seeing Julian Opie on television, being surprised, and realising that I had (for no reason I can fathom) thought that he was black.
On walking to the metro, passing three intriguing folded pieces of paper, but not wanting to look like a person who picks up rubbish in the street.
On walking past a stationary line of traffic and feeling in the spotlight.
On sitting down on the metro when the seat made quite a loud noise, even though I had lowered myself gently - embarrassment exacerbated here by the woman opposite refusing to look at me and exchange a 'hah! broken seat!' facial expression.
On asking for a bottle of Asahi - no matter that I pronounce it correctly, the bar staff always say 'pardon?' making me fear a foreign lager faux pas.
On telling a not particularly interesting anecdote and it being interrupted several times, making the punchline extraordinarily anti-climactic.
On replying 'no' to the question: 'would you like to see the à la carte menu?'and feeling poor.
On choosing, as starter, a salad involving black-pudding - dried blood products seeming an un-feminine choice.
On being asked whether I would like black pepper for the second time and declining again.
On asking an acquaintance for free tickets at the cinema.
On hearing a ripping of underwear in the first sex scene of the film and waiting for the correct moment for myself and my companion to diffuse our discomfort by making a silly face at each other.
On mis-judging that and looking at my friend during a sex scene.
On stopping to chat to someone whilst walking through electric doors and squealing as they closed on me.

I saw something really sad today. A shiny new car with a sticker in the back passenger window with a girl's name and the date of her birth and death. She was nine when she died this year. What a strange way to commemorate someone, I thought. It looked weird in an everyday place where you'd expect an 'I've been to Flamingoland' sticker. It reminded me of those Gillian Wearing photos where people carry signs showing what they're really thinking. Like a sign stuck on the car saying 'everyone inside this car faces loss and heartache every day'. Strange and sad.

Serendipity! I had to go into Outlook Express (which I never use) to set up my email from the website and discovered I had over a hundred messages. 99% were stuff and nonsense but one was from my dad, very kindly offering me his old stereo. Quote of the week goes to Mr Parker: "the problem your mother had with the Cliff Richard CD was down to the CD." Quite.

STOP PRESS: boring notice just to say that changes have been afoot on the website recently. Apologies to anyone who has experienced difficulties. I've just upgraded my server because I am nosy and want to know how many Austrians are reading. I'm temporarily taking down some of the links while I add some new writings and pictures and things. I'm especially looking forward to horoscopes, a problem page and the facility to email me from the website. Whoop!

At 3.30 a.m. last night I was stocking up at work - filling plastic trays with little vials of sterile water. I moved the older vials to the front of the tray before placing new vials in front of them. Midway through this rather dull task I was transported back to my very first job, working weekends in Wylam Spar. On my first day a manager from head office happened to be visiting. He showed me how to stack shelves of petfood - putting the new tins at the back and making sure all of the tins were facing forward - 'facing up', I think he called it. When, a little later, he came back to see how I was getting on he announced in a thick blackburn accent 'Helen! You are the queen of petfood!'. I laughed and felt sorry for anyone who cared how good they were at stacking shelves.

Please God, could I have a job one day where I don't have to pack shelves or trays?

On a cheerier note, I know I'm a bit late but is anyone else enjoying the Magic Numbers? I hadn't heard them when I read about Richard Bacon's TOTP fat comments. Of course, Richard Bacon has always been a dick, but now I've heard how lovely their music is, he seems even more of a wazzock. He just seemed mean before but now I've fallen in love with them he also seems pitiful - a talentless wretch poking fun at people for the most vacuous of reasons. I'm currently listening to the one that goes 'this is not what I'm like, this is not what I do, I think I'm falling for you'. Ahhhhhh.

I dare anyone to watch Dear Wendy and not find themselves walking with a bit of a swagger, wishing they had a pistol in their pocket.

If you haven’t seen the new Lars Von Trier/ Thomas Vinterberg collaboration, it’s about a group of misfits who fall in love with firearms and transform their self-images through their relationship with their ‘partners’. Apparently the rest of the world thinks it’s a pile of tosh, in particular the man in the front row (I believe it was Noah – Newcastle’s premier exponent of performance art as life*) who performed the most ostentatious yawn I have heard. I, however, liked it.

Maybe I liked it because I have also been a pacifist gun-lover. In the summer of 2000 I spent several months working in an American summer camp. Prior to going I made only one request on my application – that I would not work at a camp where riflery or any gun sports were taught. Having worked in one place for a few months I moved to another and requested that, since riflery was on the curriculum, that I be excused from escorting children to classes because of my pacifist beliefs. The camp manager was happy enough with this arrangement and all was well.

One extraordinarily dull day I found myself ambling round the empty camp with a couple of friends. Someone suggested we go down to the range and pointlessly shoot at tin-cans for the afternoon. Naturally I resisted. Then I relented. Then I fell in love. It was hard to justify but I was just so good at it! Just as when another human being likes you, you can’t help but warm to them, so I found it hard to resist the gun once it had shown its feelings for me.

So when Jamie Bell strokes his beloved Wendy in the film I felt a bit like I understood. Thankfully things did not end quite so disastrously for me as they do for the characters in the film. I just felt a bit guilty and embarrassed and never told anyone in England about it. Until now, obviously.

I’m hoping that vegetarians will contact me to say that they had a secret meat-feast in Bavaria. Except they wouldn’t, would they? Unless they were unprincipled wretches like myself.


*i.e. he dresses funny

In 1992 I made a promise to myself. It was after the Madder Rose gig at the Riverside. Nicholas Hawkes had just persuaded me, against my better judgement, that I should go backstage and speak to the band. I did so. It turned out I had nothing of interest to say to popstars and they had very little to say to me. At least after they'd tried to make conversation and I'd given them very little back. So I went home and had an asthma attack. It was utterly, utterly humiliating. And it made me decide that I would never again put myself in the lowly position of approaching a person who did not know me to tell them how great I thought they were. In fact, I would only tell a stranger I thought they were great if they said it to me first.

Permitted:
Michael Stipe: Er, excuse me, aren't you Helen Parker?... I loved your latest movie... and that speech you gave at the Oscar ceremony... fantastic!
Me: Thanks. Stand was quite a nice song.

Not permitted:
Me: Hi aren't you Michael Stipe? I (gush, gush - I can't even write it it's too embarrassing).

Anyway, that brings me nicely round to Sunday. I'd just enjoyed a double bill of music - Malcolm Middleton supported by Jennie and the Bets. I enjoyed Malcolm's disgustingly depressing songs so much that I bought his album. A wee Scottish chap standing by the merchandise stall pointed out that Malcolm was just standing over by the bar and would be happy to sign my cd. I said thank you very much but really there's no need. He implored me "it'll be the only chance you get!" I again politely declined and returned to my pals. Seconds later, a tap on my shoulder and there was the man dragging Malcolm Middleton along and thrusting a pen at him. I said that I really hadn't asked to have it signed, but of course I thought he was great. . . (NNNOOOOOoooooooooo! Promise broken!)

Much mutual embarrassment ensued. He signed the cd with some jaunty birthday wishes. I didn't have an asthma attack. I got away with it. I admired someone and it didn't make me feel like a useless pleb.

Walking out of the Cluny I passed by him as he sat at a table near the door, I smiled and said "thanks for the birthday greetings!". He responded with a tired ah-leave-me-alone-now-will-you look.

Never again.

This time I mean it.

See a review of the canny Scotsman.

Happy Birthday Mary!

Laura Cantrell facts I have discovered in the last twenty-four hours:
a)by day, she is a financial researcher
b)in September she is playing in Gateshead
I am very, very excited. (More so about the latter admittedly.)

I was watching a band I like last night (at the Distraction Weekender) called Chippewa Falls. Two of them are twins. Sometimes I wonder if I love their music or if I am just being bowled over by the magic-y-ness of nature. There's one. . . whoop, there's another one. Disappointingly, they do not have their own language. However, during last night's set they were glancing supernatural twinny looks back and forth with abandon.

Today I've been wondering a lot about the etiquette for dealing with strangers crying in cars. On the way back from Asda yesterday, turning into Bath Terrace, I noticed a woman hunched over at the wheel of a stationary car, head in hands, crying.

What are you supposed to do? If she was sitting on a wall crying I would have asked her what was wrong. Even, at a push, if she was in her front garden, I would enquire as to her well-being. But she wasn't. She was in a car and asking how she was would first mean knocking on the window and, if she didn't immediately wind her window down, I would have to make a potentially goonish expression/ gesticulation. She might have locked the door and looked terrified. So, bearing in mind there was no hosepipe nipping in the back window, I just politely looked away and pretended I'd not noticed.

For two seconds anyway, then I had a quick, guilty glance back. She was just putting moisturiser on her face.

Firstly, a rather belated birthday wish to Nisha. It was her birthday on Thursday and she celebrated in a jolly fashion by drinking an awful lot of champagne and subsequently re-inventing the rules of Texas hold Em and licking my ear. I've never experienced a girl licking my ear before. It was moist but not entirely unpleasant. I've also never played no-rules poker before. It was moist but not entirely unpleasant. Happy Birthday.

Owing to the failure of my present financial planning system (once again I didn't win), I've been toying with the idea of spending less and earning more. To get some top tips I was looking last night at a website devoted to matters of personal finance. There's a bizarrely addictive forum where people write about their debt problems and how they've managed to save money. For some reason I find myself absolutely fascinated by reading people's spending diaries. "Monday. Food at work: £4.69, cigs: £4.05, TV guide: 49p".

That's not really interesting, is it? I do like reading shopping lists mind.

I tried the diary idea myself earlier in the year but I don't think I have the necessary levels of shame for it to work. "Monday: Taxi to work: £5.70, Booze at Sainsbury's: £22.50".

I have a little dead fish in a glass of water in my bedroom and I'm not sure what to do with it. Any suggestions?

Last night a man called Nev Clay (who is folky sort of singer man) told me that I should be a writer. I am going to take this as a tremendous compliment. . . although I suspect the fact that it swiftly followed on from my telling him what exactly I didn't like about his poetry may point towards it simply being an alternative way to say 'fuck off'.

Two things brought a tear to my eye today. First up was a lovely card at work from some little girls saying "thank you for looking after our daddy". My eyes were ever so slightly moist. Second up was Max on Neighbours saying that he didn't want Boyd to remain in a coma forever "he's my beautiful boy". I bubbled my eyes out. Just goes to show, eh?

Something that should have made me cry was the Fantastic Four movie last night. It was comically (no pun intended) bad. I rather got the impression that the character of The Thing was meant to be teaching us something about not judging people on their appearances. Once he'd been transformed into a hulking brute made out of stone, his wife ran away from him and people recoiled in terror. As luck would have it he met a blind girl who fell in love with him. Are spotty, overweight, and ugly teens all over the world now desperately searching for stunning, blind girlfriends? Ross questioned whether blind girls would like to rub against a block of sandstone. Which illustrates how little he knows about girls.

That reminds me of a documentary I saw about a boarding school for blind children. One of the pupils was saying that the nice thing about relationships between two blind people was that shallow ideas of beauty played no part in their relationship. 'Aw, that's so nice', I thought. . .then two seconds later: 'Christ! You could do better than him, pet!'

Sobriety stinks. . .

Wowser! What a bright and beautiful day! I'm full of it today. Absolutely full of it. All borne of the fact that this morning I decided to have a couple of weeks off the booze. Honestly, only hours later I can already feel the benefits. All you suckers devoted to the demon drink could learn a lot from my good example. So, say I last had a drink (although it was shandy - does that even count?)at 10.30 last night. . . that's nineteen hours and counting! And already I'm bursting with vitality!

Other, hopefully more interesting, news: last night Mercury Music Award nominees Maximo Park appeared in RPM music shop. It was class. They did a cracking little set and everyone sweated a lot. I might write a review of it. If the non-drinking results in the increase in productivity I like to think it might. Nice to see real life Newcastle superstars being, er, exactly the same as they were when they drank in the Head of Steam every Friday. 'Cept in sharper suits. . . nice Westwood tie there Smithster. Oh, and more revered, obviously.

Post-park entertainment came in the form of John Egdell's set at Camp David. A neat-o selection of cute covers. Only downside of this performance was that I felt quite sorry for the girl sitting behind me. When Jennie made a gag about it being her and John's first ever live performance behind-me-girl started shouting out all kinds of encouraging, sweet 'hey I think you're the best!' type things. Think she felt a bit of a div when John started shamelessly plugging his album (available in all good. . .).

Guess what I got through the post today? My lovely, lovely guitar strap from www.sparklecraft.com . The brown calico number in case you're wondering. Lush. Now I'm properly accessorised I may actually be able to learn a chord.

There is a certain type of bush which grew somewhere in the village where I grew up which has pink flowers and a very strong fruity smell. Where I live now whether I turn left out of the door to go to the metro station, or right to go the supermarket, I pass one of these bushes and get a big waft of my childhood.

In case I get too sentimental though, there is a bush at the end of my street, outside the nursery, that smells of dog shit.

Hello

Welcome to my brand spanking new website, which will become one of two things: a witty window into the cultural landscape of the northeast, or a half-hearted exercise in self-indulgence.

Feel free to email me with your heartfelt thanks and appreciation. Do not however, email me with any great ideas. I will not be able to use them for fear that people will say 'hey the best bit on the website is' and it will be your bit. Then I'd have to hate you.