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