Some opinions and tangents

It strikes me that I haven’t done a blog in a good old while. Not since I made my miraculous recovery from the Dread Disease Swine Flu. Which, despite being really very mild and not that debilitating, has made people not want to hang out with me.

Hang on… maybe that was just their excuse.

Anyway, I haven’t done a huge amount since then. Upon my recovery my parents and sister all swanned off to Dorset, leaving me and my brother in charge of the house for a week. It was jolly lovely – I did lots of cooking and reading – The Beach by Alex Garland (which, according to Livvi, is frequently referred to in Geography lessons. I’m guessing that the references have more to do with the impact of tourism in Thailand than the astute prose and the postmodern disintegrating narrative, so I doubt that that itself is enough to make me take an interest in Geography.) I also read A Woman In Berlin by anonymous, although Wikipedia informs me that it was written by a journalist named Marta Hillers, so… mystery solved. Apparently that fact was only disclosed after she died, though. It was a really really good book, obviously made a lot more interesting by the fact that it’s completely true, although I don’t think it’s as poignant as something like the Diary of Anne Frank, although I guess that sort of stands head and shoulders above other war memoirs in terms of sheer devastatingness.

Speaking of poignancy, I’ve discovered a new phrase that I like – easy poignancy. Stuff like using a brolly that’s been left on the Tube as a metaphor for loneliness and rejection, which is lazy and irritating bullshit.

Anyway – reading! Lots of Evelyn Waugh in the past week: Decline and Fall, which I really ought to finish this evening, and Vile Bodies, which I read this morning because we were talking about it over dinner last night and I wanted to read it before it slipped my mind. Totally heart Evelyn Waugh, by the way, and I’ve noticed that he definitely seems to have been a big inspiration for Richmal Crompton, who’s just one of my favourite authors ever. 

I’ve been dividing my time between books, music, and pointless internet trawling. The music part has been my big project for the summer: take everything off the iPod and instead of keeping it as it is – a mixture of awesome and dross – I’ve been seperating the wheat from the chaff and sorting out some decent playlists – one playlist per artist, and only the best goes on. It’s made me listen to a) Eminem, b) Lauryn Hill, c) Muse and d) Ryan Adams to name a few, so it’s pretty much an excellent thing all round. I’ve been doing my playlisting with the help of a rough guide, although said rough guide doesn’t actually contain many of my most beloved artists (Sandy, where ARE you?). The rough guide on the whole is pretty awesome, although whoever compiled the Richard Thompson playlist needed to dig a little deeper.

Sounds boring to some, I know, but it literally  makes my little music neek heart swell.

In other music news, I spent the past hour learning how to play Wonderwall on the guitar. It sounds shit, partly because I’m shit at the guitar, partly because my guitar is shit, and partly because my capo is shit. If anyone feels like buying me a small but useful present – a decent capo, please.

Also – as if I couldn’t love Russell Howard any more than I do, I have discovered that he is a big Rufus Wainwright fan. In fact, a casual Google told me that he’s said that he would like to BE Rufus Wainwright on at least two separate occasions in interviews. Even I have never gone that far. 

My mum said the other day that I’m destined to be a fag hag. Nice, coming from a woman who worked in ELT.

Anyway, Russell Howard. His favourite RW songs are Poses and The Art Teacher – good lad! Speaking of Rufus, my brother decided yesterday that he sounds like Thom Yorke. Frankly, I was mildly offended, but this is my brother, and he probably thinks that everyone who doesn’t scream tunelessly into the mic is all of one ilk. The things my brother and I agree on musically are basically Jeff Buckley and Muse. And I suppose neither of us like a lot of indie. Hmm.

I expect the non-musos are getting bored. I’ll talk about something else. 

Like the new Harry Potter film! Guess what – it’s shit! I think people basically judge the Harry Potter films by different standard than… well, all other films. Like no critics seem to notice that the acting still sucks from all the kids, that Daniel Radcliffe gives Harry all the character and individuality of a fruit fly, and that Ginny needs recasting.

Obviously Snape still rocks, but that’s a given.

Anyway, having blogged, having fulfilled the quota and kept the baying masses from my door, I shall now leave you. Possibly to read a book or watch a film or something, and almost definitely to ferret out some food (I made scones earlier but the Human Hoover soon saw to that). Before I go, however, I’d like to say two final things.

1) Is it just me, or is Alan Bennett shit?

Not The History Boys, obviously – how could I hate the play that gave us Dakin and Posner (by the way, I think Posner is rather adorable in that Desperate Romantics thing on the BBC, which I am actually watching (admittedly, on iPlayer, but it’s a start!). It also contains Aiden Turner, and he doesn’t have greasy hair like in Being Human, rendering it basically okay to fancy him, even though I don’t think DR is really that good.)

Golly – I’m mighty glad to see this blog. I wrote all of the above yesterday and was really incredibly proud of myself for writing a proper blog – a fairly upbeat one, even – and then my laptop (by which I mean my mother’s laptop which I am slowly but surely taking custody of) died of juice deprivation. I assumed that the blog was lost in some recess of cyberspace, but lo and behold, I return and here it is. Anyway, I’ve lost all interest in what  I was saying about Alan Bennett, but I’ll still mention the second Thing.

I was thinking of doing a Current Affairs type blog, because despite my best efforts I’m still woefully underinformed in general Stuff and I ought to get more informed, so if I posted a weekly blog on some Thing then I might get a bit more enriched and shit.

Anyway – yay, nay? None of you are obliged to READ it, obviously. Tootles.