lucy pepper's blog and website and everyfink

further than ever [Flickr]

2008-08-08T02:41:23-05:00

sporting

2008-08-08T05:35:03Z

I'm awfly glad that the Olympics are in China this year. Not for any political reason am I glad. If anyone thinks that holding the Olympics is going to change anything in China, then they're a bit daft. They GOT the Olympics and then used slave labour to build that stadium that you can't see for smog. duh. So the best thing about the Olympics being in China, the only good thing, is that most of the action will be happening while I'm asleep so it will be that much easier to avoid the unbearable tedium of it all. I'm not too disturbed that other people find it enjoyable to watch other people jumping up and down, running around, dancing with ribbons and all that in a competitive manner. If that's your fun, then lovely, it keeps you off the streets. I can't be arsed with sport, but if you want to waste your life watching it, great... like I want to waste my life making pretty pictures and writing waffle. Great. Fine. Yeah. But what eludes me is how anyone finds remotely interesting the monotone dullards in their pre- or post- activity interviews, that will be televised and radio-ised ad nauseum until I either feel like want to slit my wrists or spend the fortnight (fortnight! HOW much money/time/lives/energy spent on a fortnight of SPORT?) in a tent up a mountain... "yeah, well, I did me best, felt like I was going to come up hard against it, but pushed all the way, I AM the most boring person in the world, yeah, and I've got 30,000,000 people, like, listening to me, like, yeah, droning on and on and I thought my injury might slow me down, but I pushed all the way, and had faith and thought positive like, and yeah, are you still listening to me, because I'm SO boring, aren't I... that's why I went into sport, because I knew I'd never make it in anything where I had to be remotely interesting and yet here I am, with all of you, amazingly, hanging on my every inane word".... all in monotone, all different athletes, all saying the same thing, all making me want to stick a brick through the screen...

another bit of not finished [Flickr]

2008-08-06T07:37:23-05:00

unkempt woman posted a photo:

i started this as a quick oily sketch.... i've decided to turn it into the sistene chapel...it may take a while

a solution

2008-08-06T03:11:51Z

I'm getting a tattoo. The thing is, it's going to have to be quite big, so I'm not sure where to put it. I may start on my forehead with the title, but there is some small print, which goes on quite a bit, which will need a home.

I've already drawn it out, ready for a game tattoo artist to copy here:

but, the small print is very small print, so I have transcribed it here for you:

Do Not Tell Me What to Do
... for I have a huge character flaw which means that I get QUITE angry and annoyed on the inside when people tell me what to do. Of course, being the big drip that I am I never tell the people telling me what to do (unless it's my husband of course, but he deserves it) to shut the hell up, so I stay feeling angry and annoyed for quite a while. It is entirely hypocritical of me because I'm sure I'm always telling other people what to do, but then maybe they don't hate it QUITE as much as I do. The thing is that it's not that I think I know EVERYTHING when I rail against people giving me constant unsolicited advice and orders, it's that I like to find things out for myself, teach myself, learn for myself. In fact it's pretty much what my WHOLE life is about, so other people telling me what to do without having been asked is kind of an intrusion. I may be paranoid, but I seem to attract a lot of unsolicited advice and telling-me-what-to-do behaviour. Maybe it's just because I hate it so much that I feel like people never stop telling me what to do, or maybe it's because I don't live very much like many other people in the world, so that many other people in the world think I need telling a thing or two. I may well attract an awful lot of it because I'm not Portuguese, and, as most old Portuguese ladies know, the English are all a bit dim and incompetent and are absolutely the most impractical people you can find about the place, but let me assure you that they are wrong, that we're very practical, rather brilliant (and humble) and just because I do it differently, does not make me wrong. Now, I understand that all this is not entirely reasonable of me, that I should, like other people, rise above it and smile sweetly, but it's a defect that's as deeply engraved in my soul as this tattoo is in my skin, so that's why I have this tattoo so all the people of the world can read it and give me advice only when I ask for it OR if I have started dribbling and am no longer capable of rational thought. Thank you.

I am aware that ownership of this tattoo will mean my being cut out of my mother's will, as she has always insisted that she would do such a thing should I tattoo even a centimetre of my body. But, needs must.

still not finished [Flickr]

2008-08-05T18:54:57-05:00

unkempt woman posted a photo:

tattoo [Flickr]

2008-08-05T15:36:32-05:00

unkempt woman posted a photo:

for further explanation go to blog... as usual.
www.lucypepper.com/pt/blog/18-blog/706-a-solution

not finished [Flickr]

2008-08-05T06:51:11-05:00

unkempt woman posted a photo:

how many legs is too many?

2008-08-04T05:02:31Z

leave a kilner jar in a shed with its lid slightly open and if you're lucky you'll find an interesting bug in it who couldn't get out again and died an agonising death of starvation and thirst. If you're REALLY lucky, you'll get three bugs with way too many legs plus a baby one which is a bit purple. What the hell ARE they?

Living in Portugal is good. As well the finding bugs in jars thing, there are QUITE a few other lovely things.

I was standing with a fellow Briton and a Pt last night as we watched our respective smallish kids running around the place at midnight, having a great time as we growed-ups did the growed-up thing of chatting, gossiping, telling stories, taking the piss and giggling a lot (well, actually guffawing. I don't giggle). It occurred to one of we Britons that if we were in Britain on this balmy night at a similar get-together, we wouldn't be standing there at such an hour having such growed-up fun. Being parents of young children, we would have had to have gone home hours ago to put them to bed, or minutes ago to go and relieve the fifteen year old drug addict of her babysitting duties. Our Pt friend looked at us, mystified. Why on earth wouldn't you take your children?

Here the kids come too. And they're used to it, used to not being stuck in bed at seven at night, so they don't go all mad and hyper and sugar crazed because they've stayed up late. In Britain, you can't take your kids anywhere, let alone at night time, unless it's a disgusting Harvester (and not late at night or you'll get funny looks), a Little Chef (ditto and ditto on the disgusting) or if you're lucky enough to live in West or North London some fucking expensive "mother and child" restaurant (which probably closes at 4.30pm) where you probably end up wanting to commit hari kari with the plastic cutlery (I'm imagining, as I've never had the misfortune to go to one, but I've heard they exist). I could go on and on and on about how dreadful it is doing anything with children in England as compared to Portugal, but I won't because you'll cry and I'll get angry (angry with how silly it is, not with your crying) at how silly it is, silly that you STILL have to apologise for taking kids to restaurants (and shops/zoos/museums/friend's houses/to see the queen/etc.)... and don't think of taking them to any of the London museums and giving them FOOD in the in house restaurants/cafés. The WONDERFUL Museum of Childhood is ruined for me by the fact that they tried to sell me A sausage stuck ironically in a ball of mashed potato for six quid last summer which wasn't enough to feed a two-year-old, let alone a hungry five-year-old whose parents, if they had tried to sate the children AND themselves in such a place, would be heading for bankruptcy, and trying to find lunch in Bethnal Green that isn't a bottle of Lucozade (mmmm) and a mars bar (mmm) OR halal and QUITE hot, not forgetting, of course, that you can't take kids into pubs either, is QUITE hard. But hey, that's food. And we were talking bed times.

When I go to stay with my family, it's VERY strange to them all that my kids aren't in bed by English (or Ingerlish, I suppose... a girl likes to be consistent) o'clock... they don't go to bed at that time at home, and they sure aren't going to suddenly decide to go to bed early while they're on holiday. It's very awkward. Children just aren't up late at night, it's not the done thing. Here, if I put my kids to bed at Ingerlish o'clock, people would think I was really odd and QUITE mean. Last year, when the child went missing in the Algarve, and it was reported that the she and her siblings were in bed at seven, people here thought that was REALLY weird. No, I mean REALLY. And it probably didn't help matters much. LET THE LITTLE SODS STAY UP LATE! IT'S GOOD FOR THEM! AND IT'S FUN! THEN THERE'S THE ADDED BONUS THAT THEY WON'T JUMP ON YOU AT FIVE IN THE MORNING. Obvious really.

OOh, that was only supposed to be a few words long, and I appear now to have gone off on one..... and now it's 1.15am, none of us went to bed until QUITE late last night (I shan't say how late, or the Ingerlish Social Services will be after me) so I'd better shut the heck up and go to bed. Goodnight.

ABANDON HOPE!

2008-07-31T17:47:05Z

What a way to start a Thursday. Pick up the newspaper and the top headline is: Cavaco Silva interrupts his holidays to talk to the nation... tonight.... about something QUITE important.

Cavaco (who, for the benefit of everyone outside of Portugal, and a good many Angles IN Portugal who probably think that Mário Soares is still in the job, is the President of the Republic) hasn't done this before. His colleagues are saying that only something truly important would bring him to do such a thing, in his holidays and everything!

So, in our house today we're running a sweepstake. What will Cavaco say?

Please join in. The winner will receive erm... .... ... quite a bit of kudos.

Will it be:

a. speaking from the Bahamas from a private yacht, that he has abandoned the country and all of us to complete bankruptcy (financial and moral) and he got out while he could, sorry, but see ya!

b. speaking from a bunker somewhere in the Azores, that he has abandoned the country because he was sick of it all and released an unheard-of deadly virus on us.

c. that we'd better hold on tight, because Portugal has come unzipped from Spain and we're about to float off into the Atlantic, and that there'll be an almighty bump when we hit Madeira (see above).

d. that the nation must drive carefully this weekend, this being the busiest and deadliest of the Portuguese year.

e. that he's resigning for health or boredom reasons

f. that he's firing Sócrates, because if Sampaio gets to fire a prime minister, so does he. Nyeugh.

g. just to say that "I'm having a lovely holiday and I thought it would be more personal to send a televised talk to the nation than some crappy old postcard."

h. we're all screwed. goodbye.

blokehood

2008-07-31T04:52:25Z

probably thinking about "bola"

Ranty (I HATE that word now... along with "Random") Post Alert: this post is about blogging and the internet and it's a bit ranty. if you react with anaphylaxis or coma to the navel raving (like navel gazing but more violent) of a blogging woman blogging about blogging please look away now. thanks.

The other day I was watching a naff segment on a sky news thing about internet stuff, when some newsreader mentions to some bloke from some tech website something about blogher (as if it were some new thing he'd just discovered) and this some bloke said something like "ug... ug... women... blogging... it's nice to see they're getting onto the internet now... ug ... ug... grunt".... and I said loudly to the television, probably a little too loudly considering the small people were about, "you fucking WHAT, you fucking IDIOT?".

How many millions of women doesn't the blinkered techie idiot think have been blogging and generally doing stuff for the last five or six years (and some for notably longer)? Just because porn, trolling and silly nerd wars about what's best: "star wars or linux?" are the oxygen of the internet and they are predominantly masculine, doesn't mean that quietly, subtly, classily, discreetly, there aren't millions of women communicating, selling stuff, writing, drawing, being brilliant (and not just me!), taking advantage of all the sound and fury of the boy internet to give us madly fast broadband.

I'm sure he is not alone in his idea of what this internet is all about. I'm sure that many gazillions of people don't know what women get up to in here.... and I don't mean they all have webcams in their bedrooms. I'm not entirely sure why I'm so worked up about one silly boy on the telly and one silly quote, but, really, it was very very stupid... but as boys are the shoutier ones, they get heard more often... aaaah, egos.

I could go on. ... but I'd be likely to start going off on one about all the worthless, soulless shit that's out there, how immoral it probably is to be getting rich selling ringtones when there are people who are hungry, and then I'd say how really, wouldn't it be good if internet publishing was only open to me and my talented friends (female and male) so that only we would ever get anything out of it (money, for a start, that'd be good, then maybe a bit more money) and then I'd end up on my real internet bugbear about people who seem to sell shed loads of crap while I and my cohorts have enough fucking class/style/taste to not spend our lives drawing/painting/collaging a. dolphins, b.fairies, c. fairies with dunce hats, d. fluffy kittens with no irony, e. horses and clouds, f. rainbows, g. porn, h. ringtones, i. retro nineteen fifties and sixties cartoon characters j. etc. and don't sell nearly enough of anything (I will be opening an etsy very shortly, take heed and take the hint...ahem!) .....so I won't go on. Again.

men

2008-07-29T06:00:25Z

the paper is "bola". Obviously.

nine years ago

2008-07-28T06:00:01Z

nine years ago today I popped a sprog with nothing more than a bit of nitrous oxide and some pushing. (a far cry from this sprog-popping experience, I can tell you). Yesterday she painted a picture and I copied it. Or was it the other way round... can't remember... anyway, please wish her a happy birthday, as it will make her day, and we do love her terribly.

early morning beach

2008-07-28T04:04:24Z

a good time at the beach is early in the morning, when the light is bright and white, the shadows are hard and sharp and the people are mostly still at home.

sandes?

2008-07-26T22:41:32Z

greasing the wheels

2008-07-24T22:00:00Z

Portugal would probably grind to a halt without it, as it is the lubricant of society and commerce, used sparingly by some and lavishly by others. It is called the CUNHA (COON-ya).

In Britain, there is nepotism, a similar fruit. But nepotism is limited. It's usually confined to close family and it's something one doesn't shout about much, because who wants everyone to know that daddy got one one's job. Cunha is slightly different. It's talked about more openly, except in the very nepotised situations, like being shoe-horned into that job just because daddy put a word in. Cunha is the distillation of "having friends in the right places" and "it's not what you know, it's who you know" all into just the one word.

Having a cunha means that you may jump the queue in a hard to negotiate institution with long waiting lists or queues like a hospital or a tax office or the council planners or a difficult to contract lawyer or architect. If you're lucky and more open to nefariousness, it may give you preferential treatment once you're in.

When a person is in a queue and sees someone pulling a cunha to get in front of them, they can get all pissy and miffed. Of course, the very next day, they'll be pulling their own cunha in another building. When I was pulling my own cunha the other day with my busted finger (under family duress, I must add.. if it were down to me, I would prefer to sit waiting for several hours while the genuinely sick got preferential treatment) my personal cunha was asking a question of a nurse. So pissed off was this nurse that we were pulling a cunha, that she was extremely pissy and miffed with me. An hour later, I was back in the waiting room and there was the same nurse, doing her own cunha'ing, cunha'ing in a pal from the waiting room.

But that is just how it is.

I wonder if somehow, cunha'ing were outlawed (as if THAT would make a difference here) or overnight became sociallly unacceptable, and stopped completely, Portugal would actually grind to a halt, or would it find a way of getting systems to work without the bloody queue jumping?

Just wondering.