what's new, pussycat?

Henpecked

2009-06-07T18:49:13Z

England! Land of red telephone booths...

Banburgh

Fine fayre...

And fierce creatures.

Anguished of Alnwick Castle

We had a great day pootling down the Northumberland Coast with the in-laws yesterday, one of those times when you remember OH YEAH I'm living in a foreign land and there is still so much to see. I always forget that the border is just over an hour away. I've been to London a dozen times and once got stranded at Bristol airport but apart that I've not really seen anything of merry old England after six years. FOR SHAME! The main project of the day was to catch a boat to the Farne Islands to see the kazillion nesting seabirds. The boat was packed with bird nerds in woolly jumpers. Look! Guillemot! Shag! Cormorant! they crowed from behind their binoculars and long lenses. The commentary was handy as I'm only good at spotting kookaburras and galahs. Although I know a puffin when I see one, and we saw hundreds. And many angry terns, who were staunchly defending their nests. I grew up on a farm with swooping magpies but they are totally softcock compared to the Arctic tern. These guys are not afraid to peck you on the head then come back for more. It was pure Hitchcock. Check out the feathered action below...

Heatwave

2009-06-02T11:09:55Z

It was a mighty 26 degrees here yesterday (79F), which pretty much constitutes a heatwave in Dunfermline. Sunglasses were needed in the high street to combat the blinding glare from pale topless men. Anything higher than 15 degrees then off come the jumpers and jackets and out come the bellies, concave or corpulent.

At the newsagents.

Down at the park the hillside was strewn with more bare-chested bodies. Birds sang and unprotected Scottish skin barbecued. On the bus the old ladies who moaned about the endless winter last week now moaned about the relentless heat. Hellish, they called it.

Trouble in Paradise

2009-05-21T12:24:55Z

We've moved house again; a little house with rural views to the rear complete with enormous pile of cow shite. Inspired by all that fertiliser we've planted some herbs and tomatoes and have already become emotionally involved with their fate. Every time the house creaks and gurgles during the night I worry it's the sound of little plants hurling themselves out of pots. No phone or internet yet but been fooling around with a little Wacom tablet. I'm no Loobylu but it's fun chucking yourself into something new for the pure hell of it, instead of wondering if it's the right move or the proper next thing. Reveling in your crapness with no expectations. Will try not to put it in the washing machine.

On the X26 to Glasgow

2009-05-11T22:11:30Z

Drunk guy just sat down next to a bookreading girl on the bus. BOOK GIRL: You are reeking of drink! DRUNK GUY: And you are reeking of literature! (this is just a wee tweet I wanted to preserve!)

I Like Budgies

2009-05-07T11:30:38Z

Following on from the whole Baby or Budgie debate, while in Australia I found evidence that Dr G and I were destined to be together. It seems we've both wanted the same thing all along! While pawing through a folder full of stories I'd scribbled as a five year old, we found this:

I like budugies. Can't spell them but I like them! FATE, I tell you.

Long Haul

2009-04-18T17:17:31Z

There needs to be a word for the pathological loathing one feels when boarding a plane and having to walk through the First and/or Business class sections en route to your own pissweak Economy class seat. Nothing makes me spew more with futile rage than seeing a fully reclined someone with a pre-takeoff glass of champagne in their hand, especially at the start of your third eight-hour flight of the day. Another delight of long haul travel is watching your reflection progress through increasing levels of shithouse. With each trip to the bathroom the hair has limpened a few more notches; the eye bags bloom; the tiny pimples peek above the surface. We got back to Scotland today and I think it is possible (but bloody impractical) to be equally in love with two countries. For example: when I first got to Melbourne, an Aussie accent came strolling over the speakers, "Passengers arroiving from Duboi, yer bagserat carousel foive!" Shortly afterwards at Carousel Foive, a tiny Glaswegian lady suddenly thrust her handbag at her grandson. "HOUD MAH BAG, SON! HERE IT COMES!" * she rasped, before throwing herself on top of her wheelie suitcase as it trundled by. Both sounds were music to my ears. * I wish I knew how to capture an extremely thick Weegie accent. but I have been awake for thirty house. Update: That was 18 April and it's now 7 May. I dunno where I was going with this but will post anyway!

The Gift

2009-03-24T21:48:30Z

GARETH'S DAD: I want to give you a wee bit of spending money for your trip to Australia. GARETH: That's okay, thanks. I don't need any money. GARETH'S DAD: I want to give you some money! GARETH: I don't need any money! GARETH'S DAD: Say it's for your birthday! Take the money! GARETH: I don't want to take the money! GARETH'S MUM: Either you take the money now, or you take it when we die!

And that was the end of that

2009-03-16T12:07:08Z

"Do you think we should think about having kids, at some point?" "Could we not just get a budgie?"

Pavlovian

2009-03-14T15:07:00Z

There was a guy leaned over someone's desk, pointing at graphs on the computer screen as I was sailing past to make the seventeenth cup of tea for the day. My right hand twitched automatically and raised slightly. I was just about to swing it towards his butt when I remembered where I was. Would this stand up in court? It wasn't sexual harassment yer honour, I just saw a denim-clad backside and next thing you know I'd slapped it. Because that's what I mindlessly do every time I walk past Gareth, whether he's doing the dishes or trying to choose a beer at the corner shop. I saw this particular butt and forgot to put it in context. Sometimes you forget where you are. Like when you've eating something really fabulous in a restaurant and you forget you're in a restaurant and pick up the plate and almost lick up the last scraps. Or like when The Mothership was my teacher in Year Two and I couldn't stop blurting out "Mum" instead of "Ms Marsh". It's easy to get confused. It's hard to stay in the here and now. UPDATE: HONESTLY you spammy bastards, comment spam after 24 hours, you are truly doing my head in. Closing comments AGAIN and feeling very stabby. BOO!

Three Times A Lady

2009-02-27T00:21:22Z

If there's anyone left out there, apologies for the ongoing crapness. Every freaking time I post an entry the comment spam starts pouring in within half an hour and is there anything more demoralising than getting New Comment Posted emails only to find it's Crazy Bob and his performance enhancing drugs. I'm planning to move this blog off Movable Type and import it into my TypePad account (where Dietgirl resides with minimal fuss) before I head to Oz in four weeks. It will mean almost nine years of broken links because this blog is all PHP and TypePad doesn't do that. But I never knew what PHP meant so I had no business messing around with it. It will be worth manually editing 1,064 entries just so I can forget about the back-end bollocks and look forward to clicking the New Post button. Giddyup! HAPPY WEDDING DAY, MOTHERSHIP!

Valentine's Morning

2009-02-22T19:42:48Z

SHAUNA: You've stolen all the blankets AGAIN! GARETH: What we need is separate blankets. S: Why not separate beds? G: Why not separate houses? S: Why not separate countries? G: Yeah, great idea! I grew here, you flew here! As the saying goes.

Lost and Found

2009-02-17T21:38:48Z

"He really loved kangaroo mince in the end," said The Mothership through her tears, the night she called with the news. Our beloved, deranged hound Bert had passed away at the ripe old age of fourteen or so (loving tribute here). "Kangaroo mince? That sounds fancy." "And it was proper kangaroo mince intended for human consumption, not the pet food stuff." "Really? Don't tell me, it was on special?" "Oh yes!" she perked up a little, "Only $1.99 a kilo!" Yesterday she emailed me a photo of the gentle mound of dirt under which Bert now resides. I couldn't quite decide whether to laugh or cry but went with laugh in the end, because it was such an old Mothership thing to do. I found my wedding ring nestled inside a Jamie Oliver cookbook. Looks like I'd used it to bookmark the Spring Vegetable Soup recipe then shoved it back on the shelf. What a bloody moron. I received a Valentine's Day card from Peter Pan, our Dog's Trust sponsor dog. You may recall Peter Pan replaced Kenco, who died in a kennel brawl. Apparently Peter Pan loves rolling in seaweed at the beach but does not like people - you can visit him in Darlington but you can't touch. So I'll just admire him from a distance with his card on the mantlepiece.

I like the fuzzy effect they put on his photo. Combined with the tilt of his head, stern expression and stiff posture, he looks almost Victorian. All formal, like he's about to go off to war and this portrait will be tucked into the bosom of his good wife.

(Thinking of the folks back home xxox)

Bow down to your leader!

2009-01-28T23:07:54Z

Here is Puff Daddy Seany Sean and his modestly titled new perfume. Back on Scottish shores but I finally got to do my Early Show thingy before I left! (video here, beware giant head) It went okay but I was so bloody nervous I talked like a robot. I wish I could have done a warmup gig somewhere slightly smaller than a national US program, say Midstate Television 689 back in Orange, New South Wales. I was crapping my dacks coz I'd not done television before - I didn't know what it would be like with the cameras and lights and gleaming presenters. So when the interview started all my wit and personality deserted me completely; it was a matter of trying to breathe and listen to the lady and answer the questions in plain English and not throw up all over her dainty shoes. But as soon as it was over and I got outside back into the lung-piercing morning I thought, You nitwit, that was cool, what were you so nervous about, and why didn't you say X and Y and Z?! I wanted to knock on the studio door and beg for a do-over, hehe. It was like getting married - the first wedding I was freaking out but the second was a charm; I knew the drill! Och well, critical analysis aside.... it was rockin. One of those lucky, once-in-a-lifetime experiences that is a blur at the time then a few days later when you're back in a cold, grey Scottish town you can't quite believe that it happened to you. I'm grateful for the chance. And also grateful for the nice wee holiday in New York :)

Inauguration Day

2009-01-20T23:09:25Z

One of my favourite Scottish phrases is "jammy bastard" which means "a very lucky person". After drowning the phone and losing my wedding ring last week, this one has been indeed smeared in jammy goodness. I'm in New York! I came over last Thursday to go on The Early Show on Friday. But then my segment got bumped to Wednesday and now it's been bumped to Thursday so I've been forced to extend my stay. Such hardship! Who knows if I'll ever get on the bloody telly, but comrades... unexpected New York holiday. You cannae beat that! Today I moseyed down to Times Square to soak up the inauguration atmosphere on the big screens. I've never heard so many woohoos and allllllrights and dang I been waitin' for this day all my lifes. The massive cheer when Obama got sworn in, oooh it gave me shivers. Must admit I was a little teary. Then Obama did his bigass speech. His voice, the closed captions and the video were all out of sync so it was very confusing and people's attention started to wander and there were as many people saying let's get a coffee as YOU DA MAN NOW!
Crappy video but wanted to capture the cheering!

Death of a Wankerphone

2009-01-12T22:30:29Z

2009 so far: 1. Gareth nearly burned the house down. Or as he would tell it, I nearly burned the house down. It was an unfortunate alignment of random objects: i. My make-up mirror, the one that magnifies your advancing years in spectacular fashion, was sitting on top of a cupboard, and then along came... ii. A giant blazing beam of sunlight coming through the window (sunlight in Scotland in January, WTF) which bounced off the mirror and bored into... iii. Gareth's "Executive Chair", which is made of some faux-leather crap so it started to smoulder ... which Gareth discovered upon returning to a smoky office after lunch. 2. My book got translated into German, Finnish and American, so I've been pimping it to the max before it is consigned to the multilingual remainder bins of history. 3. Last night I washed my iPhone. Before you say anything Mothership, I didn't leave it in my pocket. You know I always check my pockets. Except for the 756 times I left crumpled tissues in them and you would bellow from the laundry, SHOORRRNNNAAA, and my heart would run cold. Anyway, let me walk you through it. i. On Sunday morning I emptied my laundry bag onto the bed and sorted the dirty clothes ready for washing. ii. Went off to eat brekkie and forgot about clothes. iii. 5PM and waiting for the Tesco Man to deliver the groceries. Sometimes he calls if running late, so I took iPhone into the bedroom and wedged myself up against the window. We don't get mobile reception at our new place but sometimes you can get half a bar at the window if you're lucky. iv. By coincidence the Tesco Man arrived at that very moment so I chucked phone on bed and answered the door. v. 6PM. Groceries were packed away and I remembered the dirty clothes. Went back into bedroom, didn't both turning light on and scooped up pile of clothes. Put the washing machine on. vi. Can't find my phone anywhere. vii. Four hours later, I remember that I've got clothes in the machine. I remove the clothes and there is the stupid phone. Dead, dead, dead and stinking of lavender. I bought the iPhone last September after months of turmoil as to whether I should buy something so frivolous. It would go against the frugal farmgirl roots; I'd always been on £10 a month pay-as-you-go. But I eventually succumbed to lust and walked out of the O2 Shoppe with the goods, wobbly with fear and guilt. It was like when I moved out of home and purchased Heinz tomato ketchup instead of Home Brand. Or when I first bought Nike trainers instead of Leisure 7s or plastic Apple Pies. I thought God would come busting through the clouds and say, "YOU. DECADENT. FOOL!" and vaporise me then and there despite my begging, "Please sir, I got them from the factory outlet." I loved that phone; I named it Basil. The whole time I was waiting to be mugged because you just know, deep down, that you're not someone who's meant to own that sort of thing. But I never thought I would ruin it by my own hand, for crying out loud. Googling revealed that I wasn't the only donut who's washed their phone. Apparently laundered iPhones have come back to life after being left in a bag of rice for a few days. "Arborio or basmati?" Gareth yelled from the kitchen. "Basmati," I said, reasoning that because basmati cooks quickly, it would heal my stupid phone quickly. Yeah that makes sense. Zoe joked this morning that we should have used arborio as it absorbs more moisture, and tonight I am looking at my cloudy-screened paperweight in its ricey-Tupperware coffin and sincerely wishing I'd thought of that. Anyway, that was a very expensive load of laundry. I just wanted to say, yes it was a Wankerphone as Gareth called it. But I loved it and it was very useful. I will miss my Mr Plow ringtone and how a photo of Gareth flipping the bird popped up when he called. I will miss listening to podcasts, checking train timetables, obsessing over to do lists, misspelling things with the touchy keyboard, compulsively checking email and squinting at electronic books. Most of all I will miss the alarm clock. You could select noises such as "Harp" or "Robot" or "Bark", the latter which sounded like a German Shepherd saying, GET UP OR I'LL BITE YOUR FUCKING LEGS OFF. But now I must rely on the Scottish sun to wake me up. If it can set a chair on fire surely it can get me out of bed in the morning.