Rain, rain go away

But this is Britain we are talking about. It has a faint drizzly rainy thing going on about 50% of the time. Just enough to make your glasses all spotty. I need someone to invent a pair of tiny windscreen wipers for my glasses.

It is funny how types of rain are described here by comparing them to bodily fluids. It is spitting means just a bit of rain, here and there, on and off, just a dribble. Pissing down with rain means quite heavily. Also chucking it down means quite heavy--but chucking is not a bodily fluid--unless you are really saying up-chucking it down.


I have long since given up on umbrellas. It is also windy here and every umbrella I've ever owned has either made me lift off the ground like Mary Poppins if a wind current catches under there or more likely turned my umbrella inside and out and crumpled it like a paper cup. My new rain gear involves a really enormous yellow poncho with a hood that makes me look a bit like Big Bird. But it works even if I look like a big dork.

Sunny days are rare here. In the US you say partly cloudy but in the UK you say partly sunny. Ever the optimists, we are.

I'm not sure it can be called partly sunny today as I have seen no actual sun. It has been between spitting and pissing. And bloody cold. But what's a bit of bodily fluid, eh?

Travelling through time and space

Yesterday I went to London to do some shopping and then Spiderman met me at the British Library so we could go to a lecture on time travel. http://www.bl.uk/whatson/exhibitions/outof/events/event121910.html  It was a thoroughly entertaining venture for a mere £7.50 each. My favourite quote of the evening was "We are all time travelers moving at the rate of 24 hours a day."

Anyone who knows me knows that I am crap at directions. I can get lost going home if I try to go another route. FACT. Read here if you can't recall my extreme phobia of navigation: http://spidergrrlvstheworld.blogspot.com/2011/03/iron-filings-in-my-nose.html

However, I have managed to turn a corner recently through intense prayer and have recently managed to go to London on my own--not once but twice-- and actually not get lost. Amazing. As some of you know I have joined a folk dancing class and needed some beautiful, well fitting strappy shoes that were not made from leather. Tricky that one. So I figured go into Covent Garden as I know how to get there and do some shopping then meet up with Spiderman for the lecture. And let me tell you--I was very blessed indeed. I believe a person should count their blessings and so here they are:

  1. There was someone working the window at the train station so I didn't have to navigate the touch screen computer to buy my ticket. I much prefer buying from a person.
2. I remembered my q-pod (much lower tech version of i-pod) and so i had tunes on the way.
3. It was spitting with rain when I arrived but I had remembered my rain gear unlike our anniversary.
4. It stopped raining shortly after I arrived.
5. When I got out of the tube staion I did not even have to use the map Spiderman had given me as there was a big sign saying "Neal street this way."
6. The walk to the shop was as short and direct and easy-peasy as I recalled.
7. The man who worked there was useless and couldn't be fagged to do anything but the woman understanding my incredibly tiny feet issues (I wear a size 3/4 here--size 5/6US) went to downstairs to the store room and brought me up some size 3 black narrow strappy crocs in the Shyana style http://www.crocs.eu/crocs-shayna/11212,en_ES,pd.html?cid=206&cgid=women-footwear which were perfect and will be breathable and comfortable and will look much like everyone else's dancing shoes.
8. It didn't take long at all so I had time to potter around Covent Garden market.
9. I passed an AMT coffee-which are really hard to come by. They make this delicious Chai Steamer that is chai tea and hot soya milk with cinnamon on top. Perfect for a chilly (on and off again) rainy day.
10. I had a really interesting chat with a woman who carves animals in solid acrylic cuboids. I bought a lovely hand carved spider in a web as a late anniversary gift for Spiderman. We had a long interesting talk about teaching in an inner city school--she saw my backpack had a school logo and her son is trying to teach in Hackney but is so discouraged that he will go back to university next year.
12. I went into Crabtree and Evelyn pretending to browse but really as a cunning ploy to use a sample of their luscious rosewater hand cream that retails for £16. Shhh, don't tell anyone.
13. I went to LUSH for a similar reason to try out samples so I can figure out how to copycat them at home and I struck up a conversation with a girl who worked there about being vegan. I was excited to see the vegan society logo on some of their stuff so we got to chatting and she is a vegetarian wanting to go vegan. I wrote down a whole bunch of stuff for her--products to try (nutritional yeast that you can make your own cheese sauce/parmesan with) and some websites and blogs to look at. It was great to be so helpful. She gave me tonnes of samples.
14. I passed a Big Issue seller (magazine sold by homeless people who have to buy the mag and then sell for a profit--it is a way to get out of being homeless and the Big Issue foundation offers help with lots of stuff) and he seemed so down on his luck so I stopped to buy and mag and chat. Our friend Shaun who used to sell in our town said that the greyer the sky the less people buy. He agreed and said when it rains hardly anyone buys. We had a nice chat and I was glad I had some change to buy the mag.
15. I stopped off at M&S (oooh aren't we posh) and picked up some healthy salad bowls of grains and veg and goodness to eat and they had wasabi peas which was a treat.
16. I met Spiderman at the British library and when we were waiting in the lobby before the lecture a nice lady name Penelope struck up a conversation. She's Canadian but her hubby's a Brit. We had a really interesting visit about the Sci-Fi exhibit and Sci-Fi books we like. I'm glad that we seem friendly and approachable.
17. The lecture was stellar and really made us think. I was so happy to be here in England, so close to London, with my beloved Spiderman by my side.
18. Not actually about yesterday but something that happened earlier in the week that I am thankful for: The haberdashery stall in the market where I buy my thread and ribbon and buttons etc did me a nice turn. I was there buying some red yarn and the woman offered me some free iron on interfacing because she had accidently cut a hole in it and it was unsellable. I was really touched and went home and wrote a thank you note and she almost cried. Which was silly really--but I'm glad she felt touched as well.

It was a great day and I had a meaningful conversation with 4 strangers. I was very blessed by them and I hope I blessed them as well.

N-n-n-n-n nineteen

Today was our 19th wedding anniversary and I always get all soggy and sentimental remembering our wonderful wedding and all the events leading up to it--like JD's birthday party where we bonded over Frank Zappa and I ate all the cake. We had a wonderful day  despite the fact that it was pissing down with rain. Spiderman was volunteering at the London zoo as he does every other week and so I trained up to meet him so we could go out to eat at our favourite veggie restaurant Tibits. Read here if you want to know about the most delicious place in London. http://www.tibits.co.uk/e/

Here are some interesting statistics:
I was 19 when we met.
We have been married 19 years.

We have been together for 22 years.
I was 22 when we got married.

Spooky, eh?
So thanks to Lottie H-F who played cupid like we were in junior high and phoned up Spiderman to tell him I liked him because we might never have gotten together. Happy days.

Inch by inch, row by row

You know how dreams seem perfectly reasonable when you are asleep and when you wake it is like QUOI? Last night I dreamed I was a part of an eco initiative to create a Garden Bus. They were essentially a regular double decker bus but half the seats had been given up to a garden. So they were in a raised flower bed and they had a greenhouse around them but it was porous so air could get in and out. The object was that all the people exhaling CO2 on the bus would help the plants grow and the air on the bus would be ultra oxygenated. It made sense at the time. The buses also seemed to be a bit on the TARDIS side--bigger on the inside--but it totally worked in the dream. Some buses were for flowers and some for vegetables. There was a promotion that you could get a free organic carrot if your bus ticket was more than £3. Oh and the gardens were tended by fairies and gnomes. I think this is where I realized it was actually a dream.

I leave you with the best example I know of of a dream that made sense when you were asleep. This is the brilliant song by one of my favourite bands The Dead Milkmen. I give you Dean's Dream.

It's a Friday night cookin' show
With a horse-meat dish
I had to stay in the freezer
All Thursday eve
Talkin' to that horse

I really had to go
Down to the sidewalk
The sky's all red
The street's filled with people
From a High School band

I escaped to a theatre
To see a girl
With long blonde hair
Right down to there
I escaped from a theatre to see a girl
With long blonde hair

We had to leave

We got in a tan van
Us two in the back
With Steve McGarrett
From Hawaii-Five-O
At the steering wheel
Speeding away we slide into a
Parking lot
And all in slow motion
These tough guys appear

We argue and fight
And one pulls a knife
He hits me in the back
But I'm all right,
I'm all right,
I'm all right,
I'm all right

He's all right

I escaped from a theatre
To see a girl
With long blonde hair
Right down to there
I escaped from a theatre
To see a girl..

Over by the Nettos

My mum was saying she didn’t really get the idea of the rabbits from Watership Down being chavs because she didn’t have a good understanding of what a chav is. Here is a little something we tossed off a few years back. It is well funny innit (see you’re talking like a chav already! Just substitute well for very and tack on innit for isn’t it and you’re half way there!) While it is taking the piss out of chavs it is also an homage to that favourite childhood rhyme Over in the Meadow. If you don’t know the original poem this will not seem as dead clever as it actually is so take a squinty here http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/o/overinthemeadow.shtml   before you read our mock up version. Oh and for all my American peeps there is a dictionary that follows for all the British words you might not know. Cheers!

Over by the Nettos with their gold jewellery on,

Lived a young mother Chav and her little Chavvie one.

“Bling!” said the mother.

“I bling!” said the one.

So they sparkled like the sun with their gold jewellery on.

Over by the Nettos in a tracksuit made of blue,

Lived a young mother Chav and her little Chavvies two.

“Hoodie!” said the mother.

“We hoodie!” said the two.

So they tried to look tough in their tracksuit made of blue.

Over by the Nettos with an alcopop so sweet,

Lived a young mother Chav and her little Chavvies three.

“Drink!” said the mother.

“We drink!” said the three.

So they binged ‘til they puked on an alcopop so sweet.

Over by the Nettos like a cheap little whore,

Lived a young mother Chav and her little Chavvies four.

“Tart!” said the mother.

“We tart!” said the four.

So they gave it up for free like a cheap little whore.

Over by the Nettos where the school kids skive,

Lived a young mother Chav and her little Chavvies five.

“Skive!” said the mother.

“We skive!” said the five.

So they all hung around where the school kids skive.

Over by the Nettos with a fizzy drink and chips,

Lived a young mother Chav and her little Chavvies six.

“Eat!” said the mother.

“We eat!” said the six.

So they all got fat on the fizzy drinks and chips.

Over by the Nettos with a bloke named Kevin,

Lived a young mother Chav and her little Chavvies seven.

“Steal!” said the mother.

“We steal!” said the seven.

So they visit him in prison, this bloke named Kevin.

Over by the Nettos on the Newington Estate,

Lived a young mother Chav and her little Chavvies eight.

“Skate!” said the mother.

“We SK8!” said the eight.

So they  skidded on their skateboards ’round the Newington Estate.

Over by the Nettos committing petty crimes,

Lived a young mother Chav and her little Chavvies nine.

“ASBO!” said the mother.

“ We ASBO!” said the nine.

So they terrorize the town by committing petty crimes.

Over by the Nettos with their dope head friends,

Lived a young mother Chav and her little Chavvies ten.

“Smoke!” said the mother.

“We smoke!” said the ten.

So they puffed on their fags with their dope head friends.

Nettos - a supermarket chain that sells very low priced unhealthy processed food such as 25 bags of crisps for £1.

'chav' (slang) - a young person, often without a high level of education, who follows a particular fashion; Chavs usually wear designer labels including the chav favourite 'Burberry', and if they’re girls, very short skirts, large hoop earrings and stilettos.

For more about chavs go to

http://www.worldwidewords.org/topicalwords/tw-cha2.htm

bling bling (slang) - synonym for expensive, often flashy jewellery sported mostly by African American hip-hop artists and middle class Caucasian adolescents.

Alcopop - a sweet fizzy alcoholic drink usually with about 5% of alcohol by volume, which makes them rather stronger than most beers. They specifically target younger drinkers as they taste as if it does not contain alcohol.

skive - Doing anything but that which you are supposed to be doing during a specific time frame. e.g. Pretending to do something for which you are being paid for, such as a your job, but instead doing other things (like having a laugh, phoning your friends, hiding from your boss, surfing the internet, playing computer games, having a sly cigarette) that are totally unrelated or unconnected to that which is within your job description.

Council Estate - the British term for a neighbourhood of purpose-built housing operated by a government agency, often simply referred to as "projects". The Newington Estate was the one right outside the Ramsgate school.

ASBO - an anti-social behaviour order (ASBO) is a civil order made against a person, as a result of persistent anti-social behaviour. The order bans a person from engaging in a specified form of anti-social behaviour, and/or bans them from entering a specified area. Breach of an ASBO can result in criminal penalties.

The definition of anti-social behaviour is wide-ranging. The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 (http://www.legislation.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts1998/19980037.htm) defines anti-social behaviour as behaviour that "caused or was likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to one or more persons not of the same household." Cases of orders have included:

·        Vandalism

·        Abusive behaviour

·        Harassment

Fag- British slang for a cigarette

Sci- fi / horror / fantasy / geek

We had a big ole geek fest yesterday. We went in to the British library to see their (free) exhibit Out of this World: Science Fiction but not as you know it followed by a talk by author Joe Hill in the Waterstones in Piccadilly. But first to save money I cooked up a big ole pot of Mac and Trees and Peas which is my new favourite quick but healthy meal. Basically you make this cashew cheese sauce http://viveleveganrecipes.blogspot.com/2009/03/vegveeta-cheese-dip.html (I like to increase the nutritional yest to 1/4 cup) while your wholemeal pasta boils. You throw all sorts of veg into the boiling pasta water--I used tenderstem broccoli and frozen petit pois (hence the trees and peas) plus half a diced red pepper and a sliced carrot. Then you drain the pasta and veg, stir in a tin of beans (I used haricot this time but chickpeas rock as well), pour over the cheese sauce and dinner is sorted. Sometimes I have also tossed in some chopped smoked tofu because I am hardcore like that, but alas I had no tofu in the fridge at the moment. After having full tummies so as not to have us spend money on crisps or other cheap and appealing but ultimately unhealthy junk food we proceeded to London.

The exhibit was awesome! All sorts of old manuscripts and books with Sci-Fi themes. The oldest being True History by Lucian of Samosata written in the 2nd century AD about a group of adventurers on a sea voyage who are pushed up a water spout and land on the moon! There were lots of what you'd expect--Jules Verne and HG Wells--which are cool to see what ideas they had as to how things would be in the future and how many of those are true. There were also whole sections on Time Slip--my personal favourite type of Sci-Fi--such as that fantastic book Kindred by Octavia Butler about a black woman in the late 1970s who is pulled through time repeatedly back to the pre Civil War South to save a badly behaved white red haired boy name Rufus who she comes to understand is her great great great etc grandfather and has to keep him alive (he is forever trying to get himself killed) long enough for him to have children with her great great great etc grandmother--a free black woman who does not want Rufus as a mate. She has to watch him rape and enslave this poor woman --and help him do it--otherwise she won't exist in the future. I also really adore the Time slips of Jack Finney--all that sliding into a more simple times in the past where men sat on the porch of the feed store and  drank lemonade and played checkers. it also featured books about Utopian or Dystopian worlds. I was pleased to see my favourite feminist text there --a short story called Sultana's Dream by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain which was written in 1905! The men are all in harems and locked away and the women rule the country wisely and well. There is solar power and flying cars as well as the idea that women get all the work done in 2 hours. Men used to work a 7 hour day but in reality they wasted 6 hours smoking charoots. It is a great Sci-Fi what the future will be like as well as a tale about how there is no violence or crime in a female run society. You can read the full short story here:  http://www.marxists.org/archive/begum-rokeya/1905/x01/x01.htm it was a fascinating exhibit--and did I mention it was free?

Then we were off to waterstones where we heard the amazing Joe Hill (who is son of Stephen King) read from the novel he is currently writing and answer questions about his books. I would recommend 2oth Century Ghosts if you like short stories--my favourite (and his!) is Pop Art about a boy and best friend who happens to have been been born plastic and inflatable. Sounds dumb but totally isn't--I can completely suspend my disbelief when I read it. I also recommend Horns which is about a nice young Christian man whose girlfriend is brutally raped and murdered and he is the suspect but it never comes to trial although the whole town believes he is guilty (he isn't) and one day he gets drunk and curses God and grows a pair of horns. At first the horns make people tell him their darkest desires--some scary stuff--and he uses them to find the real killer and seek revenge. It is a profoundly deep, spiritual and dare I say religious book--about the nature of good and evil. It ask the question if God hates sin and the devil punishes sinners--are they not somehow on the same team--like good cop / bad cop?  Lastly, I would urge you check out the comic book series gloriously illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez called Locke and Key. This is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key.  Actually here are lots of keys--like the one that takes you anywhere or the one that helps you change gender or the one which opens your head where you can put in or take out things. This is amazing stuff and if you are at all a geek I urge you to check it out.

Joe Hill was funny and clever and he signed our books and comix for us and it was a great day out! Plus I used my Waterstones loyalty card (which i've never actually used for books just discounts) to get £2 off each ticket so we say Joe Hill for £3 each instead of £5! Cool!

We are geeks and we are proud
Stand up tall and say it loud!

Are we there yet?

Yesterday Spiderman and I took the train up past York to Harrogate to see an art exhibit of  Victorian painter John Atkinson Grimshaw who painted lots of scenes by moonlight giving them an eerie ethereal quality. Look here to see his complete works: http://www.johnatkinsongrimshaw.org/ He was completely self taught but had a lot of the Pre-Raphaelite in his works--the really looking carefully at nature in natural light, the attention to detail (painting every single individual leaf) and his love for Romantic literature (he had twins named Lancelot and Elaine after the poem by Tennyson.) His works have a near photographic look about them. Gorgeous.

It was a long train ride. we left Stevenage at 7:30 am and arrived in Harrogate about 10:45 after a small layover in York. It was a long journey but we entertained ourselves by playing games. We saw some rabbits on the hill beside the tracks in Stevenage and so we spent a great deal of time rewriting Watership Down as if all the rabbits were chavs.

The primroses were well over.
Fiver: Ooooo
BigWig: Oh for Frith's sake 'azel, what's Fiver on about?
Fiver: Bloody fields, innit.
Posh Kehaar: I say old chaps, that's some frightfully big water.
etc etc etc

It was a huge laugh. The game we used to play on long car trips was inserting the word FART into famous literature quotes. e.g. But soft! What fart through yonder window breaks! (Romeo and Juliet) or To fart or not to fart, that is the question. (Hamlet) Hours of entertainment.

Anyway, we mostly entertained ourselves quietly as we were on the quiet coach that wasn't supposed to have mobile phones or people with small children so we kept mum with Spiderman reading and me listening to tunes on my wee MP3 player which we call a q-pod (as opposed to an i-pod) as it is so old fashioned. It is basically a gloried memory stick with earphones, but it works. Spiderman got it for me for mega-cheap when i went into hospital last year. So I listened to my favourite tunes to pass the time.

But once we got there we had 7 hours to have fun. We did the Attkinson Grimshaw exhibit (which was free) and the paintings were *amazing* and then we did the other museum at the Pump House which had lots of interesting local stuff including letting you sample the local medicinal water from the wells--which reeked of sulphur. Pooh. We declined to drink it, but many people used to come there for spa treatments as the water was supposedly good for skin complaints. But boy it was whiffy.

We also pottered around some antique shops and sat on some benches in the park and enjoyed a picnic lunch I had packed and just checked out the town. We found a cool geek shop with comix and had a nice chat with the dude working behind the counter about Joe Hill's graphic novel Locke and Key which we are mad for.

Then it was time to train back home. We stopped off at M&S (Ooooh, aren't we posh?) and bought some healthy food--quinoa with chickpeas, edamame and pomegranate seeds with spinach and other nice veg thrown in a sweet lime dressing for me and Spiderman got giant couscous with roasted butternut squash and red pepper in a  dressing--they were 2 for £3. Plus I bought some fresh cut pineapple, melon and grapes. Then we trained back home munching and listening to tunes or reading until we were safely back home about 9:00pm.

It is amazing that you can train halfway across the whole country and back in a day--in Louisiana 4 hours travel and you'd still be in Louisiana. I love living here.