INTP

If I have to spend time with non-INTPs
I’m much more forgiving of Fs than of Es
I don’t mind Fs making decisions with feeling
But I can’t get on board with this social free-wheeling

They don’t understand how it is that I’m prone
To spend countless hours simply sitting alone
While the F finds it hard that my methods are clinical
The E cannot stand that I’m so goshdarned cynical

I tell them it’s just I require solid proof
To help on my quest towards some kind of truth
Then they tell me I’m being too shitting pragmatic
Well, I’d rather have that than be over-dramatic

I prefer more to think than to actually do
And I’m often distracted by the shiny and new
Sometimes people find I don’t do what they ask
I’m sorry! I’m P! I can’t finish a

Drink when:

• Dimbles is wearing an amazing tie
• Dimbles stumbles over the words ‘twitter’, ‘tweeting’, ‘hashtag’ or ‘Dimblebot’
• The cuts are blamed on the “shameful state the previous government left us in”, or the words ‘deficit’, ‘inherited’ or ‘13 years’ are used
• Two fingers if the audience groans in response to these buzzwords
• Any reference to the coalition as an arranged/gay marriage
• Dimbles refers to member of the audience by the wrong gender
• Dimbles refers to an audience member as “You there in the spectacles, yes you”
• Dimbles refers to an audience member as “You there in the spectacles, no not you, in the row behind, yes you”
• The phrase “LET US BE CLEAR” is used
• The economy is compared to household finance
• Female panellist says ‘as a woman…’
• Audience member says “as a mother”
• Female panellist is talked over
• Obvious Daily Mail reader is obvious
• Fists are used to bang on a table to emphasise a point
• (2 fingers if end of finger is used)
• The phrase “Guardian Readers”, “wet liberals” or “liberal thinking”  is used
• 2 fingers if the audience then cheer.
• Sighting of HPN (Hot Political Nerd) in audience
• Two fingers if @mrchrisaddison then tweets about them
• Sighting of audience member wearing tweed jacket/bow-tie combo (BOW TIES ARE COOL!)
• #bbcqt trends on twitter
• The name of one of the panellists trends on twitter
• A panellist tweets during the show’s recording
• Something is blamed on meddling from Europe
• Two fingers if the point has nothing to do with Europe
• Audience member mentions “MPs expenses – it’s one rule for us and one rule for them!”
• Panelist refers to benefits system/NHS as “getting things for free” or similar
• The BBC license fee is referred to as a “tax”
• If people who normally attend drinking game are in the audience and appear on screen
• And finally: if the Question Time music is playing, you are drinking.

I am putting on a thing!

I didn’t used to watch Question Time, or indeed be particularly politically engaged at all. This all changed completely (as did many things) when Twitter came into my life.

HEYYY TWITTER HEYYYY!

Now I LOVE it and I literally read the news every day. I just cannot get enough of the news.

Twitter has a clever knack of making live events, and shared events, much more fun; even if they’re things that, perhaps, on your own, you would find mind-numbingly dull. I’m not talking about Question Time here; obviously I’m talking about X Factor. I in fact watched all of last year’s series of X Factor, simply because the shared jokes and japes and piss-taking on Twitter made it such a joyous experience. And it’s the same with Question Time (probably the first time anyone’s compared Question Time to the X Factor in any way ever???); even the dry bits and the awful bits are a lot more fun with a feed full of people doing SATIRE and making JOKES and getting ANGRY AT THE GOVERNMENT. Normally, all on their own, in front of their computers slash tellies, yelling at the screen, drowning their political anxieties with whatever liquor comes to hand.

So! I thought. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all this together, sometime? The drinking and shouting and laughing? “When I move to London,” I thought, “I might look into that.”

Then! I moved to London.

I met Mediocre Dave (@mediocredave [otherwise known, occasionally, as Martin]) in a pub after we had both been to a myth-busting talk that Zoe (@stavvers) & some other people were doing about anarchism. It was a nice talk and I liked it!! I was concerned, however, that the fact that it was on a Thursday might make me miss Question Time. I DO NOT LIKE MISSING QUESTION TIME! IT IS MY FAVOURITE TIME OF THE TWITTER-WEEK. I mentioned this to Dave…Martin….Dave….and we got onto discussing the idea of holding a watchalong/tweetalong in a pub somewhere, with everyone in the room’s tweets projected onto one wall and the programme itself onto another. AMAZING, we thought. “Is this just a slightly tipsy pub-talk,” we said, “Or shall we actually do it?”

LET’S ACTUALLY DO IT.

Question Time is on fairly late, though (10:35! Practically bedtime!) and I thought that this would be an odd time of night for something to start. “We could have political speakers, and comedians, beforehand!” I said, “To get us in the mood! We could play the #BBCQT Drinking Game!” My friend Chris Coltrane (@chris_coltrane) runs a lovely night called Lolitics, which I’d been quite inspired by, though I didn’t want to centre around stand-up comedy too much – I wanted more of a “Twitter on a Thursday but IRL” feel.

I went onto Twitter and crowd-sourced the rules of the #BBCQT Drinking Game, since everyone has a different version each week. HILARITY ENSUED. This was the result. I’ve since pruned it just a *tad* and you can read the finalised version here: BBC Question Time Drinking Game.

Dave & I contacted some politicos that we thought might like to do slots and they thought it sounded nice! This was encouraging. Becky Luff (@speckl) allowed us access to her massive brain-library of comedians and helped us get in touch with a few likely people. I found a lovely venue in Islington, The Compass, who were very keen to get involved, and said they’d give us the room for free if we brought in a successful, regular night. The wonderfully obliging Steve Maclean (@steven_maclean) whipped up a poster. John Rogers (@lampyjohn) and Mike Hillier (@mikehillier) offered their support on the tech/audio side of things. DIMBLEBOT (@dimblebot) thoroughly endorsed the project.

Anyway, without further ado, I present – the first #BBCQT Watchalong/Tweetalong.

EHHHH MYYYY GEEEEEEHHHHHHD.

Twitter, I love you, and you are all fucking stunners.

See you there x

__________________________________________________

It’s time we all accepted the inevitable: social media isn’t going to go away.  It is not a fad.  It is here to stay.  And – bear with me here, whilst I go out on a limb – it doesn’t really, actually, exist.  At least, not in any truly meaningful way.

Almost half of the internet-using population interact with social networking sites on a daily basis.  The biggest and most pervasive of these is Facebook, which has over 500 million active users and more than 30 billion pieces of content shared each month.  To put that into some context: if Facebook were a country, it would be the third-highest populated in the world (the first and second are China and India, with America trailing far behind at a measly 311 million).  On top of that, some 10 million users create 1500 new tweets every second, and the list of other social networking sites grows ever longer by the day; just last week, Google+ joined the ranks of Myspace, LinkedIn, Diaspora, Quora, Tumblr, Formspring, and all the innumerable others jostling for position.

Quite understandably, this new influx of user-generated content – a tidal onslaught of opinion, debate, humour and plain whimsy – has many organisations running scared; particularly those that have always relied on the more traditional forms of engagement and promotion.  And the picture is only going to get more complex: the rate of change and growth on the internet is getting faster all the time, with myriad new platforms and trends to keep an eye on if you want to stay ahead of the game.  As self-styled internet guru Clay Shirky puts it,  “The old models are breaking before the new ones can be put into place”.

Personally, I believe that the answer for organisations and businesses lies in embracing openness and the online; in particular the willingness to engage with and participate in discussion online rather than operating above it or in isolation.  Dipping your toes into the fast-flowing waters of social media can seem daunting in the extreme, and with good reason; but there’s one very important thing to bear in mind at all times – and it’s this:

Even if you think you don’t want your company to get involved with social media, it probably already is.

Chances are that someone, somewhere out there, is talking about you right now.  It’s up to you whether or not you decide to get involved in that conversation, but if you choose not to then don’t be surprised if you suddenly discover that people have been talking about you behind your back – and don’t be surprised if, lacking that valuable input from you, they’ve got the wrong impression about your company or services.

The digital generation is one that is mistrustful of authority and highly sensitive to corporate interest (Don Tapslock, Growing Up Digital), so new approaches must be found: it’s no longer enough to simply throw tired old imperatives and calls-to-action into people’s faces, no matter how persuasive your type-face might be.  Dictating to the digital generation what they should like, what they should buy, and who they should aspire to be may not go down as well as expected: online, anything too corporate, too staid or too sales-y is likely to be derided, torn apart or (perhaps worse) completely ignored.

If this all sounds like too much gloom and doom from a marketing perspective, there is an upside; and I’d argue that it’s an upside that leads to far better places that traditional models of marketing and promotion.  At a business level, social media gives companies the opportunity to communicate, engage and build relationships with customers and consumers like never before.  For perhaps the first time, we as businesses have a chance to be more than simple faceless entities and develop far more personal and human relationships online – whether that’s with customers, clients or consumers; whether that’s with potential partners, the public or the press.  Of course, creating long-lasting relationships is great news for brand loyalty – but it’s also great news for all of us, as living and breathing human beings.

And this is what I mean when I say that ‘social media’ doesn’t really exist, in the true sense of the word.  Wherever there are people, be it online or offline, they will always find ways to engage and interact and enthuse about the things that interest them.  The web has always been about communicating and socialising, ever since the early days of IRC and Usenet newsgroups – as time goes by, we simply find better and faster and more multimedia ways of doing it.  At the end of the day, it’s just people doing what they’ve always done.

‘Social media’ is just people, talking to other people – about the things that they like, and the things that they don’t like.  We ignore it at our peril.

So! A proper update. The LP version of all those twitter EPs that keep flying off the shelves.

I live in LONDON now.  I work in NEW MEDIA in SHOREDITCH. This is hilarious to me. Whenever I am feeling a bit stressed, or like I am a child pretending to be a grown-up (i.e. most of the time), I remember this and then everything is amusing again.  I am a SELF-FACILITATING MEDIA NODE.  So far it is my third day here and no one has yet offered me a line of coke OR a game of ‘Cock Muff Bumhole’.  I have also failed to work the adjectives ‘bum’ or ‘well fucking jackson’ into my everyday rhetoric.  I am almost saddened by these facts.

I work for a company called Ixxus, who design and implement content management systems and are the UK specialists in Alfresco open source software.  Which basically just means we make websites & that.  My bossman is tall and stern-looking, like an eagle, and also he is bald, like a bald eagle.  He has a very tiny curly-haired poodle that looks more like a TY beanie-baby blacksheep than an actual dog, and he plays catch with it up and down the office.  A thing that I like about my new job is, there is free fruit and coffee and tea and biscuits here every day.  Mental!  A thing I do not like about my new job is, sometimes people make me do work.  As usual, my office is very male-dominated (there are only three girls; Marketing, Marketing and Secretarial; hurrah for gender equality!), and full of techies; that said, I have already had to explain what memes are (along with examples) and describe the point of leet-speak (i.e. none).

Speaking of memes!  I went to Hay Festival again the other week, and attended a lot of ace internetty talks with exciting and adorable people like Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing and Ben Hammersley of Wired Magazine.  I mentioned the Adam Curtis documentary All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace to Ben during his talk, and got told by the chair to shut up since it was too niche for the audience (pfff); afterwards, Sue Blackmore (the world’s! leading! authority! on memes! also she is amazing! and does talks at TED! and has great hair!) literally LEAPT over the room to talk about it with me afterwards.  Tl;dr I was pleased by this and am now showing off about it?  I might try and be her when I grow up, if being Caitlin Moran doesn’t pan out.

Speaking of Hay! I helped my good friend and book-bummer extraordinaire Lauren Smith out on the Voices for the Library stall a lot during the festival.  They’re a really great organisation who are campaigning against library closures around the UK in the wake of coalition cuts, and are deffo worth a look at if you’re into, y’know… books, or literacy, or learning, or children, or any of those important things that we’re supposed to value in an enlightened society.  You can follow them on twitter @UKPling.

Here are some things that I have found out about living in London:

1. It does not take very long until you get annoyed by very minor delays in public transport. Back in Shropshire I had to wait for two hours to get a bus, and drive for an hour to get to a city; now I get irritated if the tube is more than three minutes late.   Last week I also got annoyed because I literally had to go right to the end of my street to find a shop that sells HP sauce, as the shops at my end didn’t stock it.
2. Salgam is disgusting.  I am kind of against savoury drinks in principle, but this one is the worst of the lot.  It is made out of radishes.  Radishes are bad enough in solid form.
3. Nearly everyone in London is gay.  Probably?
4. Going on the tube with a hangover gives me panic attacks.
5. All of the pubs are too small to actually fit everyone in, which is fine in the summer, but I am not sure how this will work in the winter.
6. If you are a girl and have dyed red hair and dress a little oddly and perhaps maybe just happen to be covered in glitter from a gay disco, then blokes will yell “VIVIENNE WESTWOOD!” at you in the streets as though they think this is an insult or something.

Here are some exciting things that I have done so far:

1. Been swimming in the outdoor bathing pools on Hampstead Heath.  They are very very cold and have enormous fish in them.  I quite like it because you can swim after passing ducks and coots.  Coot.
2. Blagged my way into a party on the Commons Terrace at Parliament and got very drunk on taxpayer-funded wine and a bottle of whisky signed by Nick Clegg.
3. Been mugged.
4. Watched two seasons of The Vampire Diaries.
5. Waded through the fountains in Trafalgar Square and got told off by the police during London Pride.
6. Hung out with boy-blogger Rhys Morgan who is a bit of a Skeptic hero of mine for starting campaigning against homeopathy and other such quackery at a young age.
7. Arranged to start a ‘zine with my friend Bill and then failed entirely to follow up on it.
8. Referred to myself as being “in my mid-twenties” for the first time ever.
9. Invented a new euphemism for ones lady-parts. CAT-FLAP.  It is totally classy and will definitely get you laid.

You can read my first review here:
Episodes (BBC2, Stephen Mangan, Tamsin Greig, Matt le Blanc) S01E01

Sensory Defensiveness

Common symptoms of sensory defensiveness include intolerance of high-pitched noises, intolerance of chewing sounds, intolerance of overhead lights (especially fluorescent lighting); experiencing a feeling of being attacked upon being touched (especially from light touch or sudden touch); intolerance of certain types of fabrics in contact with the skin; intolerance of pointy objects or objects jetting towards the eyes; becoming nauseated upon smelling something that does not smell bad to neurotypical individuals; difficulty maintaining eye-contact; severe intolerance of foods due to taste, texture, or temperature; and generally becoming overwhelmed when exposed to a lot of sensory stimuli at once – Wikipedia

i hate it the most WHEN
it is EXACTLY 10am
the slavering, the slobbering, the
chunks of chuffing CHEW
OH if you knew
the time i’ve spent resenting how your
food and spit’s cementing & the
anger’s left fermenting in my browwwwwwwww

& ohGOD, i’ve kept a FILE on
your every bit of BILE, & the
time it takes each day for you to swallow.
& i never COULD admit. just how
SICK i am of IT, for i fear the
thought’s too much for you to FOLLOW.

every DAY and to the MINUTE
off you go again, you gannet, with the
food sprayed once more past your parted lips.
& i won’t succumb to murder – though
you’re only a co-worker – but for
GOD’S sake, must it everytime be CRISPS?!

Warning: may cause hysterical hyperventilation.

ETA: In literally ridiculous news, The Financial Times picked up on this post here. I’m famous! One day people will give me a job in “satire”.

GORDON IS GORDON THE BIG ENGINE

"Gordon views himself as the most important engine because he is the biggest (not including Murdoch from Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends) and he pulls the Express. Although he can be boastful, he is hard working and strong, and performs his express duties to the absolute best of his ability. He is sometimes teased by other engines, particularly the smaller ones, and has been known to have a good-natured rivalry with fellow main line engine Henry the Green Engine."

DAVE IS HENRY THE GREEN ENGINE“In this story he went into a tunnel and refused to come out due to fears that the rain would spoil his paint.”

MANDY IS DIESEL

"Duck was unimpressed by Diesel's claims of being "revolutionary" and left him to his own devices. As a result, Diesel was made into a laughing stock by the trucks for trying to pull some rusty old trucks and failing spectacularly, and Diesel blamed Duck for not helping him. Diesel swore a vendetta, and spread rumours that Duck had given the big engines rude nicknames. Duck was sent to Wellsworth pending an inquiry into the matter, but Diesel got too big for his boots and tried telling lies about Henry. He was found out and sent home in disgrace. Diesel is, in essence, the average pantomime villain. He is oily, malicious, devious, scheming and full of ideas to get revenge. It appears Diesel has a good side in him, but one would still have to look deep to find it. "Devious" Diesel is a devious diesel shunter."

VINCE IS EDWARD THE BLUE ENGINE

"Edward is a kind engine, who is always keen to help a friend in need. The younger engines can always rely on him to lend a listening ear and sympathetic advice. He works hard and will always do his utmost to get a job done."

BURNHAM IS PERCY THE SMALL ENGINE

"He is the smallest, youngest and probably cheekiest, of the principal steam engine characters."

BALLS IS TOBY THE TRAM ENGINE

"Toby is first seen reminding the other engines that they must not let Diesel 10 push them around."

DANNY IS TERENCE THE TRACTOR

"He is slow but good enough – he can go anywhere, because of his caterpillar tracks. He becomes good friends with Thomas after Terence helps Thomas out of a snow drift."

BORIS IS BERTIE THE BUS

"He is cheerful and boisterous, and although he enjoys a good-natured rivalry with the engines, he is most usually seen helping them out, whether bringing passengers or assisting when the railway is out of action."

MILIBROS ARE DONALD & DOUGLAS

"The Fat Controller originally only ordered one engine but was surprised when two arrived, neither with numbers or any distinguishing features – both engines were painted completely black. He could not tell which engine was which, and so decided to keep whichever one was the more useful."

BERCOW IS HAROLD THE HELICOPTER

"He keeps a watchful eye over the Island in case of trouble, and speeds to the rescue of anyone in distress."

WLLM IS DUCK THE GREAT WESTERN ENGINE

""There are two ways of doing things," Duck says, "the Great Western Way or the wrong way." This has been known to annoy the other engines.""

CAROLINE IS EMILY

"Emily had been a kind-hearted engine when she first arrived. But soon she gained a more bossy attitude. She bossed Thomas once, which made him cross. She has been good friends with Thomas ever since her first arrival."

PICKLES IS THE FAT CONTROLLER

"In the Season 8 episode "Halloween", he is briefly shown wearing a wizard costume."

(Actually I’m updating because I promised Mobile Fun that I’d review a USB phone charger, and because it’s… well, it’s been a while)

Exciting updates! What the hell have I been up to?!

Well. Mostly I have been putting photographs of politicians next to trains from Thomas the Tank Engine and then laughing a lot?

WHAT IS THIS.

I CAN'T BREATHE.

So yeah, I’ve been doing a lot of that.  Too much, one might say.  But also! I have done normal things that proper people do, too. Proper people who don’t get looked at as though they are mental.

Hay Festival

My first time (shocking really, as I’m next to the Welsh border and it’s only an hour away). I’ve been to Hay-on-Wye before obviously, there were books, I had some fudge.

I ADORED it. The same sort of intellectually-trascendent revelation that I had when I first went to Latitude. Wonderful, to hear snippets of exciting conversation everywhere you went, to know you could happily interject without inevitably hating the strangers you ended up talking to.  I did the Philosophy festival on the Saturday and the Literature festival on the Sunday (I span academia, yo).  I’m not going to rave too much, but it was stunning.

Also, I got a virtually self-spoofing Guardian tote bag that is immune to parody in its ridiculousness. It is totez awesome:

Paper? Tick! Sunshine? Tick! Pimms? Tick!

Highlights inc!

• “Copyright, Copyleft & Artistic Ownership in the Digital Age”; brill stuff on a thorny issue. Feargal Sharkey was a really engaging & compelling speaker, even though I disagreed with much of what he said.  Still, at least everyone seems to be agreed that reform is needed.
• Johann Hari being adorbs.
• More Nick Clegg stalking (I know, I’m a girl possessed). He was lovely & witty & self-deprecating as ever (“I co-authored a book on this – well, it wasn’t really a book. More of a pamphlet. I just said it was a book because I thought this is a literary festival and it would sound grand. It was a leaflet, really.”)
• Stephen Fry being booked to speak for an hour and overrunning for an hour in typically verbose Stephen-fashion (“Incidentally, WHEN is the Alejandro video coming out?! It is just driving me MAD!”)
• All the speakers being given sunflowers. Glorious!

Also, Bonnie Greer was literally everywhere we went. Being fierce.

Minor quibble: I was surprised how un-foodie it was; only one vegetarian option on site, and barely any food on site at all. I was expecting, you know, grilled halloumi and houmous and venison burgers.

I also spent far too much of the weekend sitting in my car trying to charge my phone just so that I could tweet. Nightmare. #firstworldproblems

Here’s some satire, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Oh, my achey-breaky Lib Dem heart.

Latitude

I also went to Latitude! I wasn’t supposed to, it was sold out and I was very sad, but then I managed to come by a spare VIP ticket about 3 days before for less then face value.  Huzzah.

An excellent time, but unfortunately I did keep falling asleep and missing things.  Most noteably & heart-wrenchingly, Karaoke Circus & Crystal Castles, though they clashed anyway.

Highlights inc!

• Quite a lot of Robin Ince happened. Robin Ince is everywhere. He is the king of middle-class, left-wing festivals. And there were cushions on the floor of the Literary Arena! Score.
• The Actor Kevin Eldon. Obviously.
• Q&A session with Chris Morris.
• Forest! Sheep! Lake! Cocktails! All the usual, really.
• I Blame Coco played! She is the fittest thing I have ever seen?

FAO Coco, how are you real?

My favourite bit was when Colin & Mary & I were having a discussion about something wanky like “the transient nature of the campsite” and “festivals as liminal zones” (Colin & I basically talk in English Lit. essay titles once we get going, it is really irritating for anyone near us); Colin asked whether either of us ever imagined that each tent was a word and strung them together across the campsite to make sentences.  No, I said, shaking my head, “But are they present tents or past tents?”

I am literally the funniest person in the world.

Anyway!

A REVIEW

Perks of the job. Work very kindly let me take along this emergency charger for my phone, so that I didn’t have to spend half the festival sitting in the car like I did at Hay.  I’m no tech-blogger really, so you don’t get an unboxing video I’m afraid.  Here’s a picture of it though:

I actually really dig it and have been using it loads.  It works well as a charger for my G1 but comes with loads of other tips so you could easily use it as an iPhone 4 charger or an iPad charger etc – not sure how long it’d take to charge an iPad though, I’ll have to borrow m’ boss’ one for a go.

The unit itself is quite sleek and feels/looks well-made, with a nice matt finish.  It seems to hold just enough power for me to charge my phone completely about 1.5 times, perhaps 2 at the most, so I did still end up sitting in my car again occasionally, but that’s more the G1′s fault for absolutely gobbling up battery.

I like it! I shall bequeath it THREE AND A HALF OUT OF FIVE STARS.

If that sounds low, it’s just because I’m stingy. I would only give myself three and a half out of five stars as a person, too.  And I’m really into me.

Birmingham SiTP

I went to it, my second. Everyone very friendly and welcoming, and remembered who I was though I’d missed a couple of sessions

Anyway, lovely lovely Prof Chris French (wot I wrote a piece on sleep paralysis for last year) gave us a talk, on the latter, and also on anomalous psychology and pareidolia and all that malarky that always makes me wish I’d carried on with Psych after A Level.  I got a little drunk on toffee cider.

Escorted through the Peer’s Entrance

Not a euphemism. Or at least, it wasn’t until all my rt. Hon. friends the Loliticians got their grubby little hands on it.

I had a tour round Parliament! It was amazing!

Lord Faulkner kindly took me round and he properly knew his stuff.  Here are some interesting facts that he told me about:

Behind the Speakers chair is a green bag which is the petitions bag, where all the petitions sent in end up. Lord F. said that in the olden days when people would ask ”Did you get my petition?”, the Speaker would say “It’s in the bag”, and that’s the origin of the phrase “It’s in the bag”.  I squealed quite loudly when he told me this.

In front of both of the benches there are two red lines, just over two sword lengths apart, which you aren’t allowed to step over when you’re talking to ensure that you don’t fight the opposition; this is the origins of the phrase “toeing the line”.

He also explained the tradition behind Black Rod, the guy who comes with the Queen for the State Opening of Parliament. This one time! Charles I ran in demanding to see 5 MPs who he was angry with and wanted to punish, but the MPs had already legged it. The Speaker refused to tell the King where they were and said that he was under the rules of the Commons, not the rules of the King, and then they ejected Charles I from the Commons.  Hero!  So now, royals are only allowed into the Commons by invite, and when they come they have to have the door slammed shut ceremonially in their faces and then Black Rod raps on the door with his rod to be let in.

It was a bit empty as it was the last day of term before all the politicians wander off to the beach with their buckets & spades.  I watched the Lords doing a vote, and I went in the Commons chamber and had a wander around and looked at the front benches and the dispatch boxes, and I went on the Terrace Bar, and I went in the Robing Room where the Queen gets dressed before State Opening of Parliament.  I’d always envisaged it as a large walk-in wardrobe but it is in fact an entire room with quite a lot of paintings in it.

Not many Lords.

Doctor Who at the Proms

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

Matt Smith! Karen Gillan! Arther Darville! Daleks! Weeping Angels!

They played Gallifrey: My Childhood, My Home along with a video of all of the Doctor’s regenerations, and we all applauded each Doctor as they passed.  Very poignant and lovely, so obviously I was sobbing my face off.

Albert Mo'Fo'ing Hall

I also went to see The Knife’s opera based around The Origin of Species, Tomorrow in a Year, but I won’t go into it here as it wasn’t all that.  A nice concept, moderately executed.  My advice is to just stay at home and listen to the album, which is great.  Cool dry ice, though.

SHERLOCK

The BBC modern-day adaptation of Sherlock Holmes, by Steven Moffat (Doctor Who) & Mark Gatiss (League of Gentleman) started airing a fortnight ago. Be still my heart.

I AM FANGIRL CENTRAL.

HUMPERDINK BANDERSNATCH. CUTHERBERT CAMEMBERT. BENDYDICK CUCUMBERPATCH. YOU HAVE A RIDICULOUS NAME. MARRY ME?

They’ve even had a sort of hamfisted go at the extended media/ ARG side of things, with character blogs (John, Sherlock, Molly) and puzzles to crack, which is sort of endearing.  And gives us lots of extra squee-worthy details like SHERLOCK AND JOHN HAD A JAMES BOND MARATHON TOGETHER, SHERLOCK AND JOHN RAN OUT OF MILK THIS ONE TIME AND SHERLOCK HAD TO ASK JOHN TO GET SOME, SHERLOCK AND JOHN ARE IN LOVE AND DEFINITELY GOING TO GET MARRIED, et cetera.

Unfortunately it’s only a three-parter. The first episode was stunning, absolutely utterly & inexorably perfect.  The second, I thought was a little weak (also not slashy enough?! hello?!).  But the second of a trilogy is always the worst, TRUFAX, so I have high-hopes for next week’s finale.  And for us getting a full series after that, please?

I would be this excited.

PS. Dear Mr Prime Minister, plz do not take our BBC.

I, having loved ever since I was a child a few things, never having
wavered
In these affections; never through shyness in the houses of the
rich or in the presence of clergymen having denied these
loves;
Never when worked upon by cynics like chiropractors having
grunted or clicked a vertebra to the discredit of those loves;
Never when anxious to land a job having diminished them by a
conniving smile; or when befuddled by drink
Jeered at them through heartache or lazily fondled the fingers of
their alert enemies; declare

That I shall love you always.
No matter what party is in power;
No matter what temporarily expedient combination of allied
interests wins the war;
Shall love you always.

-Edna St. Vincent Millay

Came upon this poem and hearted it terribly.

Three major updates:

1. I went back to Leeds for one sun-burnt and gloriously nostalgic weekend.  Everything was as it was, but changed.  The people that I left there are still brilliant, and bridges seem to be being built with the ones I pushed away more forcibly.  The pavements of Hyde Park were still hot and booze-addled, the fry-ups were still oozing and fatty, the nights were long and warm and stretched on forever.  When I stood up to do poi in the park everyone yelled “PARK TWAT” at me.  I am sad but happy that I left.

Also, I finally saw The Room. YOU’RE MY FUTURE WI-IIFE.

2. I managed to find a very lovely doctor who prescribed me Melatonin off-license for my insomnia.  I’d read about it a while ago, because you can get it over the counter in America, but you can only get it here on a scrip for over-55s or kids with ADHD.  So, thank you lovely doctor!  I don’t want to jinx things, but it seems to be going really well; I’ve been falling asleep within 20 minutes of going to bed every night, which is almost unheard of for me.  The two downsides are that I really struggle to wake up in the morning, and whenever I wake briefly in the night I’m having hypnopompic hallucinations that something is prowling around in my bedroom.  It crashed into my bed last night, too.  Oo-er.

Theoretically, Melatonin works to reset/ maintain the body clock, so it’s used short-time for jet-lag and shift-workers, and longer-term for insomniacs who (it’s speculated) have a deficiency of Melatonin.  Its production’s linked to light, which explains why I have (even more) trouble sleeping at a full moon. In an act of ultimate badassery, it’s sometimes known as  “The Hormone of Darkness”.  Anyway, it’s all a bit woolly and uncertain at the moment, which is why it isn’t licensed over here.  I daren’t even give myself leave to hope that my years of sleep deprivation are over, we’ll have to wait and see!

3. CLAMERON.  I am basically obsessed with politics at the moment, or at least, lolitics.  EATING UP ALL OF MY TIME.  EATING IT UP MUCH AS GIDS SCOFFS CURLY-WURLIES AND CHOCOLATE COINS (this is basically canon).  My feelings on the coalition are pretty ambiguous.  Of course, I’m not happy about having a mostly Tory gov’t, but I’m glad that the Lib Dems are there to soak up at least a little of the damage, and it’s all very interesting at least; all I really ask from life is that it’s exciting.  It’s making me vaguely ponder how one would go about getting into something political as a career.  The House of Commons looks like literally so much fun.  Anyway, so I joined the Lib Dems yesterday. Hm. At the very least that means I’ll get a snazzy yellow poster to stick up in my window next election time (2015?).

More importantly, the entire media has gone completely slash-happy and are shipping Clegg/Cameron to no end which is providing me with daily (if not a little pervy) squees.  As a ship it has everything that I heart; it’s slightly forbidden & illicit, there’s a lot of power-play involved, the prospect of scandal and media-spotlight at any point, and of COURSE the potential for Nick being seduced to the dark side and/or Dave’s heart being melted by our plucky young hero.  It’s very much a Harry/Malfoy thing.  Obvvvz I love it.  My long-term Aussie gf Rhiannon has written an engaging piece that rather sums up the appeal.

Also, two words: SHIPPER!QUEEN.