yonmei

08:37 am: All week, I've been waking up a few minutes before the alarm goes off
Probably because the clocks went back at the weekend, but possibly because I feel good.

I have a meeting to go to this evening and a bunch of stuff to get written today.

It's a lovely day. The sun came out.

I'm going to have chickpea/tofu/pineapple curry for lunch, with half a sweet potato. Yum. (However, the soup I put together last night, while it smells good, is basically brown. Brown lentils and kale with carrots.)





Bite me.

Tags: just my life really

10:40 pm: I'm feeling quite good
And is it at all strange that feeling good automatically makes me think "soon it's going to change"?

There are valid solid reasons why I feel this good. But I might have had the reasons and not felt this good. It's all biochemical. Happiness I mean. Is that sad or what?

In other news, sun-dried mango is delicious.

And I still feel good.



Tags: just my life really, mango

01:46 pm: I found my headphones!
They'd got lost. I hadn't had them since Wednesday night.

*hums to self*

(It was only about 18 months ago that I first got an MP3 player, having always thought they were a bit pointless. Whee!)



Tags: just my life really

10:43 pm: What I did today
I went to Stockbridge Sunday Market via Eildon Street and Inverleith Park. I haven't walked down Eildon Street in years: my great-aunt used to live there. The new owners have planted a hedge in what was Aunt Margaret's garden, which lets them sit by the sunny wall sheltered from direct gaze by the street: it's a very specific and local hedge, because (I presume) they don't want to block one bedroom's view of the firework shows...

I went on through Inverleith Park, which has a pond on which several grown men were playing with toy boats. (There was a cluster of them by the bank, with their controls, looking very grim as if a toy boat was Serious Business. I suppose it might be, if the boat was attacked by a swan.)

There were rumours that Artisan Roast was going to be at the market, but they weren't, so I bought myself a plain and an almond croissant to eat in the office later (but I shall try to resist in future: they aren't making any reductions whatsoever given they're selling their pastries from a market stall, and good though their croissants are, they're not £3.30 worth of good...), and had an excellent lunch of Stir-fry Yaki Udon noodles from HaraJuku Kitchen. There is nowhere to sit down - the market is just a cluster of stalls along Portgower Road, which runs from Inverleith Park to Comely Bank - so I sat down on the pavement with my back against a sunny wall and managed my chopsticks quite nicely, considering I am way out of practice. (For years, I thought I didn't like "Chinese food": it was only after friends asked me to meals at Chinese restaurants that I discovered what I don't like is the state a stir-fried meal gets into when it's stored in little foil boxes for half an hour to an hour and then eaten steamy-soggy, greasy, and luke-warm.) I suppose I could have walked back to Inverleith Park without my lunch getting too cold: next time I might do that, if they're still there next time I go.

So then I walked back via the river path to find out what was going on at the Car Free day on the Shore.

What there was, actually, was even less than Stockbridge Sunday Market: a pen had been put up for a five-a-side football game that looked uncomfortably like a cage match (I suppose they really did need the cage wall on the side by the river, or they'd have lost their football sure as fate) and a set of stalls about energy conservation on the other side of the bridge. One of them was giving away free hessian ILoveLeith bags, so I got one, and another was letting you have a free glass of freshly juiced apple juice, if you cycled for about a minute or so per glass on an old bike that was set up to power the apple juicer.

...and then I went on to the office where I brewed myself up some coffee, ate my croissants, and watched Evita while I did data processing work for several hours. I took a break between five and six when I walked up to ScotMid and bought myself some tea, because the chip shop across the road was beginning to sing wistfully to me in its siren way, and when that happens, I should probably eat something more sensible.

But I got almost all the data processing done. It's got to be all done for the 24th. Yes, that's Thursday. I have too much to do, and if I got the bulk of it done on Sunday, I could half-watch half-listen-to a movie while I did it.

I first saw Evita when it was a musical in London in 1982: my drama class went on a three-day trip to London during which we saw an alarming amount of theatre, including Evita, The Cherry Orchard, and Barnum. Plus one play we got unexpected tickets for, because (probably) it was so awfully bad. I forget what else we saw. Of the three big evening plays, the one I remember vividly is Barnum: though the songs from Evita stuck with me longer. It was odd: I vaguely knew what the plot must be from having read more history of South America since than I had then, but I don't think I ever really followed the plot of the musical till I finally saw Madonna's film. I'm interested to find that the film doesn't name Che until the credits roll up the screen and you finally (if you didn't already know) find out who Antonio Banderas was playing. (The film does not pass the Bechdel Test. The only conversation two women have is between Evita and Peron's previous mistress, and since it's a conversation in which Evita is telling her she's getting dumped, it doesn't count.)

I also got an e-mail from my sister about next weekend: she's coming up for a visit.



Tags: eating some delicious food, edinburgh, films, just my life really, lunch, walks, work

11:16 pm: Lists of today
I'm sort of watching Night at the Museum, which I last saw on the ferry from Belgium after Ajay and I had virtually no sleep and were pretty much totally stoned from tiredness. It was very funny then. It is still pretty good, but it is easier to spot the plotholes waving in the breeze.

Can plotholes wave in a breeze? Probably.

This morning I discovered that the friend of a friend had succumbed to the forces of evil. Which is to say, he wanted to do something, homophobes believed he shouldn't be allowed to do it, and when it was clear they were going to go on standing in his way and jumping up and down and spitting ugly homophobic allegations, he did eventually just give up. Which is infuriating and maddening and understandable and sad.

We had a meeting about our salaries. I want more money. More than that I want more recognition. That is a wholly complicated topic for another time.

I got contacted by someone who was going to help someone who may be stuck in an asylum seekers detention centre. It was all a bit like a handball getting passed: she wrote from Dungavel to an address in England who contacted us and I passed them back to legal advice group and passed the email on to someone else I work with who passed it on to someone she knows who passed it on to someone who can visit her who contacted us again. And now I know this group exists - they visit asylum seekers in the detention centre and they have no problem supporting LGBT asylum seekers which is frankly a problem in this area, dammit - I can pass other people on to them. So that was a good afternoon after a rotten morning.

I did not manage to fix H#1's web access. Tomorrow. I hope.

I wrote emails to people. I looked up banner prices. I passed on some logos to a leaflet designer. I fixed meetings for next week. I feel like I did things.

On Sunday, I'm going to Stockbridge Market, and then I'm going to walk down to the Shore by the river path to the Car Free Afternoon from 1:30 to 4. I may photograph things.



Tags: just my life really, work

11:15 pm: The weekend
I went to the farmer's market and then to the zoo on Saturday, and right at the top of the hill next to the reindeer paddock, it occurred to me that I would feel a lot less stressed if I just didn't go into work on Monday.

So on Saturday evening I posted a note in my calendar to say I was on annual leave on Monday, and tomorrow I'm not going to work.

And today I did virtually nothing, except back up photos. I thought I might go see Moon, but it turns out that's not on anywhere in Edinburgh any more. I went to the pub and had a pint of Ginger Pig, which is a nice beer that's not really gingery. I exchanged several e-mails with Peter David, who is multiply annoying.



Tags: beer, just my life really

11:05 pm: I need a life. But what would I do with it if I had one?
Three and a half hours ago I said to DMS on the phone: I should post a personal ad. "Hi. Lesbian who has no life. Come and join me."

You do not want to know how long I have spent at my home computer today adding events to our spandy-new glittering website and e-mail newsletter. But I'll tell you! Because I'm mean like that. I started at 9 this morning (actually, I put in a couple of hours last night) and it's now quarter past 11 at night, and I certainly took breaks. At least an hour, all in all, putting laundry in the machine and hanging stuff up and giving myself breakfast and lunch and making tea and coffee. (I don't seem to have had supper. Oh dear. Too late now.) So that was 13 hours. I probably spent a couple of hours doing other stuff online too - non-work writing of e-mails and posts. But I have a horrible feeling I just put in at least a 10-hour day.

Part of that was spent fixing a young intern's problems with posting events on the website. (It seemed easier to fix it, than to figure out what was wrong and to explain how to fix it to him. 32 events later I am not so sure, but it's done now.)

Addiing one last event and then going to sleep. Promise.



Tags: just my life really

10:53 pm: Yesterday I went shopping, today I went to a party
My best friend's birthday was a few days ago: so today I was invited to the usual exhausting garden bash with four little girls ages 8 to 6. I brought cake. There was lots of cake, but the other best friend (whose daughter is one of the little girls) doesn't do dairy, so I make one of my vegan specials: coconut and lemon/orange, decorated for a garden party.

It's been an OK weekend. I'm just tired. And I have a funeral to go to Wednesday. Nobody you know or would know: she was someone I knew when I was a kid. She died on Friday: my dad sent me an e-mail.

Coconut/lemon/orange. With marmalade frosting.



Tags: just my life really

11:40 pm: Today was not a good day.
Yesterday wasn't a good day either. (Though whatho and jekesta slay me for it, I will admit I am actually enjoying Torchwood.) I may even put some spoilery comments up about it. Eventually.

My manager got a virus which destroyed a file of useful notes he was supposed to send me. Or rather his laptop got a virus. He's been having unprotected Internet access in a cafe in Glasgow, tut tut. (Fortunately, our work system has a better protection set - it shut down his infected laptop forbiddingly as soon as he tried to let it access our server.)

Also we've been having a wearying argument about the date for our annual conference, and oh my god I want to be a dictator, I really do.

I picked up this meme from tagging old posts in the years before tagging was invented: the last line from the most recent 10 posts on your friends-list. (The un-f-locked ones, obviously.)

1. It is really too damned hot outside for me to be walking anywhere in heels and a business suit. Ugh.
2. I am -- a little apprehensive.
3. sind eigentlich noch Leute auf meiner IJ- oder DW-Leseliste die ausschließlich oder weit überwiegend auf deutsch schreiben, sodaß ich sie auf den zweites_dingsi-Account packen könnte?
4. I don't even know how I'm supposed to keep track of what takes place where any more.
5. But the fear of being robbed, having so much money in the house, was very great, and is still so, and do much disquiet me.
6. I'm just having a happy and I wanted to share. <3!
7. As I said, damn.
8. The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself. Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821 - 1890)
9. Mainly, I wanted to say thanks for introducing me to the game, and state how much I enjoyed our discussion of it. ^^
10. Totally forgot I had some great shots of herpetofauna.
11. Usual deal -- Akame, Adult, and we thought we'd managed a PWP but have been informed that we are wrong: Getting with the Plot.

Yeah, so it went to 11: I couldn't decide whether a post that was itself a meme counted or whether this would throw my entire friends-list into an ever-recursive loop, possibly destroying the universe.



Tags: just my life really, lists, meme

06:04 pm: Pride and Judy Garland plays
I couldn't remember exactly when the play I am going to tonight begins, so I thought: I will stop off at the Internet art shop (it's an art shop, it also does Internet) and check. And it's at 7pm, so it really makes more sense to head up there and make sure I have my ticket and all than it does to go home.

All the default text on this computer is in Chinese: the shop belongs to a Chinese woman. (There isn't a very large Chinese community in Edinburgh, but as with most of the minority ethnic communities in Edinburgh, a large chunk of it lives on or near Leith Walk. So did I, once upon a time, but now I live a mile away in a much more white-bread area.)

But in the corner of the screen there is a small floating popup ... with a picture of Michael Jackson. Idealised Michael Jackson from 10 years ago, I think - not the beautiful young man he used to be, nor the creepily surgical beauty of his last years.



Tags: just my life really

11:51 pm: Sunday, Sunday
I did writing this morning - a good morning's worth: and I baked bread, and mixed up another couple of batches of savoury and sweet bread with buckwheat, and I did laundry, and went to the gym (where I did just on 1 hour 15 minutes of exercise because there was an enjoyable David Suchet Poirot episode on, The ABC Murders, with lots of lovely Poirot/Hastings moments. I like it when Poirot calls Hastings mon ami, and when they do the washing-up together, and when Poirot gets a really good idea he wants to tell Hastings first.

I felt awesomely unfit, though. But I also experimented with Twittering my gymstats, and discovered when I came to check that #gym is actually in quite frequent use.

And watched fifth-season House. This was the "Lucky Thirteen" episode. Why couldn't one of the boy ducklings have turned out to be bisexual? Couldn't Chase come out? And then Chase and Foreman could have sex!




Tags: gym membership, house md, i watch tv obsessively, just my life really

12:50 pm: Saturday in June: sun and rain
At the farmer's market this morning I bought eggs, tomatoes, a fresh supply of Stoats bars, a couple of pretzels from the German baker (one baked with cheese, one with salt), resisted more Arran cheddar though I love it, resisted a bright yellow cheese made with Jersey milk though the sample tasted excellent (I already have a lot of yummy cheese at home), and then spotted that the puddledub pork stall was selling flour from the Tweedale mill (they used to have a stall at market, but I guess didn't do well enough on their own). So I bought 3 kilos of lovely strong wholemeal flour and a bag of rolled oats, and then sat down with a double-shot latte and the Guardian on a sunny bench to try out the cherry cake I had bought from the German baker. (It was fine, though I didn't realise till too late that the shine on top was probably achieved with gelatin. Oh well. I lose 3 vegetarian points. I love their bread, and sometimes I love their cakes, but for this one I felt only moderate affection.) Then Ajay and one of her lovely work colleagues stopped by and we sat with coffee and talked about this and that: so that was nice.

Caught the 16 bus back to Leith Walk to stop off at Tattie Shaws for fruit - they had Scottish strawberries and curious flat peaches from Spain and I got apples and a couple of pears, and a small bag of cherries, thinking it was going to be a sunny afternoon suitable for picnicking. Walked down Leith Walk to Barnardos for something to read, and got The Sixth Winter and The Other Boleyn Girl. Which latter I feel a little guilty about, since I'd meant to buy it new, but I also wanted to read it, so yay.

I came out of the charity shop and a lovely sunny day had turned into thick grey clouds and a very humid feeling in the air. There's a nice Internet cafe just a few doors down, so I turned in here and sat down to check e-mail and the Weather Pixie... and before I'd been here more than five minutes, it was pouring. It still is. I would have got soaked. Instead I am here, dry, writing this, and feeling an unholy sense of satisfaction. I could even have a fruit smoothie (I'm still feeling quite caffeinated from that double-shot latte from Torchwood).

Actually the worst of the downpour seems to be over, but it's still drizzling: well worth paying for half an hour's Internet time to avoid.



Tags: coffee, flour, just my life really, weather

09:15 pm: Yay personal failure yay
Once you get into evening time at Stirling station, the trains - while still perfectly reliable - are once-an-hour-too-bad-if-you-miss-thank-you-very-much.

And - having missed trains from there before - I know that it's really not worth it to get a lift back to solo's for the portion of an hour before you need to get back to the station. Unless it's actually blowing a gale or mizzling a blizzard. Or at least the nearest to blizzards that Scottish snowy weather gets in the lowlands.

But, on this occasion, we had pulled ourselves away from the aftermath of dinner in their favourite restaurant (buffet curry: beautiful enormous freshly-made nan breads, and red wine, and tarka daal, besides two beautiful and different vegetarian curries, and an array of delicious starters... we were full. And sleepy. But, we'd both set alarms on our phones (solo and self) and the Historian and solo walked me to shouting distance of the station, and I got there with 10 minutes to spare before the train was due.

So I wandered up to the bridge and played with the zoom taking pics of the hills, and mirror shots on the windows in the station, and then was trying for a good shot of their spiffy new bridge, and then ... I glanced over and saw that the 21:06 to Edinburgh was gathering speed and leaving the platform. (This is the Dunblane to Edinburgh train, stopping in Stirling for 3 minutes or so - two and a half of which I spent staring interestedly at cloud formations and bridges and entirely ignoring the platform behind me. *sigh*)

Yep. I managed to miss the train despite being on the platform, at the right time, and knowing that was the train I had to catch.

Oh well. It's a very nice evening, and my T-mobile dongle has coverage, and my laptop battery is fully charged, and altogether it Could Be Worse (except that the waiting room has evidently just had its daily scrub down, because it stinks of bleach rather: a very unpleasant smell to have in one's nose after eating delicious food.

I shall now get into Edinburgh about 11pm, instead of about 10pm, but there will still be buses running.

I took many photos at Aberdour today, which I shall upload ... er, later. Yay personal failure yay*.

*Very fine line stolen shamelessly from ruthi.



( their spiffy new bridge )

This and other photographs I took are available on Redbubble tagged Stirling or Aberdour.

Tags: eating some delicious food, i want a cup of tea and a tonne of sympa, just my life really

10:30 pm: Blast the midges
I used to be able to say that midges don't bite me. This was certainly true at one point.

The sore bumpy places on my neck, my back, and did I mention my neck, and a couple of places on my face, say that this is no longer true. OUCH. Midges are horrible.

Today I went to South Queensferry to meet up with a bunch of photographers from Redbubble. I'd never met any of them before. It was a nice day. You'll see some of my pics on Redbubble, once episode 2 of House Season 5 is over, and I can leave the TV and go upstairs and do that.

There isn't a ferry any more in South Queensferry, though there was one for about a thousand years: Queen Margaret used to cross back and forth from Fife and the Lothians and paid to improve it, or some such. Then about 120 years ago they built a beautiful rail bridge, and about 45 years ago they built a far less beautiful road bridge, and, well, no more ferry.

Yesterday I went out to the gym and exercised for about an hour and a half, and then I came home and it was the hottest day so far this year and I lay down on my bed and went to sleep. I woke up and Bob was asleep at my right hand and Wolf was asleep at my feet. I still slightly regret that I didn't have the nap in my garden, in the sun, even though I would probably have got sunburned in advance of my trip to South Queensferry.



Tags: imaginary friend meetup, just my life really, non-photos, nonphotos, redbubble

02:42 pm: Plockton is pretty
We had a long trip up by car, with stops in Perth (to collect wedding favours), in Dalwhinnie (which is twinned with Las Vegas, according to the sign at the pub where we stopped - where we had a very nice lunch, but saw no gamblers or white tigers), and in someplace I don't remember the name of because for two hours of winding hilly road I was feeling increasingly carsick and I didn't care where we were, or indeed appreciate how lovely the castle was, until I had breathed some fresh air and had a cup of tea and a cheese scone. But on the way out of the castle tea shop, I looked out over the sea loch at the castle and the hills and said in a bemused voice to the woman next to me, "It really is lovely, isn't it?" feeling a bit like Tommy Lee Jones in MiB where he confesses to Will Smith that the stars are beautiful, though he hasn't looked at them in years. Anyway. We got to Plockton and checked in and I found I had a room to myself (which I hadn't been sure about, because when they were booking us in January, I'd been asked if I minded sharing and of course I'd said No) and a nice bathroom just a few steps away, and a complimentary towelling dressing-gown to take those few steps.

So I wandered around Plockton, which is tiny and pretty, for an hour or so, and then came back to our hotel and we all had dinner*, which was lovely. My friends' friends are also lovely: it's very nice to meet them all. (I admitted to two separate people who asked, since everyone else present was thespian to some degree or another, that my sole connection with the stage was the O-Level Drama I did back when I was 15, and the drama group I belonged to for a year after that: I had met RiK when we were both in the same gay youth group, in 1984. Nobody seems to be prejudiced against non-thespians, though, which is nice.)

A sound night's sleep, followed by a lovely breakfast** - the food here is glorious, a focus on seafood, but there are enough vegetarian options to keep me happy for a longer stay! - and another wander round Plockton in the rain. I'd discovered this morning I could get online via the Plockton Inn's wifi, though T-Mobile has let me down. Then I went back to my room, packed up the half-bottle of wine I'd bought last night and not nearly finished, went down to the fish bar and ordered a vegeburger and chips, and took this and my wine up to a bench overlooking the sea and the houses, and ate and drank wine and admired the view and read The Guardian, and it was really very perfect. (The friends are lovely, but one can have too much togetherness, you know.) It's five past three. Time for another half hour or so wandering Plockton and taking more photos, then I need to come back here and dress for the ceremony.

I am very disappointed to hear that the Californian Supreme Court has decided that a majority vote in California can take a civil right away from the minority - I mean of course the freedom to marry, which has been established in the US as a civil right necessary to the orderly pursuit of happiness since 1967. I'm very glad and relieved, though, that they didn't decide to forcibly divorce the thousands of couples who had got married - and hope things will change for the better by 2010, if not before.

But I'd like to promote to your attention a petition to the UK Government (and ask you to sign it, if you're a UK citizen) to amend the Civil Partnership Act so that same-sex couples who want to register their partnership at a religious ceremony can do so.

*Grilled vegetables in pitta bread, followed by vegetarian haggis with clapshot (mashed neeps and tatties) and followed by Crannachan ice-cream. I'd ordered a bottle of very nice Merlot, thinking I'd share, but everyone else at my table was on gin-and-tonics or beer.

**Muesli with dried fruit salad, orange juice, coffee, brown toast, scrambled eggs which tasted like the eggs had been laid this morning, baked beans and a grilled tomato, more coffee, oatcakes.




Tags: being queer, breakfast is a good meal, eating some delicious food, evil american politics, ice-cream, just my life really, seeing friends, travel, wine

12:42 am: Tired but better
I meant to make a post before I went to sleep, and wouldn't you know, I am really too tired to write. Part of that is the Hobgoblin, part of that is the lack of sleep for two nights, and a lot of it is relief of stress.

Hobgoblin is nice by the way.



Tags: just my life really

06:10 pm: Just My Life Really
On Tuesday evening, which is cheap night at Vue, I went to see Star Trek. It wasn't good. It was the sort of kind of film where, having taken care to check how long it lasts, I keep glancing at the clock on my phone to establish how much plot there must be left.

There were three women in the film who had names and lines, and a fourth who I think wasn't named: an Orien green cadet who has sex with Jim Kirk and a few lines of dialogue and let Kirk see Uhura in her underwear. One of the women existed to give birth to Jim Kirk, and is thereafter never seen or heard again (she wasn't even allowed to be the voice on the product-placement phone telling Kirk not to steal the car and drive it to Arizona). One gives birth to Spock, and is thereafter used to make Spock go apeshit: she gets pushed into a metaphorical refrigerator fairly early on. One is supposed to be Nyota Uhura, and exists to be appallingly, skeletally skinny, be hit on by Kirk, prove that in the modern Starfleet men don't obey women officers (in that bar fight? If the real Uhura had yelled at them to stop the redshirts beating up Kirk, they'd have stopped), and to hit on Spock, thus (the director and scriptwriter and stockholders presumably hope) forestalling the slash fans taking hold and writing the K/S for this universe. Because these are het guys. Straight, straight, straight. Hell if it'll work: I say Uhura and Spock are totally cousins. The young Bones was OK even if the old joke got taken away from him and replaced by a new and much stupider joke referring to one of the few other women in this AU; Baby Sulu and Baby Chekov and Baby Scott were ... okay, I supppose: Janice Rand and Christine Chapel and Number One, the first First Officer of the USS Enterprise, were... absent. (See also: feministsf and jekesta being brilliant.)

Afterwards I wandered home and Bob was missing and it turned out a neighbour had accidentally shut her into his bike shed, because late at night when the street was quiet I went out again and heard her yell and it was too late to wake up my neighbours, so I left notes in their door and on their fence, and went to bed and slept badly. My Twitters are full of me Not Panicking. She got let out first thing the next morning, and is fine, though very clingy: but the part where it turned out I have the nicest neighbours in the world?

The neighbour who had shut her in the shed (by accident! I know he wouldn't have done it on purpose!) came round on Wednesday evening with a card and a bottle of white wine to apologize. Which I found myself without a polite way of refusing, though the bottle of white wine is still lying on the couch where I put it (the card is on the mantelpiece) and fills me with helpless rueful giggles whenever I think of drinking it. Because, after we were dialoguing on the step and he was saying how sorry he was and I was saying "Thank you for letting her out!" (it was actually his partner who had slipped down first thing and let Bob out, as soon as she saw the note) and then Bob wandered out. And I picked her up (she feels terribly light and thin these days, which I'm worried about, because this reminds me of Cally, but she's still eating....) because I did not want to let her go wandering again... and my neighbour started chucking her under the chin and apologising to Bob. So I accepted the card and the wine, and still think I have the nicest neighbours in the world.

Thursday I had a meeting in Glasgow, and after the meeting I went to the SH[OUT] exhibition in GOMA, which was absolutely fantastic and I want to go again. Maybe I can persuade Ajay to come with - it had several things I thought she might like, especially a picture of a Thai man, a prostitute, standing on a stage, not quite looking at his audience - but the whole picture was so richly painted, and the frame was ornamented, and it looked as if he/his image was a gift to us. The other I remember vividly was a picture of two older women, who had been burlesque artists in their youth, painted as they lay holding each other on their bed. It was the kind of oil painting that looks more real, has more depth, than any photograph could. But, speaking of photographs: the Mapplethorpe photo. I'm told there was some dispute about including it, and its inclusion was probably the main reason the exhibition has been banned to children under 12. But I am so glad to have seen it. I had read about it - it's a famous photograph, politically as well as artistically, the depiction of a standing man pissing into the mouth of a kneeling man, which a court case formally established as having artistic merit and therefore (in the US) protected under the First Amendment. But words and reproductions do not do the photo itself justice: it is an extraordinary work of light and shade, balanced images: it is simultaneously a depiction of a sexual act in pornographic detail and it is a work of art. In many ways the exhibition felt like a series of windows into other exhibitions, that I wanted very much to see as well - if there had been money to produce a catalogue, I would have bought it.

After I had looked round the exhibition, I wanted to see if I could get my T-Mobile dongle to work, and after trying unsuccessfully and calling the helpline, it appeared that the problem was I'd put the wee card in the wrong way round - and it was fairly jammed. So I asked the helpline to find me the nearest two T-Mobile shops in Glasgow, and set out to find the one in Buchanan Street. (On the basis, as I told them frankly, that if someone were going to break the card getting it out, I had rather it was someone working for T-Mobile than me.)

The T-Mobile shop was in the Buchanan Street Galleries, which are just above the Buchanan Street Tearoom, where one can get a very nice cream tea for £2.50. So, after I'd got my dongle working (oo-er) I went there and had tea and a scone with cream and two sorts of jam, and it was very nice. (They supplied me with butter as well as jam: I ask you, what kind of person puts butter and cream on a scone?

Then I walked round the GOMA exhibition again, to fill my eye with it a second time, and caught the 4:15 train back to Edinburgh (safely in the cheap zone) and surfed the net and wrote a bit on the way home. I was due to meet my parents and the young man who is helping them clear out their flat (a bit) at the Ann Purna that evening.

We had a nice meal: my mum told me about seeing a sign in Bakewell, where they'd gone for their holiday, about marriage between a man and a woman being the law of the land, and she said she'd wanted to add a sign about civil partnership but hadn't had paper/tape to do it. Still. It was nice of her to want to.

Friday has been a fairly ghastly muddle, in which I got not enough done and that too late. But I am drinking wine and eating nice food, and TGIF: it's the weekend now.



Tags: bob, glasgow, i want a cup of tea and a tonne of sympa, just my life really, scones, star trek, yarg

07:01 pm: Pineapple sorbet, Sun King, and yew trees
I spent most of the morning waiting for the man to test the boiler, and trying to do some work for work, neither of which is a good state to be in.

But, then the man confirmed my boiler is in good health, and I did the work I'd planned to do, and I bought fruit (and sweet potatoes) at the community centre co-op, and at last I could fulfil my long-held plans (at least since Sunday, when eileenlufkin suggested it) to visit Luca's, the one in Morningside as nearer, and buy a flavour of ice-cream I had not tasted before.

Luca's in Musselburgh has a whole array of ice-creams and sorbets, and a full-scale cafe: the one in Morningside has only six, and while it does have a cafe, it is upstairs, from which alarming noises were coming like a large number of children being tortured being fed lots of sugary treats to make them hyper.

So I stayed downstairs, and made a choice between Idgie-Widgie Toffee Fudge, Pineapple Sorbet, and Irn-Bru Sorbet.

I didn't think I could say the first without giggling, and I didn't think I could eat sorbet made in Scotland from girders without throwing up, so that really left only the pineapple, which, while nice enough (I had a single scoop and a cup of coffee, since I'd nearly fallen asleep on the bus) was nothing to write home about. Maybe I will have to go out to Musselburgh, after all. Unless there's not much of a queue and some unusual flavours at the Ben'n'Jerry's in the cinema this evening?

Afterwards I browsed through the charity shops of Morningside looking for pint glasses (having broken my last one Sunday) and a lidded pan for rice etc (which I did not find) and finding a marvellous copy of Nancy Mitford's life of The Sun King, hardback, with lots of colour plates, priced at 69 shillings, for sale in the charity shop at £3. How could I resist? I didn't. I read a large part of the building of Versailles and the ditching of La Valliere, while eating a very nice late lunch at the Yellow Cafe. (A grilled wholemeal baguette, with roasted vegetables and hummus, plus chips with brown sauce, plus a reasonably nice salad, all for £5.) Afterwards, I got my new library card - I'd lost my old one, ages ago, but kept forgetting to bring a recent bill with my name and address on it out with me when I knew I'd be passing an open library. Morningside Library used to be my idea of what libraries were, though it's changed substantially since I used to go there from Bruntsfield Place with my three library tickets, and my brother's and my sister's. Nowadays instead of three small cardboard tickets apiece, each one good for one book, so that even borrowing my sister's and brother's I could only get 9, one small plastic card does for 12. But the building is still the same.

And then I walked to the Commonwealth Pool, and went swimming. On the way there, I passed by where I used to live between 1981 and 1986 - my parents sold it some time in 1987 - and stopped to take photos of the house and the yew trees. It's been 22 years, probably, since I stood underneath the arch the yew trees make to either side of the gate, but they seemed just the same. Yew trees can live to be 5000 years old, though these are just babies - they can't be much more than 120 years old, because that street isn't much older than 1890. Anyway. I don't think yew trees really notice anything that lasts less than a decade, but I said hello.

Now I hope to get to the cinema to see Wolverine, but Bob is sitting on my lap being all purry at me.





Tags: bob, ice-cream, just my life really, swimming

09:22 pm: 24-hour supermarket? with cafe? How long has this been going on?
I walked out to the cafe at Newhaven Landing, if that's what it's called - a new island of high-rise houses in the middle of the Forth, with a single cafe in the middle of it all. (The cafe is in the reception of one of the blocks of flats, and is run by the receptionist: it also sells basics like milk and bread and such. It makes a good target to walk to, but it feels a little pointless: I never walk out to these hi-rises without wondering how long they'll last. I wouldn't buy a flat in one.)

On the way back I noticed the 24-hour ASDA, which is only about 10 minutes from home and has a cafe, which is possibly also 24-hour: I didn't notice any separate schedule of opening hours for the cafe. I walked in and wandered round and did not buy anything, because ASDA sucks, but it was sort of weird to know that if I want washing-up liquid or toothpaste at 3am, I could just walk down to ASDA and buy it.

(I can't think why I would, but, you know.)

It's obviously been there for a while, but I hadn't noticed it. I seldom walk in that direction, though.

A couple of weeks ago I picked up a video of the original release of Blade Runner (which I remember still as the last movie my mum ever took me to "for my birthday": my brother came too) because I thought I'd like to watch it again - I've seen the Director's Cut more than once, but I don't think I'd ever seen the original release again. And it was only 50p.

The video was still in its original shrink-wrappings. Okay, I know it wasn't as good as the DC version, but completely unwatched? That's sort of sad...




Tags: films, just my life really

11:57 pm: *yawn*
I put "write IJ post" down on my to-do list for Sunday. (Update: I think I had better move this back to late-2nd so that it counts.)

I met up with Ajay at the farmers' market: I had just bought The World's Most Delicious Cheese Toastie (seriously good: Arran cheddar, leek/onion/garlic relish, sourdough bread) for late breakfast, and Ajay had just got herself a coffee. We wandered around and Ajay bought meat and I bought the cutest little knitted slippers for my nibling. I mean the prospective one, not tall nephew who is impossibly cute, but won't fit these cute little slippers any more.

It was a lovely sunny day. Not too warm, but lovely.

I wandered around the rest of the day: napped between six and seven: walked over to the gym, and - it has been three months! discovered that it really formally completely closes at twenty to four, which given what Saturdays tend to be like for me, means I really should just quit trying to gym or swim on Saturdays, at least at my local pool. I suppose I could plan on going somewhere else. There's a nice gym up near Arthur's Seat.

The Guardian is offering free herbs and seeds. Ajay figured I should go for it and give her anything I don't plant. That sounds like a plan.

I made parsley scones. They're good. I ate four for lunch.

I photographed shadows of a metal gate on the pavement. That was good, too.



Tags: just my life really