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Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Blossom, rain and gate-related annoyance
The blossom is out, we've turned our central heating off, I have been seen outside without a coat (everybody gasp now), and Gloworm, Th and I are cycling to school again. Today, unfortunately, it poured with rain just as I was leaving to fetch them, but getting wet on the way home is not so bad.
I'm sitting here in a state of some irritation, due to having an argument with a disagreeable man in the school grounds. I'm far too irritated to go into detail, but in brief:
No one other than staff is supposed to use the carpark/ go through the carpark/ go through the gate leading from the school into the carpark. If the gate is left open and the teachers and caretaker catch children going through it, they tell them off.
Today the gate had been left open. A man (a grandfather, I think) had parked in the carpark, picked up his kids and was coming back from the school towards the gate leading to the carpark. Another of the school pupils walked past the gate and shut it. At which point the grandfather told him off and (I think, from what I heard) called him stupid or rude or naughty or something else unpleasant.
So I told the boy he'd done the right thing, and then I told the grandfather that the kids aren't supposed to use the gate so the boy had done the right thing shutting it.
And then we had a stupid round-and-round argument, with the grandfather insisting that he should use the gate because his car was in the carpark (he could go round the other way - his car wasn't shut in or anything), and that he'd told the boy to leave the gate open, and that the 'no unauthorised access' wasn't meant for him. And with me insisting that no one is supposed to go through the carpark, the kids get told off if they go through the gate, so the boy was probably doing what the teachers would want him to do, and that (my main point) it's not fair to tell him off for doing something that the teachers have probably told him to do.
But there was no joy on either side. And I began to feel like some kind of unofficial gate-policewoman, which, I can tell you, is never a good way to feel. And, of course, I now think I probably could have made my points far more clearly.
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| Monday, April 28, 2008
In which there is pink
This week will mostly be occupied in buying and preparing pink-themed food for Sparkler's birthday party, the invitation for which is as below (with some privacy-related amendments):
 Sparkler has a new pink outfit with pink matching shoes, Gloworm has a pink party dress, and Abstract and I are complying with the 'wearing a large item of clothing that is pink' - a pink-striped shirt in Abstract's case, and in mine a pink feather boa and pink shoes with something more normal in between. Sparkler wishes me to wear my hot-pink PVC thigh-high stiletto boots, but I feel these would be less than appropriate for a twelve-year-old's birthday party.
I've booked Princesses 2 Pamper, who are coming to do mini-makeovers for all twelve of the party-ers (manicures, glitter hair-tattoos etc), and we're having pink lemonade, chocolate cake decorated with pink sugar, ham sandwiches, fresh strawberries, and anything else pink and edible we can find. Girls Aloud, Britney and Kylie will, no doubt, be playing throughout.
Yes, it's the new wave of feminism. It's called Pro-Pink. I can't imagine why you haven't heard of it.
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| Thursday, April 24, 2008
Thursday Thirteen: Things making me cross this week
Thirteen Things that are making Imogen Howson cross this week
1. Being ill for the second time in two weeks. I was ill last week, then I recovered, so when Sparkler came home from school with a sore throat and headache and Abstract came home from work saying he thought he'd got a cold I assumed they'd caught my bug/virus/whatever, and that I'd escaped lightly. But oh no. Now I have a sore throat and am living in a scarf.
2. Apostrophe misuse. I swear, this is a virus. I was reading a website the other day and every single plural had an apostrophe. Honestly, you read a page of tortoise's, house's, plant's, owner's, vitamin's and you start seeing floating spots - or possibly apostrophes - in front of your eyes.
3. 'Wallah', 'wuala', wolla' and other creative mis-spellings of 'voila'. Seriously, if you can't spell the exciting exotic foreign word, don't try to use it.
4. Sexism. Okay, so no change here, but this week I'm particularly irritated by women being sexist about women. If you're female, and if you're particularly illogical, weak-minded, or bitchy, then please, feel free to put yourself down all you want. But do you think you could avoid stating that I must necessarily share your faults? kthxbai
5. On a related note: self-avowed feminists being sexist. If you call yourself a feminist, and you then make statements along the lines of "all men are animals/ morons/ incapable of multitasking", you're making my job that bit harder next time I try to convince someone that 'feminism' does not mean 'female chauvinism'. It's already quite hard trying to convince people that not all women are the same (see above point); if I also have to convince them that not all feminists are the same the concept might cause their heads to explode.
6. On another related note: generalisations. I was watching a thing on television last night where a woman who had worked as a 'high-class prostitute' said that ninety percent of women would do the same, given the opportunity and the incentive of £5000 a night. No. Just no.
7. On another related note: racism. Yes, this is as standard too, but I'm getting particularly irritated by British people assuming that the MS Word grammar-checker gets things wrong because it's American (with a subtext of "Americans can't speak properly"). Hello, Americans know grammar too. Some of them know it a lot better than you, random British person. Also, the nation that produced James Thurber, Joss Whedon and Jennifer Crusie? I think they do understand humour, actually.
8. Spots. Seriously, I'm thirty-five and still getting spots. What's that about?
9. Our shower. The people who had this house before us did various interesting things, two of which were quite dangerous (the non-insulated electrical wiring under a loose floorboard, which every time someone trod on the board burned through a little more of the wood and fused the lights; and the gas-pipe put directly through the wall, where the cement corroded the copper and eventually caused a massive gas leak). The thing that causes me most ongoing annoyance, however, is the fact that the shower, instead of having a u-bend, has a straight up-and-down drainage pipe, which means the smell of the drains sometimes comes straight back up into the bathroom, and there is nothing I can do about it.
10. People who say all women should vote for Hillary Clinton because she's a woman and "haven't we had enough of men telling us what to do". Good heavens, am I going to vote for anyone just because they share my gender, rather than on what their policies are? I don't think so.
11. Remembering that the above point is moot because, being British, I don't have an American vote.
12. Homophobics. Honestly, get over yourself. No one wants sex with you anyway.
13. People who argue that the world is no longer patriarchal but matriarchal, basing their reasoning on a handful of cleaning-product adverts that show women as mentally superior. Okay, let's think for a minute, shall we? Adverts = real life? No. Adverts for cleaning products = adverts aimed at women because women (even those with full-time jobs outside the home) still do most of the housework? Yes. Tell me again, how does this show the triumph of matriarchy?
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| Monday, April 21, 2008
Covert surveillance?
Over the last few weeks I've been finding blobs of Blu-tack stuck around the house. On doorposts, for instance, or windowsills - or on my bedside table. I assume they have some kind of significance, although I haven't yet queried as to what this might be.
Anyway, it's odd, but it's not oddness unlimited. There are children in this house - these things happen. There's also a bandaged bird-shaped pen (I assume it's ill - or possibly wounded) on the top shelf of the bookcase, and half a shelf of books that have all been put back the wrong way, having been spread all over the carpet and used as a runway for toy aeroplanes.
However, today I found, on each doorpost of the kitchen door, a small plastic googly eye. Could it be that I'm being spied on?
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| Wednesday, April 16, 2008
The Gender Genie
Hee hee. I pasted a chunk of my Red Riding Hood story into The Gender Genie. Turns out I'm male. I must tell Abstract.
I'm ill, by the way. I'm not sure what kind of illness - I'm shivery, achey, and my skin hurts. I woke up in the middle of last night and, despite that I was wearing pyjamas, the window was shut, and the duvet is warm, I was freezing. I got up to find a dressing-gown and by the time I got back into bed I was so cold my teeth were chattering.
So, much sympathy for me, please.
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| Monday, April 14, 2008
Am I the only one...
...who wants to use the word 'despision'?
Consider this example:
I admire you. You are admirable. I treat you with admiration.
I deride you. You are ridiculous (or risible). I treat you with derision.
I despise you. You are despicable. I treat you with...contempt.
Doesn't that look wrong? Doesn't that sound wrong? Don't you think despision would make so much more sense? Not despiration, of course - that would just be silly.
...who wants to use 'instant-messenge' (rather than 'instant-message') as the verb-form of the noun 'instant messenger'?
"Oh, I'll ask her. I'll just catch her on my instant messenger."
"Is she there?"
"Yes... Hang on, I'm asking her..."
"So, has she instant-messenged back yet?"
"Yeah. She'd love to."
"Hooray for instant-messenging!"
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| Thursday, April 10, 2008
Thursday Thirteen: Things I can see from here
Thirteen Things Imogen Howson can see from here
- The vegetable garden. We planted seed potatoes, onions, perpetual spinach and carrots a few weeks ago. So far, though, I can mostly only see bits of grass.
- The cat, who is sitting in the fruit basket on the windowsill. We've given up trying to use it for fruit.
- My cup of coffee, in a yellow mug with a picture of a snail on it.
- A pink water pistol in a small plastic yellow bowl (it leaks). This is the official cat deterrent for when she tries to walk on the work surfaces.
- A round sticker on the wall with a picture of Hayden Panettiere and the slogan Save the Cheerleader, Save the World.
- Washing-up, waiting...
- Eighty printed pages (Times New Roman, single spaced) of Within the Darkness lying on the table. Sixteen of them have edits in pen - I'm getting there!
- A glass of water I haven't drunk.
- 'Auntie May's cupboard', a family heirloom, currently holding a ton of recipe books and cooking magazines, some CDs and a phone book. On top of it are six school photos of the girls (Sparkler at nine, ten and eleven; Gloworm at seven, eight and nine), two candlesticks with almost-burned-down gold candles, a poem by Abstract in an elegant wooden frame (he gave it to me one Christmas), two pound coins belonging to Sparkler, two clay angels with pipecleaner limbs, haloes and wings belonging to Gloworm, and what I think is a cuff link.
- A Fairtrade cotton bag from the Co-op.
- Two bananas, not in the fruit basket, starting to look browner than is attractive.
- Our Eco-kettle.
- A stained white long-sleeved top waiting to be unstained.
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| Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Troubles with temperature
Everything at the moment is always the wrong temperature. At the weekend it snowed. Snowed, in April. A couple of days before, on Thursday, I'd been happily wandering around wearing jeans, a little black top and a tailored jacket (dark blue, light blue and white stripes - very cute). On Sunday I went down to the high street with Gloworm, in a jumper and coat, and by the time I came back my lips were blue - really, blue.
I also don't think ice is good for frogspawn, of which we have lots in our pond, and around which, on Sunday, ice had formed. We love our baby froglets every spring, and I don't want them to have been frozen to death!
Also, my coffee keeps going cold halfway through the cup and I have to microwave it. This seems entirely abnormal to me.
Right now, I'm trying to psyche myself up for revisions on Within the Darkness. I'm sure I've told you this before, but in brief: this was one of my first full novels and I love it this much. It got nearly there but not quite with several agents (lots of requests for partials, several requests for fulls, several personalised rejections with nice comments), but I'm now pretty much at the end of my list of agents I'd like to work with, so the next stage is direct to publishers. And it needs polishing. Sometimes I think that's all it needs, sometimes I think it needs a major overhaul, sometimes I think I want to leave it under the desk and pretend it will revise itself. Seriously, if it doesn't get accepted by any of the publishers I respect (a diminishing shortlist, I can tell you) I'm going to Lulu a copy for my mother and forget about it.
Now I'm going to microwave my coffee (huh) and do some revisions. Wish me luck!
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| Tuesday, April 08, 2008
The week of book reviews: Stardust by Neil Gaiman
This should really be titled 'The week of book reviews: the return' because it's a lot longer than a week ago that I did the last one. Anyway, I still haven't covered all my birthday books (although I have read them - oh yes) so here you go.
I ended up reading this after I'd watched the film, which was a mistake. Mostly because - and this is a rare and unwelcome occurrence for me - I thought the film was much better.
I found the style of the book curiously unengaging. The character viewpoints seemed shallow - as if the author was only allowing the reader in a little way. Which meant that I couldn't engage, couldn't sympathise, and sometimes just didn't know the characters. And this is the characters I was interested in - bunches of them I simply wasn't interested in at all.
I also found the final events of the plot dissatisfying, and I didn't like the ending. So - yeah, I think it's fair to say Stardust the book was not a great success!
I let Sparkler read it, and some pages in she raised her eyebrows and commented, "Hm. Sex and swearing." Which is true, but the sex is mild and the swearing is in very small font.
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| Friday, April 04, 2008
Flying Ducks
I went to my first Romantic Novelists' Association meeting yesterday - the monthly meeting of my nearest chapter, The Flying Ducks.
It was great. Lots of writers, many of them an awful lot higher-flying than me (multibook contracts with big publishers, double-digit back lists). They meet in a pub in the beautiful countryside round Harrogate. Yesterday we were celebrating the launch of Leah Fleming's book, The War Widows, so we had champagne with our cheddar ploughman's sandwiches and baked-potatoes-with-pesto and black-pudding-with-poached-egg (not everyone ate all of those things).
We also talked about publicity - which was useful - and they were very kind and interested in knowing more about ebooks and epublishing - so much so that they've asked me to do the June talk on those subjects!
Abstract, who says he's only heard of the term 'chapter' used in reference to Hell's Angels and - obviously - books, was very amused and suggested it was called a chapter because it's a writers' organisation. He then became more amused and asked if that meant I was a paragraph.
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