hurrah for the weekend

This one contains knitting and an essay. And probably some other stuff. And the essay may trump the knitting.

Have a good weekend, whatever you do.

And just so there's something interesting for me to find on Monday morning, tell me your plans for the weekend. What exciting things does your life contain?

Gosh, I sound like a Radio 1 DJ. Sort of.

ta ta til then.

book meme

I'm a sucker for a book meme. This one came from Anne. As arbitrary as any other book list, but here you go.

Meme instructions: Look at the list of books below. Bold the ones you’ve read, italicize the ones you might read, cross out the ones you won’t, underline the ones on your book shelf, and place parentheses around the ones you’ve never even heard of.

The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy – Douglas Adams
The Great Gatsby – F.Scott Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger Currently re-reading this one. It's good.
His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman Not sure whether I want to read this or not. I saw the first half of the National Theatre production and it rather put me off.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J. K. Rowling
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story – George Orwell
Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
The Hobbit – J. R. R. Tolkien
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
Lord of the Flies – William Golding No, I still haven't read it.
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
1984 – George Orwell
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – J. K. Rowling (family copy)
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez I started it once.
Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
(The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini)
The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
Slaughterhouse 5 – Kurt Vonnegut
Angels and Demons – Dan Brown
Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk
Neuromancer – William Gibson
(Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson)
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgesss
Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – C. S. Lewis Well, technically it's a family copy.
Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
The Lord of the Rings – J. R. R. Tolkien
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
Good Omens – Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman
Atonement – Ian McEwan
(The Shadow Of The Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon)
The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
Dune – Frank Herbert

I love radio co-op

It's so unexpectedly entertaining. I went into the Co-op on my way home last night to buy potatoes (it was cold and windy and I had a craving for sausage and mash with gravy). The tannoy system was playing Dreadlock Holiday by 10cc. Interesting, I thought. Then the song finished and I heard the unmistakable plinks of the beginning of Bjork's Venus as a Boy. A grin slowly crept across my face and I found myself staying in the shop and buying a few more things just to hear the whole song and find out what came next (something I couldn't identify). Perhaps that's why they do it. Anyway, whenever I go in a Co-op there's almost always something unexpectedly good playing on the instore radio. In the last few weeks I've heard

Bob Dylan - Like a Rollin' Stone
Amy Winehouse - Stronger than me
The Foundations - Build me up Buttercup
The Beatles - Drive my car
The Bangles - Walk like an Egyptian

And that's just the ones I can remember. It's the randomness of the selection that gets me. You never know what's coming next and they're (nearly) all quality tunes.

hungry hungry

My stomach is making the most extraordinary noises.

Thanks to all who are praying. I don't know any more than I've already said. The post mortem ruled out any suspicious circumstances, but wasn't conclusive about the cause of death. I don't know the funeral arrangements yet.

Church was good on Sunday. It was great to able to pray for each other and feel the support of the church community. And I went out for lunch with a bunch of girls, all about my own age and non-students. Finally I'm starting to find some people like me. Hooray!

prayer request

I heard last night that one of the guys in my cell group was found dead on Thursday morning. No idea why, there's going to be a post mortem today. I didn't know him all that well, but he seemed a lovely bloke. He was a very new Christian, full of enthusiasm, glowing with love for God and care for others. He leaves an ex-wife and a 7 year old daughter, who hadn't been told about his death yesterday, her mother is probably going to tell her today.

Please pray for his family, for the cell and for the church as a whole.

unhappy wednesday

I'm having another one of those "what am I doing here, I'm no good at this job, aarrgh!" sort of days.

Silly really.

I'm feeling disorganised and completely not on top of my work. Everything I have to do seems to be urgent and needs doing yesterday. And I'm forever putting things off until I feel confident enough to do them (i.e. anything that involves the phone.)

All this despite a successful event yesterday.

Last night I ended up knitting in front of the telly, watching Jackanory night on BBC4. Wonderfully comforting and nostalgic.

Today I met Debs and my mum in town for lunch, which was great, if too brief. They're both on half term this week. I wish I was. I'm feeling very time-poor. I'm supposed to be taking my favourite food and favourite pudding to a cell social on Thursday night. I made triple quantities of mole (that's chicken in a tomatoey chilli sauce with ground almonds and chocolate, not a small furry creature) last night and froze what I didn't eat, so that's sorted, but I haven't got the time to make brownies or chocolate cake or banana cake. I might have to buy some yummy ice-cream or something.

Choir tonight. Singing always cheers me up. Last week I was feeling tired and didn't want to go, but I went and by the end felt muchly cheered and destressed. So hopefully, it will have the same effect tonight.

happy tuesday

It is Tuesday. It is a Tuesday just like any other Tuesday. Actually not just like any other Tuesday because this one contained an event I organised which was well attended and very interesting but kept me awake last night and early this morning with every part of my body feeling tense and nervous. Tonight I plan to relax. I might have a bath. I will certainly knit. Maybe eat some chocolate. I'll have the house to myself since my housemate will be out with her fiance for some inexplicable reason, so it'll be lovely and quiet.

I hope you have a happy Tuesday too.

Shandian

I went to see A Cock and Bull Story the weekend before last, and liked it much more than I thought I would. Not that I expected to dislike it, but I did worry that Steve Coogan would be too annoying. He was a little in the early parts of the film and I still think he mostly plays multiple versions of the same character, but by the end his character seemed to have some depth.

It's not a straight adaptation of the book and it's not meant to be. It shares themes with Adaptation, in that both are about the process of making a film. There's enough humour for it not to seem clever-clever and overly knowing. The film acknowledges the feeling of frustration at missed-out elements of a favourite book by using character's complaints to include 'missing' scenes. (Thankfully it completely misses out the long travelogue sections I always get bogged down in.)

Rob Brydon steals every scene he's in. Keeley Hawes looks terribly grown up as Tristram's mother. Shirley Henderson is squeaky and interesting as usual. There are some great cameos, one of the best being Tony Wilson turning up to interview Steve Coogan. (Coogan played Wilson in 24 Hour Party People.)

I think this film manages to side step possible accusations of pretentiousness by being amusing, clever and touching. It also gets away with much of its unevenness and jumps between plot lines since Sterne does exactly the same thing. The digressions are the point of Tristram Shandy.

what am i up to?

I have been requested (read, ordered) to blog about what I've been doing, so I shall.
On Friday night, I joined some fellow Cambridge knitters in a pub to watch the Winter Olympics opening ceremonies and cast on for the Knitting Olympics.

On Saturday, I woke up earlyish (for a Saturday) and sat in bed knitting and listening to Home Truths. Then I went out and collected parcels from the Post Office and bought some fruit and veg from the Co-op. I came home and ate croissants and hot chocolate and then did some more knitting.

After a while, I decided I needed some fresh air, so I went for a wander. I walked through the cemetery, walked up the main road in the direction of Cottenham, wandered off through some twisty roads, found a bit of bridleway, walked along it, walked back, took some photos, found the village church, walked back through the old bit of the village, discovered a few shops I hasn't seen before (a shoe factory outlet, no use for large feet, unless you want trainers or maybe walking boots), found the local library (open on Saturday mornings, but not afternoons, so not that useful), sat and watched the ducks on the village green. Went home to find Z and D watching the rugby. Knitted some more. Cooked mole, knitted some more and watched TV. Went to bed.

Sunday, I went to church, went to a newcomers lunch in a really old and amazing house, went home and knitted, went to a students and 20s evening event at church, talked to some friendly people, ate doughnuts, went home, went to bed.

Debs, are you happy now? I don't often write diary entry type things like this cos I think they're quite boring to read unless you know the person.

I shall now find something more interesting (I hope) to write about.

run away and draw

Hours of fun: Sketch swap

via meish

phew

Someone else is videoing the event on Tuesday and the one two weeks after that, so I have about a month to aquire kit and get some practice in. That's such a relief.

I'll be very glad when this week's over.

pointless 1980s UK-centric trivia

Did you that Charles Collingwood (Brian in The Archers) voiced Wordy in Look and Read?

Given that to appreciate this you have to
a) be about the same age as me
b) be British
c) have watched Look and Read at school
and d) know enough about The Archers to know who Brian is,
this piece of trivia is probably only of interest to about one member of the audience of this blog, but never mind, it amused me.

meurgh

Why do apparently simple things take forever?

I've been trying all day to find a tripod to order for work. And I am still confused. There are tripods, there are tripod heads, there are little tiny tripods for still cameras, there are great big huge tripods, there are quick release tripods (equally useful for a wedding or a warzone apparently) there are triffids, there's an 80s BBC sci-fi drama, there are £20 tripods, there are £2000 tripods. I still don't know what I want. Well, I do, but I don't know where to buy it.

I want a tripod for a Sony DCR-VX2100. It needs to be tall enough to put the camera at about eye-height, it should have a quick release mechanism, a spirit level would be useful and it should pan and tilt smoothly. I'm not bothered about having controls on the handle. I'd like to spend around £200, but that's a bit flexible. Not £2000 flexible though. I've got to film an event on Tuesday and I'd like to have chance to play with the camera setup before that. Does anyone have any good ideas?

where are you from?

I've been playing with a fascinating surname profiler website, found via Anne. It gives you maps of the frequency of a surname in the UK in 1881 and 1998, using census data. My surname is mostly concentrated in Cornwall and the South West in 1881. In 1998, it's more widespread, but the highest density is still in Cornwall. It also gives you the Mosaic group with the highest index for your surname. Mine is 'Tourist Attendant', which makes sense for the South West.

Where does your name come from?

if you can't stand the wait, don't listen to the band

Yesterday I was feeling rubbish and Mondayish (yet again, got to do something about that) and since there are rather a lot of pink fluffy things around in February, it's not the most fun of times to be single. I found myself moaning to God about not having met anyone yet and trying to work out how best to trust God and what my attitude should be.

So I tried turning it around and thought about what I'd like my future husband* to be doing right now and this is what I came up with:

Waiting patiently and chastely for God to bring the woman he’s going to marry into his life.
Not chasing after every girl he meets, but hopefully and prayerfully keeping his eyes open.
Not putting his life on hold until he gets married, but getting on with whatever stuff God’s given him to do in the place in which he is now.
Trusting God for the future, whatever happens.

So, perhaps that's a good list for me to think about too.

*Clearly there are some implicit assumptions here, but we'll leave those for another day.

that friday feeling

End of the week, about to head home. It's a good feeling.

This weekend holds good stuff - a ceilidh, sunday lunch with my landlords, D and Z, knitting, reading, maybe the cinema, definitely sleep.

I've lost track of how many weeks I've been at this job. 4 I think. Today is a month since I started, so perhaps it's 5. It's going well. I'm busy, every day there's something new to work out how to to do, we're all still finding our feet a little, but we're making progress.

Off to cycle home.

scarf

Does this belong in knitting or flying? Anyway, Nathan found it. (Why doesn't that boy have a blog yet?)

Everything you ever wanted to know about the Doctor Who scarf.