practice

I've decided that if ever want to get anywhere with anything that involves writing stuff, I am going to have to work on my metaphors and similes. They are all as hackneyed as a London-based transportation system. 

Some people have a serious knack for spinning a metaphor or simile that really does catch what they mean without them having to explain it. I always get caught up in the analogy and want to show people *why* such and such is like such and such another. The trick is obviously to say something that is sufficiently evocative that no further chat is needed. 

So, as an example. I've been listening, recently, to the new(ish) Regina Spektor Album called 'What we saw from the cheap seats', which is a pleasing title to me because it sounds - well, I don't know. It sounds like she's on our side and she's with us, and we're all sitting in the cheap seats together eating popcorn and being a little bit rowdy but essentially having a good time. Or something. Anyway. Usually when I listen to a new album of something it's because I've heard one or maybe two songs from it and I think I'll give the rest of it a go. So in this case, I had heard the song 'How' and really liked it, thus off I went trawling Grooveshark, youtube etc for the rest of the songs. And there's this one called 'Firewood', which is excellent, and then there's another one called ' The Party'. 

Now 'The Party' opens with the lines: 

You're like a party

Somebody threw me

You taste like Thursday

You look like New Year

You're like a big parade through town

you leave such a mess

but you're so fun

So. Perhaps on first sight this doesn't look like Grammy-award-winning stuff. BUT. I contest that analogically (?) this is genius. Someone is 'like a party'. Ok, so we're expecting this to mean - fun, loud, noisy etc. But - the tiny explanatory tag is not related to the nature of the noun, but to the way it is dependent on the verb (in later verses the person who is like a party changes to reflect more emphatically on what 'throwing' it does). Clever, huh? The reason they are like a party is kind of because they require someone else to be in charge and make it all happen. They get all the credit for being fun when actually it's the chappy behind the scenes putting all the hard work in to get the show on the road. And this is all picked up nicely in the 'parade through town' bit. Good while it's happening, but damn inconvenient once all the happy has worn off. 

The bit I really like is the two-line middle section. You taste like Thursday. What does that even mean? How can a day have a taste? Well, as anyone who has a normal working week can tell you, Thursday is a delicious day. It really is. You have all the anticipation of it nearly being the weekend (so close!) without the frustration that Friday brings on that it's not *quite* here yet. After Thursday, you have crested the peak of the week and you can career down the other side of the wave, and it doesn't matter if you fall off the board at this point because you'll wash up on the smooth beaches of the glory that is Saturday. Thursday is full of excited anticipation and contains very little realistic gloom or bitterness. That's Friday. Friday tastes of frustration. Monday tastes of wasted time ('all that weekend and I didn't DO anything!'). Tuesday tastes of despair. Wednesday tastes of soap. Thursday - well, Thursday is great. I love Thursdays. 

You look like New Year? Depends what your New Years look like, I suppose. And also whether you mean 'the exact point at which the year becomes new', or 'a NYE party' OR indeed, New Year's day. All of which are very different looks, I posit. I think in this case it's the second one that is meant. A New Year's eve party (which encompasses, unless you've passed out and had to be put to bed, the first meaning also) is glitzy and OTT and contains more alcohol than is strictly necessary and more celebrating than seems really worthwhile considering what we are marking. How significant is a number rolling over, year after year? Why is it that a year is important? Wouldn't it be more exciting if we reduced how often we celebrated, and had a party every five years or something like that? Anyway, the point is that it's an arbitrary party. So that's what the analogy is getting at. You look like an arbitrary party. Tacky and sticky from booze and glittery and having a really great time but almost certainly going to be suffering for it tomorrow.

Scroll up to the point where I start talking about this. That's a whole lot of meaning to fit into a not very large amount of words. People talk about 'not mincing words' but I think that the opposite approach is needed if you're going to squish this amount of stuff in. Mincing is economical. Mincing and grinding and seasoning to taste, then shaping, frying lightly and serving with a little sauce. 

So I'm going to have to practice. Let me know if you think of any good ones for me to use, in my life, or in my writing. 

Oh, and here's that song, too:

Later, 'gators X

haze

Autumn is well and truly moving on in. I've felt justified in wearing long pyjamas (as opposed to just wearing them because they are blue, with polar bears on - see 'bears'). I've worn a scarf heavier than a pashmina. I even put some glove-armsock-things on the other day. I know autumn is here with a vengeance today especially because after the roast dinner we had tonight, I suggested making stock for soup and the whole family practically shivered with excitement. Anyway. There's a big dish containing an ex-chicken simmering away in our Aga at the moment and in the morning before I go to work I will skim it and refrigerate it for soup-making in the evening. This means autumn is here. 

Other ways I know autumn is here: haze. 

What means't thou? I hear you cry. Well, perhaps not in those exact words. I'll explain. 

Autumnal haze is the sort of fog that the weather seems to have a hand in creating but is not a direct meteorological phenomenon. It's a shimmery, dense quality of the air in and out of houses - inside houses where cooking of warming food is going on, and radiators have been turned up, and fugs of heat are swirling around, oozing off people and ovens and candles and baths and wood fires. Outside, this haze is a cross between mist and smoke - it has a tang of bonfire to it, because people associate autumn with bonfires and it's amazing how your subconscious can turn a sight and a sensation into a smell. But it looks like it should cling as if it's damp and it hangs in the air like low-lying fog patches. It's a bit of a magic trick, too, because it seems to affect the eyes but nothing else - it doesn't have any physical sensation; it evaporates before you can touch it - it's a sort of weather mirage. It's truly a 'haze' in that sense - it confuses and befuddles. Anyway, it's particularly a feature of autumn. 

Other hazy things: the word 'Montezuma'. Say it out loud. Sounds a bit hypnotic, doesn't it? Like if you repeat it enough times a cloud of sleep will descend 'pon you and embalm you with its numbing, blanketing peace. Montezuma. Mmm. 

Also related (especially if you are familiar with the album 'Helplessness Blues') is the Fleet Foxes song 'Blue Spotted Tail'. Here it is: 

I'm not sure what it is about this song that makes me think 'hazy' but it is, to me at least. I think it's the guitar and the humming combo. And the words 'why in the night sky are the lights hung'. Now that's a hazily-framed question, for starters, but it also seems to recall that way that stars have of looking a bit fuzzy around the edges, like their light is sort of leaking out of them into the fabric of the sky, the way a badly-dyed piece of cloth leaks its colours. Add to that the idea the lights are 'hung' there, as if they are great big bulbs or candles with moths and all sorts flitting around them, softening edges of things and making everyone a bit sleepy. 

Other things that make me hazy: real coffee. I had some today (why is it cheaper to buy filter coffee in a coffee shop than tea? Surely tea is always lower-energy?) and it was a bit like an out-of-body experience. I had the odd feeling that my brain was floating slightly above and to the right of where my head was physically located and the sentences it was forming were not ones upon which I would be prepared to stake my life that I was making sense. (In case you were wondering, I think I'm still suffering from after-effects). 

Also, port. Now I frequently have a terrible time of things when port is involved (although often that is because of the quantity of other alcohols that precede the port, and not simply the port itself). Last night Michael and I watched a film (I won't tell you what film it was because you will think less of us, but I expect its intended audience is not an alcohol-drinking one) and we finished my bottle of 21st birthday Tawny Port. Nothing terrible happened, for once (not even a hangover, to the chagrin of my poor mum, who had two whole glasses of wine last night and had a rotten headache all day, bless). But port and a sort of happy haziness of spirit seem to go hand in hand, and apparently, not always in a bad way. 

Finally, my future. That seems to be enveloped in an ever-intensifying cloud of haze. The mists of uncertainty are thickening and if I do not escape them I am in danger of being sucked into the fog of obscurity and the swirling quagmires of boredom. This cannot be allowed to happen. I need to make choices! But not now. Now I am sleepy. There is a haze over my eyes. 

And on that somewhat cryptic note, I bid thee goodnight X

caterpillar

Sorry to leave you bereft for so long. Today’s theme – well, the theme of this post, at any rate – is caterpillars. Here are a few caterpillar-related little tales (would one consider caterpillars to have tails? They’re sort of all-tail, with added legs, really, aren’t they? Anyway. I digress).

Caterpillar tale 1: I have been rediscovering grooveshark (free online music streaming sans adverts, unlike Spotify). Over the weekend, I took this to new and unprecedented levels, especially with Disney choons. I’ve been listening to ‘Under the Sea’, ‘Colours of the Wind’, ‘Poor Unfortunate Souls’ and ‘Zero to Hero’ almost on a loop since then; they are brilliant. I have ALSO, however, unearthed a song from my yoof, which we used to own on tape and which tended to be played on long car journeys when we were all wee bairns. This song is ‘The Ugly Bug Ball’. I like this song very much. It is about a lonely caterpillar who feels as though he has no-one to love and believes this may be something to do with the fact he considers himself an ugly bug. He is invited along to an ugly bug ball by a spider and a dragonfly, where he meets a brilliantly coloured lady caterpillar, and they dance and fall in love. All the bugs are at the ball – ants, worms, fleas, spiders, dragonflies, beetles – and all of them are there because they think they are ugly – and they all have a superawesome time and go home happy that they came. It is a tale of reassurance that there is someone for everyone no matter how ugly you are, and you don’t have to be down about not having found the right person just yet. It is also a song about caterpillars. So relevant on all counts.

Caterpillar tale 2: This is more of a metaphorical take on caterpillars and stems from the mega rethink of my life ambitions that occurred around 10 days ago. I am emerging from my classical chrysalis and it turns out that I may actually be a bakery butterfly (or moth. As I said, ugly bug). Anyway. What I mean is that after cocooning myself in classics for many years and assuming that said cocoon would condition my state as I emerged from it, I am beginning to realise that maybe the material of which the cocoon is made does not affect what comes out of it. Well, that's possibly not strictly biologically true, but whatever. I am not an entomologist. Anyway, my current thinking is rather more in the direction of 'do something you love' which is much healthier than 'do something that will atone for not doing it right the first time'. Now this doesn't mean I'm never going to do Classics ever again. Far from it. But I'm taking my time to really, really, properly think about why I want to study. So if I go back to it, then obviously I mean it, and I'm totally clear on why I'm doing it and what I want out of it. But if I discover that actually I was right to finally put it down, well, that's good too. And what am I picking up instead? Well, I'm hardly picking it up. I'm experiencing my baking as a genuine passion rather than a useful hobby. 

SO. In conclusion, before it all gets a bit too deep and I stretch the caterpillar theme too far, I shall say adieu, and you can expect many more pictures of cake. And to unite the imagery, here is a caterpillar cake I once made:

Don't be alarmed. He is a friendly caterpillar. 

Adieu!

owl

Have you noticed there are a lot of owls around at present? 

I am buying into the owl trend by writing a blog post on the theme. 

When I say 'a lot of owls around', I don't mean a 1st chapter of Harry Potter-type scenario. There are not literally owls flocking between houses delivering news of a wonderboy wizard. Well, maybe there are, but I haven't seen any. No, I am talking about an increase in the use of the owl motif. 

Now I'm already a culprit here. I have a t-shirt with an owl on (well, a stylised owl) and a hairband - an alice band - with a little owl on the side. It's only a matter of time before I buy me one of those big owl-pendant necklaces. And it's not just me. Michael came back from Oxford with an owl hat. It has a little curved beak and everything. I've seen people in all sorts of owl-y things, from jumpers to t-shirts to bags. When somebody wears an owl-look waistcoat then the owl will have truly arrived. What is the current fascination with owls? 

I mean, owls are pretty cool. My family used to go to our local garden centre far more frequently than I'm sure was strictly necessary because there was an owl rescue group or similar there. This meant there would always be owl handlers with different types of owl, all perched on their little perches, blinking at you with their big owly eyes, and sometimes, if you were lucky, you were allowed to stroke their owly heads. Have you ever stroked an owl's head? They're incredibly soft, and when you touch them they sort of narrow their eyes slightly like cats do when you scratch behind their ears. I guess the attraction of an owl is that they embody desirable human traits - they look cuddly, but they also look like they could take care of themselves (the claws, dude!) and they have big, soul-searching eyes, and they are associated with wisdom, and they can turn their heads all the way around. Well, maybe the last one not so much. But yeah. Owls. Damn cool. 

It's perhaps amazing that A. A Milne got away with what is frankly slanderous description of one Owl in particular in his Winnie the Pooh books. His Owl is revered by the neighbourhood for his wisdom and sagacity and spelling, but actually, he's a bit of a thickie, and a manipulative, pompous one at that. The drawings (E. H Shepherd, not Disney), always make him look a bit jowly (a jowly owl, what a phrase) and he seems to behave like an unprepared teacher who is trusting to his commanding tone to see him through a lesson with a class which he is fairly sure will fall under his spell. ie, not like a *real* owl at all. A real owl would never do such a thing. (although now that I think about it, I'm sure owls are a cunning bunch). 

Even more interesting is that we call a flock of owls a 'parliament'. I like to imagine that owls, when they gather, sit on clearly delineated sides of a tree, and hoo-hoo alternately at each other in between joking about the other side's manner of hoo-hooing. Or similar. I don't know whether the collective noun was applied to raise the status attributed to owls, or to denigrate that applied to politicians. Although imagine the class expeditions to go and collect pellets (or chunder-nuggets, if you will, of undigested owl-dinner) in Parliament. Hilarity all round. Turns out DC can't digest his caviar after all, ho ho. 

Anyway, yeah. Owls. 

Right. I'm going to bed. I have macaroons to fill in the morning. May scores of owls sing you to your rest X

baking

You're probably sick of hearing me witter on about baking, but the fact of the matter is I just LOVE it. Today I came home from work (sans Michael; he has gone to Oxford on the train, armed with his trumpet and his dinner jacket, natch) and once dinner and social shenanigans were dealt with I opened my recipe books. 

I had a bit of a brownie fail yesterday. Well, that's not strictly true; what I made was delicious, but unfortunately, due to one or two reasons, it was not exactly what I was expecting. I took the brownies out of the oven at 40 mins - standard - and shortly after cut into them to serve as warm pudding-type material to assorted family members (for the record, Michael is now considered family). But alas - brownies that are too warm do not react well to being deprived of their self-composed structural support, and the sliced brownies quickly turned into puddles of mush. M remarked they were like Melting Hearts, the classic dessert at ExColl formal events. They were. I mean, they were damn tasty. But a brownie you have to eat with a spoon is not exactly convenient for, eg, taking in a lunch box. After the brownies had been left to cool, I scooped what remained out of the tin and into a box to go in the fridge and hopefully rescue them at least somewhat. 

All this only stoked the fires (as t'were) for my baking endeavours today. (It's just occurred to me that pausing on the brink of opening my recipe books to tell you about a failed recipe kind of mirrors Catullus 68, where Lesbia is described stepping across the door frame to come to Catullus and he goes off and describes how much she - possibly - is like Laodamia. This pleases me. Anyway.) So. White chocolate cupcakes with white chocolate cream cheese frosting were swiftly whipped together, shortly followed by brownies 2.0. I have decided not to put faces on this batch of WCCCF cupcakes because last time my sister kept making sad noises about eating things that smiled at her. She is on the brink of vegetarianism as it is and I think the cakes were just a little bit too far. That didn't stop her, she just moaned about it. So I am circumventing this problem by keeping them simple. Anyway. They are much as you saw them pictured in 'bears'. I made the brownies in a slightly larger tin, because I think one of the problems I had yesterday was that they were too deep (as well as being served too early). I had a go at extracting them from the tin earlier but I decided to leave them where they are and I will tackle them tomorrow, when they will definitely have set. And then I will parcel selections of them up and bring them to Oxford, because I promised the Excellent Alison that I would bring tasty treats and as she's basically tutoring me in her not-so-spare-time for no reason except because she's awesome, it would be remiss of me not to have something to give in return. 

AND as if that weren't enough baking love for me to tell you about, I am downloading this week's episode of the Great British Bake Off (surely the best talent competition on television) to watch on the bus to Oxford tomorrow. YES. 

It might be a few days before I bake  blog again so til then, pip pip X

soundtrack

The accordion is symptomatic of how I'm feeling right about now, but it is also currently the soundtrack to my days. It's a bit melancholy and wheezy and associated with Europe and old-world sentiment. I've been listening to a lot of accordion-based music because I'm currently (read: for about the last three months) fascinated by the film composer Dario Marianelli. Now DM's a bit of a groovy bean because he writes music that really evokes the overall spirit of the film; in the soundtracks he's done that I especially like, he's had a book to go on as well and I think he captures that, too. 

So - there's Pride and Prejudice, which sounds very Regency; oboes and fiddles and strains of genteel ball music, with some windy, sweeping sounds for the vistas of the Lakes and intricate, delicate, tender tunes for romantic and tense scenes with Elizabeth and Darcy. Then there's Atonement (or possibly that came first; anyway this is the order I've seen them in) which is entirely based around the metronomic, fatalistic clacking of a typewriter and runs like a rather knobbly and intrusive spine throughout the film. Then there's Jane Eyre. I think this one's my favourite; it sounds like Winter and corsets and heather and being caught in a rainstorm on your way home. It's deliciously chilling and warming at the same time; it's ethereal. Then there's the one I've been pouring into my ears almost on loop for 24 hours - Anna Karenina. This is clever - it sounds like Tchaikovsky, written by a Frenchman, with street music and European folk tunes woven in like a purposely-conspicuous patch in an inconspicuous place. There's quite a lot of accordion that creeps into AK, I think because it is generally seen as the European music of the street, and pre-Revolutionary Russia, especially Petersburg, was keen to identify itself with Europe - its fashions, its music, its art, its forays into philosophical, economic and political thinking. 

So, yes. Dario Marianelli. I hope one day he'll write the soundtrack to either something I've written, or my life. Either would be excellent and lovely. My hopes are dwindling, however, because I've just had the rug slightly tugged from under my feet - apparently what I'm currently studying is just about to be published by someone else. This is a bit of a kick in the face. I mean, ok, it's probably not *exactly* the same, but it's going to be damn difficult to make it look like I didn't just write a rip-off version entirely based on this work. And I'll have to read it, so that I know what not to repeat (and of course it's not out yet, so I won't be able to get hold of it, and even once it is out, I'll have to read it over about 3 weeks on Saturdays when I can get to the library). Moan, moan. I'm sure you think that if this is all I've got to complain about then I should just get over myself. Well, that's probably true, first world problems and all that. That doesn't make it any less of a bitter pill, though. I mean, I had this idea round about January time. If I had time and resources and the faith of a big-name publisher, I could be in the same position as my rival, or at least not far behind. Ach. 

This is the point that the mournful accordion would start up in the film of my life, as the camera shot pans back from me moping over my laptop, out into the night etc. Perhaps if it's a bit more of an arthouse film the camera would stay on me, stationary, while I did mundane pre-bedtime things, like rearranging pillows and musing over the practicalities of sleeping in socks (it always seems like a good idea at the time but unless it's actually Arctic out there, it's not worth the attempt). It'd be nice to think DM would write a soundtrack for me. It's a dangerous game, though - there are tragic elements in all the stories he writes music for. Have I had mine already, or is it still somewhere en route? 

Scary stuff. Anyway, I'm off to bed, to dream in waltz-time.