Dystopia

Shoe shopping is one of my least favourite things. I can't think of many worse examples of style over convenience. The shoes are almost always laced up so that you can't tighten them and inevitably there'll only be one available so that you're at the mercy of an over-worked sixteen-year-old running her legs into nubs. Angers me. Still, I faced it today. Hopefully that will see me through another five years or so.

Lately I seem to have been reading a whole heap of dystopian teen fiction, apparently it's the hip new thing. Here's some words about some of them:

Hunger Games
Yes it's almost a straight rip off of Battle Royal. Yes it's about a teenage love triangle. Yes it's obvious. Yes the third one stretches the suspension of disbelief so far past snapping point as to be laughable. Yes the film is about to come out and smear my expectations against a massive hunk of disappointment (Prince Harry as Cato? Really?). But if you can think of a more enjoyable book I will fight you and I will prevail because I will have right on my side.

Wither
Yes it's almost a straight rip off of the Handmaids Tale. Yes it's about a teenage love triangle (well pentagon). Yes it's obvious. Yes it's only the first part of a trilogy and the next two could very easily be rubbish, but I for one am going to find out how good they are as fast as I possibly can - which will probably be about eighteen months - come on Lauren de Stefano get back to your writing.

Pure (no not that one what's been in the news, the Julianna Baggott one - incidentally, if you google Pure Julianna you get someone trying to sell you pigs)
Well hello, Pure. I was told that you were going to be teen fiction, but you appear to be rather more literary than that. You're like a book for grown ups that just happens to have sixteen-year-olds as the main characters. You're also mighty twisted, with your deformed lead characters and your brutal, brutal world. You know, Pure, I think that we could be friends.

I'm too ______ for Milan

It was only when I went to buy a paper this morning and saw the dregs of humanity that had managed to make One stop that I truly realised how stylish everyone, that's EVERYONE, in Milan looked. There was no one who looked like they'd just stumbled out of bed and landed in something resembling the outside. Everyone was tailored up to their eyebrows.

I liked Milan 'though. It's dismissal as an industrial hellhole seems somewhat unjustified. I guess when you're comparing it to VeniceFlorenceRome it comes out short, but it seems to be a proper place, rather than the upper-middle-class Disneyland of the big three.

Pleasantly surprised.

Bags of Belgravia

Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London, I'll show you something to make you change your mind. Bags of poo. That's what I'll show you. Loads of them. All over Belgravia. You know what this means, don't you?

Dogs have got opposable thumbs? Nope. Initially I thought that it was semi-polite dog-bothering cretins that were too lazy to find any kind of formal, respectable receptacle. But that doesn't make sense. I mean, what kind of demi-human trollboy takes a plastic bag to clean up after a dog then leaves said bag festering on the side of the road? Surely no one.

Which means people in that end of London must have got so posh that they are refusing to have toilets in their houses. It's the only logical explanation. Word of advice, if you're in West London and you see a man in a top hat carrying a small M&S sandwich bag do not accept the offer of a sweetie.

______________

In other news, during karaoke the other night I got told that 'at points the noises coming out of your mouth were indistinguishable from real singing'. This is the highest singing praise I've ever received. Unless you count the guy who asked if I was a professional - which I don't because he was clearly an idiot.

Heroically Out of Touch

I impressed myself with how out of touch with modern culture I am yesterday. I was having a chat with quite a respectable lady - it went something like this:
Me: So, what are you up to for New Year's?
Them: Going to a party in our village.
Me: Will that be a raucous one?
Them: Yeah, probably. There'll probably be a wee tournament.
Me: "A wee tournament"? That's more than raucous, that's off-the-chain mental.

And then it sinks in and I do some blushing.

Me (again): You meant Nintendo Wii, didn't you?

Happy New Year people, see you on the other side.

Pizza My Mind

I don't get Italian restaurants. I just don't understand them. What are they about? Really?

As a rule you get to choose between pasta (for those who don't know - small bits of slippery bread normally served in ketchup) or pizza (half a cheese sandwich sprinkled with leftovers). It's student food, people. Why would you go to a restaurant to eat student food. Nothing against either per se, both have their place, but why would you go to an Italian restaurant through choice when you can go to somewhere which sells real food for grown ups?

Ever since reading the Eat part of Eat Prey Love (turns out it was actually "Eat, Pray, Love" consequently I only read the "Eat" bit - I tried with the other bits - just didn't interest me, sorry) I've wanted to go to Da Michele in Naples and have the Margherita to see what all the fuss is about.

I was coerced into an Italian restaurant (a Napoli restaurant, no less, albeit a lot closer to Covent Garden than Campania) and there they were hyping the face off of their Margherita. Given that the rest of the menu offered absolutely nothing of interest and that this was supposed to be all authentic I figured I should give it a shot. One Napoli style Margherita. A food stuff so bland it's not worth describing with anything more than a shrug. This was your signature dish, restaurant, why would you do that to me? Why?

Tinsel-faced Nincompoop

Hello Christmas, you tinsel-faced nincompoop.

Belittling your omnipresence and querying why everyone changes their behaviour around you / because of you seems thoroughly grinch-esque, so I'm just gonna give you a courteous nod and keep on walking.

In other news and responding to my last two posts. I managed to sneak another one of those must do things - I saw me a Hamlet. The nuts one, set in an asylum called Denmark. Really good it was.

Something else that's really good is Let England Shake. Objectively, as a piece of art, it is the best new album I've heard this year. So I stand corrected. Apologies for casting aspersions / pre-judging etc.

Although it didn't make me smile as much as when I heard Kate Tempest guesting on the new Beans on Toast album.

Bucket Lists

I became aware of the Travel list challenge a couple of weeks ago - one of those facebook-showing-off-I-bet-you-haven't-been-to-the-great-mosque-of-cordoba-app-things (40 out of 100, since you ask). It send me into a spiral of wondering (I won't relate the full thought process but it ended up as) what bucket list stuff have I ticked off this year?

Now I don't mean to brag but I've ticked off a fair few of the things on the list in previous years (detailed at length in previous blogs, so no need to be tedious), but what about this year, what have I done that's new and exciting? Am I losing my edge?

Now I've done a couple of firsts that I'm quite proud of - fallen down a cliff; received my first letter from environmental health; had to dig a car out of a sand dune - but I'm not sure they're on everyone else's to-do lists. If you take things like that off the list then I'm not left with much. In fact I'm left with exactly three:

1. Worked abroad. I reckon this is quite a big one, probably something that every one should do. But then I'm not sure that I did it properly - shouldn't I really be living in an apartment, rather than hotel hopping?

2. Went up the world's tallest building. And that was mediocre. Nothing against the Burj Khalifa (it's tall and shiny) but the viewing platform called 'At The Top' is a bit of a misnomer - 'Halfway Up' would have been more appropriate, or even more appropriately 'Just taller than the one in Shanghai so that we can call it the highest viewing platform in the world.' I hope that that new clocktower in Mecca does have a viewing platform at the top so can blow raspberries all over Dubai's smugness. For the record - I think that that tower in Mecca is ace. It's really, really tall, but looks like a real building. Why's no one done that before?

3. Climbed a Himalayan Peak. A good solid Bucketlist item this one. But somewhat sullied by getting so sunburnt that my face leaked which, incidentally, is another first, and another item not on most people's lists.

So yeah, all the interesting bits of my year can be summed up in three paragraphs none of which were interesting. Please can you provide suggestions of what I should do in 2012, I'm gonna boxtick its face off.