Sunday Roast: Save me from a villanous imagination

I just braved a look into my Sunday Roast bookmark folders and nearly had a heart attack; because I haven’t roasted for a few weeks they have become somewhat swollen. Bursting at the seams might actually be a more accurate description! Which leaves me in something of a dilemma, because if I post all of the links I have been saving 1) I am going to be SO out of date and 2) you are just going to get swamped.

So it is time to be ruthless… Turns out, ruthless means no news articles. Cool. Turns out it also means no blogs/sites. Not so cool. However, I do have lots of great pictures and movies for you.

Whilst you are enjoying them, I am going to go and wash my brain out a few times, and tell it sternly to behave itself. There really are certain people you shouldn’t be crushing on. I need to find an EDLO in Oxford, and right quick!

Some awesome graffiti in Singapore

One of these days I am going to get to see the aurora. Pretty please?

Sometimes, you just have to check a picture hasn’t been photoshopped

Penguin!!! (yes, I am still obsessed)

Notorious

Hank & Mike – just… bizarre

Choose Connor

Changeling – chilling and awesome

The Spirit – I’ll admit I wasn’t sold on this before, but it is starting to grow on me a little bit

Good Dick

Let the Right One In – like Twighlight, but darker, goryer, and with subtitles

Push

JCVD – just… I want to see this film!

Gran Torino

Last Chance Harvey

Transporter 3 – and I know there will be no plot and very little dialogue, but I like Jason Statham, and things blowing up, and fast cars. My mum goes to see Mamma Mia as a feel-good film. I go to see Death Race, or Transporter…

Sunday Soup

The very important question you need to be asking yourselves right this second is:
Is there a roast in the glorious Cas, under the haze of cold/flu and Lemsip? Because I am not sure there is you know. Rarely have I felt less glorious, for I am sick again. I don’t think I managed to fully get last weeks lurgy out of my system – rather, it just lay low for a few days then sensed weakness and returned full force.

*sniff*

What other news have I got to entertain you, this cold and somewhat dreary Sunday afternoon?

Well I think I might have made a mistake when I told the Brainy Snail that one of the things I wanted out of Oxford was a man (or at least lots of potentials to have fun dating). See, it’s been a year or two since I was in the same city as the Brainy Snail: I’d forgotten how gods damned determined she can be when given a mission. If you never hear from me again it is because I have gone into hiding to escape all the men she is lining up to throw at my head! Yes, I talk the talk, but now we’ve got to see if I can walk the walk, or just retire and jibber in fear till I become the crazy-dateless-wonder-cat-lady.

I should be rejoicing, surely, that there is someone in my life who is so committed to my well-being. I am, secretly, on the inside and I am sure I will prove to be a challenge she is more than capable of dealing with. If this time next year I am still single, it will not be for want of trying on either of our parts.

But it is just, right now I feel about as appealing as… Nope. There’s nothing there. I have got through half a box of tissues in the five hours I have been awake so far today and there is no image I can conjure with the magic of my command over the English language that will do justice to the mankiness that is me. I look in the mirror and am constantly surprised it doesn’t jump off the wall and run away to cower behind the wardrobe in fear. It is very hard to summon enthusiasm for lunches where the friend-of-friend is to be persuaded to bring along his friend, when the thing I am most looking forward to is another in an endless procession of mugs of tea…

Hmmm, wonder if I can persuade my lovely landlord to make me a cuppa… (He needs a blog name I have just noticed)…

Back on rambling track.

Yup, that has decided me. I am not roasting today. Roasting requires energy and wit and enthusiasm, three things that deserted me like so many rats when the Titanic of my immune system started taking on water. Instead I am going to succumb to the lure of the kettle, then take myself back to bed and encourage you all to take a step outside your RSS readers for once and admire the glory that is the new Bright Meadow. It won’t always be this pink, but it will always be this fantabulous, thanks to Tam.

Sunday Roast: make this cake and leave me alone

Originally posted by dive-angel on flickr
Originally posted by dive-angel on Flickr

I have spent this weekend fighting off the dreaded lurgy, which is not surprising considering I have moved to a new city full of new germs and students, and that 90% of the people at work are going down with suspiciously flu-like symptoms.

My poor, battered immune system is doing its best, bolstered by thumping doses of echinacea and endless cups of tea, and so far I have escaped the worst. But this weekend I have slept LOTS and spent the rest of the time sniffing in a haze, feeling like I am hungover without the joy of a great night out the evening before!

Which is why I am not roasting this week either – my bed and more tea is beckoning. So I shall leave you with this awesome recipe I found on Flickr:

3 minute chocolate mug cake
Ingredients

  • 1 mug
  • 4 tablespoons flour (that’s plain flour, not self-rising)
  • 4 tablespoons sugar
  • 2 tablespoons baking cocoa
  • 1 egg
  • 3 tablespoons milk
  • 3 tablespoons oil
  • optional: 3 tablespoons chocolate chips mini chips would be the best
  • optional: 2 tablespoons walnuts (cut into small pieces)
  • small splash of vanilla

Method

  1. Add dry ingredients to mug, and mix well
  2. Add the egg and mix thoroughly
  3. Pour in the milk and oil and mix well
  4. Add the chocolate chips (if using) and vanilla, and mix again
  5. Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts. The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don’t be alarmed!
  6. Allow to cool a little, and tip out onto a plate if desired
  7. serve it with custard or vanilla ice cream – yummy ๐Ÿ™‚

Just the thing for when you’re feeling not on top of the world.

Sunday Roast: duck quacks don’t echo

Hello, greetings and welcome to the first of what will hopefully be many roasts from the city of the dreaming spires. If you haven’t been stalking paying attention to what is going on in my life, I got a job! THE job in fact! Not even a week in Oxford and I’ve somehow accomplished what I moved here for. Either the karma gods are paying me back for the past shitty six months, or they want me to enjoy the present because there is something monumentally bad waiting round the corner. I am so overwhelmingly bouncy and in orbit right now, I just hope it doesn’t all come as a great disappointment. It won’t, but still, the practical side of me is muttering warnings.

But joy all the same. Neko said she could hear me smiling down the phone on Friday, I was that happy. It is true that you don’t realise quite uncomfortable you were in a situation till you are out of it. I loved my last job and the people I worked with, but I can accept now that it was time to move on. The environment was not for me. It is nice to be able to go the night through without waking up from a screaming nightmare about something work related. I feel lighter, more relaxed, and more me than I have in a long time. It shows.

I’m acting like a highly caffeinated five year old on a sugar rush, basically! Hence the gruesome over abundance of exclamation points in this post. Once I knew how to craft a sentence to show enthusiasm without resorting to crude markers, but no more. Things will settle down to a more even keel shortly, but for now, please bear with the digustingly high amounts of happiness exuding from this blog, and read the roast I have spent the past few hours writing ๐Ÿ™‚

Jason Donovan is making a new album. Dear god above, no! I absolutely adored Jason Donovan when I was younger – in fact, his were the first albums I brought *blush* – but they were very much of their time. Would I want to buy a Donovan album now?! Hell no. I have some pride left.

Um, if anyone gets the album, can they, like, get me a copy…

The Sony Reader came out a short while ago and I must admit, I had a brief moment of gadget lust, but I stopped myself rather easily. Why? I agree with this piece though: it still hasn’t cracked it. On the other hand, I got myself a Nokia E71 on Friday as a way to celebrate getting my job, and I’ve already loaded it with oodles of ebooks from BooksInMyPhone and MobiPocket. Reading them is simple, I can bookmark, easily download new books over wifi or the 3G service, and to top it all, I only have to carry one device (phone, camera, book, email, internet, book…) On that front it is pretty much the ideal ebook reader for me because as a plus, it plays nicely with the Mac.

Community and geographically based, automatically updated internet? Sounds like an amazing idea, so long as it can help me find a place in Oxford that does eyebrow threading!

You think only fools would be caught out by phishing and spam attacks these days, but it can happen to the best of us.

This man is my hero: he invented the kettle thermostat. Yes, there is a sense of romance and history and pleasure to be got from boiling a kettle on a stove, but in the morning when I am still asleep and just want a cuppa, I would far rather flick a switch and doze till it clicks off than wait an eternity for my kettle to whistle and demand removal from the heat before it burns the place down. As I said, the man is my hero.

I love the Charlaine Harris Sookie Stackhouse books – fluff I can read in a single sitting, but enjoyable – so I am pretty keen to see True Blood, from Alan Ball (him of the Six Feet Under credentials). DVD methinks? Unless anyone from Stateside has seen it and tells me it absolutely sucks, but not in a good vampire way…

Rarely have I chortled so much over emoticons… how to be an empowered stalkee (though in mine Bella would also be getting a slap to tell her to stop being so wet and to just go with Jacob already!)

I don’t read many book reviews, preferring to go on recommendations and whatever grabs my eye, but this one has me wanting the book, regardless of it’s less than glowing review. Well, if nothing else I have a booktoken to spend and I think it should be spent on something I wouldn’t normally try.

Top 8 Most Dangerous Animals of 2007 (thanks Neko!)

Another intriguing idea from Harpercollins.

And to finish off for you to enjoy whilst I go for a womble round Jericho, some movie trailers:
Milk
The Haunting of Molly Hartley – I’m not normally a big fan of horror, but this one could be fun on DVD
The Lucky Ones
The Soloist
Frost/Nixon
Repo! The Genetic Opera – so totally surreal, I have to see this!

Holy smokes Batman

Um, wow. Like, totally, wow. Awesome.

Give me a minute while I try and recover some command of the English language will you?

And I am back. Groovy. What is all this about, I can practically hear you mutter from all the way over here. Well, guess where I am going to be on Monday morning?

You’ll never guess (unless you follow me on Twitter, Facebook, or got bombarded by my excited SMS’), so I’ll tell you. I’m going to be working in a publishing house! A proper job, that pays money and has career prospects and everything! Not work experience, a job! Picture me bouncing round Oxford like a Tigger on speed all day, and you’ve got a pretty good visual on how I am right now.

I am considered employable in my career of choice – feel free to insert any and all feather/knocking analogies at your leisure. So it looks like the move to Oxford was the right idea after all (not that I was really in any doubt, I feel very at home here already and it’s not even been a week). The road to the job wasn’t the smoothest in creation but it wasn’t exactly rocky either. It went a little bit as follows:

  1. Cas toddles up to Oxford for an interview for a job which excites her just from the job description.
  2. Cas puts in a moderate (she feels) showing, managing at least to refrain from crumpling into a gibbering wreck (she hopes).
  3. Cas goes back to Southampton and refuses to talk to anyone about the job because she doesn’t want to jinx it.
  4. Cas gets offered a different job in Cambridge, goes with her gut and says no, keeping fingers crossed on the Oxford lot.
  5. Cas doesn’t get the exciting Oxford job, but still has nice things said about her in the feedback which at least confirmed she managed to maintain non-gibbering status and gives a nice boost to her confidence for the move to Oxford which is suddenly looming very large on the horizon.
  6. Cas moves to Oxford, registers with an agency, manages to shoehorn her belongings into a bijou room, keeps applying for anything that stands still long enough (including bar work!) and sets about with Plan B.
  7. Then the phone goes and it is the people from the Oxford job saying “remember us? Fancy just popping in for an informal chat, no pressure, I’ll tell you what it’s about when you arrive…”
  8. Cas dusts off the interview suit, reminds herself that all appearances to the contrary she IS a confident, mature 26 year old who is worthy of employment, and walks the five minutes from her bijou house to the offices.
  9. One large cup of tea, an “informal” interview, a brief conversation about the blog ( :O yes, the chap interviewing had read it!), an a conversation with an HR person later, I get offered the job I interviewed for way back in step 1!!!!

Holy smokes Batman, I got the job. I’ve never been so glad to be second choice in my life!

And… That’s it. I am going to treat myself with a lovely and extortionately priced manicure this afternoon, because the move has completely shredded my cuticles. If anyone can recommend a good, and NOT extortionately priced beauty parlour in Oxford, I would greatly appreciate it. There seem to be a dearth of them, which is mildly inconvenient. Plus none of them seem to do eyebrow threading which is just a big bother.

(If you want to read a related job/internet/interview/blog/private-public ramble, then if you hang on a little bit, it will be posted for your reading pleasure).

History of my reading

Edrei tagged me a fair while ago, unfortunately landing his request slap bang in the middle of the summer from… Well, not hell exactly, but definitely the summer from chaos. As I am only just starting to return to Planet Blogosphere from my prolonged and not all together enjoyable sojurn round my freaked out mental state, I have decided that how best to ease back into blogging than with the history of my reading?

Do you remember how you developed a love for reading?
I don’t remember ever starting to read, I just remember always reading. There were always books around the house and somehow it just seemed to me that reading is what one did. At one point my mother tried to ban reading at the breakfast table in an attempt to engender some pleasant conversation. Instead we all just read the back of the cereal packets and maintained a grumpy morning silence. She gave in eventually.

I do, however, remember with great clarity when I first developed a respect for reading. My mother had handed some old Enid Blyton books to me, mainly a selection of the Famous Five adventures. My father has very strong opinions towards Ms. Blyton and most definitely did NOT want me reading her works. Banning me from reading them, however, was contrary to pretty much everything he held dear. Plus, us Kemp women are stubborn so he knew banning them was just going to make me want to read them MORE. His compromise was that, whilst I was allowed to read the Blyton’s already in my possession, if I wanted other titles, I had to get them myself. Our local library wasn’t well stocked, so save up my pocket money I did, and all the more precious were the books as a result.

It was this, I think, more than anything else, that has brought home to me over the years that reading is a privilege not to be taken for granted. I cherish all the books I read and want to share that joy with new generations of children…

And I’ll stop there because I am starting to sound like Freak Interview Girl again (yes, I have been going for lots of publishing roles lately, and they all seem to want some high-fuluting reason for why you want the job. What’s wrong with “I like books and the job looks interesting?” Anyway).

What are some books you read as a child?
The afore mentioned Famous Five series, the Mr Men books, Thomas the Tank Engine, The Hungry Caterpillar, all of Roald Dahl, Dick King-Smith, Tamora Pierce, Anne McCaffrey…

What is your favourite genre?
I will read most anything, so long as it is well written (my problem with Dan Brown and Clive Cussler isn’t their genre, rather the fact they can barely string two words together), but I have a tendency to lean towards science fiction and (some) fantasy when I have money to splurge. I also have a very guilty little habit of reading trashy romance (especially regency romance) and trashy vampire books – total brain-floss and popcorn, but just so deliciously delightful. Even in my guilty pleasures, however, I am a snob, and demand a certain standard of plotting, characterisation and (heaven forfend) dialogue.

Do you have a favourite novel?
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, for when I am feeling in need of a longer soppy romance, or The Crow Road by Iain Banks when I want a proper book to get my teeth into. Plus the perennial favourites of Austen and Wyndham… Right now it’s very easy to say what my favourites are, because I could only bring a few books with me to Oxford and had to make some hard decisions!

Where do you usually read?
Curled up in bed with a mug of tea, or in an armchair with a cup of tea, or on the sofa with a mug of tea… Location is less important than the accompayning mug of tea you will find! I also read on the bus, on the train, in the car, at the airport, in the bath, in the kitchen, walking to/from the bus/train/car/airport/bath/kitchen… I read pretty much anywhere and everywhere. If I am in the middle of a good book, then I am generally pretty loath to put it down.

When do you usually read?
I always read for at least 15 minutes before going to bed and I always read for at least 15 minutes in the morning as I drink my first cup of tea of the day. Through the rest of the day it depends what I am doing. It is not unusual for me to spend an entire Saturday and Sunday lost in an authors world, oblivious to all that is going on around me.

Do you usually have more than one book you are reading at a time?
I tend to have one book I am focused on at any one time. Occasionally, if I am reading a book that is weightier or not grabbing my attention so much, rather than give in totally, I will intersperse it with some brain-floss.

Do you read non-fiction in a different way or place than you read fiction?
When I am in research mode, I tend to read non-fiction at my desk, armed with a notepad and pen to make notes. I am not a big non-fiction person in my book life. Reading for me is an escape to another world and I have rarely felt the lure of what my father refers to as “the Dead Generals” (biographies). When I do go down that route however, I read pretty much as I read everything else: quickly, in long sittings, and to the exclusion of the rest of the world.

Do you buy most of the books you read, or borrow them, or check them out of the library?
At one point I brought every book I read, then I just ran out of space. Renting and moving a lot will do that to you! I have always been a member of my local libraries, joining them as soon as I move to a new place (with Oxford I was registered before I had even packed a single box!), and I make the most of them. They are an especially good source of brain-floss, as are charity shops.

Do you keep most of the books you buy? If not, what do you do with them?
If I buy a book, I keep that book. I very, very rarely get rid of books I have purchased. This is mainly because if I buy a book it is because I think I will want to read it over and over. It is also because I just like to own books – see the early childhood Blyton trauma. I grew up in a house where the walls were lined with books, and that is my idea of bliss. Right now I am suffering bookcase withdrawal and seriously do not know how I am going to manage.

Books I buy second hand are an exception to my “I’ve brought it, so I am never giving it away” mentality. If I buy a book from a charity shop and have no intention of reading it again, I will re-donate it so someone else will get the pleasure and some other charity will benefit. Or I’ll off load them on hapless friends who happen to mention they are running short of books… (One in particular did very well out of the latest book-cull).

If you have children, what are some of the favorite books you have shared with them? Were they some of the same ones you read as a child?
As me and children is just a topic which flips the brain (I have enough trouble looking after myself, without adding little people into the mix), I will have to look to a recent experience of clearing out the loft at the Homestead to the benefit of a friends daughter.

Going through the boxes of books I had grown up with was an odd experience, bringing back more memories than I thought possible. I wanted to stop and re-read every book as we pulled them out the crates and I could remember the provenance behind most of them. The Lucky Eight year-old got most of the Blyton’s, of course. Got to get a new generation hooked on the Famous Five, though I did warn her mother of the VERY dated gender politics and to be prepared for some questions… The other book I insisted she read, if she read no other was an anthology of short stories that included a story called “The Wrestling Princess“. I still remember my feeling as I read the story the first time, going “yes! Here’s a girl who DOESN’T want to wear the pretty dresses, but who would far rather be tinkering around with trucks and oil and helicopters!”

If you’ve got a 7-8 year old girl in your acquaintance, make them read this story!

(As a footnote to this, I know the little girl in question did read and enjoy the story, because not soon after, she showed me a story she had written that was clearly very heavily inspired).

What are you reading now
The Confusion by Neal Stephenson

Do you keep a “To Be Read” list?
It’s more a “to be read” pile – I tend to go into the library, denude the shelves, pile the ten or so books on my bedside table, read through them, and take them back to the library to start the process a week or so later. Yes, that’s right. It is not a rare thing for me to go through a book a day. You start to understand why I always register with the library?

Whatโ€™s next to be read?
The System of the World by Stephenson (the last of the trilogy); or Nation, Terry Pratchett’s latest; or Anathem, Stephenson’s latest, if I can get hold of a copy. No bookshop has it on the shelves (some snafoo at the publishers end with barcodes as the nice boy in Waterstones told me yesterday when I looked piteously at him), which is annoying because for once I have a book token that needs to be spent in a physical shop! I might crack and get it off Amazon.

What books would you like to reread?
Pretty much anything on my bookshelves. I am actually re-reading The Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, System of the World) at the moment. I re-read John Wyndham’s work at least once a year, getting something new from them each time. Ditto Austen (cliched but true) and Banks.

Who are your favourite authors?
Iain Banks without a shadow of a doubt. The man has a genius for dialogue, beautifully drawn, screwball family dynamics and finding the humour in even the saddest occasion. Any man who can open a book with “it was the day my grandmother exploded” and not disgust you is a legend.

John Wyndham, Issac Azimov, Arthur C. Clarke – I have a soft spot for the “classic” science fiction.

William Gibson is another man who is a genius with language. I read his books, glorying in his ideas and how he takes language, forces it to do the unexpected and crafts something new and beautiful. (Perhaps I should have done an English degree instead of Archaeology?)

I always eagerly await Neal Stephenson’s books because, though usually the weight of a house brick and murder on my wrists, he creates a whole world I can loose myself in for weeks at a time.

Meg Rosoff is a young adult writer who I would recommend everyone read. Her books are simply and elegantly written, with new ideas and twists you would never see coming. If I had my way, she would be as popular as Stephanie Meyer’s damn Twiglight Saga or Harry Potter – the same putative audience of “young adults” but the quality is a gazillion times better.

Now, instead of being mean and tagging other people (most of whom have been tagged by others already, anyway), I shall ask everyone to step into the comments with their answers to some of these questions. Perhaps most importantly, who are your favourite authors? I am a ravening reading beast, and I need more food!

Still alive?

Yes, I am still alive. I am moved to Oxford and about 90% ensconsed in my small, but perfectly formed, new abode, tentatively to be called Palace Meadows. There is a story, and when I am not huddled in a library to use the internet, I will share it all I promise.

Give me say, a week? to get a bit more settled and sort out the WiFi connection in the house – the silly BTHomeHub isn’t a fan of my PocketCalculator – and then I will be back in all my usual blogging glory.

Till then, keep an eye on my Twitter (http://twitter.com/BrightMeadow) for a running commentary of my days.

Toodle pip!