Literatea

Desperate Dan sits in the first class carriage. Clearly his days of cavorting and pillaging are over and now he is living in luxury, travelling first class on the FCC to work in London.

Desperate Dan doesn’t wear a red shirt, a cowboy hat or spurs. He wears jeans, bright white trainers and a poloneck with a gilet over the top. He does sport designer stubble, which is quite a good sign that he hasn’t abandoned his former life completely, although the mobile phone probably needs to go.

There is a man on my train who looks like Desperate Dan.

…They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.”

Let me suggest they go instead to Ebay where this ebay sale hopes to buy back the life of an Icelandic fin whale.

Yee gads. I’m hooked. I’ve been commuting for exactly three weeks from High Barnet, Northern Line, to Great Portland Street via King’s Cross St Pancras (not that anyone could possibly care about the circuitous route I insist on taking in the mornings. My mind at 9am is perhaps not quite able to be logical and just go to Warren Street and walk the extra three minutes). Now I’m not saying I’m hooked on commuting. I’m hooked on the trappings thereof: the Associated Newspapers. This organisation manages to turn out the most amazing amount of tripe (think the Daily-We’re-All-Going-To-Die-Of-Bird-Flu-Mail) and we’re all caught. The Metro (Yesterday’s News -or possibly last month’s story- Today!) in the mornings is replaced by copies of the Evening Standard in, yes, the evenings. Especially exciting are London Fashion Week’s ES Fashion mag and Friday’s ES mag release. I’ve no idea why I devour these publications. All I know is that now I’ve discovered them, even if I have a perfectly readable (and factual!) book on me, my fingers will drift towards any spare copy I can put them on and allow my eyes to wander over the, er, articles. Of course, when someone sits next to me with a copy of the Times I do tend to get that prickly feeling of embarrassment but soon enough that leaves when I come across an article suggesting that wearing a floppy flowery skirt and tweed is so hot right now or another interviewing someone slightly celeb in 60 seconds. I now intend to sit down with the Wikipedia or a good dictionary and attempt to raise my IQ by 10 points. Well that’s what weekends are for, aren’t they?

According to my husband, if my life were a game of Mastermind, my top three specialist subjects would be:

Name and rank of every crew member featured on every starship on every season of StarTrek*

The many joys of the Nokia 5100, including the multiple uses of its built-in torch

Topshop winter lines from 2002

*I refute this. Mostly.

“…the older she gets, the more interested he is in her.” Agatha Christie

If my husband’s life was a game of Mastermind, his top three specialist subjects would include:

Rice pudding

Overcoming the foibles of the humble Jet Black Mini, circa 1985

Using Latin as a means of communicating to hilarious/ironic effect in the English Language

If my life were a game of Mastermind my top three specialist subjects would be:

the foibles of the Compaq Evo N1015v laptop powered by an AMD Athlon processor

fabulous budget parties

spelling

I’ve noticed that Google Ads are taking over the internet. In fact, Google is taking over the internet. It is an eerie cyber stalker trying to sell me things. Is Google the new door-to-door salesman?

On married life.

I love it. It’s a terribly exciting thing to do (be married) and a delight to have someone around (who I like an awful lot) consistently.

It’s fantastic when my mother-in-law rings up. We natter for ages about what-not and allsorts and at the end of it all I generally come away feeling calm and relaxed. What a marvellous thing to be able to say when so often mothers-in-law are maligned or worse, live up to their stereotype.

It’s fun. We went to see the Penguin (as in the publisher) 70 Years of Design exhibition at the V&A Museum for a date night. Saul Bass artwork! And if you’re thinking “s-a-a-d” then just remember: it’s a lot more interesting than one of our first dates where we sat in the library and looked things up on the web. Now that’s sad. Let us hope that we’re more balanced, centred people now. Pah!

Perhaps I should stop with the saccharine. Instead, read something useful like Martin-the-money-saving-expert-of Radio-2-fame’s site.