Breaking Through The (not) Glass Ceiling

There are times in life when one is made to appreciate the little things. When a previously overlooked, seemingly unimportant part of the world suddenly takes on a new meaning and strange urgency.

This week, that part of the world for me has been ceilings.

Ceilings are almost the very definition of ‘things that I don’t think about’. As a general rule, I don’t look up. I expect most people are the same in this respect, which is why it’s so easy to capture them in net traps set up to fall in their hallways when they come home.

Anyway. This week the ceiling in my bedroom decided that it wanted a change of perspective of its own, and would rather be on the floor, which forced me to contemplate the concept of the ceiling properly for the first time.

Interestingly, it turns out that I have no idea how they work. Many people have asked me searching questions about water damage (there was none), joists (yep, some were there), plasterboard (not sure how that differs to plaster, I’m not convinced there even was any) and I have thus been forced to bluff my way through several conversations made up entirely of ceiling-based jargon in order not to appear an utterly incompetent failure of a human being.

“Can you imagine not even knowing how ceilings work?! I mean, how does one even fall off in the first place! What an idiot!”

I imagine people have been thinking things much along these lines. It would only be reasonable for them to do so, I’m sure.

So. I’ve been living on the floor of the lounge for nearly ten days, and becoming increasingly obsessed by the slow state of ceiling repair, and dreaming of those halcyon days when I didn’t think about ceilings at all.

My dreams have been haunted by falling masonry, and I was forced to give up a playthrough of the Legend of Zelda when the floor in the temple rose up and attacked me as I feared it would make my nightmares even worse.

Luckily I’ve discovered that my laptop works outdoors and so I’m writing this from the street. I think I can probably manage without going indoors anymore for a good few years, by which time I’m banking that ceiling technology will have improved to the point where this will never happen again.

Otherwise, I think I’ve taken the experience rather well.

I have to go now.

It’s starting to rain and I need the laptop for shelter.

Saints Alive!

Idea for a badass action film:

Saints Alive!

It’s a dark and stormy night in Rome, and somewhere deep in the Vatican a religious experiment is going badly wrong…

The world awakes to find that The Pope has accidentally (?) unleashed the Saints… and this time, they’re out for revenge.

Only one man can stand between the Saints and their mad lust for carnage. And – over ninety action splattered minutes – he will.

Imagine epic battles with the biggest names in Saint-dom, each with their own special power and weakness. Picture the scene…

St. Francis of Assisi is commanding armies of birds as he mercilessly destroys all in his path. Our hero is brought to his knees by the constant violent pecking, but somehow finds power within himself at the last moment, and convinces the birds to turn on their former master and shred St. Francis where he stands.

Our hero looks up, shattered but ultimately triumphant as he surveys the many remains of St. Francis, and in his most badass voice delivers the immortal line:

“Make me a channel of your PIECES, Francis.”

Eminently quotable, fantastically merchandiseable and with potential to grow into a blockbuster franchise. Loved by the religous – for its educational value (“I never even knew who St. Therese of Avila was, let alone how incredibly agile she must have been to deliver blows like that”) – and the irreligious alike. It’s sure to be a hit.

Right?

Edinburgh: Part Omega

With hindsight, it was a little bold of me to even dare to title the previous post ‘Part I’. I’ve been so busy lately I’ve barely managed to perform essential functions like eating and tweeting, let alone writing a witty series of blog posts about my adventures in Edinburgh.

Regardless, there are more interesting things to write about, and finishing writing about Edinburgh has become an albatross that has prevented me from writing anything at all. As I’m such a pedantic completionist the fact that I called the last post Part I must mean I need to write a whole load of posts on the subject. Right?!

Part of me actually wishes I had been harrassed by a literal albatross instead, as at least this would have given me something to write about.

So in the noble spirit of ‘just getting the bloody thing out of the way’ here are a list of things vaguely worth mentioning about Edinburgh. This will be interesting to almost no-one, but at least I’ll have done it and we can all move on with our lives.

Edinburgh 2010:

1. It was marvellous.
2. John Luke Roberts Distracts You From a Murder was a thoroughly superb show.
3. H Anthony Hildebrand made me laugh a lot, and was criminally underrated by the audience the evening I saw him. Hope the show got a better run on other nights.
4. Stalking is only cool when I do it.
5. Everyone I have ever met through Twitter is an excellent person that I wish I could spend infinitely more time with.
6. Getting back on the Tube after a fortnight of walking through a beautiful city is a sadly dehumanising experience.
7. I met several famous people in social situations and coped surprisingly well. I am cool.
8. I shouldn’t have been surprised by the dickishness of late night comedy show attendees, but I was.
9. Being made to sing under pressure and in public needn’t be as bad as imagined.
10. Daniel Kitson makes the world a better place.

I saw about 30 to 40 shows, spent time with some of my favourite people, was utterly entertained, shattered and relaxed. I completed the first Phoenix Wright. And I’ll be back next year.

Edinburgh 2010: Part I – The Journey

Some would say that two years is quite a long time to go without a proper holiday. They’d be right.

Some would also say that eighteen months doesn’t really count as two years, even if technically 1.5 years would round to 2.0 if you absolutely had to round them for some reason. Perhaps an integer obsessed gunman is on the loose and asking questions about how long it’s been since you’ve been on a proper holiday? But nevermind the reason. They’d also be right.

Some others would say that the Edinburgh Fringe is a ludicrous choice of destination for a first proper holiday in two years a long time. They are fools. But they’re also right.

Regardless of this completely manufactured debate I did indeed choose two weeks at the Edinburgh Fringe as an appropriate place to go to recharge my batteries after a tricky few months. Would it be a decision I’d come to regret? Only by reading this upcoming series of posts will you find out!

I broke up the journey by stopping twice – once for an adventure in deepest darkest Shropshire with my Sherlock-obsessed political fangirl friend Nat, and once at the old family home on the Wirral.

Both of these were excellent decisions.

I had only intended to stop at Nat’s for a meal (at the finest Indian restaurant in the whole village), but ended up preferring the option of a pub crawl and a night on the farm to driving into the rainy darkness for another few hours. The village has more pubs than people and is thus well set up for a superb night of conversation and mild debauchery. Highlights included the cheapest pool table since my days in the British Legion (honest), the best local newspaper letters page I’ve seen in years (one particularly fantastic letter genuinely complained about the effect Hitler had on the development of Plymouth town centre), watching the local youths ‘flirting’ with each other by stealing the girls bras and wearing them on their heads, and trekking back to the farm in the pitch blackness through fields of mud, cowpat and terror.

On arrival back at the farm I was presented with a small dilemma. I had taken against Sherlock out of spite after unknowingly missing the first episode and being blown away by a torrent of hype and squealing. Stubbornly I decided to avoid it unless it became strictly unavoidable. And since Nat had watched the first episode every day since it had been first aired it transpired that staying at her house made it strictly unavoidable.

Luckily it turned out I loved it.

I am nothing if not open-minded.

The Wirral also made for a delightful but sadly brief visit. The main feature was a marvellous dinner party with some friends, spending most of the night discussing a mutual friend’s bizarre lovelife and the equally bizarre proposed development of one of the tallest buildings in Britain on the Wirral. And an argument about politics which for once I stayed out of!

At one point I saw my chance to try out the Greatest Joke Ever again. It failed, but I think I’m just hanging around with the wrong people.

But as all good things must come to an end, so must my journey to Edinburgh. Luckily, however, after it finished I was due to have two weeks actually at the Fringe… introducing my flatmate Hope to the delights of the festival, seeing lots of shows, eating, drinking and meeting interesting people.

So I didn’t mind the journey ending. If anything… I was quite happy about it.

The Greatest Joke Ever

Recently I made what I still consider to be the best joke I’ve ever come up with.

It went down like a very confused lead balloon, but I am sure there must be an audience for it somewhere. And so I am posting it here in the sincere hope that it will one day discover that audience.

We were in the pub.

[This isn't the joke, this is merely the context in which the joke was made. But do feel free to be amused by anything in this story that may warrant amusement. I expect there won't be anything though.]

My friend was relaying a funny incident that had happened to her earlier that day, in which someone she’d been talking to had misheard her talking about “G & T parties”, thinking she’d been talking about orgies.

Instantly I leapt in with a devastating witticism!

“Surely that’d be A, C, G & T parties, am I right?!”

[That was the joke. Bitter experience has told me this might not be obvious.]

As you read, you might be sympathising with the reaction of my friends to this comment. They looked at me with expressions of confusion, and possibly pity. I scanned their faces for a sign of recognition, that the cleverness and timing of my joke was hitting home.

“A, C, G and T? No? No-one getting this?!”

Increasingly desperate, I began to explain:

“A, C, G and T… come on! The four proteins that make up DNA, yeah?! DNA? So an ACG&T party would be a DNA party, which is like a witty way of saying orgy?”

A sea of blank faces.

“… because at an orgy DNA would be exchanged. So you could call it a DNA party. Or an ACG&T party if you were being cool…”

People started to nod. Perhaps out of desperation, or to make me stop talking. Or perhaps their brains had only just caught up to the genius of the joke.

“… which is a play on G&T party and orgy at the same time! You get it?!”

They didn’t.

The philistines.