Brennig Jones (and friends)

So.

It’s not going too well.

This whole ‘I’m going to read all of these books this year’ project.

Like any other project I start with gusto, the enthusiasm has quickly worn off and I’ve fallen into my old ways.

Which means I continue to pick up more books from the library, at least one a week, usually more.

Tonight I sorted through the previous additions to my list with a vague recognition of desire, but they are no longer as exciting, due to my new plunder.

Here is my guilty secret.

I like Stephen King.

I’m so ashamed.

I mean, it’s ok to go through a phase of reading Stephen King as a teenager, in that kind of transition between child and adult (at least before Teenage books got their own genre and writers), but I’m a 30-year old woman girl.

Anyway, I spotted his latest epic on Friday and had to have it.

Some girls have to have handbags.  This is my equivalent.

I started reading it as soon as I got home.  Which is unknown for me, because I usually plonk the telly on and become a zombie.

It did send me to sleep, but that’s more of an indication of how tired I was, rather than the content.

It’s pacy and gristly and interesting.

It’s called ‘Under The Dome’; when I described the premise to Bren he immediately said it’s like ‘The Simpsons Movie’.

Which it kind of is.  Only with humans.  And more gore.

I think it’s about a million pages long, judging by the size of it, and I’m only about 150 pages in, so maybe I’ll get fed up of it soon.

But at the moment, I am really excited about it.

How sad is that?

The list of books posted previously is all but a faint memory now…much like that distance-learning course I started nearly three years ago and got 2 modules into and mediocre marks for…

*digs out books and module information to remind self of current assessment details*

Better dust it all off I suppose.  I need to do that whole Susan Jeffers ‘Feel The Fear and Do It Anyway’ instead of just feeling the fear and ignoring it in case I don’t measure up.

Hmm.

Babbling now.

It’s because I’ve cleaned.  It makes me happy.

Or the furniture polish-sniffing makes me high…

I should be JFDI but, I don’t know, something’s missing.

Some small piece of motivational ‘oomph’ seems to have fallen out of my psyche and is probably hidden under the couch, where I have spent so much time this weekend.

So instead of writing the outline for that killer final episode of Shelved and re-editing what’s been written, I’m sitting at the dining table previewing music for future podcasts.

I don’t know if I’m suffering from the usual trap that all writers fall in to – auto, auto-generated, inverted, self-procrastination – or if this one has been brought on by the irritating but relatively minor laptop crash that happened earlier this week.

Yes, the crash did cause me to lose some data. Two files, to be precise. And the loss of one file didn’t matter, whilst the other can be easily reconstructed with about 90 minutes effort.

But it’s the thought of that reconstruction, those long lost 90 minutes, that seems to be stopping me from getting up, applying the JFDI and finishing the job in hand.

I have a 1,500-word feature to write – correction, I should have delivered a 1,500-word feature *last weekend* but, you know…

This is not me. This is bollocks.

Normally if I’ve got a target I’m (to mix metaphors with mad abandon) up and at it like a rat up a nun’s drainpipe.

Whatever.

But the key structural component in my writing is missing *from* my writing; it’s not missing from anything else in my life, just absent from my writing.

And the name of the missing part?

Humour.

For some unknown reason I can’t write the funnies at the moment.

There’s plenty of fun, and funnies, in my life; I just can’t work it out in to this one aspect of my work.

That’s a bit rubbish really, especially as the big piece of writing is the aforementioned sitcom.

Do people still say ‘aforementioned’?

Has the writing part of my brain fallen in to a wormhole and is now bobbing about in some period costume drama of an alternate reality?

Well, has it, Mr Darcy?

Oh hell, there’s no hope.

There’s a lovely track by American singer/songwriter James Casto called ‘Perfect Day’, in which James, an excellent lyricist, describes his charming ‘perfect day’ which, inevitably, revolves around the love of his life ^[1].

You might also remember a better-known song with the same title, ‘Perfect Day’, by Lou Reed, taken from his 1972 album Transformer.

Whilst the latter work highlights and romanticises Reed’s relationship with heroin, the former describes the writer’s depth of feeling for another person. So they’re both about a thing, an object of affection.

So I’ve been wondering why no-one has written a song called Perfect Day that describes a solo, self-contained day of self-indulgence?

Is it because companionship is our default position? Even the most miserable, curmudgeonly members of society (and no, I wasn’t thinking of the King of Curmudgeonism – yes, it is a word. I said so! – Van Morrison) have a thing, a person that we love; that we can’t imagine living our lives without.

Music, naturally, has always been a love of mine. And horses (though Tom is temporarily relegated from the top spot in my equine affections. But I’ve decided that I’m going to switch him back to the Bit I was using up until last week, to see if that gets things back to normal).

Anyway.

It is Sunday, but it also 31st January 2010.

On 31st January not that many years ago, Sophie and I drove from this place to Heathrow Airport and, via a series of links, were transported to this place.

It was, not wishing to use a cliché, the start of a journey for both of us, and in more ways than one. Not always an easy journey, sometimes with bumps and potholes, but an enjoyable journey nevertheless.

Happy anniversary Soph.

However, not wishing to plunge in to a dark pool of emotion, let’s take a sidestep over to today’s Independent On Sunday where this newspaper exposes the comedic underbelly of the world of Football Chanting, that strange method of communication that the people on the terraces use when they have something to say.

When goalkeeper Andy Gorams was diagnosed with schizophrenia, Celtic fans chanted ‘Two Andy Gorams, there’s only two Andy Gorams’ to the tune of Guantanamera.

You have to laugh at both the jibbing and the use of music.

When Newcastle FC scored an away goal against FC Zurich, the geordies used Welsh hymn tune Cwm Rhondda to deliver the words ‘You’re not yodelling, You’re not yodelling any more’.

More clever use of music to deliver good humour.

Meanwhile in other news, it has been decided (not by me!) that it is now time for us to get up.  We’re going out for lunch. That bit was my decision.

So it’s time to shut down, hit the bathroom, get dressed and get out there.

Woo yeah baby, we’re so rock’n'roll.

^[1]: You can listen to James’ work on his MySpace page, but how wonderfully self-effacing is the bio on his personal website which says ‘James plays piano like a drummer. And he sings like a drummer. Because he is a drummer’?

James Casto is a lovely guy. If you like what you hear and you drop him an email, he’ll probably write back to you.

Our humble little entertainment show (Arf!) is floating around the ether, just waiting to be plugged in to your ears.

The music comes from the UK, USA and Ukraine. And after watching his performance at the Chilcott Enquiry, there’s a very special musical dedication to Tony Blair – that song is delivered by Lily Allen.

Yes, really! This Reality Podcast plays Lily Allen!

Ah, but it’s worth it, for the laughs alone, it’s worth it.

There are many talkie bits that include topics from far and wide, such as two Daily Fail news stories, found by Sophie, a tale of geeky disaster and a description of a really not good day at the show-jumping office from Bren.

You can listen to it online or download it here, or pick it up in iTunes here.

On Saturday I’ll be loading Tom in to the lorry and we’ll be trundling out of the yard at about 06.30, and heading westwards into darkest Gloucestershire for the first of our JAS competitions.

I’ve put Tom on to full livery for tomorrow, so the girls will bath him and trim and groom and generally tart him up and do all the really top stuff that I cut down on because I like to get home before 21.00 most nights.

I’ve put the lorry ‘on charge’ as an insurance policy; there’s nowt worse than turning up at some horrible hour of the morning, all ready to rock and roll, only to have the bloody thing refuse to start. It’s not temperamental really, it just hates very cold and very wet mornings. Unfortunately those things are a regular feature of this time of the year so, just in case, the battery is on charge.

We had a good workout this evening, JP had us testing ourselves through lots of half-circle jumping around a track indoors. I feel well ‘jumped-in’.

Tomorrow I’ll give Tom a relatively easy night just so that I can spend some time cleaning tack and loading the lorry in preparation for Saturday’s early start.

Studio tomorrow too, being a Friday and all that.

Crash 1:
This morning my 18-month old Dell laptop refused to get out of bed and boot up. Again. You may remember it went tits up (to use the technical phrase) in October. This morning the bios started up but before it could draw breath it told me it was giving up what it was supposed to do because of a major shit problem. That’s not the precise error message but you get the picture. There was no Windows splash message, no nothing, just a screenful of 8-bit fatal error message. When I got in to the office I called Dell and explained, in words of one syllable, that I am a corporate account and that two such fatal failures on a mission-critical piece of hardware in less than 24 months are way beyond completely fucking unacceptable. The bottom line is that Dell are sending an engineer out to me tomorrow.

Crash 2:
On the way home this evening I saw an interesting accident just here. You see where the car is approaching the Give Way sign painted on the road junction? Well just there was a car transporter, one of those lorries that carry 8 cars, 4 on a lower deck and 4 on an upper deck. The lorry had been fully laden. It had evidently come banging down the road towards the junction much too quickly (the map doesn’t show it very well, it’s quite a steep downwards hill), realised he had to stop or slow, slammed his brakes on and the car at the front of the top deck slid half off, smashed backwards in to the cab of the lorry then crashed on its nose in to the road, then the lorry squashed it and ran over it. Messy. There were no other vehicles involved and the driver was shocked, but unhurt. But oh boy, the road was a total mess. It was all the more dramatic being dark, orange flashing lights on the recovery vehicles, blue flashing lights on the police car.

Crash 3:
As a result of Crash 1, I was running around the house like a headless chicken, before I left for work, trying to find my Windows and Office installation CDs. I failed in the finding. And I took it out on Sophie, in a snarling kind of way. Totally inexcusable. I spent the rest of the day feeling like shit because of my behaviour. The reason – look, I know that this is pathetic – is because Sophie is a manic OCD-er. Things vanish which is a two-way euphemism for being tidied. There’s no excuse for my behaviour, though. Completely unacceptable. Anyway, this evening I found the CDs so I’m prepared for Mr Dell to arrive and replace the motherboard and whatever else needs replacing. Yes the CDs had been tidied but I think the wider point is that I need to be far more organised in how and where I put things in the first place. So I’m going to work on that and I’m going to work on it with maximum effort. Because putting things somewhere and expecting them to be there a couple of months later might work for me, but it’s potentially unacceptable for the person I live with.

Still growing up, see?

As I’ve travelled and worked my way around this small, blue, pretty planet of ours, I’ve discovered many things  worth noting.

Big, important, fundamental things.

Like, an excess of Sugar Puffs, for a start; did you know that too many Sugar Puffs can make one’s wee smell, well, Sugar Puffery? Sugar Puffy?

Whatever.

And too many visits to the Costa Latté shop, when inevitably related to the actual over-consumption of actual Latté, can similarly have an adverse affect on one’s wee?

Well, no, not quite. The latter won’t make the wee smell of Sugar Puffs, obv. But it will make the wee smell of Latté.

Isn’t that bizarre?

Why doesn’t an excess of *other things* have the same effect?

Why don’t too many Pringle sandwiches make my wee smell of, erm, Pringles? Or sandwiches?

And why don’t too many pints of squash make my wee smell of Fruits Of The Summer squash?

I realise that I now sound like a wee-smelling (not smelling-of-wee, that’s a whole different thing) freak but, in mitigation, I will just point out that a lack of sleep can have an adverse affect on one’s brain.

And I am suffering from a lack of sleep so large and profound that it almost defies description.

Weird thoughts occur to my sleep-deprived brain (or what remains of it).

For example, did you know that Germany and the UK are increasing their troop levels in Afghanistan but France have refused to do likewise?

Straight away my brain wants to know if this is a cunning ploy by the French, to invade Europe whilst German and British military attentions are focussed elsewhere?

Or, if the French *do* attempt an internal, Europe-wide coup d’etat, would the 1st and 3rd Cheesemaking Regiments of the Royal Dutch Brigade of Edam hold them at bay?

Or would the 2nd Mechanised Onion Selling Division (Cyclists) outflank the Edamists?

So that’s the French *and* the Dutch I’ve insulted. Who’s next?

News reaches me that Saint Kylie of Minogue is Welsh. This should be a surprise to no-one. A bottom as divine as that possessed by The Blessed Kylie could only have come from Welsh roots, eny fule kno that. It most certainly could *not* have been made solely in Australia.

French, Dutch *and* Australians insulted in one post, I’m on a roll! Let’s go for the big one…

I see that Prez O’bama has said ‘I’d rather be a good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president’. Such a shame he’s shaping up to be neither – and indeed, being a mediocre prez of any period of office seems to be granting him with delusions of adequacy.

Guantanamo Bay, dude? Shut the fucking place and shut it now. Bagram? Free the prisoners or charge them. Continuing the failed foreign policy of your failed predecessor is a measure of success in which fucking alternate reality?

Speaking of alternate realities, have you seen Survivors (BBC1)? That hapless bunch of half-witted defectives wouldn’t have been able to survive two weeks in a post-apocalyptic world, let alone two months. Collectively they just about muster up to the survival instincts of a toilet roll.

And the word ‘shit’ just about sums up the writing. I lost count of the Grand Canyon-sized holes in the writers’ logic in Ep 1, Season 2 of this tedious production.

I’ve had more exciting – and more consistent – poos.

No, really.

• I’ve been in London all day
• I have had three meetings with clients
• I had one particular meeting with two people who were downright friggin’ hostile

Despite these things I have been incredibly patient at all times and even found myself walking around the shopping precinct and the streets lunchtime… SMILING AT PEOPLE.

I am obviously in danger of losing the few marbles I had left.

Help!

I wish I could throw off the last of the bloody virus that’s been hanging on to me for over a week now.

Every joint still aches but I made it to 09.30 before I resorted to painkillers on my first day back at work, today.

This evening I schooled Tom; ironically within a couple of minutes of work all of the pain and stiffness just fell away.

The same thing happened on Friday – and on Saturday I was moving freely; Sunday less so and today (Monday) was back to being as stiff as a board.

Tom was very fresh tonight, it took me 20 minutes to knock the mud off. We schooled flatwork and for the first half-hour we were very keen and just a little inattentive.

I feel a little sorry for the chap, he must be bored with flatwork in the indoor arena under floodlights.

I have ordered a new Bit – just for jumping. It’s a three-part nathe-made French Gag; we’ll continue with the snaffle for flatwork, but I need a slight edge on speed reduction after I’ve pushed him at a fence if he’s backed off a little, and the snaffle doesn’t give me any brakes.

Hopefully the new bit will be here before Thursday’s cross-country clinic.

We have the JAS at Harpury this weekend. I’m looking forward to it, with just a hint of focussed determination.

After some questions from a bunch of folk about how the dressage test section of the Eventers Challenge went, I thought I’d put the full, gory story out, complete with abbreviations:

BE 90, Test 92

A: Enter at working trot.
Proceed down the centre line without halting.
Track right
6 – Drifting

B: Circle right 20m diameter
6 – Falling off leg, could be rounder

Between F & A: Transition to walk 3-7 steps. Then proceed in working trot
6 – Losing o/l in upwards trans

KXM: Change the rein in working trot
6- Falling off leg, above bit

Between M & C: Working canter left
6 – [unreadable]

C: Circle left 20m diameter
5 – Downhill, needs more inside flex

CHEK: Working canter left. K: Working trot
5 – 1/4s in, above bit

B: Circle left 20m diameter
6 – Above bit, falling off leg

Between M & C: Transition to walk 3-7 steps, then proceed in working trot
6 – Head could be steadier

HXF: Change the rein in working trot
6 – Needs to stay softer [unreadable]

Between F & A: Working canter right
7 [no comment]

A: Circle right 20 diameter
6 – Above bit and downhill

AKEH: Working canter right. H: Working trot. C: Medium walk
5 – Above bit. Unbalanced in downd trans

MXK: Free walk on a long rein
6 – Needs to open frame and take contact fwd and down

K: Medium walk
A: Down the centre line
6 – Not on c/l at start

X: Halt, immobility, salute
7 – Pleasing halt

Collectives:
Paces (freedom and regularity)
6

Impulsion (desire to move forward, elasticity of the steps, suppleness of the back)
6

Submission (attention and confidence, harmony, lightness and ease of the movements, acceptance of the bridle and lightness of the forehand)
6

Position and seat of the rider, correct use of the aids
6

Comments:
A very handsome horse, just needs to stay in front of your leg and remain soft and [unreadable] to the hand.

40.5 penalties