Garden soreness

My body is about to collapse. I've spent four hours weeding the little spaces between the garden tiles...

Much neglected, not forgotten

Back in Sweden for a little while.

So much for the city

Ok, let's face the facts here. I'm having issues with the city.

I don't understand why you have to be cocky and stuck up and constantly remind everyone around you of how great you are. I don't understand why you have to get a fancy mercedes to pick you up and take you for a fifteen minute drive around the city system of one way streets to get you somewhere three blocks away. I don't understand why you have to applaud sales results every single Friday. I don't understand why you need two computer screens, or why you have to wear high heels and count calories and never, ever pay for your own drinks. Or why you have to go to a swanky bar to celebrate your first hedgefund client, but can't put out the money to get a quality management certificate that allows you to be a UN provider. I don't understand why I'm the only one who actually leaves when office hours end. But what I 'm really finding it most difficult to explain to myself, is why I'm doing this FOR FREE!!

bag lady

My second (actually first) name is always a source of laughter... but beat this, now it's also the name of a bag!

First day of city work today, and it was actually fine.

Old post

I meant to write an entry about this ages ago (on 20th April more exactly, when I read about it) but something must have come up. For some reason I thought of it now. This Banksy mural by Old Street tube had been painted over by Transport for London. I love how their comment after removing something supposedly worth over £300,000 was that "Our graffiti removal teams are staffed by professional cleaners not professional art critics"...

My American Grandmother

Browsing the Sartorialist yesterday (like so many other days before that) i came across this picture. And i swear, it's a blingier version of my grandmother..

Little Grey Men

I read a book when I was little called Momo (just found it on Amazon) in which little grey men stole our time. I probably haven't thought about this book for 10 years or more. But it came back to me when I passed the Hayward gallery a couple of weeks ago, and suddenly realised that buildings on both sides of the river were covered in grey men.

Didn't know what to make of it at first. Seemed a bit too big a project for it to be a Banksy prank. But it turns out Antony Gormley is having an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, and the grey men are part of it. There's already talk about keeping them after the exhibition is over...

Anna and Rob have had an offer accepted on a House!

anthropological studies of an ngo, part I

I have now worked my first week at an ngo. It's ok. In true style of living up to their reputation of being warm, fuzzy families, everyone at the office is very nice. At the same time I have noticed a bizarre need among some people to prove themselves as being morally better than others, or perhaps rather a need to point out that someone else is more bourgeois.

I first noticed this in connection with the office dress code. As you would expect it's rather casual. But casual to the point where if someone comes in wearing any of the attributes associated with the big, bad city, there will be comments.

I thought people wouldn't really care about me as I'm only there as a temp and there is no real need for people to assert their superior position in this moral hierarchy (as a temp I'm obviously bottom of any sort of office ranking ladder - no matter what it measures). But that was until last Friday. We went for drinks after work, and in a group of people started talking about where we lived. Someone said they lived in Haringey and I said that so do I. I know that Crouch End is in Haringey because I pass a sign every day, just before hitting the Broadway coming from Finsbury Park saying "Welcome to Haringey". But aparently, I don't really live in Haringey, at least not according to the desired ngo border limits as this girl gave me a stare and then snapped "well, that's on the other side of the tracks".

Perhaps I should have defended my probably quite high-scoring moral status as someone living off someone elses charity while they are doing medical work in an African village (beat that, you office working Londoner!). But somehow I just couldn't be bothered and moved on to discuss the difficulty of finding the perfect pair of jeans and finish off another bottle of white wine with some more open minded people instead.

I look forward to a new week, with more anthropological findings. Perhaps i can try this, if i fail to get ESRC funding for my other potential work on the politics and cross-dressing of the Eurovision Song Contest... Another idea is to go paint the tracks dividing Haringey in rainbow colours like the Danish ones above. Perhaps Banksy would give me a hand. Since he's sold out and has no street cred left, a train track painting by him would make all Haringey upmarket, and this girl would be no better than me after all. . .