Sunday, February 11, 2024

Aged like fine whine

 So this ad 


popped up in my social media feed and I'm thinking that the expectations of women (and/or the expectations we have of ourselves) are quite depressing and bizarre. 

There's no way you'd use "89% less pain" as a selling point to men. Surely it should be something like "makes sex enjoyable again"? But no, the best we can hope for is less pain.

Isn't pain your body's way of saying "stop, this is damaging me"? 

I'm sure many women want to continue to have sex-lives beyond menopause, and a good pelvic floor is a boon, but I'm really uncomfortable with this presentation of it.

 


Saturday, January 20, 2024

In my lousy opinion

 It's all in the news about a dog being rescued with extra limbs and a charity successfully raising about £15K to have them amputated so the dog can have a normal life and be adopted eventually.

In all honesty, I think it's such a misdirected effort. There's no shortage of dogs in need of homes. Shit, there's no shortage of humans who are in dire need of medical help and charitable assistance. 

I suppose it gets them headlines and it gets them more income, so it works for the charity to do this, but good grief people don't have their priorities straight. 

To the Lake

I've been watching a Russian series on Netflix called To the Lake about an outbreak of a zombie-style disease. 

It was pretty gripping with a complicated soap-opera of relationships between the characters, who were all pretty flawed. They really went from crisis to crisis 'though and were frequently rescued by friendly strangers in the nick of time, which felt a bit contrived. I think the high point dramatically in the series was when the little boy goes missing, it had me binge-watching past midnight.

There were very cheesy moments (which I didn't actually mind), such as the young adults finding first love to the strains of "Teach me Tiger". It was quite amusing. There was more sex in the series than you might want. 

The final episode felt set to wrap things up satisfactorily, although [spoiler: it seemed unlikely to me that Polina's father would be cool with her relationship with Misha], but then of course another sudden disaster had to happen. 

If the next series comes to a streaming service I have, I'll watch it. 

I find I do better with watching subtitled series than I do with English-speaking ones these days, as I tend to drift off into scrolling the internet or gaming. Although, that said, I did watch TrueLove on the Channel 4 player*, which I really enjoyed. Also, The Traitors series 2 has no trouble keeping my attention.


*Channel 4, if you're reading 😆, your player is really shit - it has a nasty habit of buffering and pausing, spoiling programmes, while I have no issues with other services. Particularly in Taskmaster when they're showing pictures contestants have made and the like. 

Tuesday, August 08, 2023

Scorchio

 So, I've been having a clear out and I came across a couple of objects that I thought, "You know what, [friend] might like these." 

I merrily boxed them up and toddled down to the post office to send them.

Waited in line in the small local post office, thinking about nothing in particular. The elderly chap had been harrumphing about the wait, and then did all his banking and bills. He paid £70 off his electric, £40 off his gas and harrumphed some more about the lady at the counter being the only one on, with a mildly apologetic nod to the queue. The shop assistant from the other area took someone out of the queue to deal with them to help out. 

So it was a busy scene, a grouchy scene, people waiting, the lady on the counter feeling under pressure and us shuffling around like zombies stuck in a post office. 

Anyway, I get to the counter and plonk my parcel on the scales and all is fine, and then she asks "what's in the parcel?"

Which takes me aback. "What, why?"

"I have to ask," she said. And rather rudely, I felt, "Haven't you ever sent a parcel before?"

Which considering my advanced age seemed an unlikely option and did spark some resentment in me. 

Of course I've bloody sent a parcel before, I just can't recall ever being asked this question. (I don't say this. She may have seen me think it.)

I hem and haw and say " a couple of things", which I admit is not the most helpful or satisfactory of responses.

She needs to know, though. 

And my brain has just gone into freeze mode, and I cannot think of how to elegantly describe the contents with an interested audience behind me wondering why I'm being so fucking awkward about telling her what's in the parcel.  

I can either tell her or take it away and use a courier instead, I'm informed. (I'm seriously considering finding a bin to be honest). 

So off I go, back into the shop area, defeated, taking my dubious, inexplicable parcel with me in shame, while the queue debate my bizarre behaviour with her, thinking I've fucked off entirely. 

I have not. (I am looking for packaging for a coat I have vinted.) I can hear them.

I take a few breaths, to find my zen and the perfect padded envelope. And peer back into the post office section to see the queue have all been served and have pissed off. 

I go back in. "Can we try that again?" I ask. 

She is a bit reluctant to come back to the counter, seeing it's me, but she finishes whatever she's doing to the sack and stoutly comes over.

"Sex toys" I tell her. "That's what's in the parcel. I didn't want to say in a room full of people."

She laughs. All is forgiven.

She says her next question genuinely has to be  "Does it have batteries?" We both laugh. 

It does not have batteries. (I do not explain the type of sex toy it is, but it's not that sort.)

We discuss postage costs and she asks the value, and I don't know (and jiminey what an ordeal this has turned out to be, my face is glowing).  

At least she has a mildly amusing anecdote to relate to the next customer.  

One of whom chimes in when I continue explaining that I hadn't been trying to be an arsehole with "yes you were" despite being a new arrival to the scene and having no idea what was going on, the cheeky badinager. 

I was really unprepared for this level of embarrassment today. 

She tells me next time to just say it's Anne Summers. Or pass a note.

I can't imagine there being a next time. 

Sunday, August 06, 2023

Strike a pose

 I really hate the way online clothing stores use strange camera angles or make their models pose standing in weird ways, or have them pull at or hitch up the clothing. 

I just want to see how an item looks if you stand like a normal person. 

I don't think it makes the clothing look good. Does it? 

I think probably if you have to stand in a weird way, it's because you're trying to disguise how it falls naturally. 





I'm not sure why I've blanked out their faces. I think it's because I'm not wanting to have a go at the models themselves. 

Thursday, July 27, 2023

Drivel

 


OMG, what is this bullshit?

Sometimes I am moved to cries of "what utter balls!" by social media.

Of all the things the ocean could be described as, non-dramatic, protective of friends, quiet, observant and long-remembering are probably the least accurate. (Nor is the person amused or ego-stroked by this result apparently any of those things as far as I can tell.)

Has the person who made up this crap ever seen the sea? It's dramatic af, it'll drown you in a heartbeat if it's in the mood and it Roars.

If we're anthropomorphising, I reckon it has a sense of humour as it pranked me and my bloke last time we went in - a freak wave knocked me down and shoved handfuls (or wavefuls) of seaweed in his trunks. 

It was also a reminder not to be stupid and take safety too casually. 

It nearly et me. 

Anyhow, utter balls. 

There's so much utter balls on the internet. Here I am adding to it. 

Wednesday, July 19, 2023

Holiday reads

 I finally ventured into reading on a device (my phone) rather than physical books for my holiday, which worked quite well for me. I was surprised and pleased. I don't really like the idea of paying for books that I can't pass on to others, but then again, my mum has recently been going through her books and trying to thin them out and perhaps not having shelves and shelves of them in real life has its advantages too. 


I started with Losers Club, a cosy murder mystery by Yvonne Vincent, an author recommended by an acquaintance. Brief outline: a recently divorced woman moves back to the island community she grew up in, with two teenaged children in tow, starts sticking her nose into murder with the help of her just-formed weight-loss group.

It was quite a fun read, but the humour is a bit crude and slapstick, which I didn't really get along with. The idea of some woman dangling over a counter with her knickers on show is a bit too Carry On for my tastes. 

The formation of the group was very contrived and unrealistic: first meeting and they all abandon the immediate purpose of the club and start investigating murder, really? The relationships between the characters felt hurried and unlikely. But I guess we weren't going for gritty realism in any part of the book. 

It was enjoyable but I'm not going to rush to read the rest of the series.


After Everything You Did by Stephanie Sowden was one that appealed to me randomly as I scrolled through potential reads. Brief outline: woman suffering amnesia is obviously the perpetrator of a series of murders, but can she come to grips with what she apparently did and why?

This was a gripping read for me. You think it's going one way with the twist, and then - well, it was quite a shocker. 

I'd read another book by this author. 


One Good Lie by Jane Isaac was a psychological thriller that also appealed to me on scroll-by. Brief outline: two sisters are attempting to get on with their lives following the murder of their mother, but the death of a missing witness casts doubt on the murderer's conviction - was it actually someone else?

There was some strange wording/malapropisms in the novel, which threw me out of the story at times, but  over all it was a good read and kept me hooked. 

Apparently Isaac has written police procedurals previously, so I might give those a go. 


Terror on the streets

 "I'm coming back to catch you," said some older woman out of her car window to me, as she went past on the street.

I sped up walking, got in my car as fast as possible, and got the hell out of the village, feeling vaguely guilty and stressed. 

I don't know who she was or what she wanted: I feel it must have been mistaken identity as I don't usually stop in that village. I didn't know her or her car, and I hadn't done anything wrong or had a car bump or anything. 

It's faintly ridiculous that I fled the village rather than have a conversation that would have probably been "Oh sorry, thought you were x-person" or "how's your mum?" 

But I am fairly ridiculous. 

Thursday, June 29, 2023

Michael Connelly books

 

I was looking to get something new to read, and am trying to work out which Michael Connelly's I've already read, so ticked off the ones I've mentioned reading on here. I do think I've read more of them than that. A lot of them seem to have quite similar titles which doesn't help: Black this and that, and Dark such and such. But it's a start. Quite like it as a visual. 

This search because I have finished the bunch of Tana French books I had. 



Monday, June 05, 2023

 Finished Tana French's The Secret Place yesterday. I found this one a bit of a struggle to get into. None of the characters were particularly likeable and the witchcraft element didn't work for me. 




Monday, May 08, 2023

 Finished the Faithful Place and Broken Harbour by Tana French over the weekend.

I'm getting to like the change of detectives each time and I think both books were better than The Likeness. I'm wondering who amongst the detectives I've met so far will be the next to take the lead. I'm kind of hoping for the horrible Quigley. 

Monday, May 01, 2023

Watch it

 Finished reading The Likeness by Tana French today. It was very readable despite the frankly ludicrous premise. Very well done to get the reader to lay that aside and go for the ride anyway. I bought a set of French's books on recommendation from the interwebz, so I'm glad I'm enjoying them. The detective in this one was a main character in the previous book In the Woods, but got the narrative voice this time. 

We've been watching The Glory, a k-drama on Netflix, and we finished that a couple of days ago. It was quite slow-moving, but absorbing and featured one of the stars from The Uncanny Counter. It was a very different beast to that tho! It's interesting seeing these shows and trying to figure out the cultural background, and I'm aware I'm missing a lot of nuance. Violence in schools seems a big issue over there - or maybe it's the shows we're picking - or maybe it's the shows Netflix is picking. 

And I watched the Red Turtle, a Studio Ghibli animation I hadn't seen before. It was a fable that felt quite predictable, or perhaps familiar is a better word for it, but it was engaging. There's no dialogue, although the sounds of nature are important - the sudden silence of the birds/the forest itself giving warnings and so on. It was thoughtful and I enjoyed it.

Monday, April 17, 2023

Renfeels

 I went to see "Renfield" at the weekend. It looked terrible (I thought) from the trailers I've seen on social media, like the cheesiest Dracula of recent times in Nicolas Cage. I couldn't see myself getting much enthusiasm from loved ones to accompany me, so killing time before a flight was an ideal opportunity to see it on my own. 

It was a lot of fun and I enjoyed Nicholas Hoult's Renfield as an attendee of  Co-dependent Anonymous meetings, with self-help books trying to fend off Dracula as a narcissistic boss. It was a bit of a gorefest as well with some ridiculously squishy deaths. I liked Awkwafina in the role of hero cop. 


Finished: The Last Party - Claire Mackintosh

Thursday, March 23, 2023

I know you are, but what am I

 



A strange pop-up about strange pop-ups. 

OK it's not that strange, but it vaguely amused me.


Finished: In the Woods - Tana French

Saturday, January 28, 2023

 Finished The Girl Upstairs by Georgina Lees

Sunday, January 15, 2023

Stuff

 It always puzzles me that the On the Beach advert family are so unpleasant - the mum whacks some bloke at the pool with a discarded flipflop, the brother licks his ice-cream greedily & smugly in the face of his sister who had dropped hers, they act like inconsiderate pigs generally. 

I thought the idea of holiday ads was to be aspirational, but the aspiration wouldn't usually be to behave like arseholes.

Anyhoo.

I finished Rev Richard Coles' Murder before Evensong last week. It was a cosy murder mystery and there were three murders in the end after a gentle start. I guess it's set in the '80s? Must be because the protagonist was a hip rector for knowing of Erasure. I enjoyed it; it was quite sedate but comforting in pace, and his characters were likeable. The reveal wasn't particularly believable or wholly satisfying in my view, but I'd give his next outing with Canon Clement a read, I reckon. 

I'm currently reading Brian Bilston's Days like These

Monday, January 02, 2023

Woodya

 Happy new year and all that. It is the customary time of year to resolve to do things differently and do better, so yes to that (again) and tally ho, it's 2023.

I watched a film with Woody Harrelson in it this morning - The Man from Toronto, and that was quite funny and entertaining. 

I'd pick a film with him in it quite often: reminder to self, I must never find out any more about him. 

I thought he was hot as hell in Natural Born Killers, (which is a film I would probably never watch again, because I think I'd look at it differently now, but when it came out in the mid-90s I thought was cool). He's not quite as he once was, but then, it's frighteningly nearly 30 years on.  

I have started reading Rev Richard Cole's novel Murder Before Evensong. There hasn't been a murder yet. 

Saturday, December 31, 2022

Read

 Strange to think I stopped reading for a good couple of months. 

What have I been doing?! 

I suppose internet crap. I really should make it a resolution to spend my time more wisely.

But will I?

Still I read 25 (and started several more), so could have been worse.


Finished: The Bullet that Missed - Richard Osman

Tuesday, December 20, 2022

WWJCD? Get "cancelled", one would hope.

 Whatever you think of Meghan Markle, Jeremy Clarkson's recent comments in a tabloid were so over the line.

What a grossly misogynistic sentiment to express, basically rubbing one out at the idea of her naked and humiliated in public, the grim old perv

It's funny how these old white men are slathering themselves silly hating on an attractive young black woman. 

Be critical of her words and actions if you disagree with her, but this frothing barely covering your own semi-hard dicks fantasising her destruction - well, it shows who the fuck you are. 

Very disturbing that this stuff gets published, even in utter rags. 

Sunday, November 27, 2022

Big claims, huge


 It's a big claim, isn't it?

For hand-wash. 

It's a lot. 

I mean, I like vanilla, I feel indifferent to shea butter: I'm not sure those *are* the ingredients of happiness. 

Are we supposed to wash and ho-ho?