troubled diva  
 

Friday, November 16, 2001

Home Alone.

This week, with K away in DC, I have been home alone. Oh, what fun I have had. Turn your speakers on and join in, why don't you.

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Thursday, November 15, 2001

All change at the top as retaliate slides to 4th place, making way for a brand new #1: serendipity. Meanwhile, anthrax is the highest new entry at #10, and muslim is this month's highest climber (*), up a massive 7 places.

And we've got serendipity on the phone right now. Hey, congratulations! How does it feel to be number one?

"Er, serendipitous."

(*) I realise that my younger readers may not be familiar with this term.

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Short and sweet, or long and flabby?

Ooh look, a serious sociological study of popbitch! Perhaps more analysis than is warranted for a silly "sleb goss" e-mail and message board, but still, bang on the money.

One point particuarly resonates:
To make an email publication work, it is necessary to retain the interest of the reader. This means keeping paragraphs short and to the point, with the maximum information in the minimum possible words.
Now, this is where I have problems as a blogger. I don't think in short sentences. My thought processes tend to the long-winded, and verbose: semi-colons, sub-clauses, parentheses, adverbial qualifiers, lengthy digressions, Big Words. This does not always read too well in a medium such as a blog. So I'm trying to learn to be concise, pithy, snappy (there you go: three words where one would do - eek, and I've gone into brackets, and I'm digressing - STOP!)

Trouble is: when people read the long-winded wordy stuff, they might think to themselves "pretentious git". But for me, it's actually pretentious to be writing in short sentences. What a dilemma, eh readers!

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Natalie Imbroogly-woogly is the Spawn of Satan!

Not content with releasing one of the very worst singles of the year ("That Day"), the new Natalie Imbruglia album "White Lillies Island" is the first UK CD release to employ copy protection. Basically, you can't play it on most PCs or any Macs, you can't MP3 it and you can't digitally copy it. However, all the MP3s were on Audiogalaxy before the release date anyway. So, if you want a copy of the CD which you want to play anywhere, you're actually better off downloading the MP3s and burning them to CDR. This actually amounts to an inducement not to buy the CD! Something of an own goal there. And anyway, there's nothing to stop you making an analog copy of the CD if you've got a dedicated CD recorder and some phono leads.

This new move by the recording industry is as worrying as it is stupid. Read more about it here.

Yes, OK, I have just discovered Need To Know. You have rumbled me.

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Wednesday, November 14, 2001

Top Eleven Tunes for Tonight.

Bohemian Like You - Dandy Warhols
Poor Leno - Röyksopp
A Man Needs To Be Told - Charlatans
Number One - Playgroup
A Woman's Worth - Alicia Keys
Hotel Yorba - White Stripes
We Want Fun - Andrew WK
Idioteque (live) - Radiohead
Play Girl - Ladytron
New York, New York - Ryan Adams
My Secret Life - Leonard Cohen

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Dining with Dymbellina.

World Service restaurant, Castle Gate, Nottingham.
November 13 2001.

Dymbellina writes:

We are both agreed that World Service would be better named Radio Five Live.
We sat in the new bit with its rickety tables and strangely small mirrors.
An odd mixture of over the top formality and over familiarity. I lost count
of how many times the Ali McCoist style waiters called us 'guys' and yet
kept wanting to refold our napkins and pour our wine (even after we
repeatedly told them not to). They had three type of manzanilla sherry on
the wine list but none in stock and tried to fob us off with white port.

The food was definitely not premier league; more Nationwide division one mid
table. The chef tried to mix in a few 'exotic' elements but overdid it on
the balsamic vinegar (in Dymbel's case) and couldn't cook fish to save his
life. The stray langoustine sitting on top of my lobster and langoustine
risotto was overcooked to a mush, as was coughing companion's halibut which
didn't seem to gell with the other ingredients. My turbot was the blandest
piece of fish I've eaten in some time: two fillets plonked on top of one
another swimming in a spinach (not mentioned on the menu) 'nage' or water
with angel hair pasta. The waiter didn't seem to appreciate why I thought
the nage and pasta combination didn't work.

The pear tarte tatin wasn't. The pears had been barely cooked and they
perched on a puff pastry tarte with no caramelisation in sight.
An entertaining evening nevertheless which also included
a) overhearing someone at a neighbouring table tell his fawning dining
companion (who was so clearly not his wife) that he really believed in
marriage and b) being speared with a carving fork in Habitat.


Troubled Diva adds:
My experience at World Service (two meals only mind you) has ranged from really very tasty, through to mediocre. I did have a mascarpone parfait there which actually managed to taste of absolutely nothing whatsoever, which is something of an accomplishment in its own right.

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Pop music and shagging.

Aren't they brilliant?

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Tuesday, November 13, 2001

Nina Murdoch.



A fabulously talented painter whose work literally stopped me in my tracks the first time I saw it. A year later, to my delight and relief, her work also stopped K in his tracks. As a result, we now have one of her paintings (not the one above) hanging above the telly in Nottingham. As well as being the first directly representational painting we’ve ever bought, I think it may just be the best painting we’ve ever bought. It’s certainly my current favourite, bringing me continued pleasure and fascination every time I look at it.

All the paintings I’ve seen by Nina Murdoch cover roughly the same ground. They all depict deserted urban landscapes, devoid of any signs of the “natural” world, usually incorporating a tunnel or underpass (in that respect, the picture above is not typical). I don’t know whether or not these places actually exist. None of the pictures is ever titled. These places could be in any city, in any country.

Using a glistening, almost liquid-looking egg tempera, the detail is finely worked, to an almost photographic level, although the richness of colour (including lush purples and oranges) goes beyond the colours you might have seen on a photograph of the same scene. The use of light is dramatic and striking; in particular, strong contrasts are set up between light and shadow. Garki, who has worked as a professional photographer, commented that this degree of contrast could not have been captured on a photograph – it would be a technical impossibility. Some of these scenes could therefore only have been rendered in paint.

There is also a great sense of formal, structured composition, which can almost be reduced in essence to a geometric abstract. Perspective also plays a major part, with strong lines formed by roads, kerbs, walls and bridges.

Nina Murdoch has a solo show opening in December at The Blue Gallery, 28/29 Great Sutton Street, London EC1 (020 7490 3833 - nearest tube: Farringdon/Barbican). If I were writing the blurb for this exhibition, I would say something like this: “Colour, light, line and subject matter are fused together with an extraordinary technical expertise, creating a unique, wonderfully distinctive mood which strikes you instantly, draws you in, and sustains its impact over the fullness of time.”

But I’m not writing her blurb. Apparently, Tony Parsons will be doing that instead. I wonder what he’ll have to say.

We can't wait to go.

Don’t worry – my next post will be about pop music and shagging – promise.

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Grocblog.

Oh, so Groc is also blogging, is he? One good thing about Groc is that I don't have to rack my brains thinking up a blog nickname for him. He is a Groc, and that is that. He's also responsible for the homo homepages 1 and make your own gay mag links on the left of this page - wonderfully jaded and vicious stuff. Big up to the man like Groc!

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As good a title as any...

Now that I've started "going public" with this blog, the comments are coming in. My favourite so far is from Disco Judge:
"Dermot O'Leary does the South Bank Show."

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Funniest site I've seen in, ooh, days.

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Monday, November 12, 2001

Rock Rock, Rockaway Beach...

So, my beloved flies to Washington DC tomorrow, the day after the Rockaway Beach disaster (can't get that old Ramones song out of my head now), and will be away till Friday. Meanwhile, my sister is now in Islamabad for at least the next month. Suddenly, I'm paying closer attention than before to The War Against Terrorism (or TWAT as I like to think of it).

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Subscriptions, Statesmen and Spectators.

Dymbel recently showed me round Bromley House, which houses Nottingham’s little known subscription library. Pass through an easily overlooked doorway up near Burger King and the old Odeon cinema, and you’re suddenly 50 years back in time. Upstairs, ancient hardbacks line the shelves from floor to ceiling, giving off a musty odour that immediately evokes memories of my grandfather’s old library (he had a fine antiquarian collection) and the old reading room at Dorset county museum, of which he was a member. A handful of people are sitting silently in the reading room, all of whom must have been members for many decades, sipping mugs of bitter, stewed coffee and leafing through the magazines. My NME looks wildly out of place here. At the back of the building is an enclosed garden, hidden from the outside world and completely incongruous with its city centre surroundings. I’m having to fight the urge to say “oasis of calm amidst the hustle and bustle”, and I’m losing the fight.

Anyway, I’d somehow formed the impression that not just any old philistine could join this august (if superannuated) elite – you’d probably have to prove your “literary” credentials via some sort of interview. But last night, I discovered that all you really need to do is cough up 35 quid. I have to say that I’m quite tempted. The building is less than 5 minutes walk from the office, so it would be a great place to escape at lunchtimes. But – best of all – they stock The Spectator.

Now, I still like to cling to the fond delusion that I’m some sort of unreconstructed eighties leftie, and as such it would be a mortal sin actually to go out and pay good money for an evil fascist rag like The Spectator. By rights, the New Statesman should be my natural spiritual home. In fact, I used to have a subscription. But the trouble is: The New Statesman is cripplingly dull, whereas The Spectator is a cracking good read. If I pick up The New Statesman, it feels like a homework assignment; if I pick up The Spectator, you won’t hear another squeak from me for at least the next 45 minutes.

Why should this be? I think the answer is simple: it's the political journalism equivalent of the Devil having all the best tunes. Now, ain't that a bitch?

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