Who else inhaled audibly on Sunday night when Peter Kosminsky mentioned John Whittingdale? Who else wants to see his full speech plus a lil interview with some awkward filmmakers?
I am one hundred percent done with any and all British and/or world politics at the moment but the BAFTAs made me sit up a little straighter, pick up a pen and write some things because who the fuck is a one term government to dictate what viewers can and can’t see? I’m not a fan of everything the BBC makes (like what the hell was the actual point of The Voice except to see Tom Jones be lovely?) but British television collectively is the best in the world, goddamnit, and I want to work in it someday and even if I didn’t I would defend public broadcasting to the death because commercials are the bane of my life and if the only shows available were TOWIE and that talent one, I would move to Australia.
Dear god they have the talent one in Australia.
That’s my ranting done for the week; I’m off to make something that might annoy 50 year old Tory secretaries of state…
Good news: I’ve worked out how to live with a fucked keyboard. Bad news: I haven’t gotten off my arse to buy a new one. I did get off my arse when I got a text last weekend that my copy of The Raven King was in Waterstones – literally as I walked through the door after a day of working opposite my local Waterstones, half an hour before it closed. I haven’t physically run that much since year nine cross country, holy shit. Cue an evening of ignoring the universe and wondering who I can sell my soul to in order to write that well.
In short, I’m book hungover. I also missed this:
But I think Shakespeare would have approved of my forsaking him for a story, so thank u Internet for letting me see this later.
Could I buy all the Raven Cycle merchandise I can find and call it a business expense? Insofar as I have remembered how much I love books and how much I want to make books all the time. Maybe I could enter it under Misc: inspiration. If David Cameron can stash his cash in South America, surely I can buy a couple several t-shirts, some stickers and a handful of posters with my HMRC-approved cash?
Or maybe I will just go and reread the series and plot ways to absorb Stiefvater’s evil genius. The temptation to make a sacrifice joke here is potent.
I would like to thank leap day for the opportunity to eat an extra day’s worth of crispbread. Did anyone else get up today and think ‘I had better make it count since the gods have granted mercy on my workload and blessed me with an extra day to get my shit done’? And did anyone else spend half of that day in a state of ridiculous happiness about Leonardo diCaprio at the Oscars?
Good. I mean, I feel like one of my uncles just won the Academy Award. It’s like he’s risen above the sea of racist family banter and decade-old cliques to slay at the annual murder mystery.
from Villiage Roadshow Pictures
There is a lot of shit in this world, but a small wrong has been righted and somewhere there is a lesson for us all.
Dinner time: ‘If Leonardo diCaprio can wait 22 years for on Oscar you can wait a little longer for dinner to cook young lady’
Customer service: ‘You waited a whole day for your Xbox to arrive? Well come back in 22 years’
Traffic jams: ‘It takes longer to get down the M25 than it did for diCaprio to get an Oscar’
Teachers: ‘Now we know five years seems a long time to study, but it took a certain golden-haired angel two decades to win acclaim for his work, so you just take this B and think about what subjects you want to take at uni’
And the one I’m going to holler at everyone: ‘if Leo waited 22 years to win an Oscar you can wait two fucking minutes for me to get the door’
Oh, the possibilities. Okay I’m going to go read screenplays and exercise and do all the other things I never get round to the rest of the year.
Actually, I’m still eating my mum’s soups. They’re brilliant. This afternoon’s was so spicy my voice started to rasp, but I will definitely consider them as actual meals in future. I will also always consume them with some sort of bread product.
What I learnt
I love food
I have a faster metabolism than I realised – or I’m more active than I realised – and depriving myself of calories was a STUPID IDEA
Spinach is actually quite nice
I think it was a success, overall.
Have any of you guys ever tried fad diets or cleanses? I wouldn’t be adverse to trying another one as long as I could eat more than blended vegetables… I know the whole point of a cleanse is to, well, cleanse, but that’s not practical and I’m not completely convinced it’s healthy either… I think I will stick to only abstaining from food when I’m ill, or when my IBS gets bad enough that I have to cut back on anything with preservatives for a few days (which will be soon, knowing my fondness for Quality Street). I will definitely use the copious amounts of chia left in the cupboard to turn all Deliciously Ella, though. We have baobab powder too.
You know those mornings when your dogs bark every time you start to concentrate on something, and you have to go out mid-afternoon so you’re reluctant to really get stuck into anything, but you can’t ignore the fact you really ought to get stuck into something, so you decide to pass the time writing a blog instead of pretending Tumblr browsing is market research?
Me too!
I try to be all behind-the-scenes-y on social media, especially Instagram, but if I showed you what my office space looks like right now, you’d all stop taking me seriously. (I’m aware that implies you already take me seriously, which is unlikely. My point is, the room looks like Royal Mail exploded.) There are two baking trays on my printer, tissue paper and open boxes sitting in places where other things should go, receipts stacked underneath the printer and a Pilates ball in the middle of the room to really set the ambience. I’m not moving any of it until tomorrow, when my mum is away and I can haul things up and down stairs without causing havoc… I’m thinking of changing my room around so I stop keeping shop supplies on the floor, but if past experience is an indication of ‘a quick tidy up’, I won’t just move some things around. I will deep clean, throw out shit I’d forgotten I owned, redecorate my desk and probably take several hours doing it.
But on Monday I will breeze downstairs and all will be right with the world… I’ll probably write four pages, finish a blog draft, do Pilates, enjoy a constant stream of Etsy orders and have a backer on Patreon. All because I spent the time re-organising, of course.
I wish I believed that.
I mean, everything is in place for all of those things to happen. I have pages of notes to turn into prose, a couple of blogs to craft into viral-article material, a free sticker scheme on Etsy until next Sunday and a Patreon full of excellent perks and reasons to support my work. But the biggest thing to happen on Monday will probably be my driving lesson. Maybe that is a bad example because driving is a huge thing for me and I often have to practice breathing before a lesson, but you know what I mean? Sometimes you can plan and organise and de-clutter and be as zen as you like and things still don’t fall into place. Is there a word for that? I feel like the Japanese or the French or the Greeks would have a word for that, while the English just vocalise it by making vowel sounds and flapping their hands. Like ‘mojo’ or ‘kefi’. What the hell did the English say before we learnt ‘mojo’?
I’m digressing. Perhaps I will decorate Indifferent Ignorance until it’s time to leave. If you have any ideas about how to describe ‘with the best will in the word, you’re running up a down escalator’ in less than 13 words, let me know.
Oh and if you follow me on the social media, I apologise for any spammy photos this evening of the O2. We’re seeing Top Gear Live That Isn’t Called Top Gear Live Since Clarkson Got Sacked. I am hoping for muscle cars and lots of this:
That’s definitely a figure of speech today… but ‘sleepy morning snowflakes, why don’t I take the day off and make a folder of Poldark GIFs?’ doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
There is lots of new and seriously cool Etsy news soon and I think I might wait until I’ve got a lot before I dedicate an entire post to new products (and something else I’ve been working on for far too bloody long). Makes for better gloating…
I keep stopping this post to go through the BBC One Twitter and collect more GIFs. I’m running low on new ones and trawling Tumblr for that exact image is tiring so it’s important to build up a bank. That being said, there are some I hope never to use…. I just saw a post full of Vladimir Putin memes and having seen that Reggie Yates documentary about extremism in Russia I’m not totally sure if I want to plaster ‘Putin riding on things’ all over here.
Maybe that’s why I should do it.
Monday has just cheered up a little!
NB: I just realised that when I started this post it was still Monday morning. Will leave everything as a nod to how much I’ve been finding excuses to sit outside instead of work.
I was going to start this with ‘happy Wednesday’… happy Tuesday. I’m going to make a coffee after this.
Thank you to everyone for the love for the MCR post! I’ve been blasting May Death Never Stop You for three days and there’s a definite correlation between the amount I listen to good music and the depth of my desire to colour my hair again. I must say, though, because I’ve been fortunate enough to have a few blogs that garner a lot of attention from people who aren’t regular readers, that I’m always nervous about the post that comes after. What if those one-off readers decide to stick around and expect more mind-altering and wonderful prose? You ain’t gonna get it today, ’cause I have two pieces of freelance work to finish, vacuum cleaning to do and I’m seeing a friend tomorrow so I’ve got to do whatever I might have done tomorrow today instead.
I haven’t got as far as planning tomorrow. Let’s pretend I was planning to hash together a blog!
We took Donnie to the specialist vet yesterday (good news: he’s not going to die of leishmania yet) and while we were in the waiting room we made the acquaintance of an Afghan hound. Until yesterday I had neither met nor seen pictures of Afghan hounds, and the only association I had with them was from a childhood book called The Great Big Glorious Book for Girls. I now realise the inherent and unnecessary sexism of the title, as it was essentially a compendium of fun facts and activities: it taught me how to stop a nosebleed, for example, and contained excellent Halloween ideas. It also had a section on famous hairstyles, and described Jennifer Aniston’s ‘Rachel’ do as making the wearer ‘look not unlike an Afghan hound’.
Francesca's Thoughts 