A fork in the road

I'm at one of those crossroads. I'm thinking of tossing it all in the air and seeing how it lands. Here's my choice:

1) go and work in Islington, and live in London.

2) Stay here.

It's not an easy choice. I could go to Islington and do the job I'm currently doing, but I might actually end up with a boss I don't get on with and people I don't like. But I'd be back in London, which is the aim.

Or I could stay here, doing my new role for a few more months and see what happens. Maybe move back to London in September?

You never know what's down the line, and things always seem to turn on a sixpence.

What to do, what to do.

BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music

I went to this concert at the Barbican yesterday, presented by the lovely Verity Sharp and Kwame Kwei Amah. I have to say the music was top notch, go see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/worldmusic/a4wm2007/index.shtml

Anyway we started with lunch at Tamarind.

a delightful red

potato cake thingies

tandoori paneer

dhal, morel mushrooms and snow peas, okra

in yoghurt (delicious), rice, potatoes.

rasberry sorbet

masala tea

the awards show

The System

Today I stuck it to 'The Man'.

I was in the petrol station buying lunch with the music guy, (let's call him Robbie), and proceeded to select an ice-cream from the Walls freezer. Now's about the right time to start having ice-cream for lunch. (This is a throwback from my uni days when two of my friends used to have a magnum double caramel for lunch almost every day).

Anyways, I wanted something creamy, perhaps minty, definitely chocolatey. And there it was...a mint 99 flake.

I took it to the pay desk.

The cashier (Sultana Begum) scanned my other items. These were two packs of chocolate caramel digestives (2 for £1.50). She scanned my other item - the ice-cream. Something was amiss. Up popped the price: £2.99. It had scanned as a "Lord of the Rings top trump" pack. This wouldn't do.

"How much is this?" said I, pointing to the 99.

"Oh sorry mister, I will make adjustment".

She tapped away at the screen, and I left after paying £2.49 in total. Robbie and I exited the petrol station, turning our mobile phones back on. I glanced down at my receipt and, low and behold:

I had paid 99p for my 99 Flake!

Bookshop Bloke = 1
"The Man" = 0

Murder Death Kill etc etc

Last night I saw Zodiac in the cinema. It was excellent. It's about 3 hours long, but directed by David Fincher and with a great ensemble cast starring all those good looking fellas (Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., and Dermot Mulroney). Man, they are good looking. If I had to chose [to be] one, it'd be Dermot, but that's more down to Julia Roberts and My Best Friend's Wedding than anything else.

It's the best film I've seen this year (ahead of Amazing Grace and 300). But I do need to go and watch a few more films. After the film, I went home and immediately wikipediad the film and everything to do with the Zodiac killings. [Did you know that the lead detective in the case used to send fanmail to himself?]

Anyway I have just watched Hostel, so I have serial killers on the brain.
I might watch something a bit more sedate tomorrow - perhaps The Wicker Man.

...

P.S. Poor poor Cutty Sark :(

(I read this somewhere)

When i was a little girl some other girls in school told me that I was nothing. I ran home crying to my grandmother. My grandmother said, "You tell them to Fuck off!" Then think to yourself, "kiss my entire ass."

You spin me right round, baby right round.

I did the Spinner class at the gym today. For anyone not in the loop, it was the craze of two years ago, after celebrities like Cameron Diaz, Tara Reid and Jennifer Aniston all started doing it in the gym. It's basically a group cycling exercise, but it's quite fantasy based in that the intructor constructs a narrative in which you immerse yourself. You competitively cycle to thumpingly grandiose music, all the while the instructor 'encourages' you along.

Anyway, it was quite a good class, but he chose to narrate a 'Gladiator' fantasy, in which we imagined we were riding along with Russell Crowe and had to cross some bridges. We rode along with Maximus Decimus Meridius, dodging the Spartans (or whoever they were), and after a lungbusting ride made it across the bridge to safety, with a few casualities along the way.

Now, I'm not one to complain when it comes to fantasy roleplaying, however, this one wasn't exactly to my tastes.

When you're cycling along the Seven Hills of Rome, and the only thing you can see in front of you are the rotating buttocks of a Janet Street Porter lookalike, the last thing you want to visualise is Russell Crowe in a metallic thong.

Then it just gets confusing.

You want some, do ya?

I passed me theory test today, yay!

I got 34/35 in the theory part (I got an 'Attitude' question wrong), and 58 out of 75 in the Hazard Perception bit. [Thanks for the stuff you leant me Lou.]

On another note, a lot of nice people are moving on from the bookshop, and I'm angry coz it's making me a bit sad. I hate being angry-sad...it's worse than being sad-sad. The last time I was angry-sad was when I had my phone snatched as I lay on a bench chatting away in Fitzroy Square at dusk. I was having an important conversation, and reclining on a bench in one of the poshest squares in Nodnol, when all of a sudden it was wrenched from my hand and ear.

In the commotion, my glasses flew off, and I jumped off the bench. I saw two blurry cackling figures disappearing away in the distance and shouted 'Not my fucking glasses as well!!" (I thought I was perhaps a victim of the latest mugging phenomenon: 'speccy slapping'). I was furious and intensely scared, and it was a weird mix. I needed a brandy to calm my nerves.

Anyway, I'm currently very tired, coz my test was at 8:30am, and I was up til 2am working out stopping distances (of which I didn't get a question on).

So, I'm tired, angry and sad.

But I'm happy I passed my test, yay!