Over a week gone by once again so here goes a run through of my briefs:

• Olivia Manning. Thank buggery for Olivia Manning! After the Angus Wilson debacle I devoured the final installment of the Levant Trilogy. Levant follows on from the Balkan Trilogy and can be heartily recommended to Alan Sundry. They follow the lives of Guy and Harriet Pringle through the WWII years, around the Balkans and thence Egypt, palestine and environs. I struggled with the first novel of the Balkan Trilogy, but from then on it was a delight. A huge cast of characters and complex narrative that doesn't confuse, rather gives a feeling of the atmosphere, culture and sense of uncertainty and intrigue.
• Library: Last Thursday's visit to the library saw me being adventurous... I picked from the Classics section! Shock horror, chattering teeth etc. Picked up Jaroslav Hasek's The Good Soldier Svejk, John Cleland's Fanny Hill (well you would, wouldn't you?) along with the Oliver Sacks book I've yet to read (The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat) which is also, probably his most well known. So a jolly, literary few weeks will ensue after I've done with Eric Malpass's Sweet Will. (Can't go too far wrong with an Eric Malpass can one?)
• Susanna Clarke. Last literary bullet for this week. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, to read or not to read? That is the question. It has a huge and intriguing presence on the library shelf but is it all hype? I'll give it a go, probably approach it as a trilogy being as it's handily split into 3 (or should I say III) volumes.
• DWA and an act of ludicrous optimism. Decided to walk to the DWA medical assessment thingummy as I was up, weather was conducive, the excercise would be good, I'd been on a roll for a week and, perhaps most pertinent, it'd save me a quid-fifty on bus-fare. All went well, bumped into the woman who used to run the Artizan pub (she appears to me like the shopkeeper in Mr Ben at times like these). After a quick natter with the doctor lady I sped across country, back over the railtrack along Mill Road (??) with green fields, cows (mmmmmmilk me!) and horses, through past Kingsthorpe Village, through Kingsthorpe Park and hit the quack's to pick up the prescription before a buzz into town. All was well, a busy morning, cool! An add in an employment agency caught my eye, both of 'em actually and I considered popping in and proffering my services, "hmmm, think about it Andy", I thunk to myself before popping into the housing benefit bods. Home, a shower and a proper shirt for the first time in a year then, the plunge, well an upstairs plunge if one can accomplish such a feat to the said employment agency. First stop, treated rather like a sad, old no-hoper fart that, despite managerial, financial, IT and a whole gamut of other experience was directed upstairs to the 'health and social care' section, where I was pigeon-holed. To cut a long story short, I felt rather like the gutter stepped in by the turd-encrusted boot of salesperson. Felt shite and hit a moribund downer, dwelling on the inevitable suicide that had drifted to the back of my mind for a week or so prior. Thankfully I caught myself and was back up there by Sunday.
• Guitars and tunes: Saturday was a lost cause due to being shagged-out and having eye-strain from too much PC on Friday, so Sunday was the music day this week. I'm on the distortion HM/R&B thing for a while which is fun for a change, buggering about with power chords and riffs. There's other stuff hovering around too, so don't fret. It just depends which comes to fruition first really. Results will end up here eventually.
• Eurovision live feed: Found a live video feed here without that Irish wank-brain! Hoorah! The Semi-Final too! Double Hoorah!!!!
• Muesliroons. Did some baking yesterday as Loz is popping round tomorrow for a cuppa. Turned out pretty well really, despite cursing my fanny oven. (When will Smeg, Electrolux et al learn that not all food needs to be cooked in a blast-furnace?). Apart from adapting a circa 1977 Delia recipe for flapjack by incorporating spicy baby figs in rum I knocked up some buscuity things using butter, brown sugar, SR flour, water and muesli. Taste rather like digestives, are somewhat lower in fat and sugar than some other biscuits, are pifflingly easy and quick to make, so what's stopping you eh? Oh. Yeah. I should stick the recipe on here somewhere, I guess that'd help eh?
• Free music: Currently grooving to Seedy Gonzales, Destrung, Raised By Wolves, Returnables and Chuck. All ripped from MySpace where I've been tarting myself of late. Don't worry chaps, as I say to the 'Big Shoes' seller outside my front door, "If I ever earn any money again I'll buy your product". Can't say fairer than that at the mo.
• Carla. She's returned from the cyber hinterland! Hoorah!

2006 snogs

posted by Andy 10:32