Things I thought/said/tweeted while watching The Bachelorette.

13 minutes in: I am watching #thebachelorette and this isn't even the dumbest thing said so far: "This isn't my grandfather-type dodgeball". Um, what?

19 minutes in: Bringing up that domestic violence allegation/arrest/restraining order on a first date - bold move, Guy. #thebachelorette

27 minutes in: This candid moment would feel more candid if 2 camera crews weren't filming it. Let me at least try to suspend my disbelief #thebachelorette

35 minutes in: Watching a guy on a dating show get busted by his gf should be terrible but obvs it's amazing and I'm dying of happiness. #thebachelorette

37 minutes in: This cheating sucker nearly turned it around for me by saying "oh my gosh". I mean, that's charming, right? #thebachelorette

(Okay I should mention that I'm sort of making up these times now because, honestly, I'm skipping a lot of this shit).

45 minutes in: Heights, a cold wind and being forced to don a bikini after a heavy meal? #thebachelorette is my worst nightmare on a number of levels.

200 minutes in (feels like): This demeans everyone. Are those horses? I don't even...

Eleventybillion hours in: "All I can do is reassure him." Or maybe stop dating those dozen other guys? I'm just spitballing here. #thebachelorette

I don't even know how many minutes in: And other things not to say to the girl dating another 12 guys: "I am falling in love with you and... we've barely talked." #thebachelorette

Mea Culpa

I have been, it has been put to me, a very bad blogger lately and a very slack one too. I know. I know this is true. The reason is very boring: essentially for boring reasons various aspects of my life are a little bit sad and confusing right now and there aren't that many light-hearted blog posts to be written about it. But, lest you worry I'm about to open a vein let me assure you there are still plenty of things making me happy - even if I'm not writing about them much. Here are some of them.

1. The return of The Bachelorette. If only because that means I can read various hilarious recaps of The Bachelorette, which are approximately 200 times better than the show itself.

2. My new hair (mostly). Even if I do look like Demi Moore from Ghost (thanks Dan).

3. The bar of white Lindt chocolate sitting, untouched (as yet) in my top drawer.

4. Maroon pants. More specifically, the fact that I tried on said pants and can see, kinda almost, a world in which I might buy and - crucially - WEAR - said pants.

5. The novels of Lawrence Sanders. No, there are no new ones (he's dead) but I've been steadily rereading the copies generously loaned to me by Belly a long time ago (I swear I'll return them) and they are the kind of books that cheer you up immediately. So so good.

6. Port. I've never really liked port but at the moment we have a bottle on the go in the house, for some reason, and there is absolutely nothing to beat a tiny little glass of the stuff when one is tucked up in bed.

7. My friends. Not to get all soft about it but some of them are just the best and their presence in my life makes it worth living.

8. My cat, Mr Whiskerley. Not to get even softer but I basically adore him. It's been so many years since my lovely old cat Tikki died that I'd forgotten how wonderful they can be. Neither did I imagine a cat other than Tikki could worm its way so firmly into my heart but goddamnit the little fucker has done it.

Things that were googled during dinner on Saturday night to settle an argument:

1. The name of the TV show on which Chris O'Donnell appears.

2. The genetic origins of the hyena.

Overheard at my desk

"Why do you have a boy's haircut?"

I don't know...

... what this is but according to the wonders at GoFugYourself it is a genuine product, which makes this ad... sort of awesome.

Things to read on a Sunday

Con: I now have a certain very catchy, quite terrible song stuck in my head.

Pro: This made me laugh.

Just another day in the office

Caller: Another thing you might want to look at - I wonder, I mean sometimes I wonder, whether this whole cancer thing isn't just a money raising opportunity.

Me: Uhhhh.

Caller: I mean, what were people doing 100, 200 years ago? They were using natural remedies.

Me: But, um, life expectancies were a lot shorter then, of course.

Caller: Were they though?

Me: Um... yes.

Apologies

I swear this blog is not turning into Poetry Corner (two blog posts in a row - I know, I know). I barely even read poetry these days and when I do my tastes are embarassingly mainstream, unoriginal and kinda childish: I like W.H Auden and Robert Frost, T.S Eliot and Siegfried Sasson - poets who write the kind of comfortable and familiar verse known to schoolchildren. Sometimes I pretend I like Geoffrey Hill more than I do but I don't think I'm quite smart enough for him somehow and other than the odd lovely line or two ('One cannot lose what one has not possessed'/So much for that abrasive gem./ I can lose what I want. I want you) mostly his words just wash over me.

All of which is a very long way of apologising in advance for reprinting a lovely Clive James poem published this month in The New Yorker but it's so so lovely and sad I can't even bear it. I have long been a fan of James' journalism - his wit and great talent with words - but I never realised what an awfully pretty poet he is. The fact that he's producing this kind of stuff at the very end of his life is somehow even more impressive. Faced with looming death I'd probably spend my remaining days doing something stupid like finally watching The Wire.

Leçons de Ténèbres

But are they lessons, all these things I learn

Through being so far gone in my decline?
The wages of experience I earn
Would service well a younger life than mine.
I should have been more kind. It is my fate
To find this out, but find it out too late.

The mirror holds the ruins of my face
Roughly together, thus reminding me
I should have played it straight in every case,
Not just when forced to. Far too casually
I broke faith when it suited me, and here
I am alone, and now the end is near.

All of my life I put my labour first.
I made my mark, but left no time between
The things achieved, so, at my heedless worst,
With no life, there was nothing I could mean.
But now I have slowed down. I breathe the air
As if there were not much more of it there

And write these poems, which are funeral songs
That have been taught to me by vanished time:
Not only to enumerate my wrongs
But to pay homage to the late sublime
That comes with seeing how the years have brought
A fitting end, if not the one I sought.

This Be The Verse

I kind of made this joke(?) on Twitter but seriously Philip Larkin's lovely poem, "This Be the Verse" is both a very good poem and a near perfect review of The Place Beyond the Pines, no?

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
 They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
 And add some extra, just for you.  

 But they were fucked up in their turn
 By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
 And half at one another's throats.  

 Man hands on misery to man.
 It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
 And don't have any kids yourself.

Note to self: try using the word "orgiastic" in conversation

I love The Great Gatsby a lot. It has occupied a place in my top three favourite novels since I re-read it in first year uni and suddenly realised what I had failed to the first time I read it: It's a perfect novel.

For a long time during my extremely pretentious years (yes, they have finished. Also: shut up) I had this quote - 

"And as I sat there, brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning — So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

- on the wall of my bedroom as the centrepiece of this totally mad wall quotes thing I had going on for awhile and which my parents somehow greeted with endless patience. Yes I was an insufferable child but honestly I could read and re-read that little but all day it's just so gorgeous.

Once upon a time the prospect of having a favourite novel made into a movie would have terrified me. Lord knows, I have complained constantly about the string of shitty movies based on Philip K Dick short stories - another author over whom I feel a mild and entirely ridiculous sense of ownership. I don't like seeing things I love interpreted by someone else. I have no sense of generosity, only a burning feeling of entitlement that everything should belong to me and me only.

Yet somehow - how I do not know - I have achieved a zen like calm ahead of tomorrow night's screening of Gatsby. 

I like a lot of Baz Luhrmann's movies, I like his flashy, simultaneously sentimental and incredibly unsentimental style and I think it suits the source material well but that's not it. I have suitably lowered my expectations, thanks to a fair smattering of mixed reviews, but that's not it either. Somehow I have realised at the tender age of 30 what has eluded me thus far: the realisation that even if the movie is shit it doesn't actually diminish the book. At all. Even if it's a stinking pile of poo I will still have that book to read as many times as I want.

These lovely lines - 

"They're a rotten crowd," I shouted across the lawn. "You're worth the whole damn bunch put together." I’ve always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end. First he nodded politely, and then his face broke into that radiant and understanding smile, as if we’d been in ecstatic cahoots on that fact all the time."

- will be mine for as long as I want them. Which is quite a comforting thought really.

This...

... little collection of authors' hand-written book outlines is entirely charming if you have read any of the books in question. And if you haven't why aren't you reading Catch 22 right now? Because. Holy Shit. That book. Is bananas.

It's a lot like my Is It Dinner Time face actually

Ok so it may seem like I spend all my time watching trailers and getting excited but I challenge you - I CHALLENGE you - to watch this trailer and not sort of agree with everything Lainey says. If you were here right now you would see my Is It November Yet face.

The preview clip that foiled my plan to keep my expectations basement level low:

Damn youuuu.

Overheard at my desk

Him: I saw a lot of girls in France that looked like you.

Me: (Barely hiding my delight) How so?

Him: Short dark hair, red lipstick.

Me: But the original is still the best, right?

Him: Well they speak French so....

Me: Oh.

Him: Yeah.