A somewhat drastic change of scenery from Willesden Green
Hello there! I’m back, and the first thing you should do is check out my photo gallery and make yourself all jealous and\or amused at the dry predictability of summer holiday snaps. Go on, do it now – I’ll wait. Done that? Sure? Right, now for a drop of the accompanying written commentary…
Some holiday things:
- Firstly, there was the reading. As already alluded, book club has really spurred me into action and this holiday I finished The Lost Continent before reading White Teeth (absolutely loved it), Finity (silly sci-fi, though fun in places) and The Time Traveller’s Wife (a great read, though curiously lacking much tension). I then started Lolita which I’m now half-way through and struggling with: at times the book just succeeds in creeping me out.
- True to my modern history roots, one of the most interesting bits of the holiday was the ‘Story of the War’ walking tour in Dubrovnik. An excellent guide made it utterly compelling.
- Watching something in German makes even the most banal of TV hilarious. Special mention to the host of a phone-in quiz TV channel at 1am, who alternated between a hushed silence and manic shouting that the prize money had just reached DEN DHOUSAND! euros.
- Buses in Dubrovnik are cheap, crowded and not averse to attempting to chop someone’s arm off in their doors. Pretty decent in all though, which we ascribed to the grand powers of the imaginary TfD.
- Jakov appeared at the airport!
Back in the UK: it was AS and A2 results day on the 14th, which means mega-congratulations to Lucy, Josie, Lou, Andy and everyone else at Waseley, as well as Maya, Fliss, Sanna and everyone else who was either failed to let me know how they did yet or I’ve forgotten. Yay!
And now I must return to my swiftly reducing Outlook pile of outstanding items, which include a better quality photo of me and Ken, a business project (more on that later) and other assorted things which demand my time. But if you feel like pulling me away from such stuff for post-holiday reunions, please do get in touch 
So, we sit. The Self family sit on the hotel balcony overlooking the sea. Each chair is positioned precisely to minimise eye contact with any other member of the family, but granting splendid views of each other’s (tanned) backs. What are we doing? Why, reading, naturally! An old French novel of epic confusion, The Time Traveler’s [sic] Wife, some Dan Brown, an issue of Nature and Finity. I’ll leave you to decide who was which, naturally.
Two French holiday-makers stroll past. Looking at us, one concludes to the other “well, they are English” in an obvious attempt to explain such eccentricity. Not, obviously, in English. But as it happens, it’s not so impossible to find non-English speaking English, and my parents happen to belong to such a niche. So there.
I felt like correcting them – “British, actually”. But I didn’t. The weather’s lovely, though.
(Apologies for the writing style, but we have honestly all been reading a lot.)
Right, I’m off! As of tomorrow morning I’ll be on holiday for two weeks in Croatia – hooray hooray
Things I won’t miss: rain, clingy London heatwaves, news reports which include the phrases “confident Cameron” or “another bad week for Labour”, Boris, the guilty feeling I get when I look at the work I should be doing or spam. But I will miss lots of people (you all know who you are 
) and I wish you all a fantastic time whether holidaying or not! I also think Andrew’s mum deserves a special shout-out (remember those?) on this blog, as I discovered on Saturday that she’s a fan – indeed one suspects rather more than her son is. So hi!
But before I go… in the last few days, aside from my annual stint working – yes, actually working! – on the QPCS UCL summer school I’ve also managed to see The Dark Knight in the cinema and Little Miss Sunshine (finally) on DVD at Lucy’s. Both excellent: The Dark Knight didn’t drag as I’d feared it would, and although everybody’s comments are inevitable coloured by his death it’s true to say that Heath Ledger was excellent as The Joker. Little Miss Sunshine was curiously advertised on the DVD blurb as ‘riotous’: it isn’t a riotous sort of comedy at all, at least not for me anyway, but a more understated and interesting kind which I did really enjoy. And the scenes of the little girls at the beauty pageant at the end are even creepier when you bear in mind that it was genuinely no exaggeration of real life pageants 
Finally – I like the way that when David Cameron actually does come out with something I’d wholeheartedly endorse the Torygraph manage to find someone to attack it. I suppose one of the silver linings of a Conservative election victory will be right-wing squeals of betrayal…
So I woke up today at 9.18, exactly. Well, if we’re being truthful this was actually the second time I’d woken up this morning, but there’s something irresistibly easy about turning off an alarm and going back to sleep, so let’s discount that. 9.18 – which would be fine, except the meticulously careful planning I had made the night before to go and visit Andrew in Cambridge specified a leaving time of 9.15. Great, so breakfast is already out of the question then. But as I rushed to clothe myself and get out of the house I realised that although I could dodge breakfast I couldn’t dodge a throbbing headache. Paracetamol please! Except there wasn’t any – not before I’d raided dad’s supplies anyway. But soon I was away, hopping from tube to tube until I arrived at King’s Cross with a perfect 10 minutes to spare…
…perfect, until the machine rudely refused to sell me a ticket. As did the next one, and the next one… and it was at about identical ticket machine #4 that I realised perhaps the problem lay with me. Cashpoint please! Except instead of precious money it served me with a simple yet chilling message: insufficient funds. Oh, dear 
Thankfully, I was able to locate an internet café in close proximity, transfer appropriate funds across in the blink of an eye and then manage to make the next train: so, only half an hour late. And it was all worth it in the end, for Andrew laid on a highly successful barbecue + wine combination. But I can’t stay away from London for long, and indeed must now log off from the life-saving internet café of joy (I still had time leftover, naturally) else I’ll be late for my next engagement. Phew!
Innocent, see?
So tonight was the Ken Livingstone supporters’ party in Camden, complete with a free bar, free food and badges which will certainly come in handy over the next few years. As Ken himself said, it wasn’t just filled with Labour people tonight but the much broader progressive coalition that made up his electoral base. And in all honesty, I think a great many people there would happily back Ken again in 2012 even if Labour did put up an alternative candidate. We all cheered when he reiterated his intention to run, anyway
I couldn’t not…
Obviously, it would have just been wrong to have gone without trying to ambush the guy for a photo, so that’s just what I did. (Someone took a better quality one with a proper camera which might wing its way to me at some point.) So, yeah, woo!
Before all this hero worship (
) I spent a lovely couple of hours this afternoon at Hampstead Heath’s mixed swimming pond with Joshua, Sanna, Emily, Alice and a semi-separate Swedish contingent. Although the water was unsurprisingly freezing at first it soon became pretty bearable, and it was lovely to see everyone. Also – note to Saoirse here – we managed to steal a copy of Zoo \ Nuts (I forget which) from a laddish group, which Sanna had the honour of binning. Progressive politics: why not make a day of it?
Oh, and one more thing… on Saturday, my visit to the faraway land of High Barnet for more Star Wars watching resulted in me walking in on a certain illicit activity:
Intense…
I don’t want to draw attention to Oliver, because I owe him one for the use of his spare bed that night. But Abi… well, lovely jumper!
Linda Moffitt on Colombia: “Such a sweet memory of the four of you meeting up in Colombia!” Dec 2, 07:42
