Suddenly I feel like the most useless bloody blogger in the world. Been meaning to start one for ages. Start one. Have technical problems. Get them sorted. Post about once a bloody fortnight. Useless.



Anyway.



What have I been up to? weeeelllllll.



(1) Definitely being outsourced to the big blue which is nice (I think - subject to Ts & Cs, natch).



(2) Went to go and watch School of Rock (starring Jack Black) whilst g'f was in Chicago. It was okay, but I went straight home and watched High Fidelity instead - a much better film. Also an excellent book, which I must re-read at some point soon.



(3) Went to the Nottingham Bookcrossing meet. This was organised by the amazing Rachel and the lovely Steve. About 20-odd people and several hundred books turned up to the Wetherspoons on market square. I entered the pub with g'f (now all registered up as Frisquette) and was immediately daunted by the number of people and the lack of seats around the table. I'm a bit shy in circumstances like this, so I'm afraid I probably didn't make as much conversation as I might have. Hmmm. Still I had an excellent little chat with Kangaroo (we talked music) and I have ended up making her a CD with a few tracks we talked about.... "Sweet Jane" by the Velvet Underground, "Run" by Snow Patrol (them again), a bit of Scott Walker, a little bit of Idlewild - stuff like that. The plan is to send it to her, but whilst I wait for her to send me her address, this is sitting in my car to enliven the otherwise rather tedious (if short) journey to work....



books picked up at the meet:

"Turning 30" by Mike Gayle (given to me by Lucycat - the little charmer!)

"The Way Through the Woods" by Colin Dexter (I think I've read it, but I love the Morse books)

"The Tesseract" by Alex Garland (well, to see if it's any better than "The Beach")

"The Bonfire of the Vanities" by Tom Wolfe (never seen the film, but this is meant to be good, I think)

"The Groan" by Mervyn Peake (the first of the Gormenghast books)

"The Charterhouse of Parma" by Stendahl (looked interesting, in a penguin classic kind of way)



um. That will probably do for now:



READING

Leviathan by Paul Auster (still - this is a small book and is very good. I'm making a concerted effort now!)



LISTENING

er - the CD I made for Kangaroo



WATCHING

"Black Books" - series 2. Genius. Love the piano episode and the one where they go on holiday.



Also just discovered Belle de Jour - the Bridget Jones style blog of a call girl. She's apparently landed a massive publishing deal, and it's not hard to see why. It's also not hard to see why there are those who think the whole thing is a fake, designed to do exactly that.



Anyway. Toodle pip till next time. I've got an auster to finish.....