Night Watch

All That Stands Between Light And Darkness Is The Night Watch.

I was so excited! We got to see the first screening here in the West (unless you have been a bad person and downloaded it from the Net) of Night Watch. There was a surprise bit at the start where the Russian Director did a small into of the movie to us, the Horror Audience at Frightfest last night = we applauded madly.

I can easily see why it grossed more than Lord of the Rings and such, over in Russia. It is beautifully shot, the shapechangers when changing actually look like the animals they are supposed to change into...the changes back into human form suitably gory complete with cracking bones and gore...it was brilliant. The story is easy enough to follow - (and I copy this from the US official site as I am too lazy to type it up myself) -

For as long as humanity has existed, there have been "Others" among us; Witches, Vampires and Shape-Shifters who are soldiers in the eternal war between Light and Dark.
Light Others protect mankind from Dark Others, who plague and torture humans.
Over 1000-years ago a truce was struck between Gesser, Lord of the Light, and Zavulon, General of Darkness.

They agreed that no one could be forced to good or evil, people must choose freely for themselves. To uphold this truce, each side established underground forces; the soldiers of the Light would be called Night Watch, making sure Dark Others obeyed the truce. And the soldiers of Darkness would be called Day Watch, to do the same.

Ancient prophecy foretells that one day the Great One will arrive who can end the threat of an apocalyptic battle between Light and Dark Others. That day has come, and the Great One, once he or she is identified, must choose whether to destroy the light within or battle the surrounding darkness. This choice will reveal mankind's destiny.

1992:Anton Gordesky, a broken-hearted man, desperate to win back his fiancée, seeks out the black magic services of a witch. This Dark Other, about to use her magic for evil, is arrested by the Night Watch moments before for completing her spell. The cataclysmic event awakens Anton to discover that he is an Other. Now he must choose whether to become a protector of light or warrior of darkness.

Today:Somewhere on the streets of Moscow the "Great One" wanders, oblivious to his or her powers. Anton, along with his Night Watch team, race to find and protect the Great One from Zavulon and his Day Watch vampires who seek to plunge the world into darkness. Whoever reaches the Great One first will hold the balance of power in their hands and control the fate of humanity.

Nuff said. Can't wait for it to come out onto circuit as I will go and see it again.

Off to Ikea now to go and buy a frame for the huge kick-ass poster for Land of the Dead. Oh, plus, we got freebies yesterday - t-shirts and really cool tiny badges for the Night Watch promos. How kewl!

Drunk people?

Holy hell - what is it with people? We have just come back from having a lovely dinner at Strada in town, dessert at Haagen-Dazs, with some friends of ours. We stood waiting on the concourse at Charing Cross for the sumat past whatever train down to Hayes and watched, in amazement as a busload of drunk people, beautifully attired in lovely office clothes staggered about. Hopelessly shitfaced. Especially the women.

The one woman, was so drunk that she probably walked fifteen rows of footprints, staggering and tilting from port to starboard. I just prayed feverently that we didn't have one of the upchuck types in our carriage.

Now, I can appreciate getting drunk. Been there, done that, fell asleep on the pool table, and am still a legend in some places...or is that a warning? I forget which...but jaysus, can you blame someone for robbing you/raping you if you are completely and utterly senseless? If you have no clue where you are or what you are doing? And then, in the morning telling your mates "Gods, I can't remember how I got home last night!" and having a laugh about it, if a bit nervously. In this day and age it really shocks me to the core how people - women especially - can allow that to happen themselves! Firstly, have they got no shame; secondly, aren't they worried about being taken advantage of (murdered, raped, robbed, all of the above) - and it isn't like I am making this up - everyone has seen the headlines lately. And these things happening to men, not just women, which is scarier still.

Why not travel home with a mate who is a bit less drunk than you? Why not shell out £30 and crash at the Travelodge? Why not club together and get a room - an orgy (always use protection) I am sure is preferable to trying to get home whilst so badly drunk that you started dry-humping the ticket machine on the concourse. Yes, it was that bad...and that funny.

In no way, shape or form, am I a Puritan, far from it...I suppose I was just lucky enough to have someone to take care of me; sling me onto the back of the bike and tie my hands around their waist so that I didn't fall off around some of those corners.

Poor them...I hope they get home and that that late night McDonalds stays down.

Holiday...its holiday...!

Whoo hoo!!

Migraine hasn't come back to wipe me out in over a week, the bbq I held for my work colleagues this Saturday past was a success, and guess what? All of this week, blissful holiday. Nothing fancy, not even going anywhere, but staying at home, where it is safe and quiet and peaceful. Have been, thus far, reading, sleeping, musing about storylines...taking Sparrow for runs in the park. It is bliss.

I got a beautiful arrangement of excuisite flowers from the girls at work yesterday, to say thanks for the lovely day on Saturday (thank the gods it decided not to rain, although it could have been a teeeeeeny tiny bit warmer). They are downstairs in the diningroom and I am staying far away from them...they are making me sneeze nonstop! Can't win, ever.

Am very much looking forward to this coming weekend - it is the Frightfest here in London and we are lined up to go and watch bunches of movies not yet released anywhere in the world. Well, Friday will be taken up with watching the Romero trilogy of the Dead. Saturday we are watching some werewolf movies and other chop-saki messed up Oriental movies and then on Sunday, the one I am aching to see is Night Watch by the Russian chap...man, oh, man - fun, fun, fun.

Beaming happily.

Oh, look at that - time for a nap.

Migraines

Who needs them!?

Trolls

I love urban fantasy novels by people such as Charles de Lint, Neil Gaiman and such. It never occurred to me that we would so intinsically be linked to the Otherworld ourselves.

But, I get ahead of myself. Each morning we travel on the same train (one which has not yet blown up) from our local overland station. Said transport stops at the same stations...we see the same people. And amongst the mundanes of every day life we have come to clutch at our respective seats and pray violently, sweat dripping from our brows, that the Three Trolls of Lower Sydenham do not come and sit near us.

Now, in no way shape or form am I astoundingly beautiful. But jaysus, I look at these three women (I use the term loosely here) and I shudder into my very core and think to myself that if I were God, I would defintely have added chlorine to their family genepool. Or something to stop their parents from pro-creating. The Osborne's are photogenic by comparison.

They are hideously ugly. And I won't even liken them to witches cos witches are cool.

They are trolls and should have names like Grimjaw and Grayskin and Childbiter and they should lurk under bridges where they would frighten children and steal their lunch money and hide themselves from the view of normal mundane folk.

I have NEVER in my life seen people more grey skinned (I think the term is "sallow?"), worn out, overweight with these strange asymetrical faces - as Fat Gecko says "They are one dna strand away from dragging their knuckles on the ground". You get the idea. And guess what? The one, a behemoth of a creature is pregnant and so smug with itself. All I want to do when I see it is run away screaming, clutching at my hair, plucking it out. It sits there in all its huge glory, encouraging these other two trolls to touch its swollen stomach. I have visions of things crawling out of its belly button - something like out of Alien, only that thing was cute.

Thank heavens we have had a respite this past week - I think the ToLS (Trolls of Lower Sydenham) have gone their separate ways and are on holiday. Hopefully Spain or wherever they elected to go will decide to keep them there to entertain other holiday makers where children can throw rotten fruit at them and such....

Ahem.

So, please feel pity for us and send ideas as to how to overcome the ToLS.

Yours aye,

L

The Ancient World of Heroes

I love history. I love reading histories and historical novels, in all shapes and sizes. From my great book of fantasy writing I discovered a lovely list made up by one of the authors about some of the best ancient books/known stories of times gone by. I was shocked to see that I have read most of them!

Beowulf

Grendel (John Gardner)

Grettirsaga

Kalevala

Histories - Herodotus

Germanica - Tacitus

Illiad - Homer

Odyssey - Homer

The Aeneid - Virgil

Code of Hammurabi

Bullfinch's Mythology

Some miscellaneous resources

The Hero with a thousand faces - Joseph Campbell

Man, Myth and Magic - Richard Cavendish

The Art of War

And that is all I can squeeze in from work.

Some useful writing links

I feel guilty.

I haven't blogged in AGES. And Ages.

Things at work have been slow, and that inlcudes the internet so no blogging cos of that and in the evenings at home, it is just tooooo comfortable to curl up on the couch to read or watch telly.

So, I have decided to update my blog with my favourite passtime - links on writing resources as I know loads out there are always searching for them.

The first batch of links are from my most recent book on fantasy writing, but these are quite good pointers, character generation, plot, etc.

www.writerswrite.com

www.absolutewrite.com/novels

www.fictionfactor.com/articles.html

www.babynamer.com (character names are always a Duzi!)

www.sfwa.org

www.hobgoblin.net/resources/createlinkl.asp

I have tried some and they work.

Gotta dash to go and have some food!

Musings on the tragic events of the week past

How dreadful was last week? Thursday morning was a bit chilly, a bit cold, a good excuse to wear a jacket in which to hide a bomb. I was standing in our printroom chatting to our post-chappie when the first newsbulletin hit about the "explosion" on the Underground. I immediately ran through to where my team sits and told them. Accessing the net I found Sky News already carrying a brief story - they said that the explosion heard was two trains colliding and that there had been a powercut.

As the morning unfolded and I kept refreshing the website the horror of it all unfolded. No one worked that day. We didn't have a tv in the office so all the news we got was over a very slow internet. People were wandering about talking to one another in hushed tones. By lunchtime we had seen that - now iconic picture - of the bus blown open at Russell Square. It was beyond comprehension. We were told that we could leave early that day - London had basically shut down. No underground trains were running, no busses were running within Zone 1, overland trains were running haphazzardly.

I left work at quarter past three and met up with the FG at Charing Cross Station. At least we were together. As I walked across Trafalgar Square and along Pall Mall I watched the people and saw the utterly stricken looks on their faces. People weren't talking, they were walking in small groups or on their own and just had their heads down to get to wherever it was that they were going. Charing Cross was busy but very quiet. A stack of cops no older than my three year old great-nephew stood around looking worried and nervous. Our train eventually arrived and we got home safely just after four. After changing into shorts and t-shirts (the weather had changed dramatically in the meantime) we sat down and turned on the telly flicking from one channel to the next watching it in retrospect, the interviews, the pictures. My family were so worried about all of this - I rang them and assured them that all of us are fine, friends and colleagues all, so they had nothing to worry about.

There was no doubt in my mind about going into work the next morning. The train was quite empty, with a few open seats, and people were talking in hushed tones, or not at all.

And it continues...as does life. I am thankful that no one Mark and I know have been caught up in the terror attacks. I am grateful to the emergency services for all that they had done and their fantastic work. My heart goes out to those families who have lost loved ones. I hope that the ones who perpetrated these attacks are caught and brought to justice and that they are sent to rot in a place that would make hell seem like a holiday in Ibiza.

Now we wait and see what happens.

Good Idea .... bad idea

I got a copy of the MakePovertyHistory booklet yesterday when I went to Virgin to buy some new cd’s.

Now, as someone who grew up in sub-Sahara Africa and lived there until six years ago before relocating to the UK, I think that this is the biggest load of old tosh I have ever heard off. Along with the shock headlines reading “Africa worse off than 20 years ago!” it honestly makes me insanely angry.

I think what they are doing, all these concerts to abolish poverty is admirable (sic), drawing the attention of the world to the plight of those less fortunate than them and encouraging people to spend money on different coloured armbands (which are made in sweatshops, but we won’t talk about that) to abolish poverty.

Applauds madly! Good on you lot. Throw money at the corrupt governments so that they can buy more bullet proof cars, tanks, guns, Evian water to bath in, send their kids to Swiss boarding schools, charter airplanes for those crucial Caribbean holidays in the sun, houses for their fifteen wives, thirty children…get the idea????

I was chatting with someone here at work, whose father is from South Africa. He (work colleague) was fortunate enough to have grown up on both sides of the fence and agrees wholeheartedly that instead of lobbing money at something, we should instead use that to set up a proper infrastructure that will cut through red tape to ensure that the money goes to the people who need it or, who will be able to convert it into usable objects/structures which will benefit those in need. Things desperately needed such as schools, hospitals, clinics and further education so that local people can be trained to help those in their own country. Corruption needs to be called to a halt and dictators need to be replaced and governments need to be sorted out so that they can deal with what is currently happening in their own countries, which have fantastic resources, instead of looking for handouts.

When are the people (Europe and America) going to realise that all the guilt-money (to make up for colonisation and then mucking it up when leaving) they lob at the problem to assuage their guilt, doesn’t get to the grassroots which is where it is meant to go to? What happened to those tonnes of food that was sent to those in desperate need when those tsunamis hit? Nothing – it sat on the tarmacs and rotted away. What happened to all the water that was sent, the money? The clothes, the blankets..everything? Tied up in red tape, it was sold on the black market, it never reached its end-destination, it was stolen, lost somewhere … It was a very noble cause with a very bad outcome.

So until someone can magically cut through red tape and get things done on the ground level, this money and aid will just once again disappear into the ether and no one will remember about it for another twenty years until headlines once again scream “Twenty years on and Africa is even worse off than before.” And old Geldof will get his zimmer frame out and once again arrange a concert.

I don’t think I am being cynical – it is being honest and realistic! Something daydream believers can’t cope with.

Monday Blues

Well, not really. Today was a good day.

(After I weighed myself and discovered that I have gained weight = poor me! = thoughts of going onto a strict starvation diet...but then I changed my mind...so, back onto strict diet regime to become svelte, instead!)

I got to work and one of my colleagues whose husband is in the music industry offloaded around ten free cd's on me from her hubby as she told him I was after music to meditate with. Bad sentence that, but bear with me. So he gave me loads of relaxation cd's, meditation cd's, chants and all that. In my innocence I thought "Wow, how sweet are they?" and said "Oh, I'll copy them over onto my Zen-pod and bring them back to you tomorrow." So Dianne reckons no, they are mine to keep. Or throw away if they are really pants. Wow. How nice was that!? I beamed and beamed. It was a promising start to the workday.

I refused to be phased by anything today but did throw my toys out the cot as one of the demons in my dimension decided to dictate two fee accounts ten minutes before end of day...without giving me job numbers! And today half past five was the last date for fees to be sent off to accounts. So, I had to do fancy footwork and beg the chap in Finance to accept the fees, issue me invoice numbers, without job numbers, which I would be able to give them tomorrow morning. Here's hoping the begging and pleading works.

Insane world. Bosses don't listen - I warned them all of last week not to hold out to the very last second before giving me invoicing to do. But do they listen? Nope. I am the mushroom in the corner they ignore, keep in the dark and feed shit.

Poor me!

But soon to be "poor skinny me"!

Hell Dimension Travails

i

A colleague of mine is away on holiday in Spain. So her two teams decide that of course, since I sit opposite them, that I would do ALL her work as they are incapable of printing off their own letters, make copies of them and then deposit said letters into envelopes, into the out-tray to go out in this evening's post. Not to mention that they have no idea how to scan a document, pdf a document or add pages to a pdf document. Or how to download whatever pictures they had taken on their digital camera. Or how to operate the colour copier! In fact, they have no idea what their pass codes are for their team to use when making colour photocopies. I sit back in amazement at this and notice that they are fantastically fast on the Internet and sending one another porn via Outlook, buying things on eBay and checking out iTunes. And I decide that administrators and secretaries really do rule the world - in my company, at least. I felt vastly superior and case in point was one of my own directors (25 years of service, btw!) had a flying apoplectic fit 'cos he couldn't figure out WHY when he was saving a document and brought it up again, it didn't show up the changes. When I explained to him that I am not an IT Technician but that I would give it a try to figure out how his work keeps on "disappearing" he starts ranting at me, demanding to know how can't I not know what is going on with his computer. In the end, the twatt-head, it turns out that hey, presto! he kept on calling up the original file, instead of the saved one, on the temporary drive, which clearly sat there, on his desktop, with all the original amendments made. I really sometimes wish I had superpowers. Which I would of course use for evil...like smacking him upside the head at the speed of light and then sitting behind my desk so that he would never know it was me.I never said I was a nice person.

If I was ever an evil overlord

Something I found from one of my favourite authors' website - Holly Black - which in turn is from somewhere else. That somewhere else I will link further down the email.

It is sumat brilliant to remember when either doing RPG or doing character creation! Crappy film-plot writers (James Bond!!!) please take note!

1. My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.

2. My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.

3. My noble half-brother whose throne I usurped will be killed, not kept anonymously imprisoned in a forgotten cell of my dungeon.

4. Shooting is not too good for my enemies.

5. The artifact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box. The same applies to the object which is my one weakness.

6. I will not gloat over my enemies' predicament before killing them.

7. When I've captured my adversary and he says, "Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is about?" I'll say, "No." and shoot him. No, on second thought I'll shoot him then say "No."

8. After I kidnap the beautiful princess, we will be married immediately in a quiet civil ceremony, not a lavish spectacle in three weeks' time during which the final phase of my plan will be carried out.

9. I will not include a self-destruct mechanism unless absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, it will not be a large red button labeled "Danger: Do Not Push". The big red button marked "Do Not Push" will instead trigger a spray of bullets on anyone stupid enough to disregard it. Similarly, the ON/OFF switch will not clearly be labeled as such.

10. I will not interrogate my enemies in the inner sanctum -- a small hotel well outside my borders will work just as well.

11. I will be secure in my superiority. Therefore, I will feel no need to prove it by leaving clues in the form of riddles or leaving my weaker enemies alive to show they pose no threat.

12. One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.

13. All slain enemies will be cremated, or at least have several rounds of ammunition emptied into them, not left for dead at the bottom of the cliff. The announcement of their deaths, as well as any accompanying celebration, will be deferred until after the aforementioned disposal.

14. The hero is not entitled to a last kiss, a last cigarette, or any other form of last request.

15. I will never employ any device with a digital countdown. If I find that such a device is absolutely unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the counter reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan into operation.

16. I will never utter the sentence "But before I kill you, there's just one thing I want to know."

17. When I employ people as advisors, I will occasionally listen to their advice.

18. I will not have a son. Although his ludicrously ill-planned attempt to usurp power would fail, it would provide a fatal distraction at a crucial point in time.

19. I will not have a daughter. She would be as beautiful as she was evil, but one look at the hero's rugged countenance and she'd betray her own father.

20. Despite its proven stress-relieving effect, I will not indulge in maniacal laughter. When so occupied, it's too easy to miss unexpected developments that a more attentive individual could adjust to accordingly.

There are loads more here.

Summertime!

Holy hell it is hot - yesterday the sun came out in all her close-to solstice glory and baked us to a crisp. It was fantastic as we had nothing to do and the whole day to do it in. We zipped down to the shop and bought some snacks and drinks, got home and Fat Gecko fired up his giant bbq. I roasted myself in the sun for a change, trying to lose my milk-white skin...and I succeeded. Let it be said that today I will be long sleeved shirt when going out in the sunshine.

It was a lazy day. It was a purrrfect cay. I typed up a bit on the laptop until it got so hot I couldn't bare touching the keyboard anymore, along with the screen disappering into a haze of sunlight. Packed that up and settled down to read a bit. It was the ultimate - none of our neighbours were around which makes for an exceedingly quiet day. The radio on Xfm happily threw summer music at us. As usual the bbq came out purrfect as I had the foresight to marry a cullinary bbq master of the fourth degree, at least.

Poor Little White Dog was suffering badly in the heat, he kept glaring at us, as if it was our fault he was hot. He moped around, looking miserable until we flicked him a piece of food from the table, which he gulped.

All three of us passed out on the couches after trying to stay awake watching Re-Animator on dvd.

It was hugely fun!

And today we are planning more of the same, maybe going down to Greenwich to the market to mooch around there for a bit and then heading off to go see the Caped Crusader.

Life couldn't be more purrfect.

Rocketfuel is my friend and then this one time...

Oh, woe is me.

Locked away in the hell dimension that is our office – the air-conditioning system has died a rattling death – I can smell the wafty smells of old stale smoke, bad body odour, garlic and alcohol. Last night had been the official company summer party. But I didn’t go – for various reasons, which I won’t bore you with (let it be said though that the No Fear slogan of “doesn’t play well with others” applies to me when it comes to socialising with the incredibly wealthy and obscenely rich mommy’s girls and daddy’s boys that I work with). Surveying here is like that.

I feel very proud of my own sobriety this morning – I look at the others and the words “rough as a badger’s arse” spring to mind. Hence the increase in bad body smells. And I say again:- poor me! But I am being hugely annoying this monrning by being obscenely happy and charming and LOUD! Who cares about their headaches – their conditions are self inflicted. Zero sympathy.

But my own happiness is induced this morning. Thanks to such incredibly daft actions of my own.

Stupidly, this morning, at breakfast I agreed to FG’s (hubby) suggestion that I have a concoction called “Rocket Fuel”. You know, when you watch a horror movie and there are noises the hero/heroine just has to go inspect AND then they ignore you as jump up and shout at the screen going “no, no! don’t do it!” That is EXACTLY what happened this morning – the aliens out there, watching my life on their large monitors were gibbering madly and passing out with shock as I drank down the caffeine guarana spiked brew masquerading as drinkable coffee. It is now half past twelve and I am still quivering and gibbering. And did I mention that I was actually allergic caffeine / very susceptible to it? As my one little friend said to me yesterday as I was rocketing on a sugar high of having a hot chocolate “You are a rubbish wild child, aren’t you?”

Yes ma'am, I am!

If you were born before 1986

According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who werekids in the 60's, 70's and early 80's probably shouldn't have survived,because our baby cots were covered with brightly coloured lead-basedpaint which was promptly chewed and licked.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, or latches on doors orcabinets and it was fine to play with pans.

When we rode our bikes, we wore no helmets, just flip-flops andfluorescent 'spokey dokey's' on our wheels.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or airbags -riding in the passenger seat was a treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle and it tasted the same.

We ate chips, bread and butter pudding and drank fizzy juice withsugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outsideplaying.

We shared one drink with four friends, from one bottle or can andno-one actually died from this.

We would spend hours building go-carts out of scraps and then went topspeed down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. Afterrunning into stinging nettles a few times, we learned to solve theproblem.

We would leave home in the morning and could play all day, as long aswe were back before it got dark. No one was able to reach us and no one minded.

We did not have Play stations or X-Boxes, no video games at all. No 99channels on TV, no videotape movies, no surround sound, no mobilephones, no personal computers, no DVDs, no Internet chat rooms. We had friends - we went outside and found them.

We played elastics and rounders, and sometimes that ball really hurt!

We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones but there were no lawsuits.

We had full on fistfights but no prosecution followed from other parents.

We played knock-the-door-run-away and were actually afraid of theowners catching us.

We walked to friends' homes.

We also, believe it or not, WALKED to school; we didn't rely on mummyor daddy to drive us to school, which was just round the corner.

We made up games with sticks and tennis balls.

We rode bikes in packs of 7 and wore our coats by only the hood.

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheardof...They actually sided with the law.

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers and problemsolvers and inventors, ever. The past 50 years have been an explosion ofinnovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success andresponsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

A Rune of Thorn

How unutterably gorgeous is she? She is the handwork of Brian Froud, artist and storyteller. She can be found in a book called "The Runes of Elfland".

This is her charm:-

We are children of the briar,

uninvited guests

the knots untied

bright cords cut.

We cannot be forgotten

will not fall away

but wait in stilness

at heart of the hedge.

I am currently studying to become a helrunar - someone who can read the runes and let me tell you, it is incredibly difficult. As with many divination systems runes can relate and correspond with so much. Eventhough it is insisted that readings should be instinctual on behalf of the teller, it is still necessary to remember each correspondence to each rune.

But, I am not complaining at all. It keeps me out of trouble and the knowledge gathered along the way about Nordic and Icelandic myths and legends truly lightens it all even more.

I will try to do one or two more runes at a later stage, for interest sake. If anyone is interested in acquiring a set, do check the website belonging to a good friend of mine, John Vickery over at Wistmans Wands.

If you would like to find out more about Brian Froud do visit his website.

Please note that in no way am I showing the above artwork or charm as my own - all above belongs to Ari Berk author of the book and of Brian Froud the artist.

Why I hate large national multiple supermarkets

Blast it - oh how I hate multiple supermarkets.

I work in the West End of London where the retailers inflate everything, using the justification of "oh, this is the West End" as it all. Understandable if it a local corner shop doing that, yes, they don't have the backing and wotnot these large national supermarkets do. But, what is sticking in my craw is how our one national supermarket which has a branch on Regent Street dare sell things inflated by 10 - 20%!

Unconsciously, I tend to buy the same thing each day for my lunch - a packet of rocket salad, proscuito ham and some feta cheese and a bottle of sparkling water for the day. The rocket salad has not only disappeared to be remarketed and branded as something else, where it was 99p before it is no 1.97 (damn pound sign isn't working, soz). The proscuito ham has altogether disappeared and they have brought in a pack of six slivers of the proscuito at....2.75!!! as opposed to the small pack I used to buy for 1.03! So, I thought, fair 'nough, I'll get some other meat - I started buying the pastrami ham instead which started out at 88p but has overnight gone up to 1.03! It is the world's biggest farce. Yet, if I go to my local store (same brand store) the pastrami is still sold there for 88p, my water which in the WE costs me 54p costs me 47p locally AND they are selling 3 bottles for 1.54. I ask you, HOW do they get away with it? And they can't use the excuse that they have to increase the prices in order to cover the rent - does that mean that if I go to some hick town (even hickier than my own) where the store rentals are MUCH lower (did I mention I work for a retail agency?) their prices would also be much lower? Of course not - personally, I think they are being opportunistic capitalists who need to be shown the error of their ways.

Which is why I am going to sit and compose a very lengthy letter to them to try and find out their reasoning behind these discrepancies.

Phagh. Am making a point now of instead of buying stuff from them to take in my own sarnies and home made salad brought in from our local grocer. Am hugely disillusioned as I always thought their deals were good. But now I see differently.

Hmmm.

Time to copy over more music to my MP3.

Christina's music is that bad...

I thought I would share this from the Ananova website. It tickled me and I am sure it would amuse others.

Christina Aguilera's music has reportedly been used to interrogate a leading al Qaeda suspect at Guantanamo Bay.
Time magazine says her songs were played to try to break down Mohammed al Qahtani who is believed to be the so-called 20th hijacker.
Qahtani is thought to have tried to enter the US in August 2001 as part of the team which took part in the September 11 attacks.
Despite numerous allegations from released detainees, Pentagon officials insist the prisoners at the US naval base in Cuba are being treated humanely.

I must admit that I will also break under such circumstances!

Liz

Our travels in Egypt

View from apartment in Luxor

Last year we were fortunate enough to have saved up enough dosh to travel to Egypt for two weeks. We spent a few days in Cairo being complete tourists being shown around by a lovely driver which we hired for the day by the name of Hussam. It was unreal travelling around a place as hot as that with humidity that high. There are approximately 20 million people who live in Cairo and most of them have cars and none of them know how to drive. Grin - honestly!

We saw the museum, the pyramids, the sphinx , the markets - it was unreal. And yet so very real - a dream come true.

After a few days in Cairo we climbed aboard one of their night trains and rocketed through the desert down to Luxor where I had arranged to go and stay in a friend's apartment. The apartment is on the outskirts of Luxor, next to the Sheridan hotel and it is right on the Nile. The picture above was our view from the roof which exclusively belonged to us.

We continued being amused by the Egyptians and amazed. Not once were we faced with impatience or annoyance at any given time - most of the kids asked for bakshees when we saw them - some we did give money to, but as we had a driver or our friends' neighbour with us, they were shooed away.

Luxor is beautiful. The temple is even more majestic than I could ever have anticipated. Some of the hyroglyphs survived intact complete with vivid colouring. Our days were spent meandering through the market (where we were hailed as "cousins" as we came from Africa too, eventhough it was the southern part!) and haggling for goods. And by the gods, we did haggle! Going to the Valley of the Kings and experiencing 45 degree heat at nine in the morning was insane but worth every single drop of it. We went to see Hatshepsut's temple - the majesty of this country and its people really dug in deep.

We left loaded with goods, haggled for dearly, knowing that we would be saving up even more to go back again.

Happy sighs, all together.

Hope you enjoyed travelling with me.

The way home tonight

This is obviously not what I saw travelling home this evening, but it is close. The sun is still out and it is relatively warm.

It was a fantastic feeling running down the stairs from the hell dimension, knowing that for a few hours at least that I was free to be a real person again, not a drudge.

Thanks to careful and patient instructions from hubby I attached the pic - just to prove that London is in fact one of the most beautiful cities in all the world. Anyone who dares so differently, I challenge to go walkabout with me to see the sights.

Am listening to Virgin Radio and they are playing Black Betty. Whoohoo. Sounds of Summer.

Time to go make popcorn and watch Hellboy.


Sunset over the Thames