The power of perspective

Here is a picture of me with my adorable Godcat, Tweets. For once she decided to forgo her “I am not a lap cat” mindset and sit beside me and be fussed before getting back to her extremely busy schedule of savaging toy mice and relaxing in the airing cupboard.

You might also notice that the angle the photo is taken from makes it look like I have massive legs and a tiny little pin head. But of course if you know me you will know I have ordinary legs and a normal sized head.

Tweets is demonstrating the power of perspective here. What might seem distorted and wrong may seem utterly normal from another angle. So there is something for you all to think on.

Green
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A dog name is for life...

The weather at lunchtime was crisp and dry like a popular 80s cooking oil, so I went for a walk into the village where I work. Outside the local store, I spotted a lady talking to her dog before she popped in to buy a weekly paper, or some date expired dairylea slices*. Now I am not exactly on the Crufts judging panel here, but it was some kind of reddy chocolatey labrador blend. You get the idea.

"There there Skippy, you just wait there," she said.

I then puzzled all the way back to the office as to whether Skippy was an appropriate name for a dog. Bush kangaroo, yes. Dog, hmm. Not convinced.

But then, to my mind, dogs should get simple nouns for names, like Banana or Fondue. If we give them human names, we let them think they are like us. And they should know their place.

Though nothing puts you more in your place than picking up Banana's poo in a Tesco carrier bag.

*I did get £5 in vouchers and a "sorry" letter where they spelt my name wrong.

PS wasn't really worth waiting 5 months for was it, but seeing as there's two names on this blog...

Spooooky Halloween

Hello Biscuit Fan. Or should I say, Hi Becky.

This weekend was Halloween and the London Branch of Biscuits for Girls celebrated in style. Organised by the Queen of Halloween herself, Sarah, we embarked on a zombie pub crawl that kicked the arse of all other zombie pub crawls. Except for me, cause I was dressed as She Ra. I didn’t want to be a zombie but I did want to be She Ra. There I was, kitted out in a She Ra costume that was very revealing and a little chilly, so I was rather jealous of all the nice warm zombies. Add in Charlotte’s white platform boots from her slappier student days and Hey Presto, six foot two inch She Ra is ready to conquer the town. I got a round of applause in the first pub when I took my coat off from the very much non dressed up locals. Thank goodness for Hollywood Tape!

We seemed to be the only people doing Halloween in Dulwich, but we weren’t discouraged. And after Sarah’s skilful application of zombie make up we shuffled, lurched and tottered carefully in our platforms to the drinking holes of South East London. All the time calling for Braaaaiiiiiinnnss

Some Highlights.

1) Zombie Rob being unable to see properly with his contacts in
2) Dean getting a bit “method” with his Zombie acting and terrorising a woman in a parked car by clawing at the window. We all agreed it was the funniest thing ever.
3) A loud and drawn out conversation about the under-representation of nonces in Hollywood films.
4) Lurching, shuffling and tottering across the road in front of a bus that had to stop for us, while being waved across the road by a devil.
5) Rob biting a stranger’s head. Apparently he was only going to go for his throat, but his natural sense of showmanship took over. The bloke loved it too.

A good time had by all, and it would have been even better if someone who was there in spirit could have been there in the flesh! A someone who would have absolutely loved the make up, shuffling, head biting and tarty She Ra outfit. All Hallows to absent friends.

Check out the pics on Flickr

Body off Baywatch, face off Crimewatch

As is our way, my brother and I settled down to watch Crimewatch the other night, and set about our hobby of threatening to ring the hotline and implicate each other for the most heinous of crimes.

While doing this we noticed something rather sinister about the presenters. Not the standard presenters, the delicious Rav and that woman who isn’t Fiona Bruce but may as well be. But there is a C student of Crimewatch. Those who present the in between sections and the reconstructions are all wrong uns of the highest order. Honestly they were worse than thec riminals some of them. I’ve been doing extensive searching on Google and I can’t find the names or photos of any of them.

Now I’m wondering if perhaps if you commit a crime and get community service, you can do community service presenting Crimewatch.

Wishing on a star

Last night as I made my way through the world I saw a shooting star. Unusual in inner London, but you tend to get more of them around the end of October and the beginning of November. Often accompanied by a high pitched whistle.

So anyway I saw my shooting star and like any sensible person, I made a wish. I’m not convinced that such wishes will come true but it seemed foolish to potentially look a gift horse in the mouth. As an aside, does anyone know where that expression comes from? Can you tell me if you do? Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

Anyway. There I am wishing away and I got to wondering, how so many things are associated with making wishes and yet so few wishes come true. Birthday candles, eyelashes, stars and so forth. And yet the only time I have made wishes come true it has had bugger all to do with eyelashes and everything to do with sheer bloody mindedness.

If the eyelash thing worked I’d have about twenty five ponies by now. And I’d be at the stage where I would have to start wishing for fields and hay.

Some of the wishes I’ve made this week have included “I wish I had some bacon,” “I wish I didn’t just put my hand in the toaster,” and “I wish I hadn’t drunk all the wine in the world last night.” None of which were last night’s wish, but now I do wish I’d wished for bacon. Bacon might not be achievable for this morning (until I invent time travel!) but it sure is available in the future... so do wishes depend on time? I wish I knew!

Gibraltar? No I went of my own accord.

Hi biscuit fans. Yep. Both of you.

So the hot gossip on everyone’s lips here in biscuit land is that I (Cherry) am going to be carrying out a life experiment, that involves moving to Gibraltar for 3 months. Now many of you are probably thinking “What sort of experiment is that?”, “Where’s your control?”, “What statistical test is going to prove it significant?” and “Where or where is your retort stand?”

All good questions. None of which will be answered here.

So after a fairly long and tedious 2009, filled with a lot of hard work, I have decided to seek excitement, adventure and really wild things on a strange retro peninsular that has yet to leave the seventies. There and southern Spain. I reckon 3 months should be loads of time!

Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Ho ho.

In case you were wondering, I’ve been offered a job there. A large betting firm want me to sort out their website, so that people with gambling problems can fritter their children’s university funds without running into tedious usability problems. I’ve decided on a big banner on the home page that reads “How much of your personal wealth would you be willing to gamble if there was a slight chance you would become immeasurably rich?”, the user simply types in a number and the site deducts that sum from their bank account. Easy peasy.

Although that is supposedly why I am going, I shall also be doing a little light hunting of sea monsters while I am at it. Scylla and Charydbis being the critters thought to inhabit that bit of sea. So I shall routinely be wading into the sea, holding animal carcasses attempting to do a spot of summoning.

Anyway I am now the owner of The Largest Suitcase in the World and am trying to decide which shoes to take with me. Choices choices. Honestly, the suitcase is huge, it is a suitcase I can fit in. Maybe I will try and take a photo of me in my suitcase in order to prove this point.

My sister told me an amusing story today about a friend of a friend who moved to a very small town in Cambridgeshire and hated it so much that he started a blog about how shit it was. Long story short, the villagers found out about it and ran him out of town. They actually ran him out of town! I was so delighted by this that I am now wondering if I can use the power of social media to get deported from Gibraltar! Watch this space people!

Off to plan my leaving party as I prepare to navigate Scylla and Charydbis!

The Big C
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The I Ching and I

Happy birthday to Confucius for earlier in the week.

Which brings me nicely on to the I Ching, which Carl Jung, another good friend of mine was very into. (You may recall I visited his tower on Lake Zurich with Lovely Swiss Matt)

A dear friend and I consulted the I Ching recently, and as oracles go, I was rather impressed. I think it was far better than the one on the M4 near Legoland.

The I Ching is a Chinese Oracle, for those that don’t know. It is famously never wrong. Although it isn’t afraid to be vague. I once consulted it about a website I was working on and it said “the man walks as though the flesh is stripped from his buttocks” which proved pretty accurate. Strangely I can’t find this passage anywhere now, so it must have been magicked up to describe how screwed we were.

Anyway, the I Ching is not prescriptive, the idea is that it gives you ideas to meditate on. For example I did not ask it whether I should have bought these Jimmy Choos or that leopard print dress in Hobbs, cause I know the answer to those questions and no ancient wisdom is going to stop me looking like an exquisitely groomed hooker.

You should never consult the I Ching frivolously, or so says my friend S, presumably if you do, it comes up with something facetious and bummy.

So as a life experiment, I am going to obey the I Ching religiously for 1 month. This will be like the Dice Man but instead of pooing in a plant pot, I shall be drawing a wagon full of devils, or losing the little boy in clinging to the strong man. Or furthering myself by crossing the great water.

Hopefully I wont be walking as though the flesh has been stripped from my buttocks. Unless the Choos really hurt!