Gym bunny!

Although I know everyone would love to see me in my tights giving a daily update on how the fight against cellulite is going, I have decided that they might not actually work (just the sceptical side of me coming out) and I have bitten the bullet and joined the gym! Shock, horror! It has been a while since I was a full paying member of the gym elite, and never fear I will keep you updated- let the hilarity ensue!

Hangover purchases... touch of genius or horrible mistakes!

So this evening's post is dedicated to hungover shopping mistakes! You know we all make them, although I think I made what is possibly the best purchase ever on Sunday! I ended up buying... wait for it- 'anti-cellulite tights' costing £15! Yes that's right!! Not sure why as it's not something that's really bothered me, but on Sunday it was the only thing I needed in my life. So in 30 days I will be able to let you know if they work or if I gave up half way through, as it does mean washing tights every evening! Not really sure what goes through my head sometimes!

Posting again...

Ok so if you read through the blog you will see I have habit of posting regularly for while and then nothing, and every time I have to write a post saying 'I haven't posted anything for a while, so here goes!' So I won't write that again! I did have something I really wanted to write about and I remember feeling inspired when I though of it... but of course I didn't write it down and in my old age my memory is not what it was! Stay tuned...

The case of the disappearing post-it notes....

Why is it that every afternoon at about 15.00 I lose a pad of post-it notes... I have opened 3 new pads this week and only have one left and I don't use that many! A large portion of my time is now spent (procrastinating) creating conspiracy theories as to where the post-its are going. Here are the top 3!

1. I am blacking out and eating them (not that likely but amusing)!
2. There is a cheeky ghost that like post-its and only bothers me!
3. People in the office need post-its and borrow them off my desk!(the most uninteresting but likely!)

There are many others but they are just silly... but if anyone thinks of any or can think of a way for me to keep tabs on my post-its your help would be much appreciated! and yes number 4 is probably the truth...

4. My desk is very messy and I'll find all the post-its when I get round to cleaning up!

I am just thinking how many things around town you can do for free- I went to a Banksy exhibition during lunch yesterday and it cost nothing, which is always fun! I have also been visiting the plinth in Trafalgar Square but I am very unimpressed by what I've seen, the girl I saw the other day was sat on a chair on her phone tlking to her friends on the ground... boring!!!!
This was one of my favourite pieces from the Bansky exhibition. It seems so true in this day and age... I do think, without wanting to sound pretentious, that his works provide a great social commentary.

Simple yet effective!

Thanks Dot for telling me about this one- definately up there with such classics as 'Jizz in My Pants' and 'Dick in a Box'... I know I do have a very childish and base sense of humour!

About time!

Ok, it has been a very long time since my last post (the internet hasn't been working at home) and I have been really bad at posting anything but I no longer have a good excuse for not posting anything i.e. I am now gainfully employed in London and live in a fabulous flat!!! and I know everyone is desperate for my blog updates and insights into the world of procrastination!!!

Is anyone voting today? I'm not sure how people are feeling about going to vote today- I suspect most people are so fed up with MP's expenses etc that they will either vote in anger for some of the more right wing or anti-Europe parties or won't vote at all! It is always so hard when you remember how many people died for us to have the right to vote.

I can't get the link to work, but here is the website: http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/

I found this in the Guardian and it's quite fun to waste a bit of time on... anyone feel like sharing some fun family photos?

So another pretty uneventful weekend- great weather, working on turning the paleness into slightly more freckly palneness! Trying to galvanize myself into a new fitness regime and step up the job hunting, although I am at a bit of a 'can't be bothered' stage as most jobs don't seem to even bother to call/e-mail and say you haven't got the job- all a bit soul destroying but not the end of the world... although you know it's bad when Morissons don't even want you:-(

Ok well as you can see I haven't posted anything for a while and you could take that to mean that nothing has happened in my sleepy Shropshire village... well you would be wrong, I have just been to lazy/busy to post anything. We've had signets, ducklings, baby moorhens born; fires; van crashes; weddings; street meetings (with would-be local councilors) and I've started driving again (watch out!)- yes, the fun never stops round here!

... and of course, top tips on procrastinating as job hunting can be a total bore. City procrastination has turned into countryside procrastination- I have always wanted to try cow tipping!

It has been a while since I posted anything, but now I am back in the UK and for the time being this blog is becoming a 'rural diary'! Unemployed in the country... I promise you excitement, or not. But some of it might be amusing.

This is for all those people who have dealt with 'face control'!!!
Although I have never heard of anyone being so desperate they offer to have sex with a bouncer to get into a club... but I'll let you know what happens next time I try to go to Pacha (pronounced 'pa-cha' in Moscow!)

Ireland's most wanted driver... Mr Prawo Jazdy

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/7899171.stm

I have just read a great article about the observations of a French checkout girl, which have been turned into a best selling book, and although my checkout knowledge is a lot more limited than hers, I do totally agree. People treat checkout workers with absolutely no respect and it can be horrible! Here are the links to the Times article and her original blog (for those of you who speak French)


www.women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article5853437.ece

www.caissierenofutur.over-blog.com

Avant-garde art

A link to a good article on avant-garde Russian art.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article/600/42/374882

A refreshing view on life...

I was teaching a class yeterday and opposite me there was a native speaker teaching a young boy, who was probably about 7 or 8. Most of the lesson was conducted in Russian, with the occasional 'khello and gooodbye' but about 15 minutes in the boy turned to his teacher and asked in Russian "Do you think in English?", and his teacher replied (in Russian too) "Yes, always, and sometimes in Russian". The little boys face was priceless! You could see him trying to understand how a person could think in a language where he only knew a few words... and it reminded me of the first time I heard French people talking to each other. I remember turning to my Mum and asking how they understood each other?! Such a refreshing view on life.

A video from the Last Shadow Puppets, filmed in Russia. Some of the comments about this video are that it shows a stereotyped image of Russia, which it does, but I quite like the video, thoughts?

I should also mention, my 's' key is being very temperamental at the moment, so apologies if there are typos. "It not my fault, orry. I can pell and type honet!!!"

A good way to begin procrastinating is starting a blog! I am currently applying to job after job (and receiving rejection after rejection) and a blog is a welcome form of distraction, and it feels like you are doing something constructive, which is always my number one rule for procrastinating: it has to appear to be productive (whether it is is another matter completely)!! I'll let you know how this particular form of procrastination goes... so far I'm having fun and feeling as though I am contributing something useful to society (self-delusion is a wonderful thing).

A walk to the metro, which usually takes two mintues took about ten today because the pavements have turned into rivers of dirty slush, snow is falling in very large chunks from the buildings- which makes going anywhere sporting to say the least, and I passed about three men who fell (not at the same time and in different locations) over because they were all blind drunk. A great advert for never drinking again. Well at least until next weekend...

I went to a great bar/restaurant on Wednesday night, called Кантри-бар (Kantri bar, which is the Russian way to say the English word 'country') and was very tempted by the top dish 'language of the lamb'!! The word for language and toungue in Russian 'язык' (yazik) is the same. This seemed to be a common mistake, but a very funny one, and some of the menus I have read over the past year or so have been very entertaining!

Remember this next time you're at the zoo!!

Isn't the English language wonderful. I think badger, irk, vex, bother etc. are all great but much underused words. I shall try and incoporate them in my posts, points for those that notice them.

Banksy - Manifesto

An extract from the diary of Lieutenant Colonel Mervin Willett Gonin DSO who was among the first British soldiers to liberate Bergen-Belsen in 1945. I can give no adequate description of the Horror Camp in which my men and myself were to spend the next month of our lives. It was just a barren wilderness, as bare as a chicken run. Corpses lay everywhere, some in huge piles, sometimes they lay singly or in pairs where they had fallen. It took a little time to get used to seeing men women and children collapse as you walked by them and to restrain oneself from going to their assistance. One had to get used early to the idea that the individual just did not count. One knew that five hundred a day were dying and that five hundred a day were going on dying for weeks before anything we could do would have the slightest effect. It was, however, not easy to watch a child choking to death from diptheria when you knew a tracheotomy and nursing would save it, one saw women drowning in their own vomit because they were too weak to turn over, and men eating worms as they clutched a half loaf of bread purely because they had to eat worms to live and now could scarcely tell the difference. Piles of corpses, naked and obscene, with a woman too weak to stand proping herself against them as she cooked the food we had given her over an open fire; men and women crouching down just anywhere in the open relieving themselves of the dysentary which was scouring their bowels, a woman standing stark naked washing herself with some issue soap in water from a tank in which the remains of a child floated. It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don't know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the post mortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tatooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.

Source: Imperial War museum

Not something particularly nice to read, it is just a story that I read and have never forgotten, not that lipstick could in any way solve any problems of make people forget but a touching story.

I saw this picture the other day and it did make me giggle. From my experience many Russian people do not think very much of greenpeace. I was trying to buy a winter hat for my brother in December and said to the guy selling hats, I didn't want any fur. The man looked at me and said (in a very think Russian accent) 'Grinpeeas' and thought this was the most hysterical joke ever!!! All because I wanted a hat with no fur- that is obviously the measure of a good environmentalist these days... I probably shouldn't add that I went on to buy a fur hat! (which I cannot wear, but more about that later).

Also there seem to have been a few protests in Moscow recently (the picture is from last week)- and I have not seen any of them, I wonder where they happen and why I don't know about them?!

Finally....

After 16 months of living in Moscow and talking about writing down some of my experiences and general musings, I am finally doing it (thanks Dot), so here goes...