11.11 again?

I opened my eyes this morning and the clock said 5.55. Don't worry, I closed them again pretty sharpish. When I regained consciousness again I thought "That's pretty unusual", then realised that it probably wasn't.

So here's my attempt at some maths. You can stop reading here if you like.


The clock is set to 12 (rather than 24) hour display, so there are 12 x 60 = 720 different numbers it might be showing. How many of those would make you think "Hey, look!"?


All the same number: 1.11, 2.22, 3.33, 4.44, 5.55, 11.11
Hour and number the same: 1.01, 2.02. 3.03. 4.04, 5.05, 6.06, 7.07, 8.08, 9.09, 10.10, (11.11 already counted) 12.12.
Counting up: 1.23, 2.34, 3.45, 4.56, 12.34
Counting down: 2.10, 3.21, 4.32, 5.43, 6.54


Any more suggestions? I count 27 numbers that would make you look. 720/27 is 1 in 27. That's not very unusual. If you look at a clock about once every half hour during your waking day you'll see a "hey look" time about once a day.

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I realise some times are more visible than others - I expereince many more hours-beginning with-9 than I do hours-beginning-with-4, but it's Saturday and I'm not actually that good at statistics.

Why I ignored a wedding list request

It took me until age 21 or so to realise that I wasn’t growing any more. I’d been buying my own clothes since about 14 and had not got out of the mindset that expensive clothes were not worth it because I would grow out of them. I still stick to that principle sometimes, only now it is the realisation that I will grow out of a fashionable item not physically but mentally.

So here is my mantra that I will (attempt to) live by. If you intend to use something a lot, or over a long period of time, or both, get a good one. A good one will be pleasurable to use, and will actually withstand heavy use. This is why I have an enormous heavy garlic press. The last one couldn’t take the pressure. The thing is never in the drawer, it is used more days than it is not used and half the time I have to wash it up specifically to use it, because the normal washing-up flow has not yet gotten to it before I need to use it again. Yes, we don’t wash up after every meal. We are slatterns. Let's move on.

“Where’s the wedding list?”, I hear you cry. Or I would if a) I could hear forwards in time and through the internet, and b) I believed that anyone would read this. The wedding list, or in fact lack of one, is here. I attended a wedding last week for a grown-up couple who requested that “as we have plenty of pots and pans, if you would like to give us a gift we would appreciate a donation towards a honeymoon”. I don’t object to this. I know some people do, they consider it rude to ask for money. I don’t see it as asking for money so much as saying that if we would like to spend money on them, here is the way to do it that would be most appreciated. The things that I do very slightly object to is that the couple concerned do not have plenty of pots and pans. Not good ones anyway. Last time I visited the groom was struggling to make scrambled eggs in a nasty burnt-bottomed pan that’s probably 20 years old and not very good when it was bought. They are twice my age and haven’t learned the lessons above, so I have taken it upon myself to be very sanctimonious and annoying make their lives easier by giving them a nice non-stick pan. If anyone wants a recommendation for an inexpensive but super non-stick pan, these are the ones. Food just slides off. It’s like magic.

I am contributing to the honeymoon fund as well, I’m not that self-righteous that I have decided that they must have the pan instead , but they can have the pan as well.

I do remember a joke...

Equating Islam with terrorists is like...

equating all Christians with kiddly-fiddlers

or saying that all Jedis are like a bloke being kicked out of Tesco for wearing a dressing gown and carrying a lightsaber

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(from Andy Parsons)
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But better than that, he messed it up, and said "all Jedis are like a bloke being kicked out of Tesco for wearing a lightsaber and carrying a dressing gown", and started to crack up halfway through. "Now we are all thinking of a naked guy carrying a dressing gown, and we don't know where he is wearing that lightsaber". I imagine that he was wearing his "dressing gown" and Tesco staff told him that he wasn't allowed in wearing nightclothes, at which he said "OK then" and took it off.

Does the ban on shopping in your pyjamas extend to other dressing-gown-like clothing too? What about a karate gi? That looks dressing-gown-ish.

Andy Parsons and acting like a tourist

We went to see Andy Parsons last night. He can best be described as the little bald one from Mock the Week. Why did we go? He's not my favourite comic, it wasn't a particularly convenient day, but he was in town and I have resolved to make better use of the opportunities/facilities available in my town. He was good, actually, although he made sure that no-one would remember most of his jokes by telling us about the time that he found a pair of underpants inside a jar of mayonnaise and Hellmann's wrote back saying that there was no way they could have gotten there in the factory and so he must have put them there himself.

I have lived here since 2002, but this was the first time (I think) that I have been inside the venue - it's certainly the first time I had paid for tickets to go inside. It's not as if I live in Londond with a myriad of theatres and venues, there's pretty much just this place, a more play-y theatre, and the amateur dramatics place. I haven't been to the other theatre either. London is a good subject to bring up, as friends who have lived there say that they did less "touristy stuff" while they lived there than they ever did while living an hour's train ride away. Does familiarity breed contempt? Or is it just that we get stuck in our little routines? Living in our own little circles, with the places we go and the places we don't go separated by nothing but habit.

So, today's resolution is to go and see more of the things that are there to see, go and do more of the things that are there to do. But first I must drink coffee, sit on my sofa, and maybe do some washing. I fear that the only real incentive to see and do all of the wonderful things that are available will be if I have a time limit. "Since 2002" is a long time, but the future is long too, and it is only when I know that I will be leaving that I will worry about having missed out.

Caitlin Moran and why I pay for my news

I was going to muse on the nature of anonymity on the internet, but I got distracted by Caitlin Moran winning TWO journalism awards last night: Critic of the Year and Interviewer of the Year. Given that for 2010 she was Columnist of the Year, she’ll need to branch out into something new this year because she’s won an award for everything that she does: interviewing, criticising, and columning.

At this point I would love to link you to her interview with Jilly Cooper, which shows that meeting your childhood (or teenhood) heroes can be as amazing as you imagined, but it’s behind a paywall. And I haven’t yet figured out how to link neatly. Suffice it to say that they get “tight” on champagne, and Jilly really does use the word “tight” to describe inebriation. I wonder if it implies a certain level of drunkenness, or if it only applies if said drunkenness has been achieved with champagne? I need a Jilly Cooper dictionary, and in fact my Amazon wishlist does currently hold Class (written in 1979, it has to be hilarious). Top quote from the interview: “I am, essentially, being given a dirty tour of Bath by a pissed Jane Austen.”. I won’t gush on any further about how much I love Caitlin Moran, but it is a lot. In my mind I am about 13 with braces and she is 15 and has cool hair, but she is not one of the bully-ish cool girls, oh no, she is the sort who will occasionally say “nice bag” when someone has a new schoolbag, with no clue that she has caused an incremental rise in that person’s social standing by means of her approval. She just thought it was a nice bag.

The paywall, yes. I can go behind it, and you can’t, because I have sacrificed a virgin at the altar of Rupert Murdoch. Or alternatively I have set up a £2/week direct debit and mentally allocated £1 to Caitlin Moran, 50p each to Robert Crampton and Sathnam Sanghera (spelled right without looking, yes!), and I get everyone else for free. Writers have children and cats and expensive haircuts to support just like everyone else, and I like to feel that my money says “Hey, you, you’re doing good, keep doing it and here’s some cash so you don’t have to quit it to go work in Tesco instead”. In an ideal world I would prefer the site to send my money magically to the writers of the pages that I spend most time on, thereby really rewarding the best writers, but I can imagine how complicated it would get even for a teeny tiny 10-page website, let alone a behemoth like The Times.

So, in summary, Caitlin Moran is great, the paywall is not so evil, I use too many commas, and no-one is going to read this anyway.

I don't have a blog

Really, I don't.

Why would I?

Just because I read other people's blogs and think they are interesting, why would anyone read mine?


I heard that the average number of messages/posts/tweets from a Twitter account is 1. Let's hope this doesn't go down the same way.