Love of the Day - Pinterest

Ah, Pinterest; the shiny repository of the (not-at-all-) secret hopes and aesthetically pleasing dreams of so many.

I have to confess that when I first heard of Pinterest I was furious.  Furious and somewhat sniffy, since, back in 2006 when I was just getting to grips with the brave new world of MySpace/Facebook, I came up with a fabulous idea.  What if there was some kind of site where people could have a page where they display all the stuff they liked? Pictures of things, and lists, and music thingys - all that? 'It could be called TasteMaker!!' I excitedly pitched to my completely disinterested boyfriend of the time.  Alas, however, for I knew nothing about website creation and was distracted by a passing danish pastry so the idea slipped back into the nothingness that was my brain back then (also now).

Perhaps understandable then, that I was slightly annoyed when I discovered a bunch of people had quite clearly stolen my idea and named it 'Pinterest', PFF! and proceeded to deny them the gift of my patronage for ages after it became obvious that I would love it?  In March last year, however, I decided to switch off my Facebook account and find some other 'more creative, inspirational' form of social networking/wasting my life away staring at the internet.  And oh the wonders that I discovered there.  The lovely pictures, the pretty pretty pictures of loveliness! The beautiful scenery, amazing artwork, ingenious craft, the sumptuous dishes, the cosy homes, the exquisite-looking humans! All suffused with light and joy and the promise of better things to come...

Here I am, squatting in a stranger's house, masquerading as some kind of waitressing cat-slave, in the suburbs of February-sodden Glasgow and it's fine, IT'S ALL FINE! Because I have Pinterest.  In particular my 'Beat the Winter Blues' pinboard, filled with pictures of bright, happy things, sunny places and orange:

Armed with Pinterest, I will make it through - make it through until the warmer weather comes, make it through until I find out I HAVE got PhD funding and make it through until I suddenly discover I am able to cook elaborate and delicious foods, sew complicated quilt designs and achieve insane amounts of yoga/trapeze flexibility, all with no effort whatsoever.

Yes.

Love of the Day: I Break Horses

Oops, bit of a gap since the last post, sorry! I have had a brain full of bland, grey mizzle for the last week and haven't really felt any love for, or been bugged by, anything much (unless you count painfully falling over a cat and down the stairs, incurring a giant purple bruise on my ass.  That did bug me a little.  In case you're wondering, the cat escaped unharmed the little bastard).

Anyhow, I've been listening to a few tracks by I Break Horses and one of them has sent a thin ray of sunshine through the brain-clouds so I thought I would share it:



It's been perfect for walking around Glasgow to - just uplifting enough to stop me throwing myself under a passing bus, but not so ridiculously cheerful that it clashes inappropriately with the nasty dank weather and bleak surroundings, hurrah!

I Break Horses are Scandinavian (Swedish), just like everything else I've been enjoying recently it seems.  I dream of going there someday soon.... in the summer when it gets lighter and stuff.  Scotland is enough for now!!

Love of the Day - Lindt Pistachio Delight Chocolate*

Being something of an experimental glutton when it comes to chocolate, I have a shamefully extensive knowledge of the 'slightly expensive and large' chocolate bar section of the supermarket.  You name it, I've tried it. I've had 'em all, like some kind of chocolate whore (except obviously I was  the one paying).

It all began in Edinburgh, summer of 2004, when I happened to buy a bar of Green & Black's dark chocolate with cherries.  We had a whirlwind romance, the two of us, lasting for that whole magical summer, but it all came to an abrupt end when my head was turned by the same brand's Maya Gold.  I was faithful to Maya for a few years but it got stale; I grew bored. In Ritter Sport's Marzipan, I thought I'd found my perfect match, but eventually my love for that faded too.  I moved on, lost in a series of brief dalliances, Lindt's Mint Intense, Coconut Intense, the edgy cool of Montezuma's Sea Dog... but now, now all that's about to change.

I've found The Chocolate One.

The perfect amount of dark chocolate, silkily coating the nutty filling - a hint of marzipanishness from the almond pieces, the creamy pistachio... stuff.. leaving your palate Turkish Delight-ed (see what I did there?). Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm *Homer Simpson-esque drooling noises*

Try it, I DARE YOU. Come, share my new and terrible addiction to this overpriced sugary crap!!!


*Please note that I am in no way affiliated with / sponsored by Lindt Sprungli. But I would very much like to be.  

Love of the Day - The Sochi Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony Sun

(AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

 

 

Second in brilliance only to the ACTUAL sun (this one is more stylised, but the actual sun is responsible for all life on earth, so I guess it wins). 

Bug of the Day - February

(Okay so this should be, by definition, 'Bug of the Month', but I'm trying to establish my format here so let's just ignore that).

Before I start today's mega-whinge, I would like to state that I am pro-winter.  I love the opportunities it gives me to break out the scarves and gloves, layer on clothes, cosy up to the radiator and eat mounds of stodgy food.  What can I say? I'm British! I greet November every year with gleeful anticipation of the stews, hotpots, potatoes, pies, mulled wine, mini stollen bites, eggnog, snowballs and mince pies to come. And Bonfire Night - what's not to love about Bonfire Night?! December brings birthdays, Christmas and NYE (something to at least focus on through the short days even if you're not the biggest fan of those occasions).  January is full of good intentions and resolutions, the distraction of belt-tightening and optimistic exercise.

But February? February is an odious toad of a month - nothing but unmitigated, grinding drabness.  The weather is at best grey and freezing, at worst blizzardy or flood-ridden.  By the time February arrives all of the New Year's resolutions have been broken, everyone is confronting their own weakness in the face of temptation and we have all just HAD ENOUGH of winter. But there's still at least a month or two before the weather starts to warm up, plants start to stir or the sun rises for long enough for anyone to actually notice. 

As if all that wasn't enough, February also contains the most abhorrent holiday of all the fake greeting-card company created celebrations: Valentines Day.  It's not just that I'm a bitter spinster who is filled with jealousy at all those who are in love/yoked to another human being, I hate Valentines Day when I'm in a relationship too.  The pink, the hearts, the cheesy obligatory gifts of flowers, stuffed toys and chocolate, the forced coupleyness, ugh ugh UGH it's just vile!

So, February, frankly you suck.  In the more financially affluent years that I'm sure are just around the corner for me, I will definitely be taking some kind of sunshine-filled beach holiday in order to escape you.  In the meantime I am reduced to using Home and Away as my only source of Vitamin D.

Love of the Day - The Great Interior Design Challenge

Picture: BBC/Studio Lambert/Nicky Brewin

I am completely addicted to this programme. If you've not seen it, it is basically the perfect combination of Changing Rooms and the Culture Show (what with Tom Dyckhoff and everything), interspersing scenes of paint-spattered amateur interior designers - all huge-eyed with caffeine and desperation to win on the back of their beautiful, yet also hasty and slapdash, living room revamps - at work, with charming vignettes of cheeky Tom telling us about things like Brutalist architecture.  I suspect I'm developing a weird little crush on Tom, but I think he's probably gay.  Is he gay?  If not, it could be so lovely, the two of us punting down a summer river in Oxford while he waxes lyrical about the history of... something or other... this daydream almost entirely stems from the fact that he wears a lot of stripy t-shirts and blazers, obviously.

Anyhow, EHEM, back to The Great Interior Design Challenge.  It's made me think about Interior Design, for the first time since 1998! It makes me imagine, for at least ten minutes every evening, that I would quite like to be an interior designer myself. That is, until I remember that I think that particular job is frivolous and vacuous and meaningless.  But is it though?  Isn't it important what kind of spaces we live in, what we are surrounded by in our daily lives?  Alain de Botton certainly thinks so, and I'm inclined to agree.  So if having a beautiful lounge improves our mental health, lifts our mood and inspires us, surely that means 'Interior Designer' is a worthwhile career to have? Then again, if people are really that bothered about the appearance of the inside of their homes, can't they just make it look nice themselves? Hmmm.

I don't know.  My most recent life aspiration has been to subsistence-farm out of a backwoods cabin home in which I have made everything myself from rough-hewn logs and homespun hemp, anything else being a disgusting waste of money, resources and carbon.  But maybe that's actually not what I want at all, maybe what I really want is to have a directional haircut and wave fabric swatches around convincing people to pay me to have someone paint their walls apricot and duck-egg blue. I did find myself thumbing through an 'artistic spaces' book in the library the other day, what does this mean? Oh TGIDC, you have me bewitched and bewildered!

Anyhow, it's great and the final is on TV tonight.  I'll be watching and, afterwards, weeping a little as I face the rest of the year/life (I don't know, will they do another series?) with a gaping, empty hour from 7pm to 8pm every weeknight.