A slightly random Wednesday

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Feeling most peculiar. I had an old lady early night last night, so woke at five this morning, and by eleven had already made egg bread for breakfast, tidied the kitchen, contemplated the Saville Report from every conceivable angle, made guacamole, taken the dogs for a walk, fed the pig, scanned the newspapers, written 1312 words, and shouted at Jim Naughtie on the radio for what I considered moral relativism. (He said the British Army should be held to a higher standard than the IRA. Why? Surely everyone should be held to the same standard, which is patently universal: killing unarmed people is wrong. Besides, the IRA regarded themselves as a proper army, so standards, by their own lights, should be identical. Naughtie should go back and read his Kant.)

Anyway, the point of it all is that now it feels like it is six in the evening and my day is run.

I wanted to say something interesting about Twitter but am not sure I have much intellectual firepower left, after all that. I have not been much on Twitter lately, despite my early love affair with it. I'm not quite sure why. I get moments of sudden shyness, thinking oh really, I have nothing pithy and interesting to say, I'll just hide in my room. After a few days away, the powerful feeling of a swinging party going on without me kicks in, and I imagine that I do not have a metaphorical thing to wear. But I also wonder whether it is because I am blogging more. I love reading blogs that post regularly, and so my resolution in the last few weeks has been to try and put up something every day except for Sundays, even if it is only a picture of the dogs. Besides, my mother reads this, and she gets quite affronted if there is nothing new for her to look at. It may be that there is only so much self-expression in me. Once I have told you everything here, I lose the impetus to tweet. I do rather miss it though, because my fellow Twitterers are so charming and funny. I have no answer; as you can see, there is not much coherent thought left in me, and I can only pose half-arsed questions.

A note on the weather:

There has been no sun here for days and days, just blank, low skies. This morning I discovered why. The sun comes out at six, shines for two hours like gangbusters, and then gets bored and buggers off. If I want some summer, I am going to have to stop getting up at eight and do the dawn chorus thing every day.

A note on the pig:

She is back in fine health and has a sexy rare breed boyfriend, so there may be piglets.

My word of the day:

Coulrophobia: a morbid fear of clowns. Apparently it is the third most widespread fear in Britain, after spiders and needles. I have no fear of spiders, needles or clowns, but my mild dislike of heights has blossomed into proper vertigo, I grown embarrassingly girlish when faced with wasps (much squeaking and running away), and I am not good with birds in the house.

Article of the Day:

Danny Finkelstein on Saville in The Times. The paywall is not yet up, but you do have to register, which is why I can't do a link.

Bizarre statement of the day:

'Clogs. They inspire fear in many.'

This is from the Vogue blog. Can they really mean it? Is this some kind of new research project that no one has told me about? Is it like the clown thing? It's just that in my whole wide life I have never heard of clogs inspiring fear. Perhaps the clog people are so scared that they do not actually go outdoors, but contemplate their terror in darkened rooms. It's very hard to tell.

Obscure thing I know of the day:

If you want racing people to take you seriously, you should never refer to 'Royal Ascot'. It's just Ascot, as in: 'Are you going to Ascot this year?', or 'The Royal Meeting', as in 'Yes, I love the Royal Meeting'. (My father actually hates the Royal Meeting so much that he leaves the country for a week each year at this time, because otherwise he might be tempted to go, against his better judgement, and risk losing sheds of cash in the frenzied betting environment.) 

And if you really want to show off, you should know that the Saturday is called 'The Heath Meeting', because the Queen does not go. La di dah, my darlings.

This is what the ladies wore to the races in 1926.

 

There was one more thing I was going to say, but my brain is about to fall out of my ears. I am going to have some buckwheat for strength.

Just to remind me, and you, this is what it looked like the last time we had midday sun:

That was the 4th of June. The FOURTH. No wonder I am going a bit crazy in the head.

Stopping now. Really.