ARIANE SHERINE

The Last Nine Months: A Retrospective

2011-11-27T13:11:00.003Z

Back at the start of August, I started a hardcore post-pregnancy diet. I weighed ten stone, and aimed to lose two by setting the goal very publicly, eating food fit only for a small rodent, and posting up a picture of my scales each week as proof of my weight loss. To motivate myself, I used a pre-pregnancy picture of myself in my favourite dress:

However, I was unsure that I'd ever be able to get back into it. I had an embarrassing vision of having to post up the same weight (or more) on the scales every week. During the first week of the diet, I almost quit, and was thinking of giving you the spurious line "my doctor says I shouldn't be on a diet" as a get-out.

I'm glad I didn't though, as this is what I looked like at 34 weeks pregnant, weighing over 12 stone, in a photoshoot in March for Pregnancy & Birth magazine:

It's ironic that I'm (coincidentally) holding a cupcake, as this photo is evidence of what too much cake will do to you. (I had massive cravings for chocolate, and was eating virtually a whole cake a day!). I don't even recognise myself here. People kept saying I looked like Ugly Betty.

This is what I looked like in May, soon after giving birth, weighing over 11 stone:

It's fair to say that I was a big girl.

Now, this isn't going to be a very good retrospective, as I spent most of the year studiously avoiding cameras, so you can't really see the transition from plump to unplump (sorry). But by the start of August, I'd lost a stone and a half just by cutting out chocolate and eating sensibly.

I needed an incentive to lose another two stone though - hence the blog. So I created the diet outlined in my last post. It wasn't easy or fun, and it took nearly four months, but to my relief I'm now 8 stone and a size 8 again (US size 4), and here I am (yesterday) back in the same dress:

Since April 24th, I've lost a third of my body weight, and feel much more confident, healthy and happy having done so. I don't know if I'll ever have another baby - if I do, it won't be until Lily's much older - but if I get pregnant again, I'll be very careful with my eating, so I don't have to go through this process again.

This will be my last blog post for a while. Thanks for all your support and encouragement over the last four months - it meant a lot. I genuinely couldn't have done it without you.

The Oatcake Diet

2011-11-21T14:10:00.006Z

The end is nigh! Not for mankind (hopefully), but for my infernal dratted diet. After nearly four months of oatcakes and houmous, I can't wait to start eating normally again (internal monologue: "That's the way you put it all back on, Ariane").

Anyhow: back on August 1st, I weighed ten stone, and set myself a target weight of eight stone, to be reached by October 25th. Shedding 20% of my body weight was harder than I'd anticipated, and the goal proved harder to meet than Barack Obama.

So I redoubled my efforts: fast forward four weeks, and I'm almost at my target weight. The weight loss has been so gradual, I haven't been able to see any kind of transformation in the mirror, but I opened the door to a friend who hadn't seen me since July, and she exclaimed, "Hello - and what have you done with the rest of you?!"

I'd like to claim that I've discovered some kind of marketable, saleable weight loss solution which will rake in the pounds, leaving me able to buy my dream house in Regent's Park. Alas, my newfound thinness is due to a combination of vanity, folly and eating a diet no one else would ever want to eat, so I can safely say that this isn't the case.

Nevertheless, I shall share my diet plan with you. If anyone actually tries it I will be amazed. You will lose weight on it - if I can, anyone can - but it's not much fun. I shall call it 'The Oatcake Diet'. Here goes:

THE OATCAKE DIET

10am: Two oatcakes. (You know, those dry cracker-like spheres made from oats and palm oil.)

11am: One date. (Nothing to do with romance, but a big dried fruit from the Middle East. I ate the variety called 'Medjool', because they're far bigger and nicer than standard dates.)

12 noon: Two more oatcakes. (A pattern emerges.)

1pm: A heaped tablespoon of houmous. (Made from chickpeas, looks like sick. Yum.)

2pm: Two more oatcakes. (If you try this diet, you will never want to see another oatcake again.)

3pm: One boiled egg (either hard-boiled or runny, it doesn't matter).

4pm: Can you guess? Yes, it's two more oatcakes!

5pm: One Medjool date. (Marks & Spencer sell them in fancy cupcake cases for an extortionate amount. I didn't buy them from Marks & Spencer.)

6pm: One small apple.

7pm: A proper meal! Well, a piece of steamed fish, lots of vegetables (carrots, broccoli, asparagus, mushrooms, etc) and a small amount of good carbs (either sweet potato, wholewheat pasta or bulgur wheat). I didn't eat anything after 7.30pm.

DRINKS

Only water (and herbal tea, but mostly water).

EXERCISE

If you have a small baby, strap it to your front in a carrier and walk around with it for at least an hour a day. If you don't have a small baby, you can use a heavy doll but you may get some funny looks.

And that's how I did it. Next Sunday, I shall put up some before and after pictures to prove that the feet on the photos of scales have indeed been mine, and that I wasn't strategically holding onto a nearby object while standing on them. See you then, and do let me know if you decide to try the Oatcake Diet. Anyone? No one?

Baby Love

2011-11-14T13:19:00.002Z

If you ever need proof of human kindness, spend a day outdoors with a baby. The baby is basically a conduit to all the goodwill in existence. If you're carrying it on your front in a carrier, people immediately give up their seats on buses for you, or in bus shelters, or on trains. If you're pushing it in a pram, they help lift the pram on and off public transport, give you their seat so you can sit near the baby, move out of the way for you.

Every time you go out, a stranger will strike up a conversation with you. "How old is she?" (Or 'he', if you've dressed her in blue or neutral colours.) "What's her name? Hasn't she got a lot of hair? Is she sleeping through the night? Does she have any teeth yet? What a smiley little thing." They'll coo at her, laugh at her, stroke her cheeks and hair, point her out to their friends. It's as though the baby gives them a reason to connect with you.

This is particularly prevalent with older ladies, perhaps women whose children have grown up but have yet to have grandchildren. I came across this babygro:

And though it's perhaps not the most classy pun, it's definitely true.

Last week, I was waiting at a bus stop and Lily was crying, so I took her out of the pram. Then the bus pulled up, so I was about to put her back in the pram, when the middle-aged woman next to me kindly said, "Don't do that - you take her on and I'll wheel your pram on for you." So I got on while holding Lily, and was immediately offered a seat at the front, while the nice lady held my pram at the back the whole way (it was laden down with shopping bags) and gave Lily a cuddle before we got off.

I wasn't expecting this at all when I was pregnant, but when you have a baby, it feels like the whole world's your friend. It's quite wonderful, and ample compensation for the sleepless nights. It's like you've somehow connected yourself to the rest of the human race - everyone's either had a baby, or knows someone who has one - and people suddenly want to be around you both. I used to think people in London weren't friendly or warm, but now I know that's not the case at all. At least, it isn't when you have a baby.

Feet First

2011-11-04T21:02:00.001Z

I used to have tiny feet. They were size 3, and looked like little mouse paws. They weren't much bigger than Lily's. I liked them: they were feminine and dainty, even if they were so small I frequently fell over.

Then I put on five stone during pregnancy, and my feet grew too. They swelled up and morphed into giant hippo feet, till I could no longer get into any of my shoes and had to wear flip-flops everywhere.

"It's just water retention," friends and midwives reassured me. "They'll go back to their original size after you give birth."

Relieved, I plodded around in the flip-flops, certain they were only temporary. After giving birth, I waited for my feet to shrink, gazing hopefully at the swollen arches and bulbous toes. But they didn't.

When, two months after the birth, I was invited to a party on a rainy day, I knew flip-flops weren't appropriate. My feet were approximately twice the size of all my old shoes, so I went out to buy some new ones.

I reached the shop and found a pair of suitable shoes. "Would you like me to get those for you in your size?" the shop assistant asked.

"That'd be great," I replied. But what on earth was my size? "I'll try a size four," I said hopefully.

The fours came. I couldn't even get the tops of my feet into them.

"A size five?" I guessed.

The fives came. This time I could wedge the tops of my feet in, but my heels wouldn't fit inside.

"Sorry, I think I need a six," I apologised.

When the sixes came, I could just about get them on, but they were too tight.

And so, from a lifelong starting point of size three, I ended up taking a size seven. "How is that even possible?!" I hear you ask. (You may not be asking this at all. You may be thinking, "When is this woman going to stop banging on about her feet?!" (Not for a while yet, sorry.))

As I'm only five foot two, having huge feet felt all masculine and wrong. I tried to console myself with the thought "Now I can buy lots of new shoes,", but my brain retorted, "Yeah, transvestite-size shoes! Maybe you should get your feet bound instead?"

I did some research, and found a site which said (from memory): "Ligaments in your feet can often stretch during pregnancy, and if they haven't shrunk two months after giving birth, your feet will never go back to their original size."

So I went out and bought two pairs of black knee-high boots, feeling like Bigfoot. They were quite stylish, but they looked long and clompy on me. Knowing I would never again fit into my old dainty little shoes, I sold them all on eBay, feeling wistful and sad.

I clomped around in the boots for a few months, and all that walking might have contributed to my losing nearly three stone. During that time, a funny thing happened: the boots started to feel a bit loose.

Last week, I had a work meeting for which I didn't think boots were appropriate, so I went out to buy some court shoes. I found some I liked, then sighed to a sales assistant, "Could I have these in size seven, please?"

The shoes arrived, and I put them on... only to realise that my feet were slipping out of the heels as I walked.

"Could I try a six?" I asked.

The size sixes were tighter, but still a bit slippy.

"Maybe I'm a five?" I guessed.

Sadly, this story isn't heading back to "and then I tried size three, and like Cinderella, they fit!"

I was indeed a size five. I'm now left with lots of surplus size seven shoes, and a reluctance to buy any more shoes, in case my feet shrink further as my body does. I have no idea why my feet are being so erratic, but found this on a pregnancy site:

"Can my shoe size change permanently? The short answer is 'yes'. There are so many changes the body undergoes during pregnancy that it becomes easy to ignore the changes in your feet. Most women’s feet grow at least a half-size during the second half of pregnancy. After childbirth, it can take up to six months for changes in your feet to reverse themselves and for your feet to return to their normal size and shape. However, foot enlargement caused by looser ligaments can be permanent, and at least 15% of women permanently need a larger shoe."

So there you have it. Still, gigantic feet or no gigantic feet, it was all worth it:

Happy Snaps

2011-10-31T16:31:00.002Z

My friend Graham is the best photographer I've ever met in real life, and I've met a few. He also happens to be my best mate, but that's an academic fact you shouldn't take into consideration when appraising my opinion. Just look at this beautiful photo:

(This also happens to be my daughter, but that's another academic fact you shouldn't take into consideration.)

Graham came down to London this weekend to take some photos of Lily. She turned six months last Tuesday, so I thought it would be nice to document her half-birthday. Graham made Lily feel so relaxed, she even showed him her favourite toy:

And, even though I haven't been feeling great about my baby weight, he made me feel so relaxed I was happy for him to take this photo:

I think he should turn professional, but he thinks I'm just saying that because I'm his friend. So if you agree, do leave a comment below.

Having Your Cake (And Eating It)

2011-10-24T09:00:00.000+01:00

I spent Saturday making a cake. It was a birthday cake for a friend - she was having a dinner that night, and had invited myself and all her other friends along to celebrate with her. As she had sent us all an email, I emailed all the other guests and asked if anyone else had planned a surprise cake. One of her friends replied, saying "I'm making a carrot cake, but it's not a surprise, so if you make one, it'll surprise her."

I set to work making the best Victoria sponge I could think of. I followed this recipe, which promised "you can't go wrong" in the very first line of text, then filled the cake with rings of raspberries, jam and whipped cream. From the side, it looked like this:

I then iced the top, having created a 'guide' first and pricked the letters onto the cake through a piece of baking parchment. I slid the cake carefully into a box, placed a candle and matches inside, and set off for the restaurant, feeling pleased with myself. Once there, I surreptitiously asked the staff if they could bring the cake in after the main course.

An hour after the dinner started, the girl who was making the other cake arrived, dishevelled and apologetic, clutching a huge misshapen cake tin covered in foil. She put the cake down on the floor with a thud, saying that she thought the cake was too dry. I'm ashamed to admit that I felt a flicker of pleasure that my cake had turned out so well in comparison.

After the main course, we all sang happy birthday as the waitress brought in my cake with the candle sparkling on top. I was pleased that my friend said how lovely it looked. Then the other girl unveiled her cake, saying self-deprecatingly that it was terrible. It thudded down on the table with a splat, as a load of icing oozed out of the bottom. The whole table burst out laughing at the discrepancy between the two cakes.

You can't really see how funny the second cake looked in this photo:

Everyone praised the beauty of my cake, and made fun of the other one. But then - then, as the cakes were served up - I was jolted embarrassingly back down to earth.

Because my cake was dry. It was edible, just, but it certainly wasn't light and fluffy as the recipe had suggested. The raspberries were sour, there wasn't enough cream, and the whole thing was a huge disappointment, a bitter triumph of style over substance.

And the other cake? It was delicious. Moist, juicy, succulent and moreish. What it lacked in appearance, it more than made up for in taste. I could have eaten it all day, and asked for the recipe.

I'm not entirely sure what the moral of this story is. Something to do with "pride before a fall", or "don't judge a book by its cover", perhaps. Or that schadenfreude isn't appealing; or that sometimes, when you least expect them to, things that seem disappointing can surprise you.

Or perhaps it's that you should never trust a recipe that says "you can't go wrong". Because making a Victoria sponge isn't a piece of cake.

Girls Girls Girls

2011-10-17T10:22:00.000+01:00

Over the past week, I have been looking at photos of very attractive women. The most attractive women I can find, in fact. Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Editions, FHM.com, AskMen.com, etc. Not overly thin women, just realistically curvy, sexy celebrities.

No, I haven't suddenly become a massive lesbian (though I can definitely see what lesbians see in women). Nor do I like men's magazines - I once described the genre as "If it were an animal, it would be a slobbering, lecherous dog with virulent rabies, just crying out to be put down."

I stand by that. So why the sudden interest in hot scantily-clad women?

It's simple: I have now been dieting for nearly six months, and as I get closer to my target weight, my motivation is waning. Dieting is very dull (and reading about it is probably quite dull too, hence the compensatory picture of Jessica Alba) and I would rather eat chocolate cake instead. However, I have a big bag of size 8 (US size 4) clothes in my wardrobe which I'd also very much like to get back into. If I can't, I'll have to buy new clothes, which seems a waste. Plus I look much better slimmer.

So, my theory is that if I bombard my brain cells with pictures of slim-but-curvy women I'd like to look like, I'll feel compelled to stick to the diet. I'm quite enjoying it...

My other motivational tool is this dress, which I wore on my first date with my boyfriend (photo taken in September 2009):

I dream of getting back into it for his birthday party at the end of November. Will it happen? I'll leave you on tenterhooks...

The Glamour

2011-10-09T22:30:00.002+01:00

This was my To Do list for yesterday:

- Clean poo from babygros
- Iron [my boyfriend's] shirts
- Sweep and mop floors
- Make lemon drizzle cake
- Put washing away
- Take bins out
- Sort out wires and leads basket
- Put [my boyfriend's] beer in fridge
- Fry chicken in flour, egg and breadcrumbs, saute veg and mash sweet potato

It's all very surprising, as I never thought I'd be remotely interested in domesticity. Back in 2003, a friend memorably said to me, "Ariane, I'd like you so much more if you didn't leave all your clothes on the floor and eat pasta out of the pan", but I didn't see what was so wrong with doing those things. I used to adhere to the following homemaking rules:

CLOTHES

- If it smells, spray it with Comfort Refresh (Britain's answer to Febreze)
- If it really smells, put it in the laundry basket and keep it there until you decide you want to wear it again (at which point, grudgingly wash it)
- Never iron anything, just shake and pull it and hope it uncreases

FOOD

- Why use a plate when a pan will do? It saves on washing up
- Don't bother cooking when you can eat stuff out of a packet/microwave a ready meal
- If you do cook, use the most basic ingredients (cook pasta, bung sauce from a jar on it)

HOUSE

- If the floor gets dirty, use one wet wipe to clean all of it
- Don't change your sheets unless (a) they smell and (b) someone is coming round
- When the tiles in your bathroom go mouldy, shrug and leave the mould to spread

Contrast this with today, when I don't even like it if there's dust between the banisters or dirt on the skirting boards. I source out new recipes to cook, enjoy having friends round for dinner, and scrub the house spotless beforehand.

What's changed? I think it's a combination of age and circumstance. When I was in my twenties and single, I could think of nothing more boring than cleaning my tiny flat (and, to be fair, most of my flatmates were equally grubby). I spent most of my time either writing or out, didn't have many friends round, and cleaning and cooking seemed like a colossal waste of time.

But now I'm older, with a man and baby (two different people), I actively enjoy homemaking. I don't find it dull in the least. My younger self would no doubt scoff at my soppiness; and yes, there are days when I wish I could lie in bed all day (though perhaps not in smelly sheets).

Despite this, it's an unglamorous truth that I'm very contented these days. Yes, even when I'm wringing the poo out of babygros.

Four Of The Best Type Os

2011-10-03T10:24:00.000+01:00

There's nothing like a good tpyo - I mean, a good typo - to cheer people up. Over the past few weeks, there seem to have been dozens doing the rounds, so here's a selection.

From The Guardian:

Bounty hunter Sam McKade is the new breed of hero. Tall? Undoubtedly. Handsome and chiselled? For sure. Incontinent? Erm – possibly. Author Susan Andersen was horrified to discover an unfortunate typo in the ebook edition of her new novel Baby, I'm Yours, which takes the novel out of the romance category and into something rather darker.

"I apologise to anyone who bought my on-sale ebook of Baby, I'm Yours and read on page 293: 'He stiffened for a moment but then she felt his muscles loosen as he shitted on the ground'," says Andersen. "Shifted - he SHIFTED! I just cringe when I think of the readers who have read this..."

From the comments on this article, here's a hilarious typo (if it's true).

Also from the comments, an excerpt from The Guardian's 'Corrections and Clarifications' column:

We misspelled the word misspelled twice, as mispelled, in the Corrections and clarifications column on September 26, page 30.

And lastly, here's one that's been doing the rounds on Twitter (see larger version here):

I love that they printed and distributed the leaflet without realising...

My Body Pal

2011-09-26T00:38:00.003+01:00

I've lost another pound, and next week I'm aiming to be in the "8 stone something" bracket! I can't wait. I have a massive bag of size 8 clothes (that's size 4 if you're in the US) which I'm really looking forward to getting back into. I think it's going to take until the end of the year to reach my target weight of 8 stone though.

I've found two things helpful for weight loss in the past week. The first is a free iPhone app called My Fitness Pal, where you can list everything you're eating, track your weight and see the exact number of calories/fat/protein/carbs etc you've consumed. (If you're in the US, the app Fit Day does the same with US ingredients.) If you're completely honest about listing your food intake, you might find - as I did - that you're eating a bit more than you need to, and with this app it's easy to adjust your diet accordingly.

The other interesting thing I discovered was a site called MyBodyGallery.com. Unfortunately, when I went there this morning it appeared to have been hacked, but in its unhacked state it's basically a reassuring collection of photos. You input your height and weight, and it comes up with pictures of real women whose bodies fall into the same category. I put in '120lbs' and '5'2"', and was surprised to see that the women in the photos didn't look remotely overweight. I think it's hard to be subjective about your own weight, so this made me feel a lot better.

I barely worried about my weight at all for the first 30 years of my life, so it's odd focusing on it like this. But when I weighed over 11 stone (as I did after Lily was born) I found it hard to breathe, let alone walk around easily. Being lighter means I have far more energy - which I need to carry this little thing around:

Putting The Trim In Trimester

2011-09-19T13:03:00.004+01:00

Lily is almost five months old. I was looking back through the stuff I wrote while I was pregnant, and found the following...

A PIZZA MY MIND

I am now 20 weeks pregnant, and feel like holding up a sign saying “Welcome to Blimpville – population one and a bit”. I used to prod my boyfriend’s beer belly and joke about him being the pregnant one, but while I no longer put the “trim” in “trimester”, he no longer puts the “fat” in “fatherhood”. Perhaps unsettled by my jibes, he now plays football twice a week; I just look like I’ve shoved one up my top.

I don’t know any other pregnant women in real life, so might not be too alarmed by my fatness had I not seen the pregnant supermodel Miranda Kerr on the telly. She was ready to drop and looked impossibly svelte, as though she’d tucked the tiniest hot water bottle under her dress. Worse, while my face is riddled with pregnancy acne and looks like I’m holding a mouthful of Maltesers, hers embodies the glowing radiance of pregnancy advertorials. Frankly, I rather doubt that she’s pregnant at all.

Now, I know comparing oneself to celebrities is pointless. I console myself with the fact that Miranda probably can’t turn out whimsical 750-word columns in an hour (especially not columns about not looking like Miranda Kerr). She probably chews lettuce crossly, wishing it were pizza.

Though I’d swap my columns and junk food to be a fresh-faced slender sex symbol, no one’s going to cut me that kind of deal. I will remain a slightly rotund, 5’2” visibly pregnant non-supermodel – and the best I can hope for is that, after the birth, someone buys me the inevitable post-pregnancy Miranda Kerr Workout Video.

Season Of Mellow Fruitfulness

2011-09-12T09:53:00.002+01:00

Lately, I have been buying a lot of fruit, which has reminded me of being pregnant. In the world of pregnancy websites, people were obsessed with fruit. “At seven weeks, your baby is as big as a blueberry!” they would gush. “In week twelve, your baby is as big as a plum. At fifteen weeks, your baby is the size of an apple.”

I felt like saying, “What kind of apple? One of those shrivelled Cox pippins from a malformed garden tree, or a huge Tesco’s Finest golden delicious?” But no specifics were forthcoming. It’s almost as though they didn’t care what kind of apple was growing inside me.

The process of giving birth was also fruitified. “It’s like shitting a melon”, mothers would warn eloquently, or alternatively, “it’s like pushing a watermelon through a lemon”. Unaware that I would end up having a caesarean, I was faintly terrified, thinking about the probable state of said lemon afterwards. After childbirth, was I still going to be able to make lemon meringue pie, or would the lemon be fit only for recycling?

Most fruit is conveniently spherical for baby-sizing, and it also fits into the “eating healthily” ethos of pregnancy sites. Unfortunately, all my cravings were for chocolate. It would be more accurate if they'd said, “At seven weeks, your baby is as big as a Malteser! At fifteen weeks, your baby is the size of a Wagon Wheel.”

If I'd only stuck to fruit and eschewed chocolate, I wouldn't have to be posting up weekly pictures of scales now. Still, I've lost 11.4 lbs since I started back in August. Only another 16.4 lbs to go...

Lily The Pink

2011-09-05T12:19:00.001+01:00

My baby daughter can now hold her own feet:

A skill which is delightful, if not particularly useful.

Another fact about Lily: she was due on Adolf Hitler’s birthday. I Googled “April 20th birthdays” and was relieved to find that Luther Vandross and Carmen Electra also shared this birthdate, and that both had yet to espouse an ambition of building a Reich which lasted 1000 years.

We found out Lily's gender at 21 weeks gestation, when our Hungarian sonographer informed us, "It is lady." So then we could start choosing names. We quickly ruled out Adolf, but took longer to decide on contenders.

“Why don’t we call her April?” I asked. “That’s pretty.”

“Yeah, pretty ridiculous,” my boyfriend said. “What if she’s premature – are we going to call her March?”

For inspiration, I downloaded a free iPhone app called “Baby Names”. It didn’t feature Adolf, April or Ariane, but did contain dubious endorsements such as “I love this it help me find a name for 3 kids”.

There were 50,000 names to choose from, including lots of weird ones. Jaxon? Piper? Trinity? I didn’t want to have to explain to little Chase or Serenity that I picked their name from a free computer program.

Next time I went to the doctor, he spun a calendar wheel and murmured “April 20th”.

“That’s Hitler’s birthday,” I informed him.

“Oh well,” he soothed, “only four per cent of babies are born on their due date.”

In the event, ours turned up five days late. We wanted to call her something sweet and classic, and came up with Lily.

However, a few weeks ago, the Office for National Statistics announced that Lily (if you count misspelt 'Lilly's) is now this year's most popular name. Her class will no doubt be full of Lilys.

We would never have had this problem with Adolf.

[PS Sorry for forgetting to enable comments last time. They're enabled now.]

Simply The Breast

2011-08-29T14:49:00.009+01:00

Apparently, only around 1% of British women are still exclusively breastfeeding when their baby is six months old. I can see why: I was keen to breastfeed, but my nipples put up one hell of a fight. They wept, they cracked, they bled, and at every turn there was an insistent midwife pushing my daughter's head back down onto them. “You have to get the whole of the nipple in her mouth!” she would snap, seemingly unaware that my post-pregnancy nipples were the size of tennis balls after being thwacked by Roger Federer. (The tennis balls. As far as I know, Roger Federer has not been near my nipples.)

Swayed by claims that my daughter would be thick or worse if I switched to formula, I persisted with the nipple torture. (Tip for new mothers: when they tell you “If breastfeeding hurts, you're doing it wrong,” they're lying to get you to stick with it. It also hurts when you're doing it right.) Determined to prevail, I bought a breast pump, a painless and weird-looking machine which caused milk to spray from my udders like a human cow, but was a palaver to use; I tried nipple shields, tiny silicone Mexican hats which seemed to get between my baby and the milk. Finally, cursing, I put her back on my bare nipple, and after two weeks the pain ebbed.

Having stumbled over the first hurdle, I then crashed into the second: apparently, the general public don't share midwives' passion for breastfeeding. I haven't yet been ordered to leave a coffee shop for exposing a bare boob, but I have been stared at and frowned at, which is almost worse, as you can't argue back, much less take frowners and starers to court. Even my boyfriend isn't keen on me breastfeeding in public; he has a penchant for draping my décolletage in blankets while hissing mumbled sentences containing the word “discretion”. In the absence of a blanket, he once tried to dress my nursing breast with my hair, causing me to demand, “Would you like hair in your food?”

When meeting a male friend in a cafe a few weeks ago, I began to breastfeed, only for him to blurt, “I don't know where to look!” He then laughed: “The first time I met you, you also took your top off!” I racked my brains for the offending incident, then recalled that on that day in summer 2008, a wasp had been buzzing round me, attracted to my brightly-coloured t-shirt, which I had then decided to jettison. If the only time you disrobe is in the presence of a threatening insect or to feed your child, I'm not sure that fits the dictionary definition of “exhibitionist”.

Still, I was certain that breastfeeding was the easiest way to get a spare seat next to me on the bus. That is, until one day last week, when a middle-aged man decided to sit down in the spare seat and leer down my top, staring as my baby suckled. “He looks like he's enjoying himself!” he cackled creepily. (Subtext: “Not as much as I am”.)

Perhaps blankets do have their place...

[PS Yet another set of scales this week! These read "60kg", which is 9st 6lbs/132lbs exactly.]

Dieting, Crying And Poo

2011-08-21T15:31:00.002+01:00

And so I shrink further, while simultaneously making desserts I can't eat:

It's like buying an audiobook when you've got no ears.

This week I finished the only book that has ever made me cry. It's called The Hand That First Held Mine, and is about motherhood, love and loss. It intertwines two stories - one present, one based in 1950s bohemia - and, while I found the strand set in the past thoroughly compelling, the present-day thread left me cold until the very end, when it clicked into place. I'd definitely recommend it if you need to cry anytime soon.

Talking of crying, Lily's first tooth is currently coming through, so I went to the pharmacy to buy a teething ring.

Me: I'd like a teething ring please, for a four-month-old.

Eastern European sales assistant: It has poo on it?

Me (confused): I'm sorry?

Sales assistant: You want poo on it?

Me: Er, I'm not sure...

SALES ASSISTANT FETCHES RING. POINTS AT PICTURE OF WINNIE THE POOH ON THE FRONT.

Sales assistant: Has Pooh on it!

Me (relieved): Ah, good, I like Pooh!

I'm not sure what anyone overhearing that conversation would have thought.

And Now, A Brief Interlude For Some Recipes

2011-08-14T20:46:00.001+01:00

During the past three weeks of blogging, I have learnt the following things:

(a) I am not aesthetically pleased by my big toes.

(b) Nail varnish will gradually start to chip if you don't replace it.

(c) Vanity is folly.

(d) Nevertheless, making a new website using pre-pregnancy photos is a good motivator.

(d) Losing weight is not that hard if you stop eating.

(e) Especially if you don't eat cakes like this one, which I made this week:

(The recipe for which is here. I didn't add the chocolate curls on top.)

(f) The commenters on this blog are very kind, funny and supportive people, despite my erratic posting record and current obsession with weight.

(g) Necessity being the mother of invention, I am now the proud inventor of a delicious vegan chocolate milkshake. It's very healthy, yet ridiculously easy to make.

For this, you will need to visit your local Whole Foods and purchase the following ingredients:

Unsweetened soya milk (promise you can't taste it) - one glassful
Agave nectar (like honey, but tastier and healthier) - three tablespoons
Raw cacao powder - four heaped tablespoons

Chuck all these ingredients into a blender, blend for five seconds, pour into a glass, then exclaim, "Bugger me, Ariane was right - this was worth spending an extortionate amount on fancy ingredients for!"

I've been using it as a kind of vegan meal-replacement Slimfast. And it works just as well if you substitute strawberries for the chocolate.

Just don't substitute banana. You don't want to end up like James.

There Is Now Less Of Me

2011-08-08T10:45:00.001+01:00

And so my personal Be Less Fat juggernaut rumbles on, with 9st 11lbs daubed along the side.* Yes: to my delight, in the past week, I've lost over two pounds! Thanks to the advice of a very kind man called Dave (@tartovski if you're on Twitter), I have changed my diet so that I'm eating little and often, rather than filling the hole in my face thrice daily, and voila! I am looking progressively less like a food-addicted hippo.

*NB I had to Photoshop a bit out of the middle of the photo as you could see my, ahem, unclad reflection - but the display is correct.

But never fear - this blog isn't going to be solely about my dwindling frame. Two weeks ago I asked you to critique the first chapter of my book; most of you were very kind, but you had a few questions, one of which was "What on earth is so wrong with James? So what if he smells like banana?"

To which I reply: James's banana smell is not the only unappealing thing about him. So below, I've posted another extract from later in the book, detailing how Anna and James met.

My question is: from this extract, (a) can you see why Anna went out with him, and (b) can you see why she might not want to be with him? (It's a tricky one, so I'd really appreciate your thoughts. Thanks in advance.)

CHAPTER 4

James and I met at Zifex, back when he worked in the IT department. I had never noticed him before he shambled up to my desk one day and asked in a strong Northern accent, “Would you like a cup of tea?”

I quickly closed down Facebook’s “Which West Wing character are YOU?” quiz, just in case he was someone with influence over my salary, and blurted, “Er, yeah, that’d be nice.”

When he returned with the tea, I decided he probably wasn’t one of the bosses, not least because he was wearing a stained black t-shirt featuring the slogan:

WHILE YOU ARE READING THIS I AM STARING AT YOUR TITS

I had always wondered what kind of person wore anti-social t-shirts. Now I’m going out with them.

“Nice t-shirt,” I said.

“Thanks,” he replied earnestly, my sarcasm whooshing over his head.

Then, just in case I might want one, he added, “I got it down Camden Market.”

After that momentous conversation, James would bring me a cup of tea each day and loiter by my desk. Over this period, he wore the t-shirts:

I’VE LOST MY VIRGINITY, CAN I HAVE YOURS?

and

YOU’RE NOT DRUNK, I REALLY AM THIS GOOD LOOKING

James isn’t bad-looking, just nondescript. He’d make a great criminal, because no one would ever be able to pick him out in an identity parade. You can picture a policeman’s spirits dropping as he took down James’s description: “The suspect was a white male, five foot nine inches tall, early thirties with brown hair and grey eyes, no distinguishing features.” Even I have trouble spotting him from a distance.

Luckily for the police force, James could never be a criminal. He doesn’t need a life of vice and subterfuge to be happy, just a cup of tea and a t-shirt emblazoned with MY BODY IS NOT A TEMPLE, IT’S AN AMUSEMENT PARK. When I first met him, I found it endearing, the way he let the world turn and didn’t ask much from it. Two and a half years on, I’m not entirely sure where that feeling went.

Soon after his tea-making courtship ritual began, James informed me that he was leaving Zifex to work at Omigron, another ISP. I remember feeling a twinge of sadness, though that could have been because he made really good tea. As I teased him about being a traitor, he asked suddenly, “Will you go out for a drink with me?”

“What, to say goodbye?” I asked, surprised.

“No,” he replied softly, “because I think you’re amazing.”

No one had ever said anything like that to me before. The idea that someone might think I was amazing was unfathomable, and also thrilling. I knew it might have been a chat-up line, but James sounded sincere, and had also gone bright red. I was 28, had been single for ages, and was lonely.

“Okay,” I agreed.

He took me to Wetherspoon’s, which admittedly isn’t the kind of place you take someone you think is amazing – I wouldn’t take Nelson Mandela there – but it was nearby, and James probably didn’t realise that it wasn’t the ideal first date venue.

As I recall, his t-shirt that day said:

THIS SHIRT WOULD LOOK GREAT ON YOUR BEDROOM FLOOR

We sat at a slightly wet table full of beer mats, and talked about work.

“Did you always want to be a computer programmer?” I asked James.

“Dunno,” he shrugged. “I always liked computers, and it came easy to me. Did you always want to work in customer services?”

I shook my head. “Advertising. I wanted to write catchy lines which stick in your head. Hopefully they’ll let me do that soon.”

James looked as doubtful as I felt.

Then he said, “I’d rather reassure people than write ‘Have a great Zifexperience’. ‘Cos that’s what you’re doing all day – being nice to people.”

I’d never thought of it that way before. And haven’t since, come to think of it. James’s lack of cynicism was refreshing, but I couldn’t quite let go of my own.

“Really, I’m trying to stop them from suing us or going elsewhere,” I pointed out. “If I had their interests at heart, I’d write, ‘Why not switch to Omigron?’”

James frowned. “But then you’d get sacked.”

I slurped my vodka and orange, and thought how ironic it was, two ISP employees having no connection. “Well, that’s why I don’t.”

We sat in awkward silence, while I briefly wondered what the shortest length of time I could stay there was. Would it be rude to leave after half an hour? Forty-five minutes? Maybe I could go to the toilet, text Lucy and get her to call me so I could use the old “my Grandma’s sick, I have to rush to her bedside” chestnut?

Then I remembered there was nothing for me to go home to, except some manky plates in the sink and an old West Wing DVD. I decided to make more of an effort.

“So is this new job the start of world domination for you?” I asked.

“Oh no no, nothing like that,” James said hastily, taking me seriously as usual and looking faintly embarrassed. “It just means working on more interesting projects. Do you want world domination then?”

No, just an interesting conversation. “I’d settle for England,” I said.

“I can’t give you that,” he replied, “but I can buy you dinner if you’d like?”

I couldn’t think of a good enough reason not to. “That would be lovely,” I answered.

And James obligingly shoved across a Wetherspoon’s menu.

*

That’s how it started. Maybe that’s how it should have ended, too, but [my best friend] Lucy was adamant I’d be making a mistake.

“You’re always telling me blokes don’t ask you out,” she pointed out, “and now one has, you’re rejecting him. Why not give him a chance?”

And so I did.

9st 13lbs And Counting...

2011-08-01T11:37:00.001+01:00

During my pregnancy, I shovelled down supermarket aislefuls of pizza and chocolate, and put on a whopping five stone. In just nine months, I went from a svelte 7st 7lbs to a hefty 12 stone 7lbs (that's 105lbs to 175lbs if you're American) - which, dear reader, did not fill me with joy.

A couple of nights before I was due to drop, my boyfriend and I watched a documentary called World's Fattest Man, about a British man called Paul Mason who weighed 56 stone (784lbs).

"You'd better watch out and stop eating chocolate," my boyfriend said helpfully, "otherwise that'll be you soon."

I took this opportunity to knee him in the balls. Nonetheless, I felt a bit perturbed - after all, Paul Mason was once just five stone overweight, and probably didn't imagine he'd put on another 51. In addition, I'm only 5'2" tall, so any extra weight looks huge on me. What if my boyfriend was right?

"Cut yourself some slack," my friends urged. "You're pregnant - you're meant to put on weight! When you breastfeed, the pounds will drop off."

Yes, it's true that I've lost some weight, mainly because I'm no longer carrying a 8lb baby. (She's definitely worth the weight gain. Here she is again:)

However: three months after giving birth, despite squirting out milk like a human cow, I still weigh nearly ten stone. According to this NHS BMI calculator, this means I am overweight, "which increases the risk of becoming ill with problems such as high blood pressure, heart disease and cancer". What fun!

So I have decided to set a goal: to get back down to 8 stone by October 25th, when Lily will be exactly six months old. I'm going to do this in three ways:

(1) By chucking less food down my gullet

Like most human beings, I love food, especially chocolate and pizza. However, for the next three months, I am going to imagine that chocolate is poo, and that pizza is a faceful of pus-riddled spots. This is because I am 12 years old.

(2) By trying to be Tracy Anderson

Behold Tracy Anderson. She doesn't look like she sits in bed playing internet backgammon while checking her eBay listings, does she? (The answer is no. No, she doesn't. She looks like she gets up at 5am, slicks on her £35 lip gloss and goes for an Ayurvedic run with Gwyneth Paltrow.)

For Trace is a Californian personal trainer. Short of dyeing my hair, wearing tinted contacts and doing a Michael Jackson on my skin, I am never going to look like her. However, I am going to do her post-pregnancy workout even if it kills me. (Which, quite seriously, it might.)

(3) By shaming myself into it

Each week, I am going to weigh myself then take a picture of the display on my digital scales and post it up here, as above. (I am shit at Photoshop, so this will be my real weight.) Granted, I will be weighing myself first thing in the morning in my undies, but wouldn't you?

So, wish me luck on my weight-loss odyssey. If this doesn't work, nothing will. Except perhaps a gastric band.

"I'm Not In Love" Chapter 1

2011-07-25T13:50:00.003+01:00

Hello again! I'm really sorry I haven't posted here or written any Guardian columns for ages, but I've been taking time off to have a baby. This one, to be precise:

While I was pregnant, I wrote 60 pages of a novel - and it would be great if I could run the first chapter by you and get your views on it. It's only three pages long, so should only take you five minutes to read.

You can be completely honest (even anonymous, if that's easier). It would be brilliant if you could leave a comment below - and I've also set up a poll in the top right-hand corner of this page, if you're not the comment-leaving type.

Quick note: this was written when Bin Laden was still alive, hence the Bin Laden jokes. (If you can think of an alternative cave-dweller, do let me know.)

Looking forward to your thoughts. Here goes....

I'M NOT IN LOVE

CHAPTER 1

Dear Mr Whitton,

Thank you for your letter dated 25th March, in which you stated that our customer service technicians “displayed all the competence and skill of a particularly slow four-year-old”. We regret to inform you that your claim for compensation has been rejected, because you have a fat bum and smell of wee.

Yours sincerely,

Anna Higgins
Customer Services
Zifex Communications Ltd.

Sadly, I can’t send this to Mr Whitton, because I need to keep my job. Still, if I ever win the lottery and quit, I’ll post it along with all the other letters in the ‘spoof’ file. In the meantime, I’ll write Mr W a grovelling apology and credit his account, because that is what I do.

When I first arrived at Zifex, the internet service provider that sounds like a cold sore cream, I was under the illusion that I was going to be writing advertising copy and catchy straplines like the current one: “Have a great Zifexperience!” On my first day, they explained that I could start by writing customer communications and work my way up.

Three years later, it’s fair to say I’m not having a great Zifexperience.

I’ve never written a letter of complaint myself, though sometimes I’d like to. I’m not quite sure who I’d address it to, but it might go like this:

Dear Life,

I’d like to express my disappointment at you so far. Despite my best efforts, I am now 31 and stuck in a more depressing job than Osama Bin Laden’s beard cleaner. (Do you happen to know if that position’s available? I imagine the weather’s nicer, though perhaps there’s not much sunlight in the cave.) Worse, I’m trapped in a lacklustre relationship with a man who smells like banana, while being hopelessly in love with another man who is about to get married. Can you fix this for me please before I give up on you?

Yours,

Anna Higgins

PS You could have given me a more glamorous name, too. I’d settle for being Tia LaFontaine, or similar.

The trouble is, I already know what life would reply:

Dear Anna,

Thank you for your letter, in which you detail your trifling woes. May I remind you that, unlike many people, you are healthy, and, providing you don’t accidentally step in front of a truck tomorrow at 8.23am, you have over 50 years left to live? In addition, there are worse smells than banana, your boyfriend loves you, and how do you know you’d be happier with this other man? You barely know him; he might have a two-inch penis and talk during films.

Yours sincerely,

Life

PS I’m afraid the much-coveted role of Osama Bin Laden’s Beard Cleaner is indeed taken, and would in any case require relocation to the remotest mountain in Pakistan. I understand the mobile phone reception there is terrible.

PPS You can change your name by deed poll, although frankly, Tia LaFontaine doesn’t suit you.

And, of course, Life would be right. But somehow, that doesn’t make living it
any easier. At the moment, I feel as though I’m on autopilot, and that each day goes much like this:

6.30am: Wake from dream where I’m going out with Eric (yes, I know it’s a stupid name, but it never held Cantona back). Realise I’m not going out with Eric, and that the stupidness of his name doesn’t detract from his appeal. Sigh as my boyfriend James snores loudly in my face.

6.45am: Try to extricate myself from James and bedclothes without waking him. I get dressed and brush my teeth in the dark, which means the laundry basket is always full of clothes covered in toothpaste.

7am: Either eat muesli and wish I were eating Coco Pops, or eat Coco Pops and berate myself for not eating muesli.

7.15am – 8.55am: Leave the flat, usually with cereal in my hair and fluff on my coat. I’m always suspicious of the pristine-looking women around me. Do they spend their spare time having fully-clothed sex with a lint roller? Do they have steel feet which can withstand any amount of walking in stilettos? Are all their clothes brand new? Next to them, I’m hyper-conscious of my undyed mousy hair, flat shoes and make-up-free face. I feel like a moth walking next to a cloud of butterflies.

Walk-bus-train-bus-walk. That is my commute each way to Hockney Park, a “business complex close to Heathrow Airport, featuring transport links to central London” (I know, it makes my pulse race too). Each day, as I near the giant glass building, I remind myself “at least I have a job. Some people have to eat out of bins”.

8.55am: Enter the office and clock the pile of customer complaint letters sitting on my desk. Eating out of bins suddenly seems appealing.

9am – 5.30pm: I can’t really admit it to the customers, but there’s a reason we receive so many complaints: it’s because Zifex is rubbish, and that’s on a good day. Our servers go down more than [insert name of nymphomaniac celebrity], and we charge premium rate for tech support calls, which is why so many customers resort to emails and letters. Lately, our staff have been called “a bunch of fisting spaffmonkeys”, “a lamentable herd of illiterate, socially challenged buffoons” and “a load of workshy, snivelling misers whose sphincters have expanded to accommodate their heads”.

Most of the letters aren’t as well-written or accurately-punctuated as this, but unfortunately this doesn’t mean they aren’t true. I spend approximately half my time answering them; as my computer screen faces away from my boss, the other half is spent on spoof replies, Facebook, Twitter, and applying for jobs where I probably wouldn’t be able to spend half the time messing around.

5.30pm – 7.10pm: I am allowed to return home to the man who smells like banana.

Today, James hugs me straight after I walk through the door. His arms are strong and warm, and I think: maybe I wouldn’t be happier with anyone else. I have a man who loves me, and that’s more than most people have. So what if I don’t feel excited about our relationship? Maybe long-term relationships aren’t exciting.

“Liverpool won,” he breathes into my ear.

I tell myself my happiness should not be tempered by the fact that this is clearly a jubilant football-winning hug as well as a loving one. I am lucky, and I should be thankful. Even if I can smell rotting fruit.

You Must Be Joking

2010-04-12T14:36:00.000+01:00

I love Twitter, and not because I do a show about it (I don't, not any more). It's because it's full of friendly people and feels like a genuine community. Yesterday I asked a question about syntax, and within seconds I'd received dozens of helpful answers. Today I asked for people's favourite jokes, and here are the ones (some old, some offbeat) which made me laugh the most:

@StuartSJones: Did you hear about the guy who was run over by a steam train? He was chuffed to bits!

@matbird: What is Amy Winehouse's favourite tube station? High Barnet!

@Monkiimagic: Why are Pirates called Pirates?..... because they Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrghh

@jamesjml: 'Doctor, I can't stop singing Delilah'. "That sounds like Tom Jones syndrome." 'Is it common?' "It's not unusual."

@stefanoborini: so there's a little mouse that sees a bat. Runs back to its mommy: "mommy mommy, I've seen an angel".

@brfuk: So, a new zoo has opened up in town. Paid it a quick visit, disappointing! They only had one animal. It was a shitzu.

@biteshard: Did you hear about the award winning scarecrow? He was outstanding in his field.

@benparkatBJS: How do you make a snooker table laugh? Put your hands in its pockets and tickle its balls.

@BoforsGun: "Two elephants fall off a cliff, boom boom!"

@BigDaveSB: Who's the coolest guy in a hospital? The ultrasound guy. And when's he's on holiday? Well, then it's the hip replacement guy

@elainepixie: Two peanuts were walking down the street. One was a salted.

@thisismadeup: Q: how many psychotherapists does it take to change a lightbulb? A: It is the lightbulb that must change itself.

@LauraSwinton: (Scottish accent required) Three cows in a field, which one's on holiday? The one with the wee calf.

Physics jokes which I wish I got:

@maireadetoile: Heisenberg is pulled over by the police. "Do you know how fast you were going?" "No, but I know where I am."

@bellekitten: A physicist walks into an H-bar...

Lawyer jokes which I do get:

@WorldOfChris: Man to a lawyer: What are your rates? £100 for three questions. That's a lot isn't it? I don't think so, what's your third question?

@jtmahony: What do you call 500 lawyers on the moon? A good start

And lastly:

@daveaisling: So I went to the dentist. He said "Say Aaah." I said "Why?" He said "My dog's died.'"

Feel free to leave more in the comments...

GNews140 - Not Seven Scores Of Wildebeest

2010-03-01T17:21:00.005Z

I really like my new project. It's my first time presenting, and is a show on guardian.co.uk about Twitter, called GNews140:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/gnews140

I've been writing it with Graham, which is a lot of fun. Presenting is a new experience: I have been dubbed "an android having mated with Charlie Brooker" and "a dead-eyed ingenue". Which is interesting, as I really enjoy performing, and was just trying not to look cheesy. I thought that maybe, if I didn't smile too much, I wouldn't look like a children's TV presenter. But apparently I look like a reanimated corpse instead, which is much cooler. GNews140 can be the first show with an audience which predominantly comprises necrophiles.

To anyone who loves Twitter, reading tweets and writing jokes around them for a living sounds almost idyllic and childlike, like being a chocolate-taster or a games tester. And in the best moments, it is a bit like that, because I'm working on comedy with people I really like, for my favourite newspaper - but it's also seriously hard work and lots of it, because each show is only 140 seconds long and has to be as tight and punchy as possible. Filming is nervewracking, partly because I'm completely new to presenting, and also because I keep inadvertently writing tongue-twisting phrases (try saying "impressively prolific infidelity" fast three times!).

But hopefully you'll enjoy it, and it'll get stronger and better as we go on. (And my wardrobe will only get bluer - it's starting to look like a Tory wife's, which is disconcerting.) Please do let me know what you think of it (er, the video, not my wardrobe) - any tips on what you'd like to see/not see in the next show would be much appreciated.

Happy New Nothing

2010-02-03T12:38:00.007Z

Hello to over 100 people! (Not 'hello to people over 100' - I'm not sure anyone in this category signed up for updates, though if you did, then hello to you too and well done on being so technologically savvy/unarthritic.) To everyone else, thank you for signing up on the right of this sentence. It makes my small malfunctioning heart feel warm every time I see the number go up.

A very belated Happy New Year. If you made any New Year's resolutions, here's why you shouldn't have:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/01/new-years-resolutions1

and even though I did last year and it worked (a special prize to anyone who can remember what it was, given that I deleted the post) I maintain for some reason that my overall point is valid.

I currently have a small problem, which is that I write my best pieces when I'm troubled or discontented. At the moment I'm broadly happy, which means the wryness which stems from fury and general disconsolation just isn't there. I'm desperately grasping around for stuff to write about in my own life which won't make people reach for a bucket, but there doesn't seem to be any. (And, although this lack of inspiration is rather dispiriting in itself, it isn't dispiriting enough to inspire me, if that makes any sense.) Any tips on how to fix this ("Just slash your wrists, Ariane!") would be much appreciated.

In other news, I'm still writing Guardian columns, just finished a feature for the Independent on Sunday, and am currently working on a new show as a presenter, co-writing the script with my best friend Graham Nunn. I've never done any presenting before, and have been given advice by friends to "be more natural" and "exaggerate more". Surely I can't do both? Anyhow, I've been told a million times not to exaggerate...

Lastly, I'm a bit bored with talking about me. So can we talk about you instead please? What have you all been up to?

Bargain! Buy Now!

2009-06-17T14:46:00.007+01:00

Longtime readers of this blog will know that I have something for an eye for a bargain, an undeniably handy skill in a credit crunch. Take, for instance, this simple and fetchingly plimsoll-like pair of shoes, which my delightful friend Wily Catkins is hand-modelling here:

Once, they were a whopping £70 - now, they're reduced to a mere £85!

And if that isn't enough of a bargain for you, I've found you a special deal on face mask sachets at Superdrug - 97p for one, but if you buy two, you only have to pay £3.99!

Truly, I am the new Robert Peston.

In other news, I have written a new Guardian piece on lying (and that's no lie):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2009/may/31/lies-condoms-cigarettes-taxis

and also a Cif piece on a rather wry tale:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/15/antonio-castro-online-dating

However, I am considering giving up writing to become an expert on hot deals. Next week, I hope to bring you a brassiere slashed from £18 to £37. Now, that's what I call a bragain!

Fawlty Hours

2009-05-20T10:23:00.006+01:00

The weekend before last, I had to get up at 5am to sit on my leg and flap my arms around like an over-enthusiastic green bird. Well, I didn't have to, but for some reason this is what I ended up doing, while talking about my favourite sitcom. But I didn't realise this at the time, because I had adrenaline coursing through me.

That's because live telly is scary. I don't look nervous, but I was terrified. My brain kept saying, "Imagine how bad it would be if you did a huge burp. It will be replayed, and millions of people will watch the burp on YouTube. You will be forever known as Burp Girl, and for the rest of your life, when people meet you, they'll say, 'Oh, aren't you that girl who did that huge burp?!'"

Worse, you could accidentally swear, or say something hugely offensive, or start choking or coughing, or spontaneously be sick. I know this is very unlikely - in fact, I know these things aren't going to happen - but that doesn't stop me worrying about them. It's probably not very professional, but I wrote reassuring words between my fingers, like "stay calm" and "relax" and "breathe". (I didn't look at these words once, but it vaguely helped to know that they were there.)

After watching the clip, I also wrote a helpful checklist of Things To Remember While On TV:

(1) Do not slurp your water on-screen after each question like a thirsty buffalo
(2) Do not gesticulate like an agitated monkey pushing away an invisible banana
(3) Do not sit on your leg, unaware that everyone can see you sitting on your leg. If you must sit on something, make it your hands.

I think the more often you do something scary - whatever it is - the less scary it becomes, just because you realise you can do it (not particularly well, maybe, but you can) and that the thing you were most scared of probably hasn't happened. (Unless it has, in which case you're buggered.)

By the way, Toby and Charlie were ace, and the female presenter (Louise Minchin) is possibly the nicest person in the world (and that includes Nelson Mandela and the woman who called the paramedics after I was hit by a motorbike).

[This post isn't letting you leave comments, because it is evil - to leave one, please click on the post heading. Thank you.]

It's A Punderful Life

2009-04-29T12:34:00.002+01:00

I can't stop making puns. The affliction started when I wrote for Countdown for two years, and only got worse from there. It wasn't my fault - first I had to come up with a set of "alternative dictionary definitions":

affable: fifty per cent of a male cow
bigotry: the larger of two sturdy plants
category: your moggy after it's been in a fight
definite: the more hard-of-hearing of a pair of headlice

And now I've descended to this kind of level:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/apr/28/do-fish-feel-pain

Rendering myself truly punfit to be called a writer.

I'd like to change, I really would. I'd like to write poems instead (though some would say they're verse) but I don't have the rhyme. Still, to prove that I can produce punfree pieces, here's one I wrote a long time ago for Richard Whiteley:

I'm sorry to say that your ties
Do terrible things to my eyes
It's the colours I think
With the purple and pink
Of the set - on the whole, most unwise

Overall Dick you dress like a pro
With a sharp dapper suit for each show
But those things round your neck
Make me think "Flipping heck!
"Why did someone not say to him 'no'?!"

So: I can do without them, but it's not quite as pun. But does wordplay leave you pungry like the wolf, or do you think writers should be punished for resorting to it? I'd really like your opunion...

Request #2: All The Rest

2009-04-10T22:31:00.000+01:00

Here are the rest of the answers...

Ben: What do you need to be a good writer, aside from talent, luck, and a good idea or three?

Persistence. At the beginning, you'll get knocked back more than Mike Tyson's latest opponent, and you've just got to pick yourself up, shrug it off and keep at it. It's not always easy - as writing's such a personal thing, criticism of it often feels as though you're being told you're a rubbish person - but you're not, and the sooner you can get over that (ideally sooner than I did), the sooner you'll progress.

Bubalus: How about an article on cooking with pasta?

Make friends with a man called Al Dente. If your pasta's either crunchy or pureed, you might want to plough valiantly through it, but other people are going to be spitting it surreptitiously into tissues. Once you've got the texture right, pepper, olive oil and basil aren't to be forgotten (unless you don't like them, or have a memory like a sieve - in which case, you can use it to strain the pasta).

Stuart: Should someone put a lot of effort into meeting 'the one'? Or should they just wait for it to happen?

Most people and songs say the latter ("You can't hurry love"/"Love comes quickly") but those advisors and songwriters are probably already romantically ensconced. As anyone who's been single a while knows, if you don't try, you fail - that applies to love as much as anything. They're not particularly romantic, and I'm not on any, but online dating sites at least allow you to meet other single people, which has to be a start.

Willd: Explain how an economy works (or doesn't).

I think you may have me confused with Robert Fisk. Easily done, so I'll forgive you.

Jack: How about a "What the papers say" review/round-up type thing?

Ah, but Graham has already done this so much more effectively (well, the Mail at least).

TheGuero: you stated in your comments earlier that 85% of your readers are men. Interesting. Is this a reflection of your real world as well? Why or why not?

It is - firstly, because I am a man. But also, I think Derek's explanation is correct - many of the readers of this blog came here initially because of the campaign, and the majority of atheists are men (I'm not sure why).

Apologies for not writing about books, giant toasters, food labels, investigative journalism or nose plugs. Maybe one day I'll write a novel about a combination of the above.

Request #1: Writing. Is It Exciting?

2009-04-05T15:58:00.008+01:00

Thanks for all your suggestions for things to write about. Taking them in order, Ben asked:

I think I'd like to know more about writing for TV/newspapers... what the process is like.

TV and newspapers are hugely different. To start with, TV is sloooowww. If I commissioned you now to write a half-hour episode of a sitcom (which is not going to happen, as I have no commissioning powers whatsoever, but try to suspend your disbelief), it probably wouldn't air on TV for at least a year. During that year, you'd be asked to do several rewrites of the script (I think the average number of drafts is four) and go to lots of script meetings where you may or may not have to try not to fall asleep in a plate of biscuits.

Over this year, it's normal for your script to change quite a lot. Sometimes the overall storyline of the show will change, or the show will go over budget and you'll have to take out a scene, or a character will have to be written out or in (I once had to swap a mechanic for a stalker). If it's a sitcom, you'll go on set to watch the filming in case any changes need to be made, but if it's a kids' show you generally won't (I think this is because there are restrictions on the number of hours child actors can work, so they don't have time to alter lines). Filming can also be slow, with a lot of waiting around - there's a saying that every minute of television takes an hour to film.

Newspapers are the opposite, timewise - they have a giddily fast turn-around, often the same day. I enjoy this far more, as it's exciting, you get to cover many more subjects and you never have time to get bored with any one topic or angle. There's rarely time to do more than one draft of a piece, and there's also a lot more leeway re. the way you can write and the things you can write about. As a jobbing TV writer, you're constrained by the voices of the characters, restricted to dialogue, and often provided with a plot which you can't diverge from, whereas writing topical comment for papers gives you the sort of creative freedom I only dreamed about when I was working in TV. I'm lucky to have done both, but am much happier writing for newspapers.

I hope that was vaguely interesting, and that you haven't fallen asleep in a plate of biscuits.

Ideas, Secrets, and Biscuit Insults

2009-03-27T10:32:00.004Z

Hello. I have mostly been writing about biscuits and insults, though not necessarily together. (Thinking about it, maybe there should be a few biscuit insults: "Hob-nobhead" would be reasonable).

I'm also working on quite a large new project, which will hopefully be funny, and relatively gentle, and will contain plenty of jokes and may even be useful. But I can't tell you what it is yet, which is frustrating as I'm rubbish at keeping my own secrets. I find it easy to keep other people's, but when it comes to my own, I'm much like this:

Other person: "Tell me, tell me your secret!"

Me: "No! I shall never!"

Other person: "Oh, go on..."

Me: "Alright then."

The new project will keep me busy for the rest of the year (and has nothing at all to do with atheist advertising). It should be fun though, and gives me the opportunity to work with my friend Graham again, which is excellent.

In other news, I'd like to update this blog more often, but I'm not sure what you'd like to read, so I'd really like you to suggest some subjects for me to write about, just because I'm feeling miserably idea-free at present. Let me know your thoughts below, and I'll choose one to write about in each subsequent blog.

When It Comes To The Crunch

2009-03-13T11:01:00.001Z

Gloom! Doom! Gloom and doom. That's all I'm hearing at the moment re. the future. Nothing particularly physical or discernible is happening, but as Charlie Brooker puts it:

"There's an eerie calm in the air as we glide through what feels like a brief 'phoney war' period before the CREDIT CRUNCH (which from now on, according to official guidelines, must be capitalised each time it appears in print, just to make it even more frightening) . . . before the CREDIT CRUNCH starts to bite for real and your local park becomes a shantytown filled with dog-faced people in rags prostituting themselves for a thimbleful of water."

People are being laid off. Not people I know, mind you, but people other people know. Companies' revenues are dropping, they're unable to provide pay rises, newspapers and television are crumbling like dropped blueberry pies, and, as the very astute BenSix predicts, "All people'll be reading in the near future are redundancy slips."

David Mitchell writes in The Observer, "Television audiences are falling but not plummeting. Purely in terms of numbers, there's no need to panic. But they are plummeting among the young, who are deserting TV in favour of new media, and the advertisers and their money are following, leaving commercial broadcasters skint. Last week ITV announced job cuts and huge losses - it's unclear whether it will even remain a viable business in the long-term. Channel 4 is not much better off with a vast hole in its budget to fill. On the plus side, Five is also in trouble."

I have a writer friend called Andrew Mueller who is convinced that writing - whether for TV or print - is no longer going to be a viable career option in the next few years [edit: he meant writing anything worthwhile or interesting]. This, for me, is rather scary, as I can't do much else except make silly sentences. I can play the piano... oops, no, apparently the music industry's also shattering at the speed of a 100bpm record. I can organise things, but I have no proof of this (except for the bus campaign, and I don't think anything's going to need organising in a similar fashion).

But I can't work out whether there's cause for us writers to worry, or whether the news media are just fearmongering in order to sell papers. Any thoughts?

Sunshine On A Rainy Day

2009-02-27T08:40:00.005Z

The sun has got his hat on. Hip hip hip hooray! (What would the sun's hat look like? Would it be a sunhat? Why would he be protecting himself from himself?)

Anyhow, what I mean to say is: sunlight is filling the room where I'm typing this, and it's making me feel extraordinately happy. I don't know why a bit of yellow light can make me feel better, but it can, and very quickly too.

So I thought I'd make a list of all the other things which I (and perhaps you) don't notice much on an everyday basis, but which can make us feel alive and happy...

(1) Being well. When you are well, you don't wake up every day thinking "Fantastic! I'm still well!" You just get on with life. But when you're ill, you can't wait to be well again. And when you are, everything seems fresh and new.

(2) Sleeping. Not the actual 'asleep' bit - you don't notice that for necessary reasons - but the warm, relaxed, snug feeling in between sleep and waking. That bit where you're half-asleep and dreamy and enjoying the heated cocoon you've created while sleeping.

(3) Exchanging smiles with strangers in the street for no reason other than friendliness. Babies and kids too. Having someone say "good morning" to you if you pass each other early and are the only ones walking down a street.

(4) Showers and baths. Lathering soap bubbles, lying in bubble bath, feeling hot water on your skin. And feeling clean and smelling good afterwards, wrapped in a fluffy towel, with your hair all shiny and clean.

(5) Being outdoors, feeling cool air across your face and being able to smell grass and flowers. Knowing that soon it's going to be spring, then summer, where we can lie in a park, reading books, eating ice lollies and having a picnic.

Can anyone think of any others?

Another Thought For The Day

2009-02-18T04:48:00.001Z

Happy belated Valentine's. Did you get anything? Good for you. I didn't, but I'm putting that down to the fact that no one knows my address. Yes, that must be it.

To prepare myself for this day full of tumbleweed, I wrote a Guardian piece about the desolate wasteland that is February 14th, which you can read here.

I've also recorded another version of Thought For The Day, for a series of secular podcasts which are a joint venture between The Guardian and the Scottish Humanist Society. You can hear the podcast here (best use headphones if you're at work), view the "Thought"'s page on the Thought For The World website here, and read the transcript below.

Thought For The World

It’s likely that I don’t know you. I don’t know how old you are, or where you’re from; what your beliefs are, or how you voted in the last election. I don’t know whether you’re female or male, whether you’ve ever been in love, or whether you prefer peas or beans.

What I do know is that you’re lucky. Not because you’re listening to this; but because, if you are, it’s likely to mean that you’re free, and that you’re safe. If you can read this page, it means that you’re literate and have received some education. And if you’re listening in the UK, you also have access to clean running water, enough food to eat, and free medical treatment should you need it.

If we have all these things, it’s hard for us to fully grasp that hundreds of millions of people living in the world right now do not, and are suffering because of it. It’s much easier to turn off the news than to hear things which make us feel helpless and sad, such as the fact that in Zimbabwe, thousands of people are currently dying from starvation, cholera and Aids, due to the failure and neglect of Robert Mugabe’s government.

Lately, many people in the UK have been despairing of our own government. They are worried about the economy, about job security, about ID cards being introduced and freedom of speech being curtailed. They are right to stand up and try to protect our freedoms, which should never, ever be taken for granted.

However, whatever reservations we may have about the British government, the fact that we can speak out against them is a wonderful thing. Robert Mugabe and dozens of other regimes have imprisoned, tortured and killed those who spoke out against them. And while our current government didn’t win us these freedoms, and may not have been as determined in upholding them as many of us would have hoped, we are a very, very long way from losing our freedoms altogether, as so many people have.

In a world where our chances are largely predetermined by where we are born, those of us in the UK are lucky enough to live in a country with an average life expectancy of 79, while Zimbabwe’s is just 35 – the shortest in the world. We are lucky to be able to concern ourselves with issues of liberty, and not have to think about how we are going to feed our children today, or how long we have left to live. We are lucky to be able to believe what we like, and say what we like, as millions of people cannot. We should never forget that.

Thought For An Afternoon Weeks Ago

2009-02-05T17:28:00.011Z

Hello. I hope you're all well and happy. Thanks for coming back.

I've been a bit rubbish again, and I'm sorry. This blog is basically turning into one long string of apologies, half-explanations and inept rhymes. I don't want to deluge you with trivia, and blogging about the more interesting parts of my life at the moment with any degree of truth is a bit too surreal, but bear with me - I promise I'm writing new stuff for you to read, it's a lot funnier, and most of it isn't about my two favourite topics of atheism or buses.

Until I upload it, here's an interview I did for Credo, Independent on Sunday. Where are my arms? I am totally 'armless.

Secondly, here's a sympathetic piece on the campaign (see "Wednesday") from BBC World Service. Which was nice, and quite unexpected.

And lastly, here's the text of my Thought For The Afternoon, which was broadcast on Radio 4 on January 10, and which a few people have asked for (someone also kindly uploaded the broadcast - thank you). I hope you enjoy all these things - and I promise to write again soon.

Thought For The Afternoon

We live in a beautiful, fascinating and complex world, and we’re all trying to make sense of it as best we can. There are 6.7 billion of us living on this planet, belonging to hundreds of different belief systems. Most of us want to live peacefully, yet we also want to think that our own personal beliefs are the right ones. And if we are right, whatever we believe, that means millions or possibly billions of other people must be wrong.

As a world full of individuals, we are never all going to think the same way. What we can do is accept that we hold many different beliefs - and focus instead on what unites us as human beings, because we are truly similar in so many ways. We all want to feel loved, and to give love freely; we all want our children to be happy, healthy and safe, and for them to receive a good education. We all want to live long, enjoyable lives free from fear and pain. And we’re all muddling through life the best way we know how.

What’s important are not the beliefs we hold, but that we are free to hold them, and that we always express them peacefully. That we see all other people as individual human beings just like ourselves, who love and hurt and laugh and feel pain and hope. That we share our lives with people of different backgrounds; that we talk about all kinds of ideas calmly and openly; and that instead of letting our differences divide us, we let our similarities bring us together.

Britain is a wonderful country where people are free to believe in whatever they like, and that includes non-belief. Many people think humanists and atheists don’t believe in anything. This isn’t true. We may not believe in a God, but like most believers, we think we only have one life on this planet. Nobody knows for certain what happens after this, but we know that we only have a very short time to experience all the excitement, adventure, love, fun, humanity and kindness available to us. We’re lucky to be alive - and to live life to the full, we need to share it with others and learn from them - whatever you, or I, believe.

My Sixteenth Apology

2009-01-23T13:40:00.000Z

If you've been waiting
For my slack updating
I'm sorry I've left it so long
My regular writing
Has been less exciting
With this big campaign going on

If you feel neglected
Abandoned, rejected
Then this is a poem for you
To say "Yes life's manic
My workload's titanic
But I want to blog - oh, I do!"

I know I'm no poet
(Okay: I don't know it)
But I like to ramble in verse
Perhaps I should stop it
Before you say "Hop it!
"This blog post can only get worse!

"Sherine, you're no Motion!"
But here, in devotion
And swiftly, before I depart
I'd like to reassure you:
I'd never ignore you.
I'll return soon with more works of art.

Weird And Wonderful

2009-01-14T13:08:00.008Z

Thanks for sticking with this blog even when I don't update much. I'm very grateful. To paraphrase Vic Reeves: "I'm so busy, my head is spinning/Like a whirlpool, it never ends/And it's adverts making it spin..."

It's truly surreal right now - the oddest thing has been a journalist from the Daily Telegraph quoting this blog entry for his Atheist Bus Campaign story - and a newspaper in the UAE then syndicating and reprinting it! It's making me slightly scared to write or say anything, but you can't live like that or you'd go loop-the-loop. If Mug Monster has reached the UAE, so be it.

Things are slightly more excitable than is normal. Many more people now know about the campaign, due to the international press coverage, and most of them are friendly, which is a relief. I've received 2000 emails in the past week, and I'm truly sorry if you've written to me and I haven't replied. The easiest way to keep up with me right now is on Twitter (http://twitter.com/ArianeSherine).

Thanks for all your support, and I'll write here again soon. In the meantime, here's my best friend Graham's excellent video of the Atheist Bus Campaign launch. I hope you enjoy it.

A Year Not In The Merde

2008-12-16T23:17:00.006Z

This time last year, everything in my life was topsy-turvy. I'd decided, after working on My Family, that I didn't want to write for TV any more - which was a bit unfortunate, as I didn't have much experience of anything else.

I made a very short list of possible new careers:

(a) nutritionist (I vowed to refuse to look in any toilets)
(b) interior designer (ditto)

I was vaguely interested in both, but not interested enough in either, so it was all very confusing. On the plus side, I'd just started an exciting new relationship, so felt very hopeful for the future, but my career seemed to be, erm, in the toilet.

I kicked off 2008 with an interview for a job as an ad agency copywriter. I didn't get it, and was gutted. At that stage, if anyone had told me I'd have been heading up a national ad campaign by the end of the year, I'd have laughed all over their clothes. I also lost my remaining TV commissions, and started looking more seriously into design and nutrition.

Then, in February, I bumped into a friend who I rarely saw, and he mentioned in passing that The Guardian were looking for someone to write lighthearted pieces for their Comment & Debate section. If I wrote a test piece, he told me, and he liked it, he'd send it in. I remember feeling very excited, and grilling him: how many words did it have to be? What did he think of this idea, and this one, and this one?

I'd longed to write for The Guardian since I was young, but while I'd started out in journalism, I'd slid down the TV route and never thought I could get back on track. I went straight home and started writing. Funnily enough, the first words of the (never printed) article were "I'm an atheist"...

Three days later, I sent my friend the piece, thinking he'd go "What the hell is this rubbish?!" But within an hour, he'd sent it to The Guardian, and they'd sent me an email asking for pitches. I was elated, and also very nervous. A day later, on Valentine's Day, I was given my first commission (and stayed up all night writing it, because I'm romantic like that); two days later, my first piece was printed in the paper.

Ten months and 28 columns later, I'm truly happy - much, much happier than I ever was working in TV. The exciting relationship I was in folded back in the summer, but it wasn't meant to be - much like my becoming a nutritionist or interior designer. It's odd to think how much has changed in a year - I thought this would be the year where I wrote nothing at all. I'm glad it wasn't.

I Am A Man

2008-12-10T15:22:00.006Z

Yes, it's true. I've long suspected it - the comedy writing (92% male-dominated), the atheism (over 70% male-dominated), the Sudoku and chess (not sure actually, but fairly high). But today it was confirmed, when I tried to play backgammon online and found the following line on my profile:

"Ariane has not finished 0 of his 50 previous games"

What further proof could any of us need? I am clearly a man!

Completely unrelatedly, I was listening to Nelly Furtado's Loose today (best tracks: Say It Right, Promiscuous, All Good Things and Let My Hair Down) and noticed, from the cover, that she has her mouth slightly ajar in every photo:

Maybe you notice (and do) pointless things when you're slightly ill and delirious, but I decided to test my hypothesis (as men do) that this was the case with most Nelly photos, rather than being an anomaly - and lo and behold, I was right!

Mind you, for the first 16 years of my life, I was continually told to shut my mouth; either because I was eating with it open, or because I was talking. Maybe Nelly didn't have that luxury.

Small Change

2008-12-01T19:07:00.006Z

I am quite small. Not as small as my Nan (4'8", makes a great chin-rest) or my mother (4'11", wears kids' clothes). I'm 5'2", I think, or 157cm. And last week I thought about this twice.

First, I saw a female comic on stage and thought, "Blimey, she's tiny! Really small. It must be quite odd being that small". Then later, I met her and realised we were the same height. It started me wondering whether people were surprised at my smallness.

Next, I bought some weighing scales. Not just any weighing scales, though: these did everything except answer the door, and you could probably program them to do that, though the person at the door might be a bit disconcerted. They told you your muscle mass, water content, body fat and BMI - but they didn't tell you what these amounts meant.

So I had to Google up charts for all these categories, entering my height and weight to see if I was healthy. And, in the process, I discovered that I am the height of your average 13-year-old. Yes, 13-year-old. I am, literally, 13 Going On 30. I'm not a grown-up, I'm a grown-not-enough.

Lastly, the scales featured a button with a bone on it, and I asked my friend what this was for.

"Oh," he said airily, "that's for weighing your dog".

I believed him until I read the instruction page called "measuring your bone density".

Bits And Pieces

2008-11-30T01:35:00.004Z

Hello. I do hope you're enjoying your weekend. Here's my latest article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/30/italy-parents

I'm afraid this is turning into my "I have written an article" blog, which is not very interesting for anyone, is it? Especially as I write articles relatively often. It's not like you're going to go "Gadzooks! An article? By Ariane? How quaintly novel!" (Before anyone else says it, a novel would be quaintly novel, but let's not dwell on my inadequacies today...)

So yes, we've all been here before. And again. And I repeat myself. If you truly wanted to know each time I wrote an article, you could sign up to the RSS feed and be done with it.

But I think I like to tell you, because the articles are the brightest bits of my life, like the lights in a shop window even when the store is shut and empty.

BO Selecta

2008-11-24T16:16:00.005Z

Further to the dubious title of this piece (which sounds like an order) , my article in The Guardian today is called "Give It To Me Straight":

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/24/bo-honesty-ban-ki-moon

Still, that title's really nothing compared to this...

I liked today's article, but lots of people didn't. Those people are, of course, wrong. I also liked the fact that it's the first Guardian piece ever to have "BO" in the URL. It's these little things that bring me joy on these gloomy November days when it gets dark early. Those things, and double entendres.

My friend Josh has a phrase ("That's what she said") which brings us endless amusement whenever we meet up. We say it after anything which can be remotely misconstrued:

Me (while cooking): I don't think there's enough room to fit all this in.

Josh: That's what she said!

The hours just fly by...

Taxicab Confessions

2008-11-21T14:40:00.012Z

Yesterday evening, I took a taxi from Oxford Street to Clerkenwell, and had the following conversation.

Taxi Driver: Lots of traffic 'cause of the Christmas lights on New Bond Street. They've just switched 'em on.

Me: Oh. What do the lights look like?

TD (giving me a weird look): Like lights.

Me: No, I mean the ones in Regent Street are stars, and the ones on Oxford Street are bells, so...

TD: A bra.

Me: Sorry?

TD: They're a bra. (Makes 'bra' shape with his hands.) And then there's a bit dangling down from the middle of the bra.

Me: Do you think... it might just be you who thinks they look like a bra? The designer probably didn't mean for people to think they were a bra.

TD (huffily): Don't see what else they could be!

Me: I mean, back home, they used to have lights shaped like candles. And there was a flame sputtering out of the end of the candle. But I thought it was something else.

TD (confused): What did you think it was?

Me: Er... you know.

TD: No. What?

Me: Um... a man... weeing.

TD: Oh.

We sat in silence for the rest of the journey.

Thrift, Procrastination And The £133.84 DVD

2008-11-18T14:42:00.004Z

In March this year, I lost a DVD. I am ashamed to admit that this DVD was "Anthea Turner: Perfect Housewife Series 2 Disc 1". I would absolve myself by claiming it wasn't my DVD, which is true, but this disclaimer would then be rendered moot by the confession that I indeed chose to rent said DVD from LoveFilm.

LoveFilm (as you probably know) is one of many DVD rental services which sends you discs with "no late fees". You receive them, you watch them, you post them back, you pay a subscription fee every month (for me, it was £15.99). I largely enjoyed this process, even though the Post Office kept losing them, and I worried that LoveFilm were getting a little suspicious.

So when I lost a DVD myself, I decided I had to find it. I refused to blame its loss on the postal service as I had done (legitimately) so many times before. I would hunt it down, return it, and then (as writing was taking up a lot of my time) I would cancel the service. I refused to write the DVD off as lost, because there was no point paying for something I didn't want to buy, which had to be in my room somewhere. The only problem was that it wasn't.

I searched everywhere: behind my bed, under my bed, under my table, in my under-bed drawer. I lost hours of my life to that DVD. But it was to no avail: it was nowhere to be found. Every month, I thought "I've got to cancel!" Yet I kept forgetting. Finally, 9 months later and £133.84 poorer, I conceded defeat.

I marked the DVD as "lost" on my LoveFilm account, and told them I wanted to pay for it before cancelling my account.

Today, I received this reply:

"Dear Ms Sherine

We appreciate your recent email informing us that you are willing to pay for the cost of the lost title 'Perfect Housewife - Series 2 - Disc 1'. We would like to inform you that we have written off the outstanding DVD as a gesture of goodwill and the title is no longer outstanding on your account."

It was very kind of them, but I do wish I'd emailed them 9 months ago. I also wish it had been Citizen Kane instead. That would have been a lot more dignified.

Sorry

2008-11-17T17:40:00.003Z

It's like this: I'm rubbish at the moment. No, I am. I know I am. I'm blogging once a week at most, which is terrible, as I made a vow to blog daily.

Trying to explain why I'm rubbish at the moment keeps coming out wrongly, so I won't - but I will say sorry, because I am. I enjoy writing more than anything else, and I'm not getting to do much of it right now due to random tasks like choosing bus routes.

Things will be back to normal in March - probably. And tomorrow I'll blog again. Thanks for having faith in me (if that's the right phrase) - I'll be back on the blog before you know it.

My BO Account

2008-11-09T19:59:00.005Z

I'm back. More back than a giant packet of back bacon. Back for good like Take That, except without the terrible noise. (I think that would be a great name for a band: "The Terrible Noise". I might start one just for that reason. Anybody want to join?)

I'm really sorry for going away, not replying properly to comments and being generally unavailable. The last three weeks have been wonderful and exciting, but also sleepless, hectic and sometimes impossible. I'm talking daily about things I never thought I would have to or be able to: merchandise, books, documentaries. Most amazingly, I'm talking about "allocation of funds". Funds! On October 20th, I thought it was all going to have to come out of my ISA.

Nothing in my life is normal at the moment. I'm living out of bags in different places like some kind of indoors atheist tramp, I sleep and eat at unusual hours, and 90% of my waking time is spent answering emails, the phone or both. It's both great and disorientating, but it's probably not going to get back to normal until sometime next year. So I do apologise if I haven't answered your email - I will do very soon.

In other news, I wrote these pieces for The Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/03/comment-and-debate-punctuation

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/23/atheist-bus-campaign-ariane-sherine

And wrote the Diary and recorded a podcast for New Humanist magazine:

http://newhumanist.org.uk/1896

http://blog.newhumanist.org.uk/2008/11/podcast-canvassing-opinion-on-atheist.html

But my favourite article about the campaign, unsurprisingly, has to be this one:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/insideguardian/2008/oct/27/belief-obama-atheist-bus

It was truly moving and inspirational to see B.O. win. Goodbye £200 - hello beautiful new world! And it made me laugh a lot when I went to his website to see in the top right-hand corner the phrase, "Create Your MyBO Account".

http://www.barackobama.com

But the funniest moment of the election has to be this one:

"Well, you're one up on me!"

It's your turn...

Atheist Bus Campaign: Why, What, When

2008-11-02T08:40:00.011Z

Most journalists are decent people who try to tell the whole truth in their stories. (I may not be entirely neutral here, as I am one.) But journalists also have deadlines, work under pressure and get things wrong. And then those things go out to the whole entire world. And then the whole entire world comes back to the people in the stories and goes "Why did you do this?" when the answer is, "I didn't".

So here I'm going to try and explain the main mistakes about the Atheist Bus Campaign, to make things easier for everybody in the future. Apologies if you know all these things already.

"The campaign began when Ariane Sherine saw a bus saying all non-Christians would burn in hell"
The Christian advert on the bus had a Bible quote with a website address underneath. When I visited the website, it said (among other things) that all non-Christians would burn in hell (and that being gay was perverted and sinful). The website is still up and you can read it here.

"Sherine was offended by the Christian ads"
Surprised, unsettled, slightly alarmed. Not offended, though it perhaps makes better copy.

"The campaign began with an online blog"
It began with an article, "Atheists - gimme five" which was published in the Comment Is Free section of The Guardian website (The Guardian is a UK broadsheet newspaper). You won't find other UK newspapers crediting The Guardian with launching the campaign, though international newspapers occasionally have. Matt Seaton, editor of Comment is free, deserves all credit for publishing the article in the first place. Many less innovative editors would have said "You want to do what?!"

"Ariane Sherine, Guardian journalist"
The Guardian is the only newspaper I write for, but technically I'm a freelance comment contributor and work from home (I don't have a Guardian email address).

"Indecisive atheists"
For a full explanation of the inclusion of the word "probably" in the bus advert slogan, please read the last Cif blog.

"Militant atheists"
As someone wrote on the ABC Facebook group board: "To religious people, an atheist is someone who doesn't believe in God; a militant atheist is someone who says this out loud." Atheists are peaceful freethinkers - the most active thing we ever do is write books and articles. Anyone who thinks this is "militant" is beyond reason.

"A group of atheists, led by Richard Dawkins"
Richard Dawkins is kindly supporting the campaign, which has helped greatly. But he hasn't told anyone else to support it, and atheists can't be led. All very misleading...

"It's not clear what the campaign aims to achieve"
Representation for atheism in the public domain, a voice for atheists everywhere, and reassurance and peace of mind for anyone who worried after seeing the original "burn in torment in hell for all eternity" website. It also aims to generate peaceful and rational debate.

At Last: An Atheist Bus-Free Blog Entry!

2008-10-28T12:58:00.004Z

In my previous life as a non-atheist transport columnist, I wrote this piece about alternative US election candidates for Virgin Media:

http://www.livingtv.co.uk/celebrity/starsnaps/celebrity-us-election.php?ssid=1

They didn't edit it at all (not even the Gordon Ramsay paragraph, which referenced the c-word) but I still wrote it with my "women's magazines writer" hat on, cutting out anything too contentious. When I used to write for New Woman back in 2004, they used to cut out anything that was remotely funny or quirky. I remember writing a paragraph for an article called "20 Reasons To Be Cheerful", which read something like this:

"So your best friend's run off with your fiance, your parents wish you'd never been born and your hamster's been run over by a JCB. But before you throw yourself in front of the nearest milk float, take a few minutes to read these 20 handy tips, and you'll be perkier than David Beckham's underpants in no time!" [he'd just had the affair]

The Features Editor sat me down, crossed out half the lines with a red pen, and sighed, "Why would a hamster be run over by a JCB, Ariane? Hamsters wouldn't be anywhere near one! And people wouldn't throw themselves in front of a milk float - it wouldn't do any damage."

(I sat there seething in silence for most of the time. When I was sacked after three months, it was a huge relief.)

Going back to US election candidates, I'm going to fax my ballot tomorrow. They warn you that it will no longer be anonymous if you do that, but I'm proud to proclaim my love for B.O. Goodbye two hundred quid - I'd gladly pay it for the world to be a happier place!

The Devil Has All The Best Emergency Numbers

2008-10-25T22:38:00.002+01:00

Today I went to the BBC to do an interview for Radio 4's The Sunday Programme (it's the Sunday equivalent of The Today Programme) with Edward Stourton (tomorrow, 7.10am - but don't get up for it if you need to sleep before church, innit?)

They put me in a studio, but the door was very heavy and I couldn't open it. So I called their emergency number. Which was... 666.

Yes, that's right. The girl who hatched a "plot to kill God" (Fox News) was probably the only person to call 666 from that room.

Still, they came to rescue me, so maybe the beast ain't so bad after all.

We've Started A (R)evolution!

2008-10-22T13:17:00.003+01:00

The Atheist Bus Campaign has taken off in a phenomenal way! We're at £60,500 and counting in just 36 hours! I'm amazed and relieved and keep blinking to make sure it isn't all a dream.

Thank you so much to everyone who donated, blogged and commented. I'm going to be writing another Guardian piece today, and I'll also reply to all emails and comments as soon as I can.

Again, thank you: we couldn't have done it without you, and I'm very very grateful.

http://www.itvlocal.com/london/news/?void=248701

http://www.justgiving.com/atheistbus

http://www.atheistcampaign.org

Less than 24 hours to go...

2008-10-20T13:51:00.003+01:00

The Atheist Bus Campaign launches at midnight and I'm frantically rushing around, knocking things onto the floor and trying not to think about how long my to-do list is. I'm more nervous than if I'd just accidentally tripped over a sleeping pitbull (with or without lipstick).

It would be really cool, and I'd be very grateful, if everyone reading this could support the campaign by either blogging about it, or by posting one of the banners here (beautifully designed by Graham, Mr Creative Year) to their blog, even if just for one day (tomorrow). There are also lots of ideas on the page about how you can help the ABC reach its target of £5,500.

Right, I'm off to be sick. See you soon!

"We're All Going To Hell"

2008-10-19T07:39:00.006+01:00

The Atheist Bus Campaign launches in just 48 hours, and I'm both excited and very nervous. It's worth the nerves though: in 2008, religious organisations are still trying to scare people into thinking irrational and harmful nonsense by threatening them with eternal damnation if they think for themselves. Hopefully the campaign will go some way to countering these ideas, which belong in a big trench back in the Middle Ages.

People have asked whether, like a political party, we have a campaign song. We don't, but if we did, it would probably be "We're All Going To Hell" by atheist band The Bastard Fairies, which pokes fun at the truly Medieval idea of hell, and which you can watch here. It's great.

Sina Pey

2008-10-18T15:48:00.004+01:00

Tina Fey must have rehearsed like crazy to have nailed Sarah Palin like this. The accent, the hesitation, the mannerisms...

She deserves all the accolades she gets.

Phil Collins Is Cool

2008-10-17T10:25:00.010+01:00

Yeah, I know he's a Tory who writes mawkish songs about homeless people, but I have decided that Phil Collins is officially cool. Firstly, he sang the epic anthem in the gorilla ad, which is sexy enough, but he also fought religious conmen, a fact I wasn't aware of till yesterday, when I called Graham...

Me: [Bursting inexplicably into song] "Ooh, Jesus he knows me, and he knows I'm right..." [Talking] "That was Genesis, wasn't it? Were they really religious then, singing songs about Jesus and naming themselves after a book in the Bible?"

Graham: "Dunno."

Me: "Hang on, I'll find out. Never knew Phil Collins was a godbotherer."

I Googled "Jesus Genesis", and predictably came up with loads of religious results. I then Googled "'Jesus he knows me' Genesis" and came up with the following:

"Jesus He Knows Me" is the second track on the 1991 Genesis album We Can't Dance, and its fourth single. The song is a satire about televangelism, released in a period when several televangelists such as Robert Tilton and Benny Hinn were under investigation for promising financial success to their listeners, provided they sent money to them.

The video features singer Phil Collins as an unscrupulous televangelist who lives like a millionaire thanks to donations from his followers. The comedic video also features fellow band members, keyboardist Tony Banks and guitarist Mike Rutherford, as fellow evangelists. Collins, in an orange suit, tries to have his viewers raise $18,000,000 in one weekend. In the final minute on the video, money rains down on the set of the fake program. As the toteboard reaches his goal, the amount of money shown increases in intervals of at least $800,000.

And it contains the following lyrics:

I believe in the family
With my ever-loving wife beside me
But she don't know about my girlfriend
Or the man I met last night

Do you believe in God?
'Cause that's what I'm selling
And if you wanna get to heaven
I'll see you right

Me: "Graham, Phil Collins is cool! He's so cool."

Graham: "He's not cool, he's Phil Collins."

But just look at the picture at the top, where he looks like a thin Bruce Willis, and the sub-Tai Chi way he's holding his arms. They don't come cooler than that.

Preview Screening

2008-10-16T15:15:00.006+01:00

Above is a preview of the logo for the new Atheist Bus Campaign website. Whoo! (Yes, I did upload the link, but I've taken it down because I shouldn't have. But you can see it very soon.)

Earlier, I wrote:

"It's far from being finished, so please don't link to it until Tuesday when it'll go up properly. I'm going to be working on it (as well as press releases, articles, emails etc) until midnight on Monday when the Atheist Bus Campaign will launch. It's exciting, if not a little nervewracking.

What do you think of the colours? Do you have any suggestions? What have we forgotten? Now's the time to tell us, before it goes live..."

Thanks for all your comments so far. People who haven't seen the site yet can please comment on what they think of its logo, above. Don't say it's pink though, because I already know that...

Movie Misnomers

2008-10-15T08:33:00.005+01:00

As mentioned in the last post, my friend Kevin has started a cartoon which is much like 'Lost Consonants', above (which deletes a consonant from a regular phrase, then illustrates the result). 'Movie Misnomers' puns on film titles to give them a new theme, and I thought we could use this post to help him think up some more, given that so many of us like wordplay (like you, Justin).

Gavin suggested "Anemone Of The State - a small, innocent, many-tentacled sea creature is targeted by the American national security agency."

And I've thought up the following:

"The Codfather" - a Daddy fish tenderly cradles lots of baby fish
"Star Warts" - celebrities showcase their facial disfigurements
"Reservoir Logs" - workers struggle to build a dam before it's too late
"Singin' In The Train" a carriage full of commuters bursts into song
"Full Metal Packet" - the Chippendales decide to wear foil thongs
"The Green Smile" - because some people never go to the dentist

But you can do better than me...

MM Hm?

2008-10-14T10:02:00.007+01:00

It seems like everyone's creating a quirky, witty artistic series with the initials "MM" these days. Last week, my best friend Graham posted up the first (objectively hilarious) instalment of a new series called "Modern Misfortune":

... and if that shouldn't be published, nothing should.

Then my rather wry friend Andrew linked to the latest instalment of his regular FT column, which is called "Moment of Madness". (You'll be surprised to find I'm with him on that particular topic.)

Two is a coincidence, but three is just odd, and today my friend Kevin (unaware of both the above) began a funny monthly cartoon called "Movie Misnomers":

Lastly, even I, a hardened letter-M conspiracist, made a joke about the initials "MM" in the first paragraph of last month's Cif piece about mice.

What is going on? Is the letter "M" taking over the world? Have McDonald's globally imprinted it onto the medulla oblongatas of all creatives?

I think we should be told.

The Loveliest Story

2008-10-13T15:18:00.002+01:00

Occasionally, very occasionally, you read a news story which makes you feel hopeful for human beings everywhere. This is one of them:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/13/uselection-vote-florida-obama

It's about Jewish grandchildren flying out to visit their Florida grandparents and convince them to vote Obama. I particularly like the last paragraph:

Within a day of their grandson's arrival, the Fursts had declared for Obama and had begun proselytising with the zeal of the newly converted. Kenny Furst has been posting Obama flyers at the bagel shop where he still works, and his wife is holding discussion groups with other Jewish women from the retirement home.

"I'm so proud of my grandparents, that they were open-minded enough to listen," said Bender.

"I've got a couple of years to go, so this vote isn't for me," said his grandfather. "All I'm interested in now is that my grandchildren should be safe. This one is for them."

It makes me wish my Nan were Jewish and living in Florida, just so I could convert her.

Winner Takes It All

2008-10-11T23:46:00.004+01:00

I once saw a man wearing a t-shirt with a picture of several sperm on it, saying something like, "We beat the odds out of two million sperm. We're all winners."

And that, I think, is very true. Imagine (please don't throw up your dinner): if your sperm hadn't been the fastest, or your parents hadn't had sex at that particular moment, or had done it in a different position, or had used contraception, or had been thinking about something they found less or more sexy, or your mother had been lying a different way afterwards, you might not exist right now. And the same goes for your grandparents, and their parents, and their parents, and their parents...

It's not a savoury thought (or a sweet one), but you and I really are the product of ideal circumstances merging to bring us into existence. So however much we might feel like losers sometimes, just remember: we won.

I've Done It

2008-10-10T23:16:00.002+01:00

I've only gorn and bleeding done it, haven't I? Yes, I have. I have and all.

Remember back here when I said I was thinking of betting on McCain, for the sole reason that, if he and Moosewoman win, I'll probably throw myself off a building?

Well, I now stand to make £1040 if that happens (their winning, not my suicide). Initially, I had serious moral objections, but then I realised that my gambling on the outcome doesn't hurt anyone or make any difference whatsoever. Hopefully, my flutter won't turn me into this man - and when I fill in my US absentee vote for B.O. this week, it'll still be the most emphatic vote I've ever cast for any politician.

But still, if the guntoter and creationist rule the world, I and a charity of my choice get a consolation prize.

Oops

2008-10-10T10:30:00.005+01:00

Yes, I lapsed. I was so busy writing articles yesterday that I didn't update. However, I shall make it up to you today by writing not one, but two whole posts. Whoo!

Today I called up to book a hospital appointment. The man on the phone ran through all the date of birth/address/next of kin questions, then asked, "Do you have a religion?"

Momentarily stymied, I replied, "I'm an atheist."

He answered enthusiastically, "Oh, me too! It's really nice to meet another one." Which made me feel strangely happy.

It's the third time this week I've been asked about my religion. The other two were during the podcast: one question was from a couple who were religious, but quite liked the bus ad. When I asked them if I was going to hell, they said "Nah, you've still got time. You're still living." Eh?!

The other was from a Christian who said people who didn't repent would go to hell, before asking quite kindly, "Are you an atheist? I hope I didn't offend you!"

He was smiling worriedly, so I called back, "No, it's fine!"

Yes: saying I'm going to burn in sulphurous fires is fine, really. No bother at all. Lovely day, isn't it. More tea?

Lamer Than A One-Legged Baboon With Typhoid

2008-10-08T23:50:00.006+01:00

Today I found out two things:

(a) most people are very nice

(b) I cannot present for toffee, or to save my life, or (more accurately) for the sake of a New Humanist podcast

When I took to the streets to find out what people thought of the atheist bus, I should already have known (a). When it comes down to it, most people are innately good-natured and willing to help you, whatever their beliefs. 90% of the people I met today were fun, interesting and entertaining.

Which is more than can be said for (b) my presenting 'skills'. A telephone box would present better than I can. It's quite strange: I can talk to people I've never met before easily and naturally, but as soon as I'm talking to a recording device instead, I sound stiffer than a dead cat in formaldehyde.

In other news, some of the most common searches for this blog now involve religion. As I told Graham yesterday, "There have been lots of searches for 'Ariane Sherine religion' or 'Ariane Sherine Islam'."

He replied, "Are you sure it wasn't 'Ariane Sherine is lame'?"

It would have been if they'd been searching after seeing me present.

Baby Love

2008-10-07T18:41:00.009+01:00

Election time in the US always throws up some rather outré political websites, but rarely any so funny as Yes We Can (Hold Babies), the "international source for pictures of Obama holding babies".

Now, I'm not certain you're allowed to do this to your child's head, no matter how ardently you support B.O., but maybe you are in the States?

Also, if babies aren't your thing, why not buy a picture of Obama holding a dog?

(I know: there are many, many reasons. There's really no need to list them.)

Things Which Annoy Me But Shouldn't

2008-10-06T18:01:00.005+01:00

(1) People who stop in the middle of the street to talk/hug/lick each other's faces. Move, before I move you with my foot.

(2) Stickers on purchases which don't peel off easily, but which you have to scrape off, leaving a crap-looking mess and nail marks in the product. If I wanted a sticky papery thing, I'd have bought a sticky papery thing, dammit.

(3) People who cough and don't cover their mouths. No, I don't want your mucus in my retinas or your sputum in my newly-bought sandwich. If it's mucus I want, I'll eat my own - enough people do (theirs, not mine).

(4) Free newspaper vendors who thrust their rolled-up newsprint at me insistently, and if I don't take it, bleat indignantly, "Free!" as though I'm turning down the chance of a lifetime.

(5) Targeted adverts on Google and Facebook. Yes, I'm single. No, I don't want you reminding me of it daily with "Want to go on a hideously-designed dating site full of men who still live with their mothers and haven't mastered the fine art of taking a shower? Click here for instant depression!"

Any more for any more?

Acronymity

2008-10-05T18:28:00.005+01:00

I am "friends" with a man on Facebook who sends me messages. This is not news. I have granted him anonymity, as the messages say things like "LOL u r funny. I was ROTFLMAO!!!!! :) :)"

Sadly, this is not news either. Lots of people do this. Despite knowing exactly how to spell the words, they type things like "c u l8r m8". This does not save time or help them look down wit da kidz. All it does is enrage me and make me want to throw toasters at their heads.

But I don't. Instead I count to 42,000 and reply without including the lines, "Cease and desist - I shall shun you if you ever again use an acronyms, 'letter' word, 'number' word or emoticon! You are helping to desecrate the English language every time you so much as look at a keyboard!"

If I implode with ire, you know who to blame.

YMCA

2008-10-04T18:10:00.003+01:00

To celebrate the Atheist Bus Campaign Facebook Group reaching 550 members in just over a week, here's Photo Of The Day (or should that be Photo Of The Gay?)

Oh My Goth I Can't Believe It

2008-10-03T17:33:00.005+01:00

You don't see that many brown goths. For a brown person to be a goth, we have to "white up", and that takes effort - the kind of effort better expended on making "80085" with calculators or memorising all the words to The Shamen's Ebeneezer Goode.

But when I was young, I wanted to be a goth. I wanted to look scary and aloof and cool. I didn't, in other words, want to look like this:

No. That was not my aim. I knew what my aim was, and ten years later I achieved it. So here, for your viewing pleasure, is me as a goth:

Sisters, have mercy.

So Fresh, So Clean

2008-10-02T15:43:00.008+01:00

Ta-da! Here are four internet finds so shiny and new you could lick them all over. But don't do that - nobody likes slobber.

(1) Atheist bus ad and website designer and all-round very-tall-man Graham, who since I was 16 has literally been someone for me to look up to, has started a new project. It's called My Creative Year, can be found at http://creativeyear.wordpress.com, and does what it says on the ringpull: Graham is going to attempt to post something, er, creative up on his blog 365 days in a row. The first is a black and white picture of Naomi Watts, which he drew freehand. Visit him, mutter "why can't I do that?" and encourage him - the man's only got 364 days to go...

(2) Atheist bus supporter Phil Ward (there's no theme emerging here whatsoever) has just started his first blog. Like, yesterday. How bang on the news front am I? It's at http://philwardblog.blogspot.com, and is called Six Degrees of Obfuscation. I am ashamed to admit that, until about ten seconds ago, I didn't know what "to obfuscate" meant: it means "to confuse, bewilder or stupefy". This blog will do none of these things: it will entertain you. Read it.

(3) Atheist bus supporter and freelance graphic designer Joanna Owen has set up http://www.onegodfurther.co.uk, which is juicily "dunking the soft biscuit of religion in the hot tea of science". You're not eating that biscuit though, are you Jo? Don't put it in your mouth! Erm, where was I? Oh yeah: One God Further sells sexy godfree "tea-shirts" (see what she did there?) featuring the Dawkins quote, "We are all atheists about most of the gods humanity has ever believed in; some of us just go one god further." They're even made from ethically traded cotton. Altogether now: "I'm a little teapot..."

(4) Atheist bus... erm, Sarah Silverman, who isn't helping or supporting the atheist bus, but surely would if she only knew about it, is supporting Barack Obama's campaign (which is almost as valid) by trying to get young Jewish Democrats to go and talk to their grandparents in Florida and get them to vote Obama. And she's made this very funny video to top it off. See, I don't just like people who like the atheist bus. I like people who like Barack Obama too!

The Story Of Auntie Dolly

2008-10-01T11:13:00.009+01:00

I have a Great-Aunt called Auntie Dolly. (It's her real name, but she got off lightly compared to Auntie Bapsy. Or, indeed, Uncle Jamshed.)

Auntie Dolly is a Jehovah's Witness. She doesn't know about the Atheist Bus Campaign, and I am not going to tell her, not least because she's in her 80s and I don't want to be held responsible for heart attacks and the like.

Like all Jehovah's Witnesses, Auntie Dolly believes that only 144,000 people will go to heaven when Armageddon comes, and these people will all be JWs. Unfortunately for everyone, there are 7.6 million Jehovah's Witnesses in existence, of which 7.46 million are apparently going someplace hotter.

Every weekday, Auntie Dolly calls my Nan (her sister) for an hour and tells her that, if she doesn't join the Jehovah's Witnesses, she is doomed to face eternal hellfire. My Nan is also in her 80s and is kind, gentle and unfortunately rather susceptible to this kind of dramatic prophecy.

She never tells Auntie Dolly, "I'm sorry, I'm a little too busy to talk today". Nor does she say, as I would, "Stop talking nonsense, woman! Even if I were to become a Jehovah's Witness, I'd only have a 1.89% chance of getting into paradise. Those aren't great odds, you've got to admit. Now go and do something fun with your life - you're 83, it's not like you've got forever!"

No: my Nan simply sits there, listening to Auntie Dolly's horror stories of wailing and gnashing of teeth, and gets more and more scared. She starts to tremble, wondering if her only remaining sister is in fact privy to the truth and the rest of us aren't. By the time my mother comes home from work,, my Nan is a gibbering wreck, pleading with my Mum, "But what if Dolly's right?!"

My mother then has to deprogram my Nan with an exasperated atheist lecture. "Of course she's not right! Do you really think that, if there is a God, he's going to create billions of people, only to punish all but a few of them forever at the end of their lives? What tosh!"

Then my Nan points out: "But nobody knows what happens after you die."

And that, I think, is the reason for all religion: the fact that we, as human beings, are uncomfortable with uncertainty. After all, the argument goes, if no one knows why we're here or what we're meant to do, we could conceivably be doing completely the wrong thing and be punished for it gravely. The unknown is terrifying if you've been indoctrinated to think about it in that way, and I don't blame elderly people (who are closer to the end of their lives) for worrying about it and wanting to fill that gap with certainty. Religion provides a comforting way out: "If you live your life like this, you'll be rewarded with eternal bliss."

But it's an utterly false certainty with hundreds of variations, none of which make sense or can be substantiated in any way, and all of which are thoroughly confusing (what if you choose the wrong religion or denomination?). And this "certainty" conundrum must be worse for people like my Nan who can't quite believe in any religion but have their doubts about atheism, than for people like Auntie Dolly who are doggedly following their own particular brand of nonsense. I wish I could convince both of them that these notions of Doomsday and retribution are ridiculous, with no evidence whatsoever pointing towards them - but they won't listen to me.

Maybe I need to campaign for some atheist stairlifts as well.

Go On A Date With Ariane

2008-09-30T15:14:00.004+01:00

No, this isn't some kind of charity auction (I wouldn't do that, not even for the bus). It is, as I discovered today, a "'choose your own adventure' style [computer] game that will have a different outcome depending on your choices along the way".

http://arianeb.com/dategame.htm#

Except that it won't, because when you press 'Click To Begin', you don't get any choices except to get a bit too fresh with Ariane and get lambasted for it. Which doesn't seem overly fair (the lack of choice, not the lambasting). I haven't downloaded the entire game - I'm a bit worried about "other surprises".

Still, you wouldn't want to go on a date with Ariane anyway (well, not that one). She's got a rather unusual number of teeth...

Worst Political Ad Ever?

2008-09-29T21:00:00.003+01:00

John McCain apparently doesn't like his opponents finding common ground with him. He thinks it's a sign of weakness:

Of course, each of Obama's statements here was followed by a sentence beginning with "but..."

But they cut those bits.

ABC: The Atheist Bus Campaign

2008-09-28T20:26:00.007+01:00

What is October 21st? It's a day, yes. It's a Tuesday, even truer. It's ten days before Halloween, it's my friend Catie's birthday, and it's 24 hours long.

It's also the official launch date of the Atheist Bus Campaign. Lemme hear ya sing, "1-2-3, A-B-C!" (The acronym wasn't planned, it just happened, but it's quite useful even if it does get Michael Jackson stuck in your head. And nobody wants Michael Jackson stuck in their head.)

There's lots to do, and there are only (just over) three weeks to go. On Friday, I set up a Facebook group for the campaign:

http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=32985131033

and there are already 150 members, but there need to be a lot more. Then there's the website (which I'm writing), the launch articles, the press releases, all the emails (and the mailing list), the favours from friends.

Even friends who aren't atheists, like Kia, have plugged the campaign, for which I'm truly grateful:

http://www.kia-abdullah.com/blog/

If you're reading this and you're an atheist, please join the Facebook group, blog about the campaign, and email me at ariane@arianesherine.com if you want to be put on the mailing list. Tell your neighbours, write it on your arms and shout it from your bedroom window (only before 11pm, mind - you don't want a visit from the council): "The Atheist Bus Campaign starts on October 21st!"

You can even do a little dance to ABC (you might want to nick the moves from Graham's Excel Dance). Just don't tell Michael Jackson - he's gone all religious these days and probably wouldn't like it.

Monk-ey Business

2008-09-27T20:02:00.004+01:00

I am shameless, so have decided to steal a joke from my new friend Duohedron Politico's blog. I have rationalised this due to the fact that there is no such thing as a Duohedron (I have looked it up) and therefore he doesn't exist.

And also, it's a very good joke. Here it is....

A new monk arrives at the monastery. He is assigned to help the other monks copy the old texts by hand. He notices, however, that they are copying from copies, not the original manuscripts.

So the new monk goes to the Head Monk to ask him about this, pointing out that if there were an error in the first copy, that error would be continued in all of the subsequent copies.

The Head Monk says, "We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son."

The Head Monk then goes down into the cellar with one of the copies to check it against the original. Hours go by and nobody sees him, so the new monk goes downstairs to look for him. Hearing sobbing coming from the back of the cellar, he finds the Head Monk leaning over one of the original books crying.

He asks the Head Monk what's wrong, and in a choked voice comes the reply: "The word is 'celebrate'."

Women: Know Your Place!

2008-09-26T10:31:00.006+01:00

Some news stories are so laughable, they can really only be satirised. Here's the story on which this is based.

Success: A Short Guide
Ariane Sherine

Men! Want to earn more moolah in the workplace? Just develop a range of hideous views that even your demented Grandad would cough up a kidney at, and you too could be splashing about in a glorious swimming pool full of extra cash! Look, scientists at the US Journal of Applied Psychology have just published a study saying it’s true: male chauvinists earn an average of £4,722 more a year than their “thinking man” equivalents, whatever their job. Are you a scientist? No? Then don’t question it.

Firstly, as the study states, decide that “a woman’s place is in the home”. Don’t worry if, due to the economy, you don’t even have a home in which to put a woman – with all your surplus cash, you’ll soon have a large house deposit! It’s only sensible: while you’re out all day, doing hard manly work like sitting in front of an electronic screen, your woman will be dutifully baking, cleaning and darning your socks (even the ones which smell like cheese and onion crisps). And when you wearily stumble home late at night, after drinking yourself into oblivion to bury some inexplicable and best-not-dwelt-upon sense of dissatisfaction, a nice hot dinner will be steaming on the table, and your wife will greet you with a chaste kiss on the cheek and only a slight frosty air of boredom and resentment.

Yes, I said “wife”. If you get married, you’ll apparently be more likely to develop these pleasingly lucrative views. This is equally true of believers, so you might also want to start praying to an invisible creature with facial hair who metes out justice at altitude: it will help you swallow statements like “the employment of women is likely to lead to higher rates of juvenile delinquency” and “a woman should [stay at home and] take care of her family”. (Warning! Please don’t make the grave mistake of letting the truth get in the way of your beliefs, as this will also sabotage your new religion.)

Another danger is that most guileful and cunning of creatures: the feminist. Lesbians with a highly suspect attitude towards depilation, they will try to convince you that your newfound views towards women are wrong, sexist and even ridiculous. Block your ears to such foolishness! Not only do these wayward beings already earn an average of £810 a year more than submissive traditional women, they are also after your job. Remind them that women earn 17% less on average than men for a reason - because they’re inferior. Then buy them this just-published bestselling self-help manual, which advises them to dress in skimpy clothing and obey men: it will show them the error of their ways, and they’ll be sure to thank you.

What’s that nonsense you’re spouting, man? You “believe in sexual equality and couldn’t bring yourself to renounce your atheism”? Well, if you’re an atheist, you should worship science instead of God, and science tells us that real men who put women in their place aren’t just rolling in dosh, they’re also getting more sex than you, due to your favourite word, “evolution”. Be a sissy if you like: respect the lesser sex, have conversations with them, listen to their feelings. Then watch in horror as your more masculine, flash and insensitive friends run off with them, leaving a trail of shapely devastation in their wake. These men’s own families must choke with shame [thanks Graham] when they think of them, but at least according to science they won’t end up skint and lonely like you, you wimp.

True, no one’s quite sure why male chauvinists’ pay packets are bulgier. Some psychologist from Winchester University called Magdalena Zawisz reckons that it could have less to do with the sheer potent virility men ooze by being married sexist Godbotherers, and more to do with the fact that “employers are likely to promote men who are the sole earner in preference to those who are not – they recognise that they need more support for their families because they are the breadwinner".

But don’t listen to anything she says - she is, after all, only a woman.

What A Balls-Up

2008-09-25T20:26:00.004+01:00

Until tomorrow, then, here is the funniest picture I have seen for a very long time:

It may have been the designer's last day...

Changing My Pants

2008-09-24T22:32:00.004+01:00

Whenever I check my Statcounter, it gives me a feeling of warm lovely pleasure to know that lots of people check and follow this blog daily. Thank you, whoever you are (and I only know a few of you) - you make my lonely freelance word-filled existence that little bit brighter. And on a rain-soaked, grey-skied September day, I'd like to give you something (hopefully) funny to read.

So I'm going to start updating this blog every morning, because I know from reading other blogs how disappointing it is when you return to find nothing new. And to kick off, here's my latest Cif piece, on pants...

Baggy trousers? It's madness
Ariane Sherine
guardian.co.uk
Saturday September 20 2008

In a below-the-belt ruling, a 17-year-old boy spent the night in a Florida jail last week, after he was arrested for the heinous crime of wearing low-slung trousers. The trunks waistband they revealed didn't say anything unspeakable like "I love Sarah Palin" or "Abstinence rocks!"; its mere visibility was enough to land the hapless teenage pant-displayer (who had a past history of dope use, though he was picked up without any) in a cold lonely cell without so much as a change of underwear.

As news wires reported (unfortunately often using the word "crackdown"), a first-time smalls-baring offender in Riviera Beach, southeast Florida, could have trousered an $150 fine or been levied with community service, after a law strictly prohibiting "saggy pants" was passed in March this year. Some 5,000 of my fellow American citizens, clearly appalled by the shameless brief-vaunting of insouciant, slouching youth, signed a petition to place the no-hipsters bill on the ballot: and so it was decreed that all local trouser crotches should ascend until reaching their juvenile wearers' loins.

But there's nothing in the water in Riviera Beach that isn't also polluting the supplies of several other US cities, which clearly also herald Simon Cowell as their god. If you whimsically decide to flaunt your undercrackers in the town of Delcambre, Louisiana, you could either be slapped with up to $500 in fines, or be given a boxers-soiling six-month jail sentence. Dallas and Atlanta are considering introducing similar laws, while Flint, Michigan also has its knickers in a twist over the non-issue.

There is, admittedly, a certain delicious exasperation to the notion that any person over 13 who hasn't learned to pull their trousers up properly is clearly so socially inept as to be beyond redemption, and should be locked away until they promise to stop airing their dirty underlaundry in public. After all, how hard can it be to hoik your jeans skyward until they stop advertising the manufacturer of your briefs?

It's an endless modern riddle, but perhaps not one police anywhere should be ruminating upon. In any town which isn't full of people with not enough to do, the "incarcerate bad dressers" notion should remain just that: a wearied observation in the vein of "let's chop off their fingers" for people who misplace apostrophes. A trouser crotch, however low, has yet to commit a murder.

State representative Derrick Shepherd introduced the Louisiana bill, saying, "Hopefully, if we pull up their pants, we can lift their minds while we're at it," which rather suggests that he thinks young people's minds are located between their legs.

He and his fellow pant-complainants might console themselves with the knowledge that virtually no post-adolescent woman interprets sloppy streetwear as a sign of male virility; that we don't want to be seen with a man who perpetually appears to have just left the toilet and forgotten to do his belt up. There is rarely anything titillating about the sight of a hairy bottom split or posturing hipbone: they look truly ridiculous, but making them illegal is even more so.

Thankfully, Paul Moyle, the Florida judge in the case of the errant 17-year-old, began delivering his verdict (possibly with trousers at half-mast) with a beleaguered "Somebody help me!", before railing, "We're not talking about exposure of buttocks. No! We're talking about someone who has on [trousers] whose underwear are apparently visible to a police officer who then makes an arrest, and the basis is he's then held overnight, no bond."

And in a scene straight out of a particularly testing episode of Ally McBeal, public defender Carol Bickerstaff added: "Your honour, we now have the fashion police", before successfully asking Moyles to declare the law "unconstitutional". Thomas Jefferson would no doubt be thrilled to know that he's helped liberate a youth to wear silly trousers.

Ironically, had the judge been less sane and ordered that the unfortunate teenager be re-imprisoned, the lad would probably have been forced to follow the usual anti-suicide convention and remove his belt, thereby making the problem even worse. Still, the punishment could have been effective: were he made to share a cell with the inmate everyone else calls "Bubba", the reckless trouser-dropper would no doubt have longed to belt up tightly for the very first time.

Her Momma Done Shot A Moose

2008-09-22T20:44:00.003+01:00

This speech by New York Observer writer Jonathan Bines, imagining a black comedian introducing John McCain at a Republican Party Conference, is the funniest thing I've read for a very long time (thanks Sunny)...

What up, RNC!

(cheers)

You white motherfuckers!

(laughter)

This conference so white, Helen Mirren tried to snort it!

(laughter)

Y’all the whitest white people in the history of white people. Even Barbara Bush sitting here right now going: ‘These are some white motherfuckers.’

(laughter)

You’re so white, your vice presidential nominee got the word ‘pale’ in her name!

(laughter, applause)

Look at this place. I can’t believe this shit! Y’all couldn’t find one single brother?

(shouting)

There is? Where?

(shouting)

Yo, what up, brother! Looks like you the only chocolate chip in the cookie.

(laughter)

You look like a fly in a glass of milk, yo. Swim! Swim for your life!

(laughter)

Alaska in the house!

(cheers)

Where the baby daddy at? Where he at?

(crowd noise)

You knocked her up, man? That’s cool. That’s cool.

(silence)

You know that word ‘abstinence’—you know that mean ‘no fucking,’ right?

(laughter)

I guess they didn’t make that clear at the seminar.

(laughter)

‘So I just use this abstinence, that mean we can fuck all we want, right?’ No!

(laughter)

But you know I feel you, man. I do. Because the fact is, you live in motherfucking Alaska! What else is there to do but fuck?

(laughter)

Just fuck! That’s all there is to do! Just fuck!

(laughter)

That’s all Alaska is. Just a bunch of crazy white people fucking!

(sustained laughter and applause)

And you know he got to marry that girl, too. Because … her momma done shot a moose.

(laughter)

She shot a motherfucking moose! Put its head up on the wall and everything. That’s cold, man. That’s like Al Qaeda shit. Post that shit on the Internet as a warning to other moose.

(laughter)

’Cause when a girl’s momma shoot a moose, that’s, like, a red flag for me. I take that shit into consideration. I do! It’s like, ‘Yeah, you fine. No doubt. You real fine. And you got a great personality. And you drunk. But … ain’t your momma the one done shot a moose? I’ll be seeing you later on.’ I practice abstinence with moose-shooting-momma-having bitches.

(laughter)

But it’s time to bring out the white man you’ve all been waiting for. This man is so white, he makes y’all look Mexican.

(laughter)

He spent five long years locked up in a POW camp, and returned a national hero.

(applause)

And fucked every white woman in America.

(sustained applause)

’Cause five years—that makes you horny. And women, they looove to fuck war heroes. Basically, if you were white and female in 1973, you were fucked by John McCain.

(“USA! USA! USA!”)

And then he married a fine rich white girl whose daddy owned a beer company.

(laughter, applause)

And he wants to be president? Sheeet, you already got money, beer and pussy! What the fuck you want with the presidency? Quit while you’re ahead! You’re 72 years old—just drink, fuck, and play golf, you dumb white motherfucker!

(raucous laughter, applause)

Ladies and gentlemen, the next President of the United States of America, John McCain!

The Trouble With Fairytales

2008-09-21T07:32:00.004+01:00

A month ago, a lovely editor at The Independent read this, then emailed me, asking if I'd like to write a personal anecdote about love or sex for them.

I felt slightly odd about it. I'd written about sex before (in pieces like this one, for Cif) but never about my own sex life, and it seemed somehow wrong. So I decided to write about love instead, going as far back as possible in my love life so as not to talk about anyone I know now.

And here's the piece:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/romance-passion/the-trouble-with-fairytales-935059.html

It's probably the truest thing I've ever written, and generated both the kindest and harshest comments I've ever received. I doubt I'll write a confessional piece again in the near future, but I'm glad I wrote it, and hope my ex is very happy now.

A Brief Tragedy Of Time

2008-09-16T09:25:00.004+01:00

I once read a book about a boy who could slow down time. He mainly used this astounding ability to win tennis matches, running over to the ball as it inched towards him and painstakingly whacking it out of his opponent's reach.

He was an eejit. If I had the ability to slow down time, I wouldn't waste it on such frivolities. I'd use it for everyday life, to do all the things I should be doing and am not. I'd spend more time with my Gran and the people I love, safe in the knowledge that it's not going to hold up work projects. I'd exercise and eat properly and cook food myself, email all the many people I haven't emailed for ages, and take all my unused things down to the charity shop.

Actually, I'd probably use my extra time holed up in a lab while scientists tried to find out why I had so much of the stuff, like the kid in Flight Of The Navigator.

I remember, when I was a child, being so scared of being bored and alone. I had no idea how to use my time, or that I had anything to look forward to, and wasted so many hours kicking a broken tile round the back yard, or doodling, or picking my little brother up by his hair. Now I see time as amazing. I just wish each day didn't seem to flash by like a train, with sunlight briefly glinting across the windows, before vanishing into the smoky ether.

It's The World, Jim, But Not As We Know It

2008-09-12T14:54:00.007+01:00

Earlier this year, I said I was thinking of writing a book about the world and its history and geography, encompassing (hopefully funny and concise) information about every single one of the 192 UN member states. That is a bit like saying "I'm thinking of pulling out every single hair on my body" or "I'm thinking of cleaning the whole of Edgware" - a monumental and frankly impossible task to accomplish singlehandedly. It's the whole world, for heaven's sake - it can't be condensed into a book, especially when I haven't seen that much of it.

But then I think: people write biographies of historical figures without having met them. Journalists regularly write articles on subjects they know relatively little about. I'm only writing two pages, at most, on each country - is it really worth travelling to the place to write so little? Would it not be impractical and ridiculously time-consuming (and also leave me bankrupt)? And I'm not sure you need to visit a country to find out things like its population, area and border countries.

So it's not the lack of worldly experience I'm worried about, really: it's the reams of dull, unreadable facts I'm having to plough through to get a broad enough overview of that country. I have fallen asleep three times today. Which reconfirms why I want to write the book in the first place - I've yet to find a book for adults which gives you a readable and funny introduction to each country, without offering up too much incomprehensible information or assuming you know things.

I don't know things. And for other people's sake, I hope I'm alone in this. But for my sake and that of the imaginary book, I hope I'm not.

Silver Linings

2008-09-11T14:09:00.003+01:00

The good news: I'm working hard on a book proposal, and had another piece published in The Guardian yesterday, this time about Cern and the Large Hadron Collider.

The not-so-good news: the latter wasn't exactly tip-top, which was my fault entirely because I mistakenly thought I was writing something else. Still, The Guardian were very nice about it, the article had a great headline (not mine), and at least my stance on the "are we all going to die?" question was right...

Black hole silver linings
If the world is hoovered up today when physicists try to recreate the big bang, it won't be all bad
Ariane Sherine
The Guardian

Yesterday, my flatmate came into my room and asked, "Are we going to die tomorrow?" Cern, the European laboratory for particle physics, has apparently chosen today to try to recreate the big bang, using an atom-smashing machine called a Large Hadron Collider - and a chemistry professor named Otto Rössler, among other scientists, thinks it "quite plausible" that the experiment will create black holes that will "survive and grow exponentially and eat the planet from the inside".

Knowing almost nothing about particle physics, I consoled my flatmate: "I'm sure they know what they're doing."

And if they're wrong?, she persisted.

"Then you won't have to go to work on Thursday," I pointed out.

This seemed to cheer her up, until I said, "Because you won't exist."

But everyone not existing wouldn't be so terrible. The most frustrating part of being dead has to be that life goes on without you: that everybody else is enjoying themselves, playing triple-letter-word scores in Scrabble, reading engrossing books you couldn't have read because they hadn't been written yet.

And a black hole's the last place you'd want to be left alive in anyway. We can't avoid dying, but if the Earth does get hoovered into oblivion today, we'll all bypass the fear and suffering that go along with the average death. Unless you're worrying about impending apocalyptic doom right now, that is.

"But there are so many things I could have done with my life!" some people lament.

They usually have gallant things in mind: saving an elderly cat from the jaws of a dustcart, or winning a Pulitzer and being heralded as a genius by people they like and fancy, forever. No one ever says: "I could have killed someone accidentally and done 10 years in jail for it!" In any event, the chances are that most of us would have spent the extra time drinking tea on the sofa.

In case you're worried, we're all going to be fine. Even if we're not, we won't know it, so in a sense that's still fine. In the maxim commonly used when people are trying to be bleak and miserable, "We all die alone." Not this time.

Above all, if we disappear together today, we'll be dying for a great reason: the noble cause of scientific advancement, on a mission to discover more about how the universe works. Seriously: will that really be the end of the world?

The Sad And Sorry Tale Of Bleak Mouse

2008-09-08T10:59:00.008+01:00

Bleak Mouse was depressed
As his name would suggest
Depressed re. McCain
Palin, Bush and the rest

Iraq and its legacy
Filled him with woe
As did the G.O.P.
Trampling Roe

Haggard and Hagee
And hags like the Moose
Left Bleak Mouse empty
And craving a noose

Talk of "God's hate"
Towards "gays" and their "sin"
Made him irate
Sad and troubled within

His heart sang, "Obama!"
The thought set him free
Like a banana
Much slathered in brie

He briefly envisioned
A world full of hope
And kind, good decisions
And passion, and scope

For love and for peace
All that's proper and true
And, with a squeak
Bleak Mouse suddenly knew

That if the Dems won
On November the fourth
He'd bathe in the sun
Singing till he was hoarse

But if B.O. failed
Mousey thought, "There's no hope
I'll rip off my tail
And use it as rope"

The fateful day came
And Bleak Mouse couldn't sleep
He tried just the same
(Counting mice though, not sheep)

Then he went to vote
"Obama!" he sang
"Tick him on your note
Or else I'll hang!"

But his fellow mice
All replied, "No, McCain!
He seems pretty nice
With his elderly brain."

The hours rolled around
With time ticking by
Bleak Mouse lay on the ground
And waited to die

"McCain!" declared Fox
NBC, CNN
"Stop all the clocks"
Bleak Mouse sighed, "It's the end."

He saw ahead years
Full of pain and despair
He shed endless tears
Then climbed on a chair

He wiped his eye-flood
And next, with a wail
A scream and much blood
He wrenched off his tail

He tied the tail-lace
Round his small furry neck
Bowed his whiskery face
And muttered "Oh feck!"

Then this bleakest of mice
Hung limp from the noose
And paid a steep price
For his socialist views

As the tail, like a knife
Snapped his neck like a thread
He swore on his life,
"I'm glad that I'm dead!

For eight years of McSame
Aren't what I want to see."
And he died without shame
Brave Bleak Mouse: RIP.

Oh Baby

2008-09-05T11:27:00.003+01:00

I'm down with food poisoning at the moment, so my life is being spent picking bits of sick out of my hair, but I am working on Bleak Mouse and it will be with you soon. Until that momentous hour, here's a video I've been using to cheer myself up. I hope it makes you laugh as much as it did me.

By The Book

2008-09-01T13:35:00.005+01:00

I can't decide what kind of novel to write, so I thought I'd run a few titles and plot summaries past you, my loyal readers, and see which you think has the most potential:

#1: Far From The Maddening Crowd

A young woman who works at Big Brother runs away from a yowling mob on eviction night.

#2: The Dog Delusion

A man is convinced he keeps seeing a canine in front of him, but when he tries to stroke it, there's nothing there.

#3: Fence And Fencibility

A homeowner becomes embroiled in a heated dispute over the wooden border between his garden and his neighbour's.

#4: Bleak Mouse

A rodent gets depression and tries to top itself by voluntarily diving into a mousetrap.

Which should I write? You decide!

1984

2008-08-29T10:36:00.012+01:00

I have taken this post off temporarily.

Halt die klappe, Affe!

2008-08-24T22:10:00.004+01:00

Scheisse! Ze comments on my latest article are quite extreme, Gottverdammt. I have been compared to a concentration camp guard, merely for saying that glorifying drug-related deaths is irresponsible:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/24/popandrock.drugsandalcohol

I might be wrong - I wasn't there - but I don't think there were that many brown, female concentration camp guards in WW2. And if there were, they probably weren't writing comment pieces for a socialist newspaper on the side.

Like many other blogs, the piece has fallen prey to Godwin's Law, which states that "As an [online] discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

Or maybe the commenter was just Ken Livingstone in disguise?

Chip Off The Old Munk

2008-08-19T19:52:00.007+01:00

Ariane

Chipmunk

While my brother looks like a clone of my father, I don't look even slightly like either of our parents, which enabled me to pretend I was adopted while growing up (neatly disregarding the fact that I'd seen an album full of photos of me being born).

This topic came up yesterday when I was talking to an old friend.

"I don't look anything like my Mum or Dad, do I?" I asked.

"No," he replied, "you look more like a chipmunk."

What?!

"A chipmunk?" I repeated.

"Yeah," he replied. "Like, your cheeks puff out a bit, and you're brown with black eyes."

I threatened to give him a black eye if he didn't stop comparing me to rodents immediately.

"Yeah well, whatever," I shot back maturely. "You look like a monkey."

"Which is unsurprising, as we're all descended from monkeys," he pointed out. "But I think you must be descended from a chipmunk. You're not just mixed race, you're mixed species!"

Someone in my family has a lot of explaining to do...

The Tale Of Zippy And Bungle

2008-08-18T10:25:00.006+01:00

Do you want the good news or the bad news first?* The good news, you say? Oh good.

Last week, I came down with a virus (that's not the good news). The virus made my throat feel as though it had a small hedgehog in it every time I swallowed, and so I took the day off work unpaid (that's not the good news either).

Then The Guardian called and asked if I could write a piece for their observational Monday comment slot in the paper (that's the good news). Had I been at work, I wouldn't have been able to write it, but luckily I was trying to destroy the hedgehog in the privacy of my own home, so here it is:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/18/2

It's all true as well, which basically means I am very fearful and inept, but I hope you like it.

The bad news is the virus is still making me delirious, so I can't do anything useful (or even make much sense) until it does. Anyone have any quick cures?

*I realise this isn't good news or bad news to anyone but me, and promise to write a more universal and less solipsistic post soon.

Apologies

2008-08-14T01:04:00.000+01:00

I'm not very well at the moment, and will write more when I am. But for now, I'll leave you with this, nicked off Muhamad's blog (http://muhamadlodhi.blogspot.com). In case you're wondering if it's real, the clip of B.O. dancing was cut from this. Gorblimey!

I Am An Alien

2008-08-10T14:08:00.005+01:00

I really miss singing and writing songs. Yesterday, I received back a bag of belongings which had been in storage for years. Buried deep inside the bag was a CD, and on the CD was a song I wrote and recorded almost ten years ago (thanks to Josh for the upload):

http://www.arianesherine.com/Alien.mp3 (has stereo panning, so best listened to through headphones or proper speakers)

The lyrics are very shaky in places, my voice was far weaker at 19 than it is now, and the production is a bit dated. But sometimes I wish I'd at least tried to make it as a singer-songwriter, instead of having no faith in myself and giving up early - just because it's what I love to do most.

I Ink, Therefore I Am

2008-08-09T11:12:00.003+01:00

I believe lots of things. For example, I believe that you should never eat banana peel. Or shake up a fizzy drink and then open it in a cat's face. Or steal all the duvet while your partner freezes silently beside you all night.

I also believe that we should live in a wholly secular society:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/06/richarddawkins.religion

Hanne Stinsen, Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association, believes this too:

http://www.humanism.org.uk/site/cms/contentChapterView.asp?chapter=333

But she's a braver woman than me, and has recently pledged to tattoo the BHA logo on her shoulder if the total amount raised for the charity hits £20,000:

http://www.mycharitypage.com/hanne

The BHA is a much better cause than most inktanks, so definitely consider giving her a few squid.

Humour Me. Or Just Houmous Me...

2008-08-05T14:48:00.003+01:00

I think the note my flatmate left before heading to Edinburgh read, "I will miss all your humorous puns".

But it looked like, "I will miss all your humous puns". The note was magneted to the fridge, and "houmous" is spelt in many different ways, and I do eat a lot of it. The only thing is, I don't think I've ever made a houmous pun.

Let me try... hm. Arnab Chanda has a joke about accidentally getting involved with a terrorist after confusing houmous with Hamas, so I can't use that. And this whole piece is based around my "sense of hummus" so that's gone too.

Drat. At this rate, I'll be 109 before I think of a decent pun on that particular foodstuff. And then I'll have to write it post-houmously...

The Wheels On The Bus Go Round And Round

2008-08-03T21:10:00.008+01:00

At final count, 877 people pledged £5 towards the atheist bus. If you were one of those people, thank you.

877. On Friday, the Daily Telegraph reckoned that wasn't a lot (cunningly forgetting to mention The Guardian or anyone who writes for it):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2485331/Atheists-fail-to-cough-up-for-London-bus-ad.html

But, for a campaign which started as a throwaway comedy idea in my head barely a month and a half ago, which was then written as the punchline in an online article which was active on The Guardian site for only three days, I think a total of 877 pledges is quite amazing and very encouraging:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/20/transport.religion

This was a campaign with no press or funding. Last Thursday (on the final day) Matthew Parris plugged it at the very bottom of his column in The Times, prompted by news from the British Humanist Association:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article4431914.ece

But until then, it had been solely online and had received no mainstream press except for the original Comment is free piece, as Jon Worth explains:

http://www.jonworth.eu/more-on-the-atheist-bus-campaign/

So if you were part of the 877, then thanks so much for showing what can be possible if enough people like an idea. You helped the campaign reach the national news, which means the bus slogan has reached hundreds of thousands of people nationwide who wouldn't otherwise see it, even if it's not on a bus just yet.

Previous posts on this topic:

http://arianesherine.blogspot.com/2008/06/ad-hoc.html

http://arianesherine.blogspot.com/2008/07/kindness-of-strangers.html

England, My England

2008-07-31T14:24:00.004+01:00

I just saw This Is England, which was brilliant, sickening and sad in equal measure. The scene with the three terrified Muslim boys made me cry, and the whole film made me wonder how much attitudes towards black and Asian immigrants have changed in this country in the past 25 years.

I'd like to think it's an overwhelming amount. Both of my parents are immigrants, and I'd like to think that every single person I walk past in the street doesn't make any negative assumptions about my skin tone whatsoever: that they see me as a person they don't know, nothing else.

But lately, I've read and experienced things which suggest differently. Josh's recent blog on his experience in a New Cross pub was horrifying:

http://randommusingsofajosh.blogspot.com/2008/07/deliverance.html

As was his post on these racists:

http://randommusingsofajosh.blogspot.com/2008/06/witless-racist.html

A few people I thought I knew well also surprised and disturbed me greatly recently with their views on immigration. They said "immigrants are ruining this country", but refused to say exactly why they felt this way.

And the results of the latest Radio Five CV test, while using a very small sample, would suggest that there is still racism in the workplace:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/fivelive/news/workplace.shtml

The sole racist incident I experienced while at work happened seven years ago, when an agency I had signed up with found me waitressing work at a company in Earls Court for three weeks. I was told on the phone that, when I turned up, the first thing they would do was take a photo of me for the security pass.

But when I met the man from the company on the first morning, he seemed very taken aback and said, "There's no need for that photo yet - let's just see how you do."

He asked whether I'd done much waitressing, and what my ambitions were in the long run. I explained that I wanted to be a singer-songwriter, and he asked, "Why don't you go back to India? That's probably the best route."

I told him I'd never been to India, and didn't speak Hindi, so it wouldn't be possible. Perhaps I seemed taken aback at this point, because he shrugged, seeming defensive, and said something along the lines of, "Just asking - it's a valid question."

At about 4pm that day, I received a call from the agency asking whether I'd had any kind of altercation with anyone at the company. Confused, I replied that I hadn't. They explained that the company had asked for me to be replaced with a different waitress for the next three weeks, so I was no longer needed. I remember walking out of Earls Court feeling completely dazed. The agency, which I had previously completed dozens of jobs for, never gave me any more work.

But nothing like this has happened since, and I have to believe that the overwhelming majority of people in this country are liberal and anti-racist. Thinking otherwise would mean giving in to paranoia and negativity - which is what racists want. And this is a way I refuse to feel in England, the only country I've ever known.

Yukkalicious

2008-07-28T08:20:00.002+01:00

I am traumatised after seeing a film called Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging. It was just as bad as it sounds, and having to go up to a cinema box office counter in front of a load of serious-looking people and say, "Hello, one adult and one child for Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging please" is worse than asking for a tube of Anusol in the chemist's (not that I'd know, honest). Though only asking for "one adult" would have been a lot wronger.

The worst thing about the film wasn't the over-acting, the nonsensical plot or even the scene where a boy is teaching a girl to kiss and pulls away to reveal a long string of gooey saliva. It was the dialogue: the marvy, delish, "I don't speak boylingual" abominations against the English language which I used to stare at in horror when reading Just 17.

But it's one thing seeing "boyf", "goss" and "fabbalicious" in print, and quite another hearing their newer equivalents come out of the mouths of badly-acting teenage girls for an hour and a half. Do teenagers really speak like that these days? And if so, why? Cringe.

In other slightly embarrassing news, I live in a very small flat with a flatmate, and so when we both do a load of washing, it doesn't all fit on the laundry airer. So I thought I'd come up with a cunning plan, and hang my bras, knickers and tights on door handles around the flat to air them.

I did this last night, after which my flatmate came home and exclaimed, "Your bra and knickers are out here!"

"I know," I replied, "I'm drying them."

"Oh!" she came back, "I thought you'd returned to the flat with a man in the throes of passion, and hadn't been able to wait!"

Whoo!

2008-07-21T23:24:00.005+01:00

There is nothing more exhilarating than sliding down a flume at a swimming pool. At least, there's nothing I'll allow myself to do which is more exhilarating than sliding down a flume at a swimming pool. It's the only place I can scream "Whoo!" without being sectioned. (Though perhaps, if I were listening to Michael Jackson's Earth Song, I could scream along with the "Whoo!" bits at the end and that would be socially acceptable. But on second thoughts, I'd probably be sectioned for listening to Michael Jackson's Earth Song.)

Anyhow, I went swimming with the ten-year-old on Saturday. Why do you start getting bored with things when you're an adult? I swear she could have gone on that slide for ten hours straight and still wanted to go on it again. When you're an adult, these things lose their appeal after a few goes. I think that's why I enjoy spending time with her so much - because she's a reminder that things are infinitely exciting, depending on how you look at them. I never want to get so jaded that I can't see that.

In other news, this weekend I played the ten-year-old a few songs from the 1990s, including MC Hammer's ode to a day in the life of a museum security guard, U Can't Touch This.

"When was the man singing this song?" she asked.

"Before you were born," I replied.

The ten-year-old thought for a minute. "Oh," she exclaimed, "so that must mean he's dead?"

The Story Soph-arrgh

2008-07-17T10:51:00.006+01:00

Reading my last two articles, you'd be forgiven for thinking I had a vendetta against women called Sophie. The comment column in The Guardian today critiqued a scientific study by one Dr Sophie Schwartz:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/17/humanbehaviour

And last week's Comment Is Free piece took apart the basis for a court case in which a Sophie King was awarded £7,200 when her stiletto snapped:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/09/consumeraffairs.fashion

It's a good job I don't have any friends called Sophie, or they'd have unfriended me on Facebook by now. I am not aware of a single Sophie right now, other than the Sofi who very occasionally comments on here, and I've never met her, plus she's spelt differently.

But for the record, I've got nothing against anyone called Sophie. And continually berating Sophies isn't quite as bad as what my friend did a few days ago at a tiny comedy night, when she launched into a tirade against the name Nigel.

"Nigel!" she fumed. "It's such a geeky, nerdy, stupid name. Who would call a little baby Nigel? It's insane!"

"Sorry," my friend called into the crowd later, "I don't know some of you. My name's ___ - what's yours?"

The audience gave their names willingly, until one man shuffled his feet, looking very awkward.

"Well, come on!" my friend encouraged jovially. "What's your name? Or haven't you got one?"

Only for the man to croak silently: "Nigel."

Ikea: The Final Chapter

2008-07-15T11:50:00.006+01:00

Ikea have refunded me £50. Therefore, despite the woe, ire and humiliation, I'd rather shut the moth-eaten wardrobe door on the whole dense(ly-wooded) debacle than pitch the below article to a consumer magazine. So here it is for your delectation, instead...

No Ikea whatsoever
Ariane Sherine

31st March 2008: My old wardrobe is falling apart faster than Gordon Brown’s dreams of a second term. Hurray! Ikea will rescue me with their glorious “Pax Vikedal”, its mirrors gleaming like John McCain’s big shiny forehead.

2nd April 2008: I have paid Ikea £203. It is going to sit on this money for 28 days with its cheap splintered bum, then deliver on the 30th April. I watch 28 Days Later in its honour.

28th April 2008: As I live in a room the size of a guinea pig’s liver, I have paid the council £20 to collect my old wardrobe. This means everything I own is now spilling out of plastic bags on my floor.

30th April 2008, 11am: Delivery day! I have told Ikea I live on a red route. The driver calls and says, “We’ll be with you in 45 minutes, love.”

12.15pm: The driver lied. He does not love me. He is now saying, “We’ve tried to deliver, but you live on a red route.” I explain that I informed Ikea of this salient fact. The driver does not care.

1st May 2008: I call Ikea to rebook the delivery, wishing that I owned a van or knew someone who did. “Tenff May!” the woman on the phone booms. I yelp, “But that’s nine days away!” (I have always been good at maths). She does not care either.

6th May 2008: Ikea plops into my Inbox to say it has “refunded my account £188”. Eh? That’s not even the full amount! Why have they refunded it? Pam, an “Ikea help representative”, doesn’t know. She says I will have to re-order if I want the big piece of wood.

7th-11th May 2008: I desperately scour MFI, Homebase, Hammonds, John Lewis, Habitat and Dwell for a wardrobe within my budget of £220 which doesn’t look like it’s come from a bin. I fail miserably. The Habitat man says, “You get what you pay for.” I tell him that in Ikea’s case, you don’t even get that.

12th May 2008: After gazing at its lustrous mirrors once more, I crack and re-order Pax Vikedal. Ikea assure me that it will arrive on the 24th May.

15th May 2008: I call a friend and rant about Ikea. I tell him I am slitting my eyeballs with a screwdriver and poking my kidneys out with an Allen key.

20th May 2008: The friend deals with the trauma of this conversation by taking the piss with this cartoon. I wish I carried my cv round with me - maybe then I could afford to buy my furniture from somewhere else.

24th May 2008: Delivery day again! Ikea promise they will deliver between 7am and 6pm. At 4pm, I call and ask rather manically whether they’re still intending to deliver. They lie and say that they are.

7pm: Ikea have failed to deliver once more, with no explanation. The Viking hordes have pillaged my life, leaving me helpless and impotent.

26th May 2008: An Ikea Shop Online Representative called Adrian says he will find out where my delivery is. Shocker - he doesn’t!

27th May 2008: I am now officially stalking Ikea by phone. A very truculent young man called Faisal puts me on hold for 15 minutes, then says he will find out where my truant wardrobe is and call me back within 24 hours. Does he? Does he bugger.

29th May 2008: I email Nicki Craddock, Ikea’s PR Manager, and send her this. She is apologetic, sympathetic and lots of other words ending in -etic. She says, “You’ve had a shit experience, I admit it. This isn’t the kind of service you should expect from us. I’m going to find out what’s going on right now.”

30th May 2008: The woodworm has turned, and I am being bombarded with telephone calls. Nicki, Ulla and Melanie all swear that the godforsaken 3D oak rectangle will be in my possession on Saturday 31st May by 3pm.

31st May 2008, 3pm: Maybe they meant Saturday 31st May 2014?

7pm: I am throwing things at the wall where the wardrobe should be. I don’t want to go on BBC Watchdog, but the non-appearance of the Norsemen has left me utterly demoralised.

1st June 2008: This is war! It’s the big corporation vs the little people (I am 5’2”). I email Nicki to tell her the wardrobe hasn’t arrived.

2nd June 2008: Eddie from Ikea calls and apologises. “Sorry it didn’t arrive. We should have called to let you know at the very least.” This is clearly the Ikea version of Groundhog Day.

4pm: Tiffany from Ikea calls “to let you know your delivery which arrived on May 31st has two bits missing.” Tiffany, it didn’t arrive. “Didn’t it?” And now you’re telling me that, even if it had, it would have two bits missing. “We’re doing this as a favour to the online team!” she snaps. Doing what – not sending me a wardrobe for two months?

5.30pm: Eddie confirms that Pax “has drawer fronts missing”, which is why it wasn’t sent out. The fifth delivery gets booked in for the morning of June 4th.

4th June 2008: All is forgiven – the wardrobe has arrived! I am less forgiving when I find out that, after three hours spent constructing them, the £30 drawers don’t fit at all, leaving me with a gaping hole at the bottom of the wardrobe. I am also confused, as I have a four-hinge door manual and four hinges for a three-hinge door.

9th June 2008: After smashing up the drawers and throwing them away, I write to Nicki and ask for a refund for the drawers, the delivery charge and all the lost days staying in for deliveries which didn't happen. 24 hours later, Nicola from Ikea Shop Online calls to say the cost of the wardrobe and the delivery charge have been refunded. I dance round the flat, singing “Isn’t it good, Norwegian Wood?”

20th June 2008: Norwegian Wood is anything but good. Ikea have refunded me 0 pounds. Nul. Nada. For the 273rd time, I pick up the phone and dial their number, which I now sadly know from memory.

15th July 2008: I have received a grudging £50 – about the same as the order should have cost, but unfortunately not its actual cost. It’s 64p for every day I’ve been without it, and £50 I would gladly have paid at the start to be with it.

Still, at least I’m no longer starring in my very own production of The Liars, The Witch and the Wardrobe.

The Kindness Of Strangers

2008-07-11T20:32:00.005+01:00

Thank you very much to everyone who has signed up to the "atheist bus" initiative. If you're not aware of it, here is the original Comment Is Free piece, and here is Jon Worth's Pledgebank campaign and its Facebook page, which now have over 500 pledges. David at secular magazine The Freethinker has also posted the idea up at RichardDawkins.net, and Sunny has written about it at Pickled Politics.

Now that more people are involved, and there are more thoughts as to what the slogan should be, I'd just like to re-post The Guardian website's sub-heading to the article:

"Let's get together and distribute reassurance"

It wasn't my sub-heading, but it was the right sub-heading. It suggested kindness, tolerance and humanity: the idea that, if a collective of strangers came together, we could reassure people who were unnecessarily scared. We could also make people think, and maybe cause a few people to smile on the way to work. When, to my surprise, people asked to sign up to the idea, and Jon contacted me, it was all very encouraging and exciting.

Now that it looks as though the advert may become reality, I hope that the campaign stays positive and tolerant. Lately, there have been a few suggestions for slogans which would (a) be strongly anti- particular religious groups, or (b) turn the slogan into a much more controversial message. (a) is not what the campaign is about: it is about being pro-reason, pro-science and pro-freedom of thought, not anti- specific religions. And, though I understand why many atheists would prefer (b), and why many would like to remove the word 'probably' from the slogan, I inserted it because the ad won't be allowed to run if the wording is too strong.

Yes, all atheists would like things to be different. And hopefully, one day in the near future, they will be, and we'll live in a properly secular society. But change takes time, and if the "atheist bus" advert runs, the most helpful thing it could do would be to make people feel a bit brighter, and generate debate within society, rather than set itself above groups of people who might otherwise consider its message.

Please feel free to comment below, or write to me at ariane[at]arianesherine[dot]com. Thank you.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

2008-07-10T21:25:00.007+01:00

Last week, I wrote in The Guardian:

"As everyone knows, a break-up can cause a person to take drastic measures. From frantically lobbing to charity everything you own that the other person so much as breathed near (in my case, often things you really like and want to keep), to calling your partner at 3am and begging, "If you take me back, I promise never to make that noise with my teeth again!", people react to break-ups in different ways."

Yesterday, I was that person.

Now, the local charity shop have eyed me with suspicion since I foisted a manky cushion onto them six months ago, and I can no longer make the 'teeth noise' since I had them all removed. But I had to change something, to back up my 'drastic measures' theory.

So, being the tough-as rock 'n' roll mutha I am, I have changed the layout and colour scheme of this blog.

It's pink. It's grey. It's gink. It's prey. Do you like it? I rather suspect not. People don't like change, in general, and then they get used to it and forget that it ever was.

But I have set up a poll in the top-right corner so you can exercise your democratic right, even if it's rather underwear-themed. MORI and NOP have nothing on me.

"Five... Which Is?"

2008-07-04T14:01:00.002+01:00

Chris Philpot, the 13-year-old boy I played on Countdown five years ago, has uploaded this clip of us to YouTube:

I love how Richard Whiteley repeats the word several times...

I've Been 28...

2008-07-03T22:47:00.005+01:00

... for nearly 21 hours now, and they've been some of the most eventful hours of my life.

From this, which means so much, to being front-page on this, and being interviewed for this... if I'd known 28 was going to be this exciting, I'd have got here sooner.

Except it's only 11.30pm and I'm really tired. That's what being old does to you. Next come amnesia and repetition, because that's what being old does to you.

Surprise Surprise

2008-07-01T09:38:00.005+01:00

Today I received an exciting early birthday present, when a piece I wrote on friendship for Comment is Free was printed in part in The Guardian Comment & Analysis section, completely unexpectedly:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/30/internet.familyandrelationships

It has the least comments of any article I've ever written (21), which would worry me ordinarily, but today it doesn't. Because, while writing the piece above, I was thinking how lucky I am to have supportive, encouraging and reliable friends. For over half my life, I didn't have any: until I was 16, I truly couldn't call anyone a mate; and from 16 to 19, I had one friend (Graham), whose friendship made a drastic and positive difference to my life.

I remember calling him up one Saturday night in 1997 and saying, "Please can I talk to you every Saturday night? It's when I feel the loneliest." It really brought home to me that if you don't have people you like around you, you have very little.

So I'm very grateful for all the kind, funny and interesting people in my life. If you're one of them - thank you, more than you could ever know.