Ooh ooh ooh!!*

That's meant to be the sound of me being very excited.

One of the things which intrigues me about Twitter, is who follows who, and why.  Actually, to be honest, what I'm actually intrigued about is the people who follow me, and why.   Sometimes I can work out the connection; I tweeted about working in Royal Festival Hall a few weeks ago, and a few days later, the Southbank Centre began following me.   (I happened to be back at Royal Festival Hall when I got the notification, which was a little bit freaky. For a brief moment, I genuinely thought the building was watching me).  But other times, it's a complete mystery.

I have 26 followers at the moment, and of those, 7 are real people who I actually know,  8 are organisations which I'm following, or which I have mentioned in passing, and one is Stephen Fry (get me!).

I'm also being followed by five people I'm pretty sure I don't know,  and a few commercial organisations like Virgin Sport, which don't appear to be related to anything I've ever tweeted about.  Then there is also the curiously  'WingCheese' from Utah, who annoyingly, has protected their tweets, meaning I have to follow them back if I want to know why a Mormon cheese seller (only a conjecture) might be following me.  It's all very mysterious. 

But it's my most recent follower, who I noticed today, which I'm excited about.  It's someone who is putting together an online platform for writers and publishers. I can only assume that the reason she is following me is that it's useful to her to be in contact with people who might find this relevant.  In other words, someone out there actually thinks of me as a writer. I'm really excited about this.  (I'll say it again: "ooh, ooh, ooh".)  I know it sounds like a small thing, but it must mean I'm doing something right.



*Apologies to anyone who read that and was expecting a post (as promised) about karaoke.

Bits and Pieces

Excuse the (quite frankly) useless title.  But I've had lots going on and seem to have  lots of little, er, bits and pieces to mention.  Sadly, there's not enought time to talk about any of them right now, but exciting installments coming soon (hopefully) include an even better pair of people I wish had really been neighbours, a new musical discovery and my favourite ever cocktail name. 

There's also karaoke to talk about, the comedy writer I seem to accidentally have started stalking, a very random encounter which led to me tracking down some books I haven't thought about in over 20 years.  Hold onto your seats.

Neighbourhood Watch

My favourite thing I learned yesterday was that Mozart and John Logie Baird lived two doors down from each other on Frith Street.  Granted, it was 100 or so years apart so they weren't ACTUAL neighbours.  But I like to imagine the kind of conversation they'd have had if they had met.

The British Library

I'm working in the British Library today,  mainly by accident because I got on a Cannon Street train this morning which I thought would stop at Waterloo.  It didn't.  instead of backtracking across town and over the river to the Royal Festival Hall, I decided to take the opportunity to try something else instead, and came here.

I like it.  It's very busy and full of people working dilligently on laptops (one guy has two!) Or at least they look like they're working dilligently; for all I know they could be faffing around on the internet (great high-speed wifi here, for those who are interested).

We're all a bit more squashed up than at RFH which is actually quite nice in a way; and excellent for eavesdropping.  I've just heard what I think could be the best 'how we first met' story I've ever heard (she bet him $20 on their first date that they'd end up married) and I ate my lunch next to two very straight looking men who were having a ridiculously complicated sounding conversation about online business models for selling designer handbags.  I'm no expert on e-commerce (although who knows, that could all change in September) but it all sounded very impressive.

The other thing I like about the BL is that it's all quite casual.  There are seats and tables about, but it seems perfectly acceptable to sit wherever you can find a bit of room, whip out a laptop, or a book, or a notepad, or some manuscript paper, and get on with whatever it is you are here to do.  I looked up earlier and spotted a guy curled up under a flight of stairs with his laptop, headphones and cup of coffee, totally oblivious to the people tramping over his head.

Jack Bauer, eat your heart out....

Surprisingly, I don't have a lot in common with Jack Bauer.*  But tonight I felt just like him.

I spotted an advertisment in yesterday's Media Guardian, for what could be as close to a dream job as someone with no real clue about what they want to do next can get.  The problem was, I only saw it on the way home from my Italian class last night, and the deadline was today.  Or to be more exact, tonight.  At midnight. 

That's not just me being pedantic about what constitutes "today" in their advertisment, by the way - the website actually says midnight.  How Jack Bauer is that??  And it's one of those online applications which is all automated, so no doubt the minute the clock strikes twelve, the whole system will stop working and anyone who is only half way through their application will turn into a pumpkin.  Or something like that.

Anyway, I got part of it written earlier today and then went to see Avatar.  Got home at about 7.30 thinking I'd have plenty of time to get the rest of it done, but forgot how long these things take.  Luckily, I've just managed to get it finished, after a few hairy moments :

Hairy moment 1: trying to edit an answer which was too long for the form down to the right number of words, without missing any of the selection critera out.  Nightmare!

Hairy moment 2:  Trying to dig up a phone number for my one of my references, which I realised would involve finding my old phone,  finding the charger for said phone, charging it, and then hoping the phone number was still there.  All while frantically watching the clock tick down to midnight. 

The irony is, one of the selection critera is the ability to meet deadlines.  I thought about including something along the lines of being able to fill in their form with only 24 hours notice, leaving a whole 22 minutes spare.  But thought it was best not to.  Some people just don't get Jack.





*Well, apart from the fact that we both look slightly better now than we did in the mid 80s maybe....but who doesn't?

If it's Tuesday this must be the V&A

OK, I didn't actually go to the V&A on Tuesday.  I spent most of Tuesday in my new favourite building.  But the point is, I could have.

One of the nice things about this career-break / period of unemployment / venture into self-employment / new career as a lady who lunches (delete as appropriate) is having the chance to soak up some culture.

Last week I got to the National Gallery for the first time.  Quite how I have missed this for the last eight years is beyond me, especially given the amount of time I spend in or near Trafalgar Square (I'm a bit like a homing pigeon when it comes to that part of town, which is ironic given that Trafalgar Square is the absolute last place on earth a homing pigeon would be allowed to live these days.  But I digress.)

Anyway, my point is, the National Gallery is fabulous - full of lots of famous paintings which I had no idea were in London, all in an incredibly opulent building. Of all the treasures I stumbled across though, the most unexpected was  The Hoerengracht, which is on until February 21st.  Basically, one of the rooms has been tansformed to recreate Amsterdam's red light district*. Not quite what you expect in the middle of a stroll through Rembrants, Picassos and Rubens, but there it was.

The exhibition is on until February 21st, is free, and definitely worth a look, whatever your thoughts about the subject matter.  if for no other reason than to admire the attention to detail.  Plus, when I was there, for some reason they were playing Cheryl Cole's latest single in the background.  Which made me laugh.



*I've been to the actual red-light district, as it happens, which is a very long story involving one of my oldest and dearest friends and some very embarassed Japanese business men....and sadly one which we both swore never to speak of again.

Arise, Sir Hall.....

If buildings could be knighted, Royal Festival Hall (part of the Southbank Centre) definitely deserves a gong.

It's a fantastic place. Being without internet access at home at the moment, I've pretty much set up semi-permanent residence in the foyer.  It's spotlessly clean, with plenty of room, a decent bar and coffee shop, and free wi-fi.  Plus it's full of all kinds of interesting people, who are great fun to eavsdrop on.  Today I was working next to a man who had been awarded a prize for services to Polish cinema, yesterday I overheard a group of peole who were making a music video for a musician with Downs Syndrome, asking for his feedback.

I knew it pretty well even before this week; in the past 12 months I've been  there to play scrabble, shared pain, joy and chocolate with fellow NaNoWriMo-ers in the foyer, been to a couple of concerts and killed several spare hours there with a glass of wine and my laptop, catching up on emails and enjoying the view over the Thames.