A fire, a rabbit & a Norwegian

My cousin and her kids and I were evacuated from her building on Saturday night because a mechanic's workshop in the lane behind had gone up in flames. We'd heard very loud bangs for about an hour but assumed they were fireworks. Curious, we finally opened the back blinds at midnight, to reveal a blaze. She called 999 but the firemen were already on their way. We watched from the window, mesmerised at the height of the flames, and the hard snapping noises. Once the fire was under control, the whole street was ordered outside, just in case. We put the entirely calm rabbit safely in the basement and got a taxi to my cousin's mother-in-law's, who luckily lives nearby, but she had visitors and we had to put one of them, a hefty, rather drunk Norwegian woman, out of her sofa bed. We slept snuggled together - or the children did, my cousin and I couldn't, we were giddy with the surrealness of it all. It's one of the worst night's sleep I've ever had - there have been a few - and felt like death the next day, but we laughed a lot too.

Stepfathers & fathers & books

'You know I've been born in snow, I like that kind of thing.' My stepdad's response to the Charlie English book, The Snow Tourist, I gave him for his 80th birthday last week. He ploughed straight through it, loving every page. It's a beautiful looking book too, silver snowflakes on a white cover. I just read Julie Myerson's article on David Vann's Legend of a Suicide, which I am now desperate to read. I am not really a fan of Myerson's books, but this article is meaningful to me.

Eye talk

Well, my (anterior) chambers may be deep and quiet, but the pressures are still fucked and I forgot to defrost the mince. I hate using the microwave for defrosting cos you see all the blood. And it doesn't seem like proper defrosting. Unnatural, if you like.

Rumours & symmetry

When my first boyfriend and I listened obsessively to Rumours in early 80s - I can still smell his Dunhill aftershave when I hear this - I had no idea there was so much turmoil going on in Fleetwood Mac. All these years on, two of them still seem to be getting over each other (that is my kind of turmoil). This is a brilliant documentary which you can watch again if you are in UK. Lindsey Buckingham is delightfully intense.

I get a little fed up with all the current mixed race 'hype', we are what we are. Still, I am delighted to have learned that mixed race people are more symmetrical: Shriver’s work has uncovered something else that is very interesting. He finds that mixed-race people are more symmetrical than the rest of us, and being more symmetrical translates into being more attractive, having less infection, being less stressed, and having greater genetic diversity.

Less infection, less stressed, they obviously didn't have me in their study. The Channel 4 programme is here, again you need to be in UK to re-watch. Yay for heterozygosity (though mine appeared to desert me in the fight against a certain Coxsackie virus)!

NaNoWriMo rules!

I am obviously not participating in NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, it would kill me, but a friend on Facebook is. I'd heard of it but never really known what it was, so I looked it up. It is fabulous, I love the philosophy and spirit, the recklessness: write 50 000 words during the month of November. In their own words: Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

I love it. So if you have always wanted to write a novel, have time enough and energy, hook up with NaNoWriMo, and get writing!

Dirty Dancing

Watching the hugely popular Strictly Come Dancing last night - this is the first series I've seen - I was reminded a little of the publishing world, mediocrity gets through, while true talent is ignored. Half the celebs taking part seem to be from Eastenders (which I haven't watched since Dirty Den, when was that 1986?). The public kept the Eastenders in along with some BBC sports commentator I've never heard of, and let talented dancers go head to head in the dance-off. A travesty.

Isabella as a bee