fourth floor feminism | sociable speculation

We have all seen that clever little email from the Washington Post's Style Invitational competition where you can only change one letter of the word to get a new meaning haven't we? If you are after a chuckle then, I recommend you follow me to the latest Style Invitational ...

Part I It was 8 o’clock and I had to go to bed. I was perusing the bookshelf in my Grandmother’s holiday house in Grace Town for a new book. The Carpetbaggers ? Nah, looks like it has too much of that ‘adult material’ that is really too boring for a nine-year-old. Bloodlines ? Ick, that had so much ‘adult material’ it put me off trashy novels for quite a while thanks. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ? It was a thin paperback, just the title and author on a discreet rainbow squared background. Considering how it changed my life, it really should have had DON'T PANIC! on it as well. I settled down in bed and started reading. I finished about 2am, which was definitely my very first extremely late night due to a book, and when I got up the next morning I read it all over again, trying to work out if I had dreamt the entire thing. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is my first concrete book memory, my first taste of the humour of a generation of English writers and I have n...

The weekend past I was a steward at the very luvvie Oxford Literary Festival, and that Harry Potter's Aunt Petunia was mean to me! After so much literary wonderfulness, I am reluctant to indulge in luvviness myself, so I will not natter on about the commentators and authors I listened to (John Humphries and Terry Pratchett amongst numerous others) or spotted in the crowd (Colin Dexter), but I am going to share the two best incidences of the two days. First amusing moment was Fiona Shaw and Saffron Burrows turning up for the session on Writer's Block that Fiona was hosting. Fiona is a national acting icon in Britain, and Harry Potter's nasty aunt is by far her least important role, which must be why she point-blank refused to give me an autograph. To think I broke my golden rule of not asking for autographs that I have kept for almost 15 years too. She should have been more conscious of the honour; the last autograph I got was from Ricky Grace! Both women were unnatur...

Internet-geek time everyone. I have a website. You are reading it at the moment. I only have in the format of a blog because blogger is the easiest platform for me to publish on the net and no-one liked the ezBoard forum anyway. Thus, I do not consider myself a real blogger, I just publish my writing on the net. But what I *AM* is a complete sucker for people mentioning me on the net. Monica mentioned me quite a few times on her blog Th'inkwell but that was because I lived with her. Matt links to me on his blog Creativity on Demand but that is because I used to live with him. I love those two links, but they are ones I didn't earn. What I did earn were these three little gems of Claire’s minor presence on the net. BIG MENTION NUMBER ONE – Miss C’s blog. I found Catriya’s blog when a flash of boredom drove me to press the next blog button. I landed on a post about her plans for an ex-boyfriend and didn’t look back. I don’t think I have ever read a better commentator on my ge...

WARNING: Plot Spoilers I am currently devouring Robin Hobb's most excellent Liveships trilogy, enjoying once again an author that is fearless in her writing. Hobb, along with the equally ruthless George R R Martin , has my eternal regard because she is not a sentimental author, allowing the most hideous hardships to overtake her heroes over and over again until you feel fate-ravaged yourself and wish desperately she would stop creating such cruel realities and indulge in some old school positive tweaking of the plotlines. Reading until 2am on a school night because I just met these guys and they are going through a rough patch, I remembered a heartfelt book review I knocked up at the start of the year. A week before I left Perth for London and needing cheap entertainment due to budgetary restraints, I got my greedy hands on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and lay in bed for nine hours straight getting back into life at Hogwarts. At 3am that morning I let the book sl...

Friends, Family, Visitors Today we stand at the start of an uncertain eight months for our State. Having failed in our negotiations with Great Britain for residency the State is conceding defeat and returning to Australia. While deeply regretting our passionate love for Britain could not move mountains, nor, indeed, the Visa and Immigration Department, the State is proud that our feelings are truly ambivalent, as we must leave the land of Intellectual Paradise for the land of Physical Paradise. During our final four months of residence in Great Britain, the State will be engaged in various activities that naturally occur with disengagement. Many new friends are to be left behind and time must be spent cementing relationships, a state of alertness for last minute opportunities for the State to remain in Great Britain must be maintained and plans drawn up for the Return to Paradise. These activities are, in their very nature, apt to make the State completely self-absorbed and potential...

Shakespeare's Globe 2005 THEATRE SEASON THE SEASON OF THE WORLD AND UNDERWORLD The 2005 summer theatre season at Shakespeare’s Globe has been announced as The Season of The World and Underworld. Three plays by Shakespeare - The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale and Pericles – will be joined by an adaptation of The Storm by Plautus. This Graeco-Roman comedy has been adapted by Peter Oswald whose previous work for the Globe, The Golden Ass, was a huge hit in 2002. In addition to these productions, two company projects will explore voice and the use of masks on the Globe stage. The Season of The World and Underworld, which begins on 6 May, will examine the influence of classical Greece on Shakespeare’s works. The season will finish on 2 October with The Tempest. It will be Mark Rylance’s final performance as artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe. The Natural History Museum CURRENT EXHIBITIONS Wildlife Photographer of the Year Tickets £5, £3 concessions, £12 family The power, beauty and ex...

Love can hijack your otherwise normal life with only a rusty bent teaspoon and a packet of clothes pegs - the wooden ones that start out a pleasing pine colour and end up a slimy grey-green from the weather. Love can drive you barmy with its relentless weeks of monotony that prepares you for throwing it all in and getting a real life, and then it flattens all your objections with a broadside of pure bliss so iridescent that you are blinded for days and your mind is invincible in the afterglow. I betrayed my great love the other week for a few days, as I sulked about the lack of a visa and in a fit of pique I threatened my mind with going home and starting another undergraduate course in the history of another country, one that would give me a visa. I even contemplated, god forbid, Australian history. But you can’t rage against what is in your blood, what is hard-wired into your brain, what brings you your greatest joy. And so I am stuck with being irretrievably in love with Britain, ...

From the ages of 5 to 16 years old I wanted to be an archaeologist, nattily attired in khaki, under the baking sun, slowing brushing away red dirt to reveal priceless treasures . When I gave up that dream, I replaced it with another one, that of marrying an archaeologist. This occurred to me when, collating some of my favourite quotes to facilitate the delivery of a pithy yet educated aside in polite conversation, I came across Agatha Christie’s assessment of life with an archaeologist; An archaeologist is the best husband a woman could have. The older she gets, the more interested he is in her. Dame Christie was my top author for many years and I still experience the thrill of meeting up with an old friend when Poirot and Captain Hastings converse in their sitting room at the start of each story, much like those other most famous of sleuths, Holmes and Dr Watson. Such was my admiration that, believing imitation was indeed the sincerest form of flattery, I once tried to create my...

Oh yeah baby, it is snow time again in London and this year I was better prepared than last year . Better prepared meaning I was not acting like a five-year-old and running around in circles chanting songs composed on the spot about snow. I was really cool, calm and collected and limited myself to hustling Jac out of bed to look at the snow and taking photos from my window of my snow-covered view. This year I got to view the snow falling from a few storeys up though which was cool. In the space of my 40 minutes getting ready you could really see the different styles of snowfall ... it wafted down, slammed down AND come down kinda horizontal. I do think that my three morning companions were a little shocked that I took photos of them though; the stocky guy in the bottom flat who has breakfast in his white towelling dressing gown each morning, the guy in the top flat with his two huge Mac monitors in his home office and the shy guy in the middle flat who keeps on ducking out of sight...

I have a few plans to implement this year and I am going to ask for nominations for one and offer the other one as a kind of timeshare offer. Two of my resolutions are to read more non-fiction and to subscribe to magazines that provide contemporary commentary. RESOLUTION ONE AIM: Read two non-fiction books a month on History and Literature / Ideaology, choosing areas of the world that I have no specialisation in (ie not Britain or Western Europe). METHOD: Turn the pages. EQUIPMENT: A learned, yet easy to read tome that covers a good chunk of the history and literature / ideaology of the area chosen. April – China and Mongolia May – India June – South East Asia July – Scandanavia August – Eastern Europe September – North Africa October – South Africa November – South America December – Central America Essentially I am taking recommendations. I do not have a wide enough knowledge of these regions to know who the scholars are and which publications are the most authorative or well-written...

The National Portrait Gallery is my favourite place in London, mainly because my passion is people and a good portrait displays the artist’s ability to render in paints what I seek to render in words. However, the National Portrait Gallery has two other excellent qualities that endear it immensely to me – it hosts a free lecture and a free musical performance each week. I have listened to lectures on Dandyism, Chinese Opera and writers in residence in Antarctica. I have listened to Cole Porter Jazz tunes, medieval Christmas Carols and, tonight, a collection of works for guitar, violin, flute and voice influenced by or composed in Spain. The recital was by young artists from the Concordia Foundation , an organisation I am rapidly becoming a fan of as the amazing performance I saw tonight has impressed me with the calibre of their pool of creative talent. I was given the great pleasure of watching four performers who will be commanding very large fees if I want to see them again. A...

I had been seated in the front row of the audience for the performance and remained behind for a little while, savouring the pleasure of the previous minutes. As I got out of my seat I was approached by the two elderly ladies sitting across from me. I was sure I had seen them before in my travels and I had certainly noticed them sketching quickly during the performance. We quickly established that all three of us attended approximately the same events, but Gwyneth and Joy had come up with a unique way of thanking those whom they watched perform. Both ladies had produced a lovely sketch of each performer, and afterwards, took it to them and asked them to sign it. I watched each of the four artists be melted by this gesture, smile delightedly and chat away to the two women, charmed by the gift of art for art. I myself was inordinately pleased when they showed me the sketch they had done of me, fur collar around my neck and face transformed by the music. They had caught me during the ...

I have a new job. It is one of those jobs that make you wonder what you did the night before to deserve it. The tube ride is a relaxing 40 minutes from door to door, including trains that ran on time and uncrowded carriages of good looking men in suits. Exiting the tube I am met by the clean, green scent of the breeze off Green Park, the route to work taking me through the quiet streets of St James past shops that sell that indefinable edge that makes the posh and rich look right. The office is serene and elegant; wood panelling, original artwork, lush carpets, silver service, three butlers, a wine cellar and a corporate curator. My own office has two windows, an armchair and brass plate on the door that is shiny enough to check my reflection in. There is a full cooked lunch each day in the dining room and I am already in possession of complimentary tickets to exhibitions that employees are entitled to. This is the kind of job I imagined London to be able to offer, but I did not ...

Shakespeare's Globe 2005 THEATRE SEASON THE SEASON OF THE WORLD AND UNDERWORLD The 2005 summer theatre season at Shakespeare’s Globe has been announced as The Season of The World and Underworld. Three plays by Shakespeare - The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale and Pericles – will be joined by an adaptation of The Storm by Plautus. This Graeco-Roman comedy has been adapted by Peter Oswald whose previous work for the Globe, The Golden Ass, was a huge hit in 2002. In addition to these productions, two company projects will explore voice and the use of masks on the Globe stage. The Season of The World and Underworld, which begins on 6 May, will examine the influence of classical Greece on Shakespeare’s works. The season will finish on 2 October with The Tempest. It will be Mark Rylance’s final performance as artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe. The Natural History Museum CURRENT EXHIBITIONS Wildlife Photographer of the Year Tickets £5, £3 concessions, £12 family ...

Today Bunty Marshall, 82, breezed into my life from Derbyshire (driving 2 ½ hours down the M1 by herself thank you very much) to remind me what I should be doing with my time over here. She was trying some loose powder, I offered a hand massage with the new hand cream and we talked about the weather, her Christmas, her son's travels, my travels and we finally got to my degree. And then we were off, talking faster than we could manage of the Danelaw, WRENs, the Great War and the feeling you can get of the countless years of an old building reaching out of the very stones for you. I pulled out my chair, seated her behind my counter and we became the best of friends. We covered her impression of the Imperial War Museum's Women in War exhibition that we had both seen and her founding of the Repton Historical Society. We bonded over our mutual thoughts on Hastings Castle, the Battle of Bosworth, Gallipoli and Normandy. We stood with slightly teary eyes discussing the profound ef...

When you are not at school or university, lessons creep up on you. In the middle of a quiet December I had one day in which I learnt quite a few things about the importance of being earnest about clean socks, the obligations inherent in being older, the difference between sticks and knives, why I miss my cousins and the real look of sun damaged skin. Perhaps I should start at the top then. The importance of clean socks, or in my case stockings without holes. Accessorize stockings are in my top five 'Things I Love About London' along with Pret a Manger sandwiches , any food from Marks and Spencer's , New Look trousers and the Sunday Times' Style Magazine . I have a pair from last year that were worn every day for five months and have only two holes. This year's pair are showing all the signs of repeating the star performance as the sturdiest stockings in existence. But this year's pair had not been washed, and neither had my jeans, so I was wearing skirts ...