Princess Lessons

It ought to be my dirty little secret, but I owe these books too much to hide the truth.

I love the Princess Diaries. All ten of them.

I'm quite certainly too old to be in the demographic that the books target, but I remain a sucker for happy endings and I credit them immensely for their significant contribution towards my social and emotional development.

Why deny it - I've learnt more about myself, my friends, and everything that goes with being part of the cell phone, iPod, pop-culture, consumerist generation, from TPD.

Other books have real conflict. The heroes and the heroines have real problems - war, poverty, no family, evil witches.

It's all very well that that's inspiring, but that doesn't really help me in my cushioned existence now, does it?

Just because I have nothing but love, friendship and comfort at every step, doesn't mean I'm going to give up on having some drama in my life.

Me and Mia, we like the drama.

It's my right to have problems. Loads of them. Nobody has problems bigger than mine and I'm convinced that my world will end.

So it's an extremely grounding experience to be reminded in rather amusing literary style (full of smart contemporary pop-cultural references that have for too long been denied the recognition deserved in fiction) that none of my problems are problems at all.

That every nobody-understand-me or nobody-cares-about-me situation is a been-there-done-that-so-get-over-it for every other formerly self-pitying teenager (and 20-something to be fair).

That happily-ever-after is only what I make of it. And hence, there's still hope for happily-ever-after. After-all, everyone needs the fuzzy feeling of a happy ending :)

On Patrol last Sunday

Snow Patrol!

Still grinning.

Amazing seats.

Amazing band.

Grinning too much to come up with anything more descriptive than 'amazing.' It was an investment well worth making, and it's taking some measure of self control to refrain from pasting lyrics that I have fallen in love with all over again, across all my status messages, tweets and similar stations of online existence.

Here's a clip from the show, from someone who'd brought recording equipment along. Not mine sadly.

Some wisecrack about going to the dogs

So there was this proposed visit to Wimbledon stadium to watch greyhound racing. More school assignments.

I knew nothing of this alleged sport I was going to watch. Except that there would be dogs running around a track.

As an introduction, our tutor gave us the book he wrote about his short and unfortunate stint as a race dog owner. All I knew at the end of it was that I still couldn't understand betting odds.

Ignoring the ethical ambiguity of what I was indirectly supporting, I trekked to the tracks at Wimbledon.

The place didn't smell of dog, but it smelled of beer and burgers. And high spirits.

Old men in tweed, elderly couples, some spiffy suits and loosened ties, and even a bunch of German school children were at the races, clutching race sheets and counting their bills. The screens continually brought up the odds.

The really serious punters, the ones who said they'd been coming here every week for over 40 years, were those that skipped the screens and instead peered at bookies through binoculars, while making illegible notes on their race sheets.

Soon, the first set of dogs are paraded.

Nunhead Jack stops to sniff a post.

(One should expect no less from a dog. "Come on boy!")

With two minutes to go for the race, the last bets are placed.

The gates open and they're off.

In less than two minutes, fortunes were made and lost. Me, I won the princly sum of 25p.

But at the end of the night, I quit both gambling and dog-racing. Quit when I was winning.


The story I wrote for University is up on our website mindZgap.

All work all play

The sports journalist has the best job in the world after the Swiss chocolate taster.

QPR were playing Sheffield United in London and my first assignment as fancy-shmacy sports hack was to cover this. (Read my report here.) Work at a football match was definitely in itself the benefit of a lifetime of accumulated good karma. But it only got better.

I was at a Championship game having paid 22 quid less than the cheapest ticket, with the added invitation to "enjoy the Cipriani's catering." (I did. Whoever Cipriani is.) My vantage viewing point was as good as it could get in the stadium, letting me keep an eye on the TV screen showing matches I was missing while I was at Work as well.

I was offered a press sweatshirt to keep me warm and allow me to turn my full concentration to the game. The bright blue thing was arguably fashioned for a strapping ex rugby player turned sports columnist, but it was cosy nonetheless.

Us sports types don't hang around with the common folks. We with our ubiquitous press passes and memorised stats reels collect in the press rooms to write match reports of a game where the most interesting thing to happen was that I went to watch.

Of course there were challenges. Like concentrating on hastily improvised shorthand while a rather easy-on-the-eye Portugese coach was talking at the post match press meet. And understanding that it might not be highly professional to ask the players to sign my press pack, however star struck I may be.

I could get used to such pampering. Of course, I'll be working for my supper.

Like when I visit the dog-racing track next week. On Work.

Lost masterpiece

These four walls
A window
Dark drapes hang heavily in unfinished blink.
Dust colours the unseen painting within
A shadow
Then not at all.

Non-alcoholics Anonymous

I am the Little Green Mango and I am Not an Alcoholic.

The night starts with a glass of fruit juice. And another. Then I think I can handle a glass of tap water. On the rocks. Just one more.

But it always ends the same - drama, drunk friends and someone else's dinner on my dress.

It's quite a challenge being a non-drinker at any party or night out.

Of course I'm automatically the designated driver - and it's no mean feat driving around with either extremely high-spitrited or temporarily-lost-to-the-world friends. When I'm not driving, I'm making sure we're on the right side of the road to catch the bus or cab. After a head-count obviously.

But I'm also the non-designated chaperone. There's the responsibility of frequent supervised visits to smelly loos that always leave me with toilet tissue stubbornly sticking to pointy heels. There's making sure that nobody steps on the glass that's always on the dance floor. There's magically producing tissue for when half a glass of something lands on someone (not me if I'm lucky). And remembering to check if their passport is in their bag as they head to the airport to catch the first flight out.

I've to deal with the crushed spirit when after wading through crowds by the bar and screaming over the music, to the extremely cute bartender for some water - Yea, just some tap water please - for a friend that could definitely use some, only to be greeting by, "Yuk! This tastes like water."

I've to tread carefully as I assure friends putting on quite a show that I'm laughing with them and not at them.

Sometimes, the party ends before I've even ordered my first lemonade. Which turns out to not be such a bad thing after all when the paramedics at the scene play a guessing game about what exactly a friend who's passed out has been having to eat all day. ("Definitely cheese. And tomatoes.")

But if I find myself cleaning said regurgitated dinner, it probably means there's a long night (or day) still ahead of me.

Despite the evident martyr-like suffering and the seeming prudishness, it really has do do with having more fun.

It's hard to give up on non-drinking when it's always the sobre one that has the wildest night. With the added advantage of fully functioning mental faculties to remember every single delectable detail the next morning. (Except details of puke. That should be blocked out of memory.)

I'm probably one of the few people with a hand steady enough to document the evening with the promise of enough material for two facebook albums and some more saved for special blackmail. I doubt I can ever give up the pleasure of saying to a mildly embarrassed friend just out of a 24 hour hangover: "I know what you did last Saturday night." Or better still, in mock righteousness: "Well if you can't remember if you danced on tables then there's no point in me telling you, is there?"

It's not easy being the non-drinker. But it does help collect a whole lot of stories. Stories that one day shall be retold over fruit juice and tap water, and laughed about.

At a store near you...

I thought updating your blog three times a day and punching in a new status message on Facebook before the ink even dries on the old one, had there been ink to dry, was the ultimate egotistical exercise. Who’d want to hear about your lame life when I’ve got my own to gripe about?

But taking narcissism to a whole new level of grandiosity is the phenomenon of The Book, where every academic worth his half-a-dozen degrees thinks he’s doing a great literary service by compiling a lifetime’s worth of lectures, during which time actually stopped, into a book. His mother has bought a few copies to display on the table by his graduation photos and to hand out as Christmas gifts, and his colleague has picked up a couple to burn; the rest are stocked in dusty corners of university libraries until someone decides it’s time it went on the essential reading list for his hapless students.

It’s another example of an education system gone mad. When I write my book, a whole chapter shall be devoted to just exactly what I think of this.