Sunday Summary | as seen through the haze of vino tinto

Hi! Hello! Howdy! Hey! How are we all? Happy, hopefully.

Man alive, I do love me some alliteration ...

This week, I have mostly been ...

Reading

Really, QB?! Still?!

Oh but I'm so close to the end now. And I've learned a lot. And nodded a lot. And turned down a lot of page corners. If I wasn't identifying wholeheartedly with the Ways of the Introvert before, well, it's safe to say I've found my tribe.

Writing ...

... and getting my NaNoWriMo tally up to speed finally. Still not entirely convinced that what I'm peddling isn't a whole pile of dross but as I constantly keep reminding myself, at least I'm writing. Right?

I've also taken to writing wherever there's a surface (and preferably coffee nearby), just to keep up with the word count:

So, in bed:

{Wine: the after-hours coffee alternative}

on the train:

{Oh yep, I'm the spreading-out commuter whom everyone hates}

even in a little meeting room during lunchtime in the office. That's dedication, peeps.

Listening ...

... to a lot of TED talks. I love a TED talk, especially one that makes me stop what I'm doing for a moment (which is slightly tricky when listening at work) and think, yes! I get that! Props! or words to that effect.

A few I've enjoyed this week, which you may find enlightening (or not, no judgment, no pressure), include:

Karen Gaffney | All Lives Matter

Elizabeth Gilbert | Your Elusive Creative Genius

Sir Ken Robinson | Do Schools Kill Creativity?

The latter talk was particularly noteworthy: why are the arts placed so low on the educational hierarchy compared to maths and science? Maths and science are important, of course, but children's potential and their intelligence, therefore, is gauged on their performance in those subjects rather than on their abilities in creative media.

... Er, can someone help me down from this tiny little soapbox please? Fanks.

Watching ...

... 30 Rock.

Lemon and Donaghy. So much love for the duo.

Sampling ...

... the new Christmas ranges in Costa Coffee, oh yeah!

On Wednesday evening, Amanda (aka AJ) and I shimmied (yes, shimmied) on down to Costa Rahgate to take advantage of lots of free (as in, didn't Costa penny ... ahem ...) sugary stuff, as Costa launched their iconic Christmas menus.

And 'latte' me tell you ( ... ): the Tiramisu Latte is the one to watch. 

Not to be confused, however, with:

{Taramasalata | via here}

I've been making that joke all week. It never gets tired.

Except when it does.

Not only did we get mini coffee and hot chocolate and Christmas Tree Tea samples, but we also sampled little cups of cake.

Cups! Of cake! What's not to like?!

Now, I can't possibly tell you what each of the samples was (because they barely stayed put long enough to warrant identification) but I believe there was a billionaire's tart, a mince tart, something gingerbread-y, a chocolate and cherry brownie, salted caramel ... something ... oh, it was all rather marvellous.

The inevitable cake coma followed, accompanied by a great desire for just a little leaf or something to munch on to redress the balance. Failing that, I went on to a singing rehearsal, and washed the whole lot down with wine. Semantics.

Continuing the QB Luvs Coffee Theme ...

Warning: Readers of a delicate sensibility who frown upon profanity like QB herself frowns upon punctuation errors (!) should probably skip past this part of the SS.

On Friday afternoon, my boss and I ventured into darkest Bermondsey (well, strictly, Bermondsey Street, in the London Bridge vicinity) to pay a visit to this coffee shop as lauded in a recent edition of Time Out:

Yes, friends, its name is F*ckoffee.

The interior of the cafe itself is, as you'd expect, hipster-hip, but in a rather wonderfully quirky way:

{There's a small, scary Child's Play Chucky somewhere in this scene ...}

{Espresso cup lamp!}

And the coffee is darn good, as are the cakes. 

Behold! A slice of chocolate and walnut gooey brownie heaven (with a natty Americano in a decent-sized cup):

If F*ckoffee were transplanted somewhere more local, say, Rahgate or Deadhill, it'd be the perfect place to hole up and get the next 34,000 NaNoWriMo words locked down.

Getting my karaoke on

All right, admit it, Song Club Collective [as I am now calling my beautiful ellipsis of friends comprising, but not limited to, Jos, Charlie, Dan, Jenny, Alun-in-absentia -- because he gets a mention now whether he's there or not! -- Paul, Leonie and Jamie << look! your first-ever official Sunday Summary mention, guys!] this is the part of the blog you all scrolled down to see, wasn't it? 

(Read the rest later, do; it's mighty illuminating -- chortle chortle.)

Why, yes, on Saturday night a bundle of us rolled up at the South Park 

Constitutional Club for karaoke, and had a mighty fine time. It was new Deskette Jenny's first outing with us as a quirky little corpus, and she survived, so that was nice. 

We dun did some singing, as is the custom -- look upon these fabulous singing faces and be joyous!

{Chaaaaain, keep us together ...}

{No Diggity ...}

{Nobody does it better ...}

 And in Misguided QB News I did some serious strangulation of this song:

which I regret on so many levels, because I really like the song; it has a certain resonance for me as it was the song playing in my brain as I tramped through the night on that walk I don't mention any more (much), and I didn't mean to murder it with quite such aplomb.

It is, after all, a very hard song to sing*.

* Song Club shorthand for, "you was RUBBISH!"

Lesson learned. Gah. (Also, everything sounds slightly massacred after much of wine.)

And on a sartorial level ...

{Photo by Jos}

WHAT THE CHUFF WAS I THINKING!?!

{This, apparently, is my rebellious face. Yep. Scary. | Photo by Jos}

Still. Jos won a pack of Penguins in the raffle (woot!),

{Photo by Jos}

{Sheesh, that escalated quickly ...}

it was discovered that you could buy Caramacs behind the bar, yep:

and we managed to pull off the most splendid rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody since, er, probably that one that Adam Lambert did last NYE with Queen feat. Bryan May and his Renaissance Hair.

And of course, of course, the night concluded with Chips in the Bus Stop. It's ritual now. Jos had to bond with some local youffs who were on our turf to make things pleasant-like (also, they seemed sweet and harmless and I think we scared them a bit) but it was a fitting end.

{Deskettes on Tour | Doin' the Bus Stop, November 2015}

Pinterest Pin of the Week

... has to be this little GIF. It's topical, y'all.

Weekly Web Finds

• 11 Ways to Productively Procrastinate during NaNoWriMo | on Bookish
• Choir-singing improves heath and happiness | on The Conversation | via Jill
• 'Social media is not real life' | Blogger and poster steps away from platforms | on Elle.com via Oh My Drifter
• Death to Noisy Typists | Library etiquette from Lucy Mangan | on The Guardian | via Ma QB

---

Aaaaand that's all we've got time for, folks.

See ya same time-ish next week.

Stay mellow.

qb xx

Sunday Summary | No Spirits: All Souls

Pre-emptor: There are flamingos 'subliminally' concealed somewhere in this post. First to comment here or post on FB that they've spotted them wins another Mars Bar; and I promise I won't make you wait two months to receive it this time ...

Hello, FOQ!

Now, don't all launch on me at once but I toyed with the idea of not posting this week.

I just ... lacked the motivation to Summarise. It's been one of those weeks in which, to paraphrase Del Amitri, Nothing Ever Happens:

with the exception of spending the latter part of the week hanging out with Ma QB, or more accurately waiting for Ma QB to be discharged from the hospital after a minor op so I could hang out with her.

I was left with potential acres of time in which I could have been writing, blogging, reading, 'rithmaticking and other pursuits.

But, hospital time being what it is, I ended up spending a lot of time this week ringing Ma's friends to arrange transport, texting people to let them know her progress, feeding the chickens the wrong things at the wrong time (but coming away with eggs, and finally getting a cuddle out of both of them followed by a vengeance peck on the arm from the temperamental one) ... and waiting.

And waiting.

And waiting some more.

In the immortal words of Sesame Street, "you've got to be patient to be a patient" (or the daughter of one, incidentally).

But to alleviate tension I spent a good amount of that other time (that could have been spent reading, writing and 'rithmaticking) ...

Tickling the Ivories

Essentially trying to work out how to play this:

but also revisiting pieces I've been playing since I was a teen-or-twenty. Like my bête noire, Sondheim's Send in the Clowns. Or the simplest, played-by-ear interpretation of Bring Him Home. I dunno. Stick me in a room by myself and I can play till the cows come home. But I can't play to the cows themselves without falling apart.

What gives?

Reading

Oh, for Pete's sake, yes, I am still reading Quiet. It's taking me ages. But it's so worthwhile. I love it. It makes my brain go click and makes my head nod with continual identification.

Binge-watching

Buffy.
So much Buffy.
Too much Buffy.

Not enough to make me regret not booking a photo session with James Marsters at Comic-Con Brighton next weekend, though, weirdly. Seem to have grown out of that obsession. 2002-era QB would have sold her innards for the privilege. 2015-era QB is a little bit ambivalent. (Sorry, Mr Marsters. You're 13 years too late for my epic fan-girling. You still have killer cheekbones though.)

And 30 Rock. Which at times makes me chuckle out loud. Alone. At home.

(Mostly at Alec Baldwin.)

Planning to Write Loads! 

No, really!

Why, yes, friendaroonies, I may have been slack on the writing front while playing Nurse Beffy but in a moment of insanity I've signed up to participate officially in NaNoWriMo again this year!

50,000 words in 30 days? 1,667 words a day? (Let's call it 2,000 and overachieve a bit.)

Easy.

Said no sane person, ever.

Still, I need something with which to chart my days now Chuck-tober is over.

And look! I've already clocked up 2k and it's only day one.

Pinterest Pin of the Week

Weekly Web Finds

• *** FOQ, if you follow no other links this week, please just read Evie's excellent account of her visit to the 'Jungle' in Calais | on Evie's blog, A Thousand Paper Birds

• Bridget Christie on tampon tax and Jeremy Corbyn | from the Guardian Weekend
• Women have hilarious responses to tampons being considered a luxury | via BuzzFeed via Glenda | Nicely barbed.
• 1938 Tips for Single Women | on Mashable via Retronaut | E-flamin'-gads.

{via here}

• For those of us participating in NaNoWriMo, here's some brain fodder to keep us motivated: How to Prepare for Writing a Novel | on Grammarly
• Also, Oliver Burkeman on how to conquer the 'fear' of creativity | from the Guardian Weekend
• Stephen Collins gets my mentality just about right (sorry, Costa -- sometimes I do buy a toastie as well though ...) | from the Guardian Weekend

{see the whole cartoon here}

• And finally ... I'd like this book please thank you kindly.

{via here}

Oh, will ya look at that? I came, I saw, I blogged after all.

Until next week ... keep cosy.

qb xx

PS Sorry, again with the no-call-outs this week. Next week ought to be more conducive to call-outs for my lovelies. I hope you know who you are and that I still think you're fabulous. xx

Sunday Summary | with a liberal splash of Indian Shiraz

Friends! Romans! Countrymen! Random readers! Family members! Lend me your ears, eyes and other superfluous organs.

Anyone else completely discombobulated by the extra hour? Anyone else completely forget to dress in the white robe rather than the blue for church, and wear the green not the red collar ... ? Anyone else forget the proper names for those collars? 

Just me then? Lost: one brain. If found, please return to its rightful owner.

Y'know, people often ask me, "QB, you really are living the dream, aren't you; how can I too live a wild and exciting life full of wall-to-wall high-jinks worthy of comedy gifs, just like you?*"

{I had Glee's Sue Sylvester's voice in my head while writing the above,
just so you understand the context ... | Is that too old-skool/2011 a reference?}

To those people I say,

"People, there's no secret. Oh, actually there is. Just isolate the three things you do all week that aren't: laundry, bookshelf rearrangement, perusing the IKEA collections, sleeping, eating, drinking coffee, binge-watching everything on Netflix, or working, and make them sound considerably more substantial than, er, all the other things. And then spend hours on Giphy trying to portray those three events in apposite animated form."

*Nobody really says that. They think it**, but they don't say it.
**Nobody really thinks that. 80% of my life happens in my head.

We all know those people on Facebook who only ever depict the best and most fabulous things to happen to them, although those things seem to be better and more fabulous than anything you would ever be able to post:

• OMG, just got crowned head of state! #callmeHRH
• Rough moving day. Movers lost 3 of our Monets, the horses can't be moved from the stables 'til next week and there are boxes in 57 of the 80 rooms. #passthebolly
• YAY! Desdemona just got the best sixth birthday pressie ever -- accepted into Oxbridge!!!!! #soproud #childgenius

to the point whereby you cannae take it any more and you hide the offending braggarts or unfriend them completely.

{Reza Farazmand | Poorly Drawn Lines | from here, via Pinterest}

Yyyyeah. Basically, this blog is nowt but the edited highlights of each week.

Because if I depicted all the laundry, bookshelf rearrangements (hey, you have to allow me one or two -- ditto the IKEA perusals), sleeps, eats, coffee-guzzles, Netflix binge-watches and, God forbid, work, anything too quotidian (and those Decluttering tallies come very close), then this wouldn't be the Summary you know and indulge on a weekly basis.

{"What even is this?!"}

(And you'd probably be hitting the Hide QB/Unfriend buttons prettyquicksmartish.)

Perhaps I should post a 'real-life' Summary one week and you'll understand why you get all the good material.

Or, a Hum-Drum-mary, if you would indulge me.

Which brings me to the good material. Or the publishable material.

One does not wish to brag.

This week, I have mostly been ...

Perusing the IKEA collections

Darn-nabbit, it's like a disease.

{Verdict? It's beginning to look a lot like ...}

Reading

Still. What can I say? There's a lot of identification to do. Non-fiction is notoriously slower to read than fiction.

Watching

I've added 30 Rock to my catalogue.

And I love it. Not only is each episode half an hour long so the binge-watch guilt is reduced, but there's also New York scenery. And men who value good grammar:

Also, this documentary which is definitely worth pre-ordering or viewing at one of the public showings, especially if you're of a creative/designerly bent in the digital age.

I shared the trailer last week but here it is again because it's worth a look:

Made me want to screen-print, in a big way.

And I'm just catching up on the latest full episode of Gareth Malone: The Naked Choir on iPlayer (because the episode of CSI:NY I was watching over dinner involved a case of fragrant gangrene, which is barely conducive to, er, enjoying my Sunday night pork belly fix).

Sons of Pitches for the win. Please?

Decluttering

You'd think that QB Heights was a Spartan Scandinavian-style apartment by now:

{Photo: Birgitta Drejer/Sisters Agency | via sfgirlbybay}

with all that Chuck-tober-ing but no, there are still things.

Many things.

That said, I'm getting there. I spent Friday night rearranging all the living room shelves (no, really, I did that and I make no apologies; this is me keeping it real):

{9.35pm: WHY DID I EVEN START THIS?!}

{9.36pm: I'M STUCK! IN MY BOOKS! STUCK! HAYELP!}

The spaces are soon to be filled with vinyl, admittedly, but there is now actual Space. And Order. Which pleases me greatly.

... I won't bore you with the tally this week, though. In all honesty, it's the usual. Books. The odd article of clothing. Odd items of kitchenware. A DVD or two. You get the picture.

Eating Out ...

... with the Church 'Youth' Contingent/the Demographic Formerly Known As the 18-30s group/AKA SoNIC [stands for Social Network In Church ... I know, I know, but I invented the name when I was YOUNG, goshdarnit] -- essentially, a group of us who are now under 50, basically, at local Indian eatery Mela, which was once Pizza Organic and prior to that Pizza Piazza -- that's how long I've lived here, folks.

The place usually looks dead from the outside (to be frank) but was definitely lively on Saturday night. (Admittedly, we brought the liveliness with us.)

The food was delicious. The company was, of course, even more delectable, diverse, and very entertaining. The staff, well, they were attentive, up until the point whereby we were considering dessert or trying to pay the bill, and then they couldn't be seen for the back-spray of table disinfectant, which was a distinct hint that they were ready to lock up for the night, so no dessert for us. But still.

A great night.

I like this whole having-a-social-life thing. The having-friends-thing is also pleasing to me.

Becoming an Internet Sensation***

*** ... is a laughably inaccurate description of the next little aside but what the hey.

I'm on Google Street View, y'all. Strutting down my street like '77-era Travolta:

but with no pot o' paint, and slightly less bouffy hair. Slightly.

{Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk ...}

Immortalised (for at least a year) by Google. I've arrived.

All those young vlogger upstarts can jog right on.

Pinterest Pin of the Week

Weekly Web Finds

Just a couple this week:

• This boy, singing Whitney Houston | via Charlie:

• I found this some weeks back; it's weird as heck, but still tickles me greatly | Lionel Richie, Hello, Musicless Musicvideo | by Mario Wienerroither

Which I was reminded of by this:

Is it me you're looking for?

No?

I'll be off then.

I'd just like to say thank you to you all for your continued readership/indulgence of The Quirky Brunette and the Sunday Summary. I'm aware I've done few to almost no namechecks this week but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate you.

'K?

Signing off -- jusqu'a la prochaine ...

qb xx