This may come as a bit of a shocker to most of you but I'm actually having a comparatively quiet weekend and the week looks like it might be quite low-key too.
If you need me I'll be in bed.
I love having the social life I wished I'd had fifteen years ago but I get 'xhausted by all this delightful human interaction.
So I'm rather relishing some downtime to balance things out. I'm not alone in this, though, right, Charlie and Jos?
This week, I have mostly been ...
Reading ...
(still) ... and thinking, not for the first time, that two months of solitude with a huge rucksack affectionately known as Monster, a pair of filthy hiking boots (to replace the ones that fell down a cliff)
and occasional care parcels arriving in remote towns doesn't sound like a hideous prospect at all.
No, really.
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| {"What, I could have taken a stairlift?! Really?! MAAAAAN."} |
... Suffragette
with Jos and Charlie.
Safe to say we all came out a little bit broken.
Such an important issue, such an important film, and some truly excellent performances. I'd watch Carey Mulligan in an Iceland advert, she is that brilliant; she's been one to watch since Bleak House. OK so occasionally her East London accent in this film slips a little, but I'll forgive her on the basis of, well, everything else she does in this film.
***SPOILER ALERT!***
Especially that truly awful force-feeding scene.
Parts were almost too hard to watch, especially the treatment of the suffragettes by the police, and strangely enough, the end credits, during which the years in which women were granted the vote were listed. Some, even in Europe, were much too recent to be believed. 1971 for Switzerland and only on a certain level? I cannot even. I cannot. (To paraphrase Charlie.)
We can make huge technological leaps, but we can't give other human beings the right to decide on the fate of their country because they happen to be female? We're a bit disgraceful as a race, aren't we.
On a slightly lighter note, I've been ...
Having all the feels over ...
... Someone Like You
Following on from last week's Monday Missive, while it's against my well-grounded principles (probably) to continually cross-promote other contemporary choirs when I love mine so dearly, I couldn't not share this truly beautiful rendition with live string and piano accompaniment. You'd have to be made of stone -- STONE, I tell thee -- not to appreciate this.
Also, it stars Ma QB and despite her insistence to the contrary, she is just a little bit special. In the real sense.
Dancing with a Dinosaur
#Open the door, get on the floor ... everyone dance with a dinosaaaaaur#
Yea verily, on Thursday night I bunked not one but two choir rehearsals to attend the Work Christmas Party, which this year was held in the grand Earth Rooms at the Natural History Museum.
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| {Gin in a tin. At my desk. Shameful.} |
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| {I'm yer Venus, I'm yer fire ...} |
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| {Table buddies from L-R, Alex, Kate, Daniela, Paul, Kiran -- she's behind the centrepiece -- Roni, Jane and Catherine. Excellent companions all.} |
There was a dessert buffet but again I managed to put aside a dessert, went off to dance and came back to find it had been taken away.
Still, the dance floor looked a bit like this (at least to begin with):
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| {Oh my gaaaahd, it's full of stars!} |
Didn't take very many decent photos (low light, and I didn't want to burn anyone's corneas with the flash on my phone), nor did I rock up in many, except a couple of permutations of this one:
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| {L-R, well, guess who, Charlotte, Jillian, Martin and Pritty in the front there} |
And finally, a little visual joke for you House fans out there (or, just for my own amusement):
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| {Why yes, Greg, it only flipping is.} |
When the music got much too loud (yes, I AM OLD) and too trendy (again, OLD) and I couldn't really hear the sage life advice my workmate Ant was (probably) giving me, I knew it was time to make a low-key exit. I was home by midnight.
Singing with my Lovelies ...
... at our annual Voicerox Five Gold Sings performance in Rahgate on Saturday:
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| {An assembly of Lovelies | Thanks to Rebecca S for the photo!} |
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| {Sorry, David, no marshmallows. None at all. Have a flake instead.} |
So I think Jos very, very much for this photo:
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| {Photo by Jos} |
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| {Photo by Jos} |
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| {Photo by Jos} |
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| {Photo by Jos} |
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| {Photo by Jos} |
#everymomentisblogfodder
Pinterest Pin of the Week
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| {Stop listening to the word 'if' and only pay attention to 'when'} |
Weekly Web Finds
- IKEA is providing shelters for Syrian refugees | on House Beautiful | via Monika
- Some rather epic design fails | Some of these made me snorfle | on the Daily Fail | via Julie
- If politicians had man buns | on Twisted Sifter | via my ol' workmate Gemma P on Facebook
I shall now spend the week reconstructing my reality so I have something of note to share with you next weekend. Or maybe I'll just stick to the truly quotidian. Imagine, if you will ...
PREVIEW, created for amusement, mostly:
This week, I have been mostly ...
Brushing my teeth
Yes, indeedles, dental hygiene is a must in the QB household! I like a cheap Wilco battery toothbrush and some European interpretation of Colgate Advance Whitening procured at Poundland.
Putting on boots
The stompier and more scuffed the better.
Drinking coffee
Coffee. Ahhh ... coffee ... As the song goes, I like my men like I like my coffee. Read into that what you will.
Writing Christmas cards
Because it's December and it's that time of year.
Commuting ...
... and resenting every millisecond, every loud chewer, every berk with a stinky McDonalds/Burger King meal; every pusher-inner who doesn't wait for passengers to alight from the train before attempting to board; every person with expensive but ineffectual headphones; every twerp who sits on the aisle seat and blocks an empty window seat; every numpty just out of Westfield who puts their Jack Wills/Hollister shopping bag on an adjacent seat on a busy train and looks furious at the thought that someone might want to sit there; every plonker who won't move down, please, even when asked nicely; every tourist/pensioner/parent-and-child travelling for leisure at evening rush hour when they have all day to travel unlike those of us who are working; every owner of a suitcase that's too big, too heavy or too wheely for them to manage through London; every cotton-headed ninnymuggins who stops dead at the top or bottom of steps, or in the middle of the truly grim underpass at Clapham ... etc etc.
... No?
No, OK. Only the exciting stuff then, and hold the vitriol.
I'm off to have a serious think about maybe possibly putting up my Christmas decorations -- the girls in the hallway already have their Christmas headgear on:
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| {Gaga and Mombi: made of polystyrene and yet so much cooler than me} |
I should take their lead, right?
Cheerio, chaps!
qb xx
