I've been away for a while, and I don't have the procrastination time at work to make any entries at the moment, so I've not been able to regale the interweb with fascinating stories from Gateshead for a while. Just think, in the olden days I would have had to just keep a diary, and no one would have seen them unless I became rich and/or famous and got a publishing deal, but nowadays any schmuck can just natter away about their inconsequential experiences and views and anyone who wants to can access them. Is that progress? Well, it's different, and late capitalism tends to encourage you to associate 'different' with 'progress', although for different reasons than the attempt to get you to associate 'natural' with 'healthy' or 'cool' with popular culture.

So, what have I been doing? Well, I did the Great North Run with my beloved, and we finished, and raised some money for a worthy cause. Which was nice. Then my beloved finished her PhD and had a birthday (not in that order) so we went to London to celebrate - not that that smog-ridden oversized self-important hellhole is a particularly good place to celebrate, but it does have the Natural History Museum and the Terracotta Army. And we were staying in Zone 1 so it was easy to get about. And we've got friends there. So this is what happened.

1. Bizarre pint-serving incident #94: in a pub off Great Portland St I attempt to purchase a pint of foaming nut-brown ale. The exchange goes something like this:
Me: A pint of [name of tasty real ale], please.
Barmaid (after struggling with what is obviously a new barrel, for a while before presenting me with half a pint of beer and half a pint of froth): I don't think I'm going to be able to get much more than this
Me: Oh, well in that case I'll have-
Barmaid: No, you've got to have this now.
Me (puzzled): What?
Barmaid: It'll be a waste otherwise. Do you want me to top it up with something else?

2. We saw the terracotta army and a few bits of the British Museum. The army was interesting but I thought that there could have been a bit more context to the exhibits - it was probably all in the brochure they wanted you to pay £25 for.

3. We went to the Natural History museum and went behind the scenes on a tour of the 'wet room' - stuff in formaldehyde. There was this bloody enormous squid, which was most excellent, in it's squidy way.

4. Saw Bob, had a nice Sunday dinner, stayed out in Zone 5 with him and Mrs Bob for a few days after our we ran out of hotel time.

5. Hooked up with the anti-war protest on the Monday, the one that was nearly banned from going to Parliament but which was allowed to continue at the very last minute (half an hour before it was due to start). It was an impressive line up of speakers though: Tony Benn, Kate Hudson, Mark Steel, Mark Thomas, Gorgeous George Galloway, Linsey German, some bloke who used to be in the SAS but has decided to oppose the war, Brian Haw (who comes off as a non-musical Ian Brown - heart in the right place but mad as a box of frogs), and oddest of all: Brian Eno, whose speech was quoting a speech by Menzies Campbell for all eternity; and the bloke what played Toby in the West Wing. That was odd not least because he gave a speech about how the Bartlett administration would never have gone into Iraq - yeah, and neither would Lemuel Gulliver or William de Baskeville...

Odd day all round actually - the bits that stick with me most from it are the way that when Gorgeous George came to speak and the SWP side on the left of the square cheered, whilst the SP guys behind us booed. Oh, and people rapidly altering placards to say 'The Brown junta almost banned this demonstration." That and when the police decided to reopen the road that goes down past Parliament to traffic whilst 5,000 people were trying to march down it. It basically resulted in lots of frustrated protestors being forcibly bottled in by a combination of cars and police, pissing everyone off on both sides. Still, gave the chants of "whose streets? Our Streets! Whose war? Their war!" a bit of very literal meaning...

6. Saw the beloved's parents, which cheered her up no end. There weren't any chants or placards though. And Tony Benn wasn't noticeably present.

Now, a literature review.

I was going to give Charlotte Bronte the benefit of the doubt about Jane Eyre, and assume that her thoughts about the plot development went something like:
"I've developed some interesting, believable and intelligent characters, but I don't want to drag this on too long so I'll bring in a bit of a deus ex machina ending and a couple of unlikely coincidences and round it all off nice and quickly."
Rather than:
"Well, I've developed some interesting, believable and intelligent characters, but there isn't quite enough in the way of unlikely coincidences and stupidly paranormal events so I'm missing a chance to force religion down the reader's throat."

But then I read The Professor. A short novel about a domineering, small-minded, patriarchal, racist, bigoted cock-end and his scarcely better wife that has a happy ending that sees our hero musing about the need to beat his child to stop him developing a personality of his own.

My sister tells me that Villette is amazing, so I'll give her one last chance. But I'm not hopeful. And I would like to briefly say that it's not a defence that she was writing in the 1840s and 50s: Engels wrote The Condition of the Working Class in 1845, The Levellers turned the world upside-down in 1649 - a bigot's a bigot's a bigot, is my point.

PS - listen to Illegal Attacks by Ian Brown, and see if you can get the idea of 'this is the Shake and Vac/ so put the freshness back' out of your head...