A bag to hold that thing you type on...

I've decided to write about a common first world fashion dilemma facing many a young blogger. The problem of clothing your laptop.

Nothing makes you feel grown up and important like carrying a laptop about in public. I imagine, back in the late 80s, that was how people felt about shoulder pads, hairspray, briefcases and giant mobile phones, but thankfully, those days are gone.

However, a drawback to having a lovely, delicious laptop that you can use to check emails / blog / shop / Facebook-stalk people you fancy, is that if you don't have a suitable case for it, its nice, shiny surface will get hideously scratched in a matter of days. Sad face. So you are stuck in a shopping dilemma: locate a laptop case that doesn't say, in a monotone voice, 'This case came free with my laptop from PC World'.

This is where not on the high street.com comes in. They have a host of scrumptious laptop bags, the greatest of which is this, for the mere cost of £27.95:

How awesome is that? It has a typewriter tooled into the luscious leather! And the sheet of paper reads 'all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy'. Come now, if the delightfully kitsch typewriter tooling didn't get you, surely the reference to one of the most classic horror films of all time put you on automatic Caps Lock?

If there was a Mr. Nom in existence and I was feeling flush, I'd probably also treat him to this hand-crafted leather satchel, because obviously I wouldn't want him to have the same sleeve as me, in case people mistakenly thought that he had come up with the idea. Stealing my style thunder is not cool.

Each one of these bad boys is made in East London with 'only the finest Italian tan leather' and can be customised in different colours. But I'd have to be in a very generous mood, because it costs £175. Well, it is hand made. And the fictitious Mr. Nom is very well looked after.

This post also guest features on super-cool and awesome blog About Your Dress, owned by @riaface, who is a delight and a joy to know, so follow her on Twitter and DO take a look at the blog. It's jam packed full of scrumptious things you'll really want to own. 

2011 - a year of fulfilled resolutions (hopefully)

There were a few things I decided to change in 2011 and to help me remember those decisions, I'm writing them down. Here goes nothing:

1. I can never remember what books I've read, so I'm going to start keeping an online list. This could prove embarrassing, as I have a penchant for sci fi, fantasy and children's literature amongst other things.
2. Learn another language! Je suis désespérée!
3. Do more of my crafty bits and bobs. I started a patchwork quilt over Christmas. I've been meaning to start that project since I was 17 and I've collected various bits of material over the years so that it will be beautiful. I'm not going to lie, it's probably going to take another 9 years to complete, but I'm going to commit to working on it regularly so that at least I'm getting somewhere! I find that I'm happiest when I've got something creative on the go and since I moved to London I've hardly done anything, because I've been so busy trying to settle in. There's also a zine project I've been invited to collaborate on which I'm really excited to get started on. I worked on a zine called Footnotes at uni with a few people from the Sheffield University Arts Council and from my English Literature course. It was so exciting to be a part of creating something different and organic. Footnotes was a collection of odds and sods that didn't really belong anywhere and from what I can gather, this new one will be too, so I'm very excited and honoured to be asked to contribute!
   
4. Read more books. My brain is in serious need of some food.

I think four is enough, there are a few other things I want to work on, but I haven't made any firm decisions about them yet, so no point in writing them down until they have developed out of misty ideas into something more real...

Ping Pong

What is ping without
Pong? An unfulfilling game
You need two players.



I wrote that for my now ex-boyfriend, because he loved ping pong. I wanted to explain to him what a hokku was. I think he liked it. But you never can tell can you?

FOUND: From the Picaroon Archives

Picaroon is a very old fashioned term for pirate. I have something of an obsession for them. I've been wanting to make a zine called Picaroon for about five years now, but I'm too lazy to organise my stuff and I don't like my illustrations enough to put pen to paper. Plus I have about sixteen thousand, four hundred and seventy two other things to do. So yes, I've got a strange collection of things I've written down, excitedly, on the back of fag packets and scraps of paper, in order to *ONE DAY* put them all into this quirky little zine of piratey delight. I've even done proper research. My ex-boyfriends brother, Nick (absurdly intelligent creature), wrote a thesis or something or other on the shipping habits of Liverpool in the 1700s (or something like that, I can't remember, it was like, a million years ago; or four.) and when he wasn't working, I'd steal his books from Wellington University Library and pour over all the piratey bits. Here's a random section I found:

Born on the isle of Lesbos, in 1475, was a man of wicked nature, the much feared, red-bearded pirate Barbarossa, also known as Khair ad Din. One of four brothers...

In 1505 he seized the Isle of Djerba [Tunisia] and made it the base for his 3 ship fleet.

Reknowned for his fartherly care of Moriscos
_____________________________________________________________________________________

The Barbary pirates were pirates who operated out of Tunis, Tripali, Algiers, Sale and ports in Morocco, preying on shipping in the Western Mediterrainian Sea from the time of the crusades and ships on the way to Asia from North Africa until the early 19th Century. Their stronghold was in Northern Africa, along the Barbary Coast, though they were famed it have power reaching as far as North Iceland and south along West Africa's Atlantic seabord.

Not only did they pluder ships, but also raided European coastal towns.

They captured large numbers of Christian slaves from Western Eurpoe, due to be sold in slave markets in Morrocco. Sultan Moulay Ismail built his fortified palace using the Christian slaves provided by the Barbary Pirates.

The most notorious pirate was Barbarossa, Khairad Din, who was invited to defend Algiers from Spain, killed the rules and seized it in 1510, converting it into a major pirate base and regent for the Ottoman Empire's Sultan.

The usual ship of Barbary Pirates was a galley with slaves at oars.

In 1816, a Royal Navy raid, assisted by six Dutch ships destroyed Algiers and its fleet of Barbary Pirates

If you would like to read some fiction which involves the Barbary Pirates, here are some books:
Robinson Crusoe : Daniel Defoe
The Count of Monte Cristo : Alexandre Dumas
The Sea Hawk : Rafael Sabantini
The Algerine Captive: Royall Tyler
Master and Commander: Patrick Brian
The Baroque Cycle : Neal Stephenson

Bees

Something I just found at the bottom of my wardrobe during The Great De-clutter of Summer 2010. It's very old and to be honest I'm not terribly pleased with it, but whilst I was in NZ in 2007, I became obsessed with bees and themes of bees, so it must be from around then.

Bombus hortorum

The humble bumble bee
is gentle and slow, drowsily collecting
pollen and nectar from
flowers which
drip, drip, drip as she drones.
Only The Queen and workers sting.

It seems a little unfinished to me, and also rather plodding and predictable. Humble Bumble is so overused in literature and poetry! I suppose the slow, plosive words mimic the content of the sentence and I can see I was attempting some form of visual metaphor of bees drifting from flower to flower in the layout of the stanza, but all in all it's a bit cringeworthy. I remember the first poem I ever wrote. It's paaaaaaainful to read over. It's like picking old scabs. I guess nobody is any good at anything first try, but still, it's humiliating looking at old work...

found on a scrap of paper

Deep purple passion plum
deftly delving with my tongue
jus dribbling down my neck
fragrant skin finely flecked.

Flesh tearing on my teeth



Apparently I gave up on it here.

Are you blue baby?

Cyanosis can occur for many years in patients who have gone untreated for congenital cyanotic heart disease, the commonest form of which are tetralogy of fallot* and transfosition of the great vessels, in which the circulation is misdirected. Both of these conditions result in the presence of partially deoxygenated blood (which is blue in colour), which gives the skin a characteristic purple colour.

*Tetralogy of fallot is a form of congenital heart disease in which there is pulmonary stenosis**, enlargement of the right ventricle, a ventricular septal desfect, and in which the origin of the aorta lies over the septal defect. The affected child is blue (cyanosed) and frequently squats. The defect is corrected surgically. [ELA Fallot (1850-1911), French Physician]

**Pulmonary Stenosos leads to faintness, angina pectoris, heart failure. Narrowing of the outlet of the right ventricle of the heart to the pulmonary artery.

The above is an extract from a medical dictionary I poured over once, in 2007, when I was working at Kingsway Hospital in Derby. I was fascinated by the concept that people can really be blue, but you aren't meant to be. The language these dictionaries is written in is really interesting. I especially like how you have something explained, but then within the explanation is something you need explaining further, and within that explanation is another concept which requires attention...it's a wordy labyrinth, medicine.