Hi.  Further to my previous post, I am still working working working on Desirable.co.uk.  I’m also completely swamped with writing work which is A. Good. Thing., especially considering Rob and I were up in Edinburgh Wednesday and Thursday just gone looking at places to rent and we now have a better idea of our budget.

Here are some things you’ve missed since I’ve been ignoring you:

• I’ve decided that my musical heroines are Roisin Murphy, Nina from the Cardigans, and Debbie Harry (Blondie).  Also Fran from Travis, but Fran is a man with a female name, so I think he qualifies.
• I have so many books that I want to read and not enough time to do it in.  ‘World Without Us’ by Alan Weisman looks really interesting and if his interview on Radio Five Live is anything to go by it should be a great read.  Also, why can’t Philippa Gregory just release her new novel NOW ALREADY.
• I’m really bummed that Agathe from Style Bytes has decided to hang up her heels and stop blogging.  Or at least, that’s what I’m assuming she’s done - she didn’t blog for a month and then her site was taken down.  Perhaps she was a spy working for the Russian government or something, and she was discovered!  She certainly had the fashion sense of some wonderfully glamorous 1930s-40s spy.
• I’m not sure, but I think it’s quite bad that I like Tennents lager, the much-loved Scottish beer.  Rob gave me a look of disgust when I ordered a pint of it with a spritz of lime cordial.  I think living in Edinburgh will suit me just fine.
• I read the spoilers of the Sex and the City movie on Wikipedia.  Now I understand why reviewers were complaining that it tied the whole story up in a big bow and left nothing to the imagination.  I’ll still go and see it, but I won’t be impressed.
• Every now and then I think I don’t need to read PopJustice anymore, because there’s nothing new for me to learn about the wonderful world of pop music.  Then I realise that I don’t read PopJustice for the music news anyway, I read it for the completely irrelevant statements made by one of my heroes, Peter Robinson.  For example: PopJustice reviews Nelly’s new album, ‘Generally fairly jolly …Expect to see that on some billboard posters sometime soon,’ and then follows this review with the off-hand comment, ‘By the way, did we tell you about the man with five penises? His pants fit him like a glove.’  You just can’t fake such brilliance.
• Rob and I have watched the entire three series of Black Books in two weeks.  It makes me want to see Bill Bailey live, and to have lots of very hairy musically talented children with him.  Also, I’m very tempted to buy the Peep Show box set that’s sort of quite cheap on Amazon at the moment.
• I’m going back to Australia on the 10th of June (Tuesday week) sans Rob.  Rob is not upset about this, because the Euro 2008 Football Finals are starting on the 7th.  I am upset about this, because if I’m going to die in a plane crash I want my other half to die with me.  This may sound cruel but it’s really very romantic.
• I am currently wearing a pair of lemon-yellow socks that have brown, white and red sparkly cupcakes all over them.  A friend found them in TopShop the other day and instantly thought of me.  Am I that transparent?
• I sincerely hope that Sir Wogan doesn’t give up on his Eurovision commentary just yet.  It’s the only reason I watch the finals (well, that’s not really true, I watch it for the awful costumes and even worse songs), and it wouldn’t be the same without him.
• WHY IN GOD’S NAME DID PIM PUT HARRY ‘I’m Injured’ KEWELL AS CAPTAIN FOR THE AUSTRALIA V. IRAQ GAME, AND WHY DID KEWELL CHOOSE TO REMEMBER WHERE THE GOAL WAS AGAIN?  I’m all for Australia winning, but not at the hands of that traitor.

So, as you can see, you haven’t really been missing anything and I am living in a super-inflated bubble of my own self-importance.

I’ve been spurred on by Style On Track to create my own list post of things that inspire me.

I love… my new Nokia N82. Rob upgraded to an N95 a few months ago and fell in love with it’s GPS capabilities. I decided it was high time I upgraded as well - my most recent phone was a Sony Ericsson w800i, and I’ve had it for about two years. I’ve always been a Nokia girl at heart, so returning to the fold wasn’t too hard - especially as the N82 has a 5 mega-pixel Carl Zeiss camera lens and a Zenon flash, as well as an additional lens on the front of the phone for video calling. I love that it has super-fast GPS, a really good web browser, and it’s shiny and silver. I’m fickle.

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With the move coming up so quickly I’ve found myself thinking lately about what it means to be Australian, and who we are as a collective group of people. Like any kid that attended public school in Australia I had to learn the Australian national anthem (’Advance Australia Fair’) off by heart, and every Monday morning we would stand in assembly and sing the anthem whilst facing the Australian flag. ‘Advance Australia Fair’ means less to me however than other songs which seem to more accurately portray my own experiences of Australia, such as Bruce Woodley’s ‘We Are Australian’ and GANGgajang’s ‘Sounds of Then (This is Australia)’.

‘We Are Australian‘ is one of those songs that teachers are fond of playing for their young pupils to encourage feelings of acceptance and multiculturalism, and it’s a popular feature at children’s end-of-year concerts and at Australia Day performances. The chorus, one that sticks in the minds of those that have performed it themselves, encourages understanding:

We are one, but we are many,
And from all the lands on Earth we come,
We share a dream, and sing with one voice:
I Am, You Are, We Are Australian.”

The first verse of the song describes the Aboriginal people, who ‘for forty thousand years have been the first Australians’. The second verse illustrates the convict settlement and ends with the phrase, ‘A convict then a free man, I became Australian.’ The third describes the two World Wars, the impact of the Depression, and the feeling of being an ‘Aussie Battler’ through the bad times and the good. The two verses I love the best however, are the final two in the song: Read the rest of this entry »