Wednesday 31 January 2007

Once more 'round the block

My middle name should be Procrastinator. I'm "working" from home today but I have about as much motivation as a dead goldfish floating in putrid, month-old water. Nice image, eh?

Anyhoo, whilst waiting for the plumber to fix my washing machine, I decided to have a go at writing some daft haikus. Here's what I've got so far...

--

Washing machine dead
Plumber says not his problem
Clothes remain unwashed.

--

Postman here early
More bills for my perusal
Should have gone to work.

--

Report lies unwritten
Motivation is awol
What's on the TV?

--

Kitchen is in ruins
Plastic piping everywhere
No water for tea.

--

Plumber says "finished!"
I'm gasping for a coffee
I push him aside.

--

Caffeine hits my brain
Inspiration is still lost
I give up on work.

--

Hmmm....

I still don't feel like doing anything. And now the plumber's gone so I can't even blame the noise disturbance for my lack of action anymore.

Suppose I should at least open Word...

Tuesday 23 January 2007

Philistine or Pedant?

I'd like to preface this blog by saying that I adore art. I don't know a whole lot about it, but I adore it. I love visiting galleries and museums and spending the day wandering amongst artwork, regardless of whether it's three hundred years old or three years old. I've had the immense pleasure of standing in front of original works by Botticelli and Caravaggio, as well as Blake and Lowry. However, I've recently discovered a slight internal problem that may well ruin my enjoyment of art forever.


Let me explain...


In March 2006, I had the good fortune to be invited to spend a few days in Florence with Mairead, her parents and her aunt. I didn't need to be asked twice. I'd always wanted to visit Italy and I'd heard that Firenze is one of the most beautiful cities in Italia, as well as being the bithplace of the Italian Renaissance and the hometown of the art-loving Medici family. Well, I'd be a fool to turn that down, wouldn't I?


Oh yeah, and I'd also get to spend five days with my best friend doing what we do best - drinking coffee, sipping wine, sitting in the sun and commenting on the talent walking past. It's a good life!


Anyhoo, Mairead and I arranged to meet in Pisa on the Friday night, which we did. Exhausted after our respective full day's work, flights, travel to the hotel, etc., we got ourselves checked in and set out to find someplace that could offer us a nice glass of Italian vino. Wandering around the streets near the hotel, we turned a corner and were faced with the leaning tower in all its magnificent glory.


Most of the time, when you see pictures of the tower, it looks something like this:



i.e., surrounded by tourists all yabbering away and making silly poses in front of the tower. However, due to the fact that it was around about midnight, the Campo dei Miracoli was completely deserted, allowing us to drink in the sight of this beautiful marble structure in peace. It was a beautiful night and the white tower and incredible Baptistry beside it looked almost painted onto the clear, navy blue sky behind. When we got back to the hotel (with a couple of bottles of red), we realised that we had a perfect view of the tower from the balcony in Mairead's room. As we sat and drank our wine and chatted, every now and then we would wander over to the balcony and just stare at the magnificent view. It was hypnotic.


Anyhoo, that's not the point of this story.


So, the next day we hopped on the train and made our merry (if slightly hungover) way to Firenze. Mairead's dad met us off the train, hustled us along to the hotel to drop off our bags and then rushed us over to the Uffizi where Mairead's mum and aunt were waiting for us, tickets in hand, to go explore one of the most incredible art museums in the world. The Uffizi houses a stunning collection of artwork and sculptures that would take days to investigate thoroughly. However, and now we're getting closer to the point of the story, as we wandered through the rooms, being bombarded from all sides by incredible works of art, we found ourselves becoming more and more blasé about what we were seeing. Our conversation rapidly degenerated from: "Wow! Look at this one! God, that's incredible! Look at the detail!" and: "Bloody hell! That must have taken years to finish!" to: "Oh, look.... another painting of the Madonna and child. Nice." and: "Hmmm...... sensing a slight obsession with religion here...." eventually, two hours later, to: "What's in there? More religious crap? Ah, let's skip it."


I mean, there's only so much of this you can take in at any one time:






Nice paintings, but after about two hundred of 'em, you get a bit overloaded.


Eventually, we got to the good stuff, but even then, we were beyond redemption. About three hours after entering the museum, we arrived in the Botticelli room, and saw the absolutely astounding Birth of Venus:



To say I was awestruck in the presence of this painting would be an understatement. I mean, the thing is huge! It would be difficult to not be impressed by it. And Venus is absolutely beautiful, as you can see. But... then I noticed that... well, Botticelli is a bit rubbish at painting feet. If you look at the feet of the two angels on the left, they look a bit weird. And Venus herself looks as if she's been a victim of Chinese foot binding. As for the wave-effect on the water - seriously, I could do better than that.


With my eyes closed.


And my arms hacked off.


And no lips with which to steady the paintbrush.


But, then, maybe I was just still pissed off about the billions of religious paintings I'd just had to wade through. So, we continued on. I'm happy to say that by the time we reached Botticelli's Primavera, he'd gotten much better at painting toes, which is strange because Venus was actually painted after Primavera.


Anyway...


We carried on throughout the rest of the musem, including an exhibition on the life and works of Leonardo da Vinci (more on this in a moment), and by the time we left, many, many hours later, we had been rendered pretty much speechless by the sheer talent we had witnessed inside. To think these were painted hundreds of years ago... wow! Luckily, a couple of glasses of wine later and speech had returned full force, although slightly slurred.


The next day, we made our way along to the Accademia to see Michelangelo's David:



Breathtaking. Absolutely stunning, from every angle. The fact that the statue is 17 feet tall makes it impressive by itself, but the attention to detail is what makes it for me. Not only can you see every rippling muscle in this beautiful example of the male form, but Michelangelo even carved out cuticles on the hands of the statue. Incredible.


And then we noticed.... aren't his hands and feet a bit.... out of proportion? In fact, is it just me or is his head kind of huge*?


Goddamnit.


Why were we suddenly noticing these things? Why were we suddenly looking at beautiful pieces of art created hundreds of years ago by world class masters, and only able to see the flaws? Personally, I blame Leonardo da Vinci. You see, in the Uffizi, we had visited a special exhibition entitled "The Mind of Leonardo - The Universal Genius at Work" in which there were presentations about the rules of geometry and proportion that Leonardo applied to all of his art. He explained how all of nature conforms, naturally, to these rules, and how they can be applied to create absolutely perfect works of art. Take, for example, the famous Vitruvian Man:




Leondardo's drawing displays the exact proportions of the average or ideal man. Whilst there is no such thing as universal proportions for the human body ("We're all individuals!"), I really like this idea of logically and systematically creating the perfect being. I like to think of myself as a logical person (most of the time), and so this idea sits well with me. Unfortunately, I think a result of this is that I've become very pedantic when viewing art. I've become a major fan of perspective and proportion, and I find it difficult to enjoy art that doesn't employ these two rules.


Picasso wrecks my head.



So, when viewing the statue of David, with his disproportionate hands, feet and head, I couldn't help but wonder am I being a complete philistine, standing here in front of one of the most superb works of art in the world and pointing out its flaws, or am I merely being pedantic in my persuit of beauty and thus unable to accept anything less than perfection?


Will I ever be able to fully enjoy art again**?!?


...


...


[End]


 


* I've since found out that: "The proportions (of the statue of David) are not quite true to the human form; the head and upper body are somewhat larger than the proportions of the lower body. While some have suggested that this is of the mannerist style, the most commonly accepted explanation is that the statue was originally intended to be placed on a church façade or high pedestal, and that the proportions would appear correct when the statue was viewed from some distance below." -- source: Wikipedia


** Claire has since gone on to enjoy many lovely works of art, most of which have not been proportionally correct, so one must presume that the answer to this question is: "Yes."

Wednesday 17 January 2007

Woe is me - A self-pitying, melodramatic Wednesday whinge

I'm ill.

My head has been stuffed with cotton wool, lead and helium, which is an interesting, yet wholly undesireable feeling.

My eyes are still full of hot sand.

My throat has had the insides scraped out and rubbed vigorously with salt & vinegar resulting in an altogether very unsexy croaky voice.

My neck and shoulders have been encased in concrete, restricting every movement I make and weighing me down so that I feel that little bit closer to hell with every minute that ticks by.

Hi Satan!

My lower back throbs with a dull yet persistant ache that makes me want to strap a hot water bottle on there and curl up into the feotal position until it's time to die.

My limbs feel like they've just run ten marathons back to back whilst scrubbing red wine stains out of a white shirt using an old fashioned washboard, soap that won't lather and very hard and cold water.

My body temperature swings unpredictably between unbearably hot and shivering cold, meaning that I'm constantly either ripping off jumpers or frantically trying to wrap them around me again to retain some semblance of warmth.

I'm tired, yet I can't sleep.

So I'm at work.

"Shouldn't you be at home?" I hear you say.

"Yes," I reply. "Yes I should. I was at home all day yesterday and I should have stayed there again today."

So, why didn't I?

Because I got bored, that's why. That's how ill I actually am. I got bored. I couldn't go outside because the weather was too cold and shitty. So I stayed inside all day. Our Internets isn't working because of some problem with the line. I hate daytime TV. I finished reading The Historian (fantastic book - Mozz, give it another go, seriously) and need some time to digest that one before I can pick up any other. I've watched all the DVDs in the house. I've read all the newspapers and magazines. By 8pm last night, I was climbing the walls. And then I got bored of doing that! I'm restless and I can't concentrate long enough on any one thing to relieve the boredom.

Today, when I woke up, I found out that we don't even have TV anymore because a rather horrible hail storm last night has done something funny to our connection. No Internets and no TV make Claire go crazy.

So, instead of staying at home and developing a nice case of cabin fever, I decided to go to work. Might as well get paid for being bored shitless, right?

*sniffle*

*cough*

Should have brought my duvet...

Tuesday 9 January 2007

Another day, another dollar


Claire awoke with a start after what seemed like only minutes of sleep. She looked around the room which was barely lit by a shaft of grey winter light filtering through a chink in the heavy curtains. Outside the rain battered the window and the wind howled mercilessly, slamming a nearby door against a wall - the cause of last night's insomnia. Where...? Ah yes, the hotel. Still in Sheffield then.


She reached out and silenced the alarm that had woken her, and rubbed her gritty eyes that felt as though they had been filled with hot sand. Time to get up? Maybe just five more minutes of rest. Last night's late dinner still lying heavily in the pit of her stomach, she lay back against the once-luxurious but now almost threadbare sheets and closed her tired eyes, praying for sleep to swallow her whole and deliver her into a blissful slumber that would last for days. She couldn't remember the last time she had been this tired.


The alarm started screeching again, signalling the end of the five-minute snooze period. With an exasperated sigh, she silenced the alarm again and flicked the switch on the wall by the bed, flooding the room with harsh, unnatural light. A searing pain filled her head, as though someone had just rammed a picaxe through her eyeballs. "I hate mornings," she thought to herself as she threw back the covers and shuffled out of bed with all the grace of a lame donkey.


The shower ran cold for approximately seven minutes. Just as she had given up, about to resign herself to a day of smelling like last night's cigarette smoke, the water began to gain a little warmth - not enough to be theraputic but enough to make standing underneath it for ten minutes bearable. As she half-heartedly rubbed shampoo into her hair, she pondered what today's training session would bring. The eighteen students has so far been significantly more unresponsive than expected.


She rinsed the shampoo from her hair, and added a generous dollop of conditioner, massaging it in as she contemplated. Was it because of language difficulties? Cultural differences? There were only about four native English speakers in the group. Maybe they didn't understand Jamie's lectures? Maybe they'd be more communicative on this second day of the course, now that they knew what to expect. She hoped so. The long drawn out silence after that dreaded query - "Any questions?" - was beginning to grate on her nerves.


Whatever happened, she hoped today would go a little faster than yesterday, which had seemed to drag on for three years. She rinsed the conditioner from her hair, and switched off the stream of lukewarm water. She towelled off, dressed, fixed her hair and makeup and made a final check in the mirror. "Another day, another dollar," she told her reflection, as she picked up her umbrella.. "Maybe I'll suggest a warmer climate for next year's course."


---


So, yes, I'm still in Sheffield. And, yes, that is an accurate reflection of my experience of waking up in hell this morning, after approximately two hours' sleep. It's not so much that I'm in Sheffield that's making me slightly less than enthusiastic. Rather, it's that I'm in Sheffield in a sort of crummy hotel, with horrible, rainy, windy, cold weather outside, attending and helping out with a course that, whilst interesting, is a lot of hard work - back to back lectures from 9am 'till 5pm - and then drawn-out dinners that go on well into the night, leaving me exhausted yet unable to sleep as my body attempts to digest.


*whinge whinge whinge*


I know, I know. It could be a lot worse. I could be working in a coal mine, hundreds of feet below ground, relying on a canary to tell me when to get the fuck out because I'm about to suffocate. I could be working in a paddy field, spending day after day with damp feet, bent over as I harvest rice and get paid a pittance for the privilage of doing so.


Goddamnit, I could be an accountant!


It's not so bad. At least me and the new girl are getting to spend some time together - she's cool. We also have a lady visiting us from Brazil who is super fantastic and very witty.


And, best of all, there's only one and a half days to go...


However, watching this continuously does make it more bearable!




Wednesday 3 January 2007

This year I have mostly been injecting caffeine

Hello. My name is Claire and I am a fresly brewed coffeholic. I don't even know if that's a real word but it sounds damn good to me.



Over Christmas I decided that I'm (temporarily, at least) done with alcohol. In the dying months of 2006 I've suffered some mind-cripplingly god-awful rather-rip-out-my-own-intestines-and-hang-myself-with-them-than-go-through-that-again horrible hangovers. The kind of hangovers that see you hugging the cool porcelain into the wee hours, begging for someone to kill you just to end the misery. The kind of hangovers that make Rent Boy's heroin comedown look like a teddy bear's picnic.



"Well," I hear you say. "What do you expect after a three-day whiskey & wine bender? Tut, tut, blackie. For shame. For shame."


But that's the thing, you see. I haven't been going on three-day whiskey & wine benders. I haven't been drinking 'till the cows come home and I've forgotten my own name. These gut-wrenching hangovers haven't been the result of sitting in fields with hippies drinking White Lightening and poitín whilst looking for clouds shaped like sheep.


No, I'm nowhere near that cool.


I now get a three-day hangover after just a couple of glasses of wine. In fact, I'm convinced that the severity and length of my hangover is directly proportional to the number of glasses of wine I've had the night before.


1 glass of wine = mild headache and general feeling of crappiness for 1 day afterwards.
2 glasses of wine = dwarves drilling in my head and stomach churning for 2 days afterwards.
3 glasses of wine = orcs pounding on my head with a sledgehammer whilst I pray to God on the big white telephone for 3 days afterwards.
4 glasses of wine = Goodnight Vienna.


Ok, maybe I've exaggerated a bit, but you get the general picture.


I'm broken.


I don't know how it's happened, but I think I've broken something inside. And this fear of hangover is what's kept me relatively sober this Christmas. Sure, I've enjoyed a couple of glasses of vino and maybe a Bailey's or two with friends and family, but in the two weeks of holidays there are only two nights where my memory of getting to bed is a little fuzzy.


So what did I do with myself on those other nights out when I couldn't face alcohol?


I drank coffee.


Lots and lots of coffee.


As a result, I haven't slept properly in two weeks. I am seriously sleep deprived. But it's worth it because I have come to the conclusion that I LOVE COFFEE. I love it with all my squishy red blood-pumping apparatus. I love the smell of it. I love the taste of it. I love how it looks in my cup or in a glass. I love the different varieties. I love cappucinos and lattes and mochas and americanos (but not espressos - I'm not a savage). But mostly I love how coffee makes me feel. I love the rush. The caffeine high. The rare hour of clarity immediately after I've taken that first hit of the day. The abundance of ideas that suddenly come charging forward begging for my attention. The urge to write or paint or run or sing - anything to make use of this manic energy before it disappears and I'm left with the jitters.


After two weeks of drinking coffee almost exclusively, I'm hooked. And like any proper junkie, I need to get some proper gear to feed my habit. Whilst flicking through a catalogue (at twenty pages per second), I came across this and nearly creamed myself:



It's not particularly expensive and it's probably not the best one out there, but this is the machine of my dreams. It's got a ten-cup capacity, a fastbrew option that brews the coffee in eight minutes, it's got a six-espresso-cup capacity, it's got a milk frother thingie, and it's shiny and black and got chrome bits... Sorry, I need a moment.


*sigh*


I want it.


And I'm going to get it. If it's the last thing I do, I'm going to get that dream machine!


You see, I don't currently own any coffee making apparatus. Other than a kettle, a cup and a spoon, of course. Which means that I am reduced to drinking instant shite unless I can get myself to a café. And, from Monday to Friday, between the hours of about 8am and 7pm, I cannot get myself to a café because, you see, I work in the middle of nowehere:



I work somewhere behind those trees. See? Middle of nowhere. There are no cafés nearby. Certainly no Starbucks (I hate the corporate empire which is slowly but surely taking over the world - they now have Starbucks in Ireland for Christ's sake, the last defence has been broken - but, oh, how I love their coffee!). And so I am reduced to bringing instant coffee with me to work. And we hates it my preciousssss.


This is what I drink at work:



Crappucino.


"Now with delicious Suchard topping!"


What the hell is "Suchard"? It doesn't even look like chocolate, let alone taste like chocolate!


Still, beggars can't be choosers. So, when I get into work in the morning, I pour myself a nice crappucino and pretend it tastes like coffee:





But I long for a dream machine like the one above. I long for real coffee that's been percolated properly with water that's hot but not boiling. I long for steamed, frothy milk, not powdered, sickly-sweet muck. I long to be able to do this with my coffee:





How nice do those coffees look? Tasty! Pretty! Warm! All the things I like! I want those!


The new girl brought a cafetière into work whilst I was away over Christmas. I saw it on her desk this morning. I'm waiting for her to brew some of the good stuff so I can blag a cup. But I fear she may do it in secret for she knows how much I love real coffee and knows that I'll just drink all of hers and leave her with the nasty bitter grinds at the end and then she'll never get rid of me!!! Arrrgghhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Ok, I've officially got the jitters. And the paranoia. Time to go drink some water.