Blue gold...

BLUE GOLD is an alloy of gold and indium...

Doesn't it look amazing?

Also available in purple (alloyed with aluminium)...

Jewellery Designs...

I HAD AN OK EASTER... did you? I was writing another children's story but ran into writer's block, so that's on hold. Meanwhile I took up jewellery designing. Some of my diamond and coloured gemstone designs aren't bad, if I say so myself... I'm just wondering how exactly I would translate them into something wearable that would hang together properly. Also, for the designs I like the best, a huge number of tiny flecks of green (demantoid garnet), brown (diamond) and orange (opal) gemstones would be required but I'm going to start looking now.

Most of my designs were for women's jewellery, but I designed a piece for myself, which looks something like a silver tabletop, inlaid with coloured gemstones and tiny white diamonds. Because the diamonds need only be 2mm circumference, they shouldn't be too expensive... "shouldn't be..."... And I really like blue diamonds. Originally my design was for a multicoloured cluster surrounding a blue diamond... Which of course would be extremely expensive... Or blue cubic zirconia (not so expensive)...

Ho hum I have to go now. Hope you're OK.

BULGARI'S BEST ...

Diva Collection worn by Carla Bruni Sarkozy. The first piece is one of the most truly horrible bits of jewellery I've ever seen. Obscenely over-sized rubelites or rubies against olive green. Truly yucky... The second piece, the sapphire sautoir is one of the most beautiful pieces of jewellery I've ever seen... ~And those emeralds on the bracelet (see freezeframe)... aren't they humungous and so yummy-looking you just want to put them in your mouth...

No news is ... not bad news

I HAVE no news. But no bad news either. I hope y'all are OK. I'm just logging in now to keep my blog live. 

It's lovely and sunny this Easter weekend, though not too hot. I woke up at 1:30 am last night freezing my arse off.

I haven't got a dog yet, although I would dearly love one. I haven't got tropical fish either, although I would dearly love to keep fish too. I'm paying my electricity quarterly even though I would prefer a pay-as-you-go meter. Reason: electric key meters black out without warning and are a great stress if ever you go away for any time and you're keeping fish in the house. Tropical fish of course require constant heating and cannot be blanked out because the electric company decide you haven't topped up your card lately enough... Y'know.

Anyway I hope y'all are well and in good spirits. (I'm a little depressed...)

Illustrated: cardinal tetras, my favourite tropical fish (from the Amazon...)

Gledwood TV!

I GOT ON TV LAST WEEK!!!! Yes!!! I was waiting at the bus stop, minding my own business when the police drew up. I noticed an exceptionally dodgy paedophile-looking person in the back looking very miserable. I wondered what on earth he'd got nicked for. Suddenly the car screamed to a standstill, police jumped out and the paedophile escaped from the back! A dodgy looking man was being wrestled to the floor and suddenly the paedophile had whipped out a camera and was pointing it straight in the homeless drug addict's face.

The police were yelling and screaming about a "machete" the homeless man was supposedly carrying, though I couldn't see it. All I did see was splinters of matchwood flying all over the place (probably from the invisible machete).

So the police got him to the floor in handcuffs. The man seemed to go exceptionally woozy. I now know, from watching too many of those reality cop shows that a full 25% of arrestees feign illness once nabbed and all I can say is that this one looked really ill. Next thing I knew they were yelling at him: was he on any medication for seizures?

A huge crowd gathered around and the paedophile-looking guy filmed us all. Instead of bundling their prey into a van and roaring off as per usual, police kept this man handcuffed, legs akimbo for a full ten minutes yelling back and forth and reprimanding the surging crowds to go away. (Even though the entire set-up was obviously being played out on their part as dramatically as possible.) Eventually my bus came but I was so excited! I'm going to be on one of those docu-dramas! On Sky or Pick TV (I think). Looking like a fool in the background! How amazing is that!!


Illustrated: various stills from British police reality series...

84 Hours Awake ~ and Scarcely Fatigued!

LAST WEEK I got "insomnia" so bad that I stayed awake constantly between Monday evening and Friday morning ~ that's about 84 consecutive hours! And I was barely even tired! And noI had not been taking speed (I wouldn't even know where to get speed.) Binky said that I was "manic" during this time, but I felt normal. A bit elevated, maybe. But I thought I felt pretty normal. I spent most of the time pottering about and scribbling shorthand into a notebook. 

Everybody wonders why on earth I would want to master the dying or almost dead art of shorthand and the answers are these: 1. because it's very handy to be able to write quickly and 2. I love the idea of nobody except retired American secretary types being able to read my scribblings. 

Apart from the fascination I've always had with writing, secret codes etc, I gravitated to shorthand back in my late teens because I was interested in a career in journalism and back then all journalists were expected to know shorthand. Then, in the late 1990s I saw a job offered in one of the music magazines for a "techno correspondent" and I thought "there's no way I'm going to be able to use a dictaphone at a rave, so I'd better perfect that half-arsed shorthand I picked up a few years ago". And that's why I learned shorthand. 

I never perfected the method, however and that's why, the other day when I was poking through boxes of stuff still unpacked from when I moved in, I found a sheaf of print outs of a 1929 shorthand manual I found myself filling notebooks with pages of scibbles all over again.

The style I write in is the American Gregg's shorthand. I happened to chance upon that method because my Gran was a school secretary and that's the system they taught her back in the day. It's far faster than the British Teeline method which is still taught to trainee journalists over here; and much easier to grasp than Pitman's. Pitman's is the traditional British shorthand and it's extremely fast but requires a pencil and lined paper. When I've had cause to write shorthand I have never ever had a pencil to hand and quite often had to resort to scrap paper pillaged from a bin, so I think I was right in choosing Gregg's shorthand over Pitman's.

Anyway I think I'm sleeping normally now. 

But my shorthand is really good!

"Donk Mix 2014" (Otherwise as Bounce or Scouse House.)
I love this type of music...


Illustrated: samples of German (Stolze-Schrey), Dutch (Groote)  and American (Gregg) stenography 

The Longest Shorthand in History!

I'M "learning shorthand" again. I'm so terrible at it, I can actually type faster than I can compose my jittery outlines in (Gregg) stenography. I've been trying to do online 60, 70 and 80 wpm dictations. I can just about do 80 words per minute, just as long as the audio is clear and the vocabulary not full of technical terms requiring obscure disjoined prefixes and suffixes, none of which I'm entirely sure of.

If you're wondering why I took up shorthand, it's because I always wanted to be a journalist and in this country reporters are expected to offer shorthand of at least 100wpm. Why would anyone actually use shorthand in this age of advanced voice recording technology? 2 reasons. 1. I originally wanted to be a techno correspondent for a music magazine and realized that trying to operate a dictaphone with a full-blown rave kicking off all around me was going to be challenging to say the least. And 2. there are certain situations where a person will only give an interview provided you do NOT record their voice. When a person wants to speak off the record, or anonymity or deniability are important, a person might well say "fine, you can take some quotes ~ just as long as you don't make any recordings of me actually saying this stuff"... know what I mean.

Also the art of shorthand is a fascination in itself. I learned Teeline years ago (from a book), but didn't think it fast enough, so I switched to Gregg's shorthand (the type they used in America). Gregg's shorthand has the advantage over Pitman's (a very fast traditional English system) in that it can be written on blank paper with an ordinary ballpoint pen. Pitman's requires either a pencil or a fountain pen with a special shorthand nib, because you need to be able to distinguish light and heavy strokes. (In Gregg you have long and short strokes instead).

People who know me know that I love doodling, so I've tried to channel this into some profitable arts. So I'm learning to draw properly, using a Chinese-style brushpen, and I'm attempting Japanese calligraphy.

The other great fascination with shorthand is, of course, the "secret code" aspect. Ever since I was a child I had secret codes that I could write off the top of my head, without reference to a crib-sheet. So I've tried to turn this fascination into a potentially profitable enterprise: hence my renewed study of shorthand.

By the way I think I have shorthand in my blood ~ literally! One of my ancestors published his own system of shorthand in 1647! You see! I wondered why the fascination with the dying art of tachygraphic penmanship!

I'm not being funny, but I find some of the American accents rather challenging to follow, especially when trying to concentrate on scrawling Martian-style scribbles across the page while simultaneously attempting to figure out an accent from halfway across the world. I found an Australian 60 wpm dictation for Teeline (see below). She's a lot easier to follow than the American lady, who sounds like a Speak and Spell machine. Remember those? The American ones always used to say "spell brrrr". I could never work out what she was saying.

OK I've got to go. I washed my clothes in Binky's washing machine and now she's freaking out about boxer shorts (which I do not wear) flying out of the tumble dryer... or something like that!

Illustrated: Short or Swift Writing by Simon West, published 1647 ~ my great great great great times about 35 uncle!  Gregg shorthand. It reads: Dear Sir: I was glad to get your letter of January 15th but am still in the dark as to the general purpose of your taking the trip to Lille at this time. Will you please let me have the details of the situation?... Teeline shorthand (currently the most popular method in the UK ~ note the cumbersome outlines); Pitman shorthand ~ I assume this is written in English but I've no idea what this says and to my eyes it might as well be written in Martian! 

Aussie speed dictation. Wow I can actually do this!...

Why?!?

WHY, when I've got nothing particular to say (but post anyway) do I always become to negative? I'm referring to the post below, dated Tuesday 18 Feb, full of miserable ramblings towards the end. I'm not feeling miserable, not really. I'm just procrastinating through life, not clearing out junk from my house when I should do, not handwashing clothes promptly enough, so I keep running out of clean ones... that sort of stuff.




But I STILL WANT A DOG!