Tea for two

My mother recently made fun of my fine range of organic teabags - she's a Scottish Blend/Typhoo woman - and remarked that I must have my tea delivered by an elephant every day. This jasmine green is my current favourite, not at all bitter (some green teas are). And, last week, a friend brought me some of this Pekoe China Green, which is just exquisite, though I must get a decent strainer, I'm using a flour sieve.

Giving away CDs that you don't listen to any more

I gave a lot of CDs to charity last week, they were gathering dust, I never listen to them, but I got a pang, thinking of the different loves and friends that once had all this music in the background. Still can't listen to Portishead without feeling hollow (not that I feel hollow now, just the memory of hollow is in the very vinyl - or whatever CDs are made of - of Dummy). Of course, I've hung on to Leonard Cohen and Frank Zappa and Aztec Camera and Bjork and Pulp and Violent Femmes and Mazzy Star etc, etc, etc (REM was tricky, they're just so whiny, I think I donated a couple but kept one).  I also had a vivid memory of one of my brothers' friends, in late 80s, demonstrating the indestructibility of a Morrissey CD by pouring beer on it. He was the first of any of us to own a CD. It was this song.

And discovered a gem I'd forgotten I had, Preisner: Requiem for my friend. This piece I particularly love.

And absolutely shocked (ashamed) to find I had Dido's Here with Me -   dear Jesus, what was I thinking?

A sabbatical from my sabbatical

Taking a wee sabbatical from my sabbatical from ME blogging, I just have to link to this Ulster TV interview with Dr William Weir and Dr Derek Enlander: 4:59 mins in Dr Weir refers to 'irrefutable evidence of immunological dysfunction' in ME and at 5:48 Dr Enlander speaks of the urgent need for a multi-disciplinarian approach: 'Psychiatric ailment in this disease is *secondary* to primary physical disease. This is a physical disease'. We all know this, these fine doctors know this - many fine doctors know this - but there are unfortunately silly billies (substitute another word for billies if you wish) who *still* don't get it. Tut tut!

Silly billies

Delighted for Caroline Smailes that her new ebook 99 Reasons Why is creating such a buzz. Having Karachi roots, I was especially chuffed to see her in The Daily Times in Pakistan. In 99 Reasons Why, Caroline plays with  the possibilities of endings and you the reader can choose which one you would like. However, being playful and imaginative - surely, the job of a writer - has its downside, she is apparently threatening the future of literature, and, according to one reviewer in the DT, doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously. The DT also brought us silly billy media doctor Max Pemberton last year talking nonsense about my illness, and at the weekend we learned that Richard Dawkins has a penchant for slaves. Yes, you couldn't make it up, so it's great we have such high quality journalists to do it for us.

'E-books can't burn': essay by Tim Parks

'Only the sequence of the words must remain inviolate. We can change everything about a text but the words themselves and the order they appear in.'

Interesting article on e-books by Tim Parks.

A crow & a yoyo & a bomb

My 10-yr-old nephew is fast approaching the 'shrugging offness' of a teenager but when I congratulated him on Skype on his inter-school chess trophy he was beaming and ten again. The wee one - seven - always exuberant - hopped up on the computer desk and gave me a demo of the crow (yoga). Then he showed me a drawing - you have to add things to doodles - and said, What is the man throwing? It looked like a yoyo. A yoyo? I asked. No, he replied. A bomb. B-o-m-b. I didn't  ask him to spell it. Then we talked about underwater dogs and the Scale of the Universe. Then my sis-in-law lifted the cat up to say hello, she is not fond of me (the cat) and goes rigid if she thinks I'm actually there. 

Dickens, vitamin D & Prof B

Probably a jailable offence but I'm not a huge Dickens fan, I still recall having to read Martin Chuzzlewit at uni, it ruined my Easter holidays. Of course, he has great characters, the names stay in your head, Mr Pecksniff, Magwitch, Miss Havisham (and we've all had our Miss Havisham moments), but given the choice, I would not choose Dickens (though I know I am probably missing out). And I have failed spectacularly (again) to finish The Hare with Amber Eyes, meant to at weekend (started it Jan 2011). I have however started Dirt Music by Tim Winton on my Kindle. Still getting used to Kindle, and though I can now see the point, when I see someone on  the bus reading one I get annoyed, it still feels they are showing off a bit. Am at page 55 of the paperback of Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt's Lorsque j'étais une oeuvre d'art, it reminds me of Candide, the absurdity. And I downloaded his Oscar et la dame rose onto Kindle. So I'm still primarily a reader of paper  books but am slowly nudging myself into the e-zone.

I've stopped blogging about ME for the time being but this is an interesting article about vitamin D and Scottish ill health due to lack of sun. I am going to start taking a supplement of D, I already take 1 gram of C daily.

*update Just saw this news about Prof Behan. He is to become a patron of MEA.

Just lovely

Greenwords told me her wonderful news just before Christmas, I was overjoyed for her and her husband. She has now blogged her news and I was in tears reading what I already knew. Could not be happening to a lovelier person. She is a fine  writer too.

Three things

Three things I've learned:

• Balsamic vinegar is a bastard if you spill it, you get an ice rink on your kitchen floor.  

• My new printer (Christmas gift, old one was gubbed for six months, it was printing stripes down the margins) only works if I switch it on before laptop. Otherwise, I get relentless, rage-inducing messages about unsupported ports.

• Voltarol  deep heat treatment is more helpful than diclofenac tablets. I am pleased.

And sorry to be  a book bore, but I just saw this on Amazon.