will work for biscuits: March 2007

nasleduhe zastavka: londyn

thanks folks... dave, i look forward to joyriding with you. just don't insist on switching seats when we get pulled over - i have a license to lose. although this government probably made it illegal in some anti-terror bill for anyone to have read this and not reported it to the apporpriate authorities. after all, the point of such a trip would be to assassinate gordon brown, stage a neo-fascist coup and annihilate hardworking british families using lesbian single parent muslim ninjas. innit.

and fifteen points if we run over that o'reilly bastard who runs the highly successful squeeze airline by which i come home tonight. packing is bad enough, but fixing it so that neither bag is over fifteen kilos. sorry, but i'm shedding presents all over the shop...

juuuuujjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj. and the zebra is back. the big one.

celebrations

Tonight was awesome. Today is both my nameday and the 159th anniversary of the medium(18 month)-lived Hungarian revolution against Habsburg/Austrian rule, and the joint celebration was sponsored by the Hungarian government in the form of a concert of the Free Style Chamber Orchestra, to which Ilona got us a couple of tickets and at which I failed to keep still in my seat. It was fantastic, like Wynton Marsalis' jazz band with the London philharmonic at the royal albert hall, but different (although no less good, I would say).

Last night having (an appropriately improvised) dinner, we listened to the recording of Miles Davis + band live at the blackhawk theatre blah, which is an awesome recording, especially when played loud on an incredible sound system while I am winning at poker (not during dinner - another time). This was kind of like that, but livelive (I'm also reading Salman Rushdie).

I'm not sure I have hurd a Tekerő Lond before, but what character!

Also I met only the third non-UNish person who I liked a lot in a very short space of time. And the Hun government bought us lots of wonderful wine and food, the former of the quality thateight of nine glasses goes unnoticed the next day. Excellent. My flight is on the 27th.

horniman

having a look for women's rightsy gender budgety stuff in lewisham (my new plan for the next few months), i bumbled across this blog, where super pool campaigner max puts stuff he has drawn. multi-talented.

UN wanted

one and a half cheers for the UNFPA. we will be working together again, everyone who needs to say yes has said so, but the person writing the contract has run off somewhere and we have no idea when he's coming back. so it goes. it's not fatal, it's just a delay. but following a planning meeting for the project (on youth policy and youth situation and needs in several countries of eastern Europe and the CIS) next week, i will be heading back home. so pretty soon, probably late next week.

needless to say, wisdom prevailed at the European Youth Forum and dictated they not exploit me in Brussels for six months, so that scare is over.

there is turnover of younger people in this UN environment, and the super special cohort with which i coincided seems to have pretty much moved on (a particularly nice bunch, according to those who have seen several come and go). there are a couple of very special people left, but i think there's also a (self-defensive) mechanism that kicks in part way through a limited stay like this at which point you (i) stop being interested in making such close friendships. i guess one is forced to at the beginnings. blah. i miss those who have left.

oli, it was wicked to see you. we went to budapest for some next level shit with the obnoxious josy, ending up going to turkish baths at two in the morning for an unforgettable couple of hours. not that much happened, it was just - hot, and cold, and sulphurous. Turkish baths, as in, built by Ottomen in the sixteenth century after Christ rather reduced the Jewish population. (Actually I have no evidence for that, cookies for anyone to find corroboration or refutation.) it makes me want to see what they have at ladywell leisure centre. (how did my lewisham lovelies fail to let me know the pool campaign was successful? lewishame on you.) and the tuna thing was well next level eaten cold.

i also want to say a big thank you to oli for his megassistance in helping me get home in a manageable way, by taking Stuff back. i should now be able to get everything back home in one go.

and if anyone can think of a good name for a toy that is a doll's house (for boys) which turns into a castle (for girls), suggestions in comments. thanks.

there is a long way to go before we achieve gender equality, or better the revolutionary rebalancing of priorities of which said would form part. onward, chris'n soldiers.