…spicing up your life
Life is good! I’ve had a cracking week, making headway on my resolutions, visiting friends, going to concerts and gernerally having a ball. I have spent a lot of my two weeks off itching to get back to work but now that the time has come I could quite happily stay at home and do my own thing. Why do I start enjoying myself when it’s too late? Downsizing has started in earnest; look at all the clothes I managed to throw out/recycle:
It doesn’t actually look as much as all that, does it? It took me all morning though, and my cupboards are still full. Jim and I also went around the house getting stuck into those little corners where junk tends to build up, emptying out those drawers of crap (we all have them and the worst one is always in the kitchen) and throwing out all those things you think might be useful but know will never get used. Work is underway on moving the blog to its own site, which I think I will launch later in the year after we hear about the visa application. (In the meantime I would revive the old ‘guide to…’; I was getting pretty sick of boring old ‘Svenderland’. There were no decent shops and the buses were just a joke.) Research for my MA and ways to pay for it is ticking over slowly: being an Australian resident will reduce the costs by about two-thirds, which is obviously a good thing. The only thing I haven’t done so much on is the six-pack plan, but walking to work up the steepest hill in Christendom should be a good start, especially since I will be carrying this:
Again, it doesn’t look like much when you post it on a blog, but it weighs quite a lot, and I did I mention the hill is really, really steep?
Another image where the photo doesn’t do it justice. I’m not having much luck today. Aside from all this New Year’s Resolution stuff, I’ve had a cracking week: Pippa (“Of course we’re fabulous, Sveny: it’s our birthright”) returned from Australia with her fiancé and their beautiful baby daughter so I paid them a visit, but not before I had been to the Spice Girls Concert at the O2 in London.The O2: one enormous gay club. Imagine, if you will, ten-thousand girls between 12 and 28 year old, and ten-thousand gay men screaming for the pop reunion of the decade. Not Take That, (although I bet it was the same crowd for both events): The Spice Girls Reunion Tour with costumes by Roberto Cavalli. That was my Thursday night. Let’s not pretend I was above the hysteria or over-excitement; this was Liccy and me halfway through:
The whole concert was one big shiny sing-along and the best thing was that the performers knew it too. There was no cringeworthy trying to indoctrinate the crowd into the Church of Girl Power, no “Mrs Thatcher was the first Spice Girl”, and no trying to be something they weren’t. What we got was exactly what the gays and girls were after: a well rehearsed, visually exciting on-stage party. They gave us all the classics and they gave it their all. In return, the crowd loved them. Liccy and I, along with 99% of the arena, were on our feet from the very first song (”Spice Up Your Life”) to the finale (”Spice Up Your Life” again, but with an international dance remix and some Riverdancing too). We roared the lyrics like we owned them (”Find out for certain, love’s gonna be there for you, you’ll always be SOMEONE’S BABY!!”), and to a certain extent, I suppose we do. They are part of my youth. When I was seventeen the Spice Girls were everywhere and whatever you think of them, they ruled Pop Music virtually unrivalled. You may think you have forgotten the lyrics/harmonies/dance moves but they are lodged somewhere in the back of your mind ready to burst forth and camp it up without reservation or dignity.
But what of the girls themselves? With tongues firmly in cheeks, they belted out the hits (and misses) and quite clearly loved every minute of it. The crowd howled appreciation at Posh Spice every time she took to the mic - Geri must wonder where she went wrong - and they seemed to be there for the same reasons the rest of us had come: we wanted a good, cheesy couple of hours. The was almost an understanding that this was not a normal “we sing, you listen” concert: this was an excuse for all of us - performer, audience, security guard and cleaner - to holler at the top of your lungs songs you would never admit to liking in the real world. By the ‘last chance to dance’ finale it was all I could do not to run to G-A-Y immediately and dance the night away in hedonistic bliss. So they’re not the best singers in the world: they are good fun. And that’s good enough for me.
