70cities blog

Ok, so this week hasn't seen an avalanche of neu-blogging here, but I've got my reasons. Work is an enourmous source of stress at the moment, with a whole cloud of uncertainty and worry about the very near future (which seems to get nearer every day). As a result, I've been distracting myself and haven't spent a great deal of time online. This morning, despite a will to get the hell out of the house and go and buy stuff, I found my domestic wind and cleaned the flat. Two hours later, I've been shopping for breakfast, hoovered, dusted, cleaned, tidied, washed out the cat litter tray and hung out washing to dry (it's a gorgeous clothes-drying day at least, and our novelty suspended clothesline never fails to amuse when in use). Now, I've just made an enourmous pot of strong, fresh coffee (see previous post) and I've been listening to Ronnie Corbett wibble away on the Jonathan Ross show. Pleasant enough, but that's just ended and now I've got Andrew Collins (or is it Stuart Maconie? One of them, anyway) playing shite comedy clips from 1980s stand-ups going "Ooh, technology? It's all over me head".

So, if Jasper Carrott couldn't get his head around his Betamax video in 1986, he's got bog all chance of being able to read this - so here goes:

JASPER CARROTT - YOU ARE NOT FUNNY. YOU HAVE NEVER BEEN FUNNY. YOU ARE A CRAP ERIC IDLE (AND HE'S BEEN FAIRLY CRAP TOO SINCE ABOUT 1979). GO AWAY. Oh, you have.

Now I'm listening to BBC Radio London and they've got some bloke who appears to be the bastard lovechild of Simon Bates and Tony Blackburn wibbling away. Oh - hang on - I've just checked, and it is Tony Blackburn! I can see him (and his rug) on the studio webcam right now! Fuck me. Well, if I was running BBC Radio London (a job which I may well be applying for soon..), I'd have Blackburn on all day, every day. His pleasing mix of 60's soul and inane, moronic wittering cannot be beaten.

(Choice comment from Blackburn: "I only have one thought a day". You're not kidding either, are you, Blackburn? You thought-facist.)

"Yes, but those beans are useless without my electric coffee bean grinder.."

I've finally completed my transition into the bourgeoisie - for my 30th birthday last week, Meg bought me a Braun coffee grinder. That's right - I can now take the time to buy my very own coffee beans, grind the little bastards up into a potent powder, and brew it up to produce the freshest of all the caffiene delivery systems known to man.

I'm a bit of a coffee geek, and have been cafetiére-ing it for a good few years now, but never went as far as the whole self-grinding milarkey as I was never convinced that it could be that much better than the ground stuff you can buy everywhere. How wrong I was - right now I'm sipping a large mug of freshly ground goodness that defies all comparison with the stuff I've made before (thanks to Anna and Bobbie, who have supplied some massive bags of marvellous organic coffee beans to start me off).

Back when we were in San Francisco in March, we were staying in a quirky B&B on Union Street, which allegedly had a wifi spot but it refused to play ball with my Macbook (I know, I sound like the biggest arse in the world here, really I'm not) so we had to head to the next block to a indie cafe place that sported wifi and superb, freshly-ground stuff that kept me buzzing through our overnight flight back to London. I think it was that that started my mind wandering down the gourmet coffee obsessive route, to be honest. I've found I can't drink milky Starbucks coffee any more (apart from their brewed stuff which is actually fairly decent) and my morning hit - which I am useless without, unfortunately - generally comes in the form of a massive Americano from the friendly Polish ladies in the canteen. I've become somewhat infamous in morning meetings for never been seen without one. A coffee, that is - not a Polish lady. My relationship with the haphazard yet cheery serving wenches of White City is of a purely transactional nature.

Testing, testing, 123.