(Not) workin' nine to fiiiive

I like reading Terry Pratchett's books, but I sometimes wonder if he's ever done a night shift. Some of my favourite characters work nights: Sam Vimes (in the Night Watch) and Glenda Sugarbean (in charge of the Night Kitchen at Unseen University), and Pratchett makes it sound wonderful, exciting and with its own unique glamour. Unfortunately, in my experience, it's nothing like that.

Nights are disorientating, confusing to the digestive system, and no matter how much sleep you manage to get during the day, exhausting. That's not to say there aren't good bits. I like having the ladies loos pretty much to myself. I can go in and stretch and pretend to be a ballerina (there's a full-length mirror and the sinks are about barre-height, I think), without worrying that someone from accounts will walk in and freak out. In the top trumps of employment, working nights usually wins in the hardship stakes, now that there aren't any chimney sweeps or workhouses. It also means you can look at your fellow commuters on the early morning train with a certain air of weary superiority. And, on slow nights, although I don't think we're really supposed to, you can catch up on all the TV you missed during the week.

It can get really spooky though. We work on the ground floor of a large five-storey building on an industrial estate packed with warehouses and a weird nightclub where machete-wielding men are commonplace. Many a Monday morning I've had to jump over "do not cross" tape to get inside while the police aren't looking. Wandering around in the wee hours is scary. It's not fear of the dark per se, more fear of who or what might hiding in it. I'm a bit of wuss really and tend to run through the deserted offices in case someone jumps out of a cupboard and tries to kill me with a circuit board.

It turns out that working nights is just like working day shifts, only a bit more crap than normal, and with more coffee/energy drinks and things that go bump in the night (or bump-bamma-bump-de-bump. I can hear the basslines from the nightclub in the toilets while I'm doing my best impression of a hippo in a tutu). Let's just hope Pratchett got it right about the other stuff. It would be terrible to visit Ankh-Morpork and find it's a tiny village with no werewolves, dwarves, vampires, zombies or dragons at all.

Highway to Hell

Found this on my bus seat.

I thought maybe someone had lost a photo of their grandfather (although an odd kind of grandfather. Is the little girl giving him money? "Here you go, gramps. Buy yourself something nice.") So I turned it over in the hope of finding a name or address for the owner, but instead found this on the reverse.

Is it an appeal to fellow bus-using Catholics to support the beatification of GK Chesterton? A really long-winded attempt to convert commuters? A prayer card left on the seat by accident?

If you visit the first website, it has a direct link to prayer cards to "ask him [GK Chesterton] for a miracle" because "the Church would like some proof that GKC is a saint". It does not give any clue as to what these miracles might be though...

The fact that it was left on a bus would seem to indicate a desire to reach the un-Catholic masses (no pun intended) who in this area at least, probably don't need Catholicism to be anti-abortion because most of the major religions round here are never ever ever going to be pro-choice (whether Islam or Hinduism).

The second website link leads to an organisation who have apparently saved "100's of Babies" but have never worked out how to use apostrophes or capital letters. Presumably GK Chesterton would have had something to say about that. Incidentally the website also has a lot to say about the apparent evils of homosexuality and condoms in general. In fact the letter which rants on about this actually makes me quite sick. Apparently an AIDS worker must "SUFFER the AIDS-related deaths [through using infected needles] that addicts inflict upon themselves instead of FORMALLY COOPERATING in the moral evil of degrading the addict further by helping him to solve his problems in practising the addictive behaviour" [sic]

I'm sorry, but I'd take hell any day if it meant not having to spend eternity with GKC and these venom-filled loonies.

Les Miserables

I finally saw it! And it's true, it is sad. For all those film critics wondering why everyone comes out of the cinema crying, the clue's in the name, bozos.

While the film is stunning, full of earworm, barnstorming tunes, glorious costumes and tremendous acting (I have a new, glowing respect for Ms A Hathaway), it uncovered some uncomfortable truths for me. I spent more time than I really should have half-wondering why they bothered to make Hugh Jackman's fingernails so authentically dirty but no-one who was crying had a red, puffy face, bloodshot eyes and hands full of snot-filled tissues (like the audience). But I also found myself thinking back to an interview with Anne Hathaway, where she worries that young fans coming to see the film will try to starve themselves in emulation of her emaciated frame. And you know what my first treacherous thought was, as Fantine was carried through the snow, ill and distraught and freezing to death? "Oh. She doesn't look *that* thin."

What the hell is wrong with me?

I worry that my brain has been finally captured by the body-haters, and I now think it is normal for a body to be bereft of  a single ounce of fat.

It's not hard to think that sometimes. Anyone slightly overweight, or not long-legged, tight-tummied and white-teethed, and who is in the limelight, is quizzed over their body image or held up as wonderful and astounding just for having a body shape LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE. It's not hard to see the people that men find attractive - whether celebrities, or porn stars, or someone else - and come to the conclusion that anyone else is abnormal, because they couldn't possibly be attractive.

And women are just as bad, in my view. Pinterest is full of women who want to be somebody that their body frame is just not going to accommodate. I am just a shade over five feet, and I sometimes dream of being 10 inches taller, with endless legs. But I've got to face it: no diet or exercise regime in the world will turn me into a supermodel.No lifting weights or doing 30 lunges a day will shrink my broad shoulders, get rid of my spots or make me less hairy.

I wonder if one day I'll overhear something like this as I'm waiting to buy popcorn:
"Oh, wowww, a thin/fat/egg-shaped/upside-down woman starred in this film. Big frickin' deal. I look like an egg too, but I can't act."

For the sake of womankind and the sisterhood (not the travelling pants one, bleurgh), heck, for everyonekind, I hope so.