Faye L. Booth's Blog, page 4

The nine-year-old me.

Just having a clearout and found one of my old school reports, dating from 1989, making me nine at the time. Presented for your amusement:

...

General Comments
Faye is a very pleasant, quiet girl who has grown in self-confidence this year. She is settled in class and is a pleasure to teach. Her work is well organised, planned and presented.

Language
Faye's written work reflects thought and imagination. Much of her work reveals great sensitivity and is beautifully composed. Faye reads extensively and enjoys books. Her spelling is good. Faye still needs encouraging to contribute more in discussion work.

Mathematics
Faye continues to try hard with mathematics, but she does not always find the work easy so she must continue to work at this subject.

Other Curriculum Areas
Faye enjoys science and her written reports are accurate and balanced. Faye has enjoyed the sewing in art and this term has had a more positive approach towards her own ability.

Attitude
Faye is an industrious and diligent worker. Her application is very good, as is her imagination. Faye's work is of a consistently high standard.

...

My high school reports were funnier - my PE teachers made me sound like a performing seal ("Can master simple tasks"), and I once got an art report that made much of the amount of time I took to make a cardboard model of a house ("FAR too long!"), but I tend to destroy anything connected with school, so they're probably long gone. And now, this report will join them...

And yes, I gave her that surname for a reason*.

Text message I just received from my friend Jen:

I've just discovered that in the ladies' loo at the Lyric bar in Soho (which is one of those pubs that has obviously been a boozer for centuries) there's just one piece of graffiti and it reads "Ketch is a cunt". I am so tempted to leave a message asking "Jack or Lydia?".


* In keeping with the book's title, I wanted to give Lydia the surname of a famous practitioner of another 'trade of the flesh'. The abbess Kathleen has a flesh-trade surname as well (Tanner).

Bloody cheek.

Religion is marginalised, says Pope.

So let me get this straight, Ratz. You're here on a state-funded visit, despite the fact that you are neither necessary nor relevant to the majority of Brits; your overpriced vehicle is exempt from congestion charges; you have police guards; you've had an audience with our heads of state; you have not been arrested for your complicity in the sex offence coverup scandal (and I suspect will not be); you feel free to insult us while you're here...and you can claim to be marginalised and keep a straight face?! Riiiiiiight.

Character sketches in song.

As is perhaps inevitable, one of my particular loves in music is when the songwriter sings about or from the point of view of someone else - a real person past or present, a character from literature or one of their own devising - and now that my own characters have been packed off to introduce themselves properly to the agent, I have a few minutes to post a small selection of my favourite character sketch songs in here.


Queen Adreena - Pretty Polly. This is based on an old folk song.


Emilie Autumn - Marry Me. This character is, I suspect, ultimately one of Miss Autumn's own creation, but I see a lot of Henry VIII's fifth wife Katherine Howard in the basic story. It's also a wickedly funny song.


The Dresden Dolls - Missed Me. A dark one, this, but again a brilliant example of the character sketch. This is the sort of dysfunctional trope-inverting character I can imagine appearing in an Alan Bennett monologue (reading Talking Heads for English A Level was a major influence on my love of strange characters).


REM - Tongue. Incidentally, the reason Michael Stipe sings this in a higher key than he usually sings is because the character this song is about is female.


Nick Cave - The Mercy Seat
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Nick Cave - The Mercy Seat. Cave is very good at these rather extreme Southern Gothic characters, and this condemned criminal in the electric chair is a classic example.


Emilie Autumn - Shalott. It's pretty obvious which character and story this is taken from.


Emilie Autumn - Mad Girl. Ditto!


PJ Harvey - Angelene. My favourite PJ song.


REM - Daysleeper. There's something so mournful and sad about this.


The Curse of Millhaven by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds

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Nick Cave - The Curse of Millhaven. I think this may be the definitive fucked-up character sketch song! Such a brilliantly accurate picture of a sociopath.

Finished!

Flopping onto keyboard shall now commence.

Just a quickie. (As the bodiceripper said to the...)

Breaking radio silence briefly to share these photos of the candle holder I use when writing. (I have to have a tealight burning in a particular holder. Why? Because, that's why.)


Saltstone candle thingy. It was an Xmas pressie from the bro.


After use. As you can see, it gets used a lot...

Proper content to follow.

Just a quick note to let you all know that I'm in the final stages of writing the first draft of my behemoth of a WIP, so I don't have much mental energy for blogging at the mo. I am keeping up with Twitter and Tumblr as not much thought is required, but rather than fill your blog reading lists with fluff I'll finish the WIP and then get back to you when I've finished and replaced a few brain fuses.

For now, here's the recipe for one of my favourite writing session brainfoods. (I usually halve the sugar as it's a bit sickly with the sweet jam as well otherwise.) See you when I've overloaded my hard drive!

Surely this woman must be one of my ancestors?

The Alot.

Errors in spelling, punctuation and grammar bug me, one of many being the tendency of some people to write "a lot" as one word ("alot"). The other day, though, my friend Dan pointed me in the direction of this rather glorious piece explaining what people really mean when they speak of Alots. For the first time, Alot makes sense. You can picture that as an Alot writing a formula on a blackboard.

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Welcome to my website and blog.

"It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information."
(Oscar Wilde)