Well, it has to be done, hasn’t it? Ever heard of the Blogathon? I’m participating this year, so please: Sponsor me!

I’ve chosen Plan International as my charity. It’s seems like a logical choice, as I am currently sponsoring two children through them. They do a pretty good job (including keeping costs down, which means more of your money goes to something worthwhile) – I’ll probably be writing more about them leading up to the Blogathon.

By the way, I’ll be updating both Little Voices and Den norske dagboken on the 26th, so if you can deal with Norwegian you can follow both.

Since I found the first link to the blogathon this year on Anything but Ordinary, I guess I’ll be sponsoring Melissa myself.

Now let’s do the cartoon edition of this or that and maybe demonstrate my earlier point about not watching cartoons all that much…

1. Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck?
Bugs.

2. Tom or Jerry?
Jerry.

3. Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck?
Neither.

4. Rocky & Bullwinkle or Boris & Natasha?
Huh?

5. Road Runner or Wile E. Coyote?
The Road Runner, though I guess I’d quite like to see Wile E. win just the once…

6. Sylvester or Tweety?
Tweety.

7. Popeye or Bluto?
Who cares?

8. South Park or The Simpsons?
I once watched a whole South Park episode to see what the hullaballoo was all about. I laughed once. And I wasn’t offended.

I guess that means The Simpsons, huh?

9. Jetsons or Flintstones?
I’ve never actually watched the Jetsons.

10. And finally, the eternal question asked by all good Scooby-Doo fans: Velma or Daphne?
Huh?

And I’m sure you all enjoyed reading that…

Voices in my head: The Backstreet Boys – I Want it That Way (was just on the radio. Ugh. Off to put on some other music in order to drown them out, quickly.)

Two men just appeared outside my window!

I live on the fourth floor!

Ok, so they are painting the window frames. I knew they were painting the window frames. Still, they gave me a bit of a shock. For some reason I hadn’t quite realised the implications, neither had I expected anyone to be working this late.

Luckily I’m decent – or at least decentish. I tend follow Alanis Morrissette’s advice (“I recommend walking around naked in your living room”) quite frequently, as there is not, normally, any chance of anyone looking in on me, but at least I’ve got a top on this evening. Phew. I’m sure they’ve seen it all before, and I’m not the most easily embarrassed person in the world, but I think I would have found it harder to greet them with equanimity and a reasonably steady “Oh, you made me jump” if I’d been sitting at the computer with no clothes on. Not to mention all the stuff they could theoretically have caught me doing (I’ll leave it up to you to imagine – I mean, what sort of stuff do you get up to when no one’s looking?).

Voice in my head: well, it’s obviously Alanis now, isn’t it?

You can’t help feeling sorry for A.S. Byatt. Just think of the enjoyment she’s missing out on, since she thinks Harry Potter is crap (thanks to M for the link). Apparently:

It is written for people whose imaginative lives are confined to TV cartoons and the exaggerated – more exciting, less threatening – mirror world of soaps, reality TV and celebrity gossip.

Now, I must admit I’ve never read Byatt (maybe that’s her problem?), but I fail to recognise myself in the picture she paints (oh, that could also be her problem…). It’s been a while since I watched TV cartoons, I prefer a book (Proust, anyone?) to soaps, reality TV makes me dive for the remote (to press the OFF!! button) and uhm, well, I bought a celebrity gossip mag last week (for the first time, ever, as far as I can remember), but that was after getting up at five in the morning, four hours on a bus and five hours waiting around at the airport, so I think my mental state at the time could be described as “unusual”.

I’m not a great fan of Tolkien (read it, enoyed bits of it), and I’ve never managed to finish an Alan Garner – I did, however, enjoy Susan Cooper (I assume ‘Cropper’ is a misprint, if not Byatt is talking about a very obscure writer, that not even Google has heard about – unless ‘Loving and Losing a Pet’ is the book she’s referring to…), she really is excellent (and, yes, serious). Her choice of examples seem somewhat weird, though. Tolkien, at least, had an intended audience of adults. Garner and Cooper seem to have a target audience of “young adults” – I read Cooper long before I was 12 and had no problems with her – and I’m one of those people who suspect Rowling would have given me nightmares when I was 11.

Thanks to google, here’s the original article by Byatt in NY Times.

I see from The Leaky Cauldron that Fay Weldon admits to finding it “troubling” when she sees grown-ups reading HP. Why? Surely there is nothing inherently wrong with reading children’s books when you’re grown up? They are written by grown-ups, aren’t they? Does it not occur to these people that some authors are actually able to write books that are mulit-layered, on the surface simple enough that children can read them, at heart complicated enough that adults can find them challenging as well as entertaining?

What I find “troubling” is when seemingly intelligent people turn out to chose The Sun as their daily paper (and their main source of information about what’s going on in the world). This is worrying. Adults reading well-written children’s books is not.

And, as I said, Byatt is missing out – majorly.

Voice on the tv: George Michael – Careless Wispers

Og så jeg som alt var sulten (grunnet ferie var kjøleskapet rimelig tomt i dag morges, så det ble ingen frokost). Ironisk nok var det lille som var i kjøleskapet for det meste ost. En bit chevre, en bit taleggio. Begge har ligget der i minst en måned. Betyr det at jeg ikke bør spise dem? Chevren var blitt veldig hard på utsiden men så ok ut. Taleggioen stiller jeg meg mer tvilende til. Jeg hadde dessuten også en (uåpnet) boks Philadelphia ost med urter. Best før 15. juni. Det begynner også å bli en stund siden, men det er jo “best før”, ikke “holdbar til”. For sikkerhets skyld motsto jeg fristelsen til å ta noen av dem til frokost.

Jeg har lyst på pizza med blåmuggost på. L og jeg spiste pizza på Flemings for to uker siden, men L liker ikke blåmuggost, så det måtte jeg klare meg uten. Trist. Ikke kan jeg bare gå tilbake heller, siden Flemings ligger i Worthing. Litt langt å reise bare for å få pizza med blåmuggost.

Nå skal jeg gå og spise lunsj før jeg besvimer av sult.

But I’m going to do the This or That Tuesday summer potpurri anyway.

1. Strawberries or blueberries?
Both, please. They’re not in season at the same time anyway, and I only eat them in season – well, fresh that is, I do eat frozen/jam at other times. Once you’ve had strawberries in season (picked that same morning at a local farm) the imported ones you can buy in the supermarket taste like someone’s tried to “make” strawberries and haven’t quite succeeded because they’ve added too much water or something. If we’re talking flavour rather than the fresh fruit, I’d have to go with blueberries, though, I’m not very fond of strawberry-flavoured stuff.

2. “Legally Blonde 2” or “Terminator 3”?
Haven’t seen the prequels of either, so I don’t think I’ll see any of them just yet.

3. Hamburgers or hot dogs?
Home-grilled (or should I say home-burnt?) hot dogs.

4. Boating or hiking?
Boating. I like hiking too, but nothing beats boating.

5. Suntan lotion or sunblock?
Does it make any difference?

6. “Big Brother” or “The Amazing Race”?
Not Big Brother. What’s The Amazing Race?

7. Beach Boys or Jimmy Buffett?
The Beach Boys are cool, but who’s Jimmy Buffett?

8. Grow your own produce or buy from supermarket/greengrocer/farm stand?
The latter. Where would I grow produce? If I had a garden I’d probably try growing some vegetables, though – carrots at least.

9. Drive with car windows/top down, or with air-conditioning on?
Windows/top down. I don’t like air-conditioning, it feels all wrong.

10. Go away for vacation, or stay at home?
Been there, done that (gone away that is). Going away again in September.

Voice in my head: Avril Lavigne – “If I could say what I want to say, I’d say I want to blow you away, be with you every night, am I squeezing you too tight? If I could say what I want to see, I want to see you go down on one knee – Marry me today – I guess I’m wishing my life away”

Home again, and I can’t tell you how much I look forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight. Sleep just in general would be good, actually, because, true to form, I hardly slept last night due to stress on account of flying and all. I can’t understand how I manage to get so worked up about travelling, but there it is.

Where were we? Oh, yes, Wigtown… Well, made my way from Wigtown on Friday to arrive in London in the early evening. M (he was going to London for the weekend anyway and since the sailing never manifested itself I figured I might as well grab the chance to meet up with him and travel back from Stanstead with Norwegian meaning I’d land at Gardemoen rather than Torp) arrived lateish, too late for the pub, in fact, which we made up for Saturday. Traipsed around town (Hyde Park, Oxford Street (including HMV, bad idea), Lincoln’s Inn, Royal Mile Whiskies (another bad idea), National Gallery, the South Bank and so on) and had a lovely time. The weather was over-friendly (I’m not all that partial to temperatures over 20ish degrees (celcius), but at least I suppose I’m glad it didn’t rain).

M’s not going back until tomorrow (lucky guy – the fact that I’m looking forward to sleeping in my own bed doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have liked to stay longer), so he saw me off at Victoria Coach Station this afternoon and no doubt headed off to have a celebratory pint (or ten). Celebratory because today’s his birthday – not because he’d seen me off (at least I hope not). Unfortunately – you might even say unpolitely (if that were a word) – I only remembered that it was his birthday five minutes after I got on the coach. Well, at least I sent an sms. Come to think of it, perhaps he did want to celebrate seeing me off, at least he’ll get his pints to himself – despite the fact that I have yet to find a beer I like I insist on tasting all of them. I have this irrational hope that I’ll suddenly “snap out of it” and think “well, this is delicious” or something. Pretty stupid, really, as A. it’s very unlikely and B. why would I want to like beer in the first place?

Oooh, gotta go get pizza out of oven. Mmm, pizza…

Voice in my head: Gareth Gates – It could happen to anyone (No, it bloody well couldn’t! Get out of my head you stupid git!)