minimania

… and Christmas. 2014 edition

I was right with the last post - this is indeed the blog of presents. Usual disclaimer. Make sure you tell John (if you've emailed him, tell me to tell him to actually read his email...) if you're getting me something off this list so there's no awkwardness with doubling up and returns, please!

So college is done and in theory I should be doing, y'know, Life Stuff, but instead I'm finding that a lot of the things I want are much the same as over the past couple of years. Maybe I shouldn't be all that surprised, but still. Hopefully there'll be enough variation in here to accommodate assorted budgets, postal requirements, etc.

Anselm Kiefer Studios book (that link's Amazon, or it's at Book Depository). OMG. Anselm Kiefer is THE BEST THING EVER. I was practically in tears first time round at the big exhibition of his stuff at the Royal Academy. This book (REALLY heavy, so if you're going for this one, I'd recommend going with a delivery option even if you're going to be seeing me...) however, is about his studios, which are an integral part of his process and which also seem to serve as galleries of his work too. Looks glorious and fascinating.

Misfits series 1-3. So so funny. Season 3 fell off a bit but closes out a story arc. Don't bother with seasons 4-5. They pale into insignificance beside the first three.

Warehouse 13 - either season 2 (because we've only got season 1 so far) or season 5 (because it's where we're up to, having borrowed season 4 from LoveFilm but they don't have season 5 yet. aargh). Thank you, Damien!

True Blood Season 5. Just finished re-watching the first four seasons and looking forward to seeing what insanity ensues in season 5. I promised myself I'd buy it after I submitted my minor portfolio, then after my final, then when I finished the degree, but never found the spare money to do so...

The Music of John Cage, by John Pritchett (Amazon. Also at Book Depository but it's cheaper from Amazon and you'll be able to ship it for free to me anyway). This is a great book, which I discovered in the final weeks of my degree so wasn't able to do any more than just dip into it. Would really love to read the whole thing properly. Thank you, Mama!

Now that I'm no longer a student (*sob*) I'm about to lose I've lost my discounted Spotify subscription. As I don't have a job at the moment, this means that I'll probably not be starting up a new one for a while on the grounds of not being able to justify it, but there's a few CDs I'd like that have been on heavy Spotify rotation and I really don't want to stop listening to them or subject myself to the horror that is Spotify ads:

• Stereophonics - Keep Calm and Carry On (this one seems to have vanished off Spotify entirely since the last time I listened to it)
• OK Go - Oh No - SUCH an awesome album - I keep coming back to it again and again. Brilliant stuff.
• Cibo Matto - Pom Pom (The Essential Cibo Matto) - there aren't many bands I've discovered thanks to a TV show, but I always meant to check them out properly after they turned up in an episode of Buffy ("Cibo Matto can clog dance????") and finally got around to it and the answer is 'great' - quirky and catchy. And all their songs are about cooking too. So much fun.
• Per Norgard - Songs - gorgeous vocal writing. Really lovely.
• Emerson String Quartet - Janacek/Martinu - lovely performances of fantastic string quartets by Janacek and Martinu. This one's been on the list for a couple of years now.

Douglas Kahn - Noise Water Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts - like the Cage book, I never had the time to do anything more than briefly touch on this book last year and the second time I dipped into it, I understood so much more that I really regretted not having the time to read the whole thing.

eldritch Priest - Boring Formless Nonsense: Experimental Music and the Aesthetics of Failure - Really interested to read this one - haven't found it in a library or anywhere else - as it seems to tie in with a lot of the ideas I was exploring in my MFA project.

James Saunders - The Ashgate Research Companion to Experimental Music - again, a book I was only able to dip into during the degree. Really dense but useful and interesting stuff, that unfortunately really needs slow and careful reading which is difficult with library books. Stupidly expensive too, so hard to justify buying for myself!

Richard Taruskin - The Oxford History of Western Music - this 5-volume set comes with my friend Ed's highest recommendation - apparently it is not only extremely thorough and interesting but eminently readable as well. I do have the Grout and Palisca History of Western Music, but it is very much a potted version when compared to this. The hardcover edition is just insanely expensive (don't be fooled by Amazon's £14.95 price - that's only the index volume!) but the paperback should be just fine. Again, more expensive than I can justify buying for myself in hard copy so skip this if you're feeling poor :-)

Mick Maslen - Drawing Projects: An Exploration of the Language of Drawing - this one's been on my Amazon list for quite a while - looks like there are some great ideas in there by some really interesting artists. This looks even better than I thought it would - thank you, Mama!

Bill Viola - Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House: Writings 1973-1994 - I've been starting to get interested in video art recently, and Viola's work is really stunning and this book seems to be focused a lot on his process, so I'm really interested to read it. From the lovely Da - thank you!

Nonclassical - We Break Strings: The Alternative Classical Scene in London - this looks a lovely book - photos and interviews (including with Bastard Assignments!) - sounds like a really lovely thing to have.

Set of interchangeable circular knitting needles - this one has been on this list probably for about 5 years now because I still can't justify buying it for myself, but I want it! I really want it! It would mean no more having to fork out the cost of the yarn again to buy new needles for every circular project, no more messing around with the horror that is double-pointed needles either. And I have 1 pair of this make of needles in straight needles, and some cable needles and they are a joy to use.

Grayson Perry: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl - Had a peek at this a little while ago and it looked really interesting. Amazon reviews are generally saying it's delightful. Djelibeybi provided this one, lovely chap. Can't wait to start reading it!

also, as Djeli & I have recently realised, it's going to become harder to find games for our Wii now that it's been superseded by the Wii U, so here are a few that I'm interested in playing:

• Lego Harry Potter Years 5-7. I love the Lego games - so simple even I can usually complete them without having recourse to other family members. Plus Harry Potter. There is no bad :-)
• Disney Epic Mickey. Yes, Mickey Mouse. It's supposed to be excellent, so branching out a little with this one.
• Super Mario Galaxy. I'm ashamed to say that, with the exception of a few rounds of Mario Kart (at which I am very bad) I've never really played a Mario game. This one appears near the top of most 'Best Wii Games Ever' lists.
• Rabbids Go Home. Pure silliness. Some friends had one of the other Rabbids games, which was great fun, and this was listed as one of the best in the franchise in somebody's list. Looks like enormous silly fun.

As Damien's going to need his digital recorder when he returns to Australia, the time has come for me to replace my dead Zoom, and the one I want to replace it with is the Tascam DR-40. Prices are pretty variable. Amazon has some OK prices, and Canford currently have a respectable price for it (note: VAT not included) and seem a reputable firm.

The usual gift vouchers - either for Amazon.co.uk or for Cass Art which is where I buy most of my supplies so can always find ways to spend money there! Or iTunes, actually - I don't buy music from iTunes because of objecting to DRM on principle, but I'm wanting to buy the Mira Controller app so I can control Max/MSP from my iPad but it's £35, so iTunes vouchers for anything up to that amount would be handy!

Birthday, yo

OK, this is officially the Blog of Present Lists. Therefore I am skipping the customary disclaimer - read any of the older lists if you don't know why this is here :-)

So. Birthday. In. Oh Sod. 2 weeks. I'm a bit behind!

Here's some ideas if you're lacking in them. All orderable online so postage panics should be minimal.

Stuff I need

Rotring Isograph Set - I go through disposable fineliners insanely fast - these Rotring ones are refillable AND you can even refill them with, say, watercolour paint! Useful for creating handwritten experimental scores and drawing. Thank you, Mutti!

On Not Knowing How Artists Think. I'm going to have to get this for my research - it's too detailed to read the whole thing in a library, so if it could be a present that would go down very well :-) It looks like it may not be possible for it to be delivered in time, but that's fine. Thank you, Da - fascinating!

Richard Long: Walking the Line. This is also for my research and contains many of Long's artworks that I need to refer to for the song cycle. Bought this one for myself.

Cass Art voucher. I'm going to have to buy a bunch of paper to create these artworks that have been commissioned for the Closet Music launch - a voucher would really help with the cost of this. Not to mention that any shopping trip to Cass is cause for celebration :-)

Word Events: Perspectives on Verbal Notation, by John Lely and James Saunders. This is a really interesting book which I've borrowed from Dominic and really need to give back but haven't had the time to read it at home and haven't wanted to carry it about in case it gets damaged. Have come close to buying myself a copy several times so I can give Dominic back his and do things like underline stuff that I want to come back to, but haven't found the money to do so yet... Again, bought for myself (really, really good!)

[Insert usual Amazon voucher request]

The damned mice ate most of my beautiful Perigot feather duster which I use to dust the piano among other things. I would love a replacement. Or if you're feeling really decadent there's a marvellous telescopic version that does the tops of doors and ceiling corners and so on too!

Fun stuff

Warehouse 13! Season 4 would be grand because that's where I'm up to, but Season 2 would also be good because we only have Season 1 here and then John and I could carry on watching it together :-)

Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Thank you, poss.

Castle, seasons 1-5 set. LoveFilm cut us off halfway through season 2 so I've been pining a bit.

Janacek "Intimate Letters" string quartets

Take Chelsea Home: Practical Inspiration from the RHS Chelsea Flower Show

 

Christmas 2013, heigh ho

Another year, another post, eh? So here it is. Usual spiel:

• this year's list
• no, this isn't a hint. It's for if you were considering getting me something anyway and just don't have any inspiration. Also, feel free to deviate if you want...
• it's long not because I want/expect to get everything on it but because I like to be surprised when I open a present.
• DO TELL JOHN WHAT YOU'RE GETTING. Nobody ever seems to do this but if you don't there's a very good chance of doubling up (which has happened in the past) - tell him what you plan before you get it, please!

THE LIST

Sewing machine. We have a few projects coming up that will require a sewing machine - in particular I need to make a cushion for the bench in the kitchen but there is no way I am doing that by hand. No. Way. The machine I've linked to is a John Lewis one (red or green please. DEFINITELTLY not pink of any sort or I will throw it at you), but anything equivalent from a good brand (e.g. Singer, Elna, Janome) would be fine. It doesn't need a bunch of fancy stitches, but does need to be sturdy enough for heavyish fabrics (probably not full-on upholstery fabrics, but more than the usual dress-weight) and have some sort of automated buttonhole feature. Note that similar features may be available in other brands cheaper elsewhere - I saw a Singer machine that looked like it might do the job at Dunelm Mill about a year ago that was only about £69. Oh, and it must be operated by a foot pedal!!

Yarn swift - because I'm really enjoying doing more knitting this year, but as always the total pain in the derriere is turning a skein of yarn into a centre-pull ball, mostly because I need to corner John and make him hold it. A yarn swift does the holding, so no cornering required...

Castle DVD set - LoveFilm cut us off when we were halfway through Season 2, which was VERY frustrating. Would love to get back to this.

Sennelier oil pastels - I absolutely love using these, but only have a few random colours, so either a good set of colours (min. 36, I think, please!), or for the impecunious person in London, a few extra singles would be welcome - you can also get these from Cass Art stores (def. Islington, not sure about the smaller shops) for a couple of pounds each. They also do metallic colours - I have the silver and the copper already, but would love to play with some of the others too!

TransAmerica or other games that seem fun. Nothing that requires loads of people to play though - generally we can drum up 2-4 players

Fuck Art, Let's Be Hedge Fund Managers print - I've loved this for years & it would be great on my studio wall. Bear in mind it needs to be shipped from the States...

The Savvy Musician - I've read an excerpt of this book and it looks really good. Unfortunately not available on Kindle and I've had a block about buying a Real Book so would be good to just have it appear :-) Thank you, Da!

Janacek "Intimate Letters" string quartets - this recording is superb. And the music is fantastic. And it would make me very happy to have this when I don't have a student-rate Spotify subscription.

Clive James' Dante translation - looks wonderful, a really sensitive translation

The Silver Spoon (because there had to be a cookbook, yes?). This one's Italian. We don't actually have a good Italian cookbook because, most uncharacteristically, Tessa Kiros' Italian book turned out to be not as useful as I'd hoped. Thanks, D & B! Can't wait to get cooking now...

Berio: The Complete Sequenzas - marvellous stuff. Not nearly as scary as I used to think.

British Baking by Oliver Peyton - because one day I AM going to need to be able to make my own chocolate teacakes.

Interchangeable circular knitting needle set - because I love knitting in the round but absolutely loathe double-pointed needles. This set would ensure that I would almost never need to use double-points again. Huzzah!

Take Chelsea Home - a book of garden design ideas from the Chelsea Flower Show. Pure garden porn. Could be useful in designing our garden this year, but mostly I just want to drool over it.

The Chef's Garden by Terence Conran - given that my principal interest in gardening is to grow stuff to eat, this looks a useful book by a renowned designer. Would prefer hardcover, but happy for this to be secondhand, which could be a good choice for the impoverished (look for the Very Good condition ones on Amazon and only those shipping from the UK - should be about £3 including the postage). Thanks, Da!

Little food Thermos - this is a short & fat thermos designed for hot college lunches of risotto or chicken curry. It comes with a little fold-up spoon in the lid! Several of my friends have these and swear by them because they're the only way to get hot, healthy food at lunchtime on college days without beggaring yourself... A red one, obviously. Found this in Lakeland on sale after Christmas! Hurrah! Self-present ahoy!

And a new addition because it looks really useful but the copy in the college library has vanished without trace:

The 21st Century Voice: Contemporary and Traditional Extra-Normal Voice. It's a book about extended vocal techniques and comes with a CD demonstrating what all the funky stuff sounds like.

List time

It seems like no time at all since I was doing my Christmas list, and I still haven't finished playing with all my toys, so this list is actually proving a little tricky to compile. Also, because of having received two marvellous cookbooks for Christmas which I'm nowhere near done with exploring, it just seems greedy to include my usual parade of food-related reading matter, so I've cut that down drastically from the 6-8 volumes on my wish list too.

If you're feeling creative and want to deviate from the list, Djelibeybi has access to all the CDs, books, DVDs, etc. we have around. Current interests are including: complete obsession with composition, getting very into more experimental/improv/electroacoustic stuff, trying to play the flute a bit more and experiment with some improvisation there, bread-baking, house-which-is-not-yet-ours-but-hopefully-will-be-soon.

As always, this list isn't a hint. It's for people who were going to get me a pressie anyway but don't know where to start. I hope it helps!

I don't think I can be bothered to put these in any sort of order because I've struggled enough with trying to think of stuff this time, so they're just going to be random. As always, Amazon vouchers are VERY, very welcome. They are not a cop-out or showing a lack of imagination, and this year more than most, with a house to do up and starting uni in September - a little spending money to play with would be awesome. iTunes vouchers are good too (in ££s though, I don't have an Australian account so can't use ones in AUD)

Zoom H1 digital recorder. Tiny, light, surreptitious. I tried to make a workable field recording setup out of my iPod Touch and 2 lovely mics, but have been entirely unable to without buying adaptor cables that are almost as much as just getting one of these, and it seems that the adaptors may introduce noise into the recording anyway, so I've given up and after some research, the H1 seems to be the answer.

Short & Sweet by Dan Lepard. Dan Lepard is one of the gurus of bread-baking and while I don't think I'm quite ready for his (sourdough-intense) bread-baking book, this one does have some fabulous-looking bread recipes, an introduction to his bread preparation techniques and some amazing-sounding other cakes and biscuits and things. Chocolate custard muffins, anyone?

The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together by Twyla Tharp. I absolutely loved Tharp's The Creative Habit. It was a real inspiration to me and really helped me get back into serious composing. This one, on collaboration, I think would be very helpful - I'm coming across more situations and having more ideas requiring collaboration, and it looks like this could be a useful read.

A proper paella pan would still be nice. They say the carbon steel ones are the best.

Either TransAmerica or TransEuropa. We used to play TransAmerica in our lunchtimes at LBi and it's a great game for 2 or more people. Quick and fun. TransEuropa seems to be a new version - same rules, different continent, so either would be fun.

Prokofiev Violin Sonatas, Gidon Kremer & Martha Argerich. I bought their complete Beethoven sonatas last year and it is just wonderful, so I'd love to hear what they've done with these.

Marc Johns: Fuck Art, Let's Be Hedge Fund Managers print. I LOVE this post-it-note artwork. So much that I actually wrote to him and asked him to make it a print. And he wrote back (about a year ago now) and told me that, lo, there it is in the store. I think this would be great on my studio wall, don't you?

The Shape of Content by Ben Shahn. This one was recommended by @pkpiano - I've read three of his previous recommendations (Art & Fear, The War of Art and Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit) all of which have been fantastic and have shot straight to the top of my best-creativity-books-ever list, so I'm very interested to see what this one's like too.

Roussel's Joueurs de flute. I love this set of pieces. I played a couple of them during my brief stint of flute lessons at the Sydney Conservatorium and have always wanted my own copy. I don't mind which edition, but do check to make sure it includes all four - some publishers sell them as individual pieces...

A friend on Twitter has strongly recommended this fascinating-looking book: The Flavor Bible, which is a book for cooks who make things up as they go along. It includes adventurous food pairings, but also sections on how flavour works and how to combine different flavours effectively. Similar, but focused more on the pairings and an anecdotal style (both books have their fans, and the reviewer I found who had reviewed both came to the conclusion that they were pretty complementary) is The Flavour Thesaurus, which also looks interesting, if perhaps a little opinionated (she doesn't like chocolate & beetroot cake apparently!). At any rate, while I have a specific recommendation for the American book, either one would be very interesting indeed, especially with a shiny new kitchen to cook in soon...

Pelagia and the Red Rooster. The second book in this series was even better than the first - looking forward to see what Boris Akunin does with this one.

Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days. The first Hummingbird Bakery cookbook gets pulled out regularly here - their cookie recipes are amazing! This book includes their rose cupcakes, which I was hoping would be in the first book, and expands out into whoopie pies, which sound like fun to make.

Nice new well-padded oven gloves because ours have been leaking stuffing for a couple of years now. Preferably glove-style and not joined together (those long teatowel-style with pockets on the end freak me out). Please, no blue. Other colours are fine, especially if they're red/orange/purple/green, etc.

Some nice modern salt & pepper grinders (note: grinders, not shakers, pls!).

Just about anything from Georg Jensen would go down well.

Could do with a really nice fruit bowl. Something stylish and classic and presentation-y - suitable to leave out on the table or bench and give a sense of occasion. Stylewise, I'm liking Bloom by Georg Jensen, Alessi's Port Basket & Alessi's Marli baskets (although I think the Marli would bug me because as soon as I picked it up it'd be lemons all over the floor but I love the styling). I think I'd prefer stainless steel/silver over glass or wood. Sorry - this one's vague but maybe you'll find something...

It is not impossible that there may be a need for me to sew stuff - hemming light curtains, making cushion covers on the cheap, etc. and it could be handy to have a sewing machine at some point. If this appeals, John Lewis has a red sewing machine :-D (oh all right, it comes in white as well) which is suitable for light to medium fabrics & does buttonholes. The cheaper model is light fabrics only, so guessing that's only suitable for clothes but in the reviews for this one (the red, more expensive one) someone said she sewed oilcloth cushions just with a sturdy needle installed & no problem. But as you can probably tell, I know absolutely nothing about these things. Might be a useful thing to have though.

I'd really rather like to get an easel for my studio. Cass Art usually has nice ones & they're often super-cheap. Would need to be able to hold A2 paper at least. And I think a freestanding one would be better than desktop, but I could be wrong.

Update 29-Mar: It seems that Some People have left things rather to the last minute, so I've been asked to add in some additional stuff. However, this is proving rather difficult and I feel I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel a bit simply because I can't seem to think about anything but house-panic and work-panic and other sorts of panic at the moment. At any rate, here goes...

The Silver Spoon or 1080 Recipes, Phaidon's Italian and Spanish cookbooks, respectively

Peyton & Byrne British Baking - think this one would really come into its own when we have to leave here and no longer have access to chocolate marshmallow teacakes

Design*Sponge at Home - haven't seen this book live in person, but I've been a fan of the blog for a while and she usually picks interesting interiors to profile

Terence Conran: Essential Colour - colour is a topic that isn't really covered in Conran's Ultimate House Book, and it's something I'm trying to understand a bit better - this looks like a good introduction that focuses on what colour does and how to manipulate it, rather than just putting together suggested colour schemes.

Marc Johns has a marvellous new series of prints out of objects reading books. I think a group of "Salt shaker reading JD Salinger", "Frying pan reading Walt Whitman" and "Bananas reading Shakespeare" would look lovely, framed, in the new kitchen.

Interesting-looking design books that I haven't discovered yet. Perhaps especially books on interior design of small spaces?

An IOU for a frivolous something for the house if we ever get it???

Get my CD player fixed for me??

A ticket for Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach?

I think I have now run out of ideas. So sorry. Will try to do better at Christmas... Who knows. Maybe we'll almost own a house then.

Resuscitation

This blog has been pretty much inactive for quite a long time now, and as I'm starting a new personal project that isn't really appropriate to talk about anywhere else, I guess this is the place. I never meant for this blog to turn into a dumping ground. I almost wish I'd just left it as my Vox blog and not updated it, but heigh ho. It's as good a place as any. The only other alternatives are to put it on my Tumblr, which doesn't really have an identity yet and I need to work out how I'm going to use it - probably as an aggregator for my assorted creative stuff ultimately - or start up yet another brand new blog, which seems silly.

So here I am. With what will probably be, for most of you, a very uninteresting project. I will start with a story.

Four years ago I started seeing a nutritionist. I was vastly overweight (clinically obese), always exhausted, with a wide variety of health problems, and I was sick of it. My main goal wasn't actually weight loss, but to regain my lost energy and try to get back into composing.

My nutritionist put me on what I've always thought of as the 'deprivation diet'. I know that's not a helpful way to think about it, but that's what it was to me:

• no wheat
• no dairy
• no red meat
• no salt
• no sugar
• no coffee
• no tea
• no alcohol
• no yeast

I think that was most of it. There were probably a couple of other forbiddens in there, but these were the biggies. My favourite things in the world are fresh bread, fresh cheese, fresh coffee, so just from that you can see that this diet was never going to make me happy.

Well, the results - physically - were spectacular. For the first time since I could remember, I could go out in the afternoon and straight on to a dinner engagement (admittedly where I couldn't really eat anything) without needing a nap first. I had way more energy than ever before, I shed weight by the truckload - 14kg in 6 months and looked and felt fantastic. Apart from the raging depression which set in after about a month and never really went away the whole time I was on it and for quite a while afterwards.

And, for the most part, I managed to keep the weight off too. Until I put my foot down wrong in a patch of wobbly paving in Brick Lane on my way to work one day in November 2009, which resulted in a sprained ankle and bruised bone which took a year and a half to heal, and was swiftly followed by another sprained ankle (the other one) and just as that was starting to heal, a snapped calf muscle. So, basically, for the past two years I have been unable to exercise. And as one of my many and varied health problems is that I have PCOS and insulin resistance, this means that the weight has just piled back on.

I am now back where I started four years ago. But the thought of taking on the deprivation diet again, in spite of the excellent physical results, is just too much for me. For weeks I've been trying to work out a way to balance what I learned from that diet with the food I enjoy and have been failing parlously. Then this week a couple of friends on Twitter somehow started talking about Weight Watchers. They had good things to say about the system and I recalled a school friend in Australia also had great success with them and has kept the weight off for several years now.

So last night I signed up. I went along to my first meeting and signed myself up for a month. The system seems pretty flexible, if maths-heavy: they have a system of points based on the nutritional value of the food and how much of its own calories the body burns while processing it. Sort of more intelligent calorie-counting (and a very canny move on WW's part - proprietary calculations!). The good thing about it is that no food is forbidden. You have your allocation of daily points, then there's a weekly allocation too which helps if you go out for dinner. Beyond that, if you want a Mars bar, you need to cut back somewhere else. And unlike many diet plans, it doesn't simply revolve around prepackaged food. They have a calculator so you can put in the ingredients in your home-cooked food (this morning I put in my bread recipe, told it it makes 36 generous slices and now I know what they reckon my bread is worth) which pretty much allows you to calculate anything you make.

So I'm signed up. I'll test it out for a month or two and see what happens. Mostly I liked the idea of checking in every week. Accountability has always been a big thing for me - it's why I put so much of my life online - if people are (or may be) looking, then I'm more likely to push on properly. My first goal (assigned by my meeting leader, which happily more-or-less coincides with the goal I've set myself for the year) is to get down to 76.9kg, 5% less than my current horrific weight of 82.2kg.

Today, of course, is day 1. Obviously there's going to be a lot I need to work out, and I don't fully expect to manage to keep entirely within my 26-point allocation each day this week. Today I'm mainly focusing on seeing what the point value of a relatively normal day is, which is proving an interesting exercise. My normal-ish breakfast of homemade bread toast with Vegemite, a cup of coffee and some fruit comes in at 5 points, which is at the upper end of the breakfast points in WW's sample menus (3-6 points, mostly), which is comforting, because I do love my breakfast. The only tweaks I've made are to use a bit less butter than I would normally and to have one slice of bread instead of my usual two (but, being honest with myself, the second slice was almost always more out of habit and yum than really being hungry for it).

So far, while I'm liking the sound of it, I'm thinking that a large part of its success is likely to come because of "oh feck it, I can't be bothered working out the points in this yummy thing, I'll have a carrot", but hey, that's no bad thing.

But only time will tell how it works for me. One of the issues with PCOS, if you're not familiar with it, is a really slow metabolism - they say that if a woman with PCOS eats exactly the same thing for 5 days as a normal woman, then she will have actually eaten food for 6 days. Which is the problem for me with many diets - they prescribe too much food as a base and I actually put on weight while doing the diet. From reading the WW forums though, there seem to be many women with PCOS doing the programme and slowly achieving success with it (weight loss is hard with this condition and the slightest slip-up piles it back on again. Ironically, the more weight you do lose the less the symptoms affect you) and someone said that she finds that if she sticks to her daily points allocation and doesn't use her weekly points, then she loses weight; if she uses her weekly points, she doesn't, so I'm taking that as something to aim for.

So we'll see how it goes. I don't know whether anyone's still reading this blog, or if you're interested at all, but I just wanted to track this journey somehow and see what positives I can pull out of the experience.

10 good things about 2011

Well, having made my 2012 goals list and joyfully bid farewell to the horrors of 2011, today I found an email from someone talking about the 10 best things of their 2011. Given how mostly awful 2011 was for me - back pain, depression, 9-month gum infection that nobody could find the cause of, a second sprained ankle and a busted calf muscle just for starters - I thought I should really try to think about the good things that happened in 2011, because there were good things, and it's not right that they be obscured by a bunch of mostly medical crap. So it's time for a list-post. I'll start with the kind of obvious but still amazing:

1. I was accepted into Trinity Laban's Master of Music programme in Composition, to start in September 2012. I've been wanting to do an MMus ever since graduating from my BMus - for 15 years, so yes, this is an amazing thing.

2. I'd never have applied for the MMus if I hadn't done the CoMA Midwinter Composers Masterclass in Durham in January. I got the first real feedback on my music I'd had since I left uni, met some amazing people and got some real encouragement, including specific encouragement from both our tutor Tansy Davies and other students to apply for a Masters degree, that my music was good enough to do so (I hadn't thought I was anywhere near good enough). That masterclass was one of the most important things I've ever done for my work.

3. We decided to buy a house. Admittedly, since then there's been a vast amount of stress, dealing with the stupid bank who have been causing all sorts of delays and not giving us an answer about the mortgage, but the decision itself was a huge step - to move out of London, deciding where we wanted to be, making plans.

4. Wrote (or at least mostly wrote) my first real orchestral piece. This has taken most of the year, but I've learned so, so much by following the process through and while it's still got some way to go, I'm pretty pleased with how it's turned out so far.

5. Did a semester's worth of private composition lessons. This is obviously tied up with no. 4, but it was a great experience, exposed me to some wonderful music I'd never have found otherwise and got me used to actually talking about my work and getting a little bit brave about sharing it.

6. Spent 2 weeks at the Edinburgh Festival followed by a weekend with Djeli on the Isle of Arran. I really, really needed that break and saw some amazing shows and stunning scenery. And even though the Festival was somewhat marred by a rather extreme bout of stress-induced insanity on my part, followed by the second sprained ankle, the insanity did lead to some excellent talks with Djeli, and I'd really needed to get away - just so insanely stressed by an assortment of stuff...

7. Met up with an old friend. We met first through the internet & have been corresponding for over a decade. We met once in York in 1998, but hadn't managed to meet up again since I moved over here 6 years ago. Very slack, I know, but it was great to finally do it - and great, too, that we're moving into the same area as him, so hopefully we'll see a lot more of each other from now on.

8. Started sharing my work-in-progress on my blog. This was a super-scary, but very useful for thinking through the piece and for my confidence. I didn't get as much feedback as I'd hoped to, but people seemed to read the posts at least and I've learned a lot from doing it anyway.

9. Saw the Barbary apes on the Rock of Gibraltar. I've been wanting to do that since about the age of eight.

10. Made big progress with my business. It's still got a long way to go, but I think I've found a focus now, I've launched the website for it, got a few clients and am gradually finding a way to balance the paying work with composition and training. This was a big feature in the year, and a bit of a struggle to get to where I am now, so mostly it didn't feel like a good thing, but in hindsight it really is.

So there you have it. I made it to ten. And, looking over them, some of those are pretty big deals, really. Food for thought...

'Tis the season... again

Well, this is an interesting blog, isn't it. It seems to have turned into semi-annual postings of lists of stuff. So sorry. There's more interesting reading over at http://caitlinrowley.com. Should consolidate some of these blogs...

To the issue at hand... Given the general quietness of this site, if you're reading this, chances are pretty good that you've been sent here. And if you've been sent here it means you're considering whether I'm worthy of a Christmas present. And if you're considering that, you probably know me quite well and know that I am both scraping by on a dab of freelance work and in the process of buying a rather large and very dilapidated Georgian townhouse. Given these things, it's going to be a pretty frugal few months here Chez Minim so this year's list has a bit of a sensible edge to it. So sorry. I'll see if I can put something in here to mitigate the sense...

As always, this list is here as a convenience, not a hint. It's long because that way I can offer a lot of options for differing budgetry and postal requirements. Plus it means that even if everyone uses the list, there'll still be an element of surprise as to what will turn up. As always, please DO TELL JOHN if you're going to get something from this list so as to avoid double-ups. If you don't have his email, ask me :-)

Maybe I should do this room by room... Let's start with the...

Kitchen (of course)

The Art of French Baking, by Ginette Mathiot. Newly out, and it looks WONDEFUL. Thank you, Tchatchke!

1080 Recipes or The Book of Tapas, both by Simone Ortega. Not sure which one I'd prefer but I've been enjoying cooking paella since we got back from Spain and I'd like to try some other Spanish food.

The Silver Spoon, classic Italian cookbook

I Know How to Cook, by Ginette Mathiot - classic French cookbook. From my Da - lovely!

(All five of these are Phaidon cookbooks, in the same series as the superb Greek cookbook, Vefa's Kitchen, which I love to bits and use regularly)

Paella pan. Not sure which one's the best, so I've not linked one, but they say that carbon steel makes the best paella pans. All I know is that cooking it in a saucepan tends to end up as tasty sludge.

Nice new well-padded oven gloves because ours have been leaking stuffing for a couple of years now. Preferably glove-style and not joined together (those long teatowel-style with pockets on the end freak me out). Please, no blue. Other colours are fine, especially if they're red/orange/purple/green, etc.

British Baking by Oliver Peyton

Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days

Some nice modern salt & pepper grinders (note: grinders, not shakers, pls!).

Some decent speakers so I can pipe music in from the server. The BeoSound 8 is really rather nice. And it comes with red speaker panels too! Yeah, I know. Cloud-cuckoo-land.

Also probably cloud-cuckoo-land and would probably need some consultation would be a benchtop-sized slab of marble - John wants a place to put hot pots and I want a place for rolling out pastry, so marble would suit both our needs.

Lounge room

Chuck Season 4. Of course. From the fabulous champagnesnob. Also of course :-)

True Blood Season 4 (if it's out, which it probably won't be)

Lego Pirates of the Caribbean for Wii. I love the other Lego games for the Wii, especially Indiana Jones and Harry Potter, and this one's likely to be a whole heap of fun. Note that Wii games, like DVDs need to be bought in the UK because of being region-encoded. Thank you, Djelibeybi :-)

Pelagia and the Black Monk, by Boris Akunin. The first in the series was great - I've been wanting to read the others for a while now. From D - very much looking forward to reading it.

Transamerica
A fantastic board game for two players or more - used to play this at lunchtimes at LBi and it's awesome. Yes, still (4th list around for this one).

Bedroom

Three big Georgian windows for the front of the house so we don't have to live with the horrible airless ones for any time at all? That'd be really nice. If you're Croesus.

Studio

A problem is that we're running out of space for physical books & CDs. Most books I buy nowadays are eBooks, but it's almost impossible to give someone an eBook or digital audio downloads because of the stupid way that these systems are set up so far so vouchers are still vastly welcome for the following places:

• Amazon.co.uk
• http://passionato.com/ (not sure if they do vouchers but if you ask maybe they will)
• http://deutschegrammophon.com
• iTunes voucher (in ££s) could be useful too for magazine subscriptions/apps (I won't buy music from iTunes because the quality is too low and it hurts my ears) so the house doesn't get cluttered up with paper!

Should we actually get the house (and we're not sure when we'll know this, so these would have to be last-minute purchases, most likely, because while they'd still be interesting, they'd not be much use if we don't get it and end up in something Victorian instead...) we're going to need some references for Georgian and Regency style, so we can do the place up in a sympathetic manner. These two look good:

• The Georgian Group Book of The Georgian House by Steve Parissien
• Regency Style by Steve Parissien ('our' house was built in the 1830s so comes at the end of the Regency section of the Georgian Period)

Prokofiev Violin Sonatas, Gidon Kremer & Martha Argerich. I bought their complete Beethoven sonatas a couple of months back and it is just wonderful

Martha Argerich: The Collection 3 (Chamber Ensembles). I have to confess I have become a complete Martha Argerich addict. She is amazing. I have volume 2 of The Collection (Concertos) as downloads, which is superb - this one looks like a really interesting collection of pieces.

I would still like a complete Beethoven piano sonatas recording. Alas, La Argerich seems to have never recorded them all. I have liked very much what I've heard of the John O'Conor Beethoven recordings (very light touch - barely Germanic at all!) on Telarc, but am open to suggestions. Please, no thumpers, I beg you. Can't stand it when pianists play Beethoven as if the stronger they make the chord, the more important the music seems. Thank you, Mama, and yes, every bit as fabulous as I thought they'd be

Minimal Piano Collection Vol X1-XX. This (still) sounds like fun :-)

Morton Feldman: Rothko Chapel/Why Patterns?
Started listening to Feldman's work before last Christmas, but it's really distracting on Spotify, even with a Premium subscription so I haven't been able to pursue it properly.

Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer. Yes, I know it sounds dull. I've been trying to justify buying it for a few months now and while I think it'd be useful, I have trouble because I don't know when I'll get time to implement A/B testing on my site and see how it can push my fame and fortune forward. But perhaps if you get me this book the time would magically appear. It's supposed to be fantastic

Flute Project - album of short pieces for flute. Includes one by Arvo Part!

Still interested in something from the Music Minus One range - it gets really boring just playing all on your own. Would be nice to mess about with something with an accompaniment for once... There's a selection of them on Amazon.

Should you happen to win EuroMillions, I would love a Paetzold recorder plus a year's worth of recorder lessons to start to learn how to play it properly. What an amazing instrument! See them here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFw8cjxH5HU

Garden

Yup, we'll have a garden. And that goes whether or not we get this house - wherever we are next is going to have some sort of garden which means... veg!

The Kitchen Gardener: Grow Your Own Fruit and Veg by Alan Titchmarsh. Lovely Da at work again - now I can't wait to start growing...

Something on companion planting or similar might be useful too. Organic Gardening: The Natural No-Dig Way by Charles Dowding seems to be getting excellent reviews, but I'm open to anything that will keep bugs at bay without having to spray chemicals all over everything.

The garden is long and flat. If we get the house, it would be perfect for boules! or possibly croquet!

2011's getting-older moment

I can't believe it! Christmas just finished and yet I suddenly realised that there's only a couple of weeks till my birthday. Which of course calls for (yet-another) list.

This year's focus is a hard-edged one - no fluffy distractions for Minim this year - I'm all about the composing and building up my business to get it to a point where I can support myself doing stuff I enjoy and over which I have some control, rather than working for other people to other people's timetables (9am starts are banned when they don't involve just getting up and starting work in your pyjamas).

Usual disclaimer: If you're not expecting to see this, don't worry - I'm not hinting for presents, this is solely for the convenience of people who were going to get me something anyway but who don't know what I'd like. This is what I'd like :-)

Starting with a bang:

Rode M3 microphone. I think this one looks a good one - it's not too pricey, is getting good reviews and is apparently a good all-round mic. The purpose of this is because my tiny Sony stereo mic, while it produces pretty good sound, is unusable with Pro Tools without hacking it through the MiniDisc recorder on mute which involves lots of cables and confusion and generally doing things three times over to get the sound into the programme. Recording my songs would be much easier with a proper mic I could just plug straight into the Mbox, and apparently it's also good for field recording. Thanks, Mutti!

Logic Studio. This is ludicrously expensive. Which is why I haven't invested in it before now. The price on Amazon fluctuates up and down around the £300 mark, so if you're keen for this one (ha! it's alright. I know when I'm dreaming), you might want to watch it for a few days? Seems to be at a high point at the moment (£365) The price made a sudden dip just before my birthday, so I snagged it as it was too good a bargain to waste and I was pretty sure (I checked with Djeli too) that nobody was buying it for me. And SO glad I did!

Writing Poems by Peter Sansom. If I'm to write the libretto for my opera, I have to face the fact that at some point I will need to write real live actual poetry. I have a book by Ted Hughes, but it's not really grabbing me. This one looks better and looks like it focuses on a certain amount of analysis too. If you find anything else that looks like it might help me limp my way to an interesting libretto, that would be grand. Not interested in learning how to write stuff that rhymes though - too difficult to set to music. It boxes everything in. Thanks, Buffygirl!

Minimal Piano Collection Vol X1-XX. This sounds like fun :-)

Vienna Symphonic Library
Well, one can dream! If you win the lottery, though, even a lowly Special Edition package would be brilliant :-)

iPad 2!
It's available on the 25th of March. Whee! This is cloud-cuckoo-land stuff. It's on here because I want it, but unless you win lotto I will probably be aghast if you buy it for me. Just sayin'. If you DO happen to win lotto, I'll take the 32GB 3G version please :-) With our iPad 1 taking off to Scotland without me for 3 weeks and the deep unliklihood of EuroMillions wins before The Day, I have reserved one for pickup on the 30th. There always needs to be a birthday present for oneself, yes?

Marc Johns: Fuck Art, Let's Be Hedge Fund Managers print
I LOVE this post-it-note artwork. So much that I actually wrote to him and asked him to make it a print. And today he wrote back and told me that, lo, there it is in the store.

Chuck Season 2
Cos Season 1 just isn't enough Chuck. Thanks, Buffygirl!

Structural Functions in Music by Wallace Berry
An amazing book. Very dense and difficult to read, but so much to be learnt from it. But in order to wade my way through it, I need to own it. Found it first in Ealing library (which, knowing Ealing Library, means it will never be found there again if I go in looking for it) and even 3 renewals weren't enough to get through a single chapter. Nobody got this for me, and there was a secondhand one on Amazon for something like £2, so it's now off the list :-)

Barnbrook Bible: The Graphic Design of Jonathan Barnbrook
Amazing, amazing work. Really inspiring

Twyla Tharp: The Collaborative Habit
Her other book, The Creative Habit, has been a very important one for me and this one on creative collaboration looks really interesting and useful.

The Shape of Content by Ben Shahn
This one was recommended by @pkpiano - I've read three of his previous recommendations (Art & Fear, The War of Art and Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit) all of which have been fantastic and have shot straight to the top of my best-creativity-books-ever list, so I'm very interested to see what this one's like too.

Nigel Slater's Tender, Vol. 2
This is the one about fruit - looks fantastic! Awww, thanks, Djelibeybi!

Nico Muhly's Mothertongue & I Drink The Air Before Me
Yeah, Mothertongue has been on the list for about 3 4 years now and everyone's studiously ignored it. Please don't ignore it. I still want it! Again, if you get the CD + download option direct from Bedroom Community, these come with a bonus track (FLAC format please).

Morton Feldman: Rothko Chapel/Why Patterns?
Started listening to Feldman's work before Christmas, but it's really distracting on Spotify, even with a Premium subscription - really needs to be a CD, I feel

Arrested Development
I never saw enough of this when it was on TV and always wanted to except that Channel 7 kept moving its timeslot. Now the whole thing is available in one box. And on sale :-) If you don't know it, it's very cool, very quirky. And it has Jason Bateman. Again, Amazon had a sudden massive discount on this (£19.95 down from £50) so I snapped it up (several months after the birthday though - I'm just keeping the list tidy)

Transamerica
A fantastic board game for two players or more - used to play this at lunchtimes at LBi and it's awesome.

File-keeping footstool
Had my eye on this for a while but keep putting off buying it, largely because until the bookcase situation was sorted out in the study, but it would be very helpful - easy access to my files, plus allow me to put my ankle up (or just stretch the legs - not just for the injured period!) while I'm sitting in my chair. Note that it may be cheaper in-store than online. Not sure if there are colour options - if so, black to match the chair would be nice, or just the neutral colour that's online would be fine.

Plus of course, the ever-welcome Amazon vouchers. I will not think you are cheap or lazy, I will just be delighted.

And a new addition:

Nomad Brush
This is a brush-stylus for the iPadPod and it actually seems to behave like a real brush! Sounds like it's a heap of fun to use. They're on back-order now because they've received so many rave reviews (the video on the site doesn't look like much, but read the reviews in the news section and have a look at the review & video at iPadCreative.com ) but I don't mind waiting :-)

NMC Digital Subscription
NMC are a fantastic label who release all sorts of groovy stuff - Howard Skempton, John White, etc. Lots of fabulous new music, mostly British. They're now doing a digital subscription model where for £80 they send you every release for the whole year (usually about 12 CDs) in digital format.

Heavy thinking

I've just spent three hours thinking about my business, working through worksheets and planning stuff. And the conclusion I'm coming to is that the more I think about what I want my business to be, the more it seems to wriggle and transform under my gaze. Possibly this means that I didn't spend enough time thinking about it in the first place, but I think all the reading I've done about online business strategies and marketing and options open to me in the past few weeks has had an impact too. What started out as a simple "I'll build websites for small businesses that will really help them to get more business!" has transitioned through consulting work and come out the other side as "what if I could set up an online training course for designers and DIY web nerds to show them how they can build websites for small businesses that will really help them to get more business?".

I think I like where it's going. I'm not sure how it might gain traction in the marketplace, but I think I like it. And the best bit about this transformative stuff is it's moved from high-input, medium financial gain work through to low-input, potentially high financial gain work. From needing to be on the ground and building stuff, to prepare-once, run many times (with necessary updates, of course) and just check in regularly to answer questions and make sure everything's going OK. All of which then leaves more time for composition.

One of the things I'm working on now is to work out how much of my day is really composition-related. Obviously at the moment it's a bit low because I'm caught up in getting the business stuff going and there's a bunch of other stuff going on that makes me feel like I'm treading water, but I think it's important that I know a) how much time I actually spend composing b) whether that's better in a block or scattered throughout the day (scattered seems best, although haphazard) and b) how much sitting-and-thinking or sitting-and-reading or sitting-and-listening time do I also need to feed into my composition. This is the woolly bit. And at the moment I'm not really getting any of that and I think I need to start to schedule it because this is ALWAYS WHAT HAPPENS! The woolly stuff doesn't feel productive, so I skip it, but I need the woolly stuff to allow my brain to do the processing and make the connections it needs to actually produce good music.

Thinking of following Havi Brooks' lead and keeping a Big Book of Me to try to work this out. So I can write stuff down as it occurs to me and analyse at leisure.

Why are there not 72 hours in every day?

Inside the Actor's Studio Thingie

New year, new meme - just found that I was tagged in a friend's Facebook meme, but I have a bit of a horror of Facebook notes, so I'm going to put it here instead.

Inside the Actor's Studio Thingie

James Lipton (whoever he may be) asks these 10 questions to every guest at the end of "Inside the Actor's Studio".

1. What is your favorite word?
   ferret. I don't really know why. I just like it
   
   
2. What is your least favorite word?
   When people pronounce 'congratulations' with a d instead of a t. and when they shorten it to 'congrats' but with a d.
   
   
3. What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?
   Talent, passion, commitment
   
   
4. What turns you off?
   Love of money for its own sake. Missing genes for politeness and consideration.
   
   
5. What is your favorite curse word?
   Smeg! or possibly Dangnabbit.
   
   
6. What sound or noise do you love?
   The milky sound of heels walking on a concrete pavement.
   
   
7. What sound or noise do you hate?
   Relaxation 'music'. It makes me want to break speakers
   
   
8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
   Writer
   
   
9. What profession would you not like to do?
   Anything medical or related to social work or the looking after of other people's small children. I am not a people person.
   
   
10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
    "Come on in! We've got you a beautiful studio set up over here, with a view over the garden. You don't need to talk to anyone if you don't want to, but if you do, all your friends are just hanging out over there. Also, we have the players of the Berlin Phil on tap, so just yell if you need any of them"

So that's the end. If you've read this far, please consider yourself tagged!