Let it...

Word is that we'll get snow this weekend. I love snow. I love a proper cold winter.

Being the first person to walk on virgin snow. Crunchy footsteps, before it gets slippery and slushy. Standing in the silent snowfall - everything seems muted and it feels like you're the only person for miles around.

But...

I don't like snowball fights. I don't want snow thrown at me. Ever. OK?

There's a series of ads on TV at the moment for a savings bank - various scenes of joy illustrating how great it feels to save. A little girl in wellies jumping in puddles. A boy doing a super long wheelie on his bike. A gang of beautiful people having a snowball fight.

Give me a puddle, I'll jump in it. If I'd ever done a wheelie in my life, I know that holding it for a long time would give me oodles of pleasure. But stepping out of my back door to be bombarded with lumps of compacted snow that sting and are likely to break my glasses? No thanks.

Ssh... Don't mention the diet...

Not to draw attention to it or anything, but I'm back again on Less Is Me. I'm keeping it low-key after all my false starts last year, but if I don't tell anyone, I'll be going it alone, and that won't work.

Tiptoe by now and again.

Twitting the night away

I've resurrected my Twitter, er, account? presence? Whatever it should be called...

After the plane crash landed onto (into?) the Hudson river, I got a small flurry of Twitter followers. Evidently, the news of the crash was communicated quicker via Twitter than through the usual news channels. I find this hard to envisage, but maybe I'm still not 'getting' Twitter. Anyway, I started updating it again and found myself back where I was before (when I stopped) wondering whether my 'tweets' should have any relationship to my Facebook status. Or if the dullness of what I'm doing at any particular moment in time is just a waste of virtual space, of no interest to anybody.

However, after Twitter got quite a mention on Jonathan Ross's first post-Sachsgate TV show, I can see its popularity really taking off. I thought I'd follow Stephen Fry (his number of followers has risen by more than 10,000 in the last 12 hours or so), and Wossy (that's his Twitter name...), just out of interest. Then I got a bit excited about 'following' famous people, so I tracked down some more. It's like a completely acceptable form of stalking. And it seems that everyone I'm following so far makes a point of replying to all the replies they get to their 'tweets'. So it's better than stalking because you can have a conversation with your stalkee. They become your friend. Interesting...

I haven't yet seen any breaking news on Twitter before I saw it anywhere else. Though yesterday I did find out that it had snowed in Luton 5 hours previously...

Back to school

I've decided to have a go at an Open University course. It occurred to me - a little late in the day, perhaps - that I should be making good use of all this free time to better myself. Having left school at 17, and not having touched a text book since, I'm starting gently with a course designed to ease me gently into study again.

Now, I hated school. I dropped out of college because I really didn't enjoy anything about education. And I've never regretted my decision, or that I didn't make it to university. So it will be interesting to see what happens, whether I've become studious over the last 20-ahem or so years.

I'm going to have a go at some of the OU's free courses to test the water. I'll need to get myself organised - 10 months of unemployment have left me routine-less, so it'll be a challenge to make sure I allocate time and focus to learning.

Tomorrow I will buy myself some new pencils and an exercise book. You know me - any excuse to buy stationery!

History books

Writing my previous post, I was reminded of a conversation I had with Mum the other day... Have you ever re-visited a book that you used to love, only to discover that it's become dated?

As I mentioned, I re-read It by Stephen King and was relieved to find that I enjoyed it just as much as the first (or maybe second) time I read it over 20 years ago.

And I can re-read Agatha Christie over and over. But perhaps her books have always been old-fashioned, and that's the attraction.

As with anything, there are books that are 'of their time', but it's hard to understand how you could have enjoyed them so much, once upon a time.

Mum used to read Nevil Shute, but coming back to the books recently she's found them practically unreadable. I decided to have a go and borrowed What Happened To The Corbetts from the library. I managed to get about 3 chapters in, but I had to give up. It read like a public information film - think 'Mr Cholmondley-Warner' but without the comedy - though that particular novel was written almost as an educational piece. Shute wrote it just before the Second World War to urge caution to the authorities who were assuming that the major danger to the British public would be gas attacks, whereas he felt (and, of course, was proved correct) that bombs and their aftermath would be the greater threat.

Of course, it's not the books that change but you. I don't think I could read a Jilly Cooper or a Jackie Collins any more. But I'm not losing any sleep over that! I am about to re-acquaint myself with Tom Sharpe and I've got my fingers crossed that I find him as hilarious as I used to.

Tell me about the books of your past, and maybe give them another go.

Hey... you wanna read something really scary?

I think it takes an exceptionally talented author to write a truly scary book. A book that will keep you awake at night. A book that you have to keep reading into the wee small hours, because you daren't stop. There are plenty of books that are gripping and entertaining and unputdownable, but the stuff of nightmares? Not so much.

And I'm easily scared. I can't watch scary movies. I've tried, but I can't. Gory is OK, it's the suspense that gets me - I can't do sinister suspense. As soon as Drew Barrymore's phone rings in Scream, that's it for me.

I paid to see Psycho 2 at the cinema and I watched the exit sign from behind my coat for the entire duration of the film. And anything that involves a corn field? I can't even watch that bit in ET!

So getting back to books, the idea of that chilling suspense in the written word, with no eerie sound effects or atmospheric music, seems unlikely. But somehow...

Stephen King was always the master, as far as I was concerned. I haven't read any of his latest books, but I know that I was terrified by Pet Cemetery (or Pet Sematary to use its original language). And The Shining was much scarier to read than the film was to watch, in my opinion.

I have a very vivid memory of reading The Silence of the Lambs through one night, unable to stop reading until Clarice Starling caught the bad guy, or died trying. The climax of the story (the night vision bit when she's in his house) was so brilliantly written that I slept with the lights on for a fair few nights after.

The book that still affects me to this day is The Amityville Horror. I was scared stupid by that book (it all being true, especially!) and I still can't look in a mirror in the dark as a result. Don't ask me why - I really can't remember - but I won't do it! Being a teenager when I read it, I was possibly more susceptible to all the descriptions of paranormal activity, and it might not actually be that scary after all. However, I'm not going to read it again to find out...

One book I have revisited is It by Stephen King. This is another one that terrified me on first reading, and on subsequent readings, though not for quite a few years. My copy is now very dog-eared and worse-for-wear, but I thought I'd give it another go. I'm very happy to report that it's just as good as it always was, though I was spared the nightmares this time round.

I hope I haven't kept you awake with this post. That last paragraph has given me an idea for my next post, but not tonight - I've got some reading to do...

Accept the unaccepted

It may have escaped your attention, but it's recently become a new year.

Looking back to (more or less) this time last year I see that I have spectacularly failed in my goals for 2008. Well, my skin's better, at least. Of course, being out of work for most of the year does shake things up a bit.

So, this year I decided on only one resolution, which is to get out more. Sounds simple, doesn't it? And it started well because, for practically the first time ever, I had an invitation to see the New Year in at a friend's house at something like a party. Well, I'm not really a party person, but was full of optimism that I could hack it as a mingler amongst people I don't know. It turns out I couldn't. I don't know why I thought I could as I've never been a mingler and don't know why I thought I'd suddenly become one. I'm also not a small-talker. So, all in all I'm not cut out to enjoy a gathering of strangers, especially drunk strangers. Remind me next time - I'm happy to watch fireworks on telly...

This year I become 40 and so it's about time I stop kidding myself and accept that I'll never keep resolutions (and I'll never be a mingler).