A post containing every single thing currently on my mind

Quick break from doing my filing (advice: do your filing more than once a year!) to do a quick roundup and Upcoming Stuff post. First here is a photograph of me that my mother has unearthed and emailed to me.

This is a hotel and not my house (I am not capable of putting up wallpaper)

I like to post a photograph occasionally just in case any of you are worrying that I don’t really exist or am actually a middle-aged man called Barry sitting tapping away in his Y-fronts, because if anyone was going to use a fake photograph they probably wouldn’t use one of someone wearing a top like that. Is that the most unflattering top you’ve ever seen? In my defence it was in Edinburgh after a whole-day car journey during which my mother had fed me my own weight in boiled sweets, anyway I thought the expression of rather stern amusement would go well for a roundup post so sit tight ladies and pay attention.

Firstly I would like to thank Kim and Julia for giving me blog awards, thank you both, ladies, I get too anxious about who to nominate to be good at passing on blog awards but that doesn’t mean I’m not grateful, I am very appreciative and should work on my anxiety issues.

Second, I seem to have acquired some new subscribers and followers recently, so, {waves} to all new people, thank you old people for sticking with me, and I would like to say that if you stick round for long enough I will say something sensible but I am not sure that is true.

Printing with bubble wrap! I will have to get over myself and actually read this magazine

Third, after my moaning about magazines the other day I am now going to reveal with breathtaking hypocrisy that I am in Sew Eco, available in all good newsagents now. I will promise you, however, that nowhere in Sew Eco does it suggest you eat an underripe banana in order to keep your ribs visible and stop your man going off with someone younger. Its views on labiaplasty are not clear but I suspect the general Sew Eco party line is anti.

With an integral pocket to put your remote in! Or your underripe banana in case your blood sugar dips below a certain level

This is my shirt/ tie cushion tutorial. Dad said he opened it in WH Smith and realised where his old shirt had gone. I have a couple of tutorials in it including a scarf dress and a tie-dye tshirt, I daren’t read them in case I missed out some vital instruction so if you try to tie-dye according to my instructions and it goes wrong and turns all your washing pink, I want to assure you that I am a nice person and did not do it on purpose for Lulz.

On the subject of magazines, I have been buying up zines on etsy and folksy with a view to doing a zine roundup and review in a couple of weeks (you know, rather than just slagging things off!), so if anyone has or knows of a self-published mag or zine they would like me to review (a cheap one. I hate to be mercenary but I have to buy them myself), just leave me a comment and I will have a look,

And on the subject of independent publications, I have got a giveaway coming up soon for a pdf book from Diana at Magickal Realism so stay tuned!

Right that’s enough about me. Stuff I read that other people had done: first, a couple of people have bravely taken up my New Thing Challenge, for which I am very grateful and interested, and I will post my own experiences and link to everyone else’s next Monday so if you would still like to take part you have lots of time,

Heloise with self portrait

And I noticed this: Heloise Toop, who I interviewed last year who is a local artist and is really, really good, was in the Guardian the other day because she is in a new London exhibition. If anyone is in the area I really encourage you to go and see Heloise’s paintings because they are fantastic, they are huge and stunning and I am a fan and wish I could afford one. I mean, they are pretty much bigger than all the walls in our house, but even so. I might see if I can trot down this weekend,

And I wanted to point you to Stitched Together’s blog post about the benefit changes in the UK, if you hadn’t already seen it. I’ve been trying to think of something intelligent to add to this but ST has pretty much said all I’d say, I’ll just add that while all the rhetoric at the moment is about benefit cheats etc I used to work as a benefits adviser (especially Disability Living Allowance) and the number of people I saw who claimed benefit to which they weren’t entitled was, well, I didn’t see any. Not one. The number of people, however, who were going through real hardship because they weren’t getting money they were entitled to was huge. That’s just my experience, but the whole undermining of disability benefits makes me hugely sad because a country which doesn’t recognise, support and fund (at a decent standard) people who aren’t able to work isn’t really a country I’m very happy with, and it’s certainly not what I voted for (although I didn’t actually vote for any part of the government so I suppose nothing is what I voted for, but you know what I mean). Anyway, ST says it more succinctly than me so go and look at her post.

Et in Arcadia Ego: the bad fish-eating leg-weaving cat, camouflaged and lying in wait. Is this the Worst Cat In Cambridge? The hunt continues

Right, that’s me done. I shall continue with my filing (it’s an exciting life) and go and rescue mitten-in-progress from the garden because if Satan The White Pussycat comes and does anything to it I might have to make him into a mitten himself. You think that’s an idle threat? It isn’t. (It is).