I miss my iPod.

Yes, I lost my iPod just after Christmas. The third I've lost because I am a total fucking tool. Left it on the plane like a tit and didn't notice for ages. Too weary and disillusioned to phone the airline (I flew Ryanair) so now I am forced to spend my days listening to German teenagers and maniacs' inane chitchat on the BVG. Grr, argh. Along with the blissful, blissful removal from others' conversations that portable music devices bring I miss my freakin' music, man. In particular I miss The National. They make me so very, very glad I have ears. No mean feat as my ears and I have always had an uneasy relationship, though this has improved slightly since I achieved what my mother always promised I would and "grew into them". But yes, this band are truly, truly fantastic. I also miss the hip hop playlist that me fella put on there, that I would put on when I was in a pissy mood/it was raining/I'd no cash to buy a Ritter Sport*, put my parka hood up and stomp around to.




* Yes, these are the problems in my life, pretty much. I should be shot for ever complaining.

More Wedding Stuff

And then I will stop, I promise.

At the ceremony, which was in the lovely Armagh Registry Office/Council Chambers, Steven and I walked in (together, European style. I think. They do it in Greece, anyway) to this song, my cousin read the lyrics to this as our reading, my brothers played this one, and then we walked out to this.

I want to do it ALL OVER AGAIN.

I'm sick but I'm pretty (ish).

Is there anything fucking worse than being sick on the weekend? All the live long week this lurgy could have struck me down and earned me sweet, sweet guilt free sick days (as opposed to my other sick days which are inevitably hangover-guilt ridden) but no, the little fuckwit waits until Friday night to really pounce. No booze for Megan (well, not as much as I'd bloody like) and, because I live in goddamn Germany) no fun drugs either. It baffles me that you cannot get so much as a cold compress without a prescription here. I am rationing my imported Day Nurse like it's smack, but after that it's bloody Salbei sweets and Erkaeltungs Tee for muggins here.

Moan, moan, bitch, complain, ugh, sorry. Happy New Year Leute! Bit belated but, you know, bit lazy. Anyone make any resolutions? I did, I think. I was incredibly drunk on New Year's Eve, but I think I vaguely remember some redemptive contemplation between the Hendrick's Gin, Buckfast, "Dolan Bombs"* and rebel songs being sung around the kitchen table.

Don't complain about my work unless I'm doing it constructively. Grown-up, professional meetings with the bosses= good. Moaning "but whyyyyy are theeeeeey sooooo eeeeeevil???" over and over to anyone fool enough to listen= bad.

Spend more time, and dare I say it, money on my appearance. Call me shallow (the reasoning behind why I think you shouldn't I am currently too achy to go into) but 2010's looks of choice (Colourblind Trannie, Mental Childcare Professional, and, my personal favourite, Really Boring Ugly Person) left me feeling a little cold, not to mention dispirited, cranky and crap.

See more live music. I think I saw about one and a half bands play last year, and that's just silly. I'd like to blame Berlin and it's, admittedly pretty poor, indie music scene, but I wasn't even trying. You have to be in it to win it! 

Eat less. Move more.

Wish me luck!!

* Dolan Bombs are, allegedly, a variation of the Jaeger Bomb created by our good family friends the Dolans. As far as I can gather, it involves pouring a lot of different alcohols into some form of disgusting energy drink and forcing people to drink it really fast. Explanation or even justification escapes me.

I keep forgetting all the AMAZING ideas I have for posts...

Seriously, I do have 'em, like some mothers, but they just disappear as soon as I have to get off the train/answer the phone/think about cake instead. So here is a random assortment of the thoughts I CAN remember from recent times.

What is UP with these weird "wet-look-fake-leather" leggings all and sundry seem to be sporting these days? Fucking HID-E-OUS. They make you look like you've done a really long pee in your trousers. Ditto harem pants which just make me look at otherwise nice-looking, grown women and think "she wants her nappy changing". None of this is good, girls, and deep down you know it.

I really hope Whitney Houston isn't back with ol' man trouble Bobby Brown. Come on Whitney, RISE ABOVE. You sing How Will I know, ffs, you can rise above ALLES.

Why oh why do Germans love making cakes out of Quark so much?

What IS Quark?

I really like Kate Nash and wish she was my friend. Her new video is so poppy and snappy and fun. And she just looks so cute and pretty in a very unpolished way. As a very unpolished girl myself I find this comforting and happy-making....Somewhat annoyingly I've just had a closer look at her in the video and she does look very polished indeed make-up wise. But you know what I mean. She's not one of these American maniacs who looks like they've been varnished. That and she advocates reading a book or hanging out with oneself instead of agonising over rivals in LURVE. Wise words, Kate my liebe.

Right, I'd best be off. Have to shower before bed as they're turning our hot water off at 7.a.m tomorrow. Thanks guys, you rock. Particularly when you empty the bottle bins BEFORE SUNRISE (seriously, how is that normal?). In the spirit of grooming and wanting to be pretty and so forth I am going to try to plait my hair wet and then let it dry into lovely crinkley waves for the morrow whilst I get my beauty sleep. In all probabilty though this will fail and you should keep an eye out tomorrow for a woman who appears to have stapled a Yorshire terrier to her head. Say hi. Oh and here's Kate:

SICK.

I've been sick all week. It's been exciting and also gross. I've just been festering away in a pit of my own snotty tissues and those sticky wee caps from medicine bottles that you can never be bothered to rinse. I am have the sexiest cough this side of emphesyma and today I had to force myself to take a shower for the first time in days. I have been consuming Vitamin C by the truckload, ditto paracetemol, Haribo and Ritter Sport. Ugh, ugh and damn. On the plus side it does seem I am over the hump and hopefully normal working service will be restored tomorrow. Not least as I really need the money. Us freelancers can't just malinger endlessly, you know. no work, no pay and so on and so forth.

On the plus side, when one is sick one can indulge in certain behaviour that would otherwise be deemed "slackerish", "sluttish" or just plain "unseemly". This is fun, as any slacker, slut or general layabout will tell you. If only I had the balls to just all out join their ranks. But no, it's stupid social conformity for me. At least for the time being...But yes, stuff one can do when one is sick that one otherwise cannot:

1) Not get dressed all day. One can wear amazing outfits at will. Like the all-black-leggings-and-thermal-vest-ninja-suit I am currently rocking. I can also heartily recommend the cashmere jumper'n'tights look. But the KEY thing here, ladies and gentlemen, is that as an invalid, when you should need to leave the house (for provisions like Ritter Sport and DVDs), you can simply put on your coat and cardigan and NOTHING ELSE to go to the shops. You're sick, it's totally acceptable. What kind of society judges the ill? Exactly.

2) Watch amazingly soppy films like "My Sister's Keeper" and bawl your face off the whole way through (seriously, it will BREAK YOUR HEART) and blame the resulting swollen face and depressed demeanour on your illness rather than your succumbing to Hollywood tug tug tugging on your heartstrings in the most predictable of manners.

3) Listen endlessly to terrible, amazing mid-nineties American "alt" rock. Oh the joys. And, again, illness = NO JUDGEMENT.

So yes. Being sick does, to an extent, suck. But all clouds have their silver linings and what have you, and I've got Night Nurse for later. Hurrah!

Rosie, Queen of Corona...

...I am certainly not.

So last night we all went to to Tacheles to see our friends play and deejay. Fun times were had all round, fun times and a fuckton of Corona. Dear Lord, how is it legal to make a beer that tastes just like juice? It's hardly normal. Or advisable. But when do I ever stick to what's normal or advisable? Gods, but I wish I would. I was So Sick today. Horribly, horribly so. The whole world now has permission to punch me in the face if they ever see me drinking beer at a rate of more than one an hour. Right in the face, I mean it.

And what do I have to go and do now? Yes, that's it, DRINK. Good God.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.

So, in my first post in approximately eight years I have a few things to admit.

1) My obsession with Katy Perry's 'Waking up in Vegas' has been replaced by an overwhelming LOVE for the Black Eyed Peas 'I've Got A Feeling'. No, really. The 'Peas. I really have no justification. THE BLACK EYED PEAS, FFS. One of the lines in the song just contains the word 'mozoltov', inexplicably shouted. A word I had to Google to spell, which upset me even further as the first Google result is 'What does the word 'mozoltov' mean? I heard it in that Black Eyed Peas song'. Crikey, what have I become?

2) I have got worryingly involved in the latest MTV 'reality' show thingy, 'Scream Queens', where a bunch of hired maniacs compete for a 'starring' role in Saw VI. I haven't the strength to go in to this any further at this juncture.

3) On Saturday night I literally slept on a doormat. Albeit within an apartment building, but still. Three things you should remember to do when leaving a flat at four in the morning to go on a (frankly unnecessary) wine run 1) BRING YOUR FUCKING KEYS 2) bring enough cash to actually BUY the wine so you don't have to beg for money outside the spaeti (thank you lovely man who gave us two euros) and 3) don't live with people who SLEEP LIKE THE FREAKING DEAD. So yes, four a.m we leave the flat, nine forty-five a.m we re-enter it. I've had more fun.

4) There are six full bin bags on our balcony. SIX. I may well be the most disgusting person I know and I know someone who once used Cillit Bang as antiseptic.

Easy steps to banish the mean reds.

1) Listen to your favourite song from when you were 17. On repeat. All evening. It may be angsty but must be up-tempo. Give no thought to how uncool it now seems. Back when you were seventeen this song was the shit and you knew it. The zeitgeist is for idiots.

2) Dance to the aforementioned with joy and abandon all over your living room. If you get tired you may switch to a slower song (again, only if you listened to it as a teenager) but you should continue to gesticulate emotively along. If the ballad in question is of the middle-of-the-road-American-altrock genre then all the better. Something about losing a woman, or a horse, or a bet, or sanity is ideal.

3) Look out your window and notice that there's an amazing fireworks display going that seems to have been put on just for the betterment of your mood. If the world fails to comply with this imagine one. Or stage your own. Buy some sparklers. Set a cushion on fire. Set yourself on fire. Whatever it takes, honey.

4) Have some cake. I'm not talking comfort eating a whole fucking Kaesekuchen here, just to be clear, about a quarter should suffice.

5) Remember that you live in a world with the following: cake, tea, plain chocolate digestives, Dolly Parton, Barack Obama, blueberry pie, white russians, Margaret Atwood novels, Shakespeare, Ryan Gosling, your friends, your family, your pets, Ikea (particularly the meatball section of Ikea), the National, the Guardian, William Faulkner, Katy Perry (feel free to skip La Perry if she don't do for you what she does for me) and countless other amazing things and people and ENTITIES.

There now, don't you feel better. I do.

VICTORY IN OUR TIME!

MY IPOD IS WORKING!!! HURRAY FOR GLORIOUS WATERPROOF (APPARENTLY) APPLE PRODUCTS. Oh joy, joy, joy.

Other things that are RWTW (Right With The World):

1) It is a Saturday and I am not hungover. I feel glorious and also so smug I could just do a smug dance. Maybe I'll go the whole hog and start doing yoga and give up caffeine and say things like "God, to think I used to just poison my body with that stuff! I mean, I might well have just been shooting heroin for all the tea and coffee and meat I was ingesting! Ugh, I don't know how I could live with myself!"...I mean, it's unlikely, especially when you consider my addiction to all of the above plus doener kebabs and overly processed "American style" chocolate chip cookies, but maybe, just maybe.

2) Florence and the Machine are playing Berlin in October. I love her. After Katy Perry she is my number one Inappropriate Crush. Inappropriate only in that she is a lady and I am not a lesbian. As opposed to La Perry who is inappropriate in pretty much every way going. But can I help myself? No, no I cannot. The course of true love never did run smooth.

3) The new Mexican imbiss on Danziger Strasse. Yum, yum, yum, yum. A little upset that it's name appears to actually be Maria Bonita rather than TACO! (I don't know where I got that from) but still. I think it's also run by go-getting young folks who used to cook in White Trash before setting up on their own. I am a fan of go-getting young folks, and the burritos are goooood.

4) I am about to have some tea and cake now.

I am feeling kitschy.

All I want to do is listen to happy, sunny, quirky music like this:



and wear florals. Today is defintely a tea dress day. I want to eat cupcakes too. Maybe I should make some. I still haven't got the hang of baking here because a) they don't have self raising flour and baking soda and powder confuses me and b) I am goddawfully lazy. But maybe today is the day.

So I watched Steel Magnolias again last night...

...which is probably something I should stop doing in front of people as I just Over Emote to the point of ridiculousness, but ANYWAY, it's amazing. It makes me want even more than normal to up sticks to the rebel states, find a veranda and get working on some mint juleps. For reasons best known to myself (though I have a sneaky suspicion it has something to do with reading Gone With The Wind at an impressionable age) I have a borderline obsessive interest in the Southern states, and its women in particular. They're just so feisty. The fact that I live in the same world as Dolly Parton genuinely enriches my life every single day.

LOOK AT THIS. Her hair is at least 10 inches high, ffs! This video makes me sad I am no longer peroxide blonde (no mean feat, I looked like a transvestite. And not in a good way).

WEEKEND!

Well, almost. Two classes left to teach but they two of my favourites. In fact, all the kids this week have been awesome. Not counting Monday's. But I rarely count Mondays. Particularly if Monday starts on two hours sleep and a hangover.

But back to this WEEKEND. Tonight has turned into one of those nights where there's just not enough time to go to everything you want to. I am being forced to choose between a birthday party, another potentially brilliant night at the top of a film studio (at least I think that's what it is) near Sonnenallee, a 90s party in Xberg featuring LIVE HAIRCUTS by Becky and the Exberliner relaunch party. And it's not even properly the evening time yet, so God knows what more revelry will be added to this plethora. I feel vaguely hungover just thinking about it. Jesus, talking about hangovers, last Saturday was possibly a Top Five Of All Time. Not pretty, not pretty at all. Couldn't even look at my Potato Smiles until about 9pm.

As for tomorrow, tomorrow promises to be an event of biblical proportions (referring to its potential to wreak havoc, not any religious affiliations. Unless you count gin as a form of religion, which I probably do). Not only is it WORLD GIN DAY but it is LENA'S BIRTHDAY PARTY. Ich freue mich.

All this raises of course the question of what the devil to wear? Luckily, I was handsomely kitted out last Friday at the lovely Bea's swap shop evening (my first ever, and man, it was SO MUCH FUN) so my options are considerably expanded. Which is a damn good thing indeed as the looks I am sporting most frequently are two of my least favourite, namely Primary School Teacher and Colourblind Transsexual. Particularly tragic when really what I want to look like is this, ALL OF THIS:

I blame Jessie...

...but I am spending a lot of time listening to female singer songwriters these days. Usually I avoid the auld SS like the plague but how can you fail to fall in love with someone who sings lines like "If you're sleeping with someone who doesn't get you / you're going to hate yourself in the morning". And look how pretty:



Similarly, the more I listen to Laura Marling the more I think "Sweet Jesus, this girl is amazing", and she's only like seven or something.



The album is staggeringly good, if you ask me. Which I feel more people should, if only so my tendency to bang on and on about my musical opinions seems a little less rude.

My wonderful friend Jessica...

has just moved to Berlin and we are currently discussing Things That We Will Always Enjoy Doing Forever.

1) Getting pissed with our friends.

2) Dancing to records (whilst pissed).

3) Listening to Otis Redding.

4) Listening to Leonard. I love washing dishes to Leonard, personally.

5) Discussing who would be the better boyfriend: Bob or Bruce. Bruce usually wins, I just think Bob would leave you behind at parties and things. I mean, not intentionally, but still. You know, he'd be all like "God, I'm so sorry about last night. I just, you know, met this guy and he had like this kazoo and like we just had to go and see this other guy who had a banjo".

6) Eating eggs in for breakfast.

7) Listening to Van. One of my first gifts to Jessie was, like many of my first gifts to many people, a burnt copy of Astral Weeks. I have not the words at this juncture.

I wanted to finish this post with a video of that song but alas I can't find one. The live one sounds weird (he's too old dammit, why was I born TOO FUCKING LATE FOR EVERYTHING?) and I'll be damned if I'm going to accept some lunatic with a guitar, a youtube account and a digital camera as a reptuable substitute. So this post will have no multimedia aspect to it at all. So there.

I predict a riot!

Kudos to Lena (flatmate extraordinaire) for choosing that as the "rebel song" (Me: We need ONLY rebel songs today Lena!) that we started today, MAY DAY no less, with.

Our May Day activities have been exciting so far to say the least. We are currently on "police escort watch" which involves running out onto the balcony to shout "MAYDAYMAYDAYMAYDAY" when anything that has a police escort drive past. So far we have just had one, a rake of motorcyclists protesting/demanding/celebrating I know not what, but the day is yet young. We are going to Kreuzberg later to see what is going down, though obvs will be fleeing before nightfall.

These gals wouldn't though. Hells no. They'd stick it out to the bitter end, stillettos and all. Fucking brilliant:

You know what Deutschland needs to make more of a deal of?

This:

Berlin, take a bow...

I am SO IN LOVE with B-lizzle these days. It was staggeringly beautiful this evening as I was on the S-Bahn back from a job interview (I hope it went well. I had to stand on a chair and sing "Frere Jacques" at one point. I think I pulled it off...). Riding the S-Bahn actually is an amazing thing to around sunset time, particularly the S9, S7 AND S75 in my humble opinion. You get to see loads of the city, especially the cool architecture around Hauptbahnhof and the Reichstag. One should also endeavor to listen to suitable choons on the auld mp3 if you have one. I recommend this:



which is a lovely video in its own right, and this:



All these things make me happy.

I have a new favourite bar...

Sorry Astro Bar, I love you still, but the times they are a-changing. Step up Fischladen, part of one of the squats on Rigaer Strasse in Friedrichshain. Wonderfully dirty and grimy and SO CHEAP IT MAKE MY HEART SING. I think (I'm fairly certain, but I can't vouch for anything really that happened in there on Wednesday night. Or Sunday, come to think of it) I got a whiskey, a gin and tonic and a beer for like six euros. Bottles of beer (0,5l) are certainly less than two quid. Not bad going my friends, not bad going at all. The staff are also nice and friendly/forgiving, and there are many fantastic looking dreadlocks on offer to keep one's eyes occupied until vision is suitably impaired. What's not to love? They also do amazing things like play Jimmy Eat World albums straight through:

And oh, wonderful, "embedding disacbled by request". So no 'Sweetness' for anyone.



You can have that instead. Enjoy!

Boys are great.

So they are, in many ways. They do their best sometimes to make us forget that they are, but they are. And one of the best things about boys is that they SPEND MONEY ON RECORDS AND CDs RATHER THAN CLOTHES AND OTHER FRITTERY. Which in turn means that when you go to their houses you can spend ages prentending you are in a record shop without any of the inconvience of feeling like an imposter who is obviously only browsing as you obviously spend all your money on clothes and other frittery. It's lovely, and makes me feel like yer one outta Pretty in Pink. They also play bands' and musicians' stuff to you that you know that you should make time to listen to but you never do. Like Smog:



Obviously not the real video as youtube is a bastard, but the song made me smile. As did songs from these people, and these and these, all of whom were brought to my attention by boys. And just in case you need a little more convincing on the general wonderment of boys (I fully understand, they can be SO ANNOYING), heeeeere's Duckie: