This is the end for VeryHushHush.com. It’ll be deleted soon.

I hear this one is quite good, if you fancy an up to date read.

Tootle pip.

I rarely make it to museums, which is a shame because I love the quiet calm, whimsical pondering and visual cacophony one encounters there.

I have a particular soft spot for moody Spanish genius Goya, Degas for his fanciful, sketchy dancers and the Pre-Raphaelite movement has quite literally moved me, ever since early childhood when I was captivated by the prints my Nana hung throughout her house. (Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Persephone is an exquisite example.)

So hurrah for the lovely widget (above) courtesy of these dudes, which brings the museum to you by showing you wonderful art and then telling you all about it when you flip it over. Easy on the eye and educational: can’t say fairer than that.

Update: activist Feminist art movement here. Not my cup of tea at all.

Oh look.

A Twitter site that aggregates a global collection of sick people telling other sick people how sick they are. 

It’s a virtual hypochondria Soweto.

Been a bit quiet here for a bit, but it’s been busy times and besides, everyone needed a break from me writing stuff when, quite frankly, I’d run out of things to say. 

Been goggle-boxing tonight, which makes a nice change from hunkering down on the London-Brighton train line late at night. Since moving to the coast my weekends are an epiphany, but my week nights are a haphazard pinball ricochet between office/Victoria station/warm Stella purchased from the creaky old train trolley. 

Glamour works in mysterious ways.

Anyways, been watching that programme about super brainy kids, The World’s Cleverest Child and Me. This sort of point and snigger ‘investigative’ journalism is usually the domain of Louis Theroux and his peering specs-appeal, but we’re in the midst of a credit crunch, so telly sticky-beak Mark Dolan is presumably cheaper and definitely less grating.

Well, I thought I’d done alright so far. Making it in the big city, blah, blah, etc. And then I watched these preternaturally precocious smalls wielding a frightening grasp of brand marketing and trip-off-the-tongue, searing critical analysis of Dickens’ complete works. Now I’m suffering from a crippling inferiority complex. Speed dial the therapist.

My favourite automaton sproglet was 10-year old Adora. Haircut like a Lego housewife and a habit of referring to her childhood in the past tense, she impressed and petrified in equal measures. I think she may have been rewired by Microsoft shortly after birth, which incidentally, is her company of choice for a future glittering career. 

Scariest thing - unsurprisingly - was the parents. The show overall served as the contraceptive soothsayer of doom: 

“Pull thine finger out and achieve, or weak flesh will succumb to the succour of vicarious success through your children.”

Something to ponder.

How do?

I find myself on this on this Friday morning quite utterly horrified at the state of Amy Winehouse. Why the fuck isn’t this woman in rehab? Or indeed, dead, because it can’t have escaped the nation’s notice that she is sporting the look of a cadaverous twig. Just look at the pontoon eyes, for a start.

I hold my hands up and admit that I harbour a salacious streak when it comes to celebsville. Guilty as charged, m’Lud. My friend George is of the opinion that ingesting this pig swill will rot my soul, but I don’t care: the more spotlight-hungry fools willing to make utter twunts of themselves (yes, you Jodie Marsh, I mean you), the better as far as I’m concerned. I love this shit so much I’ve even started moonlighting at Holy Moly.

But on a personal level, when I see photos of the drug ravaged mess that used to be Amy Winehouse (and in spite of what I enjoy doing in a professional mud-slinging capacity) it makes me uneasy. Deeply so.

I’m well aware that I’m just as bad as the next person. I read the websites, I buy the newspapers, hell I’m the bitch writing about it. And enjoying it too. But it doesn’t mean the irony is lost on me. There comes a point when even the most cynical of us begin to think it’s time to switch off the idiot box and amuse ourselves elsewhere.

Profound eh? Might have to lay off the 11am gins…

All I seem to do these days is blog sporadically about various employment-related subject matter, but before I bore you all to terminal tears, just stick it out for one more post and then I promise I’ll get a second string to my woefully beleaguered bow.

Now then. Since landing the job with the drinks cabinet and the boardroom (result), I have in the meantime been thrashing out the salary stuff (cringe). Result? Delayed start date. So to keep my fingers out the biscuit jar and the boredom porn off the box, I have managed to blag my way into super-wanky ad agency, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, for a spot of contract ‘copy writing’ (read arsing around smoking fags and drawling ‘daaaaahling’ at everyone from the tea boy to Mr Bogle).

This whole escapade is amusing for two reasons:

1) I am no copy writer. I don’t really know what this breed of being does, but I’m winging it to within an inch of my life. So far, not busted.

2) I’ve never been in such a litigious environment. All they talk about is getting the lawyers in. And believe you me, I shat myself when I read the T&Cs on my contract. Fucking hell, they’ll be after my grandmother’s boney bottom to have their pound of flesh if I don’t fulfill.

So far they’re buying my bullshit and I’m banking on being out by Wednesday, well before anyone notices I fucked up the Five website proofs.

It would seem a blogger does not an award-winning word wizard make.

Yes, ’tis true. Someone hired me.

I managed to sober up long enough to get a job offer last week. Hop, skip, etc.

It’s with a creative agency and it’s very exciting. I will be a pro blogger, would you believe. Given that I only started dicking around with this format a mere year ago, that’s not bad going.

The best bit? They have a massive booze cupboard in their board room. It is literally filled full of throat stripper. I had to do a ‘welcome to the company’ shot of sambuca last Friday.

Damn. I think I found my spiritual home.

Tomorrow the great abyss of unemployment starts. And so, in true fighting spirit, the solace of lunchtime binge drinking also begins.

I’m going to start off on a gin and tonic around 11am, then move onto a crisp white wine (perhaps a chilled Pinot) by 1pm. Then after that I’m sure a glass of fruity Merlot wouldn’t go amiss, before a strident march towards a large coffee accompanied by a port or three.

After this I may need a snooze, but I’ll set the alarm and crack straight on with a refreshing cider, before hitting the vodka and soda (with fresh lime squeezed in, not that cordial shit), before vomiting with gusto and starting all over again the following morning.

The question is how long until I’m skint, drinking dirty double strength lagers and weeing myself?

Inevitably, the Photoshoppers have been out in force. Just received this:

I laughed. I am going straight to hell: do not pass Go, do not collect £200.

Musicals make me cringe with embarrassment. On the odd occasion I have been forced into a theatre to watch one, I’m literally climbing the walls after 15 minutes.

It’s a phobia. I just can’t bear the forced exuberance and endless supplies of ballet-trained women trooping their turned-out duck feet across the stage.

To add to this cornucopia of wretchedness, I have also been known to cry quite freely at sad bits. I’m already on the edge emotionally, then fricking Billy Elliot starts dancing for his dead Mam and The German has to escort me from the dress circle.

So it was with this in mind, that I spotted a poster for the new Brief Encounter musical on an underground poster this morning.

I love that film. Black and white magic, it is. But do I dare ruin it all by going to see the musical? It’s advertised as buy-one-get-one-free tickets… will the inner gypo win out?