Culture Never Sleeps

There will be noooooooo hurricane!

I can only apologize for my brief absence by saying that this has been an exceptionally culturally noteworthy week.

On Monday, I passed an evening of quiet and homely culture (as if) with one of my closest friends Heather, who I realised, is my natural Spaced buddy. It's not that H and I can't be serious - she has been one of the first people on the scene in almost every crisis in my life so far - it's that a lot of the time, we don't choose to be. She is the only one of my friends who would respond to me stirring an argument by using the metaphor of: "Guys you are both treading thinly on the line of the blame here" by miming the walking of a tightrope. Here at the Heights, H is officially one of our personal favourite people.

On Tuesday, I stepped out with the gorgeously dandy Glenn to, of all places, Ricky Gervais. The last couple of weeks have been a little Alice's Adventures Through the Looking Glass (mostly the bad bits - I'm being tortured by Tweedledum and TweedleDumber). I know it's sad to say this, but out of the two sets, I think I liked Robin Ince (a close friend of Ricky Gervais) just a little bit better. My mother would say that this is because I always support the underdog, but I just think Ince tries harder and his material was a wee bit funnier.

Much as I like Gervais (I've got both his Animals and his Politics tour), I was a bit worried by his fans. Yes I am saying that with a complete absence of self-awareness. I always liked Ricky Gervais because his comedy was often based on mocking stereotypes, urban myths and common prejudices. The problem with the level of irony with which that's done is that there seemed to be a lot of people around us who were laughing because they find the stereotypes and prejudices, in and of themselves, funny. Which explains why I've not felt that uncomfortable watching him at home. That and the fact that they wanted Gervais to Do The Dance, which is a bit too performing monkey (though he did a bit at the end!). By the end, I was more than a little uncomfortable with some of it. I did enjoy his more observational humour, though, a lot. Especially about the nature of celebrity.

Then, at the African Women's Forum Choir (for which I double booked myself so stupidly that I missed a colleague's leaving-do - bugger), we were filmed by Meridian. For the TV. Singing and everything. Next week, the choir are being recorded by the BBC, but without my voice, as I'm in Scotland. I'm hoping to be back for the filming of the video though. Oh, no, my mistake. That's my worst nightmare.

So all in all, a pretty cultural week! And to top it all, we've had an artist in residence at the Ministry this week, which has definitely made the stress levels easier. Our A in R is Jeannie Driver, who is doing an amazing project that you can read all about here. My favourite part of the project has definitely been her Atmosphere board, which has a variety of different weather symbols by which everyone in the office can describe their mood (or the boss'!!), forecast the mood for the day and their sense of pressure. Jeannie is hoping to sell these later on, so I for one will be returning to her website over and over until I can get one.

The Atmosphere board also prompted Miss Sally and I to look up Russ Abbott's single of the same name on Monday and dance about the office to it. How work is completed in the Ministry is sometimes a mystery to me.

Last of all, just got this from The Chief.