Saturday 19 July 2008

Nice surprises

Work ‘dos’ can be very tedious but ones at the Other Half’s workplace are generally hilarious and we went to one yesterday evening which was no exception. As well as the usual suspects, all of whom I know reasonably well as she’s been working there for nearly three years, there was a daughter-on-holiday who had been persuaded to brave the middle-aged lunatics and eat barbecued food and consume wine in the garden.
The Other Half and I shamelessly monopolised her all evening. As an ex advertising executive from London who is now a farmer’s wife (yes, farmer’s wife) somewhere in the vicinity of Hadrian’s Wall, even if she hadn’t been a delightful person (she was) her story of culture-shock would have been interesting. I also picked her brains mercilessly on the Ultimate Frisbee Freak’s behalf as the UFF has two career paths in mind – clinical psychology and advertising.

Poor girl, she must have thought she’d arrived in some kind of demented version of a careers evening. Still, she managed to look as if she thought I was a normal person and was, eventually, able to fend off brain-pickings by telling us about a friend of hers who is also a metropolitan transplant to the other end of the country. This person – Judith O’Reilly - has a blog which has now been turned into a book. I’ve been reading the blog today. It’s absolutely hilarious, particularly the bits about appearing on the Richard and Judy show. I now have to get the book. Off to Canterbury tomorrow to see if Waterstones have it. They’ve been coming up trumps recently – had a nice shiny copy of Tim’s Dog of the North on the shelves for me to buy, so I’m hoping that they won’t have missed a R and J book.
Also, in this post, Judith O’Reilly talks about a friend helping her to put together an advertising video clip. The friend, in case you hadn’t worked it out, was the young woman I was monopolising last night over sausages and chicken-on-a-stick.

Here’s said video clip. Also makes you want to read the book.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1guh4zx0O8&eurl=http://www.wifeinthenorth.com/


Who says partners’ work affairs are always a chore?

PS, can't seem to work out how to 'embed' the YouTube clip in the body of the blog - can anybody help me?

3 comments:

Kat W said...

Judith O'Reilly - a friend recently told me of her and I've listened to the serialisation of the book on Radio four. Honest and funny. Must check out her blog. Kat :-)

Karen said...

I'm off to check out the blog too, sounds great!

I've recently worked out how to embed a youtube clip, Alis. As you watch the clip being played on youtube, there's a segment to the right that has a code for you to copy to your blog. I think it says "embed code" or something similar. In fact the code is on Judith's blog underneath the clip. I've just had a peek!

Alis said...

Hi Karen - yes, I saw that but when I tried to copy it, only the short segment visible in the box copied, not the whole (v. long) http thing. Oh well, perhaps it was just a glitch! Thanks, though!