Hello! I went to Reykjavík and it was awesome, and I will get around to writing about it eventually! If you like photos, you can see some here.

Meanwhile, here are some nice things that happened this weekend (just to remind me that London is not so bad really...)

- I locked myself out of my flat but there were nice people in the pub who cheered me up about my idiocy.
- I worked at the playground and at the end of the day, the entire playworker team united in shouting out the answers to a year-old Radio Times crossword.
- I went to the cafe in Springfield Park and saw a great big rat running past, and some Hasidic Jews chasing each other round and round a tree.
- Then Rob and I walked up the River Lea or Lee and it was so lovely in the autumn dusk. I almost resolved to move to Tottenham Hale, until we got there.
- Though in actual Tottenham I saw a young man hitching a ride on the back of someone's mobility scooter.
- The new film installation thing in the Turbine Hall is ace, and there were a bunch of children jumping up and down interacting with the film, trying to catch bubbles drifting down or run up the giant escalator.
- My flatmates and I spent half an hour watching the Autumnwatch badger webcam. Some badgers went into their burrow and had a little rest! That was it.

Some things I have enjoyed on the radio this week:

1. Tony Blackburn hosting Pick Of The Pops. I like it when he plays several Stars On 45-style records in a row and still sounds cheerful, or when he makes mad claims like Cliff Richard's collaboration with Stock Aitken and Waterman definitely being one of the best things he's ever done, or when he plays the entire Top 20 from 1989 and plunges me back to the utter boredom of being 12. On Saturday afternoon everyone was out, so I made a cake and sang along to all the hits of August 1970 in a tuneless yowl. How happy I was!

2. I was gloomy one evening and wished that Ian McMillan was on the radio to cheer me up, and lo, I switched on Radio 4 and there he was! Then he claimed that the tale of Compo and Nora Batty was the greatest love story of all time. Hmm.

3. A documentary on 1 Extra about the Notting Hill Carnival, where everyone got very enthusiastic about how much they loved it and played lots of very fast, shouty jungle and reggaeton and bounced around under the Westway saying "Oh, I'm so excited, I'm just going to stand right here until it starts!". 1 Extra is very exuberant, I might listen to it more often.

4. A documentary about Queen, which included the following pop fact: one morning Queen were jamming together, and John Deacon came up with the bassline to 'Under Pressure'. Then they went to lunch, but afterwards, he had forgotten how it went. Fortunately, Roger Taylor remembered it, so they were able to recreate it. DULLEST ROCK ANECDOTE EVER.

My line manager just emailed me a Make everything OK button, and I have now made everything OK. You're welcome.

Hope everyone is OK and not too freaked out about London going weird. I find it very hard to believe that anything bad ever really happens, so it is very strange to see the evidence - gosh Clapham Junction was a mess when I walked through this morning, and Indiejob's warehouse in Enfield has burned down with all our stock in it. Blimey...

Edit: This link has suggestions for how you can support the indie labels affected by the Sony warehouse fire. Er, not that that's the only thing to bother about by any means!

I have rather lost track of whether anyone I know still lives in Oxford, so clearly, if you do, you don't owe me nothin' - but my drumming band is playing at the Cowley Road Carnival on Sunday! For 8 minutes! Though I think there's a parade too, and the pleasing sound of the Age UK Oxfordshire World Tea Tent. Might be nice! We're also playing in St. Leonards and Bexhill later in July.

Anyway! Last week I went on a super holiday to Finland with atommickbrane, but I will write about that when I have some photos to show you. Given that my camera broke on the first day and I had to rely on disposable cameras, I don't expect that these photos will be gems - but the girl behind the counter in R-kioski was so excited when she found out that they sold them! We saw a happy Finn!

I have signed up for the cycle to work scheme, and now my bike is ready! Exciting! But I am terrified of cycling anywhere in London other than the footpath which will safely take me to work and back. Please give me some advice, cycling friends - I don't want to be chased by an angry bus! Or have my bike nicked, like, tomorrow.

Oy, last week was hard work. But maybe this week will be better! Anyway, one good thing was that I FINALLY got my Brownie leadership qualification, after many years of faffing about, and am now officially an owl. I had to collect a badge and certificate in front of all the Brownies and Guides in the district (my lot kindly whooped), and when I got home, Holly had made me these wonderful owl cupcakes to celebrate.

I'm back at work, it's all right! I really should resolve to webskive less though. Starting this afternoon.

Anyway, two things:

1. I bought a Wii! How do I, erm, befriend those of you who already have Wiis? What is a good thing to do with a Wii? So far the frontrunners seem to be: making tiny Newsnight Review contributors play table tennis, and solving household conflicts by duelling.

2. Here is a link to a photo of the squid cushion I made Kevan for Christmas (with a bit of help from my mum). Click carefully! Squid are scary!

Hello! I am back from ATP and I'm going to write about it RIGHT NOW before I forget to! It was quite the eventful weekend, so here are some highlights:

- Seeing some bands, though not really enough, as they kept clashing with my desire to eat a sandwich or run around saying hello to half the internet. I was very happy to see Saint Etienne for the first time, and Edwyn Collins with an all-star Scottish rock supergroup. Also Muluku Astatke playing ace jazz just when that was exactly what I needed to listen to, Laetitia Sadier saying "I don't know how to play any Stereolab songs, sorry if that's what you've come for" and then being so lovely and charming that it didn't matter at all, and Steve Mason's wonderful melancholy voice.

- Sharing the chalet of sedate crosswords with pippaalice, ozgirlabroad, kevandotorg, ruudboy and Stephanie-who-is-too-wise-to-have-an-LJ.

- Cheering on atommickbrane all the way to the final in the Scrabble tournament! We were so proud! I had not previously considered Scrabble to be an exciting spectator sport, but tigerpig did her best to make it so by incorporating home-made banners and chants. USE YOUR WORDS!

- Hitting the arcades with kevandotorg and atommickbrane on different occasions and being thrashed at air hockey and DDR by both.

- Making Singstar happen, so that katstevens and I could reprise our lovely duet of 'Somewhere Only We Know' by Keane.

- Belle and Sebastian's set, which I loved SO MUCH because they played about 15 of my favourite songs and were just grand, especially every time Mick Cooke played the trumpet. When they played 'Judy And The Dream Of Horses', I thought back to my summer job in Scotland in 1998, sitting in my little caravan up a mountain listening to Belle and Sebastian and feeling lonely and confused. I am still fairly confused these days, but I was with a big bunch of my friends, heckling Stuart Murdoch for inviting girls up on stage to dance and cheering loudly when he namechecked Ken Chu, and I felt enormously soppily happy about this.

- Trapping my knitting in the car door on the way home, and looking out of the rear window on the M5 to see the remainder of my ball of wool flying gaily in the breeze.

But why were so many people wearing woolly hats with bear ears on them? Are pandas the new owls?

Anyway, I went on holiday a few weeks ago, and I'd better write it up before I forget it completely. I do recommend holidaying in November, by the way - it definitely takes the edge off the slow descent into winter. Though it was a bit confusing to leave before daylight saving had really kicked in, and come back to find it suddenly being dark and cold at half past four. "Why did we come here?" said the Australians behind me on the plane, and I felt very sorry for them.

( This got a bit long and I barely even left the flippin' plane... )

1. I made cornflour goo with the Brownies and they were so enthusiastic that they covered themselves and the church kitchen with pink and green slime.

2. Holly and Kevan felt so sorry for me after the crushing defeat at the pop quiz that they bought me a board game where you have to identify lyrics from different songs! I did a bit better at that.

3. At Otherjob on Saturday, little T. and I made a cardboard model of King's Cross station and had a marvellous time discussing the different kinds of train that one might catch there, and which of us would be swept away first if London flooded.

4. I visited demiabeille and played her new Singstar games. Singstar Dance has an unfortunate video playback option which revealed to me that I am an enormous frump who will remain single for ever, but no matter! For I somehow scored so many points singing 'I Just Can't Wait To Be King' from The Lion King that I am shortly to take on the role of Simba in the stage version.

5. I visited pink_weasel and very_true_thing and admired their new home in a neighbourhood of very rude starey cats.

Hello Livejournal! I've been back from Australia for a week, it was all jolly good fun and I did a Korean tube walk on the way home. I will write it up eventually, but goodness knows when. However, you can see a photo of a koala and a big opera house and so forth on my Flickr, if you like. I had a nice holiday but I'm also happy to be back at work. How sickeningly well-rounded I am some days.

Other exciting things:

1. My drumming group were in a big Halloween Dance Of The Dead parade in Dalston! It was pretty cool - there were a lot of Hackney arty people who'd made amazing skeleton costumes and were dancing about in them, and a giant skeleton puppet, and we walked up Kingsland Road and people came out of their houses to watch. Every time a bus came past us, it was full of passengers standing up to look out of the windows and take photos of us on their phones! It was also completely exhausting and we got hassled a lot by scary drunk people.

2. Last night I went to the Nordoff Robbins pop quiz (a big music industry event which is won every year by Mark Goodier) with all the nice girls from work who I don't normally hang out with much. Best bit: when the one bloke on the team was surrounded on the tube by seven women talking about knitting. Worst bit: when we tried REALLY HARD and got loads of questions right and still came last. Last! So sad! Today we have been informed that this is worse than if we'd just got drunk and fallen under the table.

3. several_bees got given a column in the Guardian Weekend magazine answering Weekend letter-writers' rhetorical questions!

4. I am going to teach the Brownies about SCIENCE in a bit, though really I had some free wine at the pop quiz and am quite interested in having a little sleep at my desk now...