Spotify

Today Twitter's worth was revealed to my when Graham Linehan (writer of Father Ted and The IT Crowd) decided to set up a twitter feed where people who had Spotify invites to spare could find people who needed one. To back up Spotify is an amazing music service that isn't available in America, it's essentially a free itunes. You can play thousands and thousands of albums on your computer and create playlists. I can't download the songs onto my ipod, but it's going to be amazing for finding new music and listening to it during the many hours I spend at my computer. But anyways, a kind soul who had a premium spotify account gave me on of their invites so I can get a basic account (meaning there are commercials)! I'm instantly obsessed with it. So, thank you Graham Lineham for being so wonderful to suggest a code exchange! YEY!

Autumn Sun

Today has been a disgustingly unproductive day. But I guess I still have time. It feels a lot later than it is. This is what the sun looks like now. It's slowly starting to set and it's not even 3pm. Oh England...

I've decided the next fiction book I'm going to read is Mrs. Dalloway. And in honor of Viginia Woolf, I present you with this magnificent quote from To the Lighthouse:

"The great revalation had never come. The great revalations perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark."

Songs I love

Two years ago during my first time being an expat in England my darling friend Sharif played Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights for me. I was like wtf is this, is this real? I then later on told my friend Dave, a fan of pretty obscure music and he had me listen to Kate's songs Cloudbusting and Hounds of Love (sorry if I'm getting this story wrong... I credit both Sharif and Dave with introducing me to Kate). My life changed. Hearing Kate Bush was like a gigantic musical hole being filled in my life. She's amazing and honestly in my mind the greatest female artist probably ever. Her songs are creative, well written with depth and her voice is amazing. Also she wrote a song about Joyce's Ulysses (The Sensual World). Here are my two fav Kate Bush songs (both, with amazing music videos), I hope you love them as much as I do:

The Remains of the Day

I just finished Kazuo Ishiguro's novel The Remains of the Day. What a heartbreaking triumph of a novel. Thank you Lianne for suggesting it to me. It was one of those books where a lot happened within very little concrete space, I guess in that sense it was very joycean, which is probably why I liked it so much. I won't write an analysis like the sorts Lianne writes on her fantastic blog, but I think it's sufficient to say that it was a phenomenal book and I definitely want to read more of Ishiguro's novels.

Daylight Savings

I totally forgot that it was daylights saving time here today until a friend kindly informed me. It totally threw off my day. So now, it's not even five pm and in an hour it will be fully dark outside. I just checked the forecast and sunset was right when I took this picture, 445. Ahhhh. And each day the hours of sunlight will keep decreasing and decreasing until it's dark at like three. But at least that means Christmas is approaching...

Also, in unrelated news, The Times was brilliant today. I love my Sunday morning routine of buying The Times and reading it over an americano at Cafe Nero. Wonderful.

Brilliant night last night of friends, pumpkins, chocolate and wine.

ME when I should be doing work

And yes... I did take this photo using photo booth.