Observer story

The story came out. I'm pretty happy with everything, including the photo. As a result I've had a barrage of traffic to the Talk Talk Hell site.

We found out this morning after an evening of drinking and debauchery in Manchester. Woke up around 12:30 and eventually left the house in search of newspapers. ASDA had a disappointingly low count but enough for me to confirm I was in it. Not only in it, but also in glorious technicolor. After giggling wildly for a few hours and telling a nice man holding a donations jar for the Rotary club of Wigan, we went on search of more.

Sainsbury's ended up being the best bet for locating the Observer. They had absolutely tons left, which I think proves that middle class guilt hasn't infiltrated this area of the metropolitan borough of Wigan just yet.

I'm very excited and quite proud. I made it into the paper without committing an unusual, stupid or horrific crime. Hooray!



Observer: Calling time on the Talk Talk fiasco

It finally seems like Christmas.

Nov06 126
Originally uploaded by vulgarcriminal.

It's been a fairly exciting week in the world of Tiffany. Monday we ventured out to the wonderful Christmas markets to drink hot wines and look at *stuff.* We ended up at the Retro Bar for a pub quiz, brilliant fun even though we only came in 4th (out of 5.) I think we may do it again in January. See, that's where the UK win. Pub quizes are awesome.

Tuesday evening I received an e-mail from a journalist with the Observer regarding Talk Talk Hell. She wanted to chat with me, which is cool. The conversation on Wednesday was pretty brief but I thought good. A lot of it was about the various issues regarding ISPs. Apparently Carphone Warehouse customers aren't the only ones currently suffering.

Toward the end of the conversation she mentioned something interesting, would I be willing to have my photograph taken?

'Oh dear.' I thought. I think I must have shrieked to everyone, cache and photographer included that I needed to clean my house.

Thankfully I had a few hours to do a mad rush around, hide evidence of my station as High Priestess of the people who drink a lot of wine and hate cleaning and wash my hair. By time the photographer arrived, things looked somewhat sensible... or at least a little less like frat boys live here.

He took a lot of photos. What I'm hoping is, if they use it (they said they will but I'm a pessimist) the photo looks more like this:



And less like what I usually look like:



The photo is supposed to be out tomorrow. I'm frightened.


All things considered, I'd say this week was fairly successful. I'm pretty excited about being in the Observer and not for commiting any crimes or scaling palace walls.

Cinnamon Bear

Like most kids, my sisters and I used to make yearly trips to a department store to get our wishes granted by a magical figure. We always saw Santa, that was just expected. But what Portland also had, and what we also got to see, was Cinnamon Bear.

Sadly I don't appear to have any photos of him (nor does anyone else) but I remember the anticipation, the cheap suit and the big scary lips. I also remember the cinnamon bears he used to hand out (by far one of my favorite pieces of candy.) When Lippman's finally went out of business, so did Cinnamon Bear and I was old enough to handle it.

I still remember riding escalators and having this sense that there was something special about to happen.

What I didn't know about Cinnamon Bear, and the inspiration for this post, was he was the central character in a Portland radio station's Christmas story. Get Rich Slowly have posted the first 5 mp3s for download. I expect I'll be listening to them on the way home. Maybe it will add a bit of magic to my Christmas malaise.