minimania

it's funny. ever since i started on trying to fix my brain a few years ago i have these random moments of revelation. while skiing i realised that my absolute terror of falling/slipping stemmed from the time i was bushwalking in the blue gum forest with my parents and slipped on casuarina needles and fell over a cliff. today's revelation relates to desks.

djeli and i have been discussing workspaces in the house because while i'd managed to achieve a setup that was working for me while he was away, the lack of space in our house means that it doesn't work when he's around. he has the whole of the spare room for his workspace while i have to take what i can find, something that isn't at all conducive to sustained work on creative things. so we've been talking about what can be done, given that the loungeroom is public space and so interruptions and laundry happen there, and the bedroom sort of likewise in that if i work on the bed i have to pack everything away entirely every night when he wants to go to bed. i can't work on till i'm ready to go to bed even, plus i find i sleep badly if i'm working on the bed all day because there's no separation of work and rest places and i feel like a slob. but the built-in desk in the bedroom is minute. it's barely wide enough for a laptop, with pretty much no elbow room. its one consolation is that it has a nice little bookshelf above it, where i keep all my music and art books, and it's a space where i can blu-tak up bits and pieces relating to what i'm working on on the wall.

i discovered when i first moved out of home that i don't like staring at a blank wall when i'm working. i like to have either a window or a large space in front of me. in lilyfield i had a room to myself that i hardly ever used for a variety of reasons. part of that was because the desk was too small and the window both too small and too high to see out of when i was at the desk.

now i'm staying with my friend in dundee and have been very taken by her tiny 1940s fold-up desk - you know, one of those ones that have storage space in them and divider-pots for pens and envelopes and things, but the desk part folds up to contain the whole thing so it takes very little room, and have been thinking about how that might be a solution, to have something like that beside the minute desk in the bedroom, so it would take up minimal space and give a little more surface space for when i need to spread out.

ANYWAY, to the point, which is the revelation. i've been wondering for years, without really thinking about it deeply, where this need for space and light in my work area comes from and this morning it just came to me in a flash and i suddenly realised that it's because i *used* to have that! when i was in high school, my mother had the clever idea of extending all the bedrooms in the house by adding bay windows to them. the bay windows in my father's study and my bedroom had desks built into them, so i had a desk that was very nearly the full width of the room, surrounded by large windows on four sides (in front, sides, plus it had a glass roof). the light in the daytime was fantastic and when thinking i could stare out into the beautiful pittosporum tree outside the window and see pictures in the leaves. when i worked there it never occurred to me that i might not want to sit at a desk, that i might want to move to the couch sometimes or otherwise shunt about the house, whereas i seem to have spent all my time since i left home doing (or wanting to do) just that in an effort to find some sort of work area where i could actually work.

the space i was using before djeli came home was the closest i've got to the ideal in the 10 years or so since i left home - we have a double-gateleg dining table that sits in a corner of a large bay-window-like niche in the loungeroom. it's a nice space but not really terribly useful so it tends to get used for drying the laundry because it's close to the kitchen/laundry, near self-contained so it doesn't seem to intrude into the living room, has plenty of light and a heater for the winter. i fold out one side only of the table, so there's still not a vast amount of desk space, but i just love being by the window. it makes concentrating so much easier and enjoyable. so i think there's a lesson learned here. let's just hope i can put it to good use and find a space i can set up properly and get some work done in!

well, things have been terribly confused for weeks now, but they slowly seem to be getting back on an even keel - the tidal wave of bad news seems to have passed, the tax is coming along nicely, with the end in sight, and it seems we're not about to be evicted, so YAY!

djelibeybi and i are currently up in shropshire - with the end of his telford contract, he has the coalport flat until the end of april, so we figured we should make the most of it and do a little exploring and walking and seeing of castles and old blast furnaces and so on, so we're having a fine old time. i also have a probable contract (possibly in germany) coming up towards the end of may, which doesn't leave much time in between for contracts, so i am taking my courage in both hands, putting my trust in Providence and have started telling employment agents that i won't be available till august (when the parents leave). it feels a bit scary - that's a long time without either of us bringing in any income, and of course it includes traipsing about france with parents and a possible trip up to scotland and who knows what surprises, but it feels like the right thing to do. i was freaking a bit about having to try to find a job and the money situation, and i think it'll all be better if i just calm down and take this opportunity as a chance to keep doing what i want to do.

assuming our visas are renewed, djeli may find employment quicker than last time (heck, maybe revenue & customs will pull their finger out and finally do their budgets and he'll get his job back!), and if they're not, then at least we'll have made the most of our last weeks and not randomly wasted them on work. and while i owe djeli a truckload of ££s (he finally worked out the true state of the joint account which revealed £3000-worth of debt for me) he does have some savings so we won't starve or not be able to pay the rent or anything.

so it's scary, but it feels like the right thing to do.

that said, if you need an experienced web interface dev for a couple of days, don't hesitate to call!

the last few days, i've been writing like mad. everything i see, everything i read is just sparking off ideas left, right and centre. i've been working through a document explaining search engine optimisation for a couple of clients who don't have a web background, so they understand how to frame their content, and really enjoying it. and i keep starting big meaty blog posts... and then getting bogged down in my own verbosity and stopping, and starting again anew. i guess it's been a while since i've really written anything of consequence that required real live logical thought. so maybe i should keep this post to the one paragraph. just to prove i can :-)

i do believe that this march is the craziest month i have experienced in a long time. it's a mixture of the very bad, the very good and the very stressful. i can't believe how many appalling and generally stressful things have happened just in a couple of short weeks - and not just to me, but to a lot of people i know too.

• our car - our lovely alfa - was stolen (and to add insult to injury, when djeli went to pick up the vw golf hire car he found he'd been "upgraded" to a vauxhall astra. how that is an upgrade completely eludes me)
  
• a very precious friend found out she is likely to have cancer
• i am flat broke. i don't recall ever having been this strapped for cash in my life before (except that time i got stuck in belgium but at least that was just broke, not actual debt)
• a friend of mine got back from skiing to find a client of hers had died suddenly. then the mother of a friend who was staying with her died. then the friend of another friend died.
• djeli found out that, far from being in the fabulous position for contract renewal he thought he was, his project hasn't been allocated budget and so he'll probably be out of a job come the end of the month
• we just found out that our landlord is no longer working in the job he had in australia, in spite of our being told last time we saw him that the deadline for his project had been extended. given that his wife has hated every minute of being in australia, the chances of his taking another job there are pretty much nil; chances of them coming back here and asking for their house back are pretty much 100%
• if the previous point comes to fruition, this will happen mid-june. just after my parents arrive for a 2 month stay which is kind of dependent on our having somewhere to house them. with djeli's telford job come to an end, the semi-planned move to birmingham is also cancelled so we could all be living under newspapers in hyde park.
  
• mid-june is also when our visas are due for renewal, something which is currently a bit up in the air due to our tax having got way out of hand, so we need to deal with the tax and make that all sweet before we can even think of putting in the visa renewal application, and of course, we can't even contemplate trying to find a new place to live without valid visas, and djeli is pretty much unemployable without same due to the time-scales of the sort of projects he works on.
• i, of course, was working on a Grand Plan, with djeli's fabulous support, which would have seen me taking most of the year off work to sort out our finances and pull together a load of backlogged adminny stuff to really try to get my composition career off the ground at long last. this is looking increasingly cloud-cuckoo-land, even if djeli hadn't finally worked out everything from the joint account and discovered that i owe him £3,000 (i've been trying to get this figure out of him for 2 years now), and if he's out of a job, i'll be the only one who can still be employed in the space up till the end of the visas.

so... um... i've seen better months! but there's been flipsides too:

• yes, the car was stolen, but it was stolen just after we'd come back from skiing and it's never been so empty - all djeli's luggage and coat were inside, his ipod was inside because it had been to france with us - even the lovely fluffy picnic rug was inside! so the only annoying things that were lost were the fm transmitter (which IS a nuisance because they don't make them with signals that strong any more) and the shovel (from the Big Snow the other month). so yes, it's bad, but it really could have been a lot worse.
• i've achieved soooo much this month - finally managed to sort through all the junk that's been cluttering up the place for ages and am now getting through the big backlog of projects on my to-do list and generally getting things done (thanks, david allen!) - this includes sorting out my australian tax and heading into the final phases of the satie arrangement for america, which have been on my to-do list for 3 years and 2 years, respectively.
• penury has given me a new-found interest in budgeting and it feels good to be getting back on track and being able to plan for my money a bit
• the accounts ARE getting done! this feels like a huge step forward, and if we get through all the horror-things on the other list ok, then i'll be able to take them over and hopefully keep them running smoothly so we don't get into such a pickle again. at any rate, it feels good that there's forward momentum happening at last. and while the £3,000 is a bit of a horror, i'm glad to know what the number is - there were moments when i thought it might be much, much worse - 2 years' worth of christmases without knowing how much money you have can do a lot of damage...

so that's march as of now. bring on april, i say!

W810i_product_quality_image_1

a little late, i know, given that half the people i know have iphones and most of the rest of them have some sort of blackberry/mobile windows hoo-ha-thingy while i'm still languishing with an almost-2-years-old sony ericsson w810i, but i felt that as i'm embarking on a collaborative project that requires me to programme for the mobile web, i should really be using it and finding out first-hand what works and what is seriously annoying.

so cue a little experimenting with my phone. most people, i believe go through this when they first get a phone. i did give it a go at one point, couldn't fathom it for some reason and figured it would be too expensive to use if i did get it working, so installed google maps and left it at that.

today i started by trying to work out how best to keep track of my expenditure (because i'm flat broke at the moment and i've decided i need to start budgeting properly so i don't end up like this again) and figured if i could find a little expense-tracking app for my phone, it would be better than writing these things down on little pieces of paper and hunting for pens and things and none of it ever getting put anywhere where it could be of any use at all. so i hunted one down and actually managed to install it which felt like a disproportionately great achievement. it's a long way from beautiful, but it actually seems to be quite well built - easy interface to use, minimal typing required and it keeps track of the basic stuff i need - what i spent, what i spent it on, and i can even put a note alongside it. and at the end of the month apparently i can export it all to xls so i can look at everything that happened in the month with ease. it was an interesting exercise in seeing how simple but how useful an app can be.

the next step was actually getting webby stuff to work. sony's interface leaves a certain amount to be desired, i feel. the email set up has HRs between sections, so you keep thinking you've got to the end of the page of options, when in fact there's a bunch more things to fill in underneath. so i managed to set it up to send, but didn't realise there were still outgoing-mail-servery things it wanted from me - it had looked like it was done with the questions, so i'd assumed it was going to use the o2 settings or something to send the mail, but it seems it needs a normal outgoing mail server just like normal email. once that was set up, sending and receiving was go. yay! i don't know that i'll use it for checking email very often (and the download seems a bit haphazard - rather than just downloading the new email since the last check, it seems to pull down a bunch of random other stuff too. and there doesn't seem to be any way to actually delete msgs out of the inbox, just to "mark them for deletion", whatever that means).

anyway, now that email's set up, i've been able to set up something a bit more useful - to be able to send tasks directly into my remember the milk account whenever i think of them. the only drawback with this is that to use the import-list function for rtm, you need to be able to separate items listed in the body of the email with line breaks, and i can't see that the sony ericsson mail client allows this, but will be checking the manual for that one and, if need be, attempting to find an alternative mail client. next step: set up email for evernote, so i can snap things i want to remember - posters for shows, or jot down random project ideas - and file them away before i forget. third step: set up emailing to flickr, which seems to work...

Testing sending to flickr from my phone

Getting Things Done: How to Achieve Stress-free Productivity

so after a long time contemplating it and hearing other people rave and reading *about* it online, i finally bought david allen's getting things done and actually read it. the final straw was when, after a conversation with my sister-in-common-law about where we each want to be in 15 years time and about the business she's setting up, and realising that our destinations are pretty much the same, albeit at slightly different angles (in 15 years she wants to be a world-renowned alexander technique teacher who gets invited to teach all over the place; i want to be a world-renowned composer who is invited to festivals all over the place as the drawcard guest composer), she said, "if there's one book i'd recommend, it's getting things done" and i kind of thought "wow". and given how far she's come with her business, even part time, it's obvious to me that she really has been getting things done and she's moving forward towards that goal while i sit in a stagnant pond.

so i trotted up the road to pick up the copy that ealing central library's catalogue said they had. but it appears that the librarians of ealing central have *not* read getting things done or they'd have got up and sorted out the shelves so that the books the computer says they have are on the shelves where it says they ought to be. so i gave up and went to waterstone's who of course had it nice and easily accessible in the right place on the shelf, and a lovely shiny £11.99 which fitted just perfectly into my remaining £12 of gift vouchers which were my leaving present from PwC 2 years ago.

short review: david allen is a genius. it's such a simple approach, but you can see immediately how it can work. within a day of starting to read it, i was following his advice and writing down all the random thoughts i was thinking about things i had to do and my gosh! what a huuuuuge difference it makes. almost immediately the permanent clamour in my head began to die down and there was actual peace in there. wow! and the book is surprisingly easy to read. he writes very well and while there is a certain amount of repetition, i didn't feel it was overdone - generally there was an additional point being made where the reinforcement of a concept introduced earlier in the book was useful to have.

and now i am following his advice and trying to clean things up around here. I've already talked to djeli and we've agreed that i should take the whole of march off work because what with the australia trip, an endless succession of (lovely) houseguests, an unexpected trip to belgium and the skiing trip to france, i have got nothing at all done since i finished work at the start of december, so i have a lovely block of time in which to sort through piles and piles of stuff. i started with the overflowing boxes and bags under my desk and have managed to throw out sooooo much crap! i think there were about 5 overflowing boxes and 3 bags of papery junk under there. now there are 3 partly empty boxes (1 big, 2 little A4 shallow ones), a few files which i need to find proper storage for and an absolutely enormous pile of recycling and shredding. thank heavens tomorrow is garbage day! there's still a long way to go, but for the first time i feel calm about the paper in my life. i know where my bank statements are. i know where my spare passport photos are (i'd forgotten i even had any), i know where all the overdue tax documentation is. it's brilliant!

another priority i've been trying to sort out is gtd software. i'm embarking on a collaboration with a friend in scotland and i want something that will keep together not just the tasks i need to do and the things i need to check she's doing, but which will also store all the reference emails and files we've accumulated so i don't have to rat through my email every time i want to check something, so i've been exploring a bit. i like iGTD but i'd prefer something online, and the need to turn on manual sorting to get my next actions in the right order is a bit tedious. and i can't use the latest version because i don't have leopard, which limits my upgrade options, and it doesn't come for PC, meaning i'd have to use a different system entirely for when i'm working. i like the look of nozbe and have played with it a little bit, but adding tasks feels a bit clunky when compared to remember the milk plus in my current unemployed state, €7 a month is a bit steep just for keeping my to-do lists in order (especially when i consider how often i use flickr and how that just costs me $24.95 a year), but the free account is far too limited to be useful. i like remember the milk - it's been my faithful companion for quite a while now, but for a proper gtd system, it's definitely a workaround situation, especially when it comes to adding new projects. but their keyboard shortcuts make adding new list items an absolute breeze and now that djeli's finally starting to use it just a little bit, i'll still have to use it for that. but i'm enjoying the challenge of finding something.

it's so tempting to just say "right, i'll build my own!" but i know i couldn't get it as slick as some of the ones that are out there, and i could spend weeks just programming it and not getting any of the stuff i actually need to do done, which would kind of defeat the purpose. i guess for now, i'll keep exploring, but stick to remember the milk as my primary list. i might re-read their blog post on setting up rtm for gtd and see if there's anything i can do better...

any suggestions?

it feels like it's been a while since i've been tagged with something like this (uh, a month, it seems), but tagged i have been: 25 random things, habits, facts or goals about me.

1. i can't stand telephones. in my book the only good uses for telephones are the internet and emergencies. if you have a non-critical message, email, sms, twitter, fax are all infinitely preferable. it's not that i don't want to talk to you, it's just that i hate talking to people when i can't see their faces.

2. my favourite sweet in the whole world is mebos, a sort of south african jube made of dried fruit and sugar. it comes in all sorts of flavours (peach, fig, raspberry, etc.) and is really amazingly fruity and sweet. small portions only!

3. for a short period when i was a child (in sydney) i was convinced i lived in england. the whole australia thing was just a conspiracy.

4. my music has been performed in sydney, brisbane, and montpellier in france.

5. i had a piece released on a cd back in about 2002 and am planning on putting together a one-girl disc of my piano music over the next year or 18 months.

6. i have edited two books.

7. my special birthday meal is almost always coq au vin. followed by some sort of chocolate cake (but not chocolate mud cake, for preference).

8. i am a very messy person, yet i love organising stuff and implementing systems, and i like things to be clean. unfortunately these things tend to conflict with one another :-(

9. i speak (in descending order of competence) english, french, italian and german.

10. i am the only child of two only children. i don't have any first cousins, aunts or uncles. (djelibeybi on the other hand is the youngest of nine and has more cousins than there are stars in the sky)

11. i have 2 degrees: a bachelor of music with honours in composition from the university of sydney, and a graduate diploma in design (with merit) from the university of technology, sydney.

12. one day i plan to get my doctorate.

13. i have been hand-coding html for nearly 13 years.

14. my favourite colour is red. my favourite colour combination is red and pale blue. runner-up colours are green, orange and purple. blue (especially dark blue) on its own makes me feel depressed.

15. i have a long-standing obsession with the music of erik satie. i wrote my honours-year thesis on it, was invited to participate in a panel discussion on erik satie and john cage in brisbane in 2002, i maintain (sort of) a website on it and am in the process of writing a new article on satie and the dada movement.

The Compleet Molesworth

16. i prefer children's literature to adults'. favourite-ever books are: narnia series, susan cooper's the dark is rising series, and the compleet molesworth

17. i can't stand so-called "relaxation" music. it makes me want to break things. i usually take a thomas tallis cd along when i go for a massage.

18. i dream one day of finding an SLR camera which weights less than 500g (but realistically don't hold out much hope of it!).

19. i don't plan to ever have children.

20. i am allergic to the spice cumin.

21. cheese is possibly the greatest invention ever. or maybe bread. it's a toss-up.

22. this year i sold my very first score that was 100% my own work.

23. the b.mus. course i did never takes more than 18 people per year and has the second highest drop-out rate of any course in australia (actuarial at macquarie uni is the highest)

24. my hair is so thick it needs to be thinned every time it's cut and if i let it grow much past shoulder-length it gives me terrible headaches.

25. i was once hired as an expert witness for a court case - i had to prepare a musicological report to demonstrate whether the new theme to a tv show was or was not an arrangement of the previous theme (i came to the conclusion that it was).

and in true lackadaisical vox tradition, if you read this far, consider yourself tagged, please :-) 

i can't imagine there are terribly many people who just randomly go off to belgium for three days with very little notice... for fun. but, yes, i am one of them. i confess that i love belgium. i love the confused languages, the horror that is the mannekin pis (alas, he was not wearing one of his costumes this week - apparently earlier in the week he was dressed as a dentist), the food... dear god the food, and the peculiar dark underbelly of the belgian character.

i was originally meant to meet up with a friend to show her the delights of brussels, but when that plan fell through after the eurostar tickets were booked, i decided to take a slightly different tack and make a plan that would ensure i'd see something new. i've been impoverished in brussels before... it's not really a city that is good to be poor in and i could do without going through it again, so i caught my eurostar to brussels... and then went to ghent.

alas, along with my general current penury, the fates saw fit to make a complete joke out of the ££/€€ exchange rate, so it was not a tour of 5-star hotels, but rather an experiment in youth hostels. i find it rather interesting that you get the same quality sheets in a youth hostel as in a 5-star hotel. it's only the places in between that attempt to impose thinning, greasy polycotton nasties on you. so in that respect it was quite luxurious. dying for a bath and a quiet night now though!

anyway, ghent is delightful. i say this categorically and heartily recommend it, especially if you're thinking of having a nice quiet weekend or long weekend away. it's pretty but not chocolate-box - it's a real city and it feels lived in. it also has this somewhat bizarre mediaeval theme going for it. maybe i need to explain though. yes, it's a mediaeval city. but it's nowhere near as mediaeval as it looks. at the end of the 19th century someone looked up and said "hey! we have a castle!" so they promptly pulled down some of it and rebuilt bits that weren't there any more (or indeed ever - apparently the roof was quite different originally). then some bright spark decided that while they had some very nice mediaeval houses, if they had more then perhaps more people would come and see them. so they found some plans and built some more mediaeval houses. um. according to my map, although i didn't go forth and confirm this for myself, there is one house which actually exists in two different places - they found plans for a particular house, went ahead and built it new... then discovered that that exact house already existed once they stripped off whatever had been done to the facade, but underneath it was the genuine mediaeval version of the not-so-stately home they'd just built. bizarre and wonderful. the castle is all about the torture - grand living doesn't enter into it - they even have a rather too detailed torture museum. it's just wonderful.

so i spent two days in ghent, doing a lot of wandering. saw both the museum of contemperary art and the older stuff (a lot of which was by flemish/belgian artists, and showed things like belgian interpretations of impressionism and so on - great stuff) then caught a train back to brussels, where i explored... um... an art gallery - the musées royaux des beaux-arts de belgique. just for a change. and wow, what a collection! genius heironymous bosch, and their late 19th/early 20th century collection is brilliant too. apparently later this year they are opening a dedicated magritte museum next door, which sounds amazing. guess that means i'll have to go back again soon!

last year, i made a long list of creative goals for the year, carefully typed them all out into a text file, filed it away... and promptly forgot it existed. this year, i'm going to wave my list about here and see if it helps me remember that i actually do have goals i want to meet in 2009.

music
finish and send the satie arrangement
try out the music of four new composers (that's one every three months - shouldn't be too hard, should it??)
finisht the walt whitman songs (this was on last year's list - only 2 or 3 of them to go)
convert at least two minidisc LP recordings over to MP3 so i can listen to them easily
play the piano more often
BUY A FLUTE! (cos this has been on the to-do list for about 2 years now)
finish layout on album of piano "eggs"

artsy craftsy stuff
try to draw at least once a month
book myself in for some sort of course (still really interested in this one at central st martins)
try to get to at least 60% of the exhibitions that interest me, rather than the approximately 10% i get to now.
try knitting cables first one off the list! february
knit myself a properly fitted jumper
finish the yellow bag i started knitting in june 2008
knit my da a scarf

web/professional
only take on contracts of two months' duration or less
sort out caitlinrowley.com (which i've been meaning to do for two years - to separate out the commercial part of what i do from the creative part)
get things moving on the much-discussed collaboration with my friend in dundee - set up systems, work out first steps then actually do something creative have got this underway at last and we're working on first steps now (march). Hopefully April will see the development of actual artistic concepts to build on the technical research that's happening now.

health/wellbeing
reach and maintain goal weight of 62kg (about 6 1/2 kilos to go)
work out how to get a little bit of composition done in every working week - if this means i have to buy an ultraportable laptop, then so be it.
rest when i need to
drink more water
see the dentist twice have made a start on this by booking an appointment for april. think i should probably book the follow-up appointment as i'm leaving to avoid delays by not wanting to use the telephone.
get back to yoga
let myself buy some new clothes without feeling guilty - too many of the clothes i wear are now huge or falling apart or both. i feel so much better when i have new clothes that actually make me look good.

because now i've gone and caught up on both jdavid AND whiskeykitten's blogs, i guess i'm tagged. this may be a little vague and forgetful-sounding, partly because i am both vague and forgetful and partly because i just got home from australia yesterday and my brain is asleep in another country.

1. what did you do in 2008 that you'd never done before? regained a fair portion of my sanity, worked out a way to maintain said sanity (although have yet to fully put this one into practice), had an operation on the nhs, cooked a vegetarian meal AND quite enjoyed it, done a road trip at christmas, knitted stuff for other people which actually seems to have been well-received.

2. did you keep your new year's resolutions and will you make more for next year? i don't think i made any. i did make a list of creative goals, some of which i achieved, others not so much - nothing out of the music list (although valiant attempts made, at least), 2 out of 5 in "art and design", everything under "creative development, mental and physical health" and not very much under "professional" (although again, valiant attempts made). i don't think i'll do actual new year's resolutions again this year, but i think i'll do another creative goals list and try to be a bit more formal about it and put it somewhere where i can actually see it this time.

3. did anyone close to you give birth? no.

4. did anyone close to you die? yes, my uncle (well, sort-of uncle - my mother's cousin's husband). he was a lovely jolly chap and christmas wasn't quite the same without his mad jokes. he's definitely very much missed.

5. what countries did you visit? denmark, france, switzerland, singapore, australia. oh, and england in that i went to shropshire a couple of times.

6. what would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008? inner peace, confidence, time to compose, a flute, a reasonable private income that would mean i wouldn't have to work unless i wanted to.

7. what dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? i'm not good with dates

8. what was your biggest achievement of the year? losing 15 kilos, keeping it off, getting back on to the deprivation diet after a severe lapse and in general starting to sort out both my physical and mental health. i've made huge, huge progress on both and am immensely proud of the fact.

9. what was your biggest failure? um. actually don't think i had any significant failures. setbacks, yes; lapses of self-control, yes, but i don't think any actual failures. just lots of works-in-progress :-)

10. did you suffer illness or injury? yup. concussion, operation on my non-circulating veins, a two-month continuous tension headache that turned out to be an inflamed muscle and which i'm still having to regularly deal with, 4 months after it started, and a gentle round of flu.

11. what was the best thing you bought? bras that actually fit and support, a swimming costume likewise that i'm finally not ashamed to wear in public. it's amazing what properly fitting underwear can do for your self-esteem. i highly recommend it. oh, and a wii fit. i wasn't sure whether it would be a waste of money, but it's been awesome.

12. whose behaviour merited celebration? djelibeybi's. without his amazing support i'd never have made it through even the first phase of the deprivation diet, far less to the point of vastly improved health and shape that i've got to now.

13. whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed? politicians', as always. this year, in particular george bush, john howard and kevin rudd.

14. where did most of your money go? assorted health stuff - nutritionist, masseur, osteopath and expensive health food type stuff and nutritional supplements.

15. what did you get really, really really excited about? making progress with my health

16. what song will always remind you of 2008? hmm. i don't really know cos i just dip randomly into my music collection generally, but the albums i've discovered this year that i've played a lot have been the trick to life by the hoosiers, scouting for girls by scouting for girls, lily allen's alright, still and mika's life in cartoon motion. yes, i'm a britpop junkie.

17. compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? happier
b) thinner or fatter? thinner, by about 15kg (not having weighed myself since coming back from aus where we were constantly being overfed for a month, this may be an exaggeration, but not for long)
c) richer or poorer? hmm no clue. i think i'll just skirt this one by saying that i'm healthier.

18. what do you wish you'd done more of? baking. but it wasn't allowed because of course i wasn't allowed to eat it and cooking the stuff and then not being allowed to eat it is depressing and leads to djeli eating too much of things he's not supposed to have either. on the plus side, i discovered knitting, which has become a good baking-substitute, and i got to do a ton of baking in sydney which i was then able to feed to my friends rather than eating it all myself. yay! and of course composing, but i'm still pretty pleased with the progress i made towards that goal.

19. what do you wish you'd done less of? working.

20. how did you spend christmas? early christmas with friends in london, then proper christmas with family in australia - a proper aussie christmas (barring midnight mass which we were too jetlagged to face, but we managed to get along there on christmas morning)

21. did you fall in love in 2008? yes, with djeli all over again.

22. what was your favourite tv programme? i don't really watch much tv, but when i remembered they were on i gained a lot of pleasure from ugly betty, secret diary of a callgirl, flight of the conchords and no heroics

23. do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year? no. i try not to do hate. i came pretty close with one of my contract bosses but am delighted to say that i've overcome it and forgiven him, although i certainly won't ever be working with him again or recommending anyone else does. forgiveness can only go so far :-)

24. what was the best book you read? i'm very bad at picking a definitive best of anything, but books i've hugely enjoyed have been boris akunin's pelagia and the white bulldog, the winter queen and turkish gambit; susannah clarke's jonathan strange and mr norrell, which i finished on the plane and was just amazing; and jpod by douglas coupland.

25. what was your greatest musical discovery? that ealing has a choral society that does really interesting repertoire and who were happy for me to go along and sing with them.

26. what did you want and get? to regain some energy, lose some weight, feel a bit better about myself, and start sorting out my brain so as to get back to composition properly.

27. what did you want and not get? £2million, instant results, a flute.

28. what was your favourite film of this year? i always forget what i've seen when asked this question. last year's films blur with this year's and ones which i saw for the first time on video. i loved iron man and was totally blown away by quantum of solace which for some reason i expected to be a bit weak (i guess because previous bond films that have been based on bond going out on his own mission rather than a job that's been assigned to him have tended to be the weaker films of the series) but was most certainly not. i saw secretary on the telly too, which just fabulous and unexpected.

29. what did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? i lamented the fact that i couldn't have a birthday cake and turned 35. it was not the most memorable of birthdays.

30. what would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? if i'd actually managed to finish the score of the wretched satie arrangement and send it off to america.

31. how would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008? i have a personal fashion concept??? wow! heh. well, i guess the thing this year is that previously i've just had to wear whatever i could buy that would do up around me. not because i was vastly fat, but because i was rather on the porky side AND very ... erm... generously proportioned, so anything with buttons down the front or which has been designed to accommodate more standard figures won't go anywhere near me. this year, however, i discovered the fabulous bravissimo, who not only have underwear for girls of my proportions but also make dresses and fitted tops and jackets that will accommodate my assets - woo! plus having lost so much weight and getting my legs sorted out has meant a whole new world of sexier skirts which has been rather nice. perhaps in 2009 i will actually develop a personal fashion concept rather than an attitude of "hey wow! i actually look good in this! and it does up!" regardless of style or whether said item goes with anything much in my wardrobe.

32. what kept you sane? well, sane is a relative concept, but that would be djeli, my nutritionist, tchatchke and my friend lis in particular.

33. which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? nobody new. still daniel craig as james bond, and over the past couple of years i have finally come to a proper appreciation of brad pitt (which horrifies my mother who hasn't bothered to see him in anything since a river runs through it which she hated). johnny depp and george clooney remain contenders and i still cherish a fondness for tim roth, although i haven't seen anything he's been in for a very long time as they tend to be more violent or harrowing than i can handle these days.

34. what political issue stirred you the most? politics leaves me totally cold, but i think the political issue that stirred me the most was one that should never have been a political issue, which is why it made me mad - kevin rudd (australia's prime minister for those of you who have better things to do that watch aussie politics) butting in and condemning artist bill henson when the police closed down an exhibition of his work because somebody who obviously knew nothing about art decided it was child porn. it achieved nothing other than creating more trouble for henson and showing rudd to be ignorant, bigoted and publicity-hungry. needless to say he doesn't have my vote, not that he would anyway because he obviously is not fit to work out an arts policy in the first place which is the first criteria of my voting for anybody.

35. who did you miss? my parents and my friend chris

36. who was the best new person you met? vanessa, my nutritionist. tchatchke would have been in here, because she's become an invaluable friend over the past year, but i still haven't actually met her, which rather puts her out of the running. going to rectify this omission this year - now there's a new year's resolution!

37. tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008. it's better to earn less and have more time for the things that matter for you than to do what other people expect you to but be mad and miserable.

38. quote a song lyric that sums up your year. oh lord. i find these things impossible cos i don't really pay attention very much, so i'm going to pass on this one.