Persona

Listen up Ikea, I'm not loving this summer's Pippi Longstocking range of tablewear and accoutrements, you should ask me before going with something as unappealing as red and green stripes. Also, had you run it past me, I'd also have advised against calling a range of pots and pans, 'Skanka', seriously, you all speak English better than many English, you know what you're doing here.

A while ago, I read a book by Sarah Waters, called 'The Little Stranger', it had me hypnotised. So I decided to read another of hers, 'Tipping the Velvet'. One thing I really like about Waters' writing is the quality of it, she is a great writer, but in both cases, she writes in a style that captures the historic period about which she is writing.
'Tipping the Velvet' is set in the late 19th Century and is about a young woman who falls in love with another. Hum, just had to re-type that, since at that point, Whisky plonked his head down on the keyboard. Now Waters herself is a lesbian writer, so it's not like me trying to imagine what it would be like to be in that situation, and so the feelings that the main character Nan has for her lover Kitty, are very honest. What strikes me is how love is portrayed without the socially constructed imbalance between women and men, so that when Nan wants to do everything to please Kitty, it's not because she's debasing herself just to 'get her man'.

Firefox has just updated itself, and it wants to offer me a new persona. I can choose from 30,000 options, and like any secondary school pupil, I spent time actually browsing through them. I couldn't, of course, find any drifting snow, but I settled for Antarctica. I also lost interest by about page seven, so good thing my actual persona doesn't depend on my choosing.