I frequently scribble lists of things in notepads and then promptly forget all about them, no matter how urgent.
Small incidents of human misfortune amuse me greatly, e.g. toddlers falling in ponds, businessmen tripping on paving slabs, tourists lurching around on the tube...
I also love: Shopping for 50p vinyls in rural charity shops - enough Barry Manilow there for the entire human race . The sound of the rain falling . Gin & tonics with ice and lime . Strawberry daquiris . Pimms with fresh mint . Clouds . My old-style 35mm SLR . Marzipan . . Cooking (and absolutely anything related to food - try to shut me up once I start discussing it!) . Cheese (especially stinky kinds) . Bella Italia . Travelling . Eurostar . Ranting . Comedy voices . Impromptu picnics in the sunshine . Hilarious parties you don't plan . Winding my friends up . Stripey tops . Silver shoes . Good hair . Dancing . Waterloo Bridge . Knitting . Carbonara . Storms over the sea . Old theatres and ballrooms . Planning the awe-inspiring library I'll build when I'm minted . Evenings of idle chat down the pub . Spontaneity . When the little boy I read with giggles at the word 'bum' . My besties . Daytripping to Brighton . The Englishness of it all...
I do not love: baseball caps . Peanut butter . Suckracks . When knobheads call me Julia: it's Juliet. U2 . Lucozade . Making typos . Imbeciles who walk too slowly on busy streets . Cyclists - can't those mofos see the red light? . That I often interrupt because I am impatient . Being kept waiting but always being late myself . Bits of barley in soup .
Anyone who possesses a modicum of genuine wit and intelligence.
Note to self: Sometimes flippant is right, and sometimes it's just plain impolite.
Gogol Bordello. Guillemots . The Long Blondes . Arcade Fire . Bloc Party . Brian Jonestown Massacre . Supergrass . The Young Knives . Mystery Jets . The Ramones . Belle & Sebastian . Cat Power . Beth Orton . The Coral . The Editors . The Sonics . The Rolling Stones . Clap Your Hands Say Yeah . Nick Drake . Jeff Buckley . Martha Reeves & the Vandellas . Joni Mitchell . Yeah Yeah Yeahs . Bright Eyes . Detroit Cobras . Beck . Le Tigre . Blondie . David Bowie . Rilo Kiley . Kings of Convenience . Sufjan Stevens . The Greenhornes . Dusty Springfield . Northern Soul . etc.
Some Like It Hot . The Apartment . Amelie . The Big Lebowski . Room with a View . The Odd Couple . Une Femme Est Une Femme . The Ladykillers . The Hairdresser's Husband . Etre et Avoir . Royal Tenenbaums . The Station Agent . Spinal Tap/Best in Show/A Mighty Wind . many films by Pedro Almodovar . and anything by Jacques Tati .
Family Guy . Spaced . The League of Gentlemen . The Mighty Boosh . Reeves and Mortimer . Kath 'n' Kim .
All-time favourite writers:
Mikhail Bulgakov
Kazuo Ishiguro
Haruki Murakami
George Saunders
Dan Rhodes
Andrey Kurkov
Italo Calvino
Carson McCullers
David Glen Gold
Shirley Jackson
F.Scott Fitzgerald
Wilkie Collins
Jerome K. Jerome
E.M.Forster
H.E.Bates
Kurt Vonnegut
Niccolo Ammaniti
Roald Dahl
I love spooky little books with dark tales and spidery illustrations: Tim Burton, Edward Gorey, et al...
Jan Morris . and: