"You can relax with nitrous oxide"

"For those who are anxious about treatment we offer happy gas(sedation)which is extremely safe and a fantastic way to have a relaxing experience at the dentist.

DVD virtual reality glasses are also available so that you may watch a movie or documentary while undergoing treatment.We also have an hygenist available to ensure a clean and healthy mouth."

I'm scared

Lucky stars, vague charms

Last night, after a most awkward game of bowling on a broken lane, we went to see Control at Surrey Quays. Bleak, beautiful and with plenty of stunning moments, it’s a film I won’t soon forget.

There was something overly distancing about the story and character portrayals and so I felt very little for the characters except vague pity. I imagine this is what was mainly intended, unless of course you’re young (in which case inexperience causes you to romanticise and even misgauge tragedy) or, as Stuart intimated, totally into Joy Division.

When I got home, I found a terse email from my mother about her unreliable email service - her sentences cut short as though the perceived fickle nature of the email service itself had somehow infected her composition, preventing her even from typing a proper amount of words into the content field: Things go missing. We shall see. Looking forward to Christmas! My mother specializes in locating conspiracy in the most neutral of circumstances.

(Shhh)

Sometimes the “Don’t look down” maxim can apply widely, as occasionally I’ll see through the fog and think Good lord, am I really heading back to the lift in an office in London where I work? With ham and cheese on a rustic bap? Why do they call buns ‘baps’ here anyway? Oh whatever, whoopee, I’m…going to be sick. And then I snap out of it and go back to being the insensate automaton that I have to be in order to function here.

Straight after work, we’re going for charceuterie and then to some home buying seminar in Covent Garden. We’ve found a few nice prospects in Plumstead Commons and must now determine if we can sell our soul for a mortgage. All things in due course.

We’re going to have to start cinching our belts immediately, especially in the face of an upcoming dentist appointment that is going to clean me out of entertainment funds for a good long while. My toothache isn’t going away but because I’m a private patient, they’re charging me £50 for the initial visit and then additional charges for whatever it is that needs doing. Since it can only be a cavity, and cavities require ex-rays whether you’re going to fill them or not, I’m not sure why they want to break it out into two expensive and time-wasting trips.

Okay, I know exactly why they’re doing it, but must they be so blatant about exploiting migrants? (Yes)

I feel a bit better about socialising since referencing my book on English customs and behaviour, though mostly it just confirmed what I already know/subscribe to. Like men complain about things out in the open whilst women make a special trip to the toilet to complain in private. And the weather – just agree with what everyone says about it, or at the very least acknowledge that a difference in opinion is just a charming quirk of yours. And never tell an acquaintance your name or ask them what they do, even if it seems prudent – people here prefer to guess! I guess.

Oh, here’s some more good news: I’ve moved desks. So I’m no longer the target of obnoxious banter and sexist commentary. All of that happens over yonder now. Lucky stars.

You can crush us, you can OWW NOT SO HARD!

I wonder when I’ll finally be able to look at something in my environment – some tunnel or cityscape or storefront – and feel a true sense of ownership/belonging. Because certainly it’s all familiar in that things I see every day no longer surprise me, but none of it resonates in that particular way of home.

Skittish is a good way to describe my handle on London. The cats, my colleagues, friends, high streets – if not terribly cuddly, at least these elements seem to have accepted my presence. Now I have to work on my charm because nothing and no one will do your bidding unless you’ve mastered this essential quality.

After getting horribly lost for a while yesterday, I took a more direct route to work this morning only to find that the front door was locked. This forced employees to use the rotating door instead, I guess for some statistical purpose that involved a headcount. But being channelled in this way only strengthened the illusion that I’m working in an ant farm.

I ate my lunch at 11:30 despite my philosophical quandary, which went something like this:

I’m hungry – I can’t eat cold fruit because I have a toothache – my sandwich is soft and not cold so my upper molar won’t suffer if I eat this - I can’t eat my sandwich now because I’ll be too hungry later – but the fruit is cold – and my tooth hurts – and I’m hungry

In the end, I ate the sandwich. Fuck consequences! Yeah, right in the *ss.

Um, so here’s some good news. I haven’t had a glass of wine in about four days, and after severe headaches and some deep, obscure hungry feelings, my mood has improved greatly. Tonight we’re meeting up with friends to bowl, have a few drinks and see Control, and I think I’m going to substitute beer with a coke or something. Because there’s really no point in destabilising my overall disposition for a single glass of wine or beer (which is about all I can stomach these days).

Does this make me a straightedge or what? I’m hoping my rampant atheism will somehow preserve my badass reputation, though I’m not holding my breath (that would be juvenile, which I’m ANYTHING BUT).

Last night I got sick and tired of sucking at banjo and decided to go for speed over accuracy. And you know, it doesn’t sound perfect or anything but it does sound like I’m playing banjo finally. I wonder if I can keep up the appearance of being able to play for long enough to convince my teacher that I’ve been practicing much. My next lesson is on the 18th, so we’ll see if I can accomplish a new trick by then.

Yesterday on the bus, I came up with an idea for a screenplay. Instead of letting it go, I wrote down a brief synopsis when I got home. Now I’m mentioning it here so that I have no more excuses not to follow through with an idea. Working in the film industry has given me a pretty good idea of what’s required to make a film, so if it’s any good, I plan to put together a development proposal and send it off to someone.

Someone like my writer friend, who isn’t really a friend if we no longer communicate or live in the same city, but what’s the point of superficial acquaintanceship with influential people if you can’t pester them with your latest Big Idea, hmm?

Next week is the Times BFI 51st London Film Festival. We’ve booked four films so far, though I somehow talked myself out of seeing the new Wes Anderson and instead am going to some dubious French flicks and an American remake of some other dubious French flick. But Bruce assures me there will be plenty of time and space to book the ones that float my boat, as expensive as this whole business can get.

Hey, watch this:



If you like what you see, have a look at his other bits.

Look that way. No, to your right. And up. Up a bit more. Right…there. Limmy.

Fright of the navigator

I’ve recently discovered (again) that my metabolism has a tight leash on my appetite, making it nearly impossible to eat unthinkingly unless I want to fill out like a schoolgirl with a bad donut habit.

It’s not that I make poor choices when I’m hungry or even that I eat past the feeling of fullness – it’s just that unless I’m eating the same sandwich day in and day out and feeling excruciatingly hungry and/or unfulfilled, I gain weight.

To be fair, I’ve been a bit more careless about food these days and haven’t been consistent in my walking either. So a few days ago, I walked to work for the first time in ages after Bruce dropped me off at an appointment (secret appointment!) located along my route. Now instead of walking up Bermondsey Street towards London Bridge, I head up Tabbard Street and turn right at Borough High Street, where I would end up anyway.

Then this morning, Bruce found a better and (in theory) easier route for me to follow and suggested I try it. I told him I might save that for another day, since I was likely to get lost. Ever patient, he didn’t push the issue and I started off to work as usual.

But coming up Tabbard Street, and having spotted one major landmark he’d mentioned, I had the sudden inkling that I might be able to do it after all. Those bloody inklings of mine.

I’m not sure what made me think I could follow a route I didn’t take much notice of map-wise in the first place because I’d never intended to follow it. But I did think this, and it wasn’t very long before my elated sense of accomplishment turned to dry-mouthed panic when my shitty sense of direction conceded with my fantastic sense of being lost that I was definitely not on the right track anymore.

Christ knows how, but I zipped along uncharted territory until I stumbled smack onto the street where I work. But I had no idea which direction would take me to the river and I was much too embarrassed to ask a stranger. So instead I called Bruce and used the familiar landmark of his voice to calmly point me in the right direction, which I eventually found, much to his mirth.

So I’ve had my sandwich and - with the extra fifteen minutes tacked onto my usual walk - I’m feeling confident that in another week the scale at home will begin to tip in my favour once more. I’m also confident that I will never again try to go anywhere I’ve never been without a map in my pocket or a local at my side.

Speaking of which, I am adapting horribly to the new content management system I’m required to use for another piece of work I’ve acquired. I’m also incredibly awkward about admitting defeat and just asking the team for help. This is okay though, because according to this book on British behaviour, my general disposition – awkwardness and all - fits right into their social code of ethics. Whoda thunk it?

Hey, so how about that photo? That was me, steering a small fishing vessel on the Adriatic moments before a look of panic registered on the otherwise impassive face of Bojana's father and he instructed her in hurried Serbo-Croatian to take over for f*ck's sake! (he probably didn't say this, though he said something to cut my piloting short).

Next door to the what?

Last night we saw a programme about a boy with a rare muscular disorder that will kill him before he turns 20. His body emaciated and failing, the kid nearly died from breathing in a grain of rice. When he couldn’t swallow food anymore, a team of specialists had to surgically implant a feeding tube in his stomach via his mouth without anaesthetics because even the sedatives could kill him. And this guy still managed to drag his ass to university.

So we made a pact never to complain about anything ever again.

Um. Hello. I’m at work right now. And.

Nothing.

All you turkeys

It becomes more impossible to pin anything down the longer past and present embrace like wet transparencies - the eternal Then stamped into photographs, typeface running the same line over and over again, jumbling the meaning, and dreams that pull through filiments of lives you have no business waking. A song you thought you knew gives your heart a brand new pair of concrete shoes and pushes it overboard - that waterlogged ticker you lost last summer still trite except now you know too. Everything fits together so suddenly, sweetly and painfully, as it pushes you from the frame to complete its circle.

Croatia's turned down the sheet, put out the lights; it sleeps in a twinkling shoebox beneath the bed. Bojana, BoJANA, BoYana, however you get it wrong, she belongs here. She chews food pensively, shakes her head in slow-motion, smiles disbelievingly - could food possibly taste this good? Every morsel of her native land rolls over her tongue with that same allegiance.

All eyes are on me all the time: yours and hers and theirs and theirs too. Everyone that ever lived and knew us is watching, their furtive glances eating up hours of our film and it's not my best angle. So many boxes in disperate basements to lift the lids off of, so many angles to shake the dust from and try on again.

I don't know how long this thread pays out, if it's even the same thread, or if all threads are pulled from a single dream coat that is never quite finished. Or something else entirely.

Regardless

This weekend we went to see Control except the guy sold us tickets to see The Kingdom and we didn't figure it out until we were already crazy glued to our seats and the film had started. I'd have never gone to see it otherwise, and I'd have been right.

Other little things here and there. Happy Thanksgiving, Canada.

Hold out central

I don’t know if it’s the product of being an insignificant one in a city of millions that has challenged my individuality. But more than ever now I find I’m unable to own experiences, always looking at myself from an outside perspective and thinking, “This could be happening to anyone, anyone at all.”

And for the longest time I guess I’d been feeling like a pair of training-wheels for the novice dater. Someone you can only go so far with before you have to trade up, or out. These are certainties I’m slowly learning to unlearn. It’s difficult to be a good wife and a productive member of society when you’re always disappearing on people.

Anyway, Bruce is expecting an entry on our evening and that’s just what I’m about to do, though there’s a sense of urgency in this office today that’s nearly impossible to ignore, even whilst on lunch and inside my headphones. We’ll give it a try though.

So last evening we met up at Embankment to have a relaxing few hours before the New Pornographers show. We’d already agreed on dinner and a drink but we hadn’t come up with the particulars of what or where. After a while of wandering, we decided on a restaurant chain that’s been very good to us in the past.

La Porchetta is probably best known for its wide, floppy pizzas of various fresh ingredients. Now we know it’s because everything else on their menu sucks.

Just to be different (and costly), I ordered the most expensive dish on the menu, which turned out to be two small fowls covered in tomato sauce and a side of rice swimming in the same. There was nothing particularly wrong with it (other than the fact that I could scarcely scrape off two full mouthfuls from those tiny birds) but it wasn’t dazzling either. And I’m fairly certain they water down their wine, which I sent back in exchange for a pint of beer (which also turned out to be watered down).

But the real kicker was an incident that took place shortly after we’d sat down. We were shown to our table by a host who greeted us with the kind of jovial banter that belied the service training he’d had back in 1955. A few minutes later, a pair of young women walked in and the host turned his attention to them, exclaiming with a flourish, “Table for three!”

The two girls laughed uncertainly and gave him an odd look.

”Why’s that?” one of them asked.

The waiter gazed beatifically at the larger of the two and said, “For the baby!”

And then the horror of the situation dawned as it became perfectly evident that the woman in question was not pregnant.

Gauging by her appearance, I still can’t think of a single reason why one would even make this assumption. She wasn’t disproportionately bigger in the midsection and she wasn’t even particularly overweight. If you make the assertion that somebody you don’t know is pregnant (never do this), you have to be pretty darn sure. And I was pretty darn sure this was the worst prediction in the entire history of mistaken pregnancies.

So the girls hemmed and hawed a bit about whether or not they should even sit down - deciding finally that they’d have their dinner anyway, to the discomfort of us all. The restaurant was now empty save for four of us: two scowling (them), one with a dislocated jaw (me) and one with pop-eyes, his sleeves clamped firmly over his mouth in utter disbelief of what he’d just witnessed (Bruce).

The New Pornographers were fantastic though. It could have been a bit more fantastic had Neko Case been there, but nobody complained. In fact, after crew had disassembled the complicated pipe organ used by a nameless band that sounded like Genesis but looked like they’d just won first place for hydraulics at the high school science fair, the crowd was in such hysterics that a few of them even deigned to make some spastic hand gestures at the stage.

This is how otherwise reticent Brits let loose at a good show – by spazzing out within the narrow confines of their standing room. Some even gathered in a huddle to jump straight up and down in time to the music. But mostly there was the awkward spastic hand gestures, which elicited smirks from a few band members.

Wow, this entry is suddenly way too long; I bet you’ve already forgotten where you are and who I am and if you’d promised to have lunch with your mother.

Whiskers on kittens

Our friend Jennifer managed to take some quality photos of our elusive cats recently. She’s in transit at the moment and camped out on our living room floor, so she’s had ample opportunity to engage with them. As much as you can engage with a pair of pea-brained trauma victims.

Meanwhile it’s just another day at Club Work. Conversations about ex girlfriends have gained steadily in self-indulgent elaboration to the point where I want to scream OH JUST SLEEP WITH HER ALREADY SO WE CAN FINALY MOVE ON! Except the point of ex girlfriends is that they taunt you from afar so that you have something to fantasise about on your lunch break or whilst you’re involved in a particularly tedious project. Or so I’m lead to believe.

So after spending all morning bearing witness to the cheating hearts of corporate Britannia, I was happily made aware of the fact that Sales Guy has been demoted by way of a completely separate promotion. This has nothing to do with anything except that maybe now he will work more and talk less and, well, that idea makes me extremely gay.

By the way, I’m re-appropriating the expression ‘gay,’ because why should the bi-/homosexuals have all the fun? They shouldn’t, that’s why! So today I am gay! GAY!GAY!GAY! Eat your heart out Julie Andrews!

Tonight we are making another brave attempt at the extradomesticular and will be seeing the New Pornographers on their Challengers tour. I am hoping against hope that Neko Case will be with them, though she has a busy schedule of her own.

And wouldn't you know it - so do I. G’bye!

Look out upon the myriad harbour

This day started off weakly, my mood a bit off, and then some minor detail in a news story we’re publishing caught my eye and drew me further into my funk. The story uncovered all the ways in which people avoid work, particularly on Mondays, and how businesses were suffering because of this initial lag.

I find this Dickensian outing of unmotivated staff really depressing. It’s not enough that a job eats up huge chunks of your week and most of every day in between; now they want to forcibly squeeze every last drop of productivity you can reasonably muster in that suffocating timeframe.

Sometimes the only way I feel like I can keep walking in the direction of work rather than turning on my heel and walking straight back into bed is the notion that everyone feels the same fatigued apprehension about turning themselves on for another eight hour slog. Or most people do anyway. The rest saunter into their £100,000 per annum seats at 11 a.m., juggle their gaseous strategies and then have a four-hour lunch meeting about it.

Then maybe they’ll read that bit of news and furrow their brow and wonder how they can determine who in their organisation might be trying to cheat them of precious revenue.

As always, though, the motivation to actually care about your job is self-driven, and the only thing it’s driven by is a slow climb up the hierarchy and a promotion. What on earth am I doing here?

Earlier on Friday Films

A production company was filming a crowd shot along the South Bank this morning. They were making use of pedestrians heading to their various offices, indicating by way of a large sign that we should avoid looking directly at the camera whilst they were filming.

So I negotiated the narrow passage between a park bench and the filming camera, taking great care to avoid looking at the director. Part of me liked the idea that all I had to do to ruin their shot was turn around like some dumb asshole and smile into the camera. But an even bigger part of me wants to see my pill-balled black tights and crumpled a-frame skirt on a screen one day so that I can say, “Hey, that’s me! Well, part of me anyway.”

Just now

I looked down at my shirt and noticed some soup there. I said a bit petulantly “Nobody told me I had soup on my shirt.” Some random someone apologised and handed me a wet wipe. I guess I’m still in a bad mood.

People to see

We had a very harrowing evening at the theatre this past Friday. The theatre is the very last place one would expect to be harrowed (unless you’ve been misfortunately cast in a Martin Amis novel) but on a Friday night in the west end of London anything is possible.

It was the second performance of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross at the Apollo and as subdued theatregoers milled about with a modest glass of wine in hand, the swinging doors suddenly flung to and a gaggle of gassed up lads walked in bellowing WOAH, THIS PLACE IS JUMPING.

As sardonically observed, the place was perhaps not ‘jumping,’ though surely a few patrons jumped a bit at the unexpected commotion.

I guess it wasn’t much of a surprise when, after Bruce and I had settled into our seats, this obnoxious troupe took up residence in the row directly behind us. What did surprise me though was the interactive enjoyment these boys took in the script, which tickled their funny bone via the connecting ‘foul language’ and ‘racist commentary’ bones. It was a nightmare.

The play itself was alright, in spite of an actor appealing backstage for a forgotten line and a few lacklustre deliveries of some of my most fond filmic recollections of the play. The boys had done their homework too, though, and like a sonic boom they emitted catch phrases in Tourette-inspired helplessness minutes before the actors could voice them onstage.

All this annoyance was thankfully contained within a few rows towards the back, but the actors could certainly tell something was amiss due to the excessive shushing that filtered through.

Bruce has asked me to write a letter to the theatre in the hopes that they’ll give us free passes to see the play again. We think they should have attempted to do something to uphold convention, if only to show that it matters.

Anyway, we made up for it on Saturday by going to see Yella at the cinema, which I’d recommend to anyone looking for a subtle intellectual thrill. I also recommend watching Half Nelson if you haven’t already. Ryan Gosling does a very convincing performance of a cracked out school teacher and the soundtrack of well-known Broken Social Scene tracks scarcely pierces the invention.

Coming up tomorrow is Lightspeed Champion at the 100 Club and then New Pornographers on Thursday, which – between dinner parties and a houseguest - makes for a very full week indeed.

I heard somewhere that the power dynamic is always unequal between two people in a relationship, in the sense that one usually loves the other more. Not in the saccharine ‘no, I love YOU more’ way but in the tragic manner of a less enthralled lover who can only bear or take advantage of the overwhelming attentions of his/her counterpart. So I count myself very fortunate in that respect, since I’m almost certainly matched in love.

First impressions, Tribunj

My short-term memory plug can only withstand the pressure of fresh volumes for so long, and soon the new will push old vacation dreams down the drain.

For now, I’m winking back inside that first day, in and out as the sun runs its fingers across tree tops so tall I thought our bus might have slipped the space/time continuum to enter Northern Saskatchewan.

But if the Great Plains are a Monet then Croatia is certainly a Gauguin with its chunky, varied landscape of scrubby trees, blood-orange fists of stiff-leaved crops, green and red earth, the whole of it choked with rocks, rubble, and broad, spiny plants.

Broke back houses, kneeling or simply caved-in, are oddly interspersed with those that escaped the bombing but still bear signs of economical hardship. An unintentional communism seems to be at work in Croatia’s urban planning, as affluent facades of sunny balconies and vine-wound columns stand resolvedly beside the ghostly grey shapes of homes once whole and inhabited.

Trubunj has the essence of a shanty town, barely disguised by constant renovations, though its Mediterranean charm is undeniable and one only needs to turn a corner or lift a leaf to discover some delectable gem, breathtaking in its visual or tactile potency.

The Adriatic sea along the coast of Dalmatia is one of the purest bodies of water in existence, a radiant and clear-eyed indigo hovering coldly above its own visible floor. In late September, the water is all teeth and claws, but if you grapple with it for a few minutes, you can swim comfortably for hours (well, someone could).

A daisy-chain of industry faces the coast - restaurants and cocktail bars and ice cream stands with themes like Cocomo, Nautica and Paradiso, poised festively along the water’s edge - and just inside, few shaded and winding passageways of climbing, stone apartments. Some of these will stand empty for decades, collecting dust and wind and cobwebs, due to unresolved legal disputes among family members after a deceased owner neglects to write a valid will.

Our host, Bojana, tells us her grandfather’s apartment has been abandoned this way for over a decade since her uncle claimed legal ownership and then permanently relocated to Australia. Her father can’t do much about this, but in any case owns a home topped with two private apartments on a quiet road further inland.

Bojana gives us the 15 minute tour of the fishing village she grew up in before we retire to our respective abodes for a nap. We meet up later for salty pizza and Ozuisko Pivo, a beer loved by travellers and locals alike. She will travel back to Sibenik later, a larger coastal village where she lives and works, located a half hour away by car. She will come in and out of our holiday like a well-timed angel, taking us to all the best restaurants, sites and expeditions.

More on that later.

Getting there

My relationship with flying is nearly synonymous with my perspective on life. Take-off feels unstable to a tooth-gritting, hair-pulling, get-me-the-hell-off-this-thing! extent. Then the plane evens out and if I can for a moment forget that it could all go pear-shaped, my enjoyment of the experience is sublime.

Such was my feeling as we hit cruising altitude (half an hour late, “thank you for your patience-y”) and I finally deigned to look over the edge of my window seat. Once the rutted shelf of antique-white cloud disappears, you can’t help but devour the whole of that divine shoebox diorama below.

Tiny rooftops pooled inside the graceful arms of mountain ranges, the coin-sized lakes twisting to capture the sun and glint it back in your eye, the fudgey green heads of trees belying the simplicity of a forest – you feel the insignificance of your own little contribution to that majesty even as you tower above it like an intoxicated deity (which seems fairly accurate, after all the wine).

Surely there’s a term to describe that visceral enjoyment you can only obtain from navigating a savage, inhospitable terrain. The way your breath quickens when you swim a bit too far out and aren’t really sure if the shadows at the bottom belong to you or to sea grass or something that could fit you inside its mouth in pieces. But you turn onto your back and look up at the inexhaustible blue sky and just wonder at your own body, and at these most basic of life’s components.

In that plane, sandwiched between cloud and earth, I imagined that crash victims would at least have this. What more should proceed one’s final moments than stunning elation and that rotating-telescopic sense of perspective? But then we reached our hotel in Zagreb and saw on the news that a plane had crashed in Phuket, all foreigners aboard, and this scenario seemed suddenly very unlikely. Not at all romantic.

And obviously there’s more, but I’m out of time for today.

It would be so nice

Wake up Friday.

Soz, I just entered the Matrix there for a moment. I'm on bighugelabs' writer, courtesy of flickr. You should try it. (Nobody paid me to say that. But would you? I could say it again!)

After buying my first swimming costume in six years (and unsuccessfully threatening a girl who swiped the last pair of my-sized swim bottoms by stalking her at an uncomfortable distance) and packing half our wardrobe into one modest case (and mumble something beer and television or other) it has finally dawned on me that we're going on holiday. To Croatia. Tomorrow.

I'm madly skimming a Time Out guide hastily purchased yesterday
to find out as much as I can about the place we're landing in (Zagreb!) and the remote location of our main stay (Tribunj?) while Bruce shoots me dirty looks from his spot in the bed because it's nearly midnight and really I should be asleep.

But I'm too excited and nervous now and I'm trying to determine if I've packed enough for one week. Having never been to Croatia, I want to be prepared for anything, which means I've packed everything, including some kind of topical ointment that Bruce used the other week. Because what if he needs it again!

Our location is so remote that it doesn't appear in our guidebook, but it's situated along the coast of the Adriatic and we have a lovely apartment all to ourselves there and lo, there is sand. So IF between ten books, five DVDs, two mp3 players and a couple of love-crazed newly weds there STILL isn't enough to do, there will always be the beach.

Oh but I've just done a search online and came up with this:

"Among various summer entertainments [in] Tribunj a traditional donkey race should be pointed out as an action of preservation of this endangered animal."

Seems reasonable. A donkey isn't going to be eaten by a lion if it's running a big race that day, yeah? (Are there lions in Croatia?)

See you next week!

Pearson gives the Devil a run for his money

Seeing Josh Pearson live is (in spite of the over-eagerness of his fans) something of a mystical experience. His hand - a great, tickling spider that spins five strings to intimate an approaching storm in some lonely night time Nevada desert – works itself into such a spindly blur that you’d almost believe he owns several more fingers than his maker normally allows.

He’s both slight and savage in appearance, his long beard a bees-nest foaming about his collarbone, and it’s difficult to look him in the face as he sings about demons. Eyes wild, he bares his teeth in an expression so intimately pained you feel as though you’re looking in on the private execution of an outlaw.

Pearson’s harsh visions blow like tumbleweeds in the imagination, which is only enhanced by the basement rec room quality of the venue – a sleepover pillow stuffed into the kick-drum, amps balanced on milk crates, wood panelling and dark industrial carpet with all manner of plumbing and electricity exposed – this is a childhood place of potential.

Josh is sober now, which I hear is a good thing - from the performer himself and from anyone who’s ever watched him self-destruct onstage. Instead of burning up, he does something much more impressive, and walks slowly, barefooted across hot coals.

Reluctant renegade

Today the sales guy is getting the smack down, all because I waved the 'formal complaint' flag. I don’t even feel proud of myself – just worried that a real issue for all people working here will be turned into a personal issue that I’m having, albeit for very good reason.

I worry about this because the atmosphere of this corporation otherwise makes a blatant mockery of feminism. Thank you Women’s Studies 300, for opening my eyes to the chauvinism of the world and then giving me nothing but a feather pillow with which to fight it.

Now there is an irritated bustle of official importance and it’s all my fault.

All work and all play makes Friday a good girl

The longer I work here, the more I struggle to find reasons to stay. Even when I’m feeling my best, in terms of both productivity and sociability, I still don’t feel all that great.

In about a week I’ll be given a new, permanent contract. Except that this contract will not include a pay raise (not in the budget for this year) even though the role most certainly involves greater accountability.

Am I being bamboozled or what? (Don’t answer that, it’s rhetorical)

Evidently, I’ll be learning things that will give me greater experience and who knows where that will lead! The expression is something like “another bow on your ribbon” or “another tie on your bow” – either way it makes me feel like I’m a prize-winning canine on a podium. But the carrot is before me now and I have to decide if I want to give chase or not.

In better news, Bruce has survived the restructuring of his organisation and is in an even better place than he was beforehand. We’re going out to celebrate after work, though I’m not sure where. My two choices are a cultured evening of independent film and fine French food or a lowbrow horror movie and pizza. I can’t decide! Bruce says I’m not allowed to scream too loudly at the scary film if it’s the latter though.

I learned a new technique for the banjo last night called “pulling-off,” which sounds dirty and I guess the enjoyment I get from doing it would approximate that assessment. A mixture of “hammering-down” and “pulling-off” really gets a girl hot under the collar (but only in the safety of my own bedroom).

My teacher thinks I’ve done considerably well and can tell that I’ve been practicing, so the gold-star grubber in me wants to spin in circles until I vomit. But then he told me that I should also spend time improvising, and why don’t I try that right now?

And my fingers froze on the strings as a look of utter dismay surely crossed my face.

The thing about lessons is you learn just as much about yourself as the instrument you’re trying to play. For instance, I’ve learned that I’m actually quite repressed. I cling to tablature like a drowning man clings to a bit of driftwood amidst a sea of four-quarter notes. Ed calls it “playing by the dots” and gives me more tablature to ease my fear of possibly doing something spontaneous.

He suggested that whilst learning I should use specific fingers to hold down the strings. He said it wasn’t a strict rule or anything, more like a rule of thumb, and I said THAT’S OKAY, I LIKE RULES.

Ed furrowed his brow a bit and said, “Fair enough” and told me to hold down the string with my first finger. And I said OKAY as I put my second finger down on the string. Because rules are made to be adhered to but only if you’re capable of it!

I didn’t have time to practice my new technique because it takes about an hour to get home, by which point it’s tea and then a bit of television and then bed.

My next lesson won’t be for three weeks now because otherwise it would have fallen on our trip to Croatia. I’m contemplating taking my instrument with me on holiday though surely I’m not THAT much of a keener.

Am I? (Rhetorical!)

It's been twelve hours since my last confession

I keep forgetting that I’m on my lunch break and find myself trying to do more work, which is obviously stupid.

Now I work sans headphones, which means I do less out of sheer frustration and lack of ability to concentrate but I guess my superiors are happier with that scenario, so.

Meanwhile I’ve agreed to take on more responsibility as one of our fellow umbrella organisations can’t be arsed to pay another body, but I’ve been flattered with the notion that they have coerced someone else to do the ‘crap work’ before I set about making it all pretty. Oh corporation, will you never cease to amaze and disgust me all at the same time?

We’ve decided that it’s probably best to wait a while for children, since things like pay raises and accommodations (and sometimes my mental health!) (I’m only kidding) are still up in the air. A year might just be enough time to enjoy our fabulous life before we start adding dirty nappies and puke-up to the mix (just pour into a pre-greased pan and bake at gas mark 6 for 20 years).

Oh-ho-ho, look who we have here. The sales guy is back from his meeting. This might mean my entry takes a turn for the aggressive, we’ll see.

I discovered last night that I can’t play my banjo in front of Bruce, at least not nearly as well as I can play for myself. I don’t want this to become a mental block though, because first it’s Bruce and then it’s my teacher and soon I will be trying to play gigs over closed-circuit television from a sealed capsule launched in outer space. And I just can’t see that as being a viable way to live.

Actually, I have absolutely no pretensions about my future as a music artist, although the more I practice the damn thing, the happier it makes me feel. This is definitely an improvement over my inaugural experience with learning an instrument at the age of seven, when my wellbeing could be depended upon for a single day of the week – the day following a lesson. After this, the accumulation of dread would increase alarmingly until I was nearly doubled over with anxiety as once again I found myself stood outside the door of my lesson room. My own green mile was traversed this way on a weekly basis for years.

Though after twenty four years, I think I can finally extend my sadistic teacher the smallest benefit of the doubt, since she wouldn’t have shouted at me and put me in all those recitals and competitions if she didn’t think I had potential. I wonder what she thought when, seven years after my first lesson, my mother called her (on my insistence) to tell her I wouldn’t be returning. Maybe she was as relieved as I was. It takes two to make a musician and at least one of us wasn’t invested (the other was frighteningly shrill and despondently narcoleptic in turn).

Hey, that wasn’t so painful.

Spirit of the Ditz

It feels like I’m learning everything for the first time all over again. I guess that’s what happens when you mistake ‘stunted’ for ‘settled’ as I did during those years following university. Oh, just a second,

I miss school.

I miss school I miss school I miss school.

I.

Miss.

School.

M'kay, where were we…

It could be this strain is a result of me aiming higher than I’m actually capable of reaching but I truly hope that’s not the case. I’ve taken this ambition out of the deepfreeze and I’m prodding its sluggish corpse and I can see that it wants to respond. Soon I’ll sling its arm around my shoulder and drag it up and down the corridor while its toes scrape along the floor – anything to keep it from slipping back into unconsciousness.

Let Us Now Speak Eloquently of our Misfortunes

Kidding! I want to talk about the tube strike, which began last night and will continue for the next three days.

How could something so inconvenient be so much fun? My walk to work was indescribable – the trickle of bodies that typically commute via the South Bank swelled to more than triple this morning. All those underground faces were suddenly above ground, squinting disbelievingly into the sun and grinning at the river.

Young men in suits on bicycles - hair sweaty beneath helmets - weaved deliriously around pedestrians who seemed prepared to tackle Mount Kilimanjaro if it suddenly sprung up on the path. Reinforced with rucksacks and water bottles, hiking boots and iPods, the formally attired trampled silently up the Thames in wonder.

It had the same feeling as a fire drill in elementary school – all the boundaries of age and rank and popularity dissolving as kids move with singular intent, banding together to face the imminent collapse of authority.

Bruce says this is called the ‘Spirit of the Blitz,’ a quiet defiance that emerged as the result of Second World War bombing in Great Britain.

This will be useful to know when I apply for my leave to remain in a few years and I’m tested on Life in Great Britain. They’ll ask, “So what’s the Spirit of the Blitz, Friday?” and I’ll say, “It’s where you tell anyone or anything that gets in your way to go f*** itself.”

I might come up with a nicer way of putting it though.

Banjo lesson tomorrow! So far I can play the ballad of Jesse James, Hard Ain't it Hard and Tom Dooley with no mistakes, as long as I'm playing these songs alone and in a sound-proof room. Awesome!

A devolution from portraiture to plagarism

Lessons reloaded – you only get out what you put in. At work on Friday I put away the music and forced myself to join whatever lunchtime topic was already in progress. The results were surprising: an invitation to post-work drinks (not accepted) and some extra-curricular material on lend. It’s not rocket science I guess. If you’re nice to people, they respond in kind. But the misanthrope in me (in me?) would rather be left alone. Why pretend? For the good of my income, my security, my family - present and future tense. Make believe on the corporate stage.

A few hours ago, Bruce asked, “If you could have anything in the world right now, what would it be?” The first thing being out of the question, we settled on thing number two and headed out the door to the Old Dutch Pancake House. And after one too many shrill voices and the jarring bark of a motorbike, we abandoned our bus stop vigil and came straight back home. There was a week’s worth of cleaning to do and it was weighing heavily on us both. We put in a solid hour and now I’m sitting against a black backdrop while Bruce sporadically blinds me with his camera flash. He’s practicing his portraiture and I’m becoming accomplished or something.

This is what I put in. I don’t pander now; I leave that up to the two million other online self-publishers. I don’t even research these things – is it two million or something else?

Last night we stumbled home drunk and it was only about 9:30. I ate a salad and we tried to watch Richard Linklater’s Fast Food Nation and I think we had a conversation. Then a long night of few winks. I nearly opted for staying in bed all day eating Twiglets but Bruce said we should walk to the café down the road and I was glad of it. Rose’s Café is a family-run operation, all plastic menus and fake flowers and food made with love and cheap ingredients. Put your faith in Rose and you get a mighty fine breakfast, I always say (starting now).

I’ve learned that a model can do more than starve and make eyes at the camera. She can write a post, practice banjo, pick her nose – whatever. Not everything has to be about sex.

Bowling, on the other hand! (?)

We went bowling last night and I started off strong. A spare on my first bowl and a strike on my second. Thereafter everything went downhill and with it a whole lotta Carling.

If this seems scattered, it’s because my job is too regimented and I’m going there tomorrow and I’m not going to try anymore unless it’s for money.

I mean.

What I meant is, keep on keeping on with the extra-curricular. Art is what separates us from the chimps and don’t let them tell you any different(LY, it’s differently). Don’t let them change you. Please don’t let them win.

There is no try

Wow, it is really cold at work. I’d put up the hood of my top except that I’m already considered a misfit for listening to music while I do my thing, if what my line manager says is true. Granted he’s managed to botch nearly every important conversation we’ve ever had, so I should probably take things with a grain of salt.

A fairly big grain of salt (if I’m manipulating the cliché properly) is the fact that I will be made permanent in September with an eye to getting a pay increase in 2008. But as a certain backwards talking Jedi Master once said, “With great power comes great responsibility,” and so my job specs will increase exponentially.

I guess I should be excited but I’m a wee bit concerned that news of my good nature and affability has not yet reached even the first tier in the chain-of-command. It makes me question why I’m being offered the job, and what I’m even doing here.

Such is the great mystery and wonder that is life I guess.

My cat was not in the meeting place this morning, though I’d set off a bit earlier than usual to make a pre-work appointment. You could set an alarm to my arrival at any point along my route and probably she’d done just that. Sorry little friend – maybe I’ll run into you Monday. (Do cats read weblogs?)

Last night I saw something that renewed my faith in humanity a little – the Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players.

I probably could have done with a bit less banter and a bit more singing/slideshowing (the whole affair felt over before it had half begun) but it’s nice to know that there is someone out there who knows how to take life by the scruff of the neck and then poke it in the eye repeatedly with a stick.

‘Weird’ and ‘charming’ were the words used to describe the act, which is an accurate assessment I won’t try and best. I find it heartening that some people can actually make a living by just being themselves and lending a sophisticated eye to the potential magic of adolescent playtime.

It’s only too bad that one day Rachel will grow up and all that magic will be consumed by the tedium of sexist tabloids, which is the unfortunate birthright of any budding female beauty in the public eye. Less so in North America, perhaps.

Even though I’m navigating the peaks and troughs of this new life with a certain amount of decorum and determination, I still get it wrong once in a while. But I try not to let it get me down and I’m learning to just pick up my weakling heart from off the ground and stuff it back into my shirt and get on with things.

You should hear what they say about you

Can I just say that I hate it when a song employs a full stop mid-song in order to punctuate the moment the music returns? I think it’s the lowest form of auditory titillation ever, as though that brief pause should serve to remind us of how good the music was before it suddenly and completely disappeared. Moreover, I abhor that live audience Oooh, where’s da music gone? face of anticipation followed by the obligatory Yesss! There it is! crashing head-nod when the tune kicks in again. So yucky!

This is one reason I’m not getting along very well with the latest Broken Social Scene album. For the most part, the songs seem like filler for all the good music that was supposed to be there. Also, I’m under the (hopefully mistaken) impression that one of the song’s lyrics goes like this:

You are too beautiful to f***
You’re too beautiful

Is that so, Kevin Drew? Well, happy to be one of the lucky few that deserve to be treated kindly in bed! Good thing I had my teeth straightened back in third grade or you might be ramming me up the a** right now! But instead, we are making sweet, beautiful love. I could cry with gratitude.

It makes no difference now if I’m wrong about this lyric, or that if I’m right it’s only part of the song’s conceptual logic, because that horrible notion is forever imbedded in my brain now. The smut will never wash off!

Possibly I have moved on from Canadian Indie Emo though, because even the likes of Leslie Feist and the much less twee Amy Millan have lost the plot as far as I'm concerned. If anybody can recommend a female vocalist who sounds like she is singing through broken glass instead, I’ll give it a try.

In other news, I think I may be cheating on my cats.

Now before you get all up in arms about it, you should know that I’ve been very kind and patient and understanding about the petting thing. I would never expect a cat to grace me with its affection on the first date, or even the first week. But the fact that it’s been over eight months now and STILL their claws skitter madly for purchase on the fake hardwoods every time I reach for their furry little sides is more than a cat lover such as myself can take!

So yesterday, I was walking to work, minding my own business, when what to my wondering eyes should appear? A black cat with a white bib and half-moustache, crouching in the middle of the sidewalk halfway down Bermondsey Street!

This cat looked so much like my childhood cat that was put to sleep a few years ago that I risked being trampled by early morning commuters to bend down and try a few pats. And you know - she was perfectly amenable to this attention. It was lovely, I won’t lie.

On my way home from work, the cat was not on the sidewalk where I’d seen it earlier, of course. You’re lucky to see the same faces on your direct route to and from work, let alone the face of someone that barely reaches shin-level and has the inclinations and demeanour of a very nimble toddler.

So this morning, I was quite surprised to turn a slight bend on the path and see that same cat crouched exactly where I’d found her the day before. As I approached, I gave her my best come-hither smile and hither she came, as though she’d been up all night thinking about me too. I crouched down, and this time she placed a delicate paw on my knee and reached out with her other paw to grasp some of my hair as she pushed her nose into mine.

After a few minutes of this, I got up and continued onto work feeling a mixture of elation and guilt. Because already I like this cat I’ve only met twice better than I like my own. And I sort of want to see her again.

We’ll see if she comes back to the meeting place tomorrow morning. If so, I’m going to have to concede that it’s fated and maybe even pick up a kennel on my way home.

The King and I...or is it me and King?

What I find really so very strange is this:

Since I’ve been old enough to know better, I’ve been working towards the kind of life I have now and going about things completely and haphazardly backwards. Battling my ego, battling individuals and institutions that only wanted to help and embracing those who would have liked nothing better than to see me fail, and then failing miserably anyway – I was the poster child for Wasted Potential.

And yet here it is, right on time – my perfect life, and rather than it being the culmination of everything I’ve ever worked towards, it arrived independently of any crooked path that preceded it. My lap turned thirty and into it fell the husband, the job and the big city.

So suddenly I’m one of the loved forevers, the ain’t life granders. And I have no idea what to make of this. If I lost my job tomorrow, if I never exceeded a 20k position or if we never managed to make it out of Bermondsey, life would go on as happily as it did the day I made the decision to come here.

I had to lock myself in a toilet stall for ten minutes because four key decision makers met to discuss my job role and the switch to a permanent contract, and I didn’t want them to see how shaken up I was about that. I don’t expect anything bad will come of it, but it occurred to me how much I like it here (despite the occasional rant) and how relieved I would feel if I could manage to lock down a good-paying position in a lucrative company that will support every life decision I ever make from now on.

At least until I write that book.

But I will have to wait until tomorrow to know for sure. In the meantime, I am updating several sites at once and also posing as our editor in the more schmaltzy bits of content our magazine produces and not letting anything go to my head. Once you do that, you might as well stop trying because you’re not going to learn anything new or make it any further than you are in that moment. I have to stop making unfounded generalisations like that, I know.

Last night I managed to play through the ballad of “Jesse James” and am trying to see practice as a fun thing and not a playground for insecurities and performance anxiety. I like my teacher but not so much that I’m too afraid to play for him, and anyway it’s pretty difficult to invest any sort of conceit in something as unsophisticated as the five-string banjo.

You know, the louder I turn up my music, the louder the sales guy speaks and the harder he pounds the desk to punctuate his tiresome stories. I’ve never met a more obnoxious, childish and clueless person in my life. Seriously. Why do I work here?

Oh yeah.

Anyway, I’m going to extract my eyeball from my bellybutton now and tell you all about Stephen King. Did you know that he was a better writer twenty years ago? Or maybe I’ve grown up as a reader. When he’s not trying to scare you skinless (to coin a nicer term), he’s toying with your compassion for humanity’s weakness. I much prefer scary to well-rounded, but he’s determined to make well-rounded work in Lisey’s Story, which I’m in the midst of reading for fun (well why else do you read?).

He attempts this with a series of ‘isms’ invented for his characters - overly precious in spite of their profound quirks. Characterisms, if you’d like. He takes these characterisms and uses them to create a kind of resonating, symphonic vibe throughout the novel by simply and varyingly repeating them ad nausium. At one time, this tactic would have served to suck me down into the narrative’s gullet where I’d happily dissolve in the digestive juices of the story. Now I just find it irksome.

Simultaneously, he’s decided it best to slough off the uncanny and instead adopt a more homely brand of terror. The effect is pretty underwhelming, as you can imagine. Do the resounding ‘isms’ of the characters at least make you want to cuddle them? No, you kind of hope whatever bland monster is in unhurried pursuit of them will hit its target, sooner than later.

At any rate, though I think Stephen King may be evolving in some way as a pulp horror writer, he’s heading off in a direction I don’t think I can follow. We’re like two ships passing in the night, me and Mr. King.

Incidentally, someone tried to jump off the millennium bridge yesterday. Two police ships circled ineffectively below and a single man in a dark suit stood reasoning with him. I know this because my colleagues were at the window in clusters of five and six, some with binoculars. Suicide is somewhat of a sport in these parts I take it. But the pay is good.

I'll give you espresso

Bleach, happiness is stifling my creativity. I think I’m going to have to give my mother a call later or possibly throw myself down an elevator shaft. Either/or.

I’ve just re-emerged from a bank holiday which actually achieved the opposite effect of what a holiday intends. Rather than rebuilding morale when it comes to work, an extra day off will dissolve most of the defences I’ve developed the week prior – defences that allow me to do my job without having to reach for the taser gun in my top drawer (kindly administered by the Ministry of Imagination).

The revised holiday sleep schedule (to bed before the birds and up by noon) doesn’t improve the situation any. One of my colleagues keeps interrupting me to say that he’s going to email me something and then he emails me something. I think he could probably make better use of the body text but I can’t think of a nice way to say this, so instead I say, “Okay, thanks.” And grit my teeth.

Thankfully, I’ve so much on that my day is nearly, oh so very nearly over. And you’re so very nearly interested in any of this.

Thank you to Stuart for reminding me that the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players exist, because I really wanted to catch them on tour. As it turns out, we’ll be seeing them on Thursday.

And thank you to Knocked Up, for showing me brief glimpses of the birthing process ten or fifteen years too late. Now that I’m actually contemplating children, I’m fucking terrified.

And a big shout out to the arrogant barista at Waterloo Station for reminding me of the second biggest reason I avoid the bitter-tasting beans of your numbing espresso-based beverages: I don’t like coffee snobs. If I want to drink an Americano, I’ll go to Americano, yeah? Until then, you can either give me a Nescafe or SHADDUP.

But when did this turn into a dedications page?

Hey, so holidays in three weeks! We’re flying to Zagreb and then taking a bus to…somewhere on the coast of Croatia. I’m wondering if it’s worth starving myself now or just waiting until we’re there, since between avoiding restaurants that serve fish stew (not for Bruce) and those that serve pizza (not for me), I likely won’t be eating much of anything.

From the window

Having spent the bulk of my early twenties transforming from a Little Engine that Would Consider It to a Little Engine that Must, I was sure I’d reached the end of the line not five years later when I found myself chugging tragically towards whatever junk heap those Little Engines that Derailed end up in.

But I picked up my banjo the other day and sat over some music and painfully and then not-so-painfully progressed from one verse to the next and remembered what that felt like - to approach the unknown with respect for its unique obscurity and tentatively put my hands there to see what I could make of it.

With much optimism and few expectations, you can learn just about anything as long as you remember which end of the power dynamic you occupy. A theory, an art from, a scientific phenomenon – it needs you even less than a rock needs to be covered in moss. You have to come at it boldly but with complete humility and concede that you might never know but you’re willing to try.

That funny little caveman survivalist in me, with its repetitious and nonsensical utterances, got snuffed out over the weekend. Rather than beating a path through the garden and tearing up the fairy homes, it’s back to just concerning itself with things like “Is it safe to cross the road?” and “Don’t eat that – it’s well out of date.”

How long has it been since I’ve been able to manage pure enjoyment without poisoning it just a little at the source? Since never, I suspect. But this old dog is learning a few new tricks since it gave up worrying that stale old bone and now all bones are buried in the muck, resting in peace as they should be.

Skeletons in the closet, bones in the garden – does it matter where they end up? Change the facts, change locations, but these fossilized frameworks never lie. They work themselves up out of the ground – they don the watch fob and cane of Great Uncle Fabio and trip the light fantastic for your friends. You have to be a diligent groundskeeper, a better dog than that, to lay those bones to rest.

It can be done though.

Memory is no longer a tragic graveyard of failed endeavours either. It sits in spools of cotton wool and occasionally I’ll find the invisible twine and mock up some clouds on this stage, this quiet potential of existence, and make a little shadow play beneath them.

It’s a beautiful hot, sunny day in London and I’m enjoying it in the only way a person can – as a single slice in the blinds of the bedroom window. These skies, these moments, contain little joy in and of themselves. They’re suggestive of internal states, of experiences half-remembered against this very backdrop: a sudsy pile of clean life stuff just swelling and floating and bursting happily around your head.

I wonder if anyone could be more content than I am today, right now, right in ten minutes and right hereon in as far as I’m concerned. But I won’t wonder for long - I’ll just appreciate the gift I’ve been given: of for once having my feet planted firmly on hard-packed dirt under a half-dreamed sky of blue and sun and little clouds.

School is now in session

Things I’ve learned about human behaviour

If someone’s being horrible to you and you don’t know why, it’s probably because you’ve done something to upset them and you did it knowingly and you don’t know that they know, but they do. And so they’re being horrible to you until you can figure it out. Which is passive aggressive, but hey: nobody’s perfect.

If loads of someones are being horrible to you, it’s probably because there’s something about you that people dislike generally. And it’s time to take stock of what that could possibly be. Are you overbearing? Are you awkward? Do you like to blow marijuana smoke at your pets? There is a reason people don’t like you and it is a good one. The sad thing is, you’ll never figure it out. Because it’s just the way you are.

If someone is being horrible to you and they aren’t typically horrible to you and you’re paranoid, they’re probably not being horrible to you at all. That’s what’s called a Bad Day. Other people do have them, you know.

If someone is being horrible to you and convinces loads of other people to be horrible to you too and suddenly you find yourself without someone to eat lunch with and then someone throws a rock at your back for no good reason, it’s probably because you’re eight years old. Children are horrible.

Things I’ve learned about London

It’s a beautiful city and it’s full of dirt. These things are difficult to reconcile.

i. Bruce said that it’s strange how you will never see the same person twice in London. He said there’s no sense of community here. I thought about living in a small city and knew that he was wrong. Community is about consciously choosing to see/interact with a person or people – it’s not about running into the same faces over and over again and pretending you have anything else in common except for this.

ii. Where I’m from, the city follows the same tired schedule of events, which you’re meant to get excited about year in and year out. You run into the same people, eat the same food, say the same things and enjoy the same next-day hangover. The next generation of hipsters will put up a gallery of their most creative snapshots and you will attend. London is anonymous when you require anonymity. In London, community is a matter of choice, not a matter of scant population.

It really DOES rain that much here.

There are so so so many people, all of them subdued. It used to be I’d go into a pub in London and couldn’t hear a thing anyone said because they were all speaking at normal volume. Nobody shouts here because imagine what a hellishly noisy place it would be, with so many people clamouring to be heard. Now I can hear everyone perfectly in pubs because my ears have adjusted to the new, low level of speech. Though we don’t often go to pubs.

Londoners don’t gossip! This is a blessing and a curse. Mostly it indicates a healthy mind that is only preoccupied with living.

Most people in London aren’t actually from London. And they will do everything in their power to get in your way while you’re trying to walk home.

Things I’ve learned about love

It’s nearly impossible to communicate.

Even if you’re deprived of love, you find out about it eventually, just like the birds and the bees. Luckily, loving can’t be taught. Unluckily, learning how to receive love must be.

Nobody really attempts to describe it because it’s too sacred. Or retarded?

It makes you daring.

It keeps things interesting.

It rights all wrongs.

Things I’ve learned from Ed

That sound: it’s not picking or strumming, it’s HAMMERING. They HAMMER the strings! With their FINGERS! DO YOU GET ME?!! A whole new world is opening up and out of it fell Jimmy Hendrix! And stuff.

Two swans

This morning at the bridge, we were whipped by wind and rain and we made our usual pledge to not look back. But then I heard my name and turned around and he was on the bridge pointing into the water. There, on top of the dirty silver churning of waves, were two white swans.

Then we were on our way again; two points moving not-quite parallel on opposite paths, getting smaller, and the wind picked up and propelled hard rain and wet leaves into my face and hair. Walking along the Thames in an early morning rain storm with a banjo strapped to your back is an awesome experience.

We always seem to have a funny moment at the door as we’re leaving for somewhere else. Like ha-ha funny, not like the funny that makes your stomach twirl and your head storm around for a good way to backtrack. We are doorstep comedians, at our most vulnerable maybe, on the precipice of our public faces.

I could tell you about what I think of (remember) whenever it seems I’m trapped in the eternal work dimension but I feel stingy about these things today. I can’t even allow myself to take conscious ownership of certain memories when I’m here and surrounded by the most unsexy objects and people and landscapes imaginable. You have to sink through the weeds to reach the murky floor of buried treasure and hope that fingers don’t catch in the shredded flag of hair succeeding you.

An early fall pelts summer with rain, causing it to retreat and I don’t even mind. I think of warm baths, covers, roasted candied nuts steaming on the wind and all those pigeons huddled together beneath a blanket of mist.

Ashes, ashes we all rise up

It’s amazing, the kinds of unexpected things that can come along and save you before you even realise you’re in a dangerous place.

All manner of life preservers come my way, none of them ever fitting. There are some tried and true buoys that you can cling to for as long as they don’t dissolve, but then there are the hands that come and pluck you from the whole mess, simply because they don’t exist there at all.

Know what I mean?

Why is it that women have to be so insecure about everything, whilst men can have moments of insecurity but none that plague them for days and weeks on end and make them say or do crazy things? Don’t answer that. I’m educated enough to come up with the answers, but I’m talking about real life now - not just the theoretical underpinnings that effect society as a whole (and so individuals).

For them it’s a series of unrelated, isolated incidents that are easily recovered from. For us, it’s like a long train of injustices that sweep along the ground, collecting others and weighing us down to the point where we can’t function at times. Or is this just me?

And the only solution is to keep on being more fabulous than I am, more fabulous than anyone has ever been – to stay on top of the clamouring masses, to not sink down into it: to walk on water. They've set us an impossible task.

We have to be magicians. Abracadabra and smoke and mirrors and follow the sound of my voice. Tune out all other voices. My voice is the only voice you can hear. You are getting sleepy…sleepier.

Come to think of it, I could use a nap.

Shot to the moon

I don’t hate work anymore but it’s not an easy place to love either. After a slow and restful weekend indoors (pleasantly pre-empted by champagne and pancakes, then pints at the Pit Bar on Friday), I was even more reluctant to come up against the long faces and nervous energy of colleagues.

This morning the sales guy was irrationally smug about the recent dismissal of a different sales person who has been with us for much, much longer – at least until it came out that the dismissal had to do with not meeting targets. Ahem.

Anyway, it’s lunch and he’s sat across from me with his two bags of crisps and sandwich dripping with mayonnaise and I’m trying like the dickens to ignore him. Try try try.

My banjo lesson is in three days and I’ve practiced far less than I thought I would. Partly because Amy was here and we all know that houseguests trump responsibilities of all sorts, and then a string broke and those things are not at all easy to replace unless you really know what you’re doing (we do now).

I can play the intro bit of Duelling Banjos now, though it’s not strictly homework and probably won’t make up for the fact that I didn’t manage to sort out my fingering. I find it difficult not to lean my fingers against the surrounding strings when I make a C chord, thereby causing my strum to sound a bit muted and out of tune.

But Duelling Banjos!

Instead, I’ve been reading a lot of fictional non-fiction novels and informational weblogs, just to escape the solipsistic vacuum that is my own hellish head, and have developed a theory about the television series Big Brother as allegory for dictatorships and corrupt governments like in Animal Farm except minus the socialism. Um, that’s the theory so far.

I also have a bit of a platonic crush on Richard Dawkins (requires sound), who confronts people with destructive and uninformed opinions about things and then basically messes with their heads. He’s the UK’s answer to Michael Moore, except with a bit of class (and education, methinks) thrown in for good measure. I fully intend to finally sit down and read The God Delusion and love every faith-crushing, afterlife-hopeless moment of it.

Here lies an atheist/ All dressed up/ And no place to go. A harrowing thought, but true* nevertheless.

This photo I took of Bruce at Hampstead Heath was displayed at the Tate Britain for a short while. Ask me how!

Better yet, ask me why!

I’ll tell you how it was received another time maybe (I won’t quit my day job just yet).

Isn’t he pretty though?

*Yes it is.

Dutch pancakes

It’s 11 and there’s nothing to do at the moment. Everything I need to accomplish in the coming weeks is reliant on others now. It’s a strange feeling, to know for certain that I’m all caught up and not just overlooking something.

The things that make me feel nauseated at the moment are: the vaguely sexist conversations taking place around me; the sales guy who won’t shut up or speak in tones quieter than a yell; the smell of the editor’s deodorant or possibly his cologne.

But my holidays have been approved and we finally booked our flights, so September in Croatia is a go. I can’t wait to have 9 full days away from this place – work specifically but certainly London. I realised in the bath this morning that back when I was in school, my environment was stable enough to allow for my inner landscape to shift and grow pleasantly for months. Here, it’s the other way around – London’s working culture is mutable, even in familiar places, and you need internal stability to manage it properly.

I feel cranky because everyone around me seems to be shouting about something, most of it sports-related, so why should I have to listen? In a meeting, a designer asked if the four of us who don’t work in sales could be moved because the environment isn’t conducive to creativity. Though apparently it costs around £1500/person to move, god knows why. I suggested that maybe they’d use the money to build us our own room.

Since I stopped walking with my co-worker in the mornings, our relationship has been much better. Unlike with my mother, who has developed shorthand for delivering her barbs within the minimum allotted time we have now to talk, distance has turned my co-worker back into the lovely, happy girl with boundaries she once was. We’re planning to meet at lunch to have a catch-up, since she’s going back to China on holiday next week and there’s much to be excited about.

It’s funny to see a particularly attractive colleague negotiate the halls like the weight of her beauty is too much for her to bear, when really, nobody cares. Everyone is too mired in their own issues to notice others much. That’s how I’ve always wanted life to be and now it is. I’m not sure why I still worry about those extra few pounds I’m carrying, or what my skin looks like under florescent lights. I guess these things take a while to mend.

I’m lucky to have married someone who dislikes crowded events and the jostling bodies of self-conscious strangers as much as I do, though I spent so long thinking this was an inappropriate and unhealthy reaction to humanity that I feel vaguely guilty for giving into reclusion so joyously. Now it’s books and laptops, movies and music, banjo practice, cooking, pillows, open windows and the gentle whirr-whirring of the fan. We venture out to a film or to dinner and then hurry back to the safety of this perfect ecosystem we’ve created.

I don’t know how you can love someone in a teeth-gritting, stomach-hurting kind of way and still manage to crack a book, but it’s a compelling contrast.

No sense

I wish I could understand why it is I feel like crying whenever somebody does something nice for me, unprovoked. Like just now, I was offered a blackberry and I nearly welled up. It’s not as though people don’t do nice things for me on a daily basis. Okay, one person. But I know that if my lovely friends were around, they would tip the contents of their minds on a little plate between us and we’d have them with our coffee for hours on end. I tend to forget there are people in the world who think I’m good company, regardless of how I see things.

Three or four blackberries later and I’m ready to have a stroke (not that kind). Some people flower with more attention and some people shrink. I’m definitely the shrinking kind.

There’s a boy who works across from me – not right across from me, but one section over – who looks like the friend in Ferris Buhler’s Day Off (the wealthy one whose car they ruin) except skinnier and more pinched. He keeps sneaking looks at me and I keep catching him. He seems miserable there in front of his little screen and he never talks to anyone. He’d never talk to me either, but I bet he wonders why I keep to myself and how it is I manage to maintain my sanity when sales and design start to volley tense words at one another over my head. I’m glad that I’m married, because I’m a beacon for tall, skinny, tense boys who want to inflict their misery on just one other person who understands (I don’t).

Last night I dreamt about old friends I haven’t talked to in a long time and woke up feeling like I was not in London and not at home (well, ‘home’) but some in-between place where everything made perfect sense. Then I opened up an email from my mother who sent me a link to the house I grew up in. It’s up for sale on a real estate website. That brought me back to earth.

I wish that I could resolve the difference between their home and the one in my head; between the setting of so many childhood traumas and the first raw materials of imagination – the only ones I had access to for those first ten or so years. Now I have to feel this way about an entire city and I just don’t have the energy. I’ve become very good at encountering strange landscapes and drawing a blank instead of incorporating them into what’s familiar. Sometimes it feels as though the unfamiliar is taking over everything, including everything inside me that was once a given.

Though on the other hand, I’m not giving enough credit to the kinds of improvements I’ve made in the last few months. I can do several things in a row without getting discouraged or feeling like I should be doing something else. I can go days without feeling angry about not feeling angry. I’m always the last to know that I’m doing just fine. I only realise it once I’ve finished dismantling the fine and you stare at me with wounded eyes and I want to take it all back. Because really - I’m fine.

The designer just shouted You can’t handle the truth! Apart from it being funny, I think he’s probably right.

First banjo lesson

Candidly burning bridges

I think egg and watercress is easily my favourite sandwich. I know they have a lot of mayonnaise in them, but they’re no-nonsense in every respect and they seem to do the trick if you’re very hungry.

On the elevator, I realised I’m becoming my father when I noticed how I’ll play with the loose change in my pocket to acknowledge and try and diffuse the awkwardness of being trapped with one other person I don’t know well enough to smile at. Even at work, smiling at strange men when you’re a woman can be misconstrued. I have no real evidence to support this theory, but call it women’s intuition.

The designer calls me by a nickname that only friends back home use. For him, the name saves time, but in my experience, it’s only ever been used to connote familiarity and affection. This tactic disarms me every time and I will pretty much drop anything to answer a question that begins by addressing me in this manner (Bruce has given me brand new names that are more suitable but not easily guessed).

Things are much better at work now that I’ve devised a proper schedule. I can see exactly what needs to be done when, and have even built in time to deal with the many unforeseen issues that can crop up in a week. I’m even busier for this, but I’m working much more effectively and can actually see the impact my work makes here. I fully intend to stay put, if they’ll have me beyond the termination of my temporary contract.

Someone just handed me a template for personal business cards, so I’m assuming I have nothing to worry about on that front (though she also handed the temp a business card template, and the temp handed it right back, so maybe not).

On Sunday we went to the Tate Britain to see an exhibition called How We Are: Photographing Britain. I have to admit - much of it left me cold, especially the older stuff. I’d like to explain why but I’m not sure myself. I’ve always felt this way about history. Maybe the one-dimensional quality of a photograph mirrors the one-dimensional ideology that probably informed these images, which for a long time were posed, stiff and propagandist by necessity (don’t be fooled by the candidness of that featured photograph – there weren’t many like it before 1988).

But afterwards, a holidaymaker gave Bruce and me a bottle of wine he didn’t want to pack or leave behind. It looks pretty good, from what I can tell, and not at all tampered with. It’s not likely someone is going to go through a lot of effort to mock-up a commercial bottle of wine in order to poison a complete stranger, is it?

I’m hoping someone will come over and help me drink it though.

Lots has been going on, none of which I can properly keep up with here. I’m going on holiday in September, to Croatia: where the pizza is lovely, the coast picturesque and the inhabitants vaguely xenophobic (or so I hear). My parents have bought an apartment in Vancouver and are selling my childhood home, which I will never see again. I’m not sure how I feel about that. But our tickets are booked for December and I feel vaguely comforted by the notion that I will see Canada again very soon.

Memories of home are still strong but much less appealing now that I’ve had time to think through things properly. Like I was telling Bruce and Amy, it’s like when you keep outdated food in your fridge to trick yourself into thinking you’re well stocked but only see how truly deprived you were once you clear it all out to make space for new groceries. Small-town Canadian City of my Birth: you were rotten to the core and I’m glad to be rid of you. Sorry, it’s just how I feel.

I don’t know how I’ll feel about Vancouver as a Canadian home base, but I’m looking forward to experiencing superb customer service, which doesn’t exist here.

Run

When you tried to outrun them in a public place, your mother’s voice the leash that yanked you always back; when you plunged from the basement into blotted trees, cement, the sun whiting everything out like a migraine; when you counted the pencil marks up the door, the painful centimetres to freedom - did you realise then that all you would escape was the serrated edge of your senses?

The scuffed sneakers, the hundreds of thousands of millions of pedal pushes, the tarmac oiling thickly beneath rubber tyres; you were running in circles, the block looping back in a friendly, an insistent, a relentless, an oppressive treadmill.

Six years later you blew out a lungful of smoke and the wheels came off your bike. Then you sucked back the sharp, cold, midnight fumes of a bottle and forgot the way back.

Weren’t you pleased when the doctor’s scissors snipped out the lights in the house one by one. And in the morning they didn’t look for you.

And after all these years, there is still no one watching you run. You could run to the ends of the earth and no one would notice. Go on then.

Before I get into banjos

Since I have fewer than 5% of my readership reading, I think I’ll halve my efforts here and post twice as frequently. That should more than make up for…something or other.

The sales guy was becoming increasingly desperate about being invited out for a drink after work (he’s been asking the team about it since 10 this morning, and they’ve been consistently evasive) so I went downstairs for a snack. I ate my lunch at 11:30 so a 13:45 snack isn’t inconceivable. I got flustered when I realised it was down to a different opus of overpriced fresh fruit and so quickly grabbed a bag of organic, salted popcorn. In retrospect, a salad would have been better, but popcorn elicits nostalgia for me, which contains just as many nutrients.

One of my favourite memories is of a moment during a trip I took to Minneapolis with my parents and Bil, when we were fifteen years old. What the moment lacks in actual activity is more than made up for by atmosphere, though it would be difficult for me to recreate this. But let me try anyway.

The thing I liked best about travelling was the feeling of invisibility that complete anonymity engendered (which contrasted the equally irrational and oppressive sense that everyone was watching me back home) - as though I was a friendly energy passing through shops and restaurants and hotel lounges and dizzying blocks of nothing familiar.

There was no hook upon which to hang judgement and so I accomplished these things easily and without fear of failure. My role was only to filter information, benignly and without purpose, which is something you can do when you’re travelling with people who take care of the details.

Our hotel was both private and ethereal, as once the opaque doors closed, an atrium of clouded glass filtered the dusty afternoon light bluely into the lounge, which was really more of a coliseum of internally balconied second-, third- and fourth-floor rooms with a single glass elevator connecting each.

My memory is of two o’clock, the hour in which a traveller is most comfortably embedded in the day’s intrigue, when it seems as though both time and possibility are at once established and endless. In the delicate lobby near the elevator, situated directly beneath the second floor, were a commercial popcorn maker and hazy sitting area where moored children or friends of sleeping vacationers could convene and rest.

The popcorn was free and the sitting area (chairs pulled to small, round tables) seemed infused by those particular attributes of the city itself, so that spending a few hours there did not seem like a waste of time better spent on the town.

All I can really recall of that moment now (its glittering tail ever decreasing in stardust the further it travels) is the popcorn in its shallow, paper bowl, the diffuse late-afternoon light and a fragment of some song that was either playing at the time or had been a part of my soundtrack that year.

I think about that sometimes, when I’m alone and eating popcorn.

You've already tried that

It’s remarkable what a massive effect sleep has on my ability to cope. Last night I was the last to fall asleep and the first to wake up. Bruce is on holidays and Amy left today. I walked to work feeling somewhat euphoric for having managed to not only get myself out of bed but bathed and combed and fed and out the door.

Things are much less euphoric at the moment. I’m accidentally smiling at strangers – people who work on our floor but have no reason to acknowledge me – who return the gesture by looking straight through me.

I’ve also been getting this sick feeling of humiliation in the pit of my stomach which I used to get when I was a bit younger and felt I had no handle on myself or my environment. I think it might have something to do with catching an unbearable sense of our mortality and how pathetic that really is. All this sitting around and feeling badly and digesting and trying very hard not to let boundaries bleed together or do or say something inappropriate.

Anyway, despite it all, somewhere in the back of my head is the knowledge that these are and have been the happiest days of my life. There’s no reason to get all bent out of shape about life just because you’re overtired. Someone should write a book that contains such obvious lessons. Mine would go something like:

- If you leave things out and don’t put them away, the house will get messy

- The alarm is set to go off at the precise time you need to get out of bed

- Eat that and you’ll regret it

- But he loves you

- They’re not thinking about you – everyone only thinks of themselves

- Remember to floss

So all houseguests have officially come and gone and it’s back to life as usual. Something I’ve realised in the past few months – I don’t miss home anymore. My home is here.

This not why

I’ve only ever written two, maybe three good pieces of writing. I know this because they share an important few things in common:

1. They were written without any conscious or subconscious desire to solicit answers. Implicit in this is the inherent mistrust I had in what I was trying to say. Which leads me to the second most important characteristic of what I consider better writing (on a personal level - you might have a different gauge):

2. I believed every word of it when I read it back to myself. It just rung true.

That’s not to say that every good piece of writing is true. But it’s better to take sure aim at something and not miss than to send your arrow into the neighbour’s open window and then turn to your friend and say, “That was okay, wasn’t it?” (And I still can’t seem to abandon my shitty analogies.)

I don’t know why these two elements so often escape me. I wish I were the sort of person who never put something down until I was sure it was just the thing. But I prefer subjecting raw memory to my own inexpert brilliant cut, even if the quality of light it refracts suggests a poverty in the attempt.

This is something I was thinking about while trying to go back to sleep this morning. I’ve been pretty hung over all day, having walked a fine line between pleasantly buzzed and uncomfortably drunk and then having stumbled merrily on the wrong side of it anyway (bruising a knee). I kissed Jennifer on the cheek, which I never do (kiss Jennifer, that is, but friends in general too), and embarrassed myself doing Justin Timberlake at karaoke.

I walked all day in tall shoes that hurt without a shred of fear or anxiety about my place in things, and things were better for it. Things burn at a constant rate if they’re tended - not so much if you blow them out.

It just gets more and more difficult to report back on these things because I’m running out of words for real experiences that take place somewhere between thought and the physics of activity. Or something like that anyway I don’t know.

I’m in love and I’m wasting time. I’ve wasted enough time, I mean. There are things I want to stop thinking about so much (like ‘why’) and things I want to think more about (like ‘this’). And just. I don’t know. Some of what I’m saying feels true.