It takes courage to enjoy it

At the moment, I am subsisting on a diet of Bjork, sugary cereals and popsicles, which they call ‘ice lollies’ in this country (aw...puke).

It occurred to me as well that waiting for something different to take place before posting again would result in not many posts between now and July. If fighting to see anything beyond the veil of sick is my only option, so be it.

In the spirit of all that, I’ve come up with a *3-Step Plan for those of you who are either i. in the early stages of pregnancy or ii. wanting to lose weight in a fashion that would scare your mother

Step 1 – Diet

If it is bland and/or nutritionally unsound, you should eat it. Examples:

Honey Nut Cheerios
Wheat bites
Toast
Toasted bagels
Cream cheese
Mild cheddar
Doritos

Actually, that’s about it. For flavour, why not try something full of sugar? Such as:

Popsicles (ice lollies)
Strawberry laces (or a single lace, if you can’t manage it in the plural)
Toffee popcorn
Honey Nut Cheerios

Don’t you feel sick now? Good – off to the toilet with you.

Step 2 – Exercise

Don’t do it! Get back into bed, young lady.

Step 3 – Sleep

Get an early night – and why not? There’s nothing to enjoy in the waking world anyway, least of all food. Don’t worry, you’ll wake up feeling sick in approximately four hours anyway, when you can do all your best thinking!

Happy living, hip and healthy friends of the internet!


*For those of you under age 18 and/or lacking in irony, I’m not actually suggesting you do this.

Great(ish) expectations

I’d do almost anything to be invisible right now. Having a banana by one’s keyboard is not a safeguard against conversation during the lunch hour – I would have to keep my face permanently stuffed if I wanted some time to myself (this isn’t a guarantee either, as invariably someone will say, ‘Sorry to interrupt you while you’re having your lunch,’ and then proceed to do so anyway).

The face-stuffing isn’t going terribly well these days, namely because I can’t conceive of eating anything that isn’t toast or cereal or (curiously) Doritos. Can you guess why?

Oh come on, you can. I’m up the duff, good friends of the internet!

We enthusiastically embarked upon this new adventure a few months back and were delighted with the news, interpreted with our little chemistry set over four weeks ago.

Then the fatigue kicked in. And then the morning sickness. The morning sickness is enjoying itself so much, in fact, that it’s decided to make a whole day of it. I spend most of my time feeling as though I’m fighting a vicious hangover, if you want to know the truth.

And food! My beloved chicken and steak dinners, pizza and pasta, fruits and vegetables, coffee and more coffee – all poison, if you asked my nose, stomach or imagination.

So I fight nausea all day long at my desk - eating what I can, whenever I can manage it - crawl into bed at six and fight nausea for the rest of the evening. It is a challenging way to conduct a marriage, let me tell you!

And I don’t really know where I'm at, beyond this. I like to try and stay one step ahead in life, but I fear I’m at the mercy of my physiology for the time being. I will probably be very excited, though, once the nausea wears off and the happy-making hormones kick in.

Until then, please stick around to witness me blunder through this new phase of our lives with none of the charm, wit and humour you’d expect to find on most websites about motherhood.

Some people are born to be mums, but I’ve a feeling I’ll be faking it all the way.

On second thought

Did I say nothing? I could never say no to a meme, or Emmms for that matter.

The rules: Each player answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

1. What was I doing 10 years ago? Gosh, I’ll be 32 next month! Okay, ten years ago. I’d have been in third year university, feeling awfully inferior about English literature – a feeling that was adequately balanced by my growing arrogance over Film Studies. I was drinking too much, throwing a lot of impromptu gatherings for diverse friends, toying with the (perverse) affections of a much older man and living unhappily ever after with my then-boyfriend in a one-bedroom apartment downtown. Or a rented house, I can't recall which now.

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):
i. Write an email to work, telling them that I might not be coming in tomorrow

ii. Prepare a list of questions for my new GP

iii. Eat something, anything

iv. Spend some quality time with my good friend, who is visiting from Canada

v. Call my husband, who’s in Edinburgh for work

3) Snacks I enjoy:
Past tense, at the moment, but: green olives, dried mango, corn chips and salsa, strawberry laces, Fruit Pastilles, baked crisps (salt and vinegar), cookie dough ice cream, gourmet jelly beans, Twigglets…I’m beginning to see why the scale seldom tips in my favour.

4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire: Quit my job, so that I could fill out surveys full time. And I’ve always wanted to take up swimming!

5) Places you have lived: A small city in the middle of nowhere/Canada, a small town in the middle of nowhere/British Columbia, and London.

6) Peeps I want to know more about:
Mrs Slocombe, the Lass, this gal, thebeesknees, dominguez and Politiko. Aw, heck. You're all invited.

I’m in a nothing state of mind

And consequently have nothing much to tell you. Is that okay? I can’t remember the last time I felt compelled to reveal any part of my life to a one-dimensional surface.

Except for that one time, when I prayed to a train window to please please please let me not throw up on this train.

So even though I’ve lost the plot with journaling, I’ve picked it up elsewhere in life, which is infinitely more important to me right now.

Our first year wedding anniversary is this Sunday. I think that means paper, which is fragile, but not nearly as fragile as binary code.

Some of my best friends are musicians

You know that whole adage about ‘If you don’t have anything nice to say, keep your blooming gob shut, &ct’? Yes, well, I’m still here, trying to think of something nice to say.

But honestly, I get around the internet these days and all I can picture is an infinity of monkeys on an infinity of typewriters, except that instead of one of them producing Shakespeare, virtually all of them are patting themselves on the back for escaping the circus, and for being able to tell the difference between a typewriter and a banana in the first place.

But if a monkey types in a forest and nobody is around to read what it’s written, has the monkey actually written anything? And! Is there even a monkey?

You know? So it’s a dilemma.

Then I was watching a BBC programme about these young kids who are passionate about their oboes or whatever, and it finally dawned on me that even though they will have to calibrate their personalities until they’ve attained the right mixture of awkwardness to parts arrogance, they don’t need someone to witness them alone in their concrete rooms playing the same bridge over and over and over again until they get it right. And do you know why?

(Here’s where the ‘nice’ comes in, I promise.)

Because they are only practicing. It’s what they are practicing for that sets them apart from everyone else on earth who owns an instrument that is gathering dust in a prominent corner of their living room.

One pod person music teacher pointed out that it’s a tough job finding talent, dedication and intelligence in the same place. What he didn’t elaborate on - since musicians sometimes have trouble seeing beyond the glare of their own genius - is that you can apply this formula to any success known to monkeys man humankind – it just makes sense.

So here I am - horribly out of practice and yet determined not to run for the safety of my television set until I’ve spent some quality time with my word processor. It’s not a concrete room, as you can plainly see – not yet. But just wait until I close the door.

It’s going to happen one of these days. I’m telling you. Monkey to monkey.

Enthusiastic film reviews, for the time constrained

In Bruges
Excellent!

Son of Rambo(w)
Crap!

Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Brand! Bad!

Happy-Go-Lucky
I want those hours back, Mr Leigh!

Battle Royal
Chilling!

The Nines
Weird!

Anna M
Uh…!

The Orphanage
Terrifying! I might even see it!

The Other Boleyn Girl
Heavy handed, poorly scripted!

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Sexy, cool and sad! And kind of self-important!

Be Kind Rewind
No star for you!

One for the bin

What a . . . um . . . trying time, to accomplish anything, aside from work and dinner and sleep. And I’m beginning to wonder if people here don’t pack overnight bags, because. Well, just look at them all. They are here when I leave, here when I get in, at their desks over lunch, like me, except working.

Because my creative brain has become flaccid like a, erm, pencil that has gone flaccid – yeah, like one of those rubbery pencils you get in a magician’s kit or maybe as a joke, where you shake it all around and it goes wobble wobble wobble. But doesn’t write particularly well?

Yes, so because of that, my thoughts often work from the outside in now, i.e. environment; me versus my environment; environment vis a vis the future; spiralling down towards tedious introspection, &ct. All of this takes longer than what I've got, currrently. When really, all I want to do is say something that isn’t about me.

I could have said something about Arnold Schwarzenegger in the starring role of Junior, but I sort of missed the boat on that one. The contest boat, with its skull-and-crossbones sail and broken oars and . . . ah forget it.

By Friday life has killed me

All I’m trying to do is find a song with enough noise to drown out the eating sounds of my ex-line manager and maybe get five minutes to myself without having to build a moat around my desk.

Loads of things seem to be happening all at once, but then I take stock and realise that I’m just letting it all pile up in my head. Some things have already happened and some aren’t set to take place until the future, where we’ll all wear government-issued pollution suits and say things like “Let me put that into the *CPPT generator and see what it says.” I do seem to be solidly booked until 2230, if indeed I make it that far (Aubrey de Grey says I stand a pretty good chance, so.)

Today I was welcomed into the editorial team, which means that I now have access to all the people who will make my job less of a nightmare, and that my workload is about to go from unmanageable to out-of-control. Somehow this doesn’t faze me, likely because of a delayed reaction that will probably kick in once I finally realise that I am married and living in London.

Conscious Friday wrestles subconscious Friday to the ground and clubs her over the head with an empty beer bottle, which she didn’t drink, because she doesn’t drink anymore**

It seems my job has taken the top priority spot without my consent, sitting well below Bruce but somewhere above reality television and voiding my bladder. Would that I were paid enough to turn seemingly innocuous weekend behaviour into an idea for a homepage, or dream that the heads of digital were trying to accompany me to the bathroom, but you can’t put a price tag on work-related neurosis, and I feel like they are setting me up to either succeed beyond my wildest dreams or go up in a blaze of failure.

When all I wanted was a cushy job that would give me plenty of time to surf the internet and stare out the window.

How do these things happen?

*Cryoprotaphototransmutability – it doesn’t exist yet, but feel free to run with the idea, I won’t stop you. Or maybe I already have!

**Barring last night, but I was at a Q&A for a new Mike Leigh film and it seemed appropriate somehow. I’m sure the raving alcoholic they kicked out of the theatre mid-screening can back me up on that one.***

***Bruce knows that I would never talk about myself in the third person like that.

Mistaken identity

If you thought you saw me on the South Bank in my makeshift Metro rain hat, Joanna Newsome ringing in my ears, I assure you it was a complete accident – an unfortunate collision of coincidences beyond my control.

People like me have no use for lunch hours, which I’m using precious time to convey.

People like me are hiding their adolescence-issued uniform beneath so many layers, it almost looks like dedication. You'd almost swear you knew me.

NOT SO CHATTY NOW, ARE WE?

Hmmm? No, we are not.

x365: 22 of 365 - Pants

You were the only one who didn’t pull away from me when I got sick; I’ll always be grateful to you for that. You’re probably still better than me at paraphrasing.

Life-like, animated

The cat is back from her operation. ‘Being fixed’ they call it, because the cat returns minus the fortnightly caterwauling that once signified a frantic, reproductive need – problem solved.

Except that now she crouches tightly, sorely, her neck gingerly extended inside the Elizabethan collar, and what tiny spirit that once encouraged her to venture bravely forth from under the bed to watch birds and eat dry kibble did not wake with her from that chemical sleep.

She has me pegged correctly now; I’m the person that sometimes comes at her with hands that deliver her into the most frightening situations unimaginable. Here kitty kitty with a gentle, calling voice – what a hypocrite.

So I’ve been moving tenderly, uncertainly around the flat like it’s me who’s had the operation, because that’s what I do: I over-empathise with others. I’m particularly bad at it too, because I’m often left to guess at what it is I’ve found empathy with.

The more out-of-touch and unfeeling the object, the harder I’ll try – I’d cradle the cold, inflexible limbs of pointy-toed dolls in my youth, imagining that they felt the chill of night without their clothes, which I would have lost. Imagining my caring could make any difference to their suffering. That all you need is love.

If just one of them had ever returned that concern, I would've screamed my head off.

Somehow I’d overcomplicated leaving the house today, tasking myself with the impossible purchase of a specific bar of soap – soap that I’d used only once in a hotel in Brussels, and which has become practically extinct. Thankfully I caught on to this self-sabotage and forced myself to take a walk to Sainsbury’s, to buy normal soap along with some much-needed items (bread, coffee, toilet paper).

I wouldn’t say I was heartened, but I was surprised as usual to see so many people - people who want nothing more to do with the impassive faces they encounter in grocery stores and on the streets and in their lives than I do. And decaffeinated coffee was one whole pound more than regular.

The service industry in Great Britain is unfriendly and inefficient - even in Muswell Hill. At least the Germans have efficiency. Don’t they?

I can't get no posting action

Ah the sordid French films you can talk someone into watching, if that someone misinterprets the definition of ‘titular.’ Walk, don’t run (you might trip over the oftentimes prone figure of its titular character), to your nearest torrents site for an illegal copy of Anna M. And then decide to do something else with those two hours instead.

I’ve been too scared to take a proper lunch hour for as long as it’s been since I last posted here (I think skinny jeans were still in fashion) but resentment trumps fear today, so here I am, with virtually nothing to report.

Our love for the new flat grows by the day, no surprises there. A friend of ours reported a Noel Fielding sighting at our local Sainsbury’s; another invited us to come round to play Scrabble with a rock star that lives in the neighbourhood. Both of which leave me feeling a bit ‘huh’ but not terribly ‘wow’ if you know what I mean. Do you know what I mean? Good, because I don’t have the time to explain where I’m at with celebrity.

The neighbourhood is full of grand old mansions once bought by individuals who could afford a mortgage but not the furnishings necessary to live in all parts of their home. Our flat occupies a small part of one such home, and though it isn’t very big, it’s no smaller than our last flat, and it’s well furnished. Mostly we sit around slack-jawed and congratulating ourselves on a good find (and pondering a gigantic poster of Peter Greenaway’s Drowning by Numbers, which isn’t the most soothing of imagery to have situated near the bed, I admit).

I was supposed to accompany Bruce on a work trip to Norway this coming weekend, but that fell through, so instead I am taking the opportunity to get some real writing done. I want to finish (start, really) a film paper that only needs to beat out two others in order to win a cash prize, for instance. Obviously I’m reserving the right to not tell you what the contest consists of, or how to enter.

And there are many other things I’d like to do to become better acquainted with my new area. Spaying a cat is not one of them, but I’m pushing that to the top of my list after the ridiculous night of sleep we just had. Great, and because I’ve been working steadily around the fringes of writing this post, my lunch hour is once again gonzo.

Tippy tip tap

I would rather write one amazing post per month than a half-assed entry per day. But I don’t do that either, so.

Let’s see, where were we? Oh right. Last we spoke, I was on the brink of moving into our new flat, whilst becoming increasingly busy at work and trying to keep up with the merriment of some rather energetic out-of-towners, all of which culminated in a nasty flu that took the fun out of transition, leaving in its wake a sticky trail of pure, unadulterated s t r e s s.

My poor, dear love had to pack everything up for us while I coughed and snotted among what was left of our depleting home comforts. By the time I felt even a wee bit better, it was time for the final act of moving: The Feral Cat Corral

That was probably the most stressful bit, as it involved trapping them in a small space and then watching them fly up the bare walls in a desperate attempt to escape us. I suppose they thought we would kill them, I don’t know – I’ve never had anyone come at me with a pair of oven mitts and a towel. I’m sure it’s harrowing, especially when you’re the size of a bread box.

It took quite a few attempts before both cats were in the box, but we managed in the end! And then it was loading, driving across town, unloading and unpacking, which we accomplished in less than two days (unpacking took the most time, obviously).

And now we have the most amazing flat in London! If there’s a better one, you won’t find two happier people occupying it, and that’s a certainty.

You also won’t find a busier editor of on-the-web-line material, which is why this post is short, shabby and over far too soon for my liking.

Skinny is the New Skinny

In the news today: Star’s Weight Loss Confession

What, she stopped eating? Took pills? Stopped eating AND took pills? That’s not news, msn! Get off your collective backsides and do some real work. Good God, how hard could it be to work for that faction?

Heath Ledger Death Perturbs 15-Year-Old Girls – Brokeback Mountain Sequel Postponed

Lily Allen Does Nothing of Interest but We Love Her Anyway

Winehouse Outbursts Becoming Predictable?

Mainstream Deigns to Notice Bat for Lashes – Not Too Weird for Hyde Park

It’s Friday, which means one more night on the booze before my houseguests return to Canada and I return to a comfortable diet of veggie dogs and reality television. We’re seeing two Harold Pinter plays and then we’re off to a friend’s for a post-Easter egg hunt. If I put that in writing, we stand every chance of going, too! (This friend and I have polar-opposite schedules it seems, or possess the same amount of apathy about leaving our little nests, but I hold out hope.)

And then it’s packing until our limbs atrophy and fall off, because on Tuesday we move to the new flat! I can’t wait to see what my garden looks like, so that I can begin the process of digging it all up and killing what I can’t. And that, my friends, is what makes a good gardener, at least in my experience. (Help!) I’m thinking that unless I make friends with Jamie Oliver, I’m going to be stuck tending forest-patterned wallpaper, or maybe a plastic fern…

I’m only here because I want to be left alone on my lunch hour. I don’t actually have anything to say. You? Naw, didn’t think so.

Enuff! Or why I ate Easter dinner from a vending machine

The girls have gone out for the evening and we are taking a break from heckling the television packing, so here I am, at the computer. And there is Bruce, shooting zombies on his new game console. The one he purchased after it was determined that we were broke - maybe because somebody had to go and buy a new dress at Orla Kiely. (Okay, that wasn’t Bruce.)

I thought I’d take this opportunity to tell you that whilst Brussels smells like pee in places and sometimes throws up oversized Tin-Tin characters where you’d least expect them (so, anywhere), it does have its merits, and so much of it was stunning.

Firstly there was our host, Lisa. Lisa is like the girl of your dreams and the best friend you wish you’d had, all rolled into one. On the subway, after she bested the lecherous advances of a cocky seventeen-year-old with bad skin in French, she pointed out a station that always made her out-of-town friends laugh. Indeed, it gave me pause, and I thought I was being a bit juvenile for thinking it, but what’s the fun in living if we can’t scoff at a place called Kunst – Wet?

Hmmm?

Possessing a hybrid accent and the comprehension of four or five languages, Lisa translates or interprets for NATO, I forget which, but either way – wow. When we told her about automatic car starters, which allow you to start your ignition from the warmth of your house, she looked momentarily stunned, and then said, “That would save your life if someone planted a bomb.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that stuff like bombs planted in cars only happens in the movies or on television, at least where I come from. Snow on the other hand! That’s some pretty life-threatening stuff.

She took us on a walking tour of the city: a tour that was frequented with stops in some utterly charming pub or restaurant, where we’d buy rounds of beer and devour plates of delicious food (punctuated by espressos). The streets were free of high-season shoppers so we roamed languidly from one district to the next, all night long, watching others and being watched, as it’s not very rude to stare in Belgium. I think all in all, we probably sat in five pubs and three restaurants, ate three meals and drank over ten glasses of beer that night. I put myself in a taxi at eleven and the others carried on until four or five (there simply isn’t a last call in Brussels).

Sunday could have been a write-off, but it was by far my favourite day there. We met up that morning and headed over to an Arabian market for breakfast, where a massive queue forms at a particular cart selling pancakes filled with goat’s cheese and honey or grilled vegetables (or all three!), and steaming glass cups of sweet tea made with fresh mint. We puffed on our pancakes at outdoor tables, listening to the desperate calls of the men trying to sell their fruit before things closed: Deux!Deux!Deux!Deux!

Then we wandered through the antique district, where you can buy furniture, dishware and toys for a pittance (if you can get them home), and the old town, which feels vaguely like the best parts of Paris, Krakow and Rothenberg, deftly stitched together. We paused to read hand-written letters pinned to clotheslines that somebody had strung through one of the squares. A voice behind me said, “Pardon, Madame,” which was my cue to keep walking, but somehow he got my attention. “Three minutes of your time, to list all the places you’ve slept.” “Does it cost anything?” I said, and he laughed. “No, this is for a festival.”

He showed me to a table where strangers sat elbow-to-elbow, scrawling messages amongst sheaves of loose paper and mismatched pens. It took more like five minutes, and I can’t remember what I wrote, but the experience of being tasked with something so random and simple, and then carrying that out in the quiet and warmth of that square reminded me of the better parts of childhood.

I pinned up my list of places I’d slept and did a little dance in front of it until the girls stopped trying to read, and we moved on. It rained a little later, making soup of all those words I bet. We visited too many chocolateres to count, and cooled our aching heads with fresh air and cups of hot Godiva exlixer.

That night I declined meeting them for dinner; I had to be up early to catch my train home. I figured I’d have a nap and then get dressed and go down to the hotel restaurant for a quiet meal alone.

I figured wrong! The hotel restaurant was closed for Easter Sunday, and instead a group of Spanish tourists swarmed the lobby in a shouting mass of confusion. I bought a bag of crisps, a packet of fuzzy peaches and a can of Carling from the vending machine and headed back up to the room to watch a programme on BBC, read the new Hanif Kareshi and basically feel sorry for myself.

The girls came back from dinner to see if I wanted to get a waffle, but it was late and I’d seen and done more than enough for one weekend.

The next morning I got out of bed shortly before the wake-up call that never came, showered, dressed and headed to the subway. I wandered around the crappy train station looking at bad installation art (stuff made from coloured construction tape?!) and then went through Eurostar security. By the time I reached France, it was snowing weevil-sized flakes of snow and I was looking forward to seeing Bruce, and sleeping in my own bed.

Brussels: A Great Place, If You Don't Have to Go

I made a last-minute decision to go to Brussels with my Canadian visitors, and although Brussels has many merits (some of which I couldn’t shut up about), I think in retrospect I do prefer London.

Their international train station alone would put you off the city forever, just as an example. For design and efficiency, I give it an F, for: Fuck! Where Are the Fucking Toilets?!

Signs are usually pretty easy to follow because they rely on symbols rather than language to direct you. This is why they are called signs, and not instructions. If the train station in Brussels had come with a set of instructions, I would not have had to wander in painful circles for the better part of an hour, though, because their signage sucks monkey balls.

Getting off the train, you can either go left (into a maze of shops, cafes and more signs) or right (into a maze of signs and escalators to platforms). My instincts told me to go right, so right I went. Right past the only toilet I was able to find after a harrowing hour with a plaintive bladder, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

Information signs only lead to maps that serve to tell you what you already know: You Are ‘Here,’ hopelessly lost in the most poorly-designed train station on Planet Earth, where somewhere is hidden a toilet. Happy hunting! Flemish backpackers and Dutch families aimlessly covered the same square meter, and although I couldn’t make out what they were saying to each other, I’m pretty sure it was along the lines of what I was saying to Jesus Christ, who I haven’t welcomed into my heart, but who usually gets the brunt of my abuse when things start to go terribly wrong.

Here was the dilemma: the only sign I could find that included the male/female toilet symbol was posted next to an arrow and the platform numbers 3 and 4.

Those doors, on either side of that set of escalators: were those the toilets? No, they’re locked, and the escalators go to platforms 5 and 6.

So back to the sign I went, thereafter following the invisible sightline of its arrow, which eventually landed me at a lift. Above the lift were the male/female symbols, an upward-pointing arrow accompanying the male symbol and a downward-pointing arrow accompanying the female symbol. Finally, some progress!

Except that the lift only had one button – an arrow pointing up.

In desperation, I got onto the lift anyway, which took me to the platforms above the station. I walked for a very long time in silence until I came to the next toilet sign. It was located above a different lift. Men’s toilets: downward arrow – women’s toilets: upward arrow. The only button for the lift pointed down this time. I pushed the button, got into the lift, and went down. The doors opened and I found myself back on ground-level, in front of the same lift I’d gotten into earlier.

Feeling utterly dismayed, I retraced my steps to where I exited the Eurostar and went left this time. I walked for what seemed like a very long time, deep inside the maze of shops, until I found the international sign for Toilets, and an arrow. I lost track of the sign for a while, beginning instead to take note of all the puddles that dotted the station floor - puddles that might have resembled spilled drinks in a perfect world, a world where toilets were not obscured by riddles like some nightmarish, toiletless Wonderland – when finally I caught up with it again near the arrivals lounge.

Ten minutes later, I was back at the first lift, facing the same dilemma. Female toilet: down. Button to the lift: up. There wasn’t even a stairwell to retreat to - just more lifts that took you up and ever away from the elusive basement-level toilets.

Finally I braved a café that looked, for all the world, like it would never have a toilet. At the top of a set of stairs, I caught sight of a door emblazoned with a loafer. Against all hope, I bought a bottle of Evian and said to the girl, “Est-ce-que vous avez un salle de bain?” to which she replied, “Toilettes? Oui, la bas” and pointed at the set of stairs.

And after practically flattening myself between the pink-slipper-emblazoned door and the stall of that very small toilet, I asked the Lord Jesus Christ to please wait outside for me, or find his own damn stall.

Chocolates are not the only fruit

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
The moment between wanting something very badly and then getting that something.

What is your greatest fear?
That everything I do is futile because for every me there are a few hundred thousand (million?) others and we’re all going to die one day.

What is your most marked characteristic?
My morbidity?

What is the trait you deplore most in yourself?
My reactionary nature – it’s forever getting me into trouble and it makes me seem unstable.

What living person do you most despise?
This girl at work who looks a bit piggy and is very smug and unfriendly for reasons I’ve yet to discern (maybe she won a blue ribbon for scratching her own name in the dirt).

What is your greatest extravagance?
On a semi-regular basis, it’s Orla Kiely. Her dresses are too expensive for the likes of me but I can’t seem to care.

What is your current state of mind?
A bit out of sorts – I’ve spent the last three days in Brussels and now have to think about moving flats, all the while trying to be a good host for my Canadian houseguests. My routine is completely mangled.

What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
Beauty.

On what occasion do you lie?
At work (no problem, I can/know how to do that).

What do you dislike most about your appearance?
That it’s mutable and completely unreliable.

What is the quality you most like in a man?
Loyalty.

What is the quality you most like in a woman?
Humility.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
Sorry.

What or who is the greatest love of your life?
Bruce.

What and where were you happiest?
Pick most times between today and nearly two years ago and you’ll have your answer.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would that be?
I would be less anxious.

Which talent would you most like to have?
I’d like to play a musical instrument very well.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Escaping the trappings of small-town histrionics; stepping out of a psychopathic ego and into the real world.

If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?
That’s a silly question.

Where would you like to live?
Muswell Hill, but we’re incapable of packing.

What is your most treasured possession?
Don’t really have one.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Childhood.

What is your favorite occupation?
I met a girl who translates for NATO. She has a work-issued gas mask in her desk drawer and a sign on her door that reads: No bombs No bombs No bombs. That seems pretty cool.

Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
Troilus, because he was such a dufus!

What are your favorite names?
Beryl, Astrid, Greta, Max (they sound like names belonging to people who’d want nothing to do with me)

What is it that you most dislike?
The sounds made by people who eat indelicately.

How would you like to die?
Quickly.

What is your motto?
If it feels bad, don’t do it (too often).

Rip it up and paste it back together

After I was told off by a superior and then invited to a meeting at fire o’clock (that’s 16:00, for those of you in cushy, government-funded roles), I was already digging a shallow grave for my short-lived media career. As it turns out, they only wanted my input on something, so. Thanks to corporate schizophrenia for keeping a gal on her toes.

All of these things that I’ve been excited about are finally coming to fruition - all at once - which has turned me into a shivering, cuticle-biting ball of flu-medicated anxiety rather than the party monster metamorphosis I was going for. This means I’ve been drinking a glass of wine at dinner, passing out before nine and begging forgiveness of my Canadian houseguests for being such a crap host.

So far, I’ve discovered that The Mighty Boosh does not interface well with jetlag, and that not everyone finds the Old Kent Road Tesco experience to be a harrowing one. Also, if you mention the word ‘porn’ in an email, the IT team monitors your stuff for some time after. Go figure.

Finally, RIP Anthony Minghella and Arthur C Clarke. Bruce says these things come in threes, so I’m designing a foil-covered crash helmet and Nerf kit for Mr. Greenaway, provided I can persuade him to, you know. Put them on please?

My line manager is looking at me in the manner of one who expects you to respond immediately to their emails over your lunch hour. And I’m looking dead on at my screen, in the manner of one who says You can go to hell and die, that’s what you can do. And it’s turning out brilliantly!

Bon voyage

The word on everyone’s lips these days: Spring. I don’t think that season exists here though. Spring is when the temperature begins to rise above zero, and then frozen things melt. We don’t normally have temperatures below freezing, hence nothing to melt. Once it gets warmer, things will turn greener, I guess. But carry on with your Spring fever, I don’t mind! It does a body good to be in such close proximity to seasonally-derived exhilaration.

This week has felt like one big long nightmare: the kind you can’t wake up from, because it’s where you work. I’ve gone from holy prodigy to impure infidel in the space of a month. This is precisely why I’m against status; the good townspeople need an idol they can decorate in sin and then tear to shreds. It’s called civilization, and it’s why we go around feeling smug in our ugly plastic Crocs (well, not me, but).

Regardless, I’m glad I got it over with early, because now I can settle into a comfortable state of peevish reluctance to do anything, at least until I quit or get fired.

I should really spend my lunch hour away from my desk from now on, because invariably someone will remember me and then start a little notice-me!-dance in my peripheral vision on the off-chance I might engage them in an impromptu meeting, I guess because they have nothing better to do on their lunch hour. Go away, sad colleagues!

ON the plus side, we have a nice weekend planned around bowling, a modest gathering and another houseguest from Canada (two, actually), which will take us to nearly April, when we move into our new flat. Then it’s Norway, another visitor and ATP. It’s time to start focusing on the parts of my life I’m actually bothered about and let the rest drift back out to sea.

From meme to youyou

Thanks, Lass.

1. Who was your first prom date?

I like where you’re going with that. But I didn’t go to prom. I think we called it after-grad, and I would have taken my then-boyfriend Tim, who I fell out with almost immediately, for punching him jokingly (though not) in the stomach before we got onto the secret bus that took us to the secret bar that was secretly rented out for us to secretly die of boredom inside of. All night long, baby.

2. Do you still talk to your first love?

No.

3. What was your first alcoholic drink?

White Rum, and I only drank it to tell a boy what I really thought of him (turns out it’s still considered mean if you say it when you’re really drunk).

4. What was your first job?

A kiosk that sold grilled Japanese food, in a food court, in a mall. I sliced frozen chicken breasts all morning and rang up orders during the lunch rush. Sometimes I stirred the chicken on the grill.

5. What was your first car?

Technically, it was my sister’s hand-me-down Cougar, but I think she was just using me for my parking space, as I didn’t have a license and had no intention of ever driving it. She sold it on me a year later.

6. Who was the first person to text you today?

I like where you’re going with this too. It was my husband. In fact, he was the only person to text me today.

7. Who is the first person you thought of this morning?

Other than my growing awareness of self? Bruce.

8. Who was your first grade teacher?

Madame Chauldice, I think. I don’t remember a thing about her though.

9. Where did you go on your first ride on an airplane?

My dad flew us to Swift Current, though we didn’t land - we just circled the grain elevator and flew back again.

10. Who was your first best friend, and are you still friends with him/her?

That would be Chad, and no, we haven’t been friends since we were 11, when the sad truth about our differing genders occurred to one or both of us.

11. What was your first sport played?

I’m still waiting to do that.

12. Where was your first sleepover?

My childhood was one long sleepover. My sister’s maybe?

13. Who was the first person you talked to today?

Bruce.

14. Whose wedding were you in the first time?

My sister’s. Is this an invitation to reminisce or something? Um, okay. I wore a horrible itchy white dress and was pursued by an overly friendly stranger whose attention scared me so badly that I ended up hiding in the toilet for most of the reception.

15. What was the first thing you did this morning?

Asked Bruce what time it was because it looked much lighter than seven.

16. What was the first concert you ever went to?

It was something at the Black Market, which was basically a stage in a basement beneath a Greek restaurant downtown. It had a makeshift bar but you needed a bracelet to drink. I think it was Funk ‘n Stein, actually.

17. What was your first tattoo or piercing?

I like where you’re going with this. It was MY EARS. The end.

18. What was the first foreign country you went to?

The United States of McDonalds. I guess that’s not strictly foreign since we shared a continent, regardless. Otherwise, it was Holland.

19. What was your first run-in with the law?

I was in a car with my friend and two boys we knew, driving aimlessly when suddenly the police pulled us over. We thought it was because we were high, but actually, there’d been a robbery in the neighborhood and the suspects fit our description (four kids in a white vehicle). The story grows less interesting each time I tell it though, so I’ll skip the details

20. When was your first detention?

I brought a flare gun to school, which accidentally went off in my locker and caused like this minor…oh wait, no. That was The Breakfast Club.

21. What was the first state you lived in?

I like where you’re going with this. But fuck off.

22. Who was the first person to break your heart?

James. He left me for his best friend, who was boring to look at, but romantically tragic because she had an abusive boyfriend and yet never stopped smiling.

23. Who was your first roommate?

My then-boyfriend Aidan and my friend Shauna.

24. Where did you go on your first limo ride?

I’ve never been in a limo, strangely. I had the opportunity to ride in one when I was an in-patient but I was out on a day pass that afternoon. That is what they do with the mentally ill in Canada – they pile them into a limo and send them to a neighboring town for ice cream.

Death and natural imagery make for bad dreams (and posts)

Blahdiwhat you say? I don’t know. Sorry about that.

I have no time for this space anymore. I only have so many stones with which to anchor the unruly tarpaulin of my existence and this stone just isn’t big enough I’m afraid. That’s probably the craziest thing I’ve ever said though, so let’s let that particular bygone be gone immediately and move swiftly ahead to something equally esoteric but possibly less annoying.

Watch Your Step

I’ve formed this habit of waking up about twenty minutes after I’ve fallen asleep with one thought in my head: O. M. G! I am going to die one day!

I mean, duh. But for some reason, that certainty is only a revelation when it occurs in the terrifying lucidity of half-sleep, and my subconscious will play it out in many different ways until my conscious mind goes OKAY, I GET IT: ‘I AM GOING TO DIE ONE DAY.’ CAN I PLEASE GO BACK TO SLEEP NOW?

But no, I have an image of little antelopes being driven off a sheer, planetary cliff-face by a relentless conveyor belt of death. And THAT’S not a very relaxing idea, so.

So so so, I’m already behind on this day. And it is raining so much rain that London looks like one big aquarium of miserable fish. Back to the drawing board.

The End

(But for how long?)

Inconclusive

The past, be it near or far, isn’t the relative distance between an event experienced and our perception of that experience. It’s just as present in our lives as a book in the other room. The only difference between the past and a book in the other room is that the past remains inaccessible, behind a curtain; or petrified, like stone.

Distance is more like the past than the past is – real distance, or that which takes place elsewhere concurrently, is more inaccessible than the past, because one must rely on imagination (rather than memory) to transport us there. To instantly find oneself anywhere other than where one could reasonably be found in a matter of moments (say one thousand miles away) and hear its sounds, however mundane (children calling to each other outdoors; a dog barking; a refrigerator chugging to a halt), would be to experience the divine.

The divine isn’t another country where drifters aspire to travel one day; the divine is only that which exists on the opposite side of possibility.

It's official

This morning I woke up a few minutes before the alarm we didn’t set, got into the bath, put on my clothes, crawled back into bed, buried my face in Bruce’s chest and told him I couldn’t do it today. I say that on a semi-regular basis, but there must have been something in it this time, because Bruce told me to take the day off.

So after emailing work, I spent the morning and afternoon doing exactly what I felt like doing, which was a big fat nothing. I feel so much better for it, like I could take on the world tomorrow (which they’re sort of expecting from me) and not spend my whole weekend hiding under the bed with the cats. There is nothing like an impromptu day off.

Bruce called me from Trafalgar square to say that our estate agent called to say that our reference checks went through and our flat is ready to move into April first. That is a massive relief. I’m so excited I could jump up and down. But I’m reserving my energy for tomorrow.

x365: 21 of 365 - Chris K

We laughed at you, Tex and me. I’m glad you’re a fuck-up, and that your ex-girlfriend married a scientologist. Go pass out on a Salisbury steak, you waste of screen time.

In no particular order

A list of books we're giving away on freecycle

Allen Carr – Packing it in the Easy Way
Various - Philosophy, Society and Politics
Jake Arnott – True Crime
Ali Smith – The Accidental
Willy Russell – The Wrong Boy
Philip Kapleau – The Wheel of Life and Death
Descartes – Philosophical Writings
Descartes – Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy
Hume – An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Hugo in 3 Months – Portuguese
C.G.Jung – The Undiscovered Self
Leibniz – Philosophical Writings
Stuart Hampshire – Spinoza
Bertrand Russell – The Problems of Philosophy
A.J. Ayer – The Central Questions of Philosophy
Various - What Philosophy Does
Chambers Dictionary of Beliefs and Religions
Russell Miller – The House of Getty
Jonathan Franzen – The Corrections
Anthony O’Hear – What Philosophy is
John King – Headhunters
Kate Christensen – In the Drink
Various - A Dictionary of Philosophy
The Photo Book
Davies – An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion
Howard Sounes – Fred & Rose
Perry Groves - We All Live in a Perry Groves World
Shawn Levy – Ratpack Confidential
Alex Garland – The Beach (first edition)
Godfrey Vesey – Philosophy in the Open
Caroline Sullivan – Bye Bye Baby
Iaian Banks – Dead Air
Paulo Coelho – The Alchemist
Nick Hornby – How to Be Good
Jason Burke – Al Qaeda
Peter Carey – True History of The Kelly Gang
Joan Didion – The Year of Magical Thinking
Elizabeth Wurtzel – Prozac Nation
Naomi Klein – Fences and Windows
Nick Hornby – About a Boy
Haruki Murakami – Sputnik Sweetheart
Irvine Welsh – Ecstasy
Christopher Isherwood – Goodbye to Berlin
Patricia Duncker – Hallucinating Foucault
John Irving – A Prayer for Owen Meaney
Nick McDonell – Twelve
Jeanette Winterson – Written on the Body
Craig W. Thomas – Losing My Religion
Jeanette Winterson – The Power Book
Calvin Pinchin – Issues in Philosophy
A.L.Kennedy – Now that you’re back
Alex Garland – The Beach
Reg Thompson – Dear Charlie: Letters to a Lost Daughter
Inazo Nitobe – Bushido: The Soul of Japan
Chuck Palahniuk – Diary
Manners for Men
Paul Theroux – Sir Vidia’s Shadow
Primo Levi – The Periodic Table
George Orwell – Homage to Catatonia
James Joyce – A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce – Dubliners
Georges Bataille – Story of the Eye
Bizarro Postcards
Robertson Davies – Fifth Business
Roger-Pol Droit – 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life
Junot Diaz – Drown
Peter Carey – Bliss
Kathy Acker – Bodies of Work
Arundhati Roy – The God of Small Things
Evelyn Waugh – Black Mischief
Rudyard Kipling – Just So Stories
Alan Paton – Cry, The Beloved Country
Iaian Pears – An Instance of the Fingerpost
Iain Banks – Complicity
A.L. Kennedy – Now that you’re back
Sight and Sound Magazine (7 issues)

In a future world

Gosh, I am writing myself into oblivion. It’s true. The more I write online, the less of me I see there. I don’t mean me as in the me you see when we read quietly on trains, glancing up to watch the countryside whip past us. But me as in: the words and ideas are all outgrowing the simplicity of what I have. And they aren’t even growing like some beautiful plant; they just spread flat, gleaming dully, like laminate.

I wish I could write somewhere, anywhere, else. All these trillions of words in their galaxy of binary code and screen pixels block out the true, lost faces of stars. Just look into them and imagine that I’m there among them somehow.

All's well that ends in Muswell

Yesterday we traveled to Muswell Hill to pay the remainder of our deposit, and because I wanted to see the place we’re moving to in less than a month. When we saw it being advertised, we felt it was better for Bruce to go and see it immediately (my job’s pretty inflexible) than risk losing it to somebody else. A few days later, he was so unsure of his decision that I was beginning to worry that we'd be living in a very posh broom closet.

The current tenants - a couple maybe five years older than us – were still home when we showed up, but they put to rest any doubts he might have had as they described the hydrangeas, lavender and honeysuckles that would begin to bloom in spring, extolled the virtues of the area and expressed their contentment with the flat overall. The only reason they’re leaving is because they can’t afford to actually buy property there. And who could? A flat like ours would cost a quarter of a million pounds (we looked it up).

The flat is smaller than the one we live in currently, but it’s chock-full of character and is nested in a grandiose house on a very pretty street. We had a walk around the commercial district, situated within a five minute walk from our front door, and were blown away by what we saw – specialty food and clothing shops, dozens of different types of restaurants, cafes, charity shops, pubs, book stores (one just for children), patisseries, three banks (one of them ours), a pet shop, two hairdressers, two cathedrals, two upper-crust grocers and a small first-run cinema. And that was only one arm (there are three, maybe four roads radiating from its center).

The youth there do not walk on their toes, their necks craning to see who or what might be stalking them from the shadows; instead, blushing young boys carried bouquets of flowers for their mothers (it’s Mother’s Day today), young couples strolled with prams and without, and every single person had an expression approximating ecstasy, though possibly I was projecting.

It all reminds me of the area I lived in before I left home, except vaster and more quaint, resembling certain parts of Vancouver as well (call it the hills and the chilled-out Starbucks-goers). There are even a few unexpected delights: a pub inside a converted stone cathedral and a breathtaking view from one of the spokes off Muswell Hill Broadway.

We had an early dinner at La Porchetta (situated minutes from where we’ll be living) and saw something we’d never seen before: diners jumped out of their seats as orchestral-sized music was suddenly piped from the speakers. Around the corner came four staff members - one playing a trumpet, one hiding a candlelit bowl of ice cream behind a menu and one singing happy birthday to a ten-year-old girl with black hair. The forth man twirled a massive disc of thin pizza dough, which he dropped resolutely on the girl’s head, where it fainted, sticking to her face, hair and neck.

And I revised my plans for Bruce’s thirty-seventh birthday.

Overall, it was a very good decision, and I owe Bruce my eternal happiness yet again. As do his family – they are now no more than a 45 minute drive away, which means we can see them more often. They didn’t really believe us when we said our visits would technically be longer if we moved to Canada, and I guess we didn’t really believe it either. They’re good people, and I’m happy for the chance to get to know them even better.

Speaking of family, I should really call my parents. They’re moving to a different apartment at the end of the month too, and probably still feeling a bit sad about our decision to stay here. Ironically, though, my family never feels closer than when we are furthest from one another.

Chuffed, as we say

Well, I survived the event and even felt a wee bit hot (I’ll reserve the two-tees-in-hot-blogger-special for another day) if I do say so myself (I just did!).

Today everyone is feeling a bit less than ritzy though, and I’ve a lot of work to keep on top of and grumpy faces to keep from shouting at me.

Nonetheless, I wanted to post some photos so that my mother* can see what our new flat looks like. We found exactly what we were looking for, in the very posh Muswell Hill area, and will be moving to our new digs on 1 April.

Check it out:


Front!


Back!


Inside!

The living room comes with more furnishings than depicted, with a gigantic bed and wall of wardrobes in the bedroom, so now we can save up for dream furniture at our leisure, rather than splash out on top of a terrifying deposit.

And that garden back there? That’s not shared! Meaning we can have nude garden parties! How about it, Shhh?

So it’s goodbye troubled Bermondsey, hello Muswell Hill (and poverty) (hopefully not too much poverty) (or nudity)!

* I assume it’s her, so am writing freely about my drug addiction on a different, secret** site instead.

** Wouldn’t you like to know.

I feel pretty

Last night I went to buy a new dress for a fancy dress work thing. What should have been a relatively simple exercise - given that I found the dress within an hour of looking - ended with Bruce waiting miserably by himself amidst lingerie while I stood topless in a change room trying desperately to make something of the strapless bra-of-many-straps puzzle I’d been handed by the sales girl.

Let this be a lesson to you, ladies of fashion – if you buy a backless dress with a peep front, well. You’re a bit stupid then, aren’t you? Especially if you’ve been wearing the same cotton casual under-things since about twenty years ago, when you hit puberty and vowed never to let a stranger follow you into a cubicle with a tape measurer ever again.

That’s not to say I wasn’t using the power of my mind to try and will the sales girl to ask if I needed help so that I could reach through the curtain and drag her in and make her show me how to build a backless bra using two cups, three long straps and a short elastic bit (she didn't). But sales girls are not paid enough to know anything at all about what they are selling in this country. She was kind enough to let me sneak in a few more garments after the shop had closed, though, so I forgive her.

And now I’m stuck with this dress that looks fine from the front (peep peep!) and slightly ridiculous from the back. I paraded around in front of sales girl number two asking “If you were a girl and you saw someone in a backless dress with her bra strap showing like this, would you think it looked stupid?”

“No, it looks not stupid” she said in near-perfect English. Then she smiled reassuringly, as if to put a finer point on it.

Which at half eight on a Wednesday night was good enough for me. I’ve got a cardigan anyway, just in case I can sense mirth from the other, more sensibly dressed women at the event. Though I am hoping someone shows up looking like a chandelier, because that always trumps a visible bra strap.

Oh, and remember when tights used to be really itchy because they employed some type of unconditioned wool, but you weren’t allowed to take them off because then your legs would show and godforbid you show a little leg at age five? Well now you can have that itchy-legged feeling all over again, as a full-grown woman! I don’t know why fashion has to hurt, but it does.

And that’s all I have time for today, because I’m doing a few more hours work and then I have to go to the toilet and grapple with ten tiny buttons and a sash.

A New York state of mind

That badge up there was given to me by the lovely and prolific Lass, a freelance writer from Texas who subverts any notions I may have held about Texans and their penchant for fried chicken, Richard Nixon and the electric chair. (I said may have.) She is one classy lady, with the same cheap taste in sweets as me, and I’m tickled that she chose to include me as a member of her online posse.

Earlier this month, I was recognised in a similar vein by Quelle Ergsome, who I’ve been following across the internet for years like some awe-struck little sister who goes Aw, I want to knit a pair of socks in less than a week and make tasty-sounding vegetarian dishes and have a party for all my friends too! and then stomps her foot and runs off to her bedroom to disembowel some Barbie dolls.

The fact of the matter is, I’m always touched and not a little surprised (so A LOT surprised then) when fellow bloggers shine a spotlight on me, partially because it can be such a solitary exercise and I assume that mostly stragglers skim to find out if I’m losing my marbles again or a banjo star or in a family way or divorced. And partially because I’m not used to kindness of the no-strings-attached sort, which is why my husband sometimes wants to shove me in the washing machine, turn the dial to WOULDJA CALM DOWN ALREADY and hit START.

So I’m an asshole and I forget to give props to those online writers who have no idea how much I rely on their openness, honesty and genuine insights into the human condition, because sometimes I forget that I’m not the only person in the world who feels anxious or irrational or oversensitive or un-fabulous. And that it’s okay to have the opposite of these feelings too.

I can’t pick only ten, because half of them are locked and half need no introduction, but you know who you are. So have an E, guys - it’s on me.

Alright, enough with the group hug. Let’s move on to…

Work! I had such a good day at work yesterday that I’m coming down a little bit and don’t feel like doing anything now. That’s the way I function though: up, down, up, down, round and round forever. I think I might also have a natural Extreme Happiness Inhibitor (EHI), which prevents me from overreacting to positive situations on the off-chance I get crushed.

No, I’m much more comfortable hovering inches above misery’s ocean floor, bumping heads with the small blind creatures that live in its perpetual darkness. It’s much easier to just hang about until I’m needed rather than wait for someone or something to dump me there from a helicopter.

I think my inner voice must belong to an angry taxi driver living in New York, as I spend my morning walk to work having thoughts like:

Jaysus Christ, you’re practically a giant and you can’t walk faster than a shuffle? Whatsamadda, you got your head caught in the Goodyear blimp or something? MOVEITBUDDY!

Look lady, don’t punish ME just because YOU decided to put on stupid shoes this morning.

Aw fantastic, now I godda walk behind these assholes. Why do suits always godda walk so goddamn slow when they get together? Mother of Christ, I just want to make that green light oh great now it’s red THANK YOU! Thanks for nothin’.

Meanwhile, my iPod is shuffling undecidedly between Bjork and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, singing me ever closer to a neurotic meltdown. My walks to work are never boring, I’ll give them that much.

I saw someone on a motorbike who had pulled over to the shoulder and was now trying to decipher a road map. The motorbike was an EMT-issued vehicle, and although I felt really sorry for whoever was on the receiving end of that service, I couldn’t help wishing I’d brought my camera.

Where I complain about the Oscars and other oblique issues

I’ve found a new and improved way of living, which leaves very little room for anxiety. Basically, you put your overstuffed iTunes on shuffle and stop worrying about who made tea for whom and who should you make tea for today?

Am I on the tea train? Am I not on the tea train? Who cares! I’ll make a cup of tea for myself when I feel like one or, hell! I’ll make everyone a cup of tea! Hey! You over there on the south side! You want a cuppa too?! O! Kay!

And then you stop worrying about what everyone thinks of you and just do your job the best way you know how, and if they don’t like it, well, stuff ‘em, hey?

Easy fucking peasy.

Yesterday I felt like Carrie Bradshaw in the opening credits of Sex and the City – walking along the city sidewalks, very much in my element, feeling sorta fabulous, when all of a sudden: WHOOSH! A bus flies by, flinging muddy puddle water at my designer pink chiffon dress, rendering me decidedly un-fabulous.

But then I got over it, because know what? Once you’ve hit your stride in life, a little bit of mud doesn’t make much of a lasting impression. Cover me in the stuff and I will still be fa-bu-lous. Oh I’ll cry a bit! But not for long.

Can I complain for a few minutes though? Okay good thanks.

So what was up with the Oscars? I mean, I know what’s up with the Oscars – they take an okay film, clock it on the head with a gold-painted statuette and raise it to the height of the Mother Theresa of all filmmaking, whilst giving nary a hat-tip to anything worthwhile. But what was up with the nominations, even?

Once There Will be Blood flickered up onto the big screen, it took me nearly forty-five minutes to catch my breath. I mean, wow! Wowowowowow! This is not the type of film critique that won me awards back in University, I know, but I have no other words! I was completely mowed down by the film in general, and the one thing about it that struck me the hardest was the soundtrack.

Did anyone notice the la-la-lackadaisical tippy-tap of the score in Atonement? Me neither!

But There Will be Blood has replaced The Conversation for me as the ultimate film soundtrack (barring any soundtracks containing pop tunes I might actually play at home), because, better than the cinematography, better than the mis-en-scene, this element exemplified the queasy ignorance of the period and the crushing impassiveness of the setting. It reminded me of the way Wisconsin Death Trip made me feel as I was reading it. Really, you couldn’t ask for more from a soundtrack.

But the Academy would still rather heap praise onto a conceptually uninteresting piece containing the innovative sound of…a typewriter. Because guess what. OMG she is TYPING the BOOK of the FILM we are WATCHING on a TYPEWRITER! *We faint at the ingeniousness of it all*

Meanwhile, There Will be Blood doesn’t even make the cut for notable soundtracks.

And that is the way of the world, good peeps. Mediocrity will rise to the top to sit upon the ornate heads of artists. It keeps the little guys feeling like big guys without ever asking them to lift a finger.

Whoops, and I’ve officially taken my complaint and upgraded it to a rant. Ah well. It's my soapbox, I can rant if I want to.

Brave new self

My husband did some serious damage to his liver (and reputation as the most sober husband on earth) last night. And yet I’m the one feeling hungover this morning – why?

It’s becoming more and more difficult to rake back personal time at work. Everyone deserves a lunch hour, and everyone is responsible for ensuring they take one, but with the amount of work I do on a daily basis, I can barely justify doing no work for an entire hour, even to myself.

This morning I woke to the noise of birds, which was something I noticed a lot during that period of a few months when I was not well in the head. Their morning song seemed like a recording at that time; it was just another superficial element of a convincing backdrop concocted by the party (or parties) who were collaborating to keep me from understanding my predicament. Or so I believed.

I capitalised on the lucidity of this hazy recollection, extending the meaning to encapsulate what I find so impossible to nail down about my experience now. The only way to achieve continuity is to live without ever having to abandon your own foundational context. I’ve lost this context twice in my life: once when I went mad, and once when I fell in love (which is a bit like going mad) and moved away from home.

This morning, I had to concede that the life I experienced in the hospital almost six years ago is still the same life I lead now, in London. I won’t say there’s little difference between a mental ward and London, though I guess someone more cynical than me might try and make that comparison. But even though both experiences are vastly different in terms of what they mean, they share the same undigested quality.

The only way to measure experience is with the levelling tool of identity. Lose that essential component to life-building, though, and you’d be hard-pressed to understand much of anything. Okay fine, I’d tell my addled brain, Let’s regroup here on January 2008 at oh nine-hundred hours and assess where we’re at. Except that no thoughts resembling mine ever showed up to the meeting place.

Psychologists are forever telling you that it’s a bad idea to fracture identity, but when you discover something you find impossible to explain, the only thing to do is to stretch yourself until you can account for it. If not me, then some other self.

And this is the other me. The one who is not alone, bitter, narrow-minded and afraid. I can be all these things, of course, but I will never again be all these things, and only these things, all at once. These are the fragments of my identity that, compiled, would exclude everything I am becoming today, and that self is growing stronger by the minute.

But I’m sorry you had to weed through this to find out that none of it was about you. On the other hand, maybe you found yourself washed up on the shore of some brave new world too, in which case, I extend my hand across the divide to shake yours.

Fairytale?

"It was a tragic accident and very sad and should serve as a cautionary tale."

Paved paradise

Why is it that asteroids hardly ever stop by Earth for a bit of death and destruction on their way to final destinations anymore? Don’t get too comfy, peeps of divine faith, hybrid vehicles and peaceful Nations, because outer space steps aside for no planet.

Speaking of stepping aside, nobody in London will do that for you either. Shoulders square, opposing armies of shoppers march staunchly into enemy territory like matching Tetris pieces that interlock perfectly before passing straight through. It’s a spatial anomaly made possible only by the mad contortions of a single person who cannot trust the pattern, and so behaves as though she’s lost her right shoulder if you’re passing her on the left, vice versa on the right, until her husband gently suggests she retires from acrobatics and walks like a proud member of the two-shouldered species.

And that is when a good game of Tetris turns suddenly into Space Invaders and I’m body-checking men, women and children so that I might pass freely without having to gimp myself in the manner to which they’ve become accustomed. Is it worth it? I’m not sure, but I’m feeling a bit more limber today and that’s what counts.

It only took us a little over a year to discover the Canada Shop, just down the street from the Maple Leaf pub, and although its modest corner must fend off the more substantial stock of vegemite and Twirls belonging to its domineering Commonwealth brethren, I nearly wept at the sight of Jell-o powder, Kool-Aid and Robin Hood brand flour. O processed, innutritious chemicals of my environmental development, how I’ve missed you!

I’m not a fan of Jell-o or Kool-Aid (or baking) but you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone, so I let nostalgia be my guide, picked up a few things that I may or may not use (Swiss Chalet gravy?) and felt instantly Canadian. Well, North American. There was no pemmican or bannock, curiously, but I’ll take what I can get (or get what I can pay for, anyway).

Oh, and I’ve discovered one less reason to move to Canada: Tim Horton’s coffee, at the Canada shop. Now all I need is a filter-drip coffee maker, which is not easily found in a country that likes its tea.

Some very important football is taking place this afternoon, and kick-off starts at three. I have a few hours yet to decide if I really want to sip soda with Bruce and his closest mates down at the pub, or if wrapping up on the sofa with a good book for a few hours is more my speed on a chilly Sunday afternoon.

Canawhat?

So, the Brit awards! Wow. Well, anyone who does sound engineering on the albums certainly deserves an award, because the live performances were all indisputably crap. I’m not sure how Mika manages an entire show, if indeed he does – even he was looking distressed by his own appalling vocals in the second song.

I perked up vaguely when the Arctic Monkeys - pissed as farts and wearing traditional English garb - came onstage for their award and began chiding the BRITs School kids (the UK’s answer to the Mickey Mouse Club). Sharon couldn’t keep her shit together either, which was fun.

Today I am having a good day, and will probably go to hell or wherever people stupid enough to count their hours before their day hatches like I did just then end up (if you can sort out that sentence then I congratulate you). But it’s true – work has been satisfying on numerous levels these past few days, and I think it’s because I’ve gained some small recognition from the heavies finally.

I’ve also discovered that if your plate is full, you only need to start feeding the choicest morsels to the dogs. Not that there are dogs under my desk or anything, but I only take ownership over things that are mine now. Easy peasy. You don’t know what I’m banging on about so I’ll switch gears now.

Bruce and I went to see a flat last night, and as we were descending the escalator at Embankment Station, the realtor called to say that it was gone. It’s just as well, because in retrospect, the flat wasn’t exactly what we’d wanted, and to be fair, we got a bit carried away too early on. We’re fairly sure that we will find just the right thing at a time that won’t cost us thousands of pounds in one go. Yes, whew indeed!

With work evening out (is that right? ‘evening’ out?), I can finally look ahead to happier things. In April we’re going to Norway for work (Bruce) and co-dependency pleasure (me), and then we’re setting sail for ATP in May. I’m hoping I will spend more time watching bands and eating pizza and having fun than last year, when I came down with the flu pretty much the first hour we arrived. Then Bil said something about Iceland and Bruce said something about Expensive and I don’t know who to believe, but that’s TBD.

My good friend Lizzie (I can’t seem to abandon her childhood moniker, even though everyone else has) is coming in March as well, and it sounds like we might be going somewhere? I dunno, we’re going to talk it out when she calls. She’s starting off in Manchester though, and I think she’d definitely planned on seeing Paris and Barcelona.

Good god, this could be a travel-heavy spring.

The votes are in

For some odd reason I am not run off my feet today. So I’m stopping in for a proper update, for anyone still interested.

I don’t know if it’s possible to fall for a place, but if it were possible, then I think London might be the place for me after all. I admit that I found Vancouver’s superficial charms (trees, fresh air, mountains) rather titillating over Christmas, but complicated, smelly, cynical London is my one true love.

It’s difficult to explain because I spent so many weeks hating everything about it – the smells, the crowds, the attitudes (cultural and social) and the impossible great maze of it all. Even the loveliest things about the city seemed trite.

Once I stopped objectifying the experience and concentrated on living, however, I noticed how very attached I am to its unique attributes. I don’t think I can ever set foot in a venue for film or music that is older than a few hundred years, for instance. The funny, ill-timed lights and impassive pedestrians; the half-giddy stair decent while the bus is still moving; the unpredictable nature of a building’s insides, its façade giving nothing away – I just couldn’t imagine a life without these things.

And that’s only the clockwork – I haven’t quite nailed down what I find so satisfying about the quaint conventions of shopping and cooking, or of restaurants even. No customer service is replaced by a sense of privacy, and that extends to social relationships. Do you ever get the feeling that you can almost see what any given friend might be up to at any given moment? Well I don’t – not any more. Your guess is as good as mine, and actually, I don’t even have a clear idea of my own spatial or temporal location. Spontaneity isn’t a way of life here, it’s pretty much mandatory.

Waking up in London is a bit like waking up in Disney Land, if you’re a kid, and you’re the sort of kid who likes entertainment parks. The basic elements are the same, but you can expect to have a very different day-to-day experience, no matter what you had in mind.

Another ex-pat and friend of mine once said that London washes over you – whether it’s in a good or bad way depends on your frame of mind. Before Christmas, Bruce and I had hit a wall here. We resented anything and everything that got in the way of our divine right to sit in front of the television, cuddling and eating sour Skittles. It was all London’s fault that we sometimes had to leave the sofa, and Vancouver became our Atlantis.

Then Bruce went to Jordan for work and I went through the motions by myself for a week. When he got back, we both realised how good we have it here, and that we stand an even better chance of doing the things we want to do by staying put.

So I guess we’re staying after all. I’m happy with that decision on a number of levels, the main one being that I think I could get to know myself even more, outside the context and constraints of ‘home’. More than that, I needed to choose this life with both options open, so that I could be sure it’s what I really want. And it is.

X365: 20 of 365 – Claire…

is awfully distracted by whatever hair accessory you’re wearing. Her eyes ping unnervingly between your face and your hair. Because she likes it? Or it’s an atrocity? Spell it out, Claire.

As sick as I am, I would never be you

I’m nearly finished Submarine by new author Joe Dunthorne and can honestly say that it’s the most enjoyable thing I’ve read in several years. The voice is spot-on, the writing deft and uncomplicated, and my inner cynic has been trip-wired into laughter more times than it would care to admit. I looked at the inside back dust jacket and saw why – the guy is only 26.

Give someone a fresh pair of eyes possibly unclouded by stoic years of dense postmodern theory and they may not come back with the Gobstopper of all literary mastication. But then who really wants to spend a lifetime teasing out meaning from a single text? Dr. Who fans, that’s who. But who else? (James Joyce can go drown in a lake of his own tears, if he hadn't already expired.)

My parents rang up last night to say that they’d been busy - “With visitors,” my father said (“With realtors” my mother clarified) - but that they still cared. “We’re so pleased you two are coming, so pleased. Okay? Bye now!”

Apart from that misplaced postscript, I can’t say that’s been our overall impression of the situation. Even if it was, it’s becoming harder to imagine a better life anywhere other than right here. We are independently, carefully balanced on a self-actualised pinnacle that might as well be on the moon in zero gravity, for all its potential to be replicated any other where or way.

For the first time in my life, I do not feel like things are in the process of falling apart. In fact, things feel remarkably stable. I have a job that is tough but rewarding, a family that is close but not smothering, and friends that like and respect me. London used to frighten me with its indifference and warped architectural memory; now it’s begging to feel not only like home, but like some devastatingly beautiful and true ship that saved my moored and savage life.

I suppose you can guess the Captain.

X365: 19 of 365 – Sandwich girl

You made me a sandwich, the day after Valentine’s Day. You’d been beaten up pretty badly. We cracked jokes. I couldn’t understand you because of your accent, and because you mumble.

X365: 18 of 365 – James Ash

I blame you for any subsequent upheaval in relationships that stemmed from a paralysing fear of betrayal, when really, I should blame adolescence. But every difficult lesson needs a poster child.

X365: 17 of 365 – Vicky M

You lied constantly; you hit me when we were friends and you put a cigarette out on my neck when we weren’t. I felt pity when you were ostracised much later.

Not writing, but frothing at the mouth

I’m not sure if my mother is reading here, but I’m going to have to assume that she has more respect for my (publicly accessible) privacy than she did when I was fourteen. In fact, I’m sure she averted her browser the second she realised that this is the online equivalent of my bedroom and went off to make a sandwich instead.

The fact that she hasn’t called me since I posted about the possibility of her reading here isn’t very comforting, but nonetheless. Hello.

Bruce ordered an original Drowning by Numbers film poster from France the other week, and this morning it finally arrived in the post. He tore open the padded envelope and unfolded it once, twice, three times, four, five…I lost count. It’s in French, it smells musty, the art is expectedly cryptic and unsettling, and shares the surface dimensions of a king-sized bed. We had no idea! And now we have to find a home with walls that are big enough to hang it on.

I suggested we mount it and then hang it five inches from the ceiling from thin silver chains. Bruce said he would consider that. I’m not holding my breath on finding the perfect wall though.

Tonight three miracles took place consecutively. No, four!

One: I made pork medallions with fine cut runner beans and a balsamic reduction
Two: It turned out
Three: Bruce declared it my greatest culinary triumph to date
Four: I got him to watch The Darjeeling Limited and he did not hate that either

There is a fifth miracle but you will have to talk to us in person to find out. And even then, we may not tell you. Hint: it does not involve tentacles, not on any level.

He loves me

Today has been the busiest day of my life. I’ve said that every day for the last few weeks, but only because it’s true! I spent two days away from my desk to help out at an event, and will be paying for it for the next year I’m sure.

Bruce sent flowers to work, but you have to actually pick them up from the post office – they won’t deliver them to you. So I went to the basement hoping against hope it wasn’t a mistake. Not because I couldn’t believe he’d sent them, but because it would be just my luck - to think I was getting flowers when really, nobody understands a word I mumble when I answer the phone.

By 5:20, I was still in a meeting with fellow inmates of the wawaweb, attempting to hurry things along psychically by swinging my leg impatiently in the direction of time moving forward. We’d booked dinner at a French restaurant, which was situated relatively close by, but only if I ran.

And ran I did! So fast and far from my desk that I forgot to bring the flowers with me, making me the Worst! Wife! in London! though Bruce was very understanding (he only looked vaguely crestfallen) and we had a lovely dinner anyway.

Life is moving far too quickly. I don’t know what to do about it sometimes, except move with it.

Waiting for someone to come out of somewhere

And watching the BAFTAs.

Epilogue

We don’t own much, in terms of furniture. We have a small sofa, a piano, a television; we own a book shelf but we don’t own a bed, a writing desk, a dining table. We have those things too, but they’re on loan. Our new home could resemble a Rubik’s cube after some of its teeth have been knocked out.

Words like to tumble around, without cohesion mainly, so I don’t record much. It’s a good thing too, as this type of writing recalls that unsophisticated form of poetry they insist you try out in high school, where the lines break in such a way as to create a picture of what the poem is about.

You know.


..............This............
...........is a poem..........
........that I've written........
...oh look, it is a pile of shit.....

I wonder if I will ever find the perfect time and place to sit down and write anything much.

If so, I’m guessing it won’t be here. Or now.

Last Chance

Have you been lurking around this journal two-to-three times a day since my second-last post? Because even if you don't know your internet provider, surely you must know if you are doing that. And I'll tell you right now, Shaw, you're the only one.

Unless you say otherwise, I'm assuming you're my mother and I'm deleting friday films today. It's just not worth it.

Where I use a big word, and it isn't falafel

Well if today isn’t your lucky day! I was about to get all philosophical on your ass but then I was sidetracked by work and now I've completely forgotten what I was going to say.

I’m having issues with work (again) (surprise!) whilst simultaneously torturing myself with that whole inner/outer beauty thing that is so (un)important to women and society in general, and do I have enough to sprinkle liberally onto the high-carb pasta of my excellent personality? Yes, even disestablishmentarianists worry about these things sometimes, so lay off would you!

And yet in spite of this familiar roster of pain, I am oddly at peace with the world. Probably because I’m just about to tuck into a falafel sandwich and berry spritzer from Pret.

I think I’ve solved the mystery of Shaw, all by my lonesome, because I suspect Shaw is in complete ignorance of its own IP address and broadband service provider. Which, fine! As long as you weren’t the one responsible for the self-esteem issues I developed in my formative years, you are most welcome to this page. One and all.

Well, and that’s lunch people. It’s either a big long rant or I get a decent lunch from down the road and talk with my mouth full for a few minutes, your choice. (It’s my choice actually and today I choose lunch!) (And loads of exclamation points!)

We interrupt this programme

I have been mindlessly writing in this thing (or variations thereof) for about five or six years now. It’s only been within the last year that the anonymity afforded me by a pseudonym was most likely breached by a family member or two (or three). Hence the new address.

But last night, after finding a suspiciously familiar IP address from Shaw that I can’t account for, I got to thinking that maybe my mother knows how to find things online by putting search terms into a browser after all.

I know! Where on earth do parents learn these things? It must be the other, more technologically-advanced parents who shoot their mouths off in the remote aisles of Safeway where our parents can overhear, because I sure as hell didn’t teach her that!

This got me thinking about the other people in my life I’d rather not invite backstage, where all the drama actually takes place. Which once more delivered me into the arms of an age-old dilemma belonging exclusively to private people who write personal information on a publicly accessible space: what am I doing this for?

The obvious answer is: I enjoy writing here. Coming here and posting something - anything at all - makes me feel as though I own a little piece of my day, which otherwise belongs to a job that is pretty intent on destroying my spirit. I do this job willingly (gladly, even) because I know that in the long run, it will help me to achieve some of the things we are very intent on achieving this year. This is a choice I’ve made, and I’m not going to complain about it (much) (overly much).

No, my real issue is with the people who come here to siphon off that last little sip of bliss in an eight-hour grind with their long-reaching straws so they can call me up out of the blue to find out if I’m still planning to move to Vancouver, mother.

Maybe I’m just being paranoid. But until I know who that Shaw address belongs to (and I hope you’ll just come right out and tell me that I’m off my rocker, Shaw), I’m not going to write a single word more - in this journal or any others.

I enjoy the spontaneity that online writing lends someone as fearful of literary permanency as me, but not to the extent that I could pull down the sheet and expose the real hands of this shadow-puppetry I endeavour to make for a modest audience of (I’m hoping) close friends and perfect strangers.

Expanding my soapbox any further than this makes me cringe, for a variety of reasons I’m sure I could work out with a therapist. But I’m hoping I won’t have to. C’mon Shaw, who are you?

It'll only hurt for a lifetime

Oh nothing much. We had a gathering last night for the first time in ages. These fine lovely friends (and one without an online presence, as far as I'm aware) came around for games and food and far too many glasses of wine, and though I'm not feeling brilliantly, I think I got off relatively easy. These last few months off the drink have done wonders for my liver, on top of everything else (skin, weight, mood, etc.), and I think I might meander back in the direction of that wagon over yonder and have myself another sit-down on its kindly passenger seat.

Today Bruce and I were driven around Muswell Hill, a trendy suburb of North London, to have a gander at the properties and neighbourhood. The difference between there and where we live currently isn't so much night and day as it is used condoms and angora jumpers. You want the latter, come around our area, though I recommend you make the extra treck for the posh sweater.

We met briefly with an estate agent who was this close to getting dumped by my mistrustful-of-all-things-agency husband, though we will try and remain open-minded for the benefit of our future new home.

Meanwhile, we're moving ahead with the application process so that we have everything in place the instant we decide to give London the old heave ho and set sail for Canadialand. Land of the free, home of the large Tim Hortons coffee with Timbits, mmmmm.

I've brought some work home with me (well, the intention to work anyway, as the internet constitutes my workspace, wherever it lies) in the hopes that I can make this upcoming week slightly less hellish than it's going to be. So that's what I'm off (here) to do now.

The cinematic experience

My mother used to say that writing comes easy if you start by getting down one true sentence. I can’t do that at the moment, so I’m calling it a day.

I didn’t know she couldn’t write, at the time I internalized that lesson. Or that writing has nothing to do with truth.

Did you know that the most worthwhile people on earth are those who do their best to dull the sheen of what makes them extraordinary?

Since I’m lying, I should tell you that the only thing that divides us from immortality is ego. You can live forever as an object. But as a subject - you’re already gone.

Either way, you should do what you want.