x365: 24 of 365 - Ellen

We (I) wanted details. Your diary: Darren’s a fucking prick (slow-dancing with a camper; thrilling betrayal). I sent you colour-coded mail. We (I) once looked you up. Alone, I’d dial the number.

None like it

Since my relapse on Monday, I’ve been working from home, which means that apart from a shopping trip Bruce insisted I take with him (I did feel a little more human after the walk) I’ve basically been a recluse for the last three days. This is how I want it to be right now, though. Even the sun, which I usually crave and can’t get enough of, seems mocking under these circumstances.

This evening, I have my first appointment with a midwife, and although it won’t entail any major surprises (blood work, a Q&A), I’m still feeling anxious about the whole thing. My initial visit and scan did nothing to inspire confidence that subsequent trips won’t be equally confusing, scary and humiliating, so my expectations are really low at the moment.

When I feel this way - ill, disoriented, nervous – I always start to miss That Place Formerly Known as Home. Never again will I be scooped up by my dad’s waiting car, transported to my childhood house (now sold) and set up on their king-sized bed for a quiet hour alone while they chat away in the next room with Bruce.

I know my parents and I have had our differences, and visits have always been fraught in some way, but familiarity in itself is a comfort few other instances can afford.

And I can’t believe that given all I do have – independence; a nice place to live; a good job; a lovely husband – I’m being such a child about this. But I’m just plain scared right now, and I want to see my horrible family.

Four more weeks until Canada.

So soon she spoke

This morning was an unpleasant mixture of denial and vomit – denial over the fact that I was feeling ill again; vomit for obvious reasons.

Having told friends, my family and colleagues that I’m finally over morning sickness, I’m not really sure where to go from here (the toilet, I guess). But I hold out hope that this is just a minor slip – a reminder of what I’m leaving behind rather than an omen of what the next five months could hold.

We have an appointment on Thursday with a midwife, midwifery being a standard practice in this country. From what I understand, they are like professional tour guides of the prenatal and birth-giving journey, accompanying you at every stage to offer support and advice until the big day has come and gone, and even a bit beyond.

They won’t actually deliver the baby, but I’m happy for an experienced obstetrician to do that bit. I know that midwives are licensed to deliver babies in Canada, but qualifications aside, the existence of two very different types of healthcare professionals fulfilling the same role at once seems like an unnecessary and confusing distinction to have to make.

It would be like if homeopaths were suddenly in the business of doing brain surgery. I’ll take the guy (or gal) who went to school specifically to tinker in that area, thanks. I’m sure there’s something inherently prejudiced about this, but I’ll take ignorance and an epidural over that uncertainty any day.

Actually, I’ve decided that until someone can adequately describe what the pain of birth-giving is actually like (my mother said unhelpfully: It’s like someone kicking a football at you. Down there.), I’m going to hold off on the scary, spine-piercing pain management drugs on offer thankyouverymuch.

But if any of you out there know and could help me out with the analogy, I'd be truly grateful. Comments are now open. (Just kidding, they're always open.)

x365: 23 of 365 - Lindsay

Baby-doll dresses, combat boots, tremulous voice, grabbing my hand – you were thrilling, frightening even. That you attended Sunday church with your parents and had grey pile carpet in your bedroom was perplexing.

The baking queen

I have been feeling fine – by which I mean no sickness – since I woke up yesterday. I am as wary of this feeling as one who has been held against her will for two months and suddenly, for no discernable reason, finds the prison door ajar.

We tested out this theory by doing things the sickness normally disallows, such as burgers at lunch, a stroll through Muswell Hill’s commercial sector that included stopping in at every charity shop we came across, a film (more on that in a moment) and a brisk walk. Any one of these activities would have seen me bedridden for the rest of the day, but upon arriving home later that afternoon, the feeling of fineness continued, and it did not dissipate.

This morning, I am still feeling fine. Bruce is helping our friend move flats, and I plan to do a bit of grocery shopping (something I haven’t done alone or with Bruce in weeks), try my hand at making these cookies and perhaps take on some light cleaning. The sky’s the limit when you’re feeling well, but this is as high as I’d like to go at the minute. I just want to be very sure the nightmare is actually over before I plunge back into life.

Speaking of plunging, I managed to convince Bruce to take me to see Mamma Mia!, which the trailer made out to be a light-hearted drama infused with Mediterranean glitz and the occasional song and dance. It was much worse than this, though, and after sitting through three or four humiliating scenes of Meryl Streep over-emoting and flinging herself artlessly along the Grecian coast, we wordlessly grabbed our things and left.

I think the worst part about the whole thing was the attempt to fit the storyline to the existing Abba songs, which often involved the characters highlighting pertinent bits of lyrics with a hysterical shriek or bellow as though to say “See? THIS is why the song works in this particular context!” like we couldn’t have worked it out for ourselves.

The Guardian wasn’t overly taken with it either, but I don’t need a review to tell me when something is shit. I like to see for myself, which is why we are still planning to watch The Happening at some point. We did not learn our lesson after Lady in the Water, and probably never will, though this type of innocence is worth preserving in my opinion. Maybe not £20, but, you know.

If you want to see a really good film this weekend, I recommend The Visitor, which we saw at the Phoenix - one of the oldest film theatres in the UK. It inspired us to watch The Station Agent (2003) as well, which was another lovely film.

Friday films, underexposed

Apparently the New York Times is ahead of its own readership, which for the most part does not see the validity of personal blogging, or the relevance of an article on the subject.

Here, Emily Gould (personal-blogger-turned-columnist) writes about over-sharing and exposure in an age where – in these parts at least - the private and the public have become disquietingly inextricable.

It’s an informative and well-written piece, but I was more intrigued by the reaction it elicited from readers. There was a general sense of outrage that the NYT would publish the self-absorbed ranting of a young girl who seemingly exploited everyone in her life, including herself, in order to gain recognition.

Which, fair enough – if you don’t blog, there’s little reason to care about the misfortunes that can befall those of us who do (well, those of us with more than a few dozen readers anyway).

But strangely, this moral outrage was predicated on the fact that, because there are more important matters at hand, such as war, famine and elections, Emily’s efforts would be better spent fighting in Iraq or maybe chopping firewood for her elderly neighbour. As though good deeds and navel gazing could and should not exist in the same universe (or newspaper).

Ironically, it's the Baby Boomers that took issue with her perceived self-absorption, and expressed the most vitriol of anyone else commenting.

Anyway, have a read and see what you think.

In a galaxy far, far away

Remember when McSweeney's was a quality site filled with good, funny writing?

Mr Bouncy Bounce

A colleague’s sister is due around the end of December, and she thinks her morning sickness finally finished last Tuesday. Doing a quick calculation in my head (which skews simple maths equations, but) I should be well on my way to feeling like myself again. It’s stories like this that keep me going from week to week, though I know my optimism can only hold out for so long.

In the meantime, I’m having difficulty sleeping, I’m not interested in much except for Big Brother UK and Walkers salt & vinegar crisps, and there is a temporary designer sat beside me who likes to bounce in his chair and stare at my chest.

Okay, I don’t know what precisely he’s staring at, but it’s somewhere in the vicinity of my self, and there is nothing in front of (or beyond) that self, so it’s a safe assumption that:

Bouncing + staring at women = pervert

That’s one equation I’m fairly confident I’ve worked out properly, at least in this instance. He’s gone in a day or two, but given that every day can feel like a month when you’re not sure if you’re going to be able to keep down breakfast (or lunch, or dinner), that feels like ages.

I promise I didn’t come here to complain though! What I really wanted to say was…

Nothing, I did just come here to complain. Soz.

Engulfed in flames

I’ve been reading the new David Sedaris book of essays and am sorry to say that I haven’t been enjoying it much at all. There is something vaguely lacklustre about the whole thing, which isn’t what I’ve come to expect from a guy who can write eloquently about his brother’s shit-eating dog or his father’s strange relationship with rotting produce.

Until now, I hadn’t been able to pinpoint the nature of what it is I’ve taken issue with. But I think it has to do with the fact that, for whatever reason, Sedaris has chosen to forego his literary flair in favour of pared-down character sketches, which he confusingly renders in wooden prose.

The reason I typically enjoy his essays isn’t because I believe Sedaris has lead a more interesting life than the average person, or because I want to discover about various human eccentricities. I mean: these things help if you’re going to weave a good yarn out of personal experience, certainly.

But the facts are not in themselves enough to make a reader believe in the story: it’s how a writer selectively isolates certain aspects of experience, repurposing them in a way that reaffirms what we know about him/her, or even challenging our very notions of that authority, and revealing yet another facet of a protagonist we've come to love and trust (or despise and revile, as is sometimes the case).

Nobody wants a regurgitation of the facts, because facts exist all around us, and to a nauseating degree. What we crave is for someone to animate these – a storyteller who can revive the dried up old clay of trivia in order to illustrate their worldview, thereby putting us back in touch with our own sleepy subjectives.

It seems like Sedaris either forgot how to be himself, or is simply too afraid of offending the people he writes about, opting instead for the safe bet of telling it like he thinks we think it is; perhaps even adding another layer of varnish to the hardened abortions of memory before tossing them back into the kiln.

That sounds a bit harsh, actually. But I just wanted to love this book and am so disappointed.

Another bun in the oven

Last week Erqsome posted a recipe for cinnamon rolls, and though I often drool over her various homely successes (be they of the baking, cooking or knitting variety), this is the one and only time I felt I could not pass up the opportunity to try one out for myself. It was either that or beg her to Fed Ex me a batch, which seemed a bit drastic.

Not nearly as drastic was the impetus to spend almost £80 on baking tools and ingredients heretofore unfamiliar with our kitchen, but I reasoned that if they turned out, I could be persuaded to make stuff from scratch more often.

By late Sunday evening, I was in a bind. I did not feel like embarking on a solo baking adventure that (as Bruce predicted earlier) would likely end in tears – bitter tears of disappointment at having allowed myself to think for one solitary moment that I wouldn’t cock it up.

Because following a recipe from beginning to end, from mixing bowl to oven – especially one that involves kneading and proofing – goes against my very nature. It’s why the bakery section in grocery stores was invented: to save people like myself from feeling like failures every time we fancy a bit of lard and allspice.

But actually, once I got the scary bit over and done with (i.e. the dough), the rest was relatively simple. And by 23.00 hrs, I opened my oven and was greeted by the luscious, heady smell of cinnamon rolls:







Elegant they are not, but tasty? Oh yes.

I won’t tell you how I blundered my way through the recipe, as Erqsome has written some perfectly good directives. But I do encourage anyone who is a bit oven-shy to try and make something they’ve never made before, as I’m convinced I haven’t been this proud of myself since I graduated university six years ago.

And Bruce is officially too full up to eat his words.

Fuck

I’ve been shooting my mouth off all weekend about how I’m going to bake cinnamon buns. And now I actually have to do it.

No pictures, please

I got an email from a fellow pregnant colleague who was quite enthusiastic about first scans. She’d only just had hers, and the experience was tear-inspiring for both her and her partner. I’m not really the tearing sort (I reserve that for anger and anxiety), so I wasn’t exactly expecting a punch-in-the-gut reaction to seeing my little alien on the small screen.

And a good thing too, because the nurses who herded us through that process were some of the most downtrodden, unenthusiastic and unintelligible people I have ever had the displeasure of being manhandled by. A less ironic pair of first-time parents-to-be could have been very disappointed, especially if they were under any illusions about healthcare in the UK.

The NHS system might offer people free healthcare, but if caring is what you’re after, well, that’s going to cost you.

Minutes after I arrived, in a dingy backroom at the Victorian hospital, the ultrasound gel unceremoniously plopped onto my stomach by the impassive Ms Muffin, Bruce and I were gruffly confronted with the first sighting of what will one day (biology willing) be our child.

Amidst the noncommittal grunts of our reluctant technician, we chattered quietly in awe and disbelief that right here, in the hidden cave of my being, lies something that looks very much like a tiny person. Not even the barely suppressed irritation of Ms Muffin could rob us of that very strange and intimate moment.

Afterwards, we were pinged between various departments in the antenatal unit until someone could riddle us what the hell we were supposed to do next. There was a new appointment to be made, a mystery appointment to make sense of, and the ever looming question of how one secures a midwife – none of which had easy answers. Not until we visited the midwives office - a bustling, cheerful hive of activity and – dare I say – caring.

Somewhere along the way, we lost our free first scan (next time you pay two pounds, and you need to bring change, muttered Ms Muffin on repeat – the closest she’d ever come to enthusiasm) but I don’t care: we saw it waving about, alive and well, and that image is indelibly burned into my mind now. Next time we’ll bring our two pounds and cross our fingers that Ms Muffin is on blood-letting duties.

So-called life

As much as I can, I have a schedule. I work hard, hard, hard throughout the week – staving off nausea in the day (and sometimes anxiety over a potential social engagement that will stretch this out unbearably) before enduring the aimless throng of tourists, the stifling, stinking tube journey home, where fatigue quickly and decisively encroaches on a necessarily short evening.

Weekends, I am utterly selfish, my needs few but specific: to lie prone for as many hours as one can deem reasonable, escaping into some work of fiction or other, most often set in contemporary London, which is more easily learned about through literature than actually being in it, I find (though the same could be said of all experience, if I'm honest).

There is no point at which I’m completely immersed in anything anymore - work or repose - as in any case I am unable to escape the heightened maintenance my metabolism now requires of me: scoffing some meal that isn’t completely off-putting, followed by constant bottles of water, followed by a snack, followed by water, followed by another snack, followed by more water, followed by another meal . . . &ct.

We are over the three month mark now, and I am looking forward to that impending period of reprieve, when this obsessive vigil over my complex physiology can cease and I will apparently begin to feel more like my ‘normal self’ again.

We’re having our first scan on Tuesday afternoon, all three of us: me, Bruce and this symptom I keep trying to humanise whenever I get a spare minute. We are like everyone else but this is like nothing I have ever experienced. It's a paradox for sure.

Not so hot

That little stunt I pulled the other day (you know, where I walked briskly) cost me forty-eight hours of nausea.

On one of those days, Yuan - friendly neighbourhood sage of unsolicited advice/opinions - decided to tell me that she’s noticed my body has changed.

Let me preface this by saying that Yuan’s personal motto seems to translate thusly: “If you can’t join ‘em, beat ‘em down with smug observations that will make them wish they hadn’t joined either.”

Oddly covetous of my conventional life, she’s taken to pushing my buttons: few but obvious to her.

Your tits are huge!

Was her first exclamation of the lunch hour, which I handled with as much decorum as someone who is trying not to barf up a sandwich can muster. I hate big tits! Doesn’t everyone? And then the final nail in that coffin:

Yes, I notice your body is changing. Your female parts are more…protruding.

So less pin-up girl (which seemed a fitting analogy last week) than Hottentot Venus, now indelibly burned into that part of the imagination that informs self-image, thanks very much Yuan. It doesn’t matter that I haven’t gained a single pound since I discovered I was pregnant – the poison has already been unleashed and is busily coursing through my veins, even now.

Having humoured some questionable ‘friends’ in my time, I believe that I’m well-tuned to the subtle differences between insensitive and malicious, and I’ve come to the conclusion that with Yuan, it’s an unhealthy mixture of the two.

The days of allowing petty individuals to feed me barbs wrapped in the soft-flour tortilla of ‘innocent observation’ are well behind me, though, and I think I’m putting ‘stop payment’ on our weekly lunch dates. At least until I’ve got this body-image/pregnancy thing under control.

Except now I’m wondering if a developing baby can subsist on breath mints and sparkling water. . .

A different tack

Tonight we are going to see My Bloody Valentine perform live in Camden. My ex-inner-Goth of 1995 is currently doing cartwheels (in her grave - depressing cartwheels of death).

I actually cannot wait, even though I feel as though I’ve swallowed month-old baloney and gasoline.

This morning, though, I woke to several strong assertions made by that formerly dormant drill sergeant that is my Ego, namely:

1. You are not dying, so stop acting like it!
2. Nothing worth having comes easy, so:

• Stop eating junk
• Walk like you mean it
• Instead of going easy on yourself, go hard

Because ultimately

• Even if you crash and burn, eventually your body will catch up with your new attitude, and that can only make things better.

You can’t argue with good sense, so today I packed orange slices, cherries, bananas and low-fat cheese sandwiches, and virtually ran the 20 minutes it takes to reach the Metro by foot.

I got off at Waterloo as usual, charging up the South Bank with such purpose that I managed to forget for 40 whole seconds that I’m nearly 3 months pregnant.

And you know - I don’t feel any worse than I typically do these days, so that’s something! And we’ve decided to scrap getting to the show on time for the opening act, which means that I can still come home after work and nap before heading out for a late(er than usual) evening.

Take that, morning sickness!

Best cures for 'morning' sickness

1. Don't get pregnant

2. . . .

3.

4.

5. Please put me out of my misery

6.

Fleet Foxes

Last week we saw Elbow perform at the Royal Festival Hall, as part of Massive Attack's Meltdown music festival. The opening act was Fleet Foxes, whom we'd researched a bit first on MySpace, the way you do. They were brilliant too.

The 'N' key on my laptop just fell out. Nanoo nanoo.

Discover Fleet Foxes

It's my birthday I can skyve if I want to

Actually, I can't - I've gotta go to work. I'm praying my former line manager didn't leak the day, as pawning off cake to sheepish colleagues who didn't know my name up until now isn't exactly how I'd like to spend four o'clock. Know what I mean?

Over the weekend, Bruce bought me a lovely handbag and dress from my favourite little boutique, Orla Kiely, but he still presented me with a voucher for maternity wear this morning so I'd have something to open. Best husband ever?

My dear friend kimchi Head (who always seems to find the perfect card) has also promised to try and visit in January, right around the time I'll be needing an extra set of hands. Even if I shut my eyes now and woke up tomorrow, this would still count as one of my favourite birthdays.

20 reasons this blog will not make me famous

Or 20 ways to sell your soul to the blogosphere, if you're into that kind of thing.

Personally, I think getting onto a season of Big Brother UK would yield quicker results.

Finally, a perk

From the mouths of babes

Fits in your handbag

I realise that comparing foetuses to inanimate objects is meant to drive home just how big/small they are, but I’d rather not visualise a tube of lipstick with fingernails that swallows and moves about on its own in my uterus (consequently as big AS A GRAPEFRUIT, goodbye weekend breakfast). No thank you, helpful pregnancy newsletter - you can take that analogy right back to your editorial team and tell them where they can shove their tube of peach-fuzz-covered lipstick (in their uterus, apparently).

So at ten weeks, I think I’ve possibly processed the significance of what’s taking place. Gone are the hazy, intermittent conjectures of the first few weeks, and even the queasy foreboding of the last few. Someone at work finally jolted me from my protective shell of misery, simply by asking: Is this your first?

I had to roll that statement around in my fist a little, to appreciate its weight (the approximate heft of an apple). My first pregnancy, my first antenatal experience, my first foray into that brave new world where things stop being about Me or about Him or about Us for as long as it will take to integrate this new...

And that’s where I get stuck. New what? Attachment? Accoutrement? Thing That Will Be More Significant Than A Pet But Is Not Yet Anything? Cosmetic by Estee Ovaries?

I just don’t know.

But last night, I dreamt that a supermarket clerk was scanning my belly with that thing that scans bar codes? And I could see the little gaffer, and felt both elation (a baby!) and fear (a checkout?!).

So my subconscious seems to be topping me up where I fall short of complete awareness on this particular subject. I wish my analogies would hurry up and get here though.

Getting pregnant and giving birth are the two things that have always wigged me out. It’s why I had to turn off my mind in the same way I do when I book a plane ticket on an overseas flight. Once you commit, there’s no going back. It’s something we’ve both wanted since we met and fell in love, and no amount of fear is going to get in our way.

Life after birth

It is going to be very difficult to enjoy the next phase of my life with all of this out-of-body, I Am an Observer of My Own Existence, floating-on-the-ceiling rubbish I go through on a daily basis.

Nearly two years ago (jesus), I was certain that my soul would be forcibly torn from my body the moment I landed in London. Until that point, my experiences were so much a part of my environment that I wasn’t sure the ensuing ‘me’ would be able to survive a transplant of that magnitude.

And in a way, I wasn’t wrong – the juxtaposition of self and other, inside and outside, is never more apparent than when you’re orbiting the unknown. It's like being turned rightside-out again, for the very first time. My new challenge is to finally resist the urge to objectify that all-too-visible self and simply try and be.

Having not enough time to reflect on anything plays a big part in this disconnect, I’m sure. Today is the first time in a long while that I’ve managed to push the crowding dishware off the tabletop and just press my face against its surface.

There’s little more than a hum and a cold, calm sensation. I don’t know what you’d divine with an empty table, but it seems like a good place to start.

The time of my life

Yesterday, morning sickness reached new and sickening heights. Spontaneous vomiting of the ‘just barely made it’ variety and the near impossibility of keeping anything down was the order of the day. I even managed to vomit in one of London’s finest canteens – Canteen – shortly before my dinner of poached eggs on toast came (I know, right?).

It only happened about three or four times, but I still got that wobbly-kneed, shaky, gotta-sit-down feeling after every incident. By the time I got home, I was so exhausted that I fell into a deep sleep. It lasted about five minutes, and then I was up for half the night.

Hence I am once again stressing about work from home. I am working too, but mainly stressing about the things I could better do if I was actually sat at my desk with my notebook and my laptop and many system folders.

Monday morning seemed like a good time to break the news, so whenever someone asked me ‘How are you feeling?’ or ‘How was your weekend?’ or ‘Can I borrow your stapler?’ I’d just blurt out ‘Yeah, I’m pregnant!’ and then spend the next several minutes describing my symptoms until they backed away slowly. Everyone seemed genuinely pleased at first.

The Heads are no longer treating me like a star in the making, which is just fine with me. In that operation, if someone notices you above the radar, they take aim and shoot until you either climb higher than you’d ever planned to climb or tail spin into the ground. Trust me: I’ve been to enough corporate pep talks to know that this is true.

I’m also banking on the fact that they probably can’t fire me now I’m up the duff. Not because I plan to work less than I typically do, but because I need this excuse to go easy on myself for once. It’s important – for the baby, obviously, but also in general. I don’t want to look like a shriveled walnut before I hit 40.

Speaking of hitting a number to do with age, it’s my biiirthday on the 19th of June. I don’t understand people who don’t like birthdays. Attention, presents, dinner and special events in my honour? Yes please! I’d have a birthday every day if it were legal. I don’t think it’s illegal, mind you. Could we afford that actually?

And it will be my last birthday sans child, if everything goes according to plan, so I’m going to rip it up the way a childless woman does and go and see a live West End production of Dirty Dancing!

It might not be your cup of tea, but I saw this film when I turned eleven, and rented it on my father’s video card no less than 33 times. It was the first (and by no means last) time a film had caught my imagination with regards to love and sex, and I was hooked for life - oddly grinding greasers aside.

It was Bruce’s idea, which goes to show how much the man must care about me (I mean, I’m pretty sure he’s coming with). If I can keep the morning sickness at bay, it might just qualify as the second best birthday I’ve ever had.

And that might qualify as the second lamest thing I’ve ever said. Even the first.

On being alone

They warned me that sleep would be one of the first things to go, but I wish I could have overcome the illness first – apparently being overtired only exacerbates the nausea. Okay, no ‘apparently’ about it.

I’ve been bedridden since Tuesday - among books, comics, unwashed clothes and empty cereal boxes - and whereas most others would at least be contemplating the full bottle of Ibuprofen in the next room, I've found something almost cathartic about the whole experience.

Honestly, it takes me right back to childhood. Not that I spent all that time alone by choice – I was very social, though circumstance often dictated five hours of television or two stacks of young adult novels, take your pick. Sometimes I would play my favourite songs on repeat and sing along, imagining that if someone could only see me, I’d be made famous on the spot. And with fame would come beauty, and with beauty, popularity.

It’s not complete bullshit, that theory. As soon as I dropped my ‘baby fat’ (some very tenacious young fat, that ‘baby fat’), I had loads of friends, including the boys that once made galumphing dinosaur noises behind me while I walked. Maybe not those specific boys, but I was always grateful that their attention was finally positive.

Anyway, things moved very quickly after that. I graduated high school, went to university and put all my effort into honing the parts of me I knew others would find attractive - body and mind. I didn’t have a minute to myself, and I didn’t think much about that.

Then my not-so-brief stint with mental illness came and went, and I spent a great deal of time alone. I didn’t know how to be alone anymore, but I was at a loss with others too, and somehow it felt harder to be reminded of that. So I bided my time (three years, four) until the awkwardness mostly passed, and then I was right back into things.

Having spent the last year and a half in a loving relationship, living and working in a challenging environment, I find it hard to believe that my priority was once drinking beer in a pub with people I didn’t even like, and who didn’t like me. I guess the path of least resistance runs mainly downhill, into that murky last call for hopes and dreams. And I had nothing to climb back out for, not for a long time.

It’ll be my thirty-second birthday on the nineteenth of this month – not a bad time to take ownership of how my life has developed so far. I can’t connect the dots between my childhood and the present tense; couldn’t say for sure there’d even be a constellation. There are some glaring similarities, though, between the uncomfortable adolescent I was then and the woman I’ve become, and what amazes me most is that I don’t feel the need to resolve this.

Being alone is not my forte, it never was. But the time I’ve spent alone here, anxious about my body and the future, is probably the most honest thing I’ve ever embarked on. Whatever that is.

Deadbeat mum-to-be

Rather than work from home today, I took the day off sick. It may not look this way because I am lying prone and often engrossed in reading or laughing at episodes of *Pot Psychology or choking down a piece of fruit, but the effort of tending to one’s constant nausea really takes its toll after a few weeks.

I don’t know how I’ll ever find my way out of this (very normal, millions upon billions do it!) prenatal nightmare, but I am taking it one day, one nap, one bag of Doritos, one episode of Dawson’s Creek at a time.

SHOOSH, there is something vaguely soothing about cheesy, overworked dialogue set to wailing C-list vocalists and don’t tell me there isn’t (or I might start crying, that’s just the kind of week I’m having).

Bruce - who has been dragging me out into the sunshine in case I forget what it looks like - insisted I accompany him to the shop this morning, so I bought a punnet of cherries, four large navel oranges and two dozen chocolate chip cookies, among other sundry items I thought I could probably manage. Cherries and oranges win the award for most palatable – the cookies tasted like pain.

And then I checked out for a few hours, buried inside a sleep so deep I didn’t even care that my mouth was hung open in the way of sleeping mouths belonging to those who accidentally eat spiders in their sleep – I would have eaten three or four spiders to prolong that sleep for another six hours, and you have not seen how I behave when I am suddenly made aware of a spider in the vicinity of my person. It was just that good.

Throughout, I've been missing my friends back home something awful but have received some very nice emails and notes and things, which is almost the same as having them here with me. Uh.


*I’ve seen reference to this on more than a few occasions and I finally had to **take a look; let’s just say that it balances out my penchant for soggy teen dramas

**WAIT, NOT AT WORK! OR WITH YOUR CHILDREN!

Also

Trying to swipe a bag of Doritos off a very high shelf using a packet of Strawberry Laces = Not my finest hour

Eggs of terror

This moment of relative sanity is brought to you by Suede, low lighting and fluffy pillows.

Aw yeah, Internizzles, I’m working from home today.

I’m not sure if it’s the malnutrition or the cabin fever or the hormones (yes! yes! yes!) but I am irritable as all get out and the NHS is not doing a thing to help.

I’ve been trying to book my eleven-week scan for the past three hours, on and off, and each time I ring them, a recorded voice goes:

I’m sorry, but this line is busy (weighted pause)

If you would like to request a call-back, please dial 5

So I do, and then:

I’m sorry: that service is unavailable for this type of call

What - the type of call a pregnant woman must make between the hours of 9 and 5 when she’d normally be at work, where presumably nobody knows about her condition because she’s not yet three months in the clear? GET. OUT.

And then, THEN, the Marks & Spencer website gave me a full, 55-page report on food allergies, when all I need to know is: CAN I EAT YOUR EFFING BELGIAN CHOCOLATE CHEESECAKE IF I AM PREGNANT OR NOT?

Because it says something about two pasteurised egg yolks on the packaging and nothing about raw or baked. And by the time I was halfway through their List of Gazillion Products That Include Soy, I was nearly finished eating the damn thing. Let it never be said that I am unfamiliar with risk assessment!

Last night, I somehow managed to eat my way through (and keep down) an entire pan of cannelloni, in spite of the fact that it didn’t taste or feel very nice. But it was my first hot food in over a week, my first bit of animal protein, and god be damned if I wasn’t going to enjoy every bland, middling, fat-laden mouthful.

This - coupled with the fact that Bruce had cleaned the entire flat on his own with no prodding from me - was enough to persuade me to live my life a bit. So I watched an hour of the excellent BBC series Age of Terror before hitting the hay.

At this rate, my kid is going to emerge one nervous ball of eating-disordered anxiety, and it will be my fault. Though with half its father’s genes, it will know how to wash a dish.

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.