Boulderflies

Whilst my mid-life crisis rampages around, banging a discordrum and showing its arse to all and sundry, I find myself rather dazed by how much has changed over the last 12 months. Exactly a year ago, more or less to the minute as I write this, I was in Arizona sipping a toe-curlingly strong Margarita, moments after getting married to Matt. We had no idea whether he would even be able to come to London with me.

And then about a million things happened and now I am here wondering exactly what it all means. I feel like a train has been through my house. It is gone now but there is broken track and left luggage everywhere.

I turned the television on in the middle of a nature programme. The narrator said, “Every night this hummingbird almost dies.”

I am surprised you don’t see more people sitting in cars, crying.

Tidal

Numbed by the sheer fucking hell and carnage
All over the news, the dizzying swathes of
Devastation, the untold people missing dead.
A million tiny pockets of paradise swept away
Forever, islands shifted, lost and drowned.
The earth rocked on her axis, and whole worlds have collapsed.

I’m sitting quietly under a railway arch
Staring at soft wet brown stone
And feather-flecked netting
To keep the pigeons at bay.
It’s been raining in suburbia
But the locals are busy texting and
Don’t seem to care.

A grey train takes me into London
Past the backside of garden sheds and
Streets where people put their bins out,
Winter Poplars, white graffiti,
Towards the cranes and Tower Bridge.

There’s a pain in my gut
When I think of those big families
With their faces and their fights
And their grinning group photos,
Whilst I batter down with fists
On stone decisions I have made.

Long , slow tango

Nothing in this world makes sense. Apart from Sphenodon punctatus, last survivor of the reptilian order Rhynchocephalia. If only there were a woman like it – cold, efficient and brutal in love but also able to feed off small animals, inhabit the breeding burrows of certain small petrels and be in possession of a vestigial third eye. Zoologist M (51), possibly a little too close to his work. And his mother. Box no. 01/05

My Christmas Day TV schedule includes a pause in transmission at 3.52pm for me to cry into the sleeve of the cardigan I bought myself. Unless you want to meet up and have crazy post-turkey sex? No? No? Bloody sod you then. Man, 34. Box no. 01/09

[London Review of Books 6 January 2005 edition]

Taking the piste

This has been a strange week.

I discovered on Thursday that there is a gay porn film called “Shaving Ryan’s Privates”.

I discovered on Friday that although Bush is clearly an egregious buffoon and his malversation-ridden presidency is unforgivable, Fahrenheit 9/11 really wasn’t a very good film.

I discovered on Saturday that aborning is an actual word.

I discovered on Sunday that although I thought I was jaded, the Simpsons can still make me laugh a lot: Homer: “Good news, Marge! I’ve learnt how to walk naked on stilts!”

I discovered on Monday that people I actually know have bought this book and this book for their loved ones' Christmas stockings.

I discovered today that people in my office are weird. We just got this email: “A pair of Ski boot clips and Ski trousers have been found. Please contact Office Services on x23222 to claim.”

Say something clever then

Well, it is Monday and work is busy as all hell so it must be time for some more small ads from the London Review of Books....

‘I always begin the LRB at the personals. Then I drink. Then I weep. Then I move on to the articles. I drink some more. I weep some more. Then I hit the letters page. You can see where I am heading here? That’s right, it’s straight to the claims court and if these personal ads don’t get any better I’m going to sue each and every one of you. Depressed, anxious, alcoholic M (41) means business, so does his legal representation (M, 38, cha-cha enthusiast and M, 42, bit of chubster but cute to boot). Box no. 23/03’

‘Mimi, 64, WLTM man whose first name is composed entirely of Roman numeral letters. You must also have a degree in advanced mathematics and be very well-endowed. Box no. 23/10’

‘ “That’s soooo funny,” I said, and wedged his biscotti vertically in his over-confidant mouth. Edgy woman (my age is my business) promises to meet future courtiers in a public place with not so many potential weapons. Send photo for list of things you’re not allowed to mention to box no. 22/07’

‘These ads always seem too preoccupied with shoehorning in song lyrics. Not me, I’m the cat that won’t cop out when there’s danger all about. Complicated man (49) - no one understands me but my woman (that’s you, bad mother to 50 with big hair and bigger grits). Shut your mouth then write to box no. 22/06’

The Aftermath of the Office Party

Many of my colleagues woke up this morning bleary eyed and remorseful after a long night of substance abuse, ludicrous dancing, ill advised lunges and inept gropes.

I must be growing up. This is the least fucked I have ever felt after an office party. I don’t have a hangover. I am not remotely shaky. There are no parts of the evening missing. Nothing I wish that I hadn’t said. I am shameless, bright eyed and bushy tailed.

But I seem to be alone in that. The Mighty R has reheated his Pumblechook’s Supreme Coffee seven times in the extremely suspect office microwave but he is still too tremulous to finish it. He’s got “Big Hat, No Cattle” syndrome and verbal diarrhoea. Ponyboy is trying to convince him that everyone has a dormant ginger gene. People are slumped at their desks mortified by the memories creeping up on them as the events of last night get slowly pieced together. Kitty just got an email from a friend across town: “Got cunted at the jolly.”

Four years

My head hurts. I smashed it on the boot of my car on Saturday. There was blood, which scared me, frankly. But the real low point of the weekend was when I trod on one of Tip Little’s pintsize turds, in socks. Tip was so eager to rejoin his brother, with the aim of beating the living fucking daylights out of Poodle Murphy in his penguin suit, that he erupted from the cat litter box mid-poo, trailing miniscule dung in his wake. It all happened so fast that before I knew it, there was a perfect circle faecal feline squish on the hall floor, which is boarded not carpeted, thank goodness, and sock squelch.


It is four years since I first met Matt since I first got that fantastic floaty sinking never going back feeling since I fell into the well of terrifying high wire tremble walk finding faraway stranger crazy endless emails pictures phone calls stories secrets first meeting making promises heart giving four years since true love came crashing over my head since that moment we said out loud that we were everything to each other. That we were forever. I was living underwater until four years ago when I first saw his beautiful face wobble and shimmer with bright lights up there on the surface and I flew out gasping for air, into the sound of another incredible world.

A deficit of wonder

Our trip to the Centre for Reproductive Medicine at Barts was rather a let down. It turns out that making a baby is quite a long process. Who’d have thought? We were very nervous. So much so that we both managed to get our ages wrong when the doctor asked. I was pretty sure that I wasn’t 36 but it was hard to believe that I was actually 37. My bumbling confused Matt who knows for sure that we are always 9 years apart so he declared himself to be 45, before realising that we are both in fact a year older. The quack looked bemused but our fuckwittery didn’t seem to have an immediate bearing on whether we were deemed to be fit to raise kids or not so we blundered on. He was not the brightest spark I’ve ever met and kept asking how long we had been trying for a baby. “About 20 minutes” was the truth of the matter but he eventually put an entirely random “Two years” in his notes. An hour later we left feeling a tad violated (some things just shouldn’t ever have to be said out loud) with handfuls of chits for various stomach-churning tests.

I decided to take the bull by the horns and embark upon these at the earliest opportunity. Waiting for blood tests (for Rubella, Hepatitis and HIV) at the Royal London, I was seated next to a sweet little girl, early to mid teens, who was with her Dad. Like me, she was clutching the referral form for the tests and I noticed with some sadness that in the box headed “Reason for Investigation” her GP had scribbled “Depression”.

We have kittens. Tip Little and Poodle Murphy. We went to Worcester past burning fields and blue-bummed sheep, through Autumn mists and one-way villages to pick up two little black kitten boys. They were teeny and timid and sat on Matt’s lap all the way home. Poodle puked silently – a shiny clay-coloured regurgitation the size of his head – over Matt’s fleece, car sickness presumably, but we didn’t mind because they were so damn cute. I have since discovered that these kittens were actually spawned in the depths of hell and are determined not to rest until our flat has been completely destroyed. Minnie and Madge are nervous wrecks, afraid to sleep or eat or pee or poo. These big old tabby cats have no sanctuary from the trails of havoc and devastation wreaked by the tornado twins. Meanwhile, us lumbering humans look on speechless, at once enchanted and horrified, wondering where it is all going to end.

There are some photos of the little buggers here.


Tom Waits says: "This is what's wrong with the world. "Everything is explained now. We live in an age when you say casually to somebody 'What's the story on that?' and they can run to the computer and tell you within five seconds. That's fine, but sometimes I'd just as soon continue wondering. We have a deficit of wonder right now."

Waving to the gods

There’s a flat disc moon and smoky clouds racing over the Highway. I lick my lips where cold sores threaten and keep on with this thirst, even after all those plastic cupsful of warm recycled water. My voice is just a shadow now, whispers closely guarded by sore, swollen glands. We went to Europe and came home with new comrades, with email addresses written on beer mats, with newspaper reviews, with precious priceless tickets, usher-torn and pocket-crumpled. I see pirates, when I close my eyes, and pork pie hats and prostitutes, so much skin skimped by negligee and luminous shocking pink bikini accents. Slow motion curls and confusing gestures half beckon half threaten rolling from their elbows to the tip of a long savage painted fingernail. Fond friendships weaved themselves into our dark couple after a chance meeting in the Tiergarten, and on Onion Burger Street and at the bar, over drinks, outside the theatres, at airports. We recognise each other, by hats or red lettered black T Shirts, by breathing, and we smile and ask who-are-you? and then kisses and cuddles and knowing hearts that look right into each other and a big fat surge of elation to be here singing and laughing with kindred souls. I can still recall the first warming taste of Indonesian food on Damrak: galangal, lemon grass, coconut, sambal kacang, nasi goreng. And later jenever and beer kopstoots to thaw us out again. I cried in the Westens, in the Carré, in the Apollo and on Platform 14 of Amsterdam train station. A woman called Susan, who had dyed her hair orange, comforted me with rubs and gentle words. She kissed us when we left. And I cried in the Trout, in a shopping centre in Hammersmith Broadway, when people that I’d never even met before this summer told me that they love us and that this all matters.

Armistice Day

The lick of a leaf fallen
Drustle under trees,
Stomach-churning splats
Of shall not be swallowed
Ramadan spit
Stuck to the underside of tissues
From the last bad cold bout,
Take-away box gifts for rats,
Mice, flies, pigeons peck at party puke
Pebble-dashed around the pubs,
Sodden cardboard cartons, bones,
Butt-ends, can flats, fag packets,
Fireworks, beer bottle, smashed
Hubcap, mattress, toothbrush, teabag,
Trampled paper plastic gutter poppy,
And still the stone speckled
Pavement sparkles in soft,
Stunning Autumn sun.

No flowers

I have spent a not inconsiderable amount of time recently mulling over the fact that, depending on the context, I pronounce ‘cerebral’ in two entirely different ways. It is pissing me off.

I feel lousy today. Jesse’s funeral was a very bleak affair. We arrived far too early and had to suffer 20 agonising minutes of hushed, tearful contemplation, trying to look everywhere except at the coffin. People kept telling me to be strong which was rather perplexing. I felt strong. Certainly strong enough to let out a damn good cry without anything terrible happening.

We had some awkward moments when we got to the church, trying to work out the best place for Matt to park his wheelchair. Matt wanted to leave it up to me. I wanted to make sure he felt comfortable. The vicar said we could sit anywhere. He said that he hoped we would not be the type of people that sit at the back. He said that yes, here, a few rows from the front, would be fine. Then he said that Matt should be aware that he would have to move out of the way when the coffin was carried down the aisle. So sitting there really wasn’t fine. Christ! We are BEREAVED. We don’t want to have to make decisions. Just tell us where to sit where we won’t be in the way. Matt cannot possibly be the first wheelchair user to ever come into this church. So we ended up in a weird corner, at a strange angle, too far away from my Dad and brother. I tried to hide my face behind my hair so no one could see me crying and dribbling snot but it didn’t really work. I tried to think of funny things to stop myself blubbing but that didn’t really work either. So I just hung on tightly to Matt and tried to keep in mind that Jesse had been very poorly and this was a release for him. He had survived to an impressive age after all.

My uncle had insisted that the service be the strict version from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Being an atheist and all, I didn’t really expect to be very impressed by the whole Christian pantomime but I was a bit disappointed that the ceremony did not strike a single chord with me. Its brutal and somewhat terse take on the suffering we all endure in life, with death being an ‘enemy’, just reinforced my sense of estrangement from the church. The vicar’s microphone was not working properly. He faded in and out of amplification, sounding stilted and at times comical. Jesse would have been furious (and might even have called him a berk).

Hats off to the pall bearers. Jesse was a very large man and must have been somewhat of a challenge for them. They hid the struggle well and managed to keep the jostling to a minimum (although they did nearly back into a candlestick at one point). The mourning and weeping continued at the graveside where we shifted uncomfortably, getting cold, on soft wet grass. On request, I doled out the apricot coloured tissues that I had swiped from Mum’s kitchen to a couple of the other sobbing females and wondered if their tears had taken them by surprise.

There was some respite when my cousins shared some of their memories of Uncle Jesse. I laughed (probably far too loudly considering we were in a churchyard) when they told me about the time they all went to Plymouth, accompanied by a dear old friend of his who didn’t eat very much. Jesse, on the other hand, loved his food. He practically lived for his food. They stopped for a hearty three course lunch and then, a little later, for a cream tea. On the way home, Jesse insisted that they find somewhere for supper. His friend felt unpleasantly full by this stage and tried to refuse anything further, which made my uncle very cross. Ken ordered something light and just pushed it about his plate to keep up appearances. Jesse was not fooled and announced in a loud and peevish voice, “Mr Stevens, you are eating like a damn sparrow!”.

We all squeezed into a small room in ‘the Plough’ in Prestbury to eat comfort food and put the wind back into our sails. Matt and I read up on the ghosts in the village (reputed to be one of the most haunted in Britain) and shivered at the idea of dogs and horses going berserk outside the spooky cottages next the pub we were in. Later we moseyed up Mill Lane hoping to spot some phantoms or at least see some dogs/horses going berserk but all we saw were falling yellow leaves and raindrips and cobwebs.

The rain got heavier as the afternoon dragged on and was nothing short of torrential as our trusty Slipper carried us towards London, back to another world. And even though it was only yesterday when they tautly, painfully, lowered dear Jesse into the ground, it suddenly seems like he has been dead a long time now.

Rocket Science

I have that woozy cast adrift feeling normally associated with Monday mornings. It's cold outside. My car is covered in rust coloured leaves fallen from a tree with slices of white bread around the base of its trunk. People are hatted, hooded and scarfed. There are lots of fat hands in small pockets. Red paper poppies on chests everywhere.

Some of my day has been spent in contemplation of how very peculiar it is that we have a part of the body called ‘the small’. Much of my day has been spent feeling completely fucking disenchanted with everything.

I did learn that a team of Japanese sociologists and psychiatrists have come up with what they claim is the perfect chat up line: “Rainen no kono hi mo issho ni waratteiy-oh” which loosely translates, if my magnificent grasp of the Japanese language serves me correctly, into “This time next year, let’s be laughing together.”

British chat up lines are more along the lines of:
“Nice legs – what time do they open?”
“Here’s 10p, darlin – ring yer Mum and tell her you won’t be home tonight”
“Is that a ladder in your tights or a stairway to heaven?”
“Do you work for the Post Office? I thought I saw you checking out my package”

There’s not much in the small ads of the latest edition of the London Review of Books but this deserves a mention:

“Tonight I’m off to Baton Rouge to have sexual intercourse with Josephine Baker. Tomorrow I’ll be back in Chichester, waiting for Holby City to start. Archeologist and perennial folie du jour seeks F to 98 for high-kicking sequined frolics. Box no. 21/01”

Er... I don't really know who Josephine Baker is but I guess that's why they invented t'internet.

Tonight is Guy Fawkes Night and there's already a lot of popping, banging and whizzing over the city. I was once a juror for an armed robbery trial at the Old Bailey. The defendant was as guilty as fuck but he had fine counsel and we had to acquit. At one point, the defence lawyer really pressed his client's girlfriend (who looked about 12) on how she could be so sure that she was with the accused on the night of November 5th - thus proving that he could not possibly have committed the crime. She came over all shy and giggly and explained that she remembered the evening extremely well because it was the night that she had lost her virginity. The unctuous lawyer smiled - rather pervily, I thought - turned dramatically towards us and smarmed, "So... it was fireworks of ONE kind AND another..." What a git.

I am very happy that this week is nearly over. Just 7 more days and a funeral to get through and we’ll be living la vida loca on a 12 day Tom Waits Extravaganza.

Trying to be a great neice

I visited my great aunt last week. She is in a nursing home in a small village called Steeton, just outside Keighley in West Yorkshire. A sign by the side of the only road into Steeton, reads “Welcome to Steeton. Home of the Steeton Male Voice Choir.” The home is big and seems to be a hotbed of geriatric militancy. My great aunt, who has always been forthcoming with her opinions, had made a window in her busy schedule that day to air her grievances at the residents’ meeting but, when I got there, she was fast asleep in a dusky pink velour armchair, looking much smaller than when I last saw her.

Lillie is 89 and very distressed to have been involuntarily relocated from the house she has lived in all her life. But she was putting a brave face on it and is much perkier than I had expected.

One day she had come across a “big black African man… very good looking” rummaging around her bedroom drawers. When she asked if she could help him at all, he said he was looking for her bra and knickers. My aging spinster aunt, understandably taken aback, asked why. “Because I am going to give you a bath… come on, love!” Lillie, bless her, took it all in her stride and afterwards told Mum, “Ooh, it were a right grand bath!”

Not everything in the home seems to be as satisfying as being bathed by a big handsome man. Lillie decided to vary her diet one morning and ordered the 'poached egg on toast' for her breakfast. When the meal actually arrived it was nothing but a poached yolk, with not a speck of white to be seen, plonked, breadless, in the middle of a large white dinner plate.

The health authority has been assessing Lillie’s abilities to look after herself, before deciding whether to let her go back to her own house again. She has had to prove that she can wash herself standing up at the sink, from head to foot, and that she hasn’t lost her marbles. She got ten out of ten on the intelligence test, which included having to write the word ‘world’ backwards. Lillie thought this was very pedestrian and told the assessor that she could not imagine anyone not being able to do this. “You’d be surprised” came the jaded reply. I'm not surprised at all! Nursing homes are seething with vague old codgers for whom mild dyslexia would be the least of their problems. There’s a lady in Glenside who sometimes stops my grandpa in the corridor when she’s zimmering towards the bathroom and asks in a quivery voice, “Is this the way to Newton Poppleton?”

One of the key parts of the competence assessment involves checking whether the patient can make a cup of tea for themselves. It is so good to be in Blighty!

Hump Day

Wednesdays. Bloody Wednesdays, eh? ‘Hump day’ according to Trixie, who knows about these sort of things.

I missed what Ms S V Strunckel predicted I might have in store this week but the chaos she foresaw for the last seven days most certainly went off big style.

Manchester. Christ. A city which seems to get further and further away from London every time I travel there. I failed miserably to tempt my husband to join me on my business trip. The idea of languishing in the car while I long-windedly blathered out a sales pitch to a brown corduroy-clad client with a surprisingly weak handshake just did not appeal to him for some reason.

And so the motorways stretched out before me like an endless grey roller coaster ghost track. Despite me leaving Wapping at lunchtime, the autumn night came in swiftly and caught up with me before I’d reached my hotel. I was tired and totally fucked off. Our trusty car, the Slipper, looked like a student bedroom, having got messier with every near-fatal 80 mph CD change and a flimsy carrier-bagful of entirely nutrition-less road snacks.

The hypnotic horror of repeatedly driving round and round Manchester’s inner ring road, trying to find the entrance to the car park of the Malmaison hotel was shattered when Mum called my mobile phone. I yanked the Slipper to the side of the road and sat on double yellow lines with the clicking of the hazard lights deafening me in the dark. This was a first – I usually seem to think that it is a good idea, and, in fact, clever to drive whilst talking on my mobile. I patiently justify this, to anyone who will care to listen, by explaining that the Slipper is an automatic car and therefore does not require two hands at all times to be safely and successfully driven.

Listening to my beloved Mum’s fraught voice, I felt a million miles away from her, from Matt and from my bastard hotel. I was temporarily homeless in the grim North and nothing seemed quite real. Mum told me that Uncle Jesse was very poorly and that things looked bad. The details just pricked at the side of my scalp without really sinking in.

In the Malmaison, I was given a small single corner room, which had been put together at very strange angles, its Feng Shui all on the piss. After eating gratinated comfort food and watching some rubbish television, I fell asleep hugging a pillow-Matt and woke just before 5 am, about when Jesse died, feeling like a breath of air had been knocked out of me. Walking to the car park, I saw a red pencil, capped with the blue lid of a ballpoint pen, nestled in the gutter next to the kerb and wondered, for far too long, why was it like that and how had it got there.

My (great) uncle Jesse

I had an uncle once who had a sausage dog draught excluder. He was my great uncle, actually. On my dad’s side. He had a very tidy garage (unlike my dad). He lived in a bungalow, which smelt of Tupperware and cold tar soap. My uncle very much liked to watch tennis on the television but he would sometimes say terrible (unrepeatable) things about the players. When we were little, my uncle made everything fun. He would often give things to me and to my brother. Ordinary things that would seem like treasure to us. He would talk in funny voices. I thought he was a wizard. At the weekends, my uncle would drive me around the countryside, helping me to find good things to draw for my art homework. My uncle was very patient and very encouraging. He drank milky tea and holidayed in Malta. He told me he had been in love with a lady who married someone else whilst my uncle was posted overseas by the army. My uncle’s vegetables had to be well-cooked. He could always be persuaded to have second helpings. According to my uncle, women shouldn’t mow lawns or become priests. He always had a stash of boiled travel sweets (those ones rolled in icing sugar) in little tins in his car. There was a compass on the dashboard. My uncle insisted that he could never eat garlic (although he didn’t seem to mind it in the chestnut stuffing at Christmas). He had five different sets of coffee cups stored in a table drawer alongside dark brown sugar crystals in a china lidded pot shaped like a sack. My uncle was born into a huge family, which, he claimed, could be traced back to the king of Bohemia, pre 1526. He always smelt nice. My uncle was a solicitor. He wrote up my first will, which was (implausibly) witnessed by a widow and a magician. He was a keen sportsman and an exceptional badminton player until the onset of arthritis ground him to a halt. And when he couldn’t move anywhere much anymore, when his walking sticks and flat caps lay untouched in his den, my uncle travelled in his dreams, always talking up big plans to go away somewhere. He loved to be by the sea. He yearned constantly to be in Norway or Portugal or Torquay. My uncle was of ample girth, a colossus. My uncle was a Freemason. My uncle helped me to learn to drive and sometimes fell asleep in the car. I took this as a compliment. My uncle was almost always in pain but only occasionally grumpy. He called me ‘flower’ and loved me dearly. I loved him back big time. He made me feel special. My uncle was always there. Always somewhere I could find him. And then my uncle died last Wednesday when I was very far away and worrying about someone else. I miss him terrible much.

Smelling of Burnt

It rained all day on Saturday. Big heavy wet rain. We finally tackled the visit to the launderette to purge the winter quilt of Minnie pee. It was a fairly grim experience, not helped by the dark fucking relentless weather. To avoid eyeballing any of the pissed-off people using the decrepit washing machines, I tried staring out onto the Bethnal Green Road. The shop opposite is “Trotter’s Jewellers – Buyers of Gold and Silver”, which if their sign is to be believed is “Number 1 in the UK for Bling! Bling!” Depressed by the view, I turned my gaze back towards the humming, rattling, whirring machines. Our tumble dryer was overheating. I noted the warning next to the coin slot, “Remove clothes from dryer as soon as it stops. This keeps wrinkles from setting in and reduces the possibility of spontaneous combustion”.

We got home soaked to the skin and with the quilt now just smelling of Burnt.

Monday again. According to Shelley von Strunkel, this week’s eclipse will throw everything into chaos. Great. I’ve been sacked by my doctor. After 15 happy years, the boundaries have changed and I am no longer in the Tower Medical Centre’s catchment area. No one wants new patients, with the NHS on the verge of collapse and all that, and the surgery I have been sent to has a kind of gloomy eastern European feel to it. The sallow reception staff are beleaguered to the point of having hiccups. They’ll take me on for now, if I complete a questionnaire and wee in a jar, but I may need to find a new practice soon. I’ll try not to get attached to the new GP. My last one was an absolute diamond. I'll miss him.

I exit the new health centre cheerlessly and walk slowly to work, feeling that familiar start-of-the-week numbness. The Whitechapel market is frantic and there are hordes of people weaving all over the place. I pass by old graffiti – “I love you whitever your name is” and new graffiti – “Bitch Magnet”; past the Lahore restaurant where the balti is so spicy that it once made Dirty Birty cry; past an albino girl in big orange glasses resembling a Spielberg alien; down the streets behind the hospital where recorded announcements boom out from futuristic devices attached to lamp posts urging visitors, in a male voice from the 1950s, not to leave valuables on display in their cars; past carpets of pigeon droppings; past the cheerful yellow and blue Ludlow Thompson Beetles; past several discarded five-gallon cans of vegetable oil; past hundreds of thousands of office workers having a nervous crafty fag outside their buildings; past “The Codfather” Fish & Chip shop; past the feckless edgy eye-contact youths on the steps of the Look Ahead rehab hostel; past the posh nursery in the old gothic church; past the smokers outside my office, past Keith, the laughably ineffectual security guard, into the lift up to my floor. I say hello to everyone, sit down at my computer and log on. Almost instantly I stumble across another hilarious example of how the world is going completely stark raving mad.

The demise of vulgarity

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No hasty pudding

They say that there is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness”. So I will try not to get too carried away with re-publishing amusing small ads.

Some are just irresistible though… This time brought to you care of the Framley Examiner, a publication which our old mucker “Mad” Stu (who is nothing if not tall) drew to my attention, many moons ago.

Check out such classics as:

Cock like a telegraph pole, shoulders like an otter. Is this you? Box FE8951

North Sockford, good-looking professional male, 34, WLTM genuinely caring lady who will not swallow my heart whole and then shit it out onto a raging bonfire of spite. Box FE8411

Met at Paul Weller gig. I flirted. You sang and played acoustic version of “That’s Entertainment”. Who were you mystery man? Box FE8799

Private dancer, dancer for money, WLTM any other squaddies from the 24th Framley Fusiliers for fun, friendship, maybe war. Box FE9891


More here.

Missing the "interview cycle"

London is very dark today. The Pickle is swathed in a wet cloud. All the scowling worker faces were half hidden under hoods or books or brollies or briefcases as I rushed to work in the rain, clutching my broken umbrella. Everything was moving in rivers, shuddles, drips, thick speckled air. The caretaker for the Rise building was on his knees picking up sycamore propellers from the drive leading up to the gates. I caught his eye as I passed by and smiled. He looked embarrassed.

Another cat has gone missing from a house by Shadwell Basin. Isabella. There are fading signs on the trees. I read the muffled words, with neither sight nor sound of another living creature for as long as I stood there. Her sister was lost in July. “Neither were known to roam”. Their owners are devastated. The autumn leaves are silently filling the canal, scurried by ground gusts, landing like ducks on the abandoned surface of the dull lemon water. I found the birds further along the path on a black lily pond. Busy, happy ducks, calm and serene, with orange withered angled legs. Flappy deformed feet perfectly still then paddling like crazy then perfectly still.


I had a little dream that isn’t going to come true.
There is no interest in my idea.
I’m dejected, rejected, wishing I had never even asked.

The world’s gone mad. Between reckless acts on Ebay and this.

It has been a bleak day. It is definitely time to go home.

My teeth are quite lovely

On Saturday, my husband received a letter from the United States of America. Pretty cool, getting written to by an entire nation. It was an innocuous letter – something about medicare premiums. It was not related to the furore over the Guardian Clark County campaign.

The response to that has been predictable.

What I really want to know is why the Americans think we Brits have such bad teeth?

The latest British buzzword has been revealed and I have never even heard of it. Sigh. I did learn a new real word today though: lusophone. I am definitely not a lusophone. My beloved friend Jiz will concur. We tried to learn Portuguese on an ill-fated trip to the Iberian peninsula some years ago but it sounded rather like Russian and, within moments, the Learn-A-New-Language-In-No-Time cassette was hurled into the back seat of our MX3, never to be listened to again. Jiz, bless her, took on the mantle of conversing with the natives. Her husband (Haggis) and I just thought it was clever to ‘speak the lingo’ by prefixing every English noun with ‘El’ and ending each word with –os ("What a beautiful el churchos!"). I am ashamed to say that we also took advantage of Jiz’s good nature and ingenuous willingness to translate for the group. Haggis pushed her one conjugation too far however when he sent her to the bar to get a pint of Guinness and instructed her to “ask them if they could keep one in the pipes” for him. The subjunctive was never a strong point for Jiz or me. In any language.

“But what’s the latest news about wine?” I hear you slur. Well, we all know that red wine (“in moderation”) is good for us but did you know that high altitude grapes have more antioxidants because they are exposed to more UV? Argentinian reds, grown at more than 1km above sea level are the way forward, apparently.

Just remember, the first one’s always free. Cheers. Salud. Slainte. May your homes always be too small to hold all your friends.

Better than being dead

The Mighty R just chuckled evilly and emailed me this:

Teen's dying wish

Much more importantly, I read a wonderful piece about the inimitable Sir John Mortimer in the Times from last week – A Day in the Life

"Even when you've lived a long time, you don't feel much older than 11 inside. It's just that the bits fall off, which is ghastly but, on the whole, very much better than being dead."

Winter's coming...

I’ve decided to model my sales and management techniques on Al Swearengen (Ian McShane in Deadwood). He just has a great way with words.
“Here's my counter-offer to your counter-offer: go fuck yourself.”
“I want to know who cut the cheese. ”
“Don't play that shit where you make me drag your words out. Declare, or shut the fuck up.”
“I ain't pissed off. I'm in fucking wonderment. I'm waiting to be kept happy by another fucking fairytale.”
“In life you have to do a lot of things you don't fucking want to do. Many times, that's what the fuck life is... one vile fucking task after another.”
“Get the fuck out of here, doc. I'm working on my deployments and flanking manoeuvres.”
“Get a fucking haircut. Looks like your mother fucked a monkey.”

The meteorologists (charlatans) are predicting an extremely cold winter.

It is time to prepare. In some parts the world, of course, this might entail setting beaver traps before the swamps freeze to ensure a supply of warm winter coats. Or checking the roof to make sure there are no holes and it’s secure for the burden of snow. Collecting fuel. Making sure there is plenty of food and shelter for the animals.

For me, it means digging through a cupboard to find a woolly hat and taking the cat piss quilt to the launderette.

Whilst I was in Arizona, Minniecat went through a rather disturbed phase and decided to relieve her anxieties through the medium of wee, all over our 9 tog winter quilt. She made patterns and everything. We avoided tackling this particular domestic niggle by cramming the offending stinky duvet into a bin bag and shoving it on top of a wardrobe. Now, apparently, is the time to face up to our laundrily responsibilities.

They closed down my art course, as I knew they would (paucity of students). It is very sad. I arrived at class a little late on Tuesday to find some bloke with a geet big wooden staff, stark bollock naked, in an almost biblical pose. We got to sketch this strange chap (and his nude bollocks) from nine different angles around the studio before being packed off home for the last time, with all our work in a big plastic wallet.

I suppose it suits my itinerant Gemini nature to jump from one project to another without commitment so I am looking at it philosophically. According to Shelley Von Strunckel, this week has been all to do with “multiples eclipses of the Sun, volatile Mars and your ruler, Mercury”. Ok then. Explains the guy with his cock out.

LRB Small Ads

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You were tanked-up on absinthe at the Rimbaud discussion in the LR Bookshop. The curl of your hair and the hole in your tights led me to believe it was neither the first nor the last time. But my god did I love you. Man, 42. I’m afraid next time I won’t be able to lend you the taxi fare home. Box no. 19/10

Put a sock in it! Now two shots of rum. OK, some fresh-squeezed O.J. And some Lego. Surrealist cocktail-maker and bar-fly guerrilla (M,35) seeks lady-friend to sample the chewiest Bloody Marys and the messiest kitchen work surfaces this side of the Humber. Box no 19/11

“I was in the war you know”. These and other tales of mind-numbing emptiness from incontinent father (81) of ‘ungrateful turd’ of a son (46) stupid enough not to change the locks on his Barnstead semi back in 1991 when his wife and kids were still with him and nursing home saving schemes had yet to go tits up. Kick me at box no. 20/06

Either you’re Diane Lane or you’re not Diane Lane. Don’t toy with me. Man, 71. Likes Diane Lane. Box no. 19/09

Too Small Boots

My boots are too small.
They were made for someone else’s feet
And a very different sort of terrain.
I have blistered heels.
My toes might as well have been run over by a large car
Full of an entire family of fatties.

I wear thick climbing socks
In an attempt to stretch my too small boots,
And also to make them feel a bit more at home.
This is Whitechapel. Not the Dolomites.

We traverse the Commercial Road.
But it is not a col, impassable due to heavy snowfall.
There are no dead mountaineers,
Perfectly preserved in the ice.
Just some dog poo and
Bones from a Halal Perfect Fried Chicken
By the gate to Altab Ali park.
The only Via Ferrata route is on the DLR.
No Sherpas. No pitons or crevasses or crampons.
There’s no need to abseil in Whitechapel.
Or hike across screes or glaciers.
This isn’t altitude sickness. It's just a slight headache.

But we are making the best of it, I and my too small boots,
Glissading whenever we can on wet leaves.

In spite of the pain and strong sense of not belonging,
We complete the ascent of the North Face
Of the steps up in to the office.

EC3

Something is blinking on the bank
By the cement block track where the
Docklands train rattles away.

Drizzle smudges London-grey
And apricot eyelashed streetlamps.
A yellow tie choked albino man
Waits for the traffic,
Frowning to stop the rain blur.
Outsize umbrella arcs of dripping colour logo
Bob on Seething Lane,
Crutched Friars, Savage Gardens.

Head down, watching office boxes
Upside down in wetsheen slabs,
I’ve got a belly full of fear,
£55 and a moleskine in my pocket.

Making many mental lists of the great
reasons why I’m angry
which are getting shorter
all the time.

Gravel on the road

I am surprisingly upset by the news of Christopher Reeve’s death. I remember being in a dark paint-peeled bar in New York with Dorothy the night they wheeled him out for the 1996 Academy Awards. She yelled out, “YOU ARE ONE SICK NATION” and, apart from being incredibly embarrassed by her outburst, I didn’t think I cared either way.

But it seems I do.

Part of it is the tragedy that someone with such influence, so determined to walk again and who had campaigned tirelessly for stem cell research has just suddenly gone. Maybe all he ever did was give false hope to a load of people with SCI and his passing is just the cold light of day on a sad, quiet Monday morning.

There’s a chill wind here in London today. It has blown the top layer of rubbish off the bins’ weekend overflows, nudging cartons and bottles and bags down streets in a happy, grubby dance. Songs from Real Gone are still chugging and clanging through my mind like a train of demonic echoes.

Our trying-for-a-baby appointment came through from Barts. We will be attending the Centre for Reproductive Medicine on November 29th. The address of that wing of the hospital is, rather alarmingly, ‘Little Britain’. Apparently the health authority does not fund fertility treatment so they have sent us a list of 'general costs' for our 'attention'. Almost everything on the list sounds like it has come from the future. Transvaginal ultrasound scan. Follicle tracking. Semen cryopreservation (annual storage fee £134). And frankly, it is all a bit avian. Egg collection under sedation. Assisted hatching.

There is no charge for counselling.

My father's shoes are missing

Good grief. I have just discovered that someone I met at university once or twice through some mutual friends and who is just half a year older than I am, is the director of the new Wyndhams Theatre play, Bog of Cats. “Leading a cast of 11, Oscar winning actress Holly Hunter makes her West End debut in this powerful and poetic tale.” Directed by Dominic Cooke. Good on him. I have totally wasted my life.

J is complaining that his waistline has thickened. He is now 32 and a HALF around the middle. He’s off to a wedding tomorrow at a golf club in Rickmansworth. My brother told me that he once arrived at the self same place in a tatty Ford Escort and was thoroughly embarrassed to be parking his car next to all the shiny brand new swanky Jags and Mercs and Porsches. Welcome relief then when his mate Dave screeched up in the work’s dirty white Bedford van emblazoned with the company name and slogan: “ Watford Blinds – if you don’t use us, it’s curtains!”

Dad has lost his best shoes. A complete mystery.

What the hell is an iPod?

I always thought Donald Sutherland was British. But he’s actually from Canada. Which is where Kitty is right now. She absconded, leaving me in a state of high confusion. And now there are deadlines looming and I am being asked questions that I don’t understand, let alone know the answer to.

My head is full of Real Gone and I am totally smitten but going quietly insane at the same time. The repeating songs aching in my brain are alternating between Don’t Go into that Barn, Sins of the Father, Hoist the Rag. It is wearing me out. Feels like drug addiction.

L called me last night, full of excitement that he has taken out a lease on an apartment in Barcelona. He furnished it with the help of Ikea and was in hysterics to hear exactly the same conversations take place there as you can hear in Croydon or Brent Cross.

Her: “Waou – this is ONLY ten euros….”
Him: “We’ve already got one of those”
Her: “Ten euros – you can’t go wrong for ten euros… isn’t it lovely?”
Him: “But we don’t need one”
Her: “TEN EUROS”
Him: [gives her a weary look]
Her: “Well I want it. I am going to get it. It is only 10 euros, for fuck’s sake!”


We watched the Cold Mountain DVD after M fixed some inexplicable technostrikes which, bizarrely, hit the computer, the Sky box and my phone. The film made me cry, big time, but it also irritated me rather because some of the accents were all over the place. Mind you, we both got teary just watching the trailer for Seabiscuit and promised each other that no one else would be invited to view it with us so we could weep with impunity.

Someone just explained iPods to me and now I want one.

Hurtling over planets

Today my mind is full of nostalgia and thin shivery ghosts. Seems like a good day to start writing everything down before it slips away forever.

Years from now

You stand at the powdery edge of the ocean, squinting at the trembling horizon. Cliff birds wail and hoop, flecking the filmy air. You catch sight of ancient skies and roses, ponds in granite and gorse and grains of pollen, dandelion and deserts, meadows and mice and mountain streams. You fly over estuaries and elephants, shells and snow and trees, tapestry of rock, quilt of fields, mosaic of flowers, to eat apricots with angels. Sea spray rises, sucking back through pebbles. A mossy forest carpet creeps towards the gorge, plummeting blue-green and wiry. Swans cross the tundra, under a kaleidoscope of stars. Grizzled dust is moved off by dragonflies, with titian wings, to tributary and steppe. You glimpse ocelot, chameleon, pelican and ape. Anemone and marble recline, trembling, in wild water. The sidewinder is kissed by the gentle maw of a zephyr, whilst you are skimming over thunderglades and poppy clouds to tilt continents with gods. You witness wind shaping milk dunes and a reef silenced by the screech-owl. In thrall of starfish and goblins, you gaze at empyrean, painted heights. Voles dance in tiny, darkened pond-holes as you make rain with the ghosts. You soar with the prophets, mercurial and boundless, over iguanodon and mule, minotaur and lobster, gryfen-wolf and bat, glacier and peachwood, jet and flint and loam. Flash floods scoop up your cradle, ready for the new century. And you can hurtle over planets, with your alchemy of dreams.