Friday night fever
It’s Friday night and some lucky girl is having a date with that guy I passed on the pavement on the way home. I was engulfed in a cloud of cheap but potent aftershave – I guess it is a way to sweep a girl off her feet.

It’s Friday night and tonight for the first time ever on prime time teevee, a French channel is showing a programme on ‘Gay culture’. Not surprisingly gay matters are still carefully kept under the rug in France, so tonight is a big night. It’s not that French people don’t know that there is such a thing as homosexuals - Queer as folk was shown on a cable channel and caused many letters of complaints from outraged viewers. We have our fair share of faggot jokes. In a country where racism and anti-semitism are severely reproved, it’s still ok to make sexist or homophobic comments.
But, but, I am told, mentalities are evolving – meaning that now we’re moving from gay invisibility into the realm of condescending voyeurism. What’s planned for tonight- the usual clichés about party people, pop and poppers. Wait, not popper, that’s too rude. A safe display of campness for the average viewer. Be gay but keep it pretty – and of course, no mention of sex. That’s just wrong.
I guess it’s a start.
What’s more, a gay channel is about to kick off in a few weeks – christened, originally enough- Pink TV. (It’s so much cooler than télévision rose.) It will offer a French rip-off of An eye for a queer guy and regular soft porn flicks.

As always, I can’t help but wonder – what about the girls?
Wait, it’s France.
Oh, right.

So it snowed, about four flakes in all, which was enough for me to slip ungracefully on the grey crust and almost break my bum a number of times. Of course the whole of England had to grind to a halt - no matter what it'll always be the wrong kind of snow. Leaves on the tracks? Melting tracks, even? My feeling of exasperation at the inability of LT to cope with the slightest weather phenomenon was echoed in today's metro :

"A quick note to London Underground: the white fluffy stuff currently falling from the sky is called snow. It is not a rain of frogs, The Winged Victory of Samothrace, or Rodan the flying monster. Furthermore it is the right kind of snow (ie the kind that doesn't fall underground), so let's have the trains running properly, eh?

And if you are really stuck, give the Swedish transport authorities a call and ask them how they manage to run a seamless, delay-free service through ice, snow and sub-zero temperatures." Anthony O' Neill, NW1

Thank you for that.

Group hug!

Another old favourite :
grouphug
and no, none of the entries are mine.

Thoughts as I'm pondering over possible candidates' cvs

Gü makes kick ass chocolate puds with raspberry compote at the bottom. Oh yes.

I think lesbian bed death should only mean that you shag so hard that the bed breaks.

Today I explained to my shrink what a blog was. His eyebrows totally left his forehead.

Rumour has it that it should snow on Wednesday. Yay! This country can' t cope with snow or leaves or ice or hot weather, so schools wil close down!

On January 10th a French guy, young and flippant as the French can be, travelling on American airlines, happened to spend too long in the john. What he was doing in there we’ll never know, maybe trying to join the Mile High club on his own (there just isn’t room for two in there anyway). The story really starts when a concerned stewardess knocked on the door. On his way out he said - don’t worry, I didn’t put a bomb in there.

The point of that story is that it was a joke. The stewardess wasn’t amused; as a result he was charged and until today was facing four years in the can. The other one, the pound-my-ass kind of can.
Today was the trial; he pleaded guilty for inappropriate behaviour and was released against a cheque for $690.
What interests me in this is the coverage it got in the French media. It’s not just an innocuous piece of news – are there any? I wonder if it’s not a half amused, half sneaky attempt at settling scores, even in a minute way, after all the shit that France got in the US of A press.
To me, what this whole incident says is: that is so typical. Those Yankees think they’re so powerful- but they really are big bullies devoid of a sense of humour. Look at us – we have every right to be indignant but we’ll report that with the phlegm that they did not even suspect we possess. We’re so cool. And one point to us.

I’ll just keep my mouth firmly shut next time I fly with an American company, then.

I’ve just had a Goth revival. In my room, by myself, with the door firmly shut against the world- just the way it happened the first time round- in true Goth fashion. I unearthed and dusted Sisters of Mercy and Rosetta Stone. Dug out Bauhaus and Alien sex fiend and The Virgin Prunes. Fifteen years on, I didn’t succumb to the appeal of the make up box - white base doesn’t look too good on wrinkles and anyway I threw all that greasy stuff out a long time ago, albeit with a heavy heart.
Good times, people, good times.
So I gazed longingly at shots of Daniel Ash - the cheekbones, the hair, the leather pants- and reminisced about it all; and also about that time when my uncle and cousins came to visit, and mindlessly ventured into my cave-like, cobwebbed bedroom (thanks are due to the London Dungeon souvenir shop). They stayed for about four seconds and were later heard pondering over my sanity.
Yes, good times.
Bauhaus were gods.

On a completely unrelated topic, (no, really- Goths do not really want to hang themselves), some new and obviously very controversial study was published by some guy – whose name I don’t remember –who claims that suicide can be positively correlated with intelligence — in other words, the smarter people are, the more likely they are to kill themselves.
Whenever something like that surfaces, I can’t help but feel mildly offended, being still alive and all.
Anyway.
It would explain why geniuses often end up offing themselves, and I ‘m not planning on it. Much.
But I digress.
So. That guy argues that the higher rate of Western suicide could be because people are, on average, more intelligent in the Western world. He’s compared national IQ levels with suicide rates. And the thing is, wherever you look, and whatever the culture, the same pattern can be seen: in Azerbaijan, Greece, Kuwait and Chile there are lower average IQ levels and lower suicide rates; in Austria, Korea, Singapore and Norway there are higher average IQ levels and higher suicide rates. He claims that for suicide to take place, a certain threshold of intelligence must be crossed.

I say, balls.
First of all, writers, psychologists and philosophers have long argued over the reasons for suicide. The problem is that statistics on the subject are notoriously slippery.
Take seasonal variations. I’ll bet anything that more people will feel the attraction of the six-storey building on a cold February morning in Hull than on a sunny August day in, let’s say, Cannes. Winter blues, climate and light and all that. Apparently suicidal thoughts reach a peak in January (when the Samaritans get most calls).
Yet in the West the peak months for actual suicide attempts are, universally, April, May and June. Yeah, I had a little brother who, last April, illustrated that data pretty well.
Also, most sociologists have argued that high suicide rates are caused by modern Western life — that something in urbanised, industrialised society alienates us from friends, faith and family, the mainstays of human happiness. Ok, fine. I’d give faith a beyond-the-religious definition.
So, I’m tempted to add that it’s not intelligence but self-awareness that, in my mind, pushes someone to suicide. Self-awareness, which comes, often but not always, with education – of which intelligence is only a corollary. The more educated we are, the more able to see just how crap it all is? What about the dissatisfaction growing into despair at the constantly growing gap between what we have and what we want, in a world when the condition to happiness is to be just about everything the media we created throw at us? Always young, always fertile in one way or another, potent, able, bouncy. That’s my way of saying a 19-year-old blonde with bleached teeth, big tits and lots of cash.
Well that’s not very clever; I just got myself all depressed now.

Crisis
I wish I hadn’t sold my copy of Lesbianism made easy on ebay for £5. It’s hard being without direction, you know.
I need my textbook back. The slim volume that was supposed to throw open the secret compartments of Sapphic joy – and possibly solve my identity crisis and other related problems. I was so intent on getting rid of just about everything -save the cat and my 100% Irish linen bed sheets- that I, carelessly, flippantly, sold it to a less enlightened being. No more source of wisdom. How do I cope with the fact that lesbians are everywhere – choosing pets, hiring removal vans, posing for magazine spreads, having sex with everyone but me – since the one I’d like to be having sex with in a removal van is all the way over there when I am over here. How do I cope with this long-distance thing? How do I cope on Thursday evenings when the cat and the linen bed sheets are all I come home to – and on that day, the cat pukes his dinner prawns? I reckon Pining made less agonizing needs to be written.

In the meantime, I’m selling my stuff on ebay. I’m very competitive. I have The Master’s Manual left, as well as Macho Sluts and Spank Me Silly. I made that last one up. Anyhow, your SAE gets a full list.

The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals, and 362 to heterosexuals.
This doesn't mean God doesn't love heterosexuals, it's just that they need more supervision.

It's a cruel sport -but so much fun.

penguins




Can you beat me? I sent the penguin flying at 320 m!

I make such good use of my free time.

It's Monday! It's Grocery shopping day!
On a good day, I like flirting with shop assistants.
Not just shop assistants, also Post Office people, and supermarket cashiers. Policemen. The nice man at the newsagents. Unfortunately bus drivers are now walled behind a security screen and therefore not as approachable as they used to. On a good day, I like waltzing into the shop. On a good day, I will smile and make small talk as I pocket my change. On a good day I will be effusively grateful about the quality of service. Good days make up for the fact that
ordinary life is indeed pretty complicated stuff.

After waltzing into Sainsbury’s, I stood in the shampoo aisle for a good ten minutes; which one to buy? I patted my hair, wondering if the ‘for limp, sad hair’ diagnosis should apply to me; I sniggered at the promise of ‘beach hair all day – for that surfers’ messed up look, all day’. I made a face at the rotten fruit smell of herbal essence – that’s the one with the idiotic advert of the woman shampooing her hair with orgasmic cries in a court of law. I don’t think I would have bought if even if I’d liked the smell, given how much I resent that advert. In the end I picked the shampoo that offered to get my hair clean. I could hear at the back of my head my grandmother’s voice claiming to add a few drops of bleach to a pail of water – and presto, all purpose body and hair cleaner.
Really, she does. And she still has hair.

The woman in front of me in the queue had turned inside out her regulation Sainsbury’s shopping bag; it’s probably uncool to walk around with a bright orange Sainsbury’s bag. I have one. Shouldn’t that be enough to make it cool?

I really don’t have a point today.

Bastards!
It’s Saturday morning, therefore too early for words; all the outside doors are open so that we can enjoy a refreshing 2° C breeze; and a bunch of strangers, after transporting muddy equipment through our flat, are erecting scaffolding in the back yard. Not for my benefit, oh no, it’s the bastard neighbours upstairs. They like us to share in whatever they’re doing. If they’re enjoying a morning spot of DIY, we know. If they’re arguing over the uncooked potatoes, we know. If England is winning the rugby, we know. If one of them is taking a leak, we can hear that too. The only thing they don’t seem to do, ever – or, trust me, we would know- is shag. And now I got the scaffolding wake up call – I’m a furry little ball of nerves, and the cat isn’t doing much better. He’s crawled behind the washing machine, filling his imaginary trousers. He was brought up by a couple of misanthropists and has exceeded all our expectations. I’m just annoyed and sleepy. And hungry. The kitchen is cold.

I wonder what I'll be like when I'm old.

This my new favourite site in the whole world (apart from my girlfriend's blog, of course)

Just what the world needed. lego porn.

I’ve just called my bank.
Just how many loops do we have to jump through before getting to talk to a human being?
I bet we’ll be getting something like this soon:

Thank you for calling the Fire station. Your call is important to us.
If you can smell smoke, please press 1
If you are singed, please press 2.
If you are losing consciousness, please press 3.
For any other option, please wait for an operator.

You are singed.
If your hair is singed, please press 1
If your clothes are burning, please press 2
If your skin is blistered, please press 3
For any other option, please wait for an operator.

Your hair is singed.
If your hair is blond, please press 1.
If you’re a brunette, please press 2
If your hair is red, please press 3.

Your hair is red.
Oh dear.
Please hold on – you are 47th in the queue.
Your call is important to us.
Please hold on.
An operator will answer you shortly.
Your call is important to us.
Please hold on.


Pah. I haven’t been able to take firemen seriously since I heard about that bunch of guys who’d taken to organise paying orgies in their fire station, took pictures, put them on the web- and were found out. It’s not illegal in itself, but it just doesn’t look good, does it.

There’s no stopping it.
As I was eagerly browsing through my brand new Spring/ Summer La Redoute mail order catalogue I stumbled upon a double page of lingerie devoted to ‘ Life after mastectomy’.
I cried.
Later I heard the story of an entomologist who spent six months in Latin America catching thousands of priceless specimens of rare butterflies. At El Passo, the American custom officer immediately confiscated the whole lot and threw it into the bin. That day the butterfly collector decided to change jobs.
I cried some more.

I can’t wait until menopause.

The loneliness of the long-distance bawler.
Last night I had an evening of fun and frolics with my favourite blonde boy. The one who will be leaving this place in favour of Japanese cheekbones and karaoke bars - the good life of an ex pat in Hiroshima. I’m devastated, in the most selfish way possible.
We met up just as I’d seen Lost in Translation, and its take on Tokyo life as lived by two clueless, transient, yet stuck, westerners. A good film, funny and romantic and melancholy. Of course the rest of the planet, including the suburbs of Ouagadougou, Burkina Fasso, have already seen it, since England has the slowest distribution circuit in the world. I pestered M all evening to convince him to go see it too. He actually knows quite a bit of Japanese. At any rate, he knows how to say that he hasn’t got a small dick.
But- PMT. I shed a few unnecessary tears towards the end, walked out of the cinema and into the night, filled to the brim with warm and fuzzy feelings towards my fellow human beings. I begged a Big Issue vendor for his last copy in exchange for my unworthy £1.20. At the tube station some kind and generous soul gave me his Zone 1/2 travelcard - I thanked him with a stifled sob of gratitude. On the Picadilly line train, I wept reading my Big Issue. By the time I got to the pub to meet M I had eyes like an albino rabbit. We hugged and drank and chatted. Acceptably bland fare was consumed in some trendy Soho dive. By the third glass of wine I was ready to squeeze him and beg him no to go, but I am a grown up now so I blew my nose discreetly in the loo. Later I begged to not go to the bars with the lesbians cos I looked crap by then, my eye make-up amply diluted. Sat on our lego-like seats, under the thirty-two mini-disco balls, we stared longingly/critically at the snogging couples on our right and the cruising singletons on our left. I cried quietly cos I was missing my girl. (It’s not done to stare but they were just too cute.) I bawled most of my way home.

No, not the Comfy Chair !

I’m going to resist my schoolteacher tendency for the didactic approach and just tell you about my day. Just because I can.
So I fine-tuned and practiced my rusty social skills all day, dealing with rich parents who want to know why their money isn’t buying their sprogs garlands of A*. Funny how some of them tend to overlook determining factors such as motivation and personal work. After 5 hours of positively ice-melting smiles on my behalf, my face was hurting, so I went to sulk in some coffee place on the high street. Sulking is relaxing. Relaxing was the whole point – but, lo and behold, all the comfy chairs have vanished. Thou shalt be comfy no more. It’s the end of coffee house slobbing out.
There was some article in an economics publication some time ago about how the starbuckneropubliccafes of this world had decided that too much comfort was bad for business. Customers who park their ample behinds in an armchair stay parked too long. They don’t keep consuming – they read the Sunday papers instead. Couldn’t have that. So now we have measly plywood chairs. They’ll be removing the backs next.

So here I was, idle on a Friday night, pissed off about having to go to work tomorrow - crazy ass job, on a Saturday; I gave some thought to giving my notice, got over it, had thirteen chocolate trufles, then realized that I was grumpy mainly from missing my girlfriend across the pond and all of my friends that I've been neglecting for the past few months. Just as well I live with one and work with another. Soon my favourite cute boy is moving to fucking Japan. I knew I should have sabotaged his interview. I'm sad. And when I'm sad I don't go out so I neglect my friends even more.
Soon I'll just move into one of those artificial caves that Victorian landscape gardeners were so fond of - complete with Resident Hermit and a a-ha for the most style conscious. That'll be me. The Chiswick Hermit. Small children will come and throw stones at my disheveled and tragic figure.
I'm digressing. Where was I- yeah. People.
I've always suspected that long distance relationships were for those who were scared of the real thing. Not brave enough for the daily grind, the bathroom sharing, the romance-stifling trips to sainsbury's, the council tax paying, the tub cleaning. Hey , I know someone I'd happily go to sainsbury's with, and it'd be fun. Also it turns her on when I clean the bathtub.
THis whole long distance business is, as I've found out, not for the faint hearted. That's why I didn't want to have one, and then, bam, just when I was busy humping someone else, I bumped into that woman who made me laugh by running like a hedgehog and made me all warm and fluffy inside , and I was smitten and shit. I'm seriously hooked. The first thing I do when I get to work in the morning is to cross off the day in my diary, stare at the page in disbelief, count the months/weeks/days until my job and my budget allow me to fly to Her again. I can't start work until that daily little ritual has been carried out. Of course it sucks more when I don't know when the next plane will be.
Right now I don't know when the next plane will be. Luckily there are some chocolate trufles left.

Of course, cynicism aside, I'm all in favour of lesbian visibility and should that program ever be aired in Britain I'll make a point of watching it.
On the same note, there was a rather wonderful article in the Observer this Sunday. The American bisexual society (or some such) is delighted by the increase in bisexuality in the US teen-age, thanks to Britney/Xtina/Madonna. Obviously the American Family Assoc say this is a disgrace! Both I (and the observer) agree that there is no rise in bisexuality that can be correlated with britney etc... the only rise is in the teenage pants of the boyfriends of the dopey girls snogging their bestfriends after excessive consumption of alcopops.

So I’m told that North Americans TV-watching dykes have been awaiting with bated breath the first episodes of The L word. The ultimate dyke soap?

OFFICIAL PLOT SUMMARY:
Jenny is a gifted young writer of fiction who just completed her MFA at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. With a major literary award and one published short story to her credit, she arrives in Los Angeles to begin her "adult life" with her boyfriend - soon to be fiancé – Tim, a women’s swim coach at a large state university.
They reside in West Hollywood, next door to Bette Porter, a museum director, and her partner Tina . Bette and Tina have been a couple for seven years and are trying to find the perfect sperm donor to help them to start a family as they struggle with their relationship and the roles they've chosen or found themselves in and what it all means to their future.
Bette and Tina's close network of friends includes Shane, a hairdresser and the resident heartthrob; Dana, a professional tennis player not yet out of the closet; bisexual journalist Alice and Bette's half-sister Kit, a musician and a recovering alcoholic.

UNOFFICIAL PLOT SUMMARY:
The L Word is about the trials and tribulations of a group of friends in L.A., most of whom are lesbians.
The previously-straight Jenny moves to L.A. to be with her boyfriend, who has befriended next-door neighbors Tina and Bette. Tina and Bette introduce Jenny to the alluring Marina , who owns a local cafe, and Marina and Jenny begin a slow dance of seduction that eventually culminates in an affair, leaving Jenny torn between her love for Tim and her feelings for Marina.
Bette and Tina, meanwhile, have been in a stable relationship for seven years and are now trying to have a child, but are frustrated by the difficulties in finding a suitable sperm donor. Tina is a bit at loose ends after quitting her studio development job in order to focus on getting pregnant, and the amount of time Bette spends at her job as a museum director is putting a strain on their relationship. Bette is a type-A personality who sees herself as the "adult" of the group, and she has a complicated relationship with her older half-sister Kit , a straight musician and recovering alcoholic.
Shane is a hairdresser who "doesn't do relationships," but sleeps with a different woman every night instead--including one who wants more than a one-night stand.
Dana is a perpetually-single professional tennis player headed for stardom in the tennis world--as long as she stays closeted. She has been willing to make this trade-off in the past, but it becomes increasingly difficult for her when she unexpectedly falls in love with the sous-chef at her country club.
As the only openly bisexual woman in the group, journalist Alice is looking for the same qualities in a man or a woman, and her love interests include an "emotionally-crippled" ex-girlfriend and a lesbian-identified man named Lisa.

MY SUMMARY
A bunch of all American, perfect, palatable girls with regular income, bleached teeth and no VPL, selected to fulfil male fantasies across the globe will legitimise mass-masturbation by having plots and subplots while they move around in different outfits and settings across the small screen but never do anything real or believable.
*nodding off..*

I’m bored already.


Oh, I can’t leave it at that. I just can’t. I simply had to go back to the site and here’s what I found: a bit of the script! Enjoy.

JENNY: "Beautiful. Who lives there? Susie Homemaker?"

As if in answer, she hears a husky voice, mid-sentence.

SHANE (O.C.): "Bette and Tina gave me a key so I can swim in the buff, which I can't do at the Chateau..."

Without thinking, Jenny obscures herself and watches as...

SHANE McCUTCHEON emerges, poolside. On first glance, you could mistake her for a boy -- average height, but lanky and lithe; short, shaggy haircut. Casual yet somehow transcendentally cool. She wears faded jeans, big black biker boots, a heavy low-slung belt buckle, un-self-conscious garnishments of leather. In one smooth move, she unlatches her belt and pulls her T-shirt over her head: and there's no mistaking her now. She has a lean, boyish/girlish body with just enough curves -- has truly great breasts. She stretches, indulges the sun on her body -- the perfect embodiment of super-sexy, sultry androgyny -- and calls toward the house.

SHANE (CONT'D) "C'mon, get your butt out here."

A pretty GIRL appears, could be a model...more likely an actress. Meanwhile, Shane sheds her boots and jeans and, buck naked DIVES in. The actress/model starts to undress.

Jenny turns away, ashamed by her voyeurism, and bends to pick another flower. Then something catches her eye.

BACK OVER THE FENCE, the actress/model is on her back, naked, on a raft, and Shane has just swum over. She slithers up onto the raft and climbs on top of the girl. Sensually, the girl arcs her body up to meet Shane's and,
undulating, wet and glistening, they start to ****.
Jenny stares, wide-eyed, riveted. Her jaw drops. She turns away, then back again. Her breath goes a little shallow.

I can barely contain myself I’m soo excited.
Give me Tipping the Velvet and its leather strap-ons and back alley sex any day.

And one more thing:I'm a rare species, or so it seems.
I just wanted to add that I have no issues with using public loos whatsoever. I refuse to be retentive just in case whoever is entering the cubicle next to mine doesn't like what she hears.
That's all.

On portaloos
Today I went back to work.
Besides the torture of having to get up at a much earlier time that should even be legal, it meant roughly seven hours of briefings, debriefings and other perfectly trivial meetings, presided by a well meaning but incredibly tedious headmistress. We were well into the fourth hour - no tea, no biscuit, no loo break, no passing notes around - when, in the middle of mentally composing my own will, I suddenly remembered the bourdaloues. Eighteenth-century portable china piss-pots for elegant ladies, who would, supposedly, hide them under their skirts on long coach journeys. They were named for the Abbé Bourdaloue, who preached inordinately long sermons - extreme tests of human endurance. I used to own one, or at least I used to believe, aged 6 or so that the one living under my bed at my grandmother's house was mine.

I wonder if it's still there. I'll keep you posted.

On Garden Gnomes
Oh no.
It seems from their website that more worthy members of the FLNJ ( Front de liberation des Nains de Jardin, the movement for Garden Gnomes everywhere, but particularly France and Belgium, really) have been caught red-handed and charged. Again. The struggle against the subjugation of our bearded little friends counts yet more casualties.

The gnome of the garden variety must be one of y favourite cultural fossils.
A cultural fossil – that’s a pattern of belief or behaviour so deeply embedded in our surroundings that no-one questions them, like crossing oneself in front of a wall where the statue of a saint used to be, or just simple superstitions. So, omnipresent garden gnomes - very cute objects; very cute indeed. But do people want them simply for cuteness? I don’t think so. The gnomes provide some of that sugar in the drink that Western religions no longer offer, and which the watered_ down humanitarianism that passes with so many people for religion offers even less. The gnomes speak of a longing, unrecognised but all the stronger for its invisibility, for the garden- god, the image of the earth spirit, the kobold, the kabir, the guardian of the household. Dreadful on the eye as they are, they have a truth you won’t find in the birdbath and the sundial.

Off to not buy a garden gnome. At all. Instead I’ll roll around in bed and listen to David Bowie. Ooooh, shivers.

Cake or death
I forgot to say, I'm all crushed out on Eddie Izzard. Executive transvestite. Endorphin dealer. Lesbian trapped in a man's body. I would go out on a dinner date with him tomorrow. I'd let him borrow my clothes. The girly ones. Shame he mainly fancies blonde, bosomy women.
At this rate, we're going to run out of cake.

I was sitting in King's Cross station last night; it's at best entertaining, at worst hazardous to sit there, what with the drug pushers and bums in various stages of decay and their skinny flea ridden dogs and teenage prostitutes who have made it their home. I don't sit in King's Cross Station for fun, it just happens that some of my friends take trains and sometimes when I'm feeling warm and fluffy inside I go and meet them. I listened into two old crones' (I love that word, it's just so.. so.. Middle earth) conversation about a couple of bums' dogs that were trying to chew each other's head off nearby. It would appear that the surest way to stop dogs from fighting is to.. .spit on your middle finger and swiftly put into the arsehole of one of the dogs. Breaks a fight in no time. Stations are wondrous places. Remember Heathrow's terminal 3? I don't know what I like best. I just can't decide.

Later on I went to look at the lesbians in my favourite café. Nice place. They serve good food, you can hear each other talk and there are also pretty boys to gawk at. 90% of the lesbians in London are über trendy. They share the one haircute, loosely nicked from David Beckham. They wear cool shoes and the right jeanstudded belts loosely worn on the hips and skinny tshirts. They drink a lot and snort a lot. I met up with two of my trendy lesbian friends; we gaped at the lesbians together and drank latte. Then they started fighting, because their relationship is not a happy one. Have you ever sat at a table with a couple having a domestic? It's not even entertaining, cos they'd like you to take sides. It's uncomfortable. And I was thinking,that, maybe, if I spat on my middle finger..

Today I went to see Noi Albinoi. The eponymous Noi is not even an albino, but the title sounds good. It's Icelandic, it's ever so slow-paced, it's filled with quirky scenes. I can safely say I picked up no Icelandic from watching this film, although I did revel in its slightly surreal, absurd humour. And I really really don't want to go to Iceland, no matter how cool they are.

I' m off to watch the Izzard.

On the rollercoaster that was 2003
I've only realised that 2003 was over. I missed the celebrations and the overcrowded clubs with sweaty singletons desperate for a snog, and the mistletoe, and the perfunctory emotional hugs, and I haven't got trousered or made a single good resolution. What's left - oh yeah, I can look back on the battlefield.
2003 can be summed up in three words for me: death, love and therapy. I think it's a pretty good balance. The year started on an intense sex high followed by an equally intense boredom. I made a once-worn kinky dress for Valentine's Torture Garden night. I got dumped once, I lost my little brother to a six-storey building and met an incredible woman, all in the same month. In 2003, I took 15 planes and went clubbing 4 times. I had four memorable arguments. I called in sick at work a total of three times. I sent hundreds of emails to the above-mentioned woman. And I found a shrink.
A well rounded year, all things considered.

On New Year's Eve
This year, London mayor Ken Linvingston tried to put off Londoners from revelling drunkenly like every other year on Trafalgar Square. People might get trampled, you see. Or get hurt by the fireworks, who knows. I don't care, I spent it at home with some foie gras and a bottle of Vendanges Tardives. For those of you philistines, it's just about the best fucking wine in the whole wide world. It's made with the last white grapes of the season, it's very much a hit and miss process which, when succesful, produces nothing less than the Gods' nectar. Really. Down with eggnog - it's slimy and it's got raw eggs in it - haven't those people heard of salmonella? And a happy new year to me.

On the Cheeky Girls - no, but really.
Earlier I was overwhelmed by the rare urge to turn on the television; lo and behold, the cheeky girls were on! I put on my glasses for three minutes or so of pure idiocy. For those of you unfamiliar by that gifted duo, here's the deal: scantily clad twins of dubious but probably eastern European origin, seemingly bullied by an overweight, over made up and over ambitious manager. Oh, and that pimp/manager happens to be their mother.The song lyrics go a little bit like this: smile/don't be shy/touch my bum/this is life.I kid you knot. What a philosophy! I think the only way they can not slip into deep depression is the fact that they have absolutely no idea what they're singing. They don't know what 'cheeky' means, or what 'bum' is, or, I'd bet, 'girl'. They can't. Oh , and, yeah, they're not too be confused with T.A.T.U. Those were the lesbian ones - although, that is doubtful- has anyone taken a look at their long nails?

I think I need to get out more.