1. Bloggers- you should have seen my therapist's face when I revealed that after thinking about it long and hard for a week and finally deciding that yes, I would ask my.. my... lover? boyfriend? manfriend? if he'd consider moving in with me - he said yes.

2. It's going to happen.
I know!

3. Perhaps as I write, said therapist is pacing up and down his living room shaking his head and wondering what to do with me.

Or not?

1. Bloggers! Hello. I've missed you. Here's what happened: after much chanting and jumping up and down to make time fast forward a wee bit - it didn't work- Thursday finally came, grey and cold as fuck and rainy and utterly loaded with Januaryness. Hurrah anyway!

2. The plan was to handle work and the post-work meeting (yes they are trying to kill me, clearly) with calm and poise throughout the day, than jump into Normal Person clothes at 6pm and make a mad dash out the door by 6.03, in order to be in Leicester square at 6.45 precisely. This dating life requires excellent organisation, you see.

3. Grazing Plan A (no proper date can happen without some form of grazing, I am sure you will agree) was a tapas bar with hyperbolic food - too full. Grazing Plan B - sudden inspiration- was a mellow Morroccan restaurant with candlelight, suave wines and welcoming low sofas -  my heart leaped when I saw that yes, there was just enough room there for us to be very, very close to each other and I made a mental note of tipping the lovely waitress very generously.

4. Mandatestuart was rocking the understated white shirt with rolled up sleeves look again - aaah, how very distracting. Does he even know? I suspect he doesn't. Really.

5. There was red wine and tagine and mellowness and words; and accidental contact between out arms, legs, hands. We considered begging the waitress to let us sleep on those sofas, the outside world being just too cold and grey and dark and January-like. Perfect.

6. 'Take him home!!' a girl yelled at me outside the tube station as we were kissing.
Oh, I've said it now - I wasn't sure what to expect, holding myself back you see - but it just happened and it was slow and warm and delicious and not at all January-like.
'She's ruined the moment now' he said.
'No she hasn't', I said, picking up where we had stopped.

I can't wait for the next instalment, bloggers.

I'm invited for afternoon tea at the Dorchester next week end!

I've browsed feverishly through my closet - I have nothing even remotely smart to wear!

It's official!
I'm frumpy!
My government might have to take my passport away!

 That's all. I've used up my daily quota of exclamation marks.

Anita is on a mission.

- This one, no. Next.

- Why not?

- Not good looking enough for you. Next!

- But.. if he's ugly then I won't feel inadequate!

- Aha, this one there...

She reads out the poor unsuspecting man's profile, commenting on punctuation, use of vocabulary,  alleged relationship history and looks.

- Write to him. This one.

So I did.

Four days later; there was a Date.

A five hour date, the type of date where, unfortunately for a blogger, there was nothing to poke fun at, no-one to ridicule, nothing to sigh about and swear I'll never do that again. A seriously fun date of conversation, food, laughter and obvious mutual attraction.

I am so boring sometimes! I'm sorry, blogfolks.

Let's see how it goes - it is bound to go seriously wrong next time, when I find out about his diaper fetish. In the meantime, I'll be over here for Christmas, trying to not get too excited.

Be well!

Triumphant return

1. And I quote fishboy:

So.

Seems like I will be resuming my usual modus craperandi of irregular and erratic updates with little content or interest.

Start as you intend to continue I say!

My thoughts exactly.

2. The yoga addiction has developed; it's a good thing. I won't elaborate today because people will call me a hippie, say that I smell and throw rotten vegetables at me. That's what J was saying until I got him hooked too, so, ha! Six packs in the House of Y!

3. Since September.. since September things have happened, plane tickets to California were purchased, and much fun and sex was had by yours truly.

Then reality kicked in, can you see the bruise?

I have exactly 156 pages of fun, sex and reality, but they are real, paper pages, covered in blue ink and honestly.. it's all drama. Pff.
Better offer a summary. So: fun, sex, reality, that's all I'm saying for now.

4. Might well be back to this blogging lark, seriously.

Eliza

1. For six years, War raged on between us.

2. I would never live up to her gardening standards, she knew it and despised me for it.
In spring, in summer, I would try to hide from her, cower, sneak back in at the mere flicker of net curtains - in order to avoid her heavily accented monologues about her garden and its roses, about my pile of mud and its weeds. She made me feel like a horticultural deliquent.

3. She liked her giant old lady knickers to dry out in the West London breeze; sometimes, in-between washing loads, we would get to see the sun setting on the horizon.

4. And now, people of Blogland! it is with some sadness that I must report the following: Eliza is no more. A professionally grim faced policeman knocked on our door, late at night, that week it was so cold in London, you remember? and no we didn't have any contact details for her family.

5. Eliza's giant knickers will not grace our living room view ever again. Elvis and Sid, her vicious cat, will never kick our very own Pancho's ass ever again. There will be no more heavily accented monologues about my incompetence.

6. I'm sad, because I'm projecting. Perhaps, like Eliza, one day I won't die alone in a country that isn't mine, and the police won't find any contact details.

7. Read Tieg Larsson's 'The girl with the dragon tattoo'. Really.

Not funny.

1.Blogfolk, don't you find that Christmas is just like PMT? I do.

2. Consider how it builds up, and with it a deep-seated, gut-churning anxiety; you know something is going to happen, you know the date even. You get more anxious, grumpier by the day, yet your forget why the suicidal feelings, the sudden bouts of despair, the snapping at family members and kicking of small pets. And then..

3. ..and then it's over! The tension suddenly eases. Ah, the relief. PMT, Christmas day, same thing. This year, I killed two birds with one stone; I'm exhausted.

*that'll be Pre-menstrual tension. Read your Cosmo already.

I think I have finally broken up with my shrink so I poured myself a glass of wine, and I've been crying into it ever since.

It's not that I don't want to go anymore. I tell him I can't afford it any longer, which is the truth, but not the whole truth.

Fifteen Things I do not like, in no particular order and just because I feel some bile coming up

1. The anxious feeling I get when, sat on the top deck of the bus, I hear a gaggle/herd of screeching teenagers come up the stairs. It's a mixture of intense, armpit-moistening annoyance, and fear; I'm not impressed with myself about the fear aspect.
   
   2. Blue mascara. On other people, since I would not touch the stuff unless they paid me. Sometimes My Own Mother wears it and this feels me with Horror. Ensues a Serious Talk (from me to her) reminding her of all the people we don't like who also wear it and why we don't want to be like them.
   
   3. Waking up every morning, unfailingly, at 4.40. Then waking up again at 5.011, which is too close to 6 for me to fall back to sleep properly.
   
   4. Not getting over what my dentist once said to me: today, you've had more work done that I ever had in my entire life. I had to make him repeat to make sure I'd heard it right. What??
   
   5. Scrabble.
   
   6.Beige. Navy blue. Bottle green. Maroon. As well as pastel colours on adults.
   
   7. People who don't return what I lent them. Books, DVDs, socks. I just don't understand.
   
   8. Seeing children, especially girls, wearing uncomfortable clothes. Frilly pink frocks. To me, it only confirms that some parents have the worst reasons for having children in the first place.
   
   9. Parents screaming at their offsprings in public. Because when they do it in private, I'm not there to see it. Clearly.
   
   10. Loud little boys with hair shaved down to a 1 wearing football shirts. It makes me very very sad.
   
   11. Yappy little dogs and usually their owners. Which is unfair. It's not the dogs' fault if they look like retarded rats owned by bipeds who really want fluffy toys.
   
   12. The fact that Spam and corned beef did not disappear after the end of Rationing. And the fact that it's all that some people can afford to eat.

   13. Trifle, cucumber sandwiches, fish paste for sandwiches, cheese and onion crisps – those monuments of British culinary tradition.

   14. Being patronised. Being told something I already know.

   15. Long nails on hands or even worse, on feet.

And gratuitous violence for all

1. Bloggers, in this season of good will and general cheer I had the sudden impulse to make a list of all the people I’ve had, throughout my not so short, not so eventful life, reasons to wish bad, bad things. Just to take it all down a notch.

2. To the random guys in the street who ever had the nerve to come up to me and call me ugly, just because they could without fear of retaliation; just because they were male and that in a certain brand of French youth culture, it’s a very cool thing to do, to those I wish explosive, uncontainable, volcanic diarrhoea in a public space. On a white pants day.

3. To the bloke who got out his rifle and shot at the random passing car that day of March 1979, I wish spontaneous combustion. What an aim you had, though, or did you miss? We couldn’t tell, the bullet went neatly in though the back window and out again right in front of my face. Shame my mother had the poise to drive away as fast as she could, or you would have had the chance to have another go.

4. To the man who pushed us into his car and sped along the empty road saying he was going to kill us, just for kicks, I wish that your worse nightmare comes true and that your hair falls out overnight; and I wonder, what took my mother so long to divorce you?

5. I think I might be too nice.

6. Bloggers, did you notice? I don’t wish any of my exes any harm.

This shampoo bar will last longer than most relationships, they said

Today, I’m mostly shaking my hair, because it smells so good! It’s that new shampoo bar I bought on Saturday morning; at times, for a whole minute, it distracts me from that whirlwind of fears about Where am I going and why bother? A whole minute, several times a day. I’m telling you. It was well worth the 3 quid. I know what my problem is: my problem is that I was born two generations too late, I don’t have ploughing and milking and general farming to keep my horizon low, and therefore I worry. But, had I been born two generations ago, I would probably had greasy, smelly hair, and I would be dead by now, so this is a stupid idea.

Last week passed in a blur of work. Mostly. Have you noticed how I’m not blogging, bloggers? That’s because I’m too busy working and going to bed early in order to be up at stupid o’clock the next morning.

On Sunday night, while I was making crêpes, J was standing in the kitchen playing sad tunes on his accordion to try and make me cry. It worked. It always works. I’m easy.

That’s it really.

Sweet grapes

People of blogland, I have to tell you about last Sunday.
My Special Lady Friend was visiting. I’m very fortunate, because she often visits. If I plead and wring my hands in a sufficiently convincing manner, she even spends the night. (I won’t tell you what she agrees to do when I get down on my knees.) So, yes, my SLF was visiting, we were in the middle of some serious hanging out, when she foraged into her bag and said, casually – oh by the way, I have a present for you. Before I had time to do my usual little excited dance she’d pulled out a bottle – I might not be materialistic, yet the word ‘present’ is nearly pavlovian- ‘Here’, she said with studied nonchalance.
I gasped.
How?
Where?
Wow!
I nearly got down on my knees then, you know.
Vendanges Tardives, the best goddamn wine in the whole world, people!
She’d found some.
She made it sound like it was easy. Just something she’d picked up after work.
After I tied her to the chair and threatened to torture her, I got the whole story. She’d been trying to trace it for weeks, had ordered it online and had just gone into an infinitely posh shop to collect it.

We drank it then we went for a walk along the river.
We met six months ago, you know.
Santé.

I don’t have a title today

1. 8.31am. Where are those piano fuckers, I bellow, a toothbrush in one hand and a shoe in the other. They were meant to be here by 8.30 and I’m going to be late.

1. 8.32am. The doorbell. It’s the piano people.

2. 8.35am. J’s steel-framed upright piano and heirloom has been prised out of its corner, and wheeled out the door in under 4 minutes, without a grunt. The piano is off to a good home.

3. 8.36am. I start bawling uncontrollably, much to J’s surprise. It’s nice to be reminded of how soppy you are, he says, offering me a hug.

4. The cat has darted out the house, sulking. He doesn’t like it that the piano is gone either; he used to have so much fun running down the stairs at full speed and crashing into it head first. It would make a lovely muffled musical sound, too.

5. 8.45. I’m still bawling my eyes out. It’s not even mine! I can’t even play the damn thing! I put my other shoe on, finish brushing my teeth and leave the house. The Italian-lady-next-door is out gardening. Today is full of challenges aready.

Fresh air
In one symbolic gesture, I put away the pair of boots, the woolly scarf and the cork-lined tights, for it is Spring in Londontown.

Yeah
And Spring means one thing: it is time to go out, position myself in a propitious area, and stare at the lesbians. A bit like hunting season, only different.
My calendar says it’s time to go out and stare, gawk, gape and possibly leer. I’m not expecting that much leering, though.

But no
I have been putting off the inevitable time when I’d let myself be dragged out. I have been wary, people of blogland. For one thing, the dyke scene bears little excitement for me. Too many identical haircuts, similar low-slung brand name jeans held at half-mast by similar belts, compulsory trainers. I’m not a fashion fascist, I just don’t like clones. And it’s not only policemen who are starting to look young, you know… everyone in there must be about 18.

But yeah
It’s taken me over six months to slowly stop feeling like I’m unwanted/able, damaged goods, thrown overboard by an ex-lover. Wary and scarred, but not too bitter; I have things to offer.

But no
I don’t want a girlfriend. I’m not even sure I want a lover. Yet.

But yeah
Spring = hormones, you know. And a little flirting’s never hurt anybody, has it? Now what can I wear..

Paragraph titles courtesy of Vicky Pollard, of course.

Today I would like to report a short anecdote in order to illustrate the psychological comfort of First Aid kits.

1. 7am, I run for the bus, stumble and fall. Pain and humiliation, blah blah. Grazed palms, torn tights and bleeding knees take me back to kindergarten and the incivilities of the sandpit. Not literally, you understand.
2. I limp into work with the face of a 5 year old struggling to keep her composure and swallow her tears, but without the snot.
3. I’m rescued by a kind co-worker armed with a first aid kit in one of those little green bags. She’s not even laughing at me.
4. The tears (rage? Humiliation/frustration?) are finally swallowed as I disinfect and bandage.

There, there, love, it’s all better now.

What do you mean, how old am I?

dis·trac·tion (d -str k sh n)
n.
1. A condition or state of mind in which the attention is diverted from an original focus or interest.
2. Separation of bony fragments or joint surfaces of a limb by extension.

I’m trying my best for definition #1. Partly because #2 sounds rather painful.

a. Diversion
I read ten lines, write a paragraph, pop bubble wrap, make tea, pop more bubble wrap, drink tea, change an adjective in the paragraph, forget to wash the cup, pop more bubble wrap, put socks on because it’s getting very cold, make more tea, pop more bubble wrap, read ten more lines, delete my paragraph, forget to drink the tea, pop more bubble wrap, put a jumper on because it’s really very cold, make more tea, open a magazine and stare at the ads, drink cold tea, try to wrap the cat in the popped bubble wrap, try to locate a clean mug for tea. The cat won’t stay inside the rolled up bubble wrap. The paragraphs are all crap, I drink too much tea, and dark thoughts come back and pop, pop in my head.

b. Original focus.
I don’t know how much more of this I can handle. I really don’t.

And this is why we're here now
One morning in the fourteenth century, young Francis P. went to church, as one did, and wham, he caught a glimpse of a complete stranger named Laura. For the rest of his life he harboured a deep, completely unrequited love - she never even knew the poor guy existed - and, in order to channel his troubled feelings, churned out over over 360 love poems dedicated to some bint he'd only seen for 30 seconds between two church pillars. For all he knew she could have been a complete idiot; talk about idealisation. Anyway; not only did she never get to read them, but she also died of the plague, a fairly fashionable death at the time. As a result, his personal literary catharsis became a symbol for the birth of romantic love and other humanistic notions. Before him and his ilk, there was no romantic love to speak of, was there. People happily pillaged and raped their way around. And then, 366 poems about pure and overwhelming love later, courtship and romanticised notions of coupledom became all the rage. I blame Francis P for this unshakable yearning for.. for.. all this mess I'm in.
Better get a start on the poems, then.

Too much Chablis
"Where should I go from here?" asked Alice.
"That depends a great deal on where you want to go." said the cat.

"But what if I don't know where that is?!" she asked.
"Then you're properly screwed." said the cat.

A story of forbidden love