Only vicariousness will save me

Bloggers, I’ve been out-bleaking myself these past few days, especially during the 2 -5pm daily black hole. Or at 5 in the morning on weekdays when I stare at the clock, only 50 minutes left of sleep, quick, sleep, sleep, why am I not sleeping yet? Today I wanted to distract myself by stripping my bedroom wallpaper, rip, rip, bit by bit, in long satisfying ribbons and wet plaster smell. Not gratuitously, you understand, but with higher decorating aims in mind. It’s little projects that keep me breathing, you see. But the only paper stripper thing for sale in the ironmonger shop costs an unjustified £6.99. I had to change my plans: I finished reading Isabel Allende’s ‘El Zorro’ instead, and entertained vivid fantasies of masked caballeros. I got goosebumps, bloggers! Read it, and see if the part when he meets buccaneer Jean Lafitte in the Louisiana bayou doesn’t keep you up at night! Goosebumps. But then again, I am feeling ideologically/romantically starved, or perhaps lacking B12, vitamins and minerals. Sometimes I can’t tell the difference. Now, would you like to know what I had for dinner or what dreams I had last night? I didn’t think so.

Either a teenage moment, or a fairly rare disease

I don’t know what it was; yesterday I stared at men’s hands; the nice hands of the shop assistant who was wrapping up my purchases, then my hairdresser’s tan, muscular arms. I was staring at him in the mirror, so taken, somehow wanting to bite. Perhaps a strange case of misspent lust, perhaps the onset of rabies, I don’t know, time will tell.

This afternoon I was extremely sophisticated in an upper middle class hippie kind of way, sipping a soy milk latte and nibbling on a spelt bun, do you hate me? And checking out people’s asses from my vantage point. How disconcerting, I said to my soy latte companion, this week I’m finding men sexier than women.


He was ignoring me, so, slurping, I went off into a reverie about vague malecrushes I would now like to share with you. I tend to go for tortured, self-deprecating French singers/songwriters with messy hair.

Wouldn't you? I know I would.

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.

Yes, I am

Next to me on the train is sitting just another 14 year old, wearing one of those mini skirts that I wish I could wear, but I can’t. She’s on the phone: Mum, mum, my battery is about to go. Clearly something’s up, my reflex is to lend her mine, if it’s an emergency, but the battery hasn’t given yet. Mum listen, I have no battery left, can you please come and pick me up at the station? ….it’s pouring. Well, it is here. I look out at the perfectly dry afternoon and just because of the lie and the whining, I hope her mother won’t pick her up.
As I get off the train, the deluge begins. I feel a little bit bad.

I have secret dreams of moving into my grandmother’s house in the middle of nowhere. I’d chop my own wood and not watch the 8 o’clock news on any of the six tv channels. I would only have a shower every other day in winter because there is no heating in the bathroom. I would have two dogs and go for walks on frosty mornings and miss big cities.

I have secret dreams of being a 27-year-old middle class American female, and living with my husband in a tiny northern Californian town. Our house would have a fireplace and a hot tub and it would smell of woods and we would drive our suv to go grocery shopping, and rent movies on Friday nights. We would probably have two kids, and I would worry about what school to send them to.

I have secret dreams of moving to a Spanish village, and cursing the heat six months in the year. I would grow my hair and go out in the evenings, and be the foreigner who knows all the slang words and who shuns other foreigners.

I have secret dreams of leaving, always, no matter where I am.

I’m training for when I’m old, talking to squirrels in the park. Just to make sure I don’t mix them up, they’re all called Damien. Yesterday I was walking home and Damien was sitting on a high branch, screaming like I didn’t think a squirrel could scream. I don’t think he was shouting abuse at me. What to do, what to do? Squirrel in pain? Squirrel tantrum? Along the path I met another: Quick, Damien, I said, your friend over there needs help. He darted off like a squirrel on a mission, and I pretended there was such a thing as a squirrel solidarity network.

I blame the stars, or perhaps the people who write horoscopes. Don’t they realise the damage they cause? More than parents even, but it’s so much harder to bring that one up in shrinking sessions.
I have grown up believing that, as a Gemini, I was easily sidetracked, unable to concentrate on one thing for too long, starting new things and dropping them in less time it’d take to say ‘pea brain’. And now look at me! I’m obsessed. I won’t read, watch, write anything if not in Spanish. My single-mindedness is taking me by surprise.
Of course the down side is that now I’m having trouble with English. Lo siento.

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.

Don Limpio

And.. into the tunnel again! Work has started again, nights are shorter and in the morning I can’t just sip my tea reading my book with the cat curled up inside my pyjamas. It’s up at stupid o’clock again, and wearing clothes that match, and why do I seem to sweat only when working?
When last week ended, everything was noisy; all I wanted was to sleep, alone, and be quiet. Since so much of my job involves talking with, to and at people, there are times – at the end of every day for at least half an hour, in fact- when just saying one sentence becomes physically painful. It’s the Daily Grump. I come home, slump, and to disconnect a little, I read whatever light reading there is in the bathroom: the august issue of PSN (the magazine of HM Prison service), comics, the Little Book of Complete Bollocks. Or I listen to history radio programs.
When last week ended, everything was all over the place, grimy, unbearable; I hurt my girlfriend’s feelings when I chose housework over seeing her.
As soon as the Daily Grump is over, I should call her, since the house is clean now.

They say it’s September already

1. Blogfolks, I haven’t felt like blogging recently, have you noticed? I flew back from Greece, recovered from the bumpy landing, and threw myself into the Sunflower Project (painting the kitchen yellow, in order to not think about going back to work.) My Special Lady Friend came to help with the second coat.
I like it that she’s better at it than I am.

2. The day of the second coat, she was wearing a ring, a thick silver one. I’d never seen her wear a ring before. She has nice hands. I stared and stared and when she realised I’d gone quiet, I was blushing.

3. Now the paint’s dry; I slept for three hours the night before going back to work. Tonight all I’ll manage to do will be sit in my sunflower of a kitchen for a while, perhaps eat a slice of J’s carrot cake, listen to Joaquin Sabina, find out if my SLF would let me take her out on a date tomorrow to see Volver again, and go to bed early.

Buenas noches.