Blogfolk, I'm away.

Normal service will probably resume on my return, when I choose to ignore the eve of the new year too. In the meantime, happy Winter solstice, Christmas, whatever it is you celebrate. Or don't. I'll be here drinking wine by the fire and reading old books. Be well, and don't eat too much.

Surprisingly, things are really not Like They Used To Be

1. Look, bloggers, at the mess that is Soho and especially the once-upon-a-time gay microcosm that is Old Compton Street; as if the weekly hen parties from South Bromley weren’t enough to cope with! At this time of year the place is heaving with herds of very straight, very clueless people out on their Christmas work do, gawking at the gay homosexuals like they’re in a gay safari. And the jokes they crack! Are not funny.
My Special lady Friend and I didn’t stick around for too long; it was a clear, crisp night, perfect for walking away from the very full bars.

2. this cat of mine is a disgrace, a renegade, a taint on the name of felines everywhere. Or is my education?
-Pancho, look, here’s bits of real chicken for you.
-Miaow.
-What, is it too hot still?
-Miaow!
-Not enough salt?
-Miaow..
-It needs to be cut into smaller bits?
-Miaow.
-What do you mean, sushi? You’ve never even seen sushi.
-Miaoow!
-Fine. I’m taking the remote control away from you., that’s too much daytime tv, missy. And anyway, what happened to the gratitude cats owed their masters?
-Miaow!
- I’m not making it up at all. In my days, cats dreamt of sucking on a dry chicken bone. So eat up.
- Miaow!
- I know you were abandoned at birth….Sure, I’ll hold it up for you so that you don’t get your whiskers dirty.

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.

W is for…

1.Bloggers, strangely, I don’t even mind it’s nearly Christmas. I’m in such low spirits that all it means to me is the end of work and the warm womb of my mother’s house to stay in, silent, for a week.

2. There will be a three-coloured, big-pawed cat for company and a pile of logs for the fireplace, woolly socks and old books from my teenager years to read again. In the early evenings, my mother will appear out of her ‘painting studio’ with a bottle of Alsatian wine and say: let’s not let it get us down.

3. It is everything, it’s Christmas that we don’t celebrate, it’s the sum of losses and anxieties about what remains. It is what we face everyday and the fact that it could be worse. It is the loneliness that we both live in; she because she feels she has failed to build a proper family, I because I have been so afraid to fail too that I chose to not have one at all.

4. We’ll drink by the fire, wishing it could be colder and that it would snow, or if it is, that it would snow harder, for the whole night; for added womb effect. It’s so satisfying when the airport has to close down and the buses no longer run! The best times are when cars can’t drive up our road, then it gets truly quiet.

5. One morning, clad like the Michelin man, we’ll walk up a mountain. It’ll hurt my lungs because I’m not used to it anymore. I’ll want to enjoy the scenery and be moved to tears but I’ll be so worried about not enjoying it enough that I won’t, really.

6. As usual I’ll get back to London the day before New Year’s eve, with neither plans, nor wanting to make any, and I’ll relish letting myself into an empty house. The candy of feeling sorry for myself! It is my tradition. This year, the Special Lady Friend situation isn’t looking too good, you see. It’s likely to be my fault. Added sweet bitterness to the candy.

7. I’m still young, have four limbs, eyes that see, a job and a place to live, and five different sets of bed linen, damnit.

Today







Pale blue: time spent working in a grumpy, tired mood.

Grey: time spent looking forward to going home and collapsing.

Dark blue: time spent wishing I could have five minutes off to go out and get myself a cup of coffee.

Green: time spent sitting on the staircase back home, contemplating sleeping with my boots on just because it’s such a fuss to take them off. But then if I did that I would not be wearing clean socks tomorrow, which is simply unthinkable.

Christmas presents suggestions- #1

A pair of goggles for when I need to cut up an onion. Or a shallot. Or anything else that’s violenty tear-inducing. My eyes are still smarting from tonight's dinner; my big mistake was to start cooking before my SLF turned up. She usually carries out the shallot-cutting chore with grace and without tears.

Tuesday night is Shrink Night

"But that’s perfectly normal behaviour, Y".
"What have you just called me? "
"You’re just like everybody else", he adds.
"Look, I’ve always been nothing but perfectly nice to you", I do not say because after three years and thousands of pounds, I know better than to defuse.
"I have a headache", I do say.

He gets up and dims the light a little.

I feel guilty.

"How does it feel to have someone do something for you?" He changes topics with a half smile.
"Don’t like it. It means I owe them, you, people, something. Even if it’s just a thank you."
"How does it feel when your special lady friend does something for you?" That guy is paid to be insistent, and it makes me fidget.
"Well, that’s ok actually. Because if I let her, then in a completely effed up way, I owe her, therefore I’m giving her something. And she’s good at doing things for me, and never makes me feel like it’s a huge favour. So it kinda works out. "

I don’t know if in the long term it’s really going to pay off knowing that I’m an overly self-reliant, ungrateful cow.

I suspect I’m too tense for what I’m about to do.

Today, bloggers, I was foolish, I said yes! to ice skating, breaking a vow I made after the last time. Years ago, when I was fearless and supple and I clearly didn’t know how else to cause myself harm (drugs were too expensive), I used to ice skate twice a week at the local ice rink with an equally supple but even more fearless friend. They’d play young people music and we’d get high on the ice and the smells and the sheer physical effort of it. Of course one day they were playing something by the Beastie Boys, someone got excited, pushed me and I went flying across the rink, and splat! smashed various parts of my body. No, I didn’t get back on the bleeding proverbial horse immediately after the fall, I was broken, I’ve told you. The Beastie boys have made me hyperventilate since then. Today, clearly in an attempt to finish me off after all those years, the same still supple and fearless friend is dragging me skating. I considered full body bubble-wrapping.

Kneepads – checks.
Gloves – check.
Woolly hat – check.
Flask of mulled wine – check.


I’m ready to go.

It’s been nice knowing you.

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.