Shiny happy person

When I mounted the downward escalator (not sure about mounted, but bear with me) this morning and prepared to continue my brisk descent to the tube, the man in front of me stopped abruptly and, in an unusual move, turned to face the moving handrail on the right hand side. I paused to look at him more closely and saw that he had extended his leg and was holding his battered, black, leather lace-up underneath the coarse bristles at the edge of the step, giving himself a free shoeshine. The seamlessness of his actions suggested this was a well-rehearsed routine. As a fellow follower of precision rituals, I rather admired his panache. Pleasing.

I found this photograph in the Guardian this morning and emailed it to Laura. We both agreed that our working lives would be significantly improved with the addition of a baby lemur, especially one who uses a wide-eyed teddy bear as a surrogate mother. I have read that pet cafes are becoming increasingly popular in urban areas of Asia - they are full of cats and other furry friends, and you pay somewhere between £5 and £10 per hour to sit and mingle with the various animals. Sounds like a bargain to me. And if the cafe could supply a few kittens and puppies, rather than cats and dogs, I think they could up their rates rather dramatically. Hmmm. I feel a career move coming on...

Not the only fruit

I'm unsure what to say. I was just doing my shopping online at Tesco and I wanted to buy a lemon. So, using the full range of my immense intelligence, into the Express Shopper list function I typed the word 'lemon'. Seconds later, I was offered a range of 178 results, divided into manageable categories, listed by the most likely aisles. 'Squash' was the first aisle they thought I wanted. Plausible, but not right. Then they suggested 'Dishwasher & Washing Up'. Then 'Fizzy Drinks'. Then 'Tea'. Then 'Jam, Honey & Spreads'. Then 'Cleaning Products'. Then 'Cakes'. Then 'Water'. Then, incredibly, 'Salt, Herbs & Spices'. I JUST WANT A FREAKING LEMON. 'Fresh Fruit' wasn't even one of the aisles they listed! What the hell is going on? I'm sure this isn't Tesco's fault. I'm sure that the aisles are generated by what most people end up buying after they type in the word 'lemon'. But I can't help feeling like there's something profoundly depressing about the whole thing. Maybe I'm wrong. Either way, pluralising it seemed to help. When I searched for 'lemons', I got what I wanted immediately. Well, by immediately, I mean it was on the list. I won't actually have the citrus in my hand until some time on Saturday morning. But then I can start my first attempt at making my own houmous. Exciting.

Wisdom on the right

So Monday was quite odd. Work as usual in the morning, which was fine, but then I had to leave at 2pm to go to Harley Street for two separate appointments to do with my wisdom teeth. Harley Street is a weird concept, isn't it? The idea of there being a garment district, a red-light district, a street dedicated to selling guitars and a street specialising in great curry restaurants all makes a bit of sense to me, but having all these absurdly over-priced doctors and healthcare professionals based in an area where very few people can live is just strange. Before I went there, I imagined that they were all uber-nice consulting rooms with seriously swanky facilities. I had visions of my consultant welcoming me in to a Regency drawing-room with a butler and a chaise longue. But his tiny little space was high up in a not-particularly-impressive town house, a badly decorated room with not enough furniture and dim lighting. Why not hire somewhere nicer elsewhere? I don't understand it. The building's sole extraordinary feature was that, on the ground floor, by the lift, lit by a spotlight, was a polished glass plaque celebrating the fact that these premises had been opened a few years previously by none other than Martine McCutcheon, Entertainer. Words fail me.

Anyway, the whole experience was a bit terrifying, because I turned up for my first appointment at a different clinic, to have an x-ray, but it turned out that I hadn't brought the form that no one had told me was remotely essential, and they were about to refuse to x-ray me, but then they called my consultant and he said he would write me another one as long as I went round the corner to his office to collect it. So that was fine with me, and I went to pick it up and he was visibly annoyed with me for forgetting the form, which is, I suppose, understandable, but it's been a while since I've been told off and it's never been my strongest suit.

So I got the replacement form, went back to the x-ray place, had my x-ray, went back to the consultant's poky office, waited for him to see about thirty other people since I'd missed my appointment slot with all the faffing with the forms, and then had my meeting with him, where he told me that taking out a lower wisdom tooth carries with it a 1% chance of destroying the nerve endings that control that side of your tongue or your lower cheek and chin, potentially leaving you with permanent numbness or tingling. So they don't like doing the extraction unless it's completely necessary. I was rapidly going off the idea but I want to do it while I'm still employed as I have BUPA and inevitably won't have any benefits wherever I work next, whenever that might be. So I agreed to it, and left. Then I phoned his secretary and she asked me to go for the operation this Thursday. I kind of panicked but then thought it was best to get it over with, and agreed, but then twenty minutes later I phoned her back and moved it to the beginning of March.

Then I had over two hours to kill until choir and, for once, with no energy to shop and the cortisol rushing around my system following my dental adventures, I went to Starbucks (a place I would normally avoid comme la plague), found a comfortable armchair in the basement and was asleep within seconds. I woke up an hour later with a crowd of wealthy Mayfair teenagers sitting around me, chatting amongst themselves. Another of life's signs that I am getting old. Hey ho. My life is pretty darn good at the moment, so I'm not complaining. And, having read online today that eating a doner kebab is equivalent to drinking a glass and a half of fat, I am feeling smug with myself, as I have never in my life eaten a doner kebab. Shish, yes. Doner, no. And I think it's safe to say I probably won't be starting any time soon...

All change...

So. The big day is finally here and we're all about to find out whether predictions of some terrible assassination will come to bear fruit. In just under two hours, Barack Obama will take Abraham Lincoln's bible and be sworn in as the new POTUS. Then he'll turn to the world and give his opening address. I cannot freaking wait. No one knows what will happen afterwards, but I'm pretty sure that his inaugural speech will be pretty spectacular. Will the world change for the better as a result of his first term in office? Potentially, yes. The possibility is there. Which - even if not much happens in the end - is pretty darn massive in itself. I may be naive, but I'm crossing my fingers. And anyway, even if only a few people become more open-minded as a result of his election, if a few less people die in senseless conflict, if a few more people think twice before wasting their time, money and influence on senseless acts of greed, then it'll be an improvement.

And, just to turn the inauguration of a new President of the Free World into an event of personal significance, I am personally very glad this is all happening because it's helping to put a few of my absurdly inflated panics and concerns in context. When potentially billions of the world's population will be affected by this one man taking the podium later today, it makes the amount of power I am giving another guy look slightly absurd. Then again, if there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that this whole thing, existence, life, humanity, is pretty absurd. In a good way. God I'm being inarticulate. I'm going to the gym.

Friday ramblings

To continue in the cultural update vein, on Wednesday I went to see August: Osage County at the National, which officially ended my near-eternal run of disappointing theatre experiences. I'm not saying it was perfect, by any means, and I did snooze through most of the first forty minutes, but the action kicked in after the interval and I was hooked. Or maybe that was the white wine. Very funny characters, a lot of strong women and family angst, modern issues and timeless crises - I fully expect that this is a play that will be performed in decades to come. The one fractional low point of my evening's experience was the fact that it made me feel a little sad about being an only child. Not because the siblings in the play were particularly beneficial to each others' lives, but still, there's always seemed something vaguely enviable and comforting about being able to scream at someone who's roughly your age and a close blood relative.

While I was at the theatre, for some reason, my mother and godmother alighted upon the subject of Tamagotchis. I had nothing useful to contribute to the topic, but in the spirit of continuing the conversation, I mentioned that I had a Furby. When I worked at the pop magazine, back in the day, my editor and I had both bought one, on the grounds that, when you put two Furbies face to face, a sensor between their eyes picks up on the fact that there is another of their kind nearby, and they start to have conversations. We thought that, on this basis, it would be unfair only to purchase one. Apart from talking to each other, Furbies do a small variety of other things. They purr loudly when you scratch their head or belly. They rock backwards and forwards when they get sleepy, sing themselves a lullaby, snore loudly and then fall asleep. They say a startled 'WOAH!' if you pick them up too quickly. Occasionally, they'll blow you a kiss or start burbling nonsense, a propos of nothing. It used to be quite amusing when I'd be doing a phone interview with, say, a Spice Girl, and in the background, my Furby would wake up and start chatting away, often saying gems such as, 'Me bored now. Pet me, please.' or, occasionally, doing a large and fruity belch. Ah me, those were the days.

Yesterday my boss came into my office while my friend Laura was sitting on my 'guest chair'.
"Looks like you two have been coordinating outfits," he said in his regular Arnie voice. "Yesterday Laura was wearing the red flower on her jacket. Today you have a red bow. Very discombobulating." Discombobulating is his new favourite word. Job satisfaction doesn't get much better than this. That said, I ain't 'alf looking forward to the weekend.

Cosy commute

In a shocking twist on normal events, this morning I was running slightly late for work. It was one of those days where, even though I knew full well I was running late, I still dawdled through my usual routine, staying in bed far too long, brushing my teeth quite slowly and being indecisive about my outfit. Consequently, once I was en route, I knew I had no time to spare. I scampered across to the tube, trotted briskly down the escalator, and saw with some dismay that the northbound platform was fairly packed. Undeterred, I strode down to my customary spot, ready to disembark at the other end perfectly in line with my destination stop's exit to street level, and took my place at the appropriate huddle of fellow commuters, waiting for the next train. It came. It left. I remained behind the yellow line. There hadn't been a hope in hell of getting on. The next one pulled up a couple of minutes later and I saw a tiny foothole where I thought I could pop my dainty size tens. Assuming a waif-like demeanour, I stepped up onto the carriage floor and levered myself in. The nice lady in front of me tried to be accommodating, but there was nowhere for her to go. She was facing in to the rammed carriage, with her back to me, so all I could do was spoon her, almost resting my head on her shoulder to avoid being decapitated by the curve of the closing doors. We remained in this intimate position for one stop, when things calmed down a bit and we could find our own tiny pocket of space with less physical contact. And really, it hadn't been that bad. What was weird, however, was that when the train arrived at my destination, she too disembarked. And above ground, I saw her again, walking just ahead of me in her distinctive little blue hat. My interest piqued, I carried on monitoring where she was going and it wasn't long before we both walked into the building where I work, and got into the same lift, and got out at the same floor. I'd never noticed her before, and there are several hundred people who work on this floor, but I felt acutely aware that the fact that we'd been snuggling together only a few minutes earlier suddenly seemed a lot more inappropriate. Oh well.

Happy New Year, LLFF-style

Better late than never...? I'm sorry, I really am. There probably isn't even a Faithful any more. I'm sure you must have given up on me by now and found other fun blogs that get updated hourly. And I wouldn't blame you, really I wouldn't.

The problem with blogging is that it's a habit. And I've got out of it. I'll try and become addicted again, honest guv'nor, but as I've said so many times before, my desire to blog is in direct proportion to my happiness. If I'm feeling miserable, if my life is a bit shit, I love to blog. It allows me to vent my frustrations and it makes me feel heard, even important, just for a few seconds. But when I'm happy, I don't need the reassurance that someone, somewhere, cares about my life. Because when I'm happy, I think my life is great. So really, with me, no news is good news. That said, I miss my blog when it's not there. On the (naturally rare) occasions that I'm feeling self-indulgent, I like to check back and see what I've been up to. And when I realise there's been no entry for days on end, I do share your miffedness. I will try and be better, starting today.

So, what is there to say, after all this time? New Year was hilarious. I was lunged at by a man in a Mr Incredible costume, who got caught leaning in to me by his girlfriend. I don't think their start to 2009 was too harmonious... My New Year's Resolution, for the third year running, is to do a parachute jump. I was going to write 'I'll get that sorted in 2009 if it kills me' but perhaps that's inappropriate. Of course, that phrase actually means 'If the effort of getting it sorted kills me' but it's easily misunderstood and I wouldn't want the Fates to get muddled and organise for me to die on the way down... Oh god. Maybe I'll leave it for a while.

I went to see Oedipus at the National and it was genuinely crap. Ralph Fiennes is more wooden than a densely packed, very tall, very large expanse of forestry land, surrounded by tightly-constructed oak fences and several full-scale replicas of the Ark. I simply cannot believe that he is considered to be such a good actor. He even made one of those long, gutteral groans that last about fifteen seconds to indicate some sort of internal turmoil. I got the giggles. And the actor playing Jocasta, his wife-mother, was no better - a grumpy, frumpy old fag-hag with bra bulges and a clompy walk whose inexplicable, unjustifiable denial of the situation as it unfurled was not made even remotely convincing. Crap. It was literally crap, I tell you.

At the cinema, I've seen Gomorrah, Burn After Reading and The Reader. Gomorrah was interesting - about the mafia in contemporary Italy cities. Compelling and enlightening, but not much fun, and quite long. Burn After Reading was massively disappointing and, I think, marks the end of my relationship with the Coens. I loved loved loved the two guys in the US secret service who were trying to make sense of what was going on, but everything else seemed hammy, self-aware, smug and irritating. I can't believe I'm criticising a movie that features Frances McDormand, but there it is. The Reader was good although a bit schmaltzy in places, and bloody Ralph Fiennes was in it (although a fraction more bearable in this role than in Oedipus) but it was good story, the young actor was fantastic and I'd recommend it. Can't WAIT to see Revolutionary Road. I almost cried in the trailer on Sunday, but then again, if you put Nina Simone in the soundtrack, it's pretty much a shoe-in. It's all go at the cinema at the moment.

In TV, I am currently obsessed with high-brow masterworks such as Celebrity Big Brother, Harry Hill's TV Burp and Celebrity Come Dine With Me. There has been quite a lot of giggling going on. You may scoff, but I defy anyone to watch Ulrika Johnnson and Verne Troyer dressed up as Lionel and Diana, singing a lens-shattering version of Endless Love, and not break into a giggle.

Outside the culture millieu, I've been eating less and exercising more, which has been good. I am feeling fitter and pretty perky. I've been on approximately a gazillion dates, all of which have been funny or hopeless or terrible or interesting in some way, but none of which have given me even the remotest hint of butterflies. But I am not really that bothered at the moment. No rush innit. Every time I see a baby I get the fear, I'm afraid. I love them, don't get me wrong. But I'm not ready to be a parent just yet. That said, I always say that when I'm single. As soon as I fall for someone, my biological clock seems to spring into action, brush the dust off itself briskly and start to tick with a volume that feels as though it must be audible to unsuspecting passers-by.

Right. That's enough from me for one day. No need to go into overdrive. And anyway, I need to guard my strength as I've just given blood. Aren't I a good girl?