They're (not) jammin'

Yesterday after work was a masterclass in delayed gratification: I used a voucher for a full body massage that I was given by an ex in the year 2000. I found the voucher during a clear-out at the weekend and, with no expiry date on it, I thought it was worth a go. I'm sure Charles Worthington have changed their stationery in the past nine years: I was convinced I'd be busted and was barely able to enjoy the massage, so tense was I about getting caught out at the till afterwards and be forced to pay the treatment myself. But it worked. And there was something she did on the backs of my thighs that made me want to take a sabbatical and pay her to continue indefinitely. Thanks Henry.

Then I went to meet Grania at The Roundhouse, where we were going to see David Byrne's installation, Playing The Building. This is a concept situated in the Venn diagram intersection of pointless, odd and unforgivably wanky, with emphasis on the latter. Basically, the artist had taken an old pipe organ and hooked up wires to various parts of the building. When people press keys on the organ, something, somewhere in the building, will make a tap or a clank or some sort of deep vibration. All the noise is made by existing structures within The Roundhouse. It's meant to make you appreciate the building in a new way. Yadda yadda. What was HILARIOUS was the fact that we went there, accidentally, during a 'jam' session, where people had been invited to bring their instruments along and play along with the building. When we arrived, there were people holding about thirty guitars, a tuba, a couple of trumpets, a couple of saws, one of those weird things that that man in my photo is playing, a cello, a couple of tiny ukuleles, someone blowing across the top of a plastic Coke bottle, a few maracas, some bongos, an accordian, three massively overpowering Chinese gongs and a mad woman who took a drum stick and dragged it in big circles along the walls. I don't know why I labelled only the last woman as mad. Seemingly without exception, everyone there was certifiable. This was to jam what Katie Price is to subtlety. Bonne Maman this was not. I watched everyone with wide eyes and one eye on the door, wondering if I am just desperately sad and uncreative as the cacophony made me frightened. These people had carried their instruments on the tube! To stand in a big room and try and make music - when no one knew what they were playing, no one took control and no discernable chords were played! It was absolutely shambolic, made all the more poignant by the fact that the 'musicians' had all carried their instruments on the tube and so had to pretend it was fun and beautiful, for fear of looking like they were all just wasting their time. I thought it was risible, but I'm extremely glad it exists. Everyone needs a hobby; if yours is 'playing random notes on a miscellaneous instrument while listening to others doing the same in an unconnected way, accompanied by the taps and clanks of a large circular structure' then get your ass down to The Roundhouse before the end of August.

This morning, Laura was in my office and I was looking at my leg, my right leg, near my foot, and I noticed something on my ankle. And I said, "What the hell is that?" and we both looked closer and it was clearly a few drops of a reddish-brownish liquid that had been spilled down my leg, just above my ankle and onto my foot. And we looked a bit closer, and found that it was clearly, unmistakably blood. Someone Else's Blood. I hadn't cut myself. It was not from a graze. Well, at least, it was not from any graze of mine. I looked at it in horror and amazement. What angle would someone have had to be at to get three or four drops of their blood on my leg, when I'm wearing a longish skirt? How much were they bleeding? I worry for them. I tried to argue with Laura that it could have been some sort of berry smoothie, but she looked at me as if I was Priorybund. Apparently it is far more conceivable that someone had spilled blood on my leg than that I'd been sprayed by some errant smoothie. Either way, having had urine on my foot on Tuesday and blood on my ankle on Friday, I am now rather concerned for the weekend ahead. Sperm on my shin? Snot on my knee? I'll keep you posted.

Nothing to report

I have nothing to say today, and when I asked my mum what to write, she said, 'Well, your father's just putting the final bit of soil around the new tree,' which, while gripping, wasn't really something I felt could fill an entire blog entry. I didn't do anything cultural last night - I got my hair cut and as usual no one's noticed, and then I went round to Astrid's where we had dinner with Ed and Tom, and it was really very fun indeed, and we discussed the fine line between agnosticism and atheism and ate seriously delicious food and I disgraced myself by finishing the rest of the white chocolate sauce when I was already really full, and then I went home and went to sleep and had weird dreams and then came to work and did some work and this afternoon I got an email showing me the route of the twenty mile night hike I'm going on in September in aid of Maggie's Centres, and we get to go in all these cool buildings on our way, including Battersea Power Station, and I can't wait. Then I was on the Guardian's homepage and noticed that there are now 130,000 members signed up to their Soulmates dating site and I can't understand why the number keeps going up because surely some people meet on the site and get together and remove their profile and it's a bad advert for the site's alleged success if numbers are continually sky high and growing? And I also downloaded a map for the Notting Hill Carnival and booked some tickets for something at the Jazz Cafe and made some other plans and basically I am SO EXCITED about all the fun things I have coming up in the near future so I'm feeling very lucky. But no one has urinated on me or farted near my head and I haven't tripped over in public and revealed my pants and I don't have anything vital to say about Channel 4's long overdue decision to axe Big Brother and I still haven't decided on my evening classes or my next adventure. I'm a bit in limbo at the moment. It's fine here, I have no problem with it as a location. But I couldn't stay here forever. More news as it comes in.

Ew

I can't believe it's taken me so long to write this down.

Yesterday, I was walking along Whitehall towards the ICA where I was going to meet Emily and see Shooting Robert King (recommended) and then Sara was going to meet us in the foyer and we were going to go to the bar for a drink and then Emily was going to go home and Sara and I were going to have dinner. I was a bit like a baton in a relay race, but curvier and fractionally less easy to pass from hand to hand while running at speed.

Anyway, so back on Whitehall, I was walking along in my Fit Flops, and looking at the pedestrian in front of me. She was wearing bright blue cropped trousers, trainers, and her hair looked a bit frazzled. I guessed she was a slightly muttony 55. Then I looked down at her bag, and started trying to work out what she was carrying. It was a plastic bag, within which was what looked like a plastic paint bucket that, for some reason, I felt was filled with vinegar and cockles and mussels. I don't know. That's just what sprung to mind. I didn't have much time to dwell on it, however, because after a couple of seconds, she did a sudden, unexpected lurch to one side, and then carried on walking. Then I heard the sound of some liquid hit the pavement. I looked at the bucket of cockles and mussels, thinking the liquid was coming from there. But no. It was between her feet. And suddenly, as we walked along, she started the most extraordinarily vigorous wee. To be honest, wee isn't the word for it, such was its fury and volume. It was a piss. And some of it WENT ON MY FOOT. Freaking Fit Flops. If only I'd been wearing trainers, none of this would have happened. Well, she still would have wet herself. But I wouldn't have had to walk around the rest of the evening, in the ICA of all places, knowing there was someone else's urine on my foot.

I tried to be nice about it in my head, and realise that some people are incontinent, but seriously, this wasn't incontinence of the type for which I am mentally prepared to be a fact of life following childbirth or general old age. This was incontinence that would not be contained by incontinence pants. Gasp! Maybe that was what was in her bucket! Earlier wees! And it was full, and she didn't have time to stop, so she just thought, "What the hay, I'll keep on going, no one'll notice." That was the weird thing - she just kept on walking during the pee. I've never tried to walk and pee, at least not since I was wearing nappies and expected to multi-task in this fashion, but I don't think I'd find it too easy. She made it look like a wee-walk in the park.

Then the other day there was this old witchy woman on the tube with loads of bags who sat down all flustered and got a yoghurt out and started eating it with her index finger, scooping it out and licking it off with loud smacky noises. I was nearly sick. God I'm glad I'm not mad. Yet.

(Brackets)

OK I'm back. In my absence, I have: seen Ricky Gervais perform some new material in preparation for a new tour (absolutely, unmitigatingly rubbish but I quite enjoyed finding him so disappointing in a schadenfreudic fashion); been taken rowing on the Serpentine at sunset (very, very romantic); had a few difficult conversations (unfun); hosted a dinner with my parents at my flat (very fun: terrine a success, cod less so); tried a restaurant near my flat that I've been meaning to visit for 15 months (not incredible but certainly will revisit); watched England beat Australia in the world's oldest sporting competition at The Oval (amazing); made a tough decision (tough); been sad (boo); and eaten a lot of M&S butter and sultana cookies (ecstasy followed by immediate regret). (N.B. the cookies are called 'butter and sultana cookies' (I think). I was not eating sultana cookies and M&S butter. The Faithful will know that this latter extrapolation would not in any sense be out of the question in terms of my dietary desires, so I thought it was worth clarifying).

Today I have been planning my next adventure. So far I have rejected archaeology excursions in Thailand and conservation trips along the Amazon, the former because my face wouldn't go brown and I'd get a farmer's tan, and the latter because you have to get up v. early in the morning and it's a bit too expensive. Now I'm going to sit in the sun across the road from my office and think about my future.

There's a reason it's not called Bodybook

At the weekend, I went to see Lucy and Jake in Oxfordshire. The sun was shining and Ness, Jake and I frolicked in the paddling pool with the two offspring. Lucy remained clothed at a safe distance. Everyone was very happy. This morning, Lucy sent us the Facebook album of photos that were taken. She had affected the privacy settings so that the only people who were able to see the album were me and Ness, to give us the chance to vet the pictures and decide which, if any, we were happy to be put up for general consumption. My initial reaction was to scour each picture of my bikini-clad self meticulously, pouncing on any sign of: a) fat rolls, b) cellulite, c) stray hairs and/or d) any other misc. hideous blemishes and conditions of which I'd been previously unaware. Out of the 14 photos in which I was tagged, I was happy with my appearance in one, when I am seated in the paddling pool with my back to the camera. My back looks quite brown. Other than that, facially I look very content, but bodily I look very much in need of liposuction and an assortment of other invasive surgical procedures. There are three photos where my stomach muscles are so firmly in absentia that it appears as though I've had three children delivered via C-section in the past fortnight. My breasts certainly seem to be heading south in a way that would add plausibility to that suggestion (strapless bikini, I bid you farewell). And the contrast between my bearably healthy-hued top half and my luminescent thighs is nothing short of extraordinary.

That said, I had no problem with my friends and family seeing the photos - after all, that is what I look like. No point pretending otherwise. What I wasn't sure about was whether some random guy from my office who befriended me on Le Livre Des Visages should see so much of my flesh while he takes a break from trading foreign currency. And the conclusion I drew was: no. So I phoned Lucy and told her, regretfully, that I didn't want her to make the photos visible to the rest of her friends (and, by default, the rest of mine). She was wonderfully understanding and I felt better when gorgeous Ness, whose figure is to mine as a racehorse is to a walrus, was similarly uncomfortable about her body going on show. Consequently, the album was deleted and will never see the light of day. But the matter got me thinking. It seemed a shame - the photos were lovely. We did all look very happy and it was a gorgeous day that I will remember for a long time. And, as mentioned above, I have no problem for some of my friends to see me in that state. Which begs the question - if I'm not happy for someone to see me in a bikini, why am I friends with them on Facebook? I know that some people use the site as a networking tool, and have just as many business contacts in their Friends list as they do actual friends. I can see the benefit of this kind of activity and, given that my career will, I hope, take a new direction at some point before I hit retirement age, I think I stand by the idea that more is more when it comes to Friends lists. I guess the point is to be wary - even with the security controls and privacy settings, you never know for sure who has access to your pages, so it's probably best to err on the side of boring. I guess my friends will just have to wait til I put the pics in a good ol' photo album (the kind that you hold, with pages you have to turn). Having said all that, I'm pretty sure it's too late for me: a few pics of me looking soft and curvy in a minty green bikini probably won't make any difference to people's opinions of me. But although I'm a big one for honesty right now, my future career as World Leader may make me think otherwise. I'm just planning ahead... I only wish I possess such foresight when faced with a large bowl of pavlova.

It's only natural

Must be quick as am uncharacteristically busy at work, but this is important. At lunchtime today, I sat outside on the small grassy knoll, eating my crayfish and avocado salad and trying to make sure that the times when I had to look down to create my next mouthful coincided with the cloudy patches, freeing me up to chew with my face turned towards the sun. The knoll was relatively empty, with just ten or so people around me, mostly on their own or in pairs. After I finished my meal, I reclined, resting my head on my handbag and relaxing in the heat. I breathed in contentedly and then, from a place that could not have been more than five or six feet behind my head, came a loud, clattering fart. I nearly saw my crayfish again in the shock. I rolled my neck so that the top of my head was on the floor. A man was sitting cross-legged behind me, eating a sandwich and wearing headphones. Perhaps he'd thought it had been silent and his music had blocked out the truth. Either way, it was repellent. I think. For some reason it was his cross-leggedness that I found particularly offensive, allowing a direct passage for the particles to travel from the place of emission to my head. Perhaps I'm being squeamish. But then I've never been a good one for bodily functions.

A different type of class...

Much as I might like to believe otherwise, the fact is that Summer 09 is on its way out, and, steeped in that back-to-school feeling, September will shortly be upon us. Christmas is in about a week and a half. So with that in mind, I decided to investigate my possible options for self-improvement in the Autumn term. First up was hairdressing - and this is still a likely plan, but the course I like doesn't start until January 2010. So I bought a copy of Floodlight, London's part-time and evening course bible, and highlighted the ones that tickled my fancy. Here, for your edification, inspiration and possible amusement, is the list of contenders:

• Comic Book Art for Beginners at Camberwell College of Arts
• Human Evolution at Birkbeck
• Lindy Hop Swing Introduction at City Lit
• Rock and Roll Jive Dancing at Bishopsgate Institute
• Drawing for Beginners at Camberwell College of Arts
• Drawing Level 1 at City Lit
• Folk and Pop Guitar for Improvers at Morley College
• Current Affairs Part 1 at City Lit
• Improve Your Memory at Morley College
• Jazz Singing at City Lit
• Tai Chi Beginners at Lambeth College
• Antique and Modern Furniture Restoration at Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute
• Doing Up Junk at Havering Adult College
• Developing Your Fiction at Birkbeck
• Short Story Writing at City Lit

I don't know what it says about me that my interests are quite so ridiculously varied, but anyone who's thinking along the 'Jane of all trades' line wouldn't be far off the mark from where I'm sitting. Why can't I just have one interest and commit, for goodness' sake? Why must I spread myself so thin? Don't answer that. I think we all know why - and for anyone who's really not sure, something about wanting to be liked, wanting to impress, wanting to fit in while wanting to stand out is probably on the money. Anyway. That's the way things are. Now to decide. What do you reckon? I was going to write that I'd promise to do the one with the most votes, but I panicked. I'm certainly doing Improve Your Memory as that's only a one-dayer and I need it more than any of the others. And Tai Chi is out as I am saving that for when I get too old for yoga. Jazz Singing... I think probably not. In fact, they all make me feel a bit panicked. But I'm young and free and this is the perfect time to start something new. Although I don't feel like doing anything because I have an as-yet-not-visible spot brewing on my chin that is so painful it hurts to sit still. I think I should be sent home early but I don't think it'll happen.

Oops

Well, now I've upset my mum with what I wrote yesterday. And I didn't mean to do that, really I didn't. I probably sound spoilt and ungrateful for all the sacrifices they made to put me through school and university. And for that, I apologise wholeheartedly. I know they were doing their best and I am incredibly lucky and grateful to have such loving and wonderful parents. I guess I just struggle with middle class guilt, and it's made me into an inverse snob, and I should keep schtum. But then... I do find class issues endlessly fascinating, and keeping schtum is, surely, one surefire way to perpetuate the status quo. Really all I wanted to say was that I don't like posh people who think they're better than non-posh people. Anyway. I feel better now I have got it off my chest, and I have always known that my opinions are riddled, RIDDLED with contradictions and half-baked rubbish (mmmm, half-baked...) and, let's face it, it's easy for me to say I don't want to send my kids to private school when a) I don't have any and b) I would never be able to afford it. Current fees at my ol' alma mater are £9300 a term, although you do get a £300 discount if you pay by monthly direct debit. Phew. But were I to wake up tomorrow and find myself in the possession of a toddler and a multi-million pound inheritance (the thought is strangely terrifying), I don't know what I would do. I know what I think is best for the country. But can I put my (fictional) money where my mouth is? There's only one way to find out. I better get pregnant.

Confusion leads to sanctimonious rant

Yesterday I read this article which explained how independent/public/private/fee-paying schools in Britain try to justify their charitable status. I doubt it will be surprising that I didn't agree with its contents. Then last night I went to a gig at the Royal Festival Hall. The turnout was pretty broad, fairly white, but a wide age-range had turned out to see 19-year-old folk starlet Laura Marling perform with her posse of other rising folk starlets. I have had Laura's album for about a year having bought it on the strength of the 30-second snippets on iTunes and its Mercury Prize nomination. And I really like it. She has a beautiful voice and sings with clarity and honesty. It's not the world's best album, but given her age, it's an impressive debut. I was looking forward to seeing her live. The lights dimmed, and a large screen lit up at the back of the stage. Footage filmed by Laura showed her interviewing some of the other musicians in her group of comrades. Everyone was attractive and supportive, full of mutual love and respect. It would all have been simply wonderful, except I was too busy bristling uncontrollably: the accents from the people on screen were as Sloaney as Prince Charles drinking Earl Grey in a Barbour, standing on a croquet lawn with a black Lab. I couldn't bear it. The singer I'd come to see wasn't a carefree hippie - she was a privileged toff. A privileged toff just like me. I was furious.

I have a chip on my shoulder the size of Eton. This isn't a recent problem but lately I've noticed it getting worse. The Glastocrush has just moved in from the decidedly gritty Uxbridge Road to a friend's place in Holland Park. The houses are stunning, the delis are exclusive, the pubs are full of well-behaved Harrovians, the pavements are wide, the flaneurs are carrying Alexander McCall Smith, the dogs are not bred to kill and people turn their James Blunt CDs down after 10pm so as not to wake the baby. It couldn't be more different to my hood. Most people would, I'm sure, secretly love to live somewhere so luxurious and safe. What's not to like? But for some reason, it makes me feel distinctly uncomfortable. I can't work out why. Then the other night, when I met a guy my age who had never had a job, instead of being jealous, I instinctively went on the attack. And when someone talked about rolling back the rug in their parents' house at Christmas time and doing some reeling, I found myself panicking.

What is going on? I, after all, was privately educated, at vast expense to my parents. I know the Dashing White Sargeant. I can hold my own at a dinner party. To my distinct irritation, I don't sound or look remotely out of place in Fulham. I've been to the Feathers, the 4th of June, Boujis and Cartier Polo (although admittedly the last was as a waitress). I know not to hold a knife like a pen, not to butter the bread all at once, to tip the soup bowl away from me and pass the port clockwise. I write thank you letters in fountain pen. Several people I know are friends with members of the royal family. Despite all attempts to adopt a more estuary twang every now and then, on the whole, my rich, plummy accent would sound fantastic on Watch With Mother. So how can I be negative about posh people when I've had exactly the same advantages, when I am one of them? As a result of my spoon-fed education, I received good exam results and went to a good university where I got a good degree - all in all, a good start in life. Spending seven of the most formative years of one's life (11-18) at a small boarding school means that you make close friends - I've just looked at my phone's contacts list, and out of our year of around 50 girls, I still have the phone numbers of 20, and see most of them regularly, just under fourteen years after we left. I am incredibly grateful for those friends. And there's no doubt that, while my schooldays were occasionally miserable, and the education I received was questionable, I did have moments when I had a brilliant time.

Still, if I could ban private education, I would. As discussed when I was loving my politics course, I believe strongly in equality of opportunity, and I'm fairly clear that private education simply doesn't allow that. I can't change my past, but I can state my belief that, in an ideal future, all of Britain's schools would be run by the state. I am convinced that only with the intervention of parents will schools improve, and the more rich, powerful parents who choose to withdraw their children from the state system, the more that state schools will decline.

I guess that, while I am not exactly ashamed of the fact that I had a private education, I want people to know that I don't believe it is fair, or right, and that I do not support inequality. And I guess that, while I think it's fine to have been to public school, what is not fine is to act as if the undeniable privilege and advantage that comes from that experience is a birthright. Basically - I'm fine with toffs as long as they are, like me, slightly uncomfortable with their toffness. Revelling in the toffness is, to me, a bit gross. Never making an effort to leave the bubble is, to me, a bit gross. Whether it's the yummy mummies in Holland Park, the chummy guffaws from the men's bar at a centuries-old golf club, the chattering at the organic farmers' market in the Oval or the clink of gin glasses from inside a gated community in South Africa, there's something that makes me cringe about this unspoken preference for PLUs.

I know, I know - people will always be different and birds of a feather will always flock together. And the hypocrisy of me saying 'Love all the people' while saying 'I don't like toffs' isn't lost on me. I guess what I'm trying to say is, things aren't great now. The divides are massive. Let's not exacerbate them by saying 'My four year old's education is worth more than yours.' Different is not better or worse. It's just different. Pitbulls aren't worse than spaniels. Garage music isn't worse than Mozart. Cannabis isn't worse than yoga. Everyone lives their own life. Judgment is wrong - right? You can't live in London and ignore the poverty, the gangs, the total hopelessness of many of your neighbours. You can't live in a rural village in your gorgeous converted farmhouse and pretend that there's not shit going down all around you. Well, you can. You can be an ostrich. But that seems so sad, so final. It's giving up. And I don't want to give up. Surely it would be preferable if we worked at this together. If we can't send our kids to the same schools, then what chance do we have?

That said, my friend once told me that she was all up for state education for her daughter until she looked round her local primary schools, one private, one state, and said the difference was so palpable as to be horrific and made her do everything in her power to find the extra thousands she needed to send her daughter to the private primary. You can be a liberal all you want, she seemed to be saying, but once you become a mother, everything will change. So, like her, I reserve the right to be a complete and utter hypocrite.

08:58 this morning

I was standing in a crowded lift at work. Also in the lift were two women. One of them was holding a Black & Red notebook and a regulation pass for the building and was therefore clearly a full-time employee of the same company as I. The other was sporting a visitor's pass and was obviously a guest in the building.
Full Time Employee: "So, where is it you've come in from again?"
Visitor: "Kazakhstan."
FTE: "Ah right, I've never been there."
Visitor: [smiles politely]
FTE: "The nearest I've been is probably... well, I went to Singapore once, but that's..."
Visitor: "Nowhere near it."

In that 10-12 second exchange, I felt a wide selection of emotional responses, starting with absolute anger at the FTE's response to the Kazakhstan information. Who cares if you've never been there, you small-minded, blinkered mofo? Why don't you try and expand your horizons a bit? There's a Kazakhstani national standing in the same airspace as you. Why not ask her what it's like there? People's merry bubble existence drives me spastic. Then I felt absolute horror and the simultaneous desire to laugh at the Singapore remark. And sympathy for the Visitor who tried to show polite interest and didn't spit in the face of the ignorant FTE. I don't know where all this passion came from, given that it was before 9am on a Monday morning, but that's what happened. No wonder I'm always so exhausted when a journey in a lift is so stressful.

Plus I have admittedly been burning the candle at both ends of late, while holding it with a pair of tongs and firing the mid-section with a blowtorch. I am all out of wick. Wednesday night I went to a secret supper club in Brixton, where the host opens his home two nights a week to 16 strangers and cooks them the most glorious food I've had in quite some time. It was almost emotional - such an extraordinary hidden gem full of simple, uncomplicated sensations of love and passion without cynicism or caveat, which rekindled my never-that-latant fondness for city life. Then on Thursday I fasted until the evening, when it was Joanna's birthday party and I walked to the pub in the pouring rain and we ate oh-so-much pizza and delicious apple bakewell. Friday day was spent with the Glastocrush, doing a psychometric test at a gentlemen's club in Mayfair (you couldn't make it up) and then rushing home to face a dramatic pre-birthday-party wardrobe malfunction combined with too-many-incoming-phonecalls crisis when at one point I was completely naked except for a very fitted black halterneck top, barking down the phone at Emily while the GC stood by with wondrous dedication, wondering how he could help - but, short of developing an ability to perform miracle cellulite-busting, body-firming algae wraps in the confines of my flat, there was pretty much nothing he could do. Eventually we made it to my party where twelve of us went bowling in Bayswater and ate and drank too much more, and then three of us went on to the midnight show at The Comedy Store, and then two of us went back to my flat and talked until 4am. On Saturday we did an hour of yoga to sweat out the hangover, and then went vintage shopping for just under six hours (this is me and Grania, by the way, not the GC, who was working but would have wept openly if I'd made him shop on his day off). Despite our hangovers we managed to shop with impressive dedication and harmony, only complaining about vintage arm on one or two occasions, and avoiding an actual fist fight over a turban with admirable diplomacy. Then in the evening I went over to the GC's flat for an impromptu BBQ on the roof with two others, and we wrote messages on a Chinese lantern, lit it and winced as it flew, at speed, into a large chestnut tree, but were thrilled when the second attempt lifted high up, unfortunately then extinguishing almost immediately and coming down somewhere around a nearby sports centre. Yesterday was Sunday and I played frisbee in Green Park and didn't humiliate myself entirely as far as I'm aware, and then I went home and hoovered and tidied and wiped and dusted and ironed and now I'm feeling slightly less hectic, especially with the prospect of another night at the flat tonight. But calm or not, all of the above might help one to understand why an overheard conversation in an elevator is enough to tip me over the edge. Maybe I should take the stairs.

Full

I'm not quite sure why I feel so strongly about sharing my birthday with the POTUS, but finding out that Barack Obama is not only a lion but a 4th August lion was enough to make me gasp with excitement. Then again, I was almost dizzy when I found out while I was watching the opening credits of Newsnight last night, having arrived at my parents' house in the late afternoon to find my dad fixing four Birthday Girl balloons to the front gate, and then eating almost my own bodyweight in crisps and dip, so that none of us were remotely hungry, and then wolfing down delicious fish starter and amazing ribeye and bearnaise sauce and homegrown beans and homegrown salad and then apple tart with vanilla icecream plus extra chocolate cupcake for me with candle. I didn't eat the candle. But I did drink a lot of wine. And I woke up this morning still unbelievably, palpably full, and then came to work and went out for an horrifyingly early lunch to a really swanky steak restaurant with my boss and his right hand man, and almost got into a tussle because they were having calamari to start and wanted me to order a portion, and I could still taste the ribeye from last night, and so eventually my boss agreed to give me one of his rings, and then I managed not to be coerced into ordering steak for my main, and instead had seabass with spinach and bacon and peas and onions which under any other circumstances would have been absolutely delicious but on this occasion was absolutely the richest and most unnecessary meal I've ever eaten, and tonight I am going out for dinner with Emily to a supper club in Brixton where we are having at least four courses, and I can't cancel as it's been booked for weeks and I am so excited about it in principle but obviously in practice am tempted to take up bulimia just for this afternoon so that I can conceive of fitting in more food. I bet Obama doesn't have to go through this.

Woop

It's my birthday. I am at work. I received four birthday cards in the post this morning. I received a further card when I got to work, as well as an individually packaged slice of M&S Victoria sponge, which I ate for breakfast. As I type, I have received ten birthday messages on my Facebook wall. I have had four birthday texts and one birthday voicemail. Tomorrow my boss is taking me out for a birthday lunch. It is not clear why he couldn't do that today, on my actual birthday, but I'm not complaining. Tonight I will be cooked a delicious meal by my parents. On Friday I will celebrate with a select group of friends who aren't on holiday. And thrillingly, I have one birthday bunch of flowers on their way, which is brilliant because I can carry them home on the tube and everyone will see that I am loved. Not that I care about that kind of thing, for I am self-sufficient and a natural introvert, but I just thought you might like to be kept in the loop. Birthday love to all from The Birthday Girl.