Volte-face

So just because I'm not self-indulgent enough on this blog, I see from my notes (yes, I have to write things down to tell you Faithful, else I'll forget these precious gems) that I am yet to tell you about a Major Event in my recent past, i.e. I had a filling. In a cavity. In my tooth.

Argh.

I can't write this. It's not what's on my mind and is thus a sham. I don't do shams. Hams: yes. Shams... Not so much. I'll be back when I'm normal. Or, at least, feeling more stable. Uber-Faithful, have no fear: I'm fine. Just having a crisis of confidence, an experience that is highly unpleasant for one so sure of one's own abilities and USPs as I. Feel free to leave messages of support below. Suggested content is something along the lines of:

"O Most Wondrous Jane,

You are, without question, one of the funniest, most intelligent, fearless and talented people on earth. Your life's meniscus is taut with interesting and challenging events. Your existence is massively enviable and I defy anyone to reject the opportunity of spending time in your company. In fact, anyone who did not actively pursue the chance even to stand near you on a tube is of questionable intellect and/or possibly harbours state secrets.

In addition to that, even though I may have ever met you in person, somehow I KNOW that you are an intensely beautiful and sensual being, with a wonderful body and winning smile. Without the lessons and experiences you share in Lost Looking For Fish, my life would be infinitely poorer. In fact, without you, the justification for my existence would wither to the point where I would have to question my motivation for going on. You are a stranger, but you keep me alive. I love you.

Yours always, in deepest admiration,

[insert your name here]"

Don't all rush at once.

Genetically modified update

Just what the world needs. A chicken that will never say the word 'spastic'.

The Baad, urr, Modern Complex

Last year I was eflirting with a guy who dropped Der Baader Meinhof Komplex into conversation so many times that I realised that he wasn't cool and was, in fact, a tryhard. I went off him before we went on our date. Then we went on a date and he also went off me. He was one of those petite boys and very intellectual. Took life very seriously while thinking he was very laid back. I then relentlessly took the piss out of him. Lethal combo. Anyway, all that's irrelevant. The only reason I thought of him is that I recently, finally, got around to seeing Der Baader Meinhof Komplex the other night, having had a Last of the Mohicans about it since it came out in cinemas.

And I can confirm that the film was really good - well directed, not too long, well acted, plausible and compelling. I learned a lot from watching it - 1970s Germany isn't a time:place ratio I know much about [NB the clever way that phrase suggests that there are other time periods in German history about which I am a PhD-level expert?] - and what really struck me was how much things have changed, seemingly for the worse. These young people had grown up in the shadow of WWII. Prominent Nazis were still in power in their country. And they were ashamed at the role their government was playing in Vietnam. So, like the Parisians, they protested. I absolutely categorically do not condone any sort of violence. I am not interested in any movement that uses terrorism to promote its message. But I was profoundly ashamed of the complete lack of comparable vehemence among young people today.

Perhaps the film was unrepresentative. Perhaps there weren't really thousands of young Germans earnestly discussing world politics and then risking their lives and their criminal records by getting involved in street protests and underground movements. But, in comparison, I can't think of a single person I know who has ever really put themselves out for the state of the world. I mean, I know people who've done voluntary work. And people who've done paid work for good organisations such as charities, organisations that can make a difference. But really, no one I know (as far as I know) genuinely puts themselves out, Big Time, for the poor, the weak, the oppressed, just because it Has To Be Done. They'll do it because it's rewarding to volunteer for the Samaritans, or because helping set up a newspaper in Ghana is interesting and good for their CV, or because being a teaching assistant in a state school makes them feel better about themselves than it would to be a far-better-paid teacher in a private school. All these things are fine - they're even, in fact, Fantastic, given the comparative level of commitment shown by many of their peers. Certainly, something is a darn sight better than nothing.

But back there, in the Seventies, it seemed to be the norm to make serious, fundamental compromises to help those in need. Is that an accurate impression? I have no idea. I was a foetus. But I can speak about the now. And today, it is as though the towering majority spend the majority of their time engaged in an endless struggle to get their own shit sorted to a quasi-fictional, certainly rarely-attained point when they are finally happy to start giving up their free time or their salary potential to help others. A reflection on the perfectionism and self-obsession of our society, I'm sure. And I am certainly not any different. It's just a shame, is all. There is still no shortage of absolutely horrific things going on around the world and the only thing we ever manage to do is go on the occasional march around London or sign online petitions, the singularly least useful thing on the planet after Gordon Brown's 2010 election acceptance speech. Just wish we were all a bit less selfish. Starting with other people, of course. Like the whole not-flying trip. I'll join in when it seems to be making a difference.

Just FYI

Last week I sent an email to an author who I absolutely love. He replied. I replied again. He replied again. Then it could go no further without me offering to stalk him, so it ended.

21 September 2009 23:52
Subject line: Fanmail
I think you are so clever and funny that I don't quite know what to do with myself.
Yours,
Jane

22 September 2009 10:52
Subject line: Fanmail
You should try being me sometime. It's no picnic, I can tell you.
Regards
AM

22 September 2009 11:24
Subject line: Fanmail
Oh, I don't want to *be* you. I just want to bask in your brilliance.
Being anyone is tricky at times. And picnics are seriously overrated.
Keep up the good work. And if you ever need an ego boost, drop me a line: I'm clever and cool and I think you're the dog's.
Jane

23 September 2009 10:18
Subject line: Fanmail
My ego, as any number of people would doubtless wearily attest, requires no further enlarging. But thanks for the encouragement - always nice to think that someone is paying any attention at all.
AM

THE END

I don't really know why I'm posting that exchange here. It makes me smile, I suppose. I like his mixture of arrogance and insecurity. And if I don't post it on my blog, then I might forget all about it.

A long wait...

So this was slightly disheartening:

SW4get it

I'm going to have to be careful not to reveal any identities here, but the other day, a girl I know went on a date with a boy I know. I used to know the boy quite well, but not any more. Actually, all that is irrelevant. What is important is this: within approximately ten minutes of the start of the date, I am told that the boy uttered one of the most deal-breaking, if not the most deal-breaking line, in the history of dating. Sadly it will be lost on any foreign readers, but for the London-familiar among you, feast your eyes upon the following, surely up there in the most off-putting statements anyone could ever make in any context, let alone at a time when you are meant to be wooing a girl, let alone when that girl is gorgeous and cool and unique and Hot Stuff. Are you ready? He said this:

"To be honest, I don't really ever see myself moving out of Putney."

I mean. Can you Adam and Eve it? What is so difficult is that my mother will now email me saying, "Pickle, what's wrong with that? You are too fussy." And I know why she thinks that. But youthful Faithful, back me up here. Is that not The Worst? Putney! Of all places. Surely it is the most mediocre borough in London. It excels at nothing. It is not very glamorous, or very urban, or gritty, or cool, or interesting, or cultural, or expensive, or enviable, or anything. It is just pure MOR. If it was a clothes shop, it would be River Island. Or maybe, at a push, Next. And he wants to shop in River Island. For Ever. As one of my friends pointed out, it would be blinkered enough for someone to say they were never going to live anywhere other than London. But Putney. Sigh. I do worry about people sometimes.

So that was a favourite anecdote for a while, and, I believed, a unique and special one. Until it happened to me.

I have been set up with a guy - we are going on a date next week - and in an earlier email to me, he suggested meeting in Clapham. I gently pooh-poohed the idea, saying something immensely subtle along the lines of 'I'd rather die. Please, I beg you, let's go absolutely anywhere else. Kabul, Darfur, Scunthorpe - all of them would be fine. Just not Clapham.' Then in a later email, he revealed that he lived there. In SW4. I apologised for being rude, but didn't retract my hatred of it - and he replied saying 'No offence taken: I love the place.' And I know this sounds melodramatic and possibly absurd, but my initial reaction was to want to call off the date.

Absurd or not, I simply cannot imagine falling for someone who loves Clapham. The kind of person who loves Clapham is so different to me. In fact, it is just not possible that I could love that type of person. I'll still go on the date, of course - a row over a glass of wine is still one of my favourite pastimes - but I wouldn't go dusting off your hat yet, Cilla. And mum - two of my girlfriends have agreed that they would have reacted similarly, so I'm not the only one out there who feels like this. Of course, all three of us are single and probably will be forever. But the fact remains that I'd rather be on my own than married to someone who thinks a crazy night out is a gastropub in the Old Town. Shudder.

Just you wait - I'll be walking down the aisle with a guy who lives on Abbeville Road before you can laugh in my face.

Middle Class Public Service Announcement

Shock announcement: Toptable, London's premier FREE restaurant booking site (because in the old days it used to be, like, soooo expensive to make a reservation), might be a sham.

For those Faithful who have better things to do than scour the internet for 3 courses for £15 deals, the way it works is that you book a table on the site, using their recommendations and other diners' reviews to help you out. Then afterwards, you write your own review. As a reward for writing the review, you get some points. When you have enough points, you get a free meal. Everyone's a winner - the site gets hundreds of up-to-date reviews each week and every now and then, the punter gets to go to Quaglino's (or A.N. Other life-threatening restaurant) for free. Well, free except booze. So not remotely free, then. But still.

Aaaaaaaaanyway. It was all going well, until I went to Bertorelli's with Joanna last month and wrote a slightly terse - but very fair - review. And then I went to lunch with my mum at Luc's in Leadenhall Market, and I wrote a mixed review, saying that the service had been fantastic but the food was a bit meh. Although more articulate than that. Then I was bored at work and, in my vanity, decided to reread my old reviews, and found that none of my recent ones had been published. So, in my boredom, I decided to complain. "I wouldn't like to think that only positive reviews are getting put on the site," I said, in true Disgruntled of Tunbridge Wells style.

The email reply I received certainly did little to assuage my concerns. Well-written and courteous, it explained that "restaurateurs are much more open to criticism if we take it to them directly rather than posting it publicly [sic] (have always wanted to do that. God it's patronising)."

I wrote back expressing my bored outrage:
"Thanks for your response. I feel very strongly that all feedback - negative or not - should appear on the site. It is good that you take it up with the restaurant, but this should be in addition to, not instead of, posting it on the site. I wrote that review to benefit other Toptable users. If I'd wanted to complain to the restaurant, I would have. I don't like to think of all the other negative reviews that people might have written that aren't visible on the site itself. What use are the reviews if the only ones that are posted are positive?"

So. There you go. It's not funny. It's probably not even useful for most of you, since the majority of my readers don't seem to live in the UK. But for those Toptable users out there - be warned. Things aren't as unbiased as they seem. I'm quite surprised that I was naive enough to have believed otherwise, but am choosing to celebrate a brief lapse in my characteristic world-weariness rather than berating myself for a lack of cynicism.

In other news: I have decided that, much as I love the smoking ban, there is one element of it that really sucks. The small areas outside pubs have now become absolutely uninhabitable. On a pleasant evening, it used to be enjoyable to sit outside having a glass of wine with a friend. Now it is akin to getting into a bath filled with fag butts while smoking six Marlboro reds simultaneously. I was at the Fitzroy Tavern yesterday and despite the gorgeous, temperate late afternoon weather, I was forced inside by the stench of cigarettes in the congregation outside. When urine cubes are a favourable aroma, you know something has gone badly awry.

Entirely unoriginal observation

You know that film with Michael Douglas, Falling Down, where he starts shooting everything due to his rage at modern life? Well, had I had my trusty semi-automatic to hand in EAT just now, I might just have begun a real-life reenactment. It's not the salespeople's fault, they're told to do it, and they do it with a smile. But please, someone, tell me how I am supposed to cope with being asked, pretty much every single day, if I want bread with that, or a drink, or any fruit? IF I WANT ANY BREAD, I'LL FREAKING WELL ASK FOR IT. I am not mute. I am not in a vegetative state. I am not so imbecillic that, while really wanting something, I am unable to get it from the large refrigerated display cabinet, and have to rely on an EAT employee to remind me that I might want a beverage. If I forget to get a beverage, I'll learn. I'll burn my mouth on their soups that are clearly heated somewhere near the surface of the sun, and I'll remember to get one next time. But the fact that the world may be coming to a point where a third party feels like they must remind me to take in fluid is terrifying. What next? Smiley women popping up in the street to remind me to urinate? People coming round pubs at 11pm telling me it's time for bed and that I should be sure to get a good night's sleep if I want to focus properly at work the next day? Text reminders from clothes shops alerting me to the fact that it is common decency to get dressed before leaving the house? I am 32 years old. I have lived on this planet for 11,738 days (thank you, Days Alive Calculator) and I have not yet become dangerously dehydrated or forgotten to eat for several days in a row. Not once. And I don't plan on starting now. But I will stop eating at EAT unless they start respecting my ability to keep up to speed with my basic human needs. Yes, that's a threat. Yes, EAT people, you should be scared. But no, I don't have a semi-automatic. Just leave me alone. Give me my soup, and let me go. Is that too much to ask?

How many people are in a group?

In a burst of community-mindedness a couple of weeks ago, I had the idea of setting up a book club for the women who live near me. There are around eight hundred flats on the estate, and I felt sure that at least some of these tiny worlds would contain women who might want to meet up and discuss books. I had fantasies of six or seven of us convening in each other's flats on a bimonthly basis, drinking tea and wine and thrashing out the finer points of the latest Alice Sebold. Before you release the hounds, I'll hold my hands up and confess freely: yes, I was expecting to be one of the more literary among the gathering. The point of the exercise wasn't to critique Proust or make smug in-jokes about Goethe. I wanted to pique the interest of people who aren't normally motivated to read much, and the posters I put up were designed to reassure someone who might normally feel under-confident about such a thing. Potentially massively patronising and naive, I'll concede. But surely still a nice idea? I love books. Reading gives me a lot of pleasure. Why not spread the love?

I became aware that I may have got it wrong when I caught the eye of a lady who lives near me and told her I was off to stick posters around the estate. She looked a bit confused, understandably, so I walked over to her and explained that I was starting a book club. I proffered the poster. She smiled like an indulgent mother, and said, "Oh! Good!" nodding enthusiastically but clearly none the wiser what I was talking about. Despite having had frequent neighbourly hi-and-bye conversations over the months, I now became unsure whether or not she speaks English. "Ah well," I reassured myself. "There will be others." I switched on my iPod and trotted off to each of the stairwells, sticking posters up with Sellotape next to another one advertising a series of ten pilates classes for £75. My idea was free - surely I would be inundated with requests?

Almost immediately, I received an email from a lady who claimed to be interested, although she pointed out a typo in my poster and added the unrhetorical caveat, "I hope you're not planning on reading chicklit." Slightly deflated at her tone, I wrote back saying that I was happy to read whatever the majority chose, but that since it was just me and her at that point, I would let her know if others took the bait. A day later I received another email from a lovely sounding lady who was very positive about the idea. But that was two weeks ago. And since then: nada. The three of us have all agreed that we need more than three to be a Club, so for now, the idea is gathering dust on the shelf, and my poster is still stuck to the door of my stairwell, a bit bedraggled and sticking two metaphorical fingers up at me every time I get home, mocking me for trying to create some community spirit. I'm a bit disheartened but not nearly enough to give up altogether. Maybe a fresh round of posters is what's needed: a 'We've got three - but we need three more' type of encouragement. Or perhaps I should take the hint and accept that people aren't that fussed. As Interested Party Number One said when I told her I hadn't had anyone else get in touch: "they work, they have busy lives." I do the former, and I thought I had the latter. Ah well. On to the next adventure.

I HATE Boden.

But I have promises to keep...

On Friday night and Saturday morning, I walked twenty miles around this great city. And it was hard. Grania had decided to join me a couple of weeks ago, squeezing the charity walk in between the end of the working day and a 6am train to Gatwick on Saturday morning, which was insania but I was glad of the company. At about 7.15pm we left my flat, took the tube to London Bridge and walked over to City Hall, where there was a band playing inspiring tunes to get us in the mood, and we were given our route maps and a free bottle of water and our commemorative T-shirts and our bowler hats. Yes. Our bowler hats.

So. Then we dashed up inside the spiral of City Hall to see the big press room which was fun, and then back down to the starting line for about 20:45. West along the river from Tower Bridge to the Wheel. On the Wheel for an 'exclusive' nightride which was great, could see for miles, tried and failed to ditch our bowlers by swapping them with passers' by, then over Waterloo Bridge, up Victoria Street, left halfway along, across to Channel 4, where we had a tour and learned that Richard Rogers always likes to put phallic symbols in his buildings, and Grania ate a flapjack (later regretted), and then we set off again, wiggling through south Victoria, across Vauxhall Bridge Road, over Ebury Bridge, near Google, waved at Simon, correctly following the yellow arrows when the pack ahead of us had turned left, up into Belgravia, south of Harrods, up Beauchamp Place, past lots of drunk people, left onto Brompton Road, past the V&A, right at the Natural History Museum, past the Science Museum, up to the next stop, the Royal Geographical Society, where there was a string quartet playing and we ate biscuits and photographed ourselves standing behind the lectern, and then we went on, along Kensington Gore and then Ken High Street, past many more drunk people, past a queue of Eurotrash waiting to get into a club in the building where Barkers used to be (poss a new entrance to the Roof Gardens?), and we agreed that we'd genuinely rather be spending our Friday night walking twenty miles than queuing to get into that club, and then left opposite Olympia, down past Barons Court, noticing that one of the flats with the huge windows on the Talgarth Road is for sale, and then past where I once weed in the street following massive night out at Lucy and Tina's when I fell off a bed into a wooden clothes drying rack and got a black eye, and then Grania told me about when she once got home to her mum's house after a big party and was sick in the dog bed while the dog was still in it, and then we arrived at the Fulham Palace Road and turned left into Charing Cross Hospital to visit the amazing Maggie's Centre, which is beautiful and so worthwhile and made it all so much more powerful but we couldn't sit down in case we never got up again, so we carried on down Fulham Palace Road, went to Fulham Palace at the south end but turned around and came straight back after posing by a fountain in the courtyard, and then went up the New King's Road, over the hump, past Crazy Larry's and Embargo, and then right near the Chelsea Bun, onto Edith Grove, past where the Stones used to live, left onto the Embankment, along along along, and then right over Battersea Bridge, down past the QVC building to the roundabout with the Shell garage, where Grania bought a toothbrush, and then left onto York Way or whatever it is, past Battersea Dogs' Home, where I was photographed stroking the photograph of a kitten, and then on into Battersea Power Station, the architectural highlight for me, which was moving and incredible and I loved it, and we ate egg mayonnaise sandwiches and drank squash and stretched a bit, and then on to Vauxhall, so close to home, but no, left over Vauxhall Bridge, right onto Millbank, past Labour HQ, past the Commons, over Parliament Square, round the back towards the park, but then onto Horse Guards, and then actually across Horseguards, where they do the Trooping of the Colour (I think, having never been as a grown-up) and the moon was bright, and Grania and I had our photos taken with handsome (it was dark, let us live our dreams) guards wearing full pointy-silver-hat-with-long-white-horsehair-tassel-thing and they squeezed us very tight and we giggled like forty year olds at a Chippendale shows, and then went through the building out onto Whitehall, and then (hilariously) down the exact road where the woman's wee went on my foot, and some other woman tried to talk to us at that point, wanting to bond about the handsome guards, and Grania and I both wanted to bond and be nice, but also it was about 4 in the morning and we had a little further to go and we were tired and smalltalk proved beyond us, and we ploughed on, under Hungerford Bridge, along the Embankment again to the final stop, the Savoy Hotel, where we went up to the third floor in a lift and drank cheap Champagne out of plastic flutes on the balcony and then I sat on my own in the big, loudly-carpeted room while Grania went to the loo, and I listened to the band, and when she came back she said I looked like the loser guest at a bad wedding, sitting there in my walking boots, and then we went down the stairs and briefly got embroiled in another conversation with the same woman, but then she overtook us when she became confident of the route, and we carried on east along the river, past Somerset House and Blackfriars, up to the Millennium Bridge and then left up the stairs towards St. Paul's, and then right and right again, back onto the river, and we could see Tower Bridge, our goal, but it wasn't getting any closer, and then the route took us north of the river about a block, along Upper Thames Street and then Lower Thames Street, and then to the Tower, round it and right, over Tower Bridge and finally down the stairs to the finish line, where we were given medals and free muesli and then we had to race to find a cab so that Grania could get back to my flat, pick up her luggage and head back to Victoria for the Gatwick Express. I had a bath and went to bed, and then woke up three hours later because my legs were aching so much. I took two Nurofen and went back to sleep. Then at 11am my downstairs neighbours started playing loud, bad R'n'B. I lay on my sofa, then went to my parents', fell asleep after a delicious dinner at about 9pm and went to bed. Maggie's Centres are £550 richer as a result. Excellent.

Menstruvacation (DYSWIDT?)

I know I go on about how easy boys have it, what with no biological clock and less pressure from society in terms of their physical appearance, but it's normally a bit in jest. I mean, it does suck that only one gender has a biological clock, but as far as the looks department is concerned, I genuinely love getting dressed up and doing my hair and make-up, and I would feel straight-jacketed, deprived and totally miserable if I only had one outfit I could wear to weddings. When it comes to looks, I'd rather be a girl. Sure, it's hard - but it's fun.

However, this morning I remembered one thing that means it really does suck to be female: menstruation. The run-up of PMT is annoying, too - I've been grumpy for the past three days and all I've wanted to do is lie under a 900 tog duvet and groan softly. But there's a kind of luxury to it - I file it with hangovers in the way that it is a physical impossibility to function at full throttle so instead you take a mini-holiday from normal pressures. Merely getting through the day without crying or stabbing someone with scissors is a major achievement.

But once PMT is over, then DMT starts. And DMT - where D stands for During - is less funny because it is actually (for me) really quite painful. When I was in my mid-teens, I once had such a bad stomach ache that I nearly fainted on a train to Waterloo. I was carried off by a man at Vauxhall and put on the platform to recuperate. Then I phoned my dad from a payphone sounding as though I'd lost a limb in 'Nam, and he had to drive for about 40 minutes to come pick me up because I was in such agony. Like migraines and cystitis, unless you've had it, you don't really believe they exist. But trust me, period pains can be paralysing. Thankfully, these days a couple of Nurofen usually do the trick and the phase normally passes in a few hours, leaving me feeling shattered but delighted to be merely normal, in that same way that the joy of 'not having lost my wallet' or 'no longer having a sore throat' makes wallet-losing or sore-throat-having almost worth it.

Today, sadly the Nurofen failed me, and I was on the tube to work and had to get off midway through my commute and sit on one of the platform chairs at Borough, doubled over in pain but relieved that I hadn't actually been sick or passed out when I was still in the carriage. It's such a specific and exhausting pain, and it's now eight hours later and I still feel like there is someone wringing out my insides. I am absolutely shattered. All I want to do is go home and lie diagonally across my sofa, eat takeaway and watch bad TV, but I can't - my temporary flatmate is in residence, and he has first dibs on the sitting room tonight. Instead, I'm going to go for a couple of drinks at 6, and then go home, sneak into my bedroom, don a lot of velour, clamber into bed and watch a DVD on my laptop. It's all been a bit much but then I look down at my feet, clad in new leopard-print pixie boots, and suddenly everything is OK again. I can't imagine many men being cheered up by the same sight.

Rage

A couple of weeks ago, I received a notification that I had been tagged in someone else's photo on Facebook. The guy is in my choir and he'd been on our tour to the south of France, so I thought maybe there were some hilarious new pics of us online, cavorting around in hotel car parks and/or straightening unwilling people's very curly hair. Excitedly, I clicked the link in my email to view the photo. Seconds later, the Facebook window opened and there, in front of me, was this:

And I was tagged. As were two other girls from choir.

To say I went fucking ballistic is a gargantuan understatement. Obviously, from the outside, I did nothing. A tear may have pricked my eye. But in my head, I was sitting astride an H-bomb aimed at his house and whooping as I went down.

Now. I may or may not be fat. I happen to think I am not. In comparison to some people, I am a bit larger; I am definitely thinner than others. However, although I am not fat, I will freely admit that I am not 'thin'. No one would point at me and go, 'God, look at that thin girl.' The other two girls weigh less than I do. But even so, and I hope that neither of them would mind me saying this, they are probably not those foal-like girls who can gorge on pizza and beer for three weeks and not gain a gram either.

So what mind-bending drugs had this boy ingested to think that tagging the three of us on this photos was a good idea? To the best of my knowledge, there is not a single person alive in the Western Hemisphere who is not aware that it is absolutely, categorically UNACCEPTABLE to hint, to insinuate, to even BREATHE the idea that a girl is fat. OK, maybe, just maybe, it might be OK to call a girl fat when the girl in question is a) your best friend and b) so laughably skinny that to suggest that she is porky would be both ironic and hilarious. But, as I have made abundantly clear, and as is no doubt obvious to the 'wacky' individual who posted this picture and tagged our names to it, none of the three of us are in the category one might call 'laughably skinny'. And the guy certainly does not know us well enough to make a risky gag like that. He's eight years younger than me, approximately. What could he get out of this? It wasn't in a run of 'paintings that look amusingly absolutely nothing like people I vaguely know'. This was one lone painting in a series of otherwise completely run-of-the-mill, smug-rich-person-touring-South-America photographs. Just goes to show that you can have the most expensive education in the world and still be emotional pondlife. And yes, it'll be awkward if he's read this the next time I see him. But I am still gobsmacked at his lunacy and I had to vent. What. A. Dick.

Today is crap

1. It is pouring with rain.
2. I am ill with a sore throat and aching limbs.
3. Patrick Swayze is dead.
4. I have just dropped a buttered, Marmited corn thin, Marmite side down on my cashmere jumper. This is the cashmere jumper I wear when I'm ill. I can't take it off or I will get a lot iller. So now I smell of ill person and Marmite. FFS.

Saturday was really fun. I went for dinner with my friend Eva and then walked some of the way home, from Holland Park to Marble Arch, where I caught the bus. When I'd left my house at about 5pm that afternoon, I'd looked pretty cool - I was wearing a new spangly cardigan, my eye make-up was excellent and my hair looked slept-in. And, several hours later, as I walked past all the patriotic tourists who'd been watching the Last Night of the Proms in Hyde Park, I was filled with a sense of worldlove and contentment, and I beamed happily at many of my fellow flaneurs as I strolled towards London's heart, while listening to music by Lambchop, Crosby, Stills & Nash, DeVotchka and Quiet Village.

Then I got home and looked in the mirror.

My eyeliner hadn't just disappeared, it had sunk about two inches, increasing the depth and intensity of my bags and nestling into my crows' feet so as to define them with greater precision for the partially sighted. My hair, previously fluffy and full of joie-de-vivre, was now lank and clinging to my perspiring forehead following my walk. And, as the crowning glory, I beamed into the mirror as I had done at so many passers-by, and found a peppercorn the size of a grapefruit lodged between my left front tooth and the neighbouring incisor. My mental image of myself as an attractive, healthy thirty-something, humming along to her walkman as she smiles at strangers had to be updated quickly to a sectionable, sweating mentalist. Far from an advertisement for happy independence, in retrospect, it was a miracle I wasn't arrested.

On Sunday I saw two films. One was absolutely brilliant: The September Issue - not so much a triumph of skilled film-making as one of those cases where the subject matter is so extraordinary and fascinating that almost anyone could have held up a mobile phone camera and made a similarly gripping and eye-opening movie. I wished it could have lasted several days. Then I came home and watched The Family Stone, a film I was recommended by a friend who shall remain nameless to spare her any humiliation. It was absolutely the worst film I have seen in some months, derivative, embarrassing to watch, patronising and as subtle as a kick in the storecupboard. Take the opening scene, where a gay couple arrive at the home of one of their parents for Christmas, and are seen unpacking bags of beautifully wrapped gifts from their expensive car. So far, so PC. But one of the pair is black, while the other is white. Sigh. And - why not go the whole hog? - the white one is deaf. Actually deaf. I laughed out loud. Anyway. The mother, we discover, has breast cancer and is soon to die. Of course. So I was ironing away, scoffing at the increasingly absurd and irritating plotline where another (straight) son falls in love with his girlfriend's sister, but it's all OK, because his brother fancies the girlfriend, even though her character is genuinely less sympathetic than Hannibal Lecter, and later the bus drives away but then the brakes come on and he sprints to catch up with it and she gets out and asks if he has plans for New Year and I am trying not to be sick, but in the middle of it all, there is a scene where the dying mother is looking out of the window at the snow falling and you know that she is thinking, 'This might be the last time I see snow falling,' and in spite of myself I welled up, suddenly struck by the thought that, shit, this might be the last time I watch a movie, or iron a pillowcase, or get into clean sheets at night. I try to appreciate how lucky I am, but sometimes I forget to appreciate the normal things. I shouldn't have to be dying or confronted with death to appreciate living. So, for the record, I'm truly glad that today is crap, and I am grateful to have a sore throat and to be breathing in and out. And I'm happy that I'm seated here on my sofa, wearing one slipper and smelling strongly of Marmite. Yes.

Enough is enough

Taste buds are weird, aren't they. I mean, we all have thousands of them (millions? billions?) and I suppose, thinking about it, that it's inevitable that everyone's will work in different ways. But what is odd is that so many people's appear to be faulty. It is laughable to me (and I know my father agrees with me on this matter, if few others) but it seems to be an oft-held perception that coriander is not a poisonous, meal-ruining, acrid leaf from HELL but in fact a tasty herb that is effective as a garnish. I know! It's patently absurd. Of course coriander is the devil's plant, devised solely to make all food take on the flavour of water that has been used to wash up after a dinner party and then left in the washing up bowl for approximately one week, during which time a mouse has crawled into the bowl, drowned and started to decompose.

So the mystery is how coriander has found this ubiquity in the past 3-5 years when all our natural instincts are, of course, to reject it. And it is my honest belief that the herb has been promoted by insiders at Sainsbury's, determined to test the limits of Jamie Oliver's powers of persuasion, in preparation for his still-secret bid to take over the world via a threat of chemical warfare to be unleashed at the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. Yes: everyone who claims to like coriander has been duped into doing so by these evil corporate hounds. Just like tabacco, everyone hates it at first, but if you try hard enough you can override your own good sense and develop a taste for something truly harmful and wrong. But there is good news! It is not too late to reverse the process. Please, I implore you, save yourselves. Train your tastebuds to do the right thing. Reject coriander and show Jamie Oliver who's boss. At best, you'll save the world from destruction in three years. And perhaps if more people see the light and face up to this herb's true evil, then local sandwich chains will catch on and stop RUINING MY LUNCH with needless, covertly-hidden leaves chopped so fine that they are IMPOSSIBLE TO EXTRACT. Rage.

Envy

This morning a woman went past me on a bicycle. She was wearing the coolest jacket in the history of warm outerwear. It had a dark grey leather body, very soft, close-fitted in a bomber style, cropped. And then it had a large floppy wool collar, thick waistband and thick ribbed woollen sleeves, made out of black wool flecked all over with silver glittery sparkles. I was so jealous that I came to a halt and stared at her as she cycled by. I don't know what else I've thought about since but it's not much.

Rivetting

The news hasn't been making me smile much of late, but one of the comments in the online Guardian this morning did make me giggle, as the poster said that Labour and the Tories are so similar that there's not a "hare's breath" between them. I LOVE it when people make sense of things in their own head. The idea that s/he'd heard someone saying a 'hair's breadth' and thought that the breath of a hare would be, of course, so thin as to provide an ideal metaphor for similarity between two items is - if I may be forgiven for being enormously patronising - adorable. I think I may have mentioned before that my friend Eva had a charming interpretation of the lyric in Paula Abdul feat. MC Skat Kat's Opposites Attract which should be rapped, 'Nothing in common with this trust, I'm like minus, she's like a plus - one going up, one coming down but we seem to land on common ground.' Eva thought it was, 'I'm like a miner, she's like a bus,' and using the 'one going up, one coming down' moment, had made perfect sense of it all. On a different level, I used to think that it was some sort of coincidence that British judges were called Justice, and that a lot of ambitious mothers had been trying to determine their child's future by calling them appropriate names to make their CVs more likely to be selected from the pile. I also love the common slip-up 'fine toothcomb' which makes me think of very delicate people refusing to brush their teeth but instead choosing to comb them with a tiny silver implement, a bit like a miniature nit comb but, well, finer.

Much as I enjoy these linguistic nuances, I get the feeling that other people want to stab me in the eyes for my smug know-it-all-ness. And I do understand their irritation. But really, I'm only trying to help. Across the road from my office, the sign outside Bagel Mania has read 'Chilly con carne' for several months. Yesterday, I happened to walk by when a Maniac (surely the employees' name for themselves?) was cleaning the sign, so I thought I'd mention that there was a spelling mistake lower down. She looked at me as if I had just asked if she wanted to drink dog sick. "It's quite funny," I said with jollity, trying to show her that I knew it was all a bit of light-hearted banter. "You've written chilly with a y! That means it's cold! Brrrr!" As I caught myself rubbing my own upper arms in a bad charade, I knew that I must commit suicide for the benefit of society. No one likes a clever dick.

Lesson learned - but only for about 17 hours. This morning, Kate sent me an email saying she was 'rivetted' by something and I replied that it sounded like she was being fastened down with metal pins. I couldn't help myself. And I justified it too: what, I reasoned, would happen if Kate were writing to someone important and made such a terrible gaffe? But then I took a deep breath and reminded myself that no sane person gives two hoots about spelling mistakes, and that most sensible people will surely see my pedanticism as a petty little pseudo-religion which is created to make adherents feel like part of a community, cultivating a failing Other so that they can feel superior to someone. Of course, inevitably, the tiny community is full of petty-minded pseuds with nothing better to do than correct people's spelling and grammar. And I'm one of them. Urgh. I need a new hobby.

Bit of fluff

Dear clothing manufacturer,

Please, I beg you on bended knee with woeful eyes, hands clasped in prayer, head bowed, drooling with subordinance, please please please stop making apparently lovely soft jumpers with fluff that comes off ALL OVER MY CLOTHES and makes me look like I've been diving into a swimming pool filled with moulting labradors because it drives me ABSOLUTELY MENTAL and the rage it causes me may lead me to do something dangerous or silly in future. I simply don't understand how you can justify the sweatshop creation of garments, such as the purple cropped cardigan I am wearing today, which look good only for as long as it takes me to leave the house and walk to the tube, and which then, as the doors of the Northern Line shut behind me, reveal their true colours as evil fibre-shedding, outfit-wrecking disaster raiments.

It is now almost the end of the working day and I have turned into one big purple woolly item. Despite the fact that at no point do I recall touching any cardiganed part of my upper body to my lower leg, I now have a smooth sheen of fluff all the way down my black trousers. Attractively, it has clumped together anywhere that there is friction, i.e. around my inner thighs. I would need a team of uniformed elves constantly and quickly brandishing adhesive fluff-removing rollers for the next hour in order to leave me untainted by unwanted matter. Admittedly the uniforms would not be strictly necessary but I think it is unarguable that they add to the drama of the scene.

I am sure your plan for ill-conceived items such as my cardigan is that naive shoppers such as myself will buy them from your stores, unable to detect the damage they inflict during our brief foray into the changing rooms. You will be laughing at our stupidity, and revelling in our powerlessness to return the items once we have worn them. And you would be right. I DO feel stupid. But I have consumer power, and I am going to wield my clout-heavy axe with all my might. Are you ready? Here goes. I will continue to shop in your store. But I will tell everyone I know, that should they come across this purple, leopard-print, gold buttoned cardigan from New Look in a charity shop in the future, do not under any circumstances buy it. Because it is a nightmare.

There. I bet you regret your choice of wool now, don't you? Eh? Eh? Who's laughing NOW, big shot?

Yours,

LLFF

Biological Crock

On the train down to Nicole's on Friday, I listened to The First Days of Spring, the new album by one of the vanguard of the nu-folk revival, Noah and the Whale. A break-up record in the old tradition, it charts lead singer Charlie Fink's faltering steps into singledom after his break-up with folk's sweetheart, Laura Marling. His voice is a bit rubbish but the music is pleasant enough; the lyrics, however, are painful - not (only) because they are (in places) quite bad, but because of the rawness of the emotions they express - the eponymous opening track illustrates Fink's optimism following the change in seasons, but then the music quietens right down and he admits that he's "still here, hoping that one day you may come back." It's uncomfortable in its honesty and, as a young lady who's been pretty honest in her time, I can't help wincing pre-emptively at the thought of how 23-year-old Fink will feel in a few years' time. Listening to the songs, I didn't think, "Oh, poor you," but rather, "C'mon lad. I know, it hurts, but don't tell everyone. You'll feel better soon and trust me, you'll want to forget all about this, not sing it night after night on stage."

It's one of life's harsh truths that it's alright to be happy and gushing about love when you're in it - but when you're not, for god's sake you mustn't appear to want it. In fact, scratch that - you can't want it at all, not even secretly, because They Can Smell The Desperation. And the older you get, the less you must want it. Instead, you must be happy on your own, content with your independence, peacefully enjoying your life, safe in the knowledge that "it'll happen when you least expect it" and "if it's meant to be, it'll be."

I can't argue with any of the above. It's undoubtedly true that on the occasions where some maniac has really, really wanted a relationship with me, I've found them needy and desperate, and I am way more likely to steer clear. Conversely, commitment-phobes are irritatingly attractive and I become moth-like in my persistence, outraged that they don't seem to be swayed by my numerous charms. Of course, should said commitment-phobes change their minds and decide they now think I am the best thing since loaf met knife, I will almost certainly lose all respect for them within a matter of seconds. It's not my fault, it's human nature, and it happens to almost all of us.

But still, it's tricky. As you will know if you've been paying attention, I have no Significant Other at present. And, as I've said before (but hopefully not to the point where I cross the line from easy, confident opining to the lady protesting too much), I know that this situation is the right thing for me right now. I'm as sure as anyone can be that my future is bright. And I can honestly, hand on heart, say that I am happy without kids right now. If I could click my fingers and be crazy in love and pregnant, I wouldn't. I have a fair bit of travelling I want to do before I have nippers, for a start. But, just like every other single woman of my age, I am painfully, daily aware that, medically speaking, I should be having my kids now, even though psychologically, I would be perfectly happy to wait another seven or eight years before producing offspring. I've always wanted to hang out with the father of my children for a while before he becomes the father to my children, rather than calculating whether I'm ovulating as I sprint down the aisle. But as I stood drunkenly over tiny Isla's cot at about 2.30am on Sunday morning, stroking her back and marvelling at the grip of her little hand around my index finger, I very nearly cried. Of course, the booze was talking, but I had a rare moment of stampy foot childishness, because fundamentally, it's Not Fair. I'm 32. I have a fantastically fortunate life. I can do pretty much whatever I want: I'm a pro-active person who Gets Things Done. But ultimately, the thing I want most in my future is unequivocally beyond my control. There is absolutely jack shit women can do about wanting kids, except make sure that they never think or talk about wanting kids, because if they visibly want them, they're desperate and thus less likely to have them. God boys have it easy. Sure, a lot of 32 year old men want kids too, and can't find the right woman to mother them. But the time pressure simply doesn't exist in the same way, and it blows.

What is true is that devoting any time or space to this is absolutely, undoubtedly, 100% pointless. When I am in a position to start trying to have kids in the future, there's no guarantee that I or my chosen partner will both be fertile. And, of course, even if I have a gorgeous baby this time in four years, I may get hit by a bus in five. There is no way of knowing or planning for the future, so the task in hand is to enjoy the present and live for the moment. The only thing I can do is be as happy and funny and pleasant and lovely as possible. And mostly I do that pretty well. Just not so much when a gorgeous 13-month-old is staring up at me through sleepy eyes and gripping my finger when I've had a skinful of wine and been emotionally charged by an hilarious dinner and a viewing of The X Factor. From now on, babies and I will only come into contact during times of total sobriety, when I will be able to see them as the selfish, demanding, uncompromising, irrational, dependent, helpless, dribbling, mucous-producing, money-draining, sleep-depriving, life-as-we-know-it-ending creatures they really are. You live and learn.

Non et in Arcadia ego

OK, so I met up with Joanna at Bertorelli's, and we sat at our table, excited about wining and dining before the showing of Arcadia. I had arrived first and thus was seated on the banquette (sp?) and she was facing me. Within about seven seconds of her joining me at the table, members of the waiting 'team' had banged into the back of Joanna's chair approximately eleven times, so we moved. Joanna, having been on the outside edge of the first table, reached the new table first and so got the coveted not-in-a-thoroughfare seat, but being nice, I didn't comment. Until now. But I'm not bitter.

At approximately 18:17 hours we ordered our food. It arrived at approximately 19:06. By this time I was about to have a hernia and had lost my appetite, although needless to say, when my tagliatelle carbonara (yes, I am that adventurous) finally reached me, I somehow managed to force it down in a matter of seconds. To the best of my knowledge, they didn't show Johnny 5 eating in Short Circuit, probably because, being a robot, he doesn't eat or have a digestive system, but if Johnny 5 had eaten tagliatelle carbonara, he would have looked a bit like me. Although I have better boobs.

The manager was very apologetic about the delay we had suffered and, without us having to ask for a discount, gave us our wine on the house, which was brrrrrrrrilliant and definitely worth the stress, although obviously I then wished I'd ordered a more expensive bottle. So we paid for our food and went across the road to the theatre. I then got embroiled in a sarcastic exchange with the woman on the door who insisted on double checking that her colleague had checked my ticket correctly and then looked at me accusingly when she discovered that my ticket stub had not been torn off, as if I was deliberately trying to enter the theatre with my stub still intact. What purpose this random act of subterfuge might serve, I have no idea. Then after a further stress (where Joanna and I were trying to order interval drinks and the announcer said 'This evening's performance will begin in one minute' and we panic bought wine and ditched the Minstrels idea, even though I wanted chocolate WAY more than I wanted booze, and then hotfooted it back to our seats only to find that the curtain didn't go up for at least seven or eight more minutes, during which time elderly theatre goers wobbled in as if going for a stroll, not a care in the world, and I wondered (not for the first time) if my perception of punctuality is actually flawed and if I should realign it so that it is more consistent with the remaining 99% of Western civilization), we were finally in our massively uncomfortable seats and the show began.

And it really wasn't that good. Everyone has been raving about it, so with irritating yet characteristic contrariness, I sat there looking for flaws, but it sadly wasn't difficult to find them. The playwright, Tom Stoppard, is undoubtedly very, very clever indeed. I mean, seriously, seriously clever. But why does he feel the need to ram his intelligence down everyone's throats all the time? Sure, do it once. Write one play so that everyone knows how brilliant you are. But then, after that, must you keep doing it? I was sad, because there were lines in the play that were brilliantly funny, moments of Wodehouse that I just wished would continue, but then he had to go all high-horsey and talk about Fermat's Last Theorum (does that Need To Be Capitalised?) and algebra and academia and science vs. nature and all these things, which are all valid preoccupations of course, but must they all be crammed into one play, along with the whole 1800s vs. modern day setting? It was all just a bit exhausting. And not that well cast, IMHO. But what do I know? And maybe I missed the best bit while I was asleep. The carbonara caught up with me at the end of Act 1 and I had a bit of a snooze during what was inevitably the key scene that had all the critics wetting their pants. Anyway, everyone else loved it and I'm glad I went.

On our way out I noticed that Dr Robert Winstone of Child of Our Time fame was in the audience, which made me perk up, but then this morning I found out that Mick Jagger had also been in the audience just a few rows further forward, which made even my celeb spot feel markedly B list. So - another night out in London. Off t'country in a minute and can't wait. See you on the other side.

Kitten

Aw, look at his little face, all covered with milk! It is a little-known fact that, when I am not being fascinating and erudite (or, indeed, paranoid and aggressive), I am often being obsessed with baby animals. Throughout 2009, I have been enjoying my page-a-day calendar of cute, featuring photos of kittens, puppies, hamsters, dwarf rabbits, guinea pigs wearing hairclips, a hedgehog with a cardboard tube stuck on its head, a tiny panda cub putting its paw up to the glass so that we can see his tiny pads, and a goat kid chewing on the plait of the girl holding it. The pleasure I derive from looking at these photographs is strange to me. But it is real, and it is harmless. Ha ha! I've just remembered the baby panda! Ah, those were the days.

So, not much has happened since yesterday except I am now crippled. I have some sort of shoulder ache on my left hand side that is spreading up my neck and will inevitably progress through my ear canal into my brain and I will be left writhing in agony for weeks in my flat with only my dying basil plant for company. It started last week, but I successfully distracted myself at first - now my life is so empty that it is almost all I can think about. I went for a Chinese massage after work (like a normal massage except you keep your clothes on and sit face down in one of those massage chairs so I feel like it's more medicinal and less luxurious and thus justify its expense) and after I left, it felt indescribably amazing for about four or five minutes and then returned to its normal state. Laura thinks I have tendonitis which sounds quite glamorous but also fractionally irritating. I'm going to take some Nurofen and see what happens. If it gets any worse I will sue my company, as I think it is almost certainly as a result of some form of RSI. One of my bosses gave me a job to do about a month ago which involved opening an Excel spreadsheet, copying an 8-digit number, then opening a complex bit of inhouse software, and pasting the number in a new box. If the number was recognised (which it normally wasn't), I had to then click a series of other links. Any one of four results were possible, so I had to then put one of the numbers 1 to 4 in a box next to the original number in the spreadsheet. The total number of 8-digit numbers I had to check was around 1200. It was so phenomenally boring that I fell asleep several times while I was doing it, even though my office walls are glass and the person who gave me the work sits about three feet away. I was beyond caring. About ten days ago, he asked how I was getting on and I lied and said I was nearly finished, when in fact I'd done about 65. So the past week has involved hours of this insufferable task, which I'm sure I could have designed some macro for, but didn't have the energy or the conviction in my own macro-designing abilities. Anyway, my shoulder agony coincides almost precisely with this task, so I'm sure it is that which is to blame. Not the fact that I carry an insanely heavy handbag, the opposite to Mary Poppins', in that it looks empty and is in fact almost empty, but magically weighs three quarters of a metric ton. And not the fact that I sit slouched down in my chair with my buttocks right on the edge, my body twisted slightly to the right to read my emails. Nor the fact that I drink with my left hand (and, additionally, write and eat and brush my teeth, although drinking is probably the Big One). I'm sure it's the Excel spreadsheet's fault. I blame my boss. And failing that, I blame Bill Gates.

Ooh, but now I feel guilty because for comic effect I said that my life is empty, and in fact it couldn't be more jam-packed. Why, just on Tuesday I spent the entire evening sitting on my sofa in the dark, refreshing my laptop waiting for Gmail to start working again! What could be more exciting? But then things picked up massively. Last night, Emily took me for my birthday treat: a manicure and a meal at the Ramsay-owned Box Wood Cafe. Lucky me. My nails look amazing and I feel like a proper, dainty grown-up lady which is a bit scary but also I suppose not a bad thing every once in a while. Plus I ate the world's most delicious taramasalata which was so exceptional that I debated licking the bowl. And tonight I am going to the theatre to see Arcadia with Joanna and I'm excited about that, although probably more excited about dinner in Bertorelli's beforehand. And tomorrow after work I'm going to stay with Nicole in the countryside over the weekend, and I literally cannot wait for that. So it's not that my life is empty. No siree. I was just being melodramatic. Can you believe it?

Honestly.

I'm going to tell you the truth now. No hilarious stories about blood on my leg or wee on my foot. I can write brilliantly about all the crazy antics up to which I get, and you'll think I'm truly astonishing and massively enviable and that everything is hunky dory - and in many hundreds of thousands of ways, it is: my life is brilliant. [Growl at unavoidable James Blunt quotation]. But in addition to me being extremely hunky dory, I'm also feeling a fraction pointless. I'm 32. An amazing talented and unfairly attractive girl in the year below me at school just had this fantastic article written about her in last weekend's Observer and it made me want to run out of the office, rip off my Marks & Spencers slacks and do something scandalous. But then I remembered (or rather, Kate reminded me) that I too have fun anecdotes from the past ten years, and that if one distilled them all down into a pert article, they'd look amazing as well. Plus I am very bad at being poor and I have a mortgage to pay. Obviously I don't love my job as much as Marina loves hers, but I do love the fact that my salary allows me to do fun things like go to the theatre and festivals and on holiday and out to interesting restaurants and to buy clothes from hip vintage retailers so I look like a kooky cool kid about town. In addition, I'm single, which is fine. Genuinely fine. Sure, I'd rather be Crazy In Love and be being flown to Prague and kissed inappropriately during the intervals of concerts and receive saucy text messages while I'm in work meetings, but I'd also rather be a size eight with permanently tanned skin, naturally blonde hair, no cellulite, a photographic memory, an uncanny knack with an acoustic guitar, a great pianist, songwriter and jazz singer with feet that are a size eight or smaller. I'm none of those things and that's fine. I just think that maybe I'm a bit... bored.

What I need is an adventure. It doesn't have to be long. It doesn't have to be terrifying. Something along the lines of a breath of fresh air. Some reinvigoration. I was thinking about taking a sabbatical, going to Thailand and training to become a yoga teacher but then I thought that was ridiculously selfish. I know I should probably do something that makes the world fractionally better. However, unless it is a) quite easy and b) ends up with me being thinner and browner, I just don't think I will be motivated to do it. I do want to make the world better, really I do, but just not if it's really difficult. If I'm honest, I probably won't do it if it's even just a bit tricky. It's disgraceful, and you're welcome to hate me for my intrinsic laziness, but I may as well be upfront about it now. Having been beating myself up almost non-stop for my twenties, I am so delighted with the idea of just existing happily, that my motivation to put myself out, to do things that are hard, or occasionally unpleasant, even when the goal is honourable, has almost disappeared. Added to that, my deep cynicism about politics and the media mean that fighting for change seems pretty pointless. I've been left as a selfish loafer and I don't like it - but I don't like any of the alternatives either. So, my perimeters are fixed. But perhaps all is not lost. Perhaps one can change the world between 9am and 6pm, Monday to Friday? I'll think on't and let you know.

In other news: my weekend was odd too - which is probably part of the reason why I'm feeling a bit confused now. The Glastocrush is sadly Glastover, as you may have gathered, which is all for the best, but meant that I was single on Saturday night when Ses and I went to the Michael Jackson Birthday tribute night at the Jazz Cafe. It was brilliant and I wore my white fedora and lots of fun people danced with us and a handsome man bought me a drink. Result. Then on Sunday I had a cold and was also very hungover and went to the Notting Hill Carnival. This was a terrible, terrible idea. I was single and ill and grumpy and emotional and needy and singularly unable to get drunk despite many beers consumed, wandering around streets full of deafening music and seemingly shielded from the fun by some sort of killjoy force field. I ended up having a massive row with the world's most annoying policeman, bursting into tears, stropping home early on my own, having a bath and going to bed while everyone else had a brilliant time by kissing attractive people, going to impromptu house parties and then onto raves in Shepherd's Bush where other people were inhaling laughing gas out of balloons. Maybe next year.

Also: my mouth is all cut as I had a tuna baguette for lunch. As if it wasn't bad enough to feel guilty about the fact that I've just eaten white unrefined flour, lots of mayonnaise and probably some butter (too frightened to look), and knowing that my only attempt at five a day was a few slices of cucumber, I now have to sit here in oral pain. Gah.

And finally: this is my 400th post.