Dancing in the Dark (would have been preferable)

And now it really is the last LLFF of the Noughties. It's about 6pm and Nick and I have returned from a long day's wandering and learning and eating and being confused. First stop was the fantastic Museum of Communism, which had a lot of boards displaying photos and quite small writing, and both of us later admitted that we had thought we were going to struggle to focus, but were pleasantly surprised with how well it held our attention. It was really quite amazing. I was 11 when the Berlin Wall came down, and I don't think I really understood what Communism was until about 2006, when I read The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists and 1984 in quick succession. Part of me briefly thought I was a Socialist for a while, and I suppose I still might be. But I also feel a bit Libertarian, which really doesn't fit on the same side of the fence at all. Hmmm. Either way, I would like to believe in democracy. There was some interesting footage at the museum showing ordinary Czechs in ordinary, slightly Eighties clothing, fighting the Communist forces in squares we'd been walking through moments earlier. It was inspiring. Not that I want to start a revolution but just that, maybe, if we needed to revolt, one day, we could find the courage. Power to the people.

Then we walked out of town a bit and went to the Museum of Prague, mainly to see a miniature model of the city that was made in the nineteenth century. And we would have enjoyed seeing it if it hadn't have been for the freaking annoying feature which meant that the model, which was about as big as four ping-pong tables and surrounded by a glass case, could be lit up in different sections by one person standing at a computer screen at one corner. Fun if you are in control of the screen and wanted to light up the Old Town Square or the Charles Bridge or whatever, but unbeLIEVably irritating for everyone else, who has walked around the glass case and is staring in detail at one particular area and then all the lights go out and only one patch of the model, invariably on the other side of the case, is illuminated and the bit closest to you is in pitch darkness. Badly thought out and made us both strop off. Still fun though.

Suddenly we noticed that all the while, time had been marching on, and we had to rush back across town to our hotel, pick up a couple of things and then wolf down a delicious lunch in a nearby eatery where we had gone because our hotel had supplied us with vouchers giving us 10% off if we ate more than 400 CSK which was basically impossible as a main course was about 125. But the waiters were charming and the food was perfect so we were well happy innit. Then we charged over to the National Theatre where we'd bought our tickets for Godzilla: The Ballet yesterday and the man at the door frowned at us and we thought it was because we were late, so we went up the stairs and he shouted at us and then his colleague explained that it was at another theatre and that we needed to go out and turn right, which we did, but we couldn't find anything resembling a performance of Goldilocks, so we went into another building and asked a woman who said "Hmmm. You have three minutes to go two kilometres," and it turned out the theatre was directly opposite the Museum of Communism, and we ran back across town and got there a bit late and flustered, and walked into our box, expecting to see taut men and wispy women in 200 dernier tights and perhaps some sort of figurative bear costume, delicately acting out 'Who's been eating my porridge?' in a routine choreographed by Rudolf Nuryev or similar, but instead appeared to have walked in to the live version of Let's Pretend, where the rejects from Prague's second-best ballet school went to get drunk and then die. I know as much about ballet as I do about microbiology, but even I can say with confidence that the dancing was a disgrace. The main man did four average pirouettes in a row and then expected applause from the audience. And then there was the singer/narrator, who sounded like a haggard, inebriated tramp who had stumbled onto the stage and been told to make up a song as he went along. There were no bears and no bowls of porridge. There were lots of people dressed up as red ants, some of them with women's knickers attached to their thoraxes, doing routines with silver Swiss balls, looking like something any sixth form girl could have choreographed in a twenty minute tea break. It was all quite extraordinary. In the first interval, the lights went up and I looked around - Nick and I were almost certainly the only people who had not brought a five year old with us. In the second interval, I felt a bit drowsy after my nap and Nick said he had had enough, so we culled. An experience.

Since then, we've been to a couple of shops. I developed an obsession with buying a fur muff while I was in Prague, and must have been in about thirty shops over the past two days, miming inserting my hands into a soft fur ball. I have been greeted with many strange looks, although one lady showed me a gigantic, bottle green one made of fox yesterday that I loved until I found out it was around £200. Today I walked past yet another shop that had hats on display in the window and said to Nick, hopefully, "Muff?" He agreed it looked possible, and yes, lo, inside was my dream muff, creamy white, very soft and - crucially - much cheaper than the other one. I now own it and am very happy. Sorry Peta.

Tonight we have a table booked at a restaurant near the Old Town Square, and all around everyone is getting excited. Nick, however, has a hatred of New Year's Eve so we are not allowed to talk about the end of the decade. He is lying on his bed next to mine reading Barbara Walters' autobiography and I am desperate to compile lists of best albums of the past ten years, best movies, best moments, worst moments, top three lessons learned, etc., while he just wants to forget about the passing of time. He tells me that he gets excited on New Year's Day, and looks forward to the future, but hates to think about what has been lost, missed opportunities and ineradicable truths. So, just between you and me - my best album released in the Noughties is Poses by Rufus Wainwright. My best book published in the Noughties is The Road by Cormac McCarthy. My favourite movie released in the Noughties is... TBC. I can't think of any good films I've seen at the cinema in the past ten years. That's insane. I did love Anvil. Maybe it was Anvil. Is that possible? I'll come back to that. My personal highlight is one long complex string - it's that I'm finally happy, but I wouldn't have been happy if I hadn't bought my flat, and I wouldn't have done that if I hadn't taken the job in the bank, and I wouldn't have taken the job in the bank if I hadn't been tutoring my boss's kids, and I wouldn't have been tutoring them if I hadn't been doing my MA, and I wouldn't have been doing my MA if I hadn't had been lost and blue and had my wonderful parents to help me... it's all a beautiful chain of events that's reached a wonderful viewpoint, crystal clear in retrospect but murky as a swamp at the time. What I know for sure is that everyone who's reading this makes me happy, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. TBC.

Penultimatum

I couldn't feel less like writing tonight but I am aware that if I don't, then tomorrow I will have to write my last LLFF of the Noughties and it will all be a bit of a hideous rush, so I thought maybe if I am grown up now then I will feel the benefit tomorrow. There is certainly a fair amount to write about today, or not very much at all, depending on how you look at it. I am choosing to take the median option. We couldn't possibly get out of bed on time this morning and ended up missing breakfast, which was a disappointment as we were both looking forward to a traditional selection of cholesterol-boosting foodstuffs, and instead were reduced to drinking free tea in the hotel lobby while using the wifi to book the JAZZBOAT and eating the last of my mother's banana bread and my final mince pie, which I'd wrapped in tinfoil and carried here in my suitcase, because I am clearly an octogenarian hiding in the body of a 32 year old. And then we went to book tickets for the ballet tomorrow; we had been told that it was the story of the girl with the flaxen hair, and we thought it must be Rapunzel, which was fine, and then when the woman came to the ticket window to help us, she had just taken a gargantuan bite of cake, and we said we wanted to see the ballet tomorrow, and she said 'Goh-GOH-goh' or something, with bits of pastry flying everywhere, and Nick started nodding and I thought we were buying tickets for a ballet called Godzilla and then I realised she had said Goldilocks. Quite how a story about three bears going on a daytrip and leaving their breakfast on the table, and a girl coming and eating it, and them coming back and complaining, is going to take up a 2 hour ballet, I have no idea, but I'll keep you updated.

Then we crossed over the river and I very nearly spent approx. £150 on a bottle green fox fur muff but then didn't, and we took a funicular up a hill and then went into a mirror maze which was very kitsch and good but not QUITE as funny as everyone else in there thought it was, largely because the mirrors had steamed up due to the cold and there were snowy footprints on the wooden floor so you would have had to have been one mascara short of a make-up bag not to work out which was the correct path almost immediately. Then we walked down a hill, past a macabre human statue of a jester, to a monastery, which didn't make a massive impression on me, and from there we went to the Loretta, which I was keen on because it was so absurd - basically, there is this place in Italy where there is a little house and rumour has it that it is the exact house where the Angel Gabriel first appeared to Mary to tell her she was up the duff with God's baby - obviously this house wasn't in Italy to start with, but the Italians claim that angels flew it there. Anyway, the Bohemians love this idea, and built a replica of this Loretta house in Prague - it's one of forty such replicas in the Czech Republic. And basically it's just a really nice, small, red brick barn, about the size of an average room in a Hotel du Vin. But without the eight foot bed, obv. And around the barn they've built this massively ornate ivory-coloured casing, covered in reliefs of saints, so from the outside it looks like a gigantic Arc of the Covenant, and inside it looks like an intimate gastropub waiting to happen.

So from thence to the castle complex, and neither of us do art, so we missed out the galleries and went to the gorgeous, gorgeous St. Vitus or Vilnius o.n.o.'s Cathedral, which had the most breathtaking stained glass and a lot of people. And then to Golden Lane, where there are all these tiny houses that have now been turned into extortionate tourist shops, mostly containing puppets. And then to a concert in a lovely church, where a small chamber orchestra including a very flat second violinist played some Grieg and some Mozart and some Sibelius and some Tchiakovsky, while we sat there turning slowly to stone. It was far, far colder in there than it had been outside. Then we down a lot of steps and then to a pub for a warming beverage and some overpriced pistachios, and then over the deliciously spooky and atmospheric Charles Bridge, where my lifelong scaffolding blight continued, and then for further wanderings round the Old Town Square, Wenceslas Square (where we found a Debenhams and a Tesco) and to dinner at a lovely secret restaurant that no-one knows about except us and the people who were there tonight.

And tomorrow we have a lot more to do, and the same on Friday, and I simply cannot believe that this year is at an end. I feel as though it has flown by, but when I think back to waking up on 1st January, it does seem like an awfully long time ago. I don't think I was truly happy in my life until 2009, if I'm honest. It's been a long and magical journey up to this point, but tough too, and I finally feel as though I am Good Enough. I used to have a permanent feeling that things could be better, and at some undefined point in the past twelve months, something shifted, and now I pretty much continually feel aware of how much worse things could be. The glass is exactly the same, but where it was once half empty, it's now half full, and I couldn't be happier about it. Half full glass FTW. I have wonderful parents and some truly entertaining friends, but ultimately I'm me, on my own, and I'm grateful and content. 2009: I salute you for your part in my story. It's been a joy and I can't wait to see what's next. Butterflies in my tummy, ants in my pants and Czechoslovakian chicken fricassee in my small intestine.

My Noughties (recalled semi-drunkenly, late at night, after a long day's sightseeing, with no access to any memory-jogging apparatus save an iTunes library and a digital photo library begun in 2005 and some computerised diaries from 2001-04 that talk about nothing, and I mean absolutely NOTHING, except boys): Went out with Henry, lived in Shepherd's Bush, went to Cuba, did a car boot sale on a site which is now the Westfield centre, went to LA, interviewed Justin Timberlake, interviewed Britney, went to Bruges for an emergency summit with Henry, went to Frankfurt for the MTV Awards, broke up with Henry, moved back home, wrote off my Fiesta, got made redundant, was obsessed with several unsuitable boys, drove through Spain with Bee, met Luke, loved The Rolling Stones, started going out with Luke, went to Paris for Easter, joined the choir, went to Marseilles and Cassis in the summer, loved Elvis, was bridesmaid at Lucy and Jake's wedding, went to Tanzania and Zanzibar, loved early Elton John, went to visit my family in the States with my mum, broke up with Luke, was single for a year, had a Vespa, wrote a cafe book, started my MA, met Simon, tutored my favourite ever student called Lola, got my best-ever score in Scrabble ('quixotic' on a triple word square), loved Rufus Wainwright and Gorillaz, learned about Marxism and post-colonialism and feminism, wrote my dissertation in the British Library, graduated from my MA, loved The Clientele, went to India for two months, loved Nick Drake, started LLFF, started working at a bank, walked the Thames Path, loved M. Ward, went to Croatia and Montenegro, went to New York, broke up with Simon, loved Amy Winehouse, Sondre Lerche, Martha Wainwright, Tom Malmquist and Fionn Regan, bought my flat, went to Amsterdam, met Paul, loved Tosca and Monteverdi, moved out of my parents' house, loved Elbow, went to Vegas and Seattle, went to Latvia with choir, broke up with Paul, went to Paris with my parents, loved Bon Iver, fell for the gardener, did a politics course, went to Egypt, went to Glastonbury, fell for the Glastocrush, went to France with choir, recovered from Glastocrush, became comprehensively selfish, had several months of independent bliss, took up the ukulele, and here we are, in Prague on a minibreak, with crow's feet aplenty and a smile as wide as a mile. Happy New Year.

Knowing me, knowing you, Pra-ha

So I’ve only been here a few hours but I think Nick and I have basically completed Prague. We’ve seen the Old Town Square and the world’s most beautiful Christmas tree, and eaten a delicious meal and photographed a pony and drunk yummy metric beer and it’s snowing and really, what else is there? Apart from the Castle, which apparently takes a day to go around, that is – and the New Town, with Wenceslas Square, of course, and Charles Bridge, which we decided to save up for a special occasion when we walked near it tonight, and the museum of Communism, and the Jewish graveyard and the Hall of Mirrors and about six or seven thousand other things. And we’ve now picked up leaflets to influence our next three and a half days further, including one for a jazz cruise, featuring a unique stage that moves independently, and we can’t work out if that’s independently of the boat, or independently in comparison to the banks of the river. And then we might go and see a concert at the Rudolfinium, which bills itself as the second-most important pseudo-Renaissance building in Prague, and is thus clearly unmissable. I think bad translations into English might be my favourite thing about the city so far. The leaflet that accompanied our bill in the restaurant tonight described the eatery as “In the gothinc house called ‘U Zlateho Hada’. Situated in the Kings road named Karlova street, was established the 1. prague's Coffee room. And from the year 1714 till today this house offer you not only relaxation, coffee or drink, but also selected meals of domestic cuisine.” And certainly, we did eat a selected meal of domestic cuisine. No need for sensational self-promotion here – just a simple, clumsy explanation that makes me want to hug everyone and drink beer until I slip over in the snow.

Only 362 days to Christmas!

I can’t really explain why it’s taken me so long to write this because I have been doing NOTHING, but as my most privileged friends will attest, the less you have to do, the longer it takes. So the last you heard, I think, it was Christmas Eve Eve and I was about to go and eat. I did, it was freaking delicious, and there began an intense period of gorging that, as yet, is about 53% complete. I had steak at my work lunch that was mouthwatering, with béarnaise sauce and a delicious sweet pea, baby onion, spinach and lardon mélange that was almost the highlight. We played shag, marry or cliff and consequences and it was every bit as funny as last year and I count myself very lucky when it comes to my office existence.

That evening, I went back to my parents’ house and, if I’m totally honest, the next few days are a haze of gluttony, as an invisible conveyor belt (aka: my hand) carried an omniprocess of delicacies over my ever-excitable tastebuds: copious piles of Nigella’s ham in Coca-Cola, turkey, smoked salmon, delicious gastropub lasagne, mince pies, amaretto biscuits, peanut brittle, granary toast with salted butter, soup, homemade Christmas cookies, parsnips, salad, garlic bread, onion rings, Sultana Bran, Bollinger, white wine, red wine, Diet Coke and beer. In the brief pauses while I was chewing, I opened amazing presents including my much-hoped-for ukulele (but a far nicer one than I’d imagined) and a tube of Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream. Delighted. There were emotional times with my family as well, of course, but in a shock development, my mother has decreed that I am not to write about them any more. Her rationale is as follows: if I am too honest about them, someone might think that my dad is a racist and want to stab him, and, as my mother put it, ‘They can find out who you are from your blog, find out where your parents live, and come around and kill him in the street. It’s that simple,’ she said, as if finding their address from my anonymous blog requires a similar level of skill to urinating. After the tension that arose over the programming of mum’s Christmas pedometer, I didn’t want to involve either of us in a complex technological explanation of a) how difficult it would be to determine my father’s identity, let alone b) quite how bored and/or misguided someone would have to be to choose him, above all the other mentalists on the internet, to assassinate. So I nodded meekly and promised not to discuss them again. We’ll see how long that lasts…

I do love Christmas but, like a late-night meal in Chinatown, the moment it’s over, you suddenly see what you look like in the hideous fluorescent lighting, realize your foundation is not worth the pump dispenser from which it emerges, accept that you will need to run, fast, for seven consecutive hours to burn off the meal you would have swapped your grandmother for moments earlier, and concede that it is time to go home. I was all up for the festivities, but the moment the presents were unwrapped and the taste of mince pies became commonplace, I was desperate to get back to my nest and recuperate tout seule. I am a creature of habit, it turns out, and fun though Scrabble and beginners’ ukulele undeniably is, I miss being master of my domain. I’m 32, after all, and being an only child in my parents’ house, still unmarried, still childless, while they are getting on with their semi-retirement, feels slightly regressive. So yesterday I went home and cleaned and now I am on the Piccadilly Line to Heathrow Terminal 4, en route to Prague, for a minibreak about which I am so excited I may rupture something. Apparently we have free wifi in the hotel so I’ll post this when I arrive. In the meantime, I hope all my Faithful and any LLFF fair-weather friends have had a joyous Christmas. Love to you all.

Visions of sugar plums... and the rest

Yesterday morning I woke up all troubled, having dreamed that I was babysitting a baby belonging to my friend Eva (who doesn't currently have a baby) and that, aged about four months old, it suddenly started being able to talk quite articulately, and within about six minutes, was chatting away with me merrily as if it were a well-educated grown-up. I found the whole thing quite disconcerting and was phoning Eva saying 'Your baby is a freak!' but she was at a wedding and didn't pick up. Then this morning I woke up having been running through a forest with some friends, feeling happy, but with the vague sensation that something sinister was going on around us, and I bounced and bounced and took off, and looked down, and everywhere, as far as my eyes could see, there were rows and rows of army vehicles and it was patently obvious that we were about to go into the most massive land war my lifetime had ever witnessed, and I was boinging around in the car park. I had to get out but I couldn't and I knew I'd be implicated. It was freaking terrifying.

Meanwhile, in reality, I'm having a lovely time with my family, doing crosswords, eating mince pies, listening to carols and screeching descants. My dad is trying to make me accept that I/we am/are better than other people, and that Tiger is a better cat than Dennis, while I'm resolutely insisting that all men, women and cats are created equal and that, while I may be better than you at knowing the lyrics to songs by T'Pau, I am certainly worse at other things, and any advantage I have is purely chance and to do with my good fortune and doesn't give me the right to look down on anyone else, and goodness isn't it lucky that my dad only has one child because he'd have a favourite before you could say 'I love them all the same' and the other one would be scarred for life. Unlike me. [NB I love my dad. Although we were discussing only a couple of hours ago how I will get my ultimate revenge when I read his eulogy. I think we have rather dark humour in our family. Apologies if it disturbs]. Concurrently, my mum is telling us both not to eat our food too quickly at lunch tomorrow and shushing us for complaining about the extract from A Christmas Carol that is read Every Freaking Year at the Christmas Eve concert at the Albert Hall. In summary, it's all just as it was last year, just as it should be, and my cup runneth over with happiness, love and gratitude.

Happy holidays, one and all. May your liver function adequately, may the Nurofen take away the pain, may your days be merry and bright, and may all your metabolisms be high.

Curiouser and curiouser

A few weeks ago I started emailing a boy through the dating website I use. He was exceptionally tall and attractive and seemed unpredictable and hilarious, so I let him off the usually unforgiveable spelling mistakes in his profile. After a few messages, I agreed to meet him at some point in the future. Then time slipped away and I realised I owed him an email. To refresh my memory, I checked his profile again to make sure I really did want to spend an evening of my valuable time in his company. And at the bottom of the first paragraph, I saw a sentence I hadn't noticed before. "I'm not a believer in monogamy," it read, "so if that's important to you, be warned." I emailed him immediately. "Hang on," I wrote. "You don't believe in monogamy?!" A day later, he replied, his profile updated and the offending sentence removed. "This has happened a couple of times before," he explained. "An ex thinks I cheated on her, which I didn't, but she found out my password and broke into my page." He apologised profusely, said he knew it wasn't the best start but was pretty funny about it, and I saw no reason to disbelieve him - he said he'd taken the precaution of changing his password. We agreed a date to meet.

Then, the day before the date, I saw that his profile had been updated again - and this time, the changes weren't even in the meat of his description paragraphs, but rather in his headline, the first thing anyone reads about you. "Looking for an easy lay," it read. Charming. I emailed him again. "Fuck fuck fuck!" he wrote back. "I'm going to delete my profile. Do you have another email address I can reach you on?" I said I was pretty wary, and he said he didn't blame me. I emailed him my real email address. Five minutes later his profile was deleted. And I never heard from him again.

I think he deleted my email address accidentally when he deleted my profile. Grania thinks he is schizophrenic and was altering his profile himself to create drama. I'm unconvinced, but I do think it's fairly unlikely that if someone broke into your profile and changed stuff in a way you didn't like, and you decided to take action and change your password, that you would ever change it to something even REMOTELY guessable. Surely you would choose the most obscure combination ever? How could she possibly have broken in more than once? Then again, if it was him making the changes for a bit of excitement, why would he delete his profile, which he'd paid for? All very odd. And thus my list of incredible vanishing men increases by the week. I can't really be offended if they disappear before they even meet me, but still, I spent Monday afternoon half-waiting for an email that never arrived and it's annoying.

That said, he clearly wasn't my husband because he can't spell and has psychotic ex-girlfriends, and I would have had to cancel the date anyway, as it was meant to be last night, and last night I had to be horizontal in velour. I was asleep on the sofa at 7pm, having made 24 mince pies that looked beautiful before I baked them, and now could be mistaken (and used successfully) as orangey-yellow hockey pucks. The pastry to filling ratio that I was advised to maintain by Delia turned out to be erroneous, and I am left with hard balls of pastry containing a small pocket of mince within, like a rock solid, shrunken mince doughnut crossed with a festive gobstopper. That's not to say they're not absolutely DELICIOUS. They're just not mince pies. Whatever they are, I've eaten three of them - two last night and one for breakfast. And now I'm off to my work Christmas lunch at a steak restaurant. Drool.

AWOL

It had to happen eventually, didn't it? Either my liver was going to grab some essential possessions and slink out of my slender frame, or my brain was going to call 'Time.' I think it is the latter that has happened, although it may be a combination of the two: I developed a sore throat last Thursday after my choir night out, and now appear to have two colds running concurrently, a delightful circumstance that offers me continual surprises as I never know which merry new symptom is going to hit me next. This is despite taking it relatively easy over the weekend. I had a great night out on Friday with a lot of old faces, held at a Hammersmith pub, where I felt simultaneously comfortable and strangely out of place. Before the booze kicked in we talked about new media and Twitter and politics and the Middle East, and after about 9pm we talked about kissing and flirting and, honestly, I have no idea what else. I am the Queen of Sincerity, I tell you, earnestly engaging in these chats with true interest and then sweeping down the decks moments later to make room for some other gems.

After the party, I took a minicab back to my parents, driven by a man who was, himself, the size of a taxi. It was a bit like an Escher drawing and I couldn't work out how he managed to fit inside the car's frame. The next 36 hours are a haze of Christmas familial love and involve me wearing a huge jumper, lying on the sofa listening to festive music, while my mum brings me amazing snacks and cooks beef brisket, sitting up briefly to eat lunch and dinner at the table, even standing once or twice to help put up the Christmas tree, and then sitting down again to watch Gavin & Stacey and Take That's incredible Circus tour at Wembley over the summer. God they are amazing, aren't they? What lovely young men. I'm very proud to have supported them since the start. Gary's voice is just gorgeous. Yum.

On Sunday I went to Waterloo to meet Grania and we watched In The Hood or Into The Hoods or In Da Hoodz or something, which was (as it was billed) a cool, festive, dance-off thing for teenagers, so I couldn't be legitimately disappointed, but it was all a bit Sylvia Young Theatre School and not enough genuine edge. The fact that Gra and I knew most of the music suggested it was a little more mainstream than it tried to suggest - more The X Factor does hip-hop than convincing urban grime. Fun though, with a kind of depressing undercurrent as I had to face up to the fact that, even after a thousand hours of classes, I'd still never look that good on the dancefloor. Still. I have many other special talents.

Then I went home for another early night, and my body, I think, saw me relaxing a bit more than I have of late, and sent a message to HQ that this was the start of a permanent hibernation rather than a brief hit of R&R before getting back onboard the party train to oblivion. Since the weekend, I've been in an ME-esque haze, my face contorted into a permanent yawn and my desire even to put on a bra at its lowest ebb. The concept of getting dressed up in high heels and putting on make-up makes me want to laugh very sarcastically, weep a bit, and pull the duvet up over my head. Last night I went home after work and wrapped presents in front of the TV, and even that seemed like an excruciating amount of effort. I am meant to be going to a party tonight, a lunch tomorrow and a party tomorrow evening, all of which are full of fun people, but I think my chances of making any of them are slimmer than I'll ever be. It's the kind of day when I feel like I should get high fives and back-pats for even turning up at work at all. Mmmm... massage...

In the clink

My nap was great, thanks for asking. I'm now back at my desk and, despite a pre-midnight bedtime yesterday, I'm still yawning and my eyes feel as though they've been sluiced with nail varnish remover. 'Tis the season to be jolly, but I don't remember anything in amongst the falalalalaing that mentioned "and 'tis also the season to spend every non-alcoholic waking moment in a kind of purgatory, unwilling to die but unable to function adequately to justify continued existence." Hard to get a rhyme for some of that lot, admittedly. Perhaps falalalala was less trouble, even if it is missing out some of the fundamental truths we should all hear more about.

Back in September, I bought tickets for a play that I said at the time would be guaranteed to clash with something or other. On this occasion, it was my work Christmas party, but I can't say I was that sad as I got off the tube at East Acton and walked towards Wormwood Scrubs, London's second biggest prison, for a performance of a play put on by a selection of the inmates. I've never been inside a prison before, and I was excited.

The play was a 45 minute promenade performance of A Christmas Carol, reworked to fit in with our wonderful modernity. It wasn't fantastic, but it was certainly enjoyable and despite my hangover, I even managed a LOL towards the end, when Scrooge has been enlightened and wakes up very confused and excited at the prospect of a new beginning. In the original, he leans out of the window at a young scamp and asks, 'What day is this?' and the whippersnapper says, 'Why, it's Christmas Day!' and it's all very jovial. In this version, Scrooge leans out and asks the same question to a random passer by who looks up and says, 'Fuck off.' OK, not the most highbrow of moments, I'll admit. Tom Stoppard doesn't need to worry himself about the competition, but it did raise a chortle.

On a note of prejudice, the cast was almost entirely black and Asian, with only one white guy. I don't know if that had been a deliberate choice or not. Personally, I found it a bit of a shame that such an absurdly white audience come to a prison to watch criminals act, and all their most secretly held racist suspicions are confirmed when the only prisoners they see aren't white. Grania and I were talking about it afterwards as we waited to be released, and agreed that we had been surprised to find that the person we'd found most sinister was the white guy. He had a skinhead, and evil eyes. And then we looked in the programme and found that someone had dropped out close to the start of the run, and so they'd had to hire in a professional to fill the spot. The white guy was the only one who wasn't a prisoner.

Before the lights went down, we had been given a quick talk about the process by one of the main guards, who explained what would happen afterwards. He also said that the players would be running around at times, sometimes in amongst the crowds, so to get out of their way. We shouldn't be scared but they are dangerous and suddenly the lights went out with a dramatic warehouse-style clunk and the guys ran in shouting and we all jumped. When I recovered, I found that beginning really annoying. The whole point of the play, surely, is to break down the boundaries between 'us' and 'them' - so why ham up their potential violence? It was lame.

What was better than the play was talking to one of the guards beforehand. She obviously took a great deal of pride in her work, and was well-equipped with all the facts and figures one could possibly want. The room in which we congregated before being taken to the church for the performance is, she told us, used for several things, but mainly for social visits with kids. There are further visiting facilities elsewhere for prisoners to spend time with family and friends - up to two hours at a time, two or three times a month, depending on your level of naughtiness. She explained that every day there are people leaving and new inmates arriving, with a turnover of about 200 out of 1500 every week or two. And when I asked her whether she believed that prison was effective, she said what I'd expected her to say, that it was a bit too comfortable, that a lot of people's lives on the outside are so unpleasant that the idea of spending time in the warm, with no bills to pay, no girls, no kids, with a Playstation to play as much as you like - it's less of a deterrent and more like an appealing break from reality.

I'm definitely not a fan of prisons on the whole - I know they are necessary in extreme cases, but generally I think they're a sign of a failing society and the idea that people would rather be in a prison than free, with their friends and families around them, suggests that freedom sucks for them, which is awful. Sure, the prison wasn't too bad, and had distinct wafts of boarding school about it, but ultimately, those thick metal doors are scary and I wouldn't want to live there. It's very sad that there are hundreds of people whose life is so rubbish that for them, prison is preferable. And, fascinating though it was last night, I don't think that putting on plays is going to change anyone's anything. I've always been more of a macro than a micro kind of gal, and I know that it's got to be about the small steps, about the drops in the ocean, about the grassroots, but on this occasion, I'm not sure the divide was blurred enough for it to be effective. I didn't come away feeling any differently about prisoners, and I doubt the prisoners are any more or less likely to reoffend having performed a short play in front of a roomful of middle-class white people. The whole thing still felt very 'us' and 'them', not helped by the icy director in her grey leather trench coat. Great concept on paper, fairly well executed, but ultimately not so great in reality. She says, from the comfort of her warm desk in the financial capital of Europe. Little Ms Ivory Tower. But I'm just telling you what I thought. Hmmm. This is pathetically disjointed. I'm in no state to provide scintillating social commentary. Back soon with more drunken antics. I think that's about the best I can manage right now. Festive kisses to you all.

There we went a-wassailing

I visited several pubs in central London last night, and without exception, they were all so full that I think I may have permanent dents in my flesh from being packed in with others in such close proximity. It's always pleasing to see so many people enjoying the city, but it's sad to think that the reason the bars are so busy at this time of year is that most of these people don't go out the rest of the time. Which is a shame. Poor them.

We were out for our choir's Christmas party, and reliving too much of it here would be foolish as only about three of my five readers will know who I'm talking about. Suffice to say that, when we'd spent many hours annoying many hundreds of innocent yuletide drinkers by singing unrequested and unclapped carols, there were five of us gigglingly walking the streets, wondering where to go now that everywhere had shut. And, always the happy hostess with the mostest, I invited these four young whippersnapping lads back to my flat, where we played a kind of uber-drinking game, the highlight of which was a round called 'Bunnies' and one where we had to play 21 using Roman numerals. Alex drew a short straw at one point and had to drink a glass half full of a beer and whiskey blend. At 3am, I was in my trainers downstairs, using a bucket of water to swill away the vomit that he had kindly directed over the balcony onto my ground floor neighbours' gate and front pathway. It was remarkably viscose. Then I put the four boys to bed and slept fitfully, dreaming that I was tidying my flat and then waking up to realise with irritation that I had to do it all again in real life.

Now I'm sitting on my sofa, fairy lights ablaze, candles glowing, Bob Dylan wafting through the airwaves, blanket over my lap. The plan was to make mince pies and go Christmas shopping but that's looking increasingly unlikely. Apologies to family and friends, I appear to be having too much fun to buy you things. I think I need a nap.

Barbour black sheep

I read this article today about the renaissance of poshness in British society. To nutshellise, it claims that 'normal' people are dressing like posh people by wearing Barbours, which proves that being posh isn't seen as such an awful thing as it used to be. Weirdly, I agree with the conclusion, but not the hypothesis. I do feel that the upper classes, plummy accents and country pursuits are sneered at less now than they were two decades ago, and I concur with the journalist who suggested that this shift has happened because Thatcher seems a long time ago, and the new enemies are bankers and global corporations, not colonial landowners. The toffs aren't the ones ruining the UK any more, so it's OK to like them. I see the logic in this argument, but I think it's bollocks. Ultimately, massive capitalist and corporate greed is more dangerous and damaging than a yearning for some sort of golden era of pre-war clarity where everyone knew their place. But they both suck. And being governed by a pack of Old Etonians might seem reassuringly familiar in this time of uncertainty, but not all that is familiar is good.

And anyway, I don't think the hipsters who are wearing Barbour jackets want to look posh. The people buying them are in their early twenties and have lived under a Labour government for most of their lives - they can't remember why everyone used to hate the upper classes. Even if they have a vague understanding of the concepts of class wars, snobbery and social immobility, they care more about looking different and ironic than politically active. In the nineties, Burberry was subversive for a bit, sported by Kate Moss, but then it filtered down to Oasis and the Appletons and, almost overnight, became a uniform for aspirational working classes. Then it disappeared out of the public eye altogether. Now it's back, the telltale tartan is used discretely if at all, and the brand is quietly unaffordable once again. These things move in entirely predictable waves.

Whatever happens, even if Barbour-wearing becomes compulsory for anyone under 35, this is one bandwagon I won't be joining. In the days of yore, during my bowl-haircut, alabaster-pale, pony-crazed early teen years, before I fell in love with Joey MacIntyre from New Kids On The Block, I had a waxed jacket, and although I concede its waterproofing abilities, I detested its singular smell and the fact that it was uniquely useless at keeping me warm. It was like wearing a dark, condensation-filled army tent, smelling of dogs, discomfort and heart-rending homesickness, and I hated it. The trendy Hoxtonites can sport 'em all they like, but as the snow falls in London, you'll see me snuggled up in my M&S coat and my H&M fake fur bonnet, looking something like a cross between an elf and a panda, and happy as a clam.

Further festive fun

Despite getting into work at half ten yesterday morning, I still snuck off to Part 1 of our double-or-nothing office Christmas lunches at noon. The credit crunch had definitely hit: we started with a splash of admittedly delicious mushroom soup served on a slightly indented plate, and although the main course portion size was more generous, the quality of the food was not. That isn't to imply that we were there for the meal, however - of course, it was all about the conversation. I relayed my embargoed gem from Saturday night and then heard an absolute beaut of an embarrassing anecdote, where a female colleague went to get her bikini line waxed after a fair hiatus, and the beautician said, "Hmmm, it's been a while since you last came in, hasn't it?" and went away and came back with KITCHEN SCISSORS to start the job. That then reminded me of the time when one of my friends went for her first ever smear test, aged around 19 or 20, and the doctor told her to take off her things and get up onto the bed, and when he pulled the screen back, she had taken off all her clothes, bottom half and top half, and climbed onto the bed on all fours. It still makes me weep with laughter every time I think of it.

By the time I was to leave work, my weekend nights out and two glasses of white at lunch had caught up with me, and I was almost hysterical with tiredness. I took the tube down to Waterloo where I met Grania at the National Theatre, who was similarly emotional, and we went to the Private Eye Christmas... thing. I don't know what it was really. A reading of some of their favourite stories from the past year, and a chance for the audience to ask questions to Ian Hislop. There were some definite gems, including a brilliant Nigella Lawson pisstake read superbly by Katy Brand, but the majority of it was very old boys' club and a bit smug, and Ian came across as unattractively pleased with himself, in addition to being merely unattractive. The 'Dumb Britain' highlights were wonderful, as ever, but with no new material, it seemed a little self-indulgent, and the best moment of the evening by far was when an audience member on the level below stood up during a sketch to go to the loo, and tripped spectacularly, landing with an enormous thump on the stairs. Pockets of people spotted what had happened and laughed uncontrollably, while the remainder of the crowd glowered at us, pretending to be furious at us for disturbing their evening with our mistimed laughter, but secretly furious because they didn't know why we were enjoying ourselves so much more than they were. After that we went for some food and then parted, nauseous with tiredness, at Waterloo, where our final conversation was about which rap we should work on learning off by heart. Grania was inspired by the one that Smithy does in Gavin and Stac(e?)y, but from prior rap-learning experience, that was pretty long. I'm thinking more about Kanye's introduction to Estelle in American Boy. Thoughts welcome.

Today has been harrowing because I was told off before 9am, but I have just given blood so I am feeling very worthy. My atheist halo is brassy and, in certain lights, reflects with a shimmering starburst that makes an audible 'ting'. Now I am counting down to 5pm and taking as many opportunities as possible to roll the sleeve of my jumper up and reveal my telltale plaster. Must receive praise otherwise good act is of less value... Nightmare.

And so this is Christmas

I am still recovering from one of the happiest weekends of the recent past and the prospect of writing down the events (or, at least, those events that aren't X-rated) as they occurred seems like an unassailable incline. It is not impossible that I am still drunk from Saturday.

But the story begins on Friday afternoon, when I got changed in the loos at work into my gladrags and headed over to Clerkenwell for my friend's wedding. I sang at the service as part of a quartet, which was fun and festive, and the organist was hilariously bad, and the vicar was almost unintelligably Italian, which was fantastic, and then we went to the reception and gorged ourselves on canapes and delicious champagne, and the speeches were brilliant, and then Harry started playing the piano, and then Dom took over, and then I put my foot in it really really badly but it was funny, and then the bride and groom left in a rickshaw, and we all went for a lock-in at a pub down the road, and then had more to drink, and took bad photos, and then I started chatting to two guys in the pub, one of whom was being quite flirtatious, and later when I left I went to say goodbye to him and he said, "Bye," and I was outraged and said, "I can't believe you're not asking for my number!" and he just shrugged as if to say, "Deal with it, love." I had a brilliant time other than this incident and then went home on the nightbus to Elephant and Castle at about 3.30am, singing all the way to songs on my iPod, and woke up on Saturday morning surrounded by a champagne flute that I'd taken from the reception, an empty packet of Roast Beef Monster Munch and the wrapping from a Reese's peanut butter cup. In a moment of almost unrecognisable self-restraint, I had put the remaining two cups in the fridge, along with a Dime bar. And another packet of Monster Munch. Which I ate for breakfast, washed down with a Diet Coke. Then I went back to bed.

Saturday afternoon I got up and went to choir practice, and then we did our concert and the church was rammed and I read my poem and it was really fun (although my mum later said that she'd spent most of it panicking that I was going to be struck by heaven-sent lightning while I was up in the pulpit), and after we'd finished singing, my boss started the standing ovation, and everyone was on a massive high, and we went to the pub afterwards and I had such wonderful friends there, people from school, people from uni, people from my first job, and people from the last few years. There was so much love in the room and I felt extremely lucky indeed. At 11.30 the pub shut and we tripped into Soho to meet a few other choirboys who had gone to Sketch, which I'd heard of but hadn't been to before. There was a queue outside and Grania and I got a bit lairy and barged to the front and demanded to be let in and they (sensibly) refused, and then we called our friend and asked him to come and get us, and they sent a different guy who is a member and the doorman was livid as he'd thought we were just chancers (as we had also believed) and he had to let us in and I felt like Madonna. So then we went to this ridiculous room at the back with the bar sunken into a pit in the centre and the space-age seats around looking like something out of a Star Trek strip joint. It was bloody brilliant and we all had a ridiculously fun time and were the last people to leave at around 4am, and I had to be told more than once that I wasn't allowed to leave carrying my glass of white wine, and Grania and I shared what was left, gulping it down as if the gallons of alcohol we'd already consumed were not sufficient. Then I went home and the next bit is embargoed but god it is quite literally one of the funniest things that has ever happened to me and when I deem the moment right to reveal all, I guarantee it will have been worth the wait.

And then it was Sunday and I was a bit over-emotional having had no sleep and no vegetables or fruit since Friday, so all I did was compound things by eating pasta with pesto, hot dogs and fun size Crunchie bars out of the fridge. It turns out they're not so fun on their own, and, like kittens, are demonstrably better the more you have. I watched The X Factor final, got annoyed with the Great British Public for forgetting that this shouldn't just be a singing competition, but rather a contest to find someone who can actually contribute to the body of pop music that is churned out every year by doing something slightly unusual and fresh and original, and Joe, the winner, is no more likely to release a cutting edge record than I am to be described as demure. Grrrrr. But god it was a fun weekend. I went to bed at midnight, having become trapped in a void syncing my iPhone, a task I only ever seem to start when I am so tired that I've started hallucinating. This morning I woke up at 7.15am to do yoga and accidentally switched my alarm off rather than pressing snooze. I didn't get into work until 10.30. Oops. Off to the Private Eye Christmas Quiz at the National now. I think I might need illegal substances to maintain consciousness.

O Come, All Ye Unfaithful

The nights darken early, the shoppers are spending
On presents and mince pies, their waistlines expanding.
It's Advent again and the streets are a-heaving,
Full of shoppers seduced by PR people thieving.
"Buy this for your boyfriend," advertisements toll,
"and he just might not ditch you for Ms Cheryl Cole."

At last, it's arrived, the one time of year
When we don't have to spend every second in fear
Of intense global warming, it just isn't festive:
Waste goes with Christmas like cheese and digestive.
We swaddle our gifts in thick paper and ribbons
Not giving a thought to the extinction of gibbons.

It's my annual highlight, my favourite season
Be happy and kind or it's basically treason.
Each eve a new party, a new chance to kiss
Under poisonous berries, a sure sign that this
Is most likely not the best plan on the planet;
Mistletoe's deadly - we should probably ban it.

For gluttons like me it's a joyous occasion,
"Can I still get those jeans on?" is my only equation.
We gorge ourselves crazy on hot turkey dinner,
And the number one song by the X Factor winner.
Time spent with family is precious and rare,
I'm annually grateful it's not Albert Square.

Oh it's all just too perfect, I love all the lights
And the snuggling of couples in frost-laden nights.
We buy gifts to say to our loved ones, "I thank you,
I'll always support you, I will never blank you."
Presents and food, magic carols in the air,
What could be the cause of this splendid affair?

And here lies the rub, here I hit a glass ceiling.
I completely love Christmas, it's really appealing,
But I'm attending a party I shouldn't be at
Because I'm not a Christian, I can't wear that hat.
I'm just not a believer of this gobbledygook,
And I'm not friends with Rowan or Pope Ben on Facebook.

That Jesus was born two millennia ago
I'll agree that it happened, historically so.
That he lived and did great works, I reckon that's true,
"Do unto others as you'd like them to do to you"
It's a great rule of thumb, but as for the resurrection
I just can't see it happening, like a Hillary election.

I'm an atheist, see, I believe not in gods,
And I know Occam's razor would push me the odds,
But for most of the year I'm happily profane
Till the bells start a-jingling and the songs play again;
I can't resist joining each year's festive shimmy
But if Jesus is nice then I think he'll forgive me.

I hate all hypocrisy, really I do,
But Christmas is too good to keep just for you.
I could call it 'Winterval' but who would I fool?
It's Christmas I love and it's Christmas that's cool.
I don't buy the whole thing but this much is true
It's a magical time, I'll give you your due.

So for one day a year I jump on the bandwagon,
And a story as likely as Puff: Magic Dragon
Becomes glorious truth, both wondrous and humbling,
And we all celebrate our humanity's fumbling.
We're doing our best, equatorial and polar,
But still, Santa is trademarked by - yes - Coca Cola.

The Christmas machine is a cynical thing,
So let us reclaim it and mean what we sing:
'Tis truly the season for all to be jolly
So help those who need it, lend a stranger your brolly.
Don't let yourself be blinded by consumerist baloney
But Saint Nick, please remember, I'd still like a pony.

Happy Wainwright Christmas

Warning: the first part of this post may be serious and slightly over-sentimental. And I have no idea what I'm going to write in the second part yet, so don't hold your breath for hilarity.

Last night, Mum and I went to see A Not-So Silent Night, the Wainwright family festive specatcular at the Royal Albert Hall. Rufus and Martha sang, as did their mother and aunt (Kate and Anna McGarrigle), Guy Garvey from Elbow, Ed Harcourt, Boy George and several others. And several moments stood out for me. Firstly, Rufus' voice. I love Guy Garvey, I really do - his version of a Joni Mitchell song last night was outstanding, and I'd still marry him now if he asked me, but Rufus... his control... it's truly something else. Just like last time, he did his 'singing without mikes' trick, which is no mean feat in the RAH, and it blew us away. O Holy Night will never be the same again. Secondly, Martha wasn't pregnant any more. After a few songs, she told us that while she usually leaves the talking up to her big brother, she wanted to say that she had been expecting to perform this concert eight and a half months pregnant, and how grateful she was to the doctors and nurses at UCL hospital who, three weeks ago, helped deliver her son. She thanked the NHS, and in a profoundly-unBritish moment, we all spontaneously cheered. It's one of those rare topics where we know full well how lucky we are.

But what was even lovelier than happy Martha and gorgeous Rufus was the slightly wonky singing of their elderly mother, and Boy George, who simply isn't as good as he was, and Rufus' German boyfriend who was nervous as hell during Stille Nacht. But that's what life is all about, isn't it, loving and respecting those who have been important to us. So what if Boy George doesn't sound like he used to? His transvesticism (word?) broke international barriers in the eighties and Karma Chameleon was number one in sixteen countries. I watched all these hugely talented musicians last night, and what seemed most important was not their voices, but what they were doing with them, and I railed at The X Factor for pouring yet more superb singers with nothing to say onto our iPods. I want people to have a message first, and then a voice, not the other way round. Still, if I'd applied that rule to myself, you'd have been reading someone else's blog for the past four years. And I do flipping love The X Factor.

I Heart My Shambolic Existence

Along with death and taxes, the one thing you can be certain about is that, like it or not, I am not the first person that will spring into your mind when I say the word 'delicate'. I'm 32 and a half and this morning I used black marker pen to colour in the scuff marks on the front of my leopard print pixie boots, and five minutes ago I went to the bathroom and noticed ladders working their way in both directions down my right leg, one starting from my shoe and travelling up my calf, and another creeping down from underneath my dress, a stalagtight (deliberate) and a stalagmite of white flesh peeping through M&S opaque blackness.

Maybe one day I'll get my act together but I doubt it. I can't wear flesh-coloured tights or stockings because I ladder any dernier under 200 before I've even left the house. On the rare occasion that my outfit demands it, I'll buy one pair of beige tights, safe in the knowledge that I'll never have to wash them as they'll go straight in the bin at the end of the evening. I'll have packed a spare pair in my handbag which will inevitably have to be put on before I've left my front door.

Buttons fall off my coats with ridiculous frequency - train journeys are spent sewing them back on with thread that laughably claims to be unbreakable. I suppose 'very slightly harder to snap than normal thread' wouldn't fit on the sticker. Or perhaps I missed the paranthetic caveat, written in font size minus six, that read 'Unbreakable (if you're a ladybird).' Aw, just had visions of a ladybird tug of war.

OK, this is a bit boring. What else can I tell you? I sang in a concert last night, I didn't embarrass myself in front of my celeb crush, I ate a lot of Harrods mini mince pies, probably a quantity equating to about four actual-sized mince pies, the boy in the flat cap has stopped writing to me for no clear reason other than his lack of a Y chromasome, but despite this I am excited about EVERYTHING and basically sickeningly perky, I'm thinking about skiing and China and Prague and singing more carols on Saturday and Rufus Wainwright and Guy Garvey and hairstyles and TV shows and other people's weddings and yoga and champagne and 2010 and god life's fantastic and I'm so, so lucky to be here.

The real meaning of Christmas

As any singer will tell you, Christmas isn't about celebrating the birth of the saviour x many millennia ago, it is about singing carols in four or eight part harmony and then drinking wine to celebrate. I am enjoying singing so much at the moment that I wasn't even the most vocal complainer when we rehearsed a single piece for over an hour last night. And tonight is the third of our four carol concerts. I am VERY EXCITED, not just because we get to sing wonderful festive music and make people feel joyous, but also because there is a celebrity reader on the programme and although I have it on reliable authority that he is an absolute unmitigating idiot in real life, and married with children, I fancy him like mad (or at least I do in the TV programme that I've seen him in) and although I will try not to stare up at him with visible beams of hopeless love streaming out from my eyes while he is doing his reading, I think I will fail miserably. Ah well. A lovely boy with a flat cap emailed me today so I am feeling perky on the romance front.

Of course, the other thing that Christmas is about, apart from singing, is presents. And the problem with Christmas shopping is that I just find more and more things that I want to buy for myself. I was incredibly close to spending £190 on a Pakistani quilt on a US online store at about 09:08 this morning, having clicked there from a site where I was looking for presents for my mother. I am yet to buy a single gift for anyone. Unimpressive. I imagine that most only children revel at Christmastime, only having to buy presents for their parents, but present-buying is literally my favourite thing to do in the world ever and I am award-winningly brilliant at it, so not having anyone else to buy for other than two adults who routinely take back every single thing they are given by the other at Christmas is a bit like being a world class opera singer and living in a prison where the inmates are, without exception, deaf. Consequently, whenever I get a boyfriend I shower them with incredible gifts that I've been seen in shops previously and filed under 'brilliant gift idea for fictional boyfriend'. Then I sit back and wait to be showered in a similar fashion, but end up having to cry with gratitude when he books tickets for the cinema. Life is so unfair. I asked my father what he wants, and he said 'Nothing' and then requested that I don't spend any money on him. It's impossible that we are related. I mean, obviously I don't NEED anything. I am so far from needing things that I could lock down into some nuclear bunker for around ten years without repeating an outfit. But once I've seen the Pakistani quilt, it is all I can think about. My bedroom suddenly looks barren without it and I will toss and turn restlessly until it lies atop my duvet, adding a £190 sheen to my previously stark and boring (read: cluttered and frantic) sleeping set-up. Hmmm.

Handle with care

Today's blog is dedicated to my friend Sarah, who recommended I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and to whom I am eternally grateful for the experience. Bloody hell is it one heck of a blinder. I was gripped throughout, heart in throat stuff, even though not much happens in the wasteland, and I finished it on Saturday afternoon while I was at Nicole's, surrounded by countryside so wonderful it was cliched in its perfection, while four year old Alice came up to me every minute or so to ask if I would tickle her and play with the masks. In the end I had to put her in front of a DVD while I turned the final pages; huge, hot, wet tears dropping over my lower eyelid and splashing onto my jumper. What a truly original novel, inspiring, bleak and yet hopeful, forces us to be so grateful for the absurd gifts we have, beautiful, sparse prose style, literally the opposite to anything I could ever write. I absolutely freaking loved it.

My weekend at Nicole's was restoratative, replenishing my sleep supply as well as the size of my thighs. Now I am back in the smoke where I belong, and feeling quite perky having actually managed to get up when my alarm went off this morning. I did half an hour of yoga (my standing forward bend has suffered as a result of non-practice over the past week or so) and am now at my desk, counting down the minutes until I can run out of here like a greyhound out of the traps and head into town for choir practice. I'm feeling extremely perky about the next few weeks, full of beans about 2010 and the only thing that's slightly floored me is an email from Kate showing photographs of the world's most romantic marriage proposal ever, where photo one shows a very pretty girl walking along with her boyfriend on their way to Brixton tube to go to work, and then you see them looking up at the front of the Ritzy cinema, and it says both their names, and then 'The Proposal', and then the next photo she's gobsmacked, then he's down on one knee, and she's crying, and then they're hugging, and then they turn smiling to the photographer, who's the groom's brother, who's been snapping all along from across the road, and they wave, and it just blew me away. I know, I know, relationships aren't all hearts and flowers, but I'm over-emotional, Cormac's made me worried that the end of the world is nigh, and I feel like being kissed by a nice boy who doesn't namecheck Houdini in his list of romantic heroes.

Meddle of nowhere

About two or three months ago, when Christmas was a pale speck on the horizon and my energy levels were somewhat higher, I bought two tickets for Grania and I to attend a singles party with a twist. The idea was that, in a room full of singles, there would be people called 'Meddlers' who would help to orchestrate that first meeting with the handsome guy standing by the bar. It sounded quite funny and I was looking forward to it. Then I woke up yesterday morning and realised that I wanted to go to the Meddlers Ball about as much as I wanted to force rusty skewers under each one of my toenails.

Still, a promise is a promise, so Grania and I dragged our sorry asses along to the bar at the arranged time, went in and sat down. The lighting was pleasingly low and we bought some revolting white wine and sat in the corner with a plate of deep fried mezze. Around us on the tables were blank Christmas cards and biros for us to send a festive flirt to a fellow singleton. I examined our options. The crowd was ok and the music was reassuringly familiar, but more than that, there was something extraordinarily liberating about being in a room full of people like us, young men and women who still hadn't yet made the decision to settle down. Going to a bar on a normal evening is, of course, an exemplary way to spend a few hours, but there's little more frustrating than wheeling out your most winning anecdotes to a man who, after forty-five minutes of flirtatious questioning, casually mentions that he's also been to India, and in fact proposed to his wife in the gardens of the Taj.

We finished our food and stepped into the throng. I'd early identified a boy who looked a little like a mustachioed Heath Ledger, while Grania pointed out a lovely tall man with excellent jeans. Mr Denim was first, and I accosted him by the bar and we chatted to him for three minutes, which was long enough to make it perfectly clear to both of us that he was very dull. It's self-evident that not every gorgeous person one sees on the tube or in the supermarket is possessed of a wondrous personality, but it's always nice to receive hard evidence of this. We moved on feeling buoyed.

The next hour or so was spent chatting to several small clusters of uniformly unremarkable men, one of whom had said that he loved Jeremy Kyle and another who'd said that he'd come to this same event in April and met a Brazillian who had dumped him after five months, so he was back for another go. Honesty perhaps not the best policy there. Suddenly, one of the Meddlers ran up and excitedly told me that he'd found me a Guardian reader, as though all my woes were cured. He pointed out two men who looked quite nice, and Grania and I spent a bit of time chatting to them later on in the evening. They were indeed good company but not quite right, and we drifted off before too long, leaving them dancing to Bonkers by Dizzee Rascal. To be honest, I'm not sure my rapping along was doing me any favours although Grania seemed to be loving my work even more than usual.

Cut to an hour later. We are sitting down, chatting about nothing, because talking to boys is exhausting. Suddenly, a small notepad lands on the table in front of us. We open it and read 'Two girls talking to each other? That doesn't not fair on us lads!' We look up and see a small man who I know for certain that I will never love. Grania starts to write but I get impatient and take over, constructing our reply, which reads 'But you need to be cool enough to justify us standing up.' Grania changes the full stop to an exclamation mark because she's nicer than I am, and we send it back. Two or three more exchanges culminate in the pathetically depressing request, 'Stand up and give us a twirl' to which I reply 'I'm trying to be nice here, but that is LAME.' Grania does not alter my punctuation.

We spot another guy behind us, sitting on his own and writing intently. 'What are you writing?' we write, and throw the notepad at him. He reacts as if shot. Eventually we get a reply, 'I try to write the beginning of a play.' 'Can we be in it?' we ask, coquettishly. He ignores us. Grania starts chatting to Mr Give Us A Twirl, while my interest levels are waning. I pick up one of the Christmas cards and start writing a message to Grania's mother. Later, I go to the bar and find myself standing next to Heath Ledger, who tries to kiss me almost immediately. I look displeased and tell him I'd singled him out as a potential hopeful earlier, and now retract that. He looks crestfallen and mumbles 'Sorry' several times. A few minutes later I spot him on the dancefloor with his shirt half unbuttoned, rubbing his chest, seemingly in an attempt to arouse the two girls he's jigging with. To their eternal discredit, they appear to be enjoying themselves.

By the end of the night, Grania is talking to a guy who looks like he'd rather be sucking a vomit lolly than chatting at a singles party, while I'm trying to persuade his lank-haired friend that I don't want to sit down next to them and that I'm fine standing. Eventually we decide that enough is enough, and scamper back down to the tube, suffering an emotional parting at the Northern Line / Central Line junction at Tottenham Court Road. The boys may not have been up to the lowest of our standards, but it was an extremely fun night and I left with my self-esteem almost buoyed, which was odd given that I had started the evening saying 'There are going to be 100 single men in here. If you don't find one you like, you need to change your criteria.' If there were some nice guys in the throng, we didn't talk to them. Still, I'm glad I went.

And now, this.

No title forthcoming part 342

Last night could have been bad. We were singing at our first carol concert of the year, in a huge London church. One of the readings was a comedic poem about Father Christmas getting drunk. It was read by a lovely-seeming man standing high above us in the pulpit, who put a lot of feeling into the words while we sat on chairs on the well-lit stage below, looking up at him. And then the story reached its present-delivery stage, and the reader said a line that was, at best, brave. "Santa emptied his sack," he told us, without a glimmer of awareness that this might be a risky statement. Immediately, my throat clenched and I knew from the silence around me that several other people had been stricken. Slowly, I turned to my right and saw a wide-eyed Ed in the row behind staring round in disbelief, convinced as I was that there would surely be an outburst. Rob was looking down at his music but his grin indicated that he too was struggling not to erupt. I knew that any noise I made would be lethal. Trying to let the laugh out slowly, I exhaled through my nose, but the contractions of my giggling abdomen forced the air out in short bursts. And then - horrors - an audible murmer, the tiniest of hums, emerged. I knew this would be death for my fellow laughers, but I also knew that looking at them would be fatal. I bit my lip and thought about a kitten massacre. Very slowly, my heart rate returned to normal and finally I knew I was safe. After the concert, we poured out of the church and roared with relief, safe to rejoice in the double-entendre, and I was proud that I had managed to keep it together. We had sung well in places but my abiding memory of the evening will be that moment.

About 14 years ago, when I was in the school choir, we were told to learn a very long song with several verses in Latin. Before our debut performance at a nearby old people's home, few of us had managed to get the words off by heart, and decided that we would cut out the photocopied lyrics and hide them in our hands - eight or so squares each, a verse on each square, turning them surreptitiously during each chorus. Our choir master wasn't having any of this, though. Furious when he realised what was going on, he tapped the hands of the guilty very firmly during a verse, and one by one, snowflakes of illicit paper fluttered to our feet as we were forced to make up a Latin carol in front of a room full of elderly locals who were probably wishing we were singing It's A Long Way To Tipperary.

Some things never change, and that makes me extremely happy. I love singing in choir, but I love the opportunity it gives us all to indulge our naughty sides. I'm one of life's goody-goodies. I hate being told off. But I also can't resist a good laugh. Ultimately, if you stand up in public and read words aloud that conjur a mental image of a masturbating Santa, people will giggle. They'll know that it's naughty, they'll try and contain it, but the laughter is inevitable. And that is exactly as it should be.

Disconnected

Some emails I’ve sent to Laura today:
09:52 ‘Internet’s down. Home time.'
09:55 ‘I literally have nothing to do.’
11:12 ‘I think it should be illegal to expect someone to sit at a desk without the internet.’
12:10 ‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggghhhhhhhhh.’
12:51 ‘Is there someone I can sue about this?’

It is now 15:37 and this is by far the longest I’ve gone without proper internet access at work since I started here 2.5 years ago. Of course, I still have the ability to check my emails and read the internet on my phone, but when there are over five consecutive hours of work time to kill, it’s simply not a substitute – the iPhone is superlative for passive browsing on-the-go, but when it comes to researching holidays, finding fun social things to do on evenings off or spending hard-earned cash buying jigsaw puzzles on Amazon, a screen the size of a four finger KitKat and the ability to type with only one thumb is somewhat limiting, dextrous though I am.

I genuinely have finished my work, I can’t read my book at my desk, and I’ve been reduced to writing this on Microsoft Word in the hope that I’ll shortly be able to work out how to post to Blogger via email. The situation is untenable. Without full access to the internet, continuing in my current job is absolutely not an option. I need the web to maintain some semblance of sanity, to distract my mind from the unbending futility of my nine to five. If they don't fix it soon, I will have to resign.

And no, it’s not weirdly liberating, you sanctimonious crap-weasels. It’s absolutely fucking awful. If no-one in the world had the web, I might be able to find some joy in the situation. But being cut off while everyone else in the surrounding buildings is still happily connected is like not being invited on a really fun holiday, and while all my friends are there having a seminal time and sending me unbearable postcards, I’m stuck at a bus stop in leaking shoes, and then a van drives by and drenches me, and a really over-confident child laughs and three ex-boyfriends walk by, all with new girlfriends, and see me looking like a fat otter, and then I finally get home and realise that I’ve lost my house keys, and then I get to my parents’ house and find that they’re out for dinner at a Michelin-starred restaurant, so I have to go back to work and sleep on the floor of my office, and I wake up with the indentations from the carpet tiles printed onto my face, and then I look in the newspapers and find that all Londoners have been infected with a deadly and completely incurable virus and we have three days to live.

Latest update: "We currently experience high connection issues to the browse environment. This causes the services on the environment to be unavailable for a period of time. At this moment it is not clear what and who is causing this high amount of connections. We will continue our investigation." I’m feeling murderous.

Three things I can tell you:

1. This short clip of giant jellyfish near Japan is a bit freaky and a bit beautiful. I think I'd find it less scary if the theme tune to The Flintstones or Baby Elephant Walk by Henry Mancini was playing instead. Maybe the filmmakers can consider that for next time.

2. I bought too much mincemeat, but it doesn't go off until 2011 so hopefully I'll force down all the mince pies by then. I principally told that story (if it can be described as such) so that you'd be impressed by my Nigella-esque skills, but then I feel I should also admit that I bought frozen shortcrust pastry, so basically all that remains for me to do is roll, cut and use a spoon. And it would have been cheaper to buy them. In an attempt to claw this back from being both tragic, wasteful and pointless, I have this instant decided that my pies will have festive drawings pricked on them with a skewer. I will supply a photograph when I make them. Which will probably be in around February.

3. I have submitted my Christmas list and am now experiencing my annual panic that I will think of something ESSENTIAL and it will be too late. The fact that I am old enough to buy it for myself is, of course, a logical beta blocker, but the post-list-submission jitters are beyond my control. As usual, to give the elves some flexibility, I have thoughtfully requested more than I am likely to receive; however, due to space limitations at my flat, I have finally stopped asking for a pony. My top two hopefuls are this and a pineapple-shaped ukulele. Santa, if you're reading, I have been a good girl, probably one of the best there's ever been, so do the right thing and reward me with the material possessions I so desperately need. Thank you.