The Year of the Snake

And so we bid farewell to 2010 and the Noughties. I spent Millennium Eve in a small restaurant in Putney with my then-boyfriend Henry. I was 23. We'd been together for three years and I was pretty darn certain I'd spend the rest of my life with him. I was deputy editor of a pop magazine, living with my parents, and he was running a web design start-up with two friends in Dalston. We broke up, unacrimoniously, in 2001. Now he's an IT teacher and lives with his girlfriend of several years in a bungalow just outside Canterbury. I've been a PA in a City bank for a fair while and have far less clue about the future than I did ten years ago.

2010's not been the greatest for me although it's certainly had some spectacular moments. It started high as a kite, drunk and delighted in Prague, peaked again in March with probably the best holiday of my adult life in Finland, followed by the baking bliss of a glorious Glasto in June. Since then there have been many fun times: Morocco was relaxing, Paris was inspiring, Edinburgh was funny, the school reunion was hilarious, Lady Gaga was fantastic, Twitter has been life altering, and the Boris Bikes have been transformational. But there's been an awful lot of introspection too: a fair amount of heartache in the early portion and, for the past six months, the strange void left by the boyban, which was without doubt the single most important decision I made this year. It's left me utterly and terrifyingly bare, unable to distract myself from the truth, and I think I'm more honest, more vulnerable and more confused now than I was at the beginning - and I mean all of those things as positives.

If growing up is about realising we know nothing, then I am certainly a fair bit older and wiser than I was twelve months ago (when I was still convinced that the only way missing from my life was a man) and categorically better off than I was ten years ago, when pretty much my whole identity was Being Henry's Girlfriend And Interviewing Popstars. Not that that was a bad place to be, but it's not quite a picture of someone with a strong inner core of self-esteem. When I first went into therapy about five years ago, I remember describing myself as totally surface - together on the outside but an empty mess within, like a Rubik's Cube - easily able to alter my colourful outer persona to suit my audience. Sure, underneath there's an unattractive jumble of strings and black plastic underneath, but who cares about that as long as the others are fooled? These days things are slowly reversing and the value I place on the opinions of others is fading. I'll never turn their volume down all the way, and I don't want to - but there's more in my middle than taut lengths of fishing wire (NB this metaphor only really works if you've taken apart a Rubik's Cube). As I've started to care less about how I'm perceived, I've actually grown a bit more fond of myself, which in turn has made me feel less like I have something to prove. Which has probably ended up making me more attractive to that audience I used to be obsessed about pleasing. And that's a nice irony.

So. 2011. It's weird but perhaps fitting that I'm going into it feeling fairly zen, actually. I have no idea what it will bring and I'm not sure I'm really that fussed either way. I'm sure it'll be OK. I don't know if I'll still be in my job in another 365 days but I kind of hope I am. The boyban still holds, for how long I'm not sure. I'm looking forward to writing more, and travelling somewhere hot at some point. I'd like to get better at the ukulele, take some good photographs, do a lot of yoga, learn to use my sewing machine, see some good music at Glasto and elsewhere, be a good friend, a good daughter and a good member of society. I'm ending 2010 feeling exceptionally grateful to the many people who've been supportive to me, and thankful to those who've been unreliable or disappointing - I've learned from you too. Right. I'm off to meditate and make lunch. Wishing you all a great night out. But a) don't worry if it's rubbish, it doesn't really matter. And b) if it IS really fun, spare a thought for those who are struggling. You're one of the very lucky ones. Happy New Year.

Michael Jackson lied: you ARE alone

Happy Christmas, one and all. Sorry I'm late. It's been a strange few days and I am now trying to help my parents use their three-year-old vinyl-to-mp3 USB turntable, unopened until today, but the software that came with it is so appalling that I challenge its designer to use it without wanting to drag the stylus over his own retina after a handful of seconds. As a sample of the aforementioned crapness, how's this: it installs a handy shortcut icon on your desktop but will double clicking it open the programme? No it will not. How about right clicking and selecting 'Open'? No. How to open the programme? It is impossible - unless you uninstall it and reinstall it from the CD-Rom. Then it works. Oh how handy. I am now listening to Judy Collins' Greatest Hits through the tinny bass-free computer speakers for approx. the sixth time as it has taken several attempts to know if we're recording successfully. My mum is doing sudoku on a sofa a few feet away and keeps absent-mindedly breaking into a tremulous warble before abandoning it, saying, 'Oh, this used to be one of my favourites.'

My latest attempt to record Side B started crackling wildly so I stopped the recording after forty minutes, only to find that there was no record of it on their PC. I have now given up, something I don't find easy but which must be done in order to preserve the functional state of my parents' laptop - the alternative is putting it on the floor and then repeatedly jumping up and down on it in my Fitflop boots until it admits, out loud, that it is at least six thousand times less user-friendly than a Mac.

Vinyl-ripping aside, I have now reached the long-longed-for stage of Winterval where my duties are over. On Christmas Eve the three of us went to the Albert Hall for a carol concert, where we were joined by two of my parents' friends who I've not met before. Seven people came for lunch on the Day Itself, making ten in total. Then yesterday we went to a pub on the river to meet another (much larger) family and then walked back to their house for lunch. It's all been lovely and festive and fun and there have been many laughs, particularly from my dad's ecstatic and near-constant use of his new Britain's Got Talent judges' buzzer, but there's always a sense of relief when all the socialising is over and you know you can don your jeans and your unflattering jumper and not be polite to anyone for the next hundred hours.

But every year, the euphoria fades after around nine minutes and I am soon left feeling listless, yet with a list of things to do and a hangover. This year's list includes a) teaching myself how to transfer vinyl to my parents' PC, a fairly bearable task that pales into heaven beside task b), teaching my parents how to transfer vinyl to their PC, which may as well be labelled Inevitable Armageddon. Since I haven't yet managed to complete stage a), I've been spared stage b), but still feel like I've let the side down. Countless others complaining about the shit software online won't console my parents, who've been gestating this project excitedly for a long time, desperately keen to ditch the records to create valuable storage space for their burgeoning collection of old bedside lamps, blankets and Eighties skiwear. I had also allocated these days to: writing, learning how to use my sewing machine, practicing my ukulele and clearing out my Gmail inbox - a selection of chores that wouldn't be misery-inducing, except that my parents are constantly boiling, fanning themselves dramatically and opening the back door to encourage a through draft, so today I have been wearing Rudolph socks, fur-lined boots, jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, cashmere jumper, scarf, beret and fleece, but have still been freezing since dawn and am unable to do anything except lie around under a blanket and moan gently. I mooted returning to my flat but I think my mother is disappointed. I'd be happy to stay longer except I don't really want to.

Like I say, it's been a strange few days. I love Christmas and on the surface, Winterval 2010 has been splendid, but recent changes within have meant that I'm definitely more aware than I used to be of my solitude - and by that I mean that separateness that exists whether you're with close friends in a crowded room or on your own in an empty flat, a fact that wouldn't be changed by the addition of a boyfriend, twins or a short-haired Dachshund. In the past, I've distracted myself with going out, planning future evenings out, chatting on the phone to people about times I've gone out in the past and times I am planning to go out in the future, writing about going out, fancying boys, or telling myself that I wouldn't be alone forever. Now something massive has shifted and I've accepted that my old denial wasn't getting me anywhere. In some ways, we're all on our own - married with babies or not - and I have to like it or lump it rather than search endlessly for distractions. Such a Copernican shift, intangible though it is, is proving a little tricky. Ideally, I'd learn how to see our psychological isolation as a good thing rather than as ultimate proof that life is a crock. Somehow I have to come to terms with it rather than feeling that I'm being massively negative and buzzkillish - but in this, I don't think I'm alone: I can't imagine that I'm the only person who views the fact of their own psychological solitude with a sense of shame, and the fact of others' with pity. Right now, it seems to me cruel that we are genetically social creatures, and that the furtherance of our species relies on us being physically and emotionally connected at the deepest level, but that, from the moment our existence begins to the moment it ends, we are the only people in our heads and will forever be the only person who lives our life. Hunter S. Thompson had sensible things to say on the subject (below) - I just hope I get there soonish. Maybe Christmas isn't the easiest time to learn:

"We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and - in spite of True Romance magazines - we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely - at least, not all the time - but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness."

Drulog

That is my new name for drunken blogging. Maybe it's already got a name. In which case feel free to tell me what it is.

I have been out for my work Christmas lunch. I was leading in the After Eights Wiggle game, at 18.9 seconds, but then Jackie beat me comfortably and I felt chastened until I remembered it meant she had to wear the Santa hat but it suited her really well anyway so I didn't feel happier for long.

What has been good is that I have been doing a lot of THINKING oh yes, that is obviously what I don't do enough of no but seriously, I have been thinking, because last night I was meant to go out with my ukulele posse, and I got home after work and I sat on the sofa and I was like, OK, I should go, this is the third night in a row that I've had plans, don't cancel these, and then I was like, but you don't HAVE to do anything. No one freaking CARES if you go, don't flatter yourself love. And I realised that something massive had shifted within me, and really, genuinely, I no longer feel like a failure. I do still feel sad about things. But feeling sad and not a failure is a million billion times better than feeling sad and feeling like it is totally your fault. So in some ways I feel way better than I used to. But undeniably I am still not feeling ideal. And I think the thing is, that I used to know what to do, because I had a mantra which was 'Do whatever would be most impressive to the people you want to impress' but now I know that, with the greatest respect, no one actually gives a FLYING FUCK what I do. So when your main motivation is taken away from you, you're left with just doing things because you actually want to do them, which may be, like, second nature to most of you, but for me it's totally new. So I was sitting on my sofa last night, thinking 'What do I actually WANT to do?' And there was a choice between sitting on the sofa, or going to play ukulele with my lovely ukey friends. And I sat there dithering and dithering more. I quite wanted to play festive music and socialise, I thought - but I also didn't want to get fat, and socialising equals boozing and possible mince pies. Plus I was genuinely tired. But for god's sake, Janey, I thought. It's Christmas. Stop being dull. Stand up. So I stood up and I got all dressed up - I put on a saucy black wool dress and high heels and did my make up and got my uke in its case and went and looked in the mirror one last time and thought that maybe I looked fat, and then I told myself off for being a superficial dickhead, and put my coat on, and then I felt tired and I sat on the sofa and then I thought 'God it would be nice to stay here tonight,' and so I did. I took my coat off, switched my fairy lights back on, breathed in a mince pie and stayed at home for the night.

And part of me thinks I was being really boring, but then since NO ONE CARES it doesn't matter, does it. And I think it's just going to take me a while to realise that I don't have to impress anyone ever again and that my existence is justified by the fact that I exist, and that is IT. I don't have to do anything else. I CAN do other things. But I don't HAVE to. It's liberating, honestly. And yes, it is all ridiculous.

I'm getting there, team. Big festive hugs from Me, while wearing velour, from the cushion-filled sofa, with O Come All Ye Faithful playing, written in the glow of fairy lights, knowing that there's a prescription for more drugs waiting for me at the doctor's. Mwah.

Doctor's (lack of) orders

So I went to the doctor. He was extremely friendly and understanding, but fell a little short of the 'actually helping' hurdle. There are, he explained, two treatments that are commonly prescribed for PMT. One is the pill. This has two advantages: 1) it can totally help with PMT and 2) you get a free contraceptive thrown in. It it also has two disadvantages: 1) it really might not help with your PMT at all - the only way to find out is to try it and 2) you may well experience some or all of these common side effects - weight gain, mood swings, depression, sore breasts, yadda yadda.

I've been on four pills before. One sent me absolutely insane. One made me gain weight (boo) but my boobs got MASSIVE (yay!). One made me gain weight and my boobs stayed the same size (cack). One was AMAZING but it's so strong that you're only meant to be on it for six months or something, and I've used up my quota. Based on that sample, the doctor said that the chances were that I would get some negative side effects from going back on the pill. Plus, he reminded me, I didn't really need the contraceptive bonus since.... There followed an awkward silence as the implied 'We both know you're not getting any' lingered in the room.

Great, I said. That all makes sense. Going on the pill doesn't seem to be the right solution. So, I asked, what's the other commonly prescribed medication? The doctor turned to me and winced vaguely. 'You're already on it.' Ah. My anti-depressant. OK, so maybe I should put the dose of that up? But I'm already a bit more numb than I used to be. Three weeks of increased numbness vs. one week of less crying per month... I dunnooooo. I am not keen to put up my dose. I don't know why, but I don't want to.

He printed out a printout and handed me the handout. Four pages of my options - take a drug that is quite likely to make me fatter and/or more mental, take more of a drug you're already taking, or try one of these Totally Unscientifically Proven Alternative Therapies: increased calcium, increased magnesium, increased B6, Evening Primrose, Agnus Castus, St. John's Wort. All of these have countless female proponents online saying 'IT'S A MIRACLE! It totally worked!' and just as many saying 'Nope. Still crying. Still want to stab my husband.'

What to do, what to do? I think I'll just carry on as I have been, sitting at home trying not to do anything that might upset me. It's not the most fun way to spend the week before Christmas and I'm certainly getting bored of the view from my sofa, reading about everyone else's fun parties on Twitter, but Chris has already told me off today for putting him down, so I'm clearly still being a miserable bitch and should probably avoid others. If everyone would just promise to do nothing except make me feel like a star, I'd be OK, but annoyingly Real Life doesn't seem to be like that. On the upside, it's a lot easier to stay thin at home than it is in the Outside World full of mince pies and endless booze. See? I'm focusing on the positives! I told you things were improving.

More moans

As the Faithful will know, after someone described LLFF as 'about mental health' I became a bit unsure. I'm happy to be honest about the rubbish that goes on in my noodle, but I didn't really want this blog to be labeled as single-topic when I've tried quite hard to make it fairly broad.

If I'm to be truly open, though, there's another reason I quash the compulsion to share my deepest thoughts. I know deep down that this is utterly absurd but that's hardly a rarity among my observations... and... well, OK, out with it: I worried that some handsome (or bearable) young man could be reading, and that my admitting to being a divider short of a lever arch file might deter him from, one day, tentatively emailing me to ask me on a date. Yes, I know: absurd. I cringe even to admit it. I mean, a) Fictional Bearable Man has four years of LLFF to read back on, so only writing about HILARIOUS antics from now on will hardly cancel out 650 entries of questionably certifiable content. b) In four years, I've only ever had one person get in touch with me flirtatiously as a result of what they've read here, and let's just say that didn't end well. c) I AM MEANT TO BE ON A FREAKING BOYBAN so any worrying about Fictional Bearable Men is absolutely against orders, and should be ceased IMMEDIATELY.

So with all that in mind, here's a description of my mental state over the past few days. You can read about it as long as you allow me to apply the caveat that I really don't think I'm THAT much more mental than anyone else, just fractionally more open about it. Allow me that indulgence, I prithee.

Last Monday I thought I felt the symptoms of PMT. I'm not sure what our problem is, but it seems like, despite menstruating more or less monthly for around two decades, the women I know tend to greet each new period with irritated surprise. You'd have thought we'd know exactly when it was going to happen, but no - the last one finishes and we just bury our heads in the sand and forget about it until the next one creeps up like an unwelcome drunk houseguest and ruins an otherwise perfectly good week. For the record, my PMT symptoms tend to include: body temperature always being wrong; near-constant exhaustion; physical sense of having ingested around ten pints of thick soup or porridge that has oozed through my intestine and is now filling up legs and arms et cetera; a perpetual feeling of foreboding. It is not unbearable, but equally it is not rib-ticklingly good fun. After about five days of this, I become convinced that the PMT is about to end and that good ol' MT should surely be about to begin. But no - I had a fairly over-sensitive weekend feeling anti-social and quiet, and then yesterday, day eight, I metaphorically hit the fan.

It started when Chris came into my office at around 11am for a chat. We nattered harmlessly for a few minutes and then he made some very light-hearted but unarguably derogatory comment about the Welsh, and then the Scots. I told him not to be racist, he (quite sensibly) told me to lighten up, I refused, and he (entirely reasonably) swore at me and stropped off. I sat there wondering what to do. I knew I was being insufferable and deserved to be firmly mocked. Equally, I do think that people should stick to their principles, and that 'harmless' prejudiced jokes between friends, even friends who know the other isn't really racist, aren't ideal. I get miffed when people use 'gay' as a derogatory term too. It's boringly puritanical, but I'd feel really awful if I went the other way. There's loads of ways to slag people off without relying on their nationality or their sexuality. (As an aside, I'm not even sure he was theoretically being racist. I don't think Welsh is a race, is it?) Either way, I didn't like him being prejudiced, but I should have let it go.

So I was a bit upset about that, annoyed at myself for being a dick, but I went off to Boots at lunch and got a few things sorted out, and the nice lady at the Benefit counter gave me 'dramatic eyes' (think Twiggy in the Sixties rather than this) and I went back to the office feeling slightly better. And then I got a phonecall from a very chipper friend, who told me I should be being more positive about something that I was being negative about, and for some reason I was so determined to persuade her that I was right to feel negative about it that I started crying. Fortunately my colleagues weren't in their offices so no one could see me as the decidedly-non-waterproof Benefit products coursed down my cheeks but I still worried that someone might come in and ask me something, so I thought it best to hide. I ducked under my desk and sat there, cross legged and sobbing, for about an hour. Then I got up, not really very sure at all why I had been crying for quite so long, wiped off as much of the sediment as I could, sat back on my posture stool and stared into space for another hour, unable to decide what to do. I didn't want to go to my non-negotiable evening engagement that I'd been excited about for AGES because I felt antisocial and ugly and boring and I knew I'd be expected to be loud and opinionated and hilarious. But I didn't want to go home to an empty flat. And I didn't want to see anyone else because I felt rubbish.

Then I realised that I had presents for two of the people at the non-negotiable evening engagement and I accepted that I had to go, but I couldn't shake off this weird under-confident paralysis. In the end I had to ask Chris to come and get me out of my office, which he did (after he'd emailed me to tell me he wasn't a racist). And he gave me a hug and I cried again and FUCKING HELL his dad is recovering from a stroke but will be paralysed for the rest of his life, and I know Chris must look at me like 'SHUT UP with your insignificant issues' but these freaking hormones are just so powerful - half the time you don't know why you're crying, you just feel so utterly negative and fed up. I wish boys could experience it just once because there is nothing more frustrating about knowing something isn't real but still not being able to ignore it. I imagine it's a bit like having a bad trip. And there's part of me that thinks we should all keep schtum about how it feels, that it's blog entries like these that spread the idea that women are mental and difficult and that boys are straightforward and superior. Perhaps it'd be better for women if people didn't come out and say 'Yes, I'm irrational. Yes, I cry when very little seems wrong. Yes, it sucks to be me sometimes' and instead, for the sake of equality, acted like all the other ladettes and said 'We're just like you but with bigger boobs!' Anyway. It's too late now. I write, therefore I press 'Publish Post'.

I went to the evening engagement for half an hour and handed over the presents. And it was weird - I'd felt so withdrawn, so utterly shy and gross, but then I got there and we were carol singing outside the Southbank Centre, and this crowd had gathered to listen to us, even though it was really flipping cold, and people were filming us on their phones and it was all sounding lovely, and I realised we didn't have a hat down to collect any money, and I put my furry hat down and everyone laughed, and then Christina said we weren't allowed to collect money and she picked up my hat. But what I thought was odd was how, even when I'm feeling utterly awful, I still can't quash my instinct to show off or get attention or put a stamp on things, to walk into the middle of the semi-circle and ask strangers to give us money, when thirty minutes earlier I couldn't even get the strength to re-don my Moon Boots. And I hate that. I wish I'd just be consistent and stay quiet rather than act up like some seal with a compulsion to bark. As soon as the singing had finished and a few people came up to say hello to me, I panicked again and went straight home. I watched the final of The Apprentice, which was long enough to take my mind off things, and then I went to bed.

No tears today but haven't managed to leave the house yet. I dunno. I'm off to the doctor in a minute. It's not remotely life threatening but I'd rather not hang round waiting for this to happen all over again in 28 days. And if the NHS don't have any answers I'm going to have to get me some waterproof mascara. To all the women out there: I love you. To all the men: love your women. We need you.

I was bored and sang a song

Santa Baby by Lost Looking For Fish

Gagantuan

It's been several years since I walked into a packed concert arena. I'm older now, and possibly wiser, but the impact of the screams, the heat of the humans and the headiness of the adrenaline is still arresting. Breathless and flushed from dancing about like loons in a weird greenscreened white pod for the O2 promotional video we'd just recorded of ourselves in the foyer, Grania and I took our seats and fumbled about trying to fit our plastic cups full of wine and back-up tiny bottles of more wine into our limited cup holders. The fifty year old man on Grania's left was bursting to talk to us.
"Have you seen her before?" he asked. We shook our heads.
"I saw this tour in Birmingham," he said. "You're not going to believe it. It's amazing."
"Are you her biggest fan?" I asked.
"No but I love her. Two of her dancers follow me on Twitter."
Grania shuffled imperceptibly closer to me. The lights went down. The volume of the screams made my ears do that weird vibrating thing that I think is probably not good. A screen came down. Lights went on it. In more than a nod to MJ, Gaga was silhouetted and massive. And so it began.

I've seen some good performances in my time: Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince, Elton John, the Stones, The Prodigy, Justin Timberlake, Eminem, U2, Blur, Rufus Wainwright - like 'em or not, they all know how to put on a show. At 24 years old, Gaga has comfortably taken her place among those seasoned pros. She is one of those unbearable people who manages to be clever, funny, innovative, self-aware, courageous, talented and really good at dancing without making you want to maim them. Anyone else with that many amazing irons in life's fire and I'd be dreaming up graphic ways of shoving them off their pedestal for good, but with Gaga, I'm fine for her to stay up there and preen. She's a real one-off and not only did her show fill me with admiration, it also made me think that anyone with a passing interest in current culture should go see her live.

She's fucking weird, there's no doubt about that. Throughout the night, she wore a selection of extraordinary outfits - shoebox-sized shoulder pads, a Where The Wild Things Are-inspired costume that made her look like a big tree trunk, a futuristic silicone dress with white pants and plasters on her nips, a glitter catsuit for Poker Face, a black cleavage-revealing bodice which she accentuated with liberal smearings of fake blood, a little girl green frilly number that clashed brilliantly with her American mustard-coloured hair, all vulnerable on the big black stage while the Fame Monster roared and gurned in the background. Gaga is gaga for monsters. Her fans are Little Monsters, and they're encouraged to be as invidual and extraordinary as possible. "Do not, for God's sake, leave here loving me more," she panted. "Leave here loving YOURSELVES more." She has a fairly scary shouting voice, hints of Miss Hannigan. Her fans screamed on demand. "I'm like Tinkerbell," she cooed later, lying back on the stage. "If you don't clap, I'll die. Do you want me TO DIE?" We clapped.


Her self confidence is infectious. It's impossible feel vulnerable when one of the most famous women on the planet is standing in front of you and twenty thousand others, wearing a black leather studded bikini and strutting around stage, happy to let her thighs and buttocks wobble in full view of everyone, her arid hair tangled around her microphone. It'd be inevitable if a fair amount of what she says on stage is scripted, but there's no doubt that she makes an impact - even if her truisms do seem heart-threateningly cheesy in the stark winter light of Friday. "I didn't used to be brave. I didn't used to be this way. I used to be a geek," she said. "But your support has made me brave. You make me brave." We screamed.

Much of her act is spontaneous, though. Every time she ventured down onto the catwalk extension in front of the main stage, she was showered with gifts from her most loyal Little Monsters, and she took a generous amount of time to notice each item and appreciate it. "Does this say 'Born This Way'?" she asked, picking up a desperately proferred T-shirt. Without hesitation or concern for her stage outfit, she pulled it on over her leotard and performed the next section of the show wearing the cropped vest. Can't see Cheryl Cole doing that. Another person gave her a Penguin Classics edition of Warhol's diaries. "Oh, you've highlighted!" she said, charmed. She flicked through the pages briefly and read aloud to us from a passage about beauty:

"When you're in Sweden and you see beautiful person after beautiful person after beautiful person and you finally don't even turn around to look because you know the next person you see will be just as beautiful as the one you didn't bother to turn around to look at — in a place like that you can get so bored that when you see a person who's not beautiful, they look very beautiful to you because they break the beautiful monotony."

Then she nattered about the beauty that comes from variety for a minute or so, not lecturing us, not sounding patronising or naive, just being honest and confident and aware of her position of power and determined to use it for all our benefits. A plush Santa toy landed at her feet. "I do love Christmas," she said, "but for those of you who are lonely or angry, this is for you." She tried to rip off his head with her teeth but St. Nick clung on, until she impaled him with the stiletto heel of her white patent ankle boot, tore him apart and plucked out his kapok.

The only irritant of the evening came from two rows behind us, where there was a ledge surrounded by a barricade. One of the girls on the ledge was making an extraordinary amount of noise, mostly in the "Wooooooooo! I LOVE YOU GAGA!" genre, constantly during the 'Please cheer now' sections and, more vexingly, fairly regularly in the 'Please don't cheer here, she's talking and we want to hear what she's saying' moments. She also sang along, fairly tunelessly but word perfectly, throughout every song, which was fine when it was a deafening upbeat hit but slightly more annoying when it was fully audible over the one slow number, Speechless. "Shut up!" yelled someone further down our row, to no effect. I turned around to see who was making this noise. There was a definite possibility that the ledge area was reserved for wheelchair users but it was hard to see in the dark. "Is she disabled?" I asked Grania. "WOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" shouted the girl. "I don't know," said Grania, who turned around and tried to climb over the row behind to take a closer look but ended up almost kissing the man behind her and returned, shocked. "I LOVE YOUUUUUUUU!" wailed the girl. "There's no excuse for this level of noise," I said. "Not even muscular dystrophy." I turned and said, "Please can you shut up?" Another man joined in, "Yeah! I paid for tickets to hear Lady Gaga, not you." The reaction was not ideal: the girl's companion was guppying, gobsmacked in a my-friend-is-disabled-I-cannot-belive-you're-saying-this fashion, but thankfully the volume from their quarters diminished before a very un-PC fight broke out.

That decidedly unbeautiful moment kindly broke up the monotony of the rest of the evening's perfection, so for that I'm grateful. As soon as Bad Romance faded away, we wished the fifty year old uberfan farewell, bought our commemorative T-shirts and ran back to North Greenwich pier to get the final westbound Thames Clipper back to Waterloo. Freezing, we stood on the outside deck giggling and taking thousands of terribly blurred photos. Then we hugged lots and went our separate ways. Music doesn't make the world go round, but love is all you need.

Pretty complicated

Well, this complimenting-pretty-people thing is certainly interesting, in that most people think I am indeed insane, and that pretty people do still get told they're pretty, and that being told you're pretty is not some perverse code for 'You aren't that pretty.' I guess what it comes down to is that some of my friends get approached by guys in bars left, right and centre and I never do. I just assumed that it was because they were much prettier than me. Maybe it's more complex than that and that instead of worrying about my appearance, I should worry about the fact that my face says, 'I will eat you for breakfast. STAY AWAY.' Anyway. Food for thought. Unless you want to be thin, in which case don't eat it.

I went out with Grania last night to watch some comedy including the v. clever Abandoman, an Irish hip hop improviser, very impressive. There were four other acts too, some excruciating, a couple fairly funny, but no one made us laugh even an eighth as much as we did after they'd all finished and were clearing away the chairs, when we suddenly started reminiscing about Lapland and went through the runaway reindeer incident in graphic detail. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to stop laughing at the sight of the shockingly empty sled behind us, no sign of the Germans, the blankets, the expensive camera bags, just a bare slab of Scandinavian plywood. Categorically the funniest moment of 2010, possibly ever.

Tonight it's Lady Gaga at the O2 - can't wait. Have donned my festive meat bikini in her honour, trimmed with tinsel. I'll send you a photo.

No alibi

So I've been doing a lot of thinking about my appearance recently. It has emerged that there are deep down feelings of self-loathing that I never really noticed before, and that despite some evidence to the contrary, I believe in my core that I am physically well below average. We can discuss whether or not that is accurate in more depth at a later point, but what I wanted to address today was the following: I have just realised that I believe that empirically attractive people never receive compliments on their appearance, as it goes without saying that they look good, and thus the only people who receive compliments are those who are usually not quite up to scratch but have managed to pull something out of the bag at the last minute. This means that when someone compliments me, I do not hear, "You look fantastic, Jane," but rather, "You look better than you do normally. It's still not great but well done for trying." Basically, if someone compliments me on my looks, I take it as an insult or a pity vote as, if I was genuinely pretty, they wouldn't bother pointing it out, so obvious would it be. How fucked up is that?

Shit. Maybe it's not fucked up. Is it fucked up? Do you compliment your very pretty friends on their appearance? Or only the ones who look like they need a confidence boost?

Six lessons and carols

Gosh it's been a long time since I wrote anything approaching a 'normal' blog entry, where 'normal' = general recap of the life I've been living outside my head, unburdened by mammoth discussions concerning my very mental state. Maybe it's time for a brief summary of things I've done and things I've learned as a consequence, NOT that everything in life has to be justified by also being a learning experience but that's a habit it'll take a while to shake.

So last Monday I had a top-up laser appointment at 5.30pm, which isn't nearly as exciting as it might appear to my male readers, although it does involve me lying nearly naked on a bed while another woman points a gun-shaped item at my nether regions while I writhe and moan, but honestly, it's not remotely sexual, I swear. I did learn that laser, pure laser, is much better than the stuff I used to have, which is called IPL (unknown TLA). IPL involves ultrasound gel and you come out all red and blotchy plus your skin is left all tacky from the gel, and it hurts like nothing I've ever experienced. Pure laser involves no gel and almost painless. Why would any salon buy an IPL machine when they could have a laser machine? Because one costs £15k and the other costs £55k. So that's fairly conclusive.

Then I went to choir and against my better judgment we went to the pub and I got home late. On Tuesday I met Em and we did a quick bit of shopping and then went for a drink and I battled with what to have in order to maintain my current dieting status (lesson: M&S nut snack pot should be illegal, and certainly marketing it as a healthy item is in violation of several trades descriptions acts, unless eating a handful of nuts and consuming approximately the same amount of calories as there are in a McDonald's Happy Meal is healthy), and then we went to Georgie's for the Christmas session of our book club, where we laughed a lot and played a hideous version of Secret Santa where the first person picks from the pile of presents and opens one, then the second person can either steal that one or pick another at random from the pile. Then the third person can steal either of the first two's, and so on. It's about as brutal as gift giving gets - particularly if some people are happy to steal while others feel uncomfortable with the concept. I came away with lovely white wool bedsocks from Accessorise: they weren't quite a white porcelain dish with rabbit figurine from Anthropologie, but could definitely have been worse. (Lesson: Prisoners' Dilemma - play hardball).

Then on Wednesday I went out with Grania for a catch up and we celebrated the fact that she is a brainbox and passed her fiendishly difficult exams, while many of her peers did not. (Lesson: she is cleverer than she thinks). Thursday we had a choir concert and I had too much to drink and took a duvet day on Friday, which I spent lying around until the afternoon when I got up and got ready for my ukulele Christmas party, an evening which began fairly sedately, continued at a noisy pub down the road until 12ish, then moved to a dive bar until 3 or 4ish, then moved via Boris Bike back home, holding hands as we cycled along in the bus lane, and ended up passed out, fully clothed, in bed after too much vodka. (Lesson: alcohol is amazingly fun but not in the long run. Actually, that can hardly be called a new lesson. What did I really learn...? I can stay up later if I drink spirits rather than wine. Useful.)

Saturday was a write-off - I was too tired even to watch The X Factor final, fell asleep on the sofa, failed to make soup and got a bit cross with myself for being unproductive. Sunday dawned clear and bright: I made the soup, tidied bits of the flat and was all ready to leave on time for the 3pm rehearsal when I applied my make up a little too enthusiastically and knocked my nearly-new glass bottle of foundation all over my black bathroom tiled floor, where it shattered dramatically, splattering its contents all over the floor, the side of the bath, the side of the sink, my brown suede boot, my tights, my dress, the shower curtain and the bin. Predicting that I might well return home, after the concert, slightly under the influence and perhaps needing to relieve myself as a matter of relative urgency, I thought that leaving my bathroom floor covered with shards of thick glass and Estee Lauder Double Wear was probably not the best idea. I thus hurried to pick up all the fragments I could see and then tried to mop up the foundation. It was not a success. In a crazed rush, I sprayed ready-mixed Tesco mopping solution all over the floor and went off to the concert, desperately hoping that my floor wasn't porous and that I wouldn't return to a streaky beige tile effect in the centre of my bathroom. (Lesson: haste makes absurdly inconvenient, expensive, tardiness-inducing waste.)

The concert went well, I felt truly supported by my wonderful family and friends, read my poem and a handsome hipster composer asked to collaborate with me in the new year. We all went to the pub, I ate mince pies, drank white wine and felt a lot of love. After closing time I took the bus home, found dried foundation all over my floor, pine-scented cleaning solution nowhere to be seen, either absorbed or evaporated, and realised something would have to be done before I could wee. I spent the thirty minutes around midnight in my stilletos and one-shoulder black dress, mopping hard with only partial success. Stupid stuff wears off my face after about six seconds in a gentle breeze but can you wipe it off tiles after a night on them? I certainly can't.

Em came over last night for dinner, we looked at photos and discussed ill-advised flirtations. Now I'm exhausted with 100 things to do at home, presents to wrap, admin to sort out, baths to clean, last week's Apprentice to watch, and I'm out the next two nights so I really should get an early one tonight, and what about my bank balance?, but what I'd really like is to get up the energy to go and see Pete's band play in Hoxton as I know it'd be a lovely festive evening. Muster muster muster. Droop. Snore.

More Than Gifts - A New Festive Poem for 2010

It’s not just about presents, the grown-ups all warn,
Christmas is when Baby Jesus was born.
Stop asking for chocolate and gifts and guitars,
Your consumption alone is bankrolling Mars.
He’s the number one man in the Christian religion
He died for our sins – do you not care a smidgen?
Can you not at least try to pretend that you care
About the birth of the man who gave us the Lord’s prayer?
You’re taking the tests for St. Osmund’s next year
They won’t let you in if you’re this cavalier.

It’s not just about presents, I’ve said it before.
Hey – open your eyes, stop pretending to snore.
You lot are so spoilt, I cannot believe
All the stuff you think Santa will bring, Christmas Eve.
When I was your age we were grateful for coal,
A satsuma was plenty to nourish our soul;
But now a small trinket’s a Nintendo DS,
A Dickens book? Whatevs, it sounds like BS.
If Santa gives me what I want right this minute,
I swear I’ll be good, I won’t punch no-one, innit.

It’s not just about presents. I know, I’m too serious
But this consumerist hell always sends me delirious.
Just try to enjoy how the log fire roars –
No, you can’t open more advent calendar doors.
There are sixteen more days of the countdown remaining
So why are there only three doors still containing
The chocolates within? Have you scoffed them already?
I don’t care if that one was shaped like a teddy.
Oh stop stropping, will you, and wipe off those scowls
Or I’ll give you all haircuts just like Simon Cowell’s.

It’s not just about presents, nor Christmas TV –
Even though there’s no doubt that when seen in HD
EastEnders has managed to get yet more gritty –
The spots on the X Factor singers aren’t pretty,
And aren’t there more worthwhile things to be done
Than finding out who on Come Dine With Me won?
Give your mother a hug, write an old friend a letter,
Pray for world peace or pat a red setter.
These carols are gorgeous, and their meaning’s momentous
Why must all hell break loose if we miss The Apprentice?

It’s not just about presents. There’s much so more meaning –
We make up for lost time from the months intervening.
We don’t always show that we love one another
Thus this is the time when we totally smother
Our families and friends with affection and thanks.
It shouldn’t necessitate phonecalls to banks
To negotiate loans that we cannot afford
So we don’t look like Scrooge when they open their hoard.
But who am I kidding? We live a capitalist existence
And to change that machine, well, I’ll need some assistance.

But it’s not just about presents – and we all must remember
That Jesus was born on the 25th of December
And whether he is mankind’s Saviour or not
We still should give thanks for the good stuff we’ve got.
I don’t mean new jumpers or gloves made of pigskin
I mean for the fact that we breathe out and breathe in.
For the fact that we have a roof over our head
For the fact we have friends, for our daily bread.
For the fact you can hear my words – though they’re quite trite
At least your ears work and that’s pretty cool, right?

So give presents, OK – wrap them up good and proper,
And act thrilled when you’re given a new mattress topper
Instead of the watch you’d been loudly admiring
Or the green Mini Cooper you’d dreamed of acquiring.
But set aside some time each day just to sit,
Breathe out, then breathe in, then be thankful for it.
All that said, I’ll admit that it’s one rule for you
And another for me – I want so much it’s untrue.
My list is extensive and I can’t tell a lie:
If I don’t get the lot I will definitely cry.

Version

Both these accounts of my weekend are 100% accurate.

Version 1:
"I hosted a party on Friday in Brixton. Lots of lovely friends came, including a few people I'd not seen for ages. I've lost a bit of weight recently and wore one of my favourite dresses and one girl said I should apply to join the Playboy Mansion, which I think she meant as a compliment. The music was fantastic, people mingled and I am pretty positive that everyone present had a good time. I got home late and went to bed. When I woke up on Saturday morning, I had no plans but Sarah suggested I join her and a couple of others to go for a pub lunch in Westbourne Park, followed by a trip to some studios nearby that were holding a Christmas market. She also invited me to go to a classical concert that night. I went for a run, did yoga, had a bath and then set out to join them for lunch, noticing while sorting out my bag that I had spent a whopping £9 the previous night - £7.50 on a pizza and £1.50 on a cranberry juice. Not bad given that I drank Prosecco pretty much solidly for six hours. Clearly my lovely friends had been very generous with the hostess beverages. At The Enterprise, I had delicious bangers and mash and felt very festive. Her friends were lovely and we laughed a lot. Then we went to the market, and I bought a gorgeous drawing for my flat that I know I will have for the rest of my life. Midway through the afternoon, my friend Fi texted and said she had a spare ticket for a musical in which my friends Anna and David were performing, and did I want to come? I was pleased to be asked, and felt like I should support Anna, so I said yes. An hour later another girlfriend invited me to dinner at her house but I'd already committed to Fi so I turned it down. Felt briefly popular. Fi and I had a lovely drink in Bourne & Hollingsworth, met the others, watched the (brilliant) show, which was based on Diary of a Nobody and was hilarious. Then we had a drink or two with the cast and I went home. On Sunday I did some writing and some laundry, ate nice food, lay around, watched the X Factor and went to bed."

Version 2:
"I had a party on Friday night. As I have decided will be my epitaph, it was "Nothing like I expected but still quite fun." The venue had reserved me a large area with sofas and big, heavy, Henry VIII style tables. A few of us sat round the head of one of the tables, chatting and waiting for the other guests. One girl came in, saw a notice on an empty table saying "Reserved for Jane", scrumpled it up and threw it on the floor. I took some pleasure in telling her that I was Jane and that she was welcome to sit there until we needed the table later on. But I still felt a bit discombobulated. Most of the early arrivals were my school friends and their associated men. They all know each other and joined us at the big table. By 9pm, others filtered in, but there was nowhere for them to sit and I didn't know if I wanted to make a scene by chucking off a group of eight strangers from the other reserved table so that two of us could sit down. I decided to leave it. Eventually, all my newer friends were standing squashed by the radiators mingling away, and my school friends were having a nice catch up with their old friends around the massive wood table. Mixing the two groups would have been contrived and unwelcome, so I decided to stay with the new friends since the old ones all knew each other. And then, suddenly, just as the music was hotting up, everyone came over to say goodbye, and by 1am, it was over. I hadn't danced a step. I went home feeling a bit flat, reassuring myself that parties aren't for the host's enjoyment, but couldn't stop focussing on the fact that one of my favourite people hadn't been able to attend as she had been in Rome on a third date. Yep. A third date. In Rome. The boyban's going well, but even I will happily admit that I was pretty darn jealous of that one. On the walk back from the nightbus to my flat, I slipped on the ice and banged my elbow really hard.

On Saturday I woke up feeling post-party-anti-climaxy. I then went for a run but pulled a muscle in my leg so badly after 20 minutes that I had to hobble home feeling really self-conscious that people would look at me and think I was really unfit because I was injured. Piled on the pounds with fattening lunch in a gastropub and then haemorrhaged my savings on a drawing that I love but that everyone else will think is a complete rip-off. Felt like a bit of a dick but the girl who'd done the drawing was so lovely and I didn't feel like I could change my mind and back out. I do really like it but I could have bought a flight to somewhere hot for that money. I don't know what came over me. I think it was the shopping equivalent of comfort eating. Silly, silly girl. Then Ses and I had a cup of tea in another pub and we started talking about online dating, and I realised that I am still a long way off being ready to face rejection, and that unless you are prepared to be rejected, you shouldn't sign up to online dating. So I'm single, a bit lonely, and yet can't do the one thing that could possibly change that: go on a date. Which sucketh somewhat. Then I went out for a lovely evening as Fi's afterthought because her husband couldn't come, and we sat with Ed and his boyfriend and David and his wife, and then afterwards talked to Anna about her husband. I was pleased to have been asked to the show, and to the dinner that I'd had to turn down, but I was clearly a last-minute choice. And I felt blue. :(

Yesterday I did nothing of any significance. I was invited (as an afterthought but still pleased to be asked) to play football in the afternoon but I couldn't because my leg was still hurting so much that I could barely walk, let alone run. Despite having the heating on all day, my feet never warmed up. My phone didn't ring until the aforementioned lovebird returned from Rome and called me. I did my best to be loving and supportive and excited and then hung up the phone and failed to sleep. This morning was unfun."

Guess which version gets stuck in my head? I've long been aware that life is just a game of selective editing - we all have many stories we can tell about ourselves. I can easily put on a brave face and project a positive narrative to the outside world if I have to, but the Jackanory going on in my head isn't quite so much fun. Shut up, SHUT UP, internal Jackanory!

And she all lived happily ever after.

End of week summary

I like to think I'm as aware as I should be that the thoughts that have been whirling and eddying around the plughole of my head aren't nearly as fascinating to everyone else, which is why I spend a fair bit of time each week looking forward to therapy - I pay someone £45 to listen to me vent for an hour and hope to leave my sessions feeling lighter. But the past few weeks, as we've really got down to the very thin central onion layers and it's been harder and harder to process all the answers to the questions I'm having to ask, I am getting more and more exhausted. Which is why, dear Faithful, I have not written. I mean, I'm awake. I've come to work, I've gone out in the evenings. But the idea of constructing paragraphs filled with erudite social commentary or even just writing the usual crap that goes in here is a bridge too far.

But it's Friday afternoon and I've not written all week and I love it when people read what I write, and I can't expect people to keep coming back to LLFF if there's never anything new here. So here, in spite of the fact I have zero motivation to write and that I resent the fact that I can't tell you the most interesting hilarity from my week as the person concerned may well hear about it from this very source, here are some of the things that've been bubbling away alongside the feelings of omnifailure.

a) The other day I was on the District Line westbound to Hammersmith. It was about 5.30pm and the tube was pretty packed. Somehow I got a seat next to the partition (prime spot). At the other end of my section of seats, standing in the aisle, was a group of around five men. I reckon they were in their late twenties or early thirties, white and from East London/Essex, judging by their accents. They were being really loud and attention seeking. I tried to block out their conversation and read my book, but soon after, one of them said to another one, "Jesus, man, what's up with you? You're sweating like a nigger at a rape trial." I felt a bit sick and instinctively scanned the carriage for black people. There was a man, probably in his fifties, wearing a suit and holding a leather briefcase, sitting about three seats from the guys. He wasn't wearing headphones. There's no way he didn't hear. He was looking down at his hands. I was flooded with rage and started considering what, if anything, I could say to these guys. I wasn't scared of them hurting me, or insulting me, but it was a crammed carriage and I really didn't want to cause a scene. It was pathetic. I stayed schtum. A few minutes later, I heard another remark, this time about the 'Chink' guy who was sitting near where they were standing. They kindly altered 'Chink' to some sort of heavily disguised alternative after one usage, something like 'Kitchen sink' although I can't remember precisely. I winced. Someone else shifted in their seats. But we still did nothing. Their next victim was a wealthy-looking guy in his forties, wearing a suit and scarf, holding a newspaper.
"Bloody hell, mate," one of them said, elbowing the other, "It's fucking David Cameron!"
"HAHAHAHAHAHA!" laughed the others. The man ignored them. He was clearly posh and had bad hair, but other than that, he looked about as much like David Cameron as I look like Thatcher.
"It's David Cameron!" another one whimpered, delirious with hysteria.
"Oi! Dave!" shouted another.
"'E looks exactly like David Cameron!" said another.
"Which one?" said a fourth, who must have been criminally thick not to have grasped the point just yet.
"This guy right here," the first one said, pointing right at 'David'. They were about a foot apart.
"What about him?"
"He looks like David Cameron!"
"Oh my god! It's David Cameron!"

In the space of about two minutes, they said David Cameron more times than the actual David Cameron has heard his own name over the course of his entire life. 'David' shifted uncomfortably and carried on reading his paper. At one point he smiled weakly at them, which only encouraged them. It went from being merely unfunny to being a bit threatening. If the guys were like this at 5.30pm, I was pretty glad I wasn't going to be spending the evening boozing with them.

"Oi, mate, which stop are we getting off at?" asked one of them.
"Yeah, where are we going?"
"Hell," I said, fairly loudly, and then wished I hadn't, partly because I was scared and partly because I don't believe in hell and didn't like to be seen by many strangers promoting such an archaic and damaging religious concept. The men either didn't hear me or chose to ignore me, and I was glad, but the man next to me sniggered. At Earl's Court, the whole posse got off the train and several people laughed and joshed together with relief. We'd all been incredibly tense and uncomfortable, and the source of our discomfort had gone. But we'd done nothing. The black guy and the Chinese guy were still on board. Maybe they picked up on the fact that we'd all found it deeply unpleasant. But I doubt it. It was grim.

That night I went to a party where two people I talked to said it was worse to be picked on for being posh than for being black. I was outraged and then was made fun of for being an inverted snob so I gave up and changed the subject back to the X Factor.

b) A few months ago I heard a programme on Radio 4 about the benefits of taking loads of Vitamin D - like way over the suggested daily amount. I think you're meant to have 25 mg a day and these doctors were advocating taking 2000. Apparently it is amazing for your immune system, skin etc. so I started knocking it back about eight weeks ago. The week before last I got the first cold I've had in donkeys' and it lasted for nearly a fortnight. Either Vitamin D is crap, or it works and without it I would have been hospitalized.

c) In other supplement news, I have been suffering from peeling nails for about a year. It started without any warning and I couldn't calculate the cause - no major change in diet or weather etc. I tried moisturising more, I tried eating more gelatine, I tried cutting them rather than filing, I tried certain nail varnishes that were specifically designed to help with it. But nothing. Then I started taking Perfectil, that daily supplement for hair, nails and skin. It has totally worked. I recommend it. It makes your pee go the colour of a yellow highlighter but it's worth it.

d) There was an article in the Guardian last week about Katie Price / Jordan being editor of the Radio 4 Today programme over the Christmas 'period'. Everyone was outraged and everyone else said 'Shut up.' But it got me thinking about what I would want to do if I was guest editor of the show for one day. I think I'd want to cover the following topics: the finances behind the Alpha course, an investigation into the Landmark Forum, a behind-the-scenes look at the private tutoring 'industry' in London, an update on the proposed changes to the voting system in the UK, a report on only children in China vs. Britain, a piece pushing increased paternity leave in the UK, and something about Simon Cowell.

e) I think that's it for now. Tonight I'm going to a party. Here are my party nails:

Enough's enough

Right, stick a fork in me, I'm beautifully medium rare; a moment more under the grill and I'll turn to overcooked, chewy and inedible.

It's been a funny week. And when I say funny, I mean miserable and weird. But now it's Friday afternoon, my feet have finally warmed up, the sun is streaming through the window, I'm full of homemade vegetable soup, there's a wash humming away in the background, and if I don't want to, I don't have to leave the house again until Monday morning. Could. Be. Worse.

Someone described this blog the other day as 'about mental health issues' and I went into a slightly flat spin. I mean, obviously this blog is sometimes about my struggles to find peace in modern London, but I also think it's about a lot of other stuff - for one, if it was only about my head, the only tag on the right would be 'Health' - so I was a bit shocked to think that even one reader felt like that was all it does. But then this week, I got into one of those self-fulfilling funks where I felt like if I didn't write about what was going on in my head, I'd be being massively dishonest, but I didn't want to write about it because I didn't want LLFF to be just about my mental health.

But it is ALL I've been thinking about. So hear this: if my mental health fills you with a) dread, b) boredom, c) hatred, d) A. N. Other negative thing, then off you trot and don't spare the horses.

Where was I? OK. Yes. What was weird this week in therapy was that I came out of the session thinking that it was very inconclusive. We'd talked about lots of interesting stuff but nothing had really been fixed or redressed and I wasn't sure how to move on. I said to her that I felt like I'd spent my life sprinting along a motorway, missing out on all the pretty villages en route, my goal always changing so that wherever I reached never turned out to be where I needed to be. And now I feel like I've finally stopped sprinting, and am lying, exhausted, on the hard shoulder, still panting in shock, and completely unsure whether or not I need to get back on the motorway, or find a quieter road to walk along, or whether I should just hop over this fence into this lovely field and gambol about in there, going nowhere for a while.

However, I've been percolating since Wednesday's session and it turns out that it was actually more revelatory than I'd initially thought. I went in there very grumpy indeed. I had stopped meditating altogether, because every single time I do it, instead of focusing on what I'm meant to be focusing on, I end up beating myself up somehow, whether it's suddenly remembering that I've failed to water my geraniums yet again, or panicking that my parents might be dead and no-one's told me, or stressing about being fat, or wondering what to wear to work tomorrow. And although some of those concerns are mighty insignificant, having a barrage of negativity thrown at yourself by your own brain for several minutes is not my idea of fun. So I stopped meditating.

I told my therapist about this, who said that she has this exercise she gives people who get bogged down in stuff like this - she calls it 'intentional offloading' and the idea is that you put a name to the common cause of the negativity, and for a minute you say it out loud. I explained that the difficulty was that my negative stuff was all so different - geraniums, parents' death etc. - and that the only common focus was that I, as I am right now, am not good enough. I was pretty sure that my issues were about success versus failure. But, in an uncharacteristically insistent way (given that therapists often don't push their ideas on you), she said she thought it was something else. She said that the thing I should hate, out loud for a minute a day, is 'feeling excluded'.

"I dunno..." I said, unhelpfully. "I feel like it's more about not being good enough." But she pushed her point. Why don't I feel good enough? she prompted. Because of my childhood, I responded dutifully, knowing at heart that she is right. And here's the thing (if you're still with me):

On the surface of it, I had an amazingly happy childhood. I was, and am, the beloved only child of two wonderful, healthy parents. My mum and dad are full of joie de vivre. They spend everything they earn, they eat and drink and laugh and sing along to music, and play golf and go on holiday and work to live rather than live to work. When I was born, they owned their own business where they worked together, and most of the time they got on brilliantly. They were pretty successful yuppies under Thatcher and had been able to buy massively wasteful luxuries like a boat and an aquarium and private school fees for lucky me. I had my own life-jacket, a My Little Pony grooming parlour, a box full of Lego, another box full of Playmobile, and books and my own stereo and their near-constant attention, blonde hair and blue eyes: my future and I were pretty bright. What could possibly go wrong? Why am I now spending hundreds of pounds on therapy, with green eyes, platinum highlights and no time to do Lego?

I sincerely hope the answer doesn't hurt my parents. It's not meant to. But I think that being an only child is destined to leave a person a bit mental. Now, it's my firm believe that pretty much everyone is a bit mental - I don't know anyone who wouldn't benefit from a few weeks in therapy - but I'm pretty sure that my own particular brand of mentalness is caused by growing up as the sole child of happy, loved-up parents. Any child wants to fit in to the dominant social order when it's born. I wanted to be my parents' equal - an absurd goal given that they had a 33 year head start on me, but there it is. I wanted to be part of their gang - but due to the fact that I was a TODDLER I couldn't be there with them. I didn't understand this. So I felt left out. A typical childhood memory involves me sitting on the landing outside my bedroom, listening to them having dinner with friends below, occasionally writing tragic notes that I would post through the bannisters to land noiselessly on the stairs one flight down and then get madly upset that they didn't notice the missives' arrival and come talk to me.

I'm sure many firstborn children have these recollections - our parents seem desperately cool, popular and wise, and we want to be a part of every bit of it - but then a sibling comes along, and normalises everything, and you learn your place in the family. Finally you're not the sore thumb - you're one of a pair, and then sometimes a trio, and you fight for supremacy with your peers, not with people decades older than you. And of course, siblings cause major traumas of their own. I'm not in any sense claiming that my problems are worse than anyone else's. If anything, they're a hell of a lot better. Poor me, I'm the healthy child of loving, well-off parents. But anyway, I'm coming to terms with why I'm still crazy after all these years. You can click the window shut if you want.

[Jesus. There's a huge fight going on outside my window. About four bikes have been abandoned in the middle of the A-road and people are driving round them. A hundred yards away, eight or nine guys in hoodies are yelling at each other in such furious blasts that initially I thought it was dogs barking. Now there's a woman crying. It's 15:39. Madness.]

Back to me. I wanted - however foolishly - to feel like me and my parents were equal, like I belonged. But even though they loved me, inevitably I could never feel like their true equal - because I wasn't. I was a child. Not better or worse. Just different. But, as many children do, I didn't feel good different. I felt wrong, and I blamed myself. When they feel left out, kids rarely think, "Oh that person's at fault," or, "We're just different. It's not my problem." Instead, they conclude: "I am bad."

I felt wrong. But crucially, I didn't feel irredeemably wrong. I believed, for some reason, that if I just tweaked this or that element of my personality, with enough careful observation and hard work, I'd eventually get the balance right, and everything would fall into place. And I went to school and was ignored, most likely because I was an attention-seeking brat who deserved to be shunned by anyone with a pulse. I realised pretty quickly that I was deeply annoying, but I didn't know how, or why, so I thought 'If I just tweak this, it'll be OK - if I just get this pencil case, or this haircut, or don't wear these stupid glasses, it'll be OK.' But it never was. I never felt good enough.

And time went on, and I got older, and over and over again, in some tragically Freudian repetition compulsion way, I would identify someone who nearly respected me but was just beyond my reach, a girl two years above, a guy who was in love with the girl two years above, and try desperately to make them like me, do everything I could to make them think I was amazing. Sometimes they did and I got what I wanted and then - of course - I went off them. I had to find a way to destroy it because no one worth respecting could possibly respect me. I always wanted one of those posses of Friends-esque friends, people who hung out in the same place, where everyone was always welcome, where the door was always open, but any time I've come close to those kinds of relationships, I've felt claustrophobic and limited, and I've pushed it away. And pretty much anyone who's ever gone out with me will tell you that I nearly destroyed them with my attempts to sabotage the relationship. Although that might have been because they were all FREAKING ANNOYING.

[Wow. They're right outside my window now. There are about thirty black schoolkids all in uniform, varying ages, and one older guy in a hoodie with a beard waving a D-lock in a very menacing way. A lot of shouting and male testosterone flying around. I reckon if I stood down there for more than a couple of minutes I'd probably get a hairy chest. Everyone white is just walking by trying to pretend they don't see what's going on. A black mum's just dragged her eight year old son through the melee trying to run for a bus.]

But anyway. It seems that what I want, more than anything, is not to feel excluded - but simultaneously, I've had to admit that it's not currently possible for me to be happy when I'm included either. And that's where I'm at.

[OK, a big police van has just turned up. Three white policemen get out, and about half the kids scarper. For some reason the people at the centre of the fight don't run away. Within about twenty seconds, a policeman identifies someone as significant and slams him up against the metal doorway of the tube. Three white grown-ups are talking earnestly to the police, trying to explain who did what. I mutter that they shouldn't stick their beaks into stuff that's not their business, but one of the guys appears to be trying to act as a mediator between the kids and the police, and the kids don't seem to be hating him for it. The policeman bundles the tall significant boy into the van, and another one is taken towards another van that's just pulled up. I can't believe how quickly they worked out who to separate. Either the perpetrators are known to them, or they're just picking people at random. Both options are sad.]

It's been a pretty unpleasant journey, especially over the past few weeks. I stopped dating months ago, I've pushed away a lot of friends, I've canceled a lot of engagements, I've wasted a lot of tickets. I've been snappish, grumpy, selfish, ill, self-pitying, unfriendly, ungrateful, unpredictable, over-emotional and teary. I've also done pretty well covering this up to a lot of people. And now I'm here - at the centre of the onion, or as close as I'll ever be. I'm metaphorically weeping, sitting surrounded by discarded layers of allium and wondering what the hell to do next.

But even though I'm metaphorically crying surrounded by onion, I actually feel amazing. Properly joyous. Because Yazz and the Plastic Population were right. And it's the weekend.

With love for you all, even if you clicked the window shut several paragraphs ago. Yours always, LLFF.

Tell no one

As any sensible people who follow me on Twitter will have gathered, I went to this month's Secret Cinema last night. I won't give away the film as that's against the rules, but I will say that the setting was seriously amazing - a vast old mental institution, us dressed in hospital gowns, robes and slippers, wearing plastic wristbands and eating canteen food. What was a little concerning was how quickly I started to love being a patient - and how rebellious I became. In the dark recesses of my mind, when I've been especially down, I've dreamed of being involved in an accident that meant I'd have to be in hospital for a few months. I didn't want to die, I didn't want to be in pain, I knew it was ridiculous, but the idea of being in an institution with no decisions to make did appeal to me when I was at my most anxious. Silly I know. But then my taster experience last night wasn't what I'd expected - I definitely enjoyed the lack of choices - but I also became extremely belligerent. I can TOTALLY see how the Stanford prison experiment went the way it did. All these actors were pretending to be nurses, police, and other patients, and it wasn't long before all of us were acting like total nutcases too. Me and Vikas had a big pillow-fight in one of the wards when a nurse came up to the metal cage bit that was separating us from the rest of the room, and told us off. Instead of agreeing, we both turned towards her and, giggling, started smashing our pillows into the iron bars, right by her face. The longer she remained stern and in character, the more we fought back. It was really quite extraordinary how quickly my urge to be naughty kicked in, and I was a little disturbed when my latent kleptomania surfaced, not discouraged by Vikas. Ultimately, I think I quite enjoyed wearing a robe and slippers for hours and being treated like an imbecile. It was a bit of a holiday and well worth £30. The film was excellent too, although I left before the nasty section started. And for those who are going in the remainder of this week: take warm clothes. No central heating in the institution - brought back memories of Lapland. Brrrrrrrrrrrr.

I'm a legal alien

Faithful readers may remember previous trips I've taken into the depths of the countryside to visit my friend Nicole, she of storecupboard fame. What has surprised me is that my visits don't seem to become any more normal the more frequently I make them. In fact, gorgeous though our chats are, I feel less like a friend when I'm in her house and increasingly like a beloved yet curious Martian. She meets me at the station in a four wheel drive. Often, there are child seats in the back, dachshunds at my feet and a Labrador in the boot. On arrival at her home, there are squawks of excitement from her adorable brood who LOVE me because I always bring them a strong assortment of hairclips from London. There is a lot of kissing, giggling, hiding behind legs, cajoling, tickling and eventual clambering. Then we have dinner. This has been prepared in advance in gargantuan batches - dauphinoise potatoes, fish pie, stew, soup - all made and frozen like the truly organised thing she is. In London, I eat home cooked food, no joke, about once or twice a month. Breakfast is cereal at my desk, lunch is bought at Pret or similar, dinner is restaurant or more cereal. It's lovely: we're separated by pretty much everything but friendship.

Occasionally Nicole invites people over to dinner while I'm staying. This weekend I was privy to a few gems including someone describing their prospective new vehicular purchase as, "an Audi probably, nothing flashy, nothing like one of those small Mercedes... nasty hairdressers' cars." And I heard the following (male) response to the question "How are the kids?" which I SWEAR I have transcribed verbatim. You won't struggle to imagine the accent:
"Oh they're fine... Actually, I say they're fine... barely seen them... was out shooting all day, came back, they run towards you shouting Daddy, Daddy!, it's very sweet, and then they go to bed... Ideal!"

The man in question is absolutely charming, handsome and lovely, but freely admits we live on different planets. Weeks go by when he doesn't see anyone who's not white - and when it does happen, he always notices that he's a bit startled, like "Oh! A black man!" I told him that there are times when I'm the only white person on the bus and he looked a bit concerned.

He was also sweetly forthcoming about Muddy Matches, a dating website I discovered this weekend for country singletons: a photo on the homepage shows a man and a woman in matching tweed flatcaps, and if you don't want to post a photo of yourself you can upload a picture of your wellies. I expressed surprise to my dinner companion (married, four kids) about the website, suggesting that it would be of interest to my urban friends as a countryside curio. He was adamant that it's normal that like should be attracted to like, which is of course unarguable. He couldn't see what the problem was - and another dinner guest asked what was the difference between looking for someone who likes hunting on Muddy Matches and going onto Guardian Soulmates and looking for someone who likes going to gigs and the cinema. Gingerly, I suggested that there's a slight difference in accessibility between going shooting and going to the cinema, and that perhaps Muddy Matches and its ilk meant that the lack of demographic variety in the countryside probably wouldn't change any time soon. He happily agreed. In short, they know they're in a bubble, and they're very content there. And honestly, I don't have a problem with it, as long as they treat everyone else as equals.

Then I found out that, of the 12 people at dinner on Saturday night, two were Catholics and nine were on the Alpha course. And here I hit a slight wall. Now, I can totally understand someone wanting to live in the place they've grown up, particularly if they've had a happy childhood. I can easily see how unpleasant city life must seem if you're used to a village existence. And it's clear why the simplicity of village life lends itself to Christian evangelism - no Muslims or gays to mess with the 'logic'. But just because I understand it, doesn't mean I have to like it.

In my ideal world, there'd be no religion: I object on principle to any faith that promotes their path as the right one (which rules out pretty much all of them), as I believe this inevitably creates divisions and thus conflict among followers. I don't like the suggestion that there's one route that's better than any other - and for that reason, I'm annoyingly not able to be a humanist either. I just want us all to be good, kind, generous social citizens, respectful and tolerant of difference. I simply cannot see how that's compatible with evangelical Christian evening classes, which teach that homosexuals and non-followers are destined for hell. Anyway, since my faithlessness prevents me from crusading (as I'm not arrogant enough to think that my way would be better for you than the one you've chosen), this is one battle I'm certain to lose. In the meantime, I'll generously allow people of faith to do just as they please, so long as they're lovers, not fighters. Fighters can go jump.

Despite all the feelings of foreignness (and let's be clear: these people are happy, and I'm not - so who's losing out? I have no illusions), I did enjoy my 48 hours on Planet Rural, with the exception of a couple of altercations with Alice who is fascinated with the fact that my thighs are at least twice the girth of her mother's, and who suggested that I should cut bits off them "with scissors", her small fingers helpfully indicating the strips where I could start my self-mutilation. She and her younger sister also asked to see my bottom about seven hundred times. But it was truly ace to hang out with Nicole, great to walk in the crisp autumnal air, delicious to gorge on her incredible crumble and wonderful to be lain on by her three warm offspring while we watched Stuart Little. I came back to London yesterday evening, studied Take That performing together live on The X Factor results show, felt the familar teenage obsession levels bubble up again, noted Robbie's panicked eyes and refusal to talk to Dermot about the future, worried about Mark's visible need for Rob's presence, saw that Gary, Jay and Howard are still rightly suspicious, and then remained concerned about my own sanity for a bit before it was time to hit the city hay.

Crap!

So this morning I retweeted Paul Chambers' original Tweet to both my followers on Twitter. Since I repeated his crime, I am expecting to be arrested, interrogated and then fined nearly £3k, but I expect the police are very busy at the moment arresting and interrogating the other several thousand people who have also posted the comment. I don't have anything new to say on the matter - I believe in freedom of speech, I believe he was misguided but not criminal, I believe there are more important things to worry about - but I'm just mentioning it in case any of you notice my absence and get worried.

Nothing else to say that's not infused with a cloying aroma of mystifying negativity so will sign off. Wishing you all wonderful weekends. Do feel free to come visit me in the clink.

Taken

It is earlier this year. Robbie Williams, Gary Barlow and Mark Owen are in a New York recording studio, tentatively laying down some demos for a new project that could possibly see Take That reuniting as a five piece after nearly twenty years apart. Following a successful morning's work, the band's remaining two members, Jason Orange and Howard Donald, arrive at the studio from London. They shake hands with their old bandmate. Robbie is keen to play them what they've achieved that morning.
"Actually, if it's alright, Rob, I'd just like to relax a bit first and wind down before listening to anything," Jason says, smiling thinly, looking around at the rest of the group. Robbie nods. An innocuous enough statement, but if you'd seen me and Lucy watching the footage last night at the IMAX, you'd have thought we were being faced with a scene so horrific that it threatened to bring up our dinner. Jason, Take That's Minister Without Portfolio, felt so threatened by the return of the uber-talented but uber-volatile Robbie that he kicked his old friend's eager exuberance with steel-toed boots. Robbie seemed to shrink in size. My hands were clutching my jumper, my stomach was tense, my neck so tight that my head had gone off at a weird angle. Lucy was wincing as if in excruciating pain and had reached across to grab my arm in a pincer grip.

We were at the premiere of Look Back, Don't Stare, the new Take That documentary, a 100 minute feature that will be shown in a slightly shortened version on iTV this Saturday. Told through face-to-face interviews with the five band members, the black and white film tells the story of the band's rise, fall and rise again, with particular emphasis on the past 18 months since the idea of Robbie rejoining became a serious possibility. Pretty much anyone with a passing interest in music and celebrity culture would enjoy the film, but for two people whose lives revolved around Take That for far longer than it's cool to admit (i.e. more than six seconds), watching this was an exhausting and intense trip. It was a bit like we'd spent our teens going out with five boys, who we thought about all day every day, who infiltrated our entire lives, who we dreamed about, whose radio interviews we recorded and listened to over, and over, and over again, who we occasionally cried over, for heaven's sake. And now, having not seen them together for nearly two decades, here they were all again, hanging out together. We were seeing how our childhood loves had grown up. And it was fascinating.

Having been five very average teenagers, the five of them have grown into pretty exceptional adults - all around their early forties now, they're articulate, thoughtful, philosophical, scarred, honest, and still very funny. There were many huge waves of laughter that blasted through the cinema last night, as well as gulps of pain when we saw what they'd suffered. And yeah, I know, suffering schmuffering, poor them with their millions, my heart bleeds - but these are five men who have gone from the bottom to the top to the bottom to the top again - a more extreme existence than any of us would surely wish for. Alongside the money and the adulation, there's been addiction, adultery, rejection, failure, agoraphobia and clinical depression. They've suffered public ridicule and private shame, and they've dealt with it all admirably. It was an exceptionally entertaining, humbling and thought-provoking film and I recommend it unreservedly. Maybe not to you, Dad. But I'd be staggered if most normal people didn't find it an extremely gripping and raw account of an extraordinarily turbulent time in the lives of five average British men.

What I found most affecting about the film was a) the lads' palpable closeness, the fact that they feel complete when they're together in a way they didn't before. And b) their awareness that, in spite of this connection, they remain completely on their own. They have the most special and unique of bonds, but that still has not been able to prevent them from spinning out, overloading and breaking down through the years. And, exhibiting a remarkable ability to relate absolutely everything back to myself, their experiences cemented a lot of what I've been thinking and feeling of late. We are always alone. We can love, we can parent, we can succeed, but we are the only people living our lives, we are the only people in the world who know what it's like to be us. We live - and die - on our own. That might sound horribly depressing, but I don't think it has to be. I reckon that those facts must be faced up to and accepted before one can be truly let go of one's crutches and be happy. Last night in therapy, I discussed a void that I feel is within me, a huge metaphorical space that I have had for as long as I can remember - a space that needs to be filled, that craves. And through my life, I've tried to fill it with a variety of things: food, friends, Take That, lovers, jobs, celebrities, clothes and hobbies. But no matter what I've consumed, the space has always remained. And now I'm learning to accept that it's there. I'm not trying to fight it or fill it any more. It's a strange kind of passive respect for reality and we'll see what comes of it.

In the meantime, if you're still awake, you can enjoy the fact that you are spinning around the earth's axis at somewhere between 700 and 1000 miles per hour, depending on your distance from the equator, and that in addition, the earth is moving around the sun at 67,000 miles per hour. We're going at a fair lick. Totes amaze.

Hair brained

Right. I am handing control of my hair decisions to a triple panel of Sarah, Sara and Grania. They have not yet been informed of this but I think they'll be fine with it. From this day on, I am not allowed to cut, dye or even have my fringe trimmed unless all three of them have approved it. No more rash decisions. Ever.

I genuinely think I have some sort of mental condition, in addition to the other six million already detailed. Every time my hair even slightly annoys me, regardless of how innocuously it does so, I have to get it cut INSTANTLY. Based on previous nightmares (e.g. here), I now insist to myself that my hairdresser must have English as a first language, but in my desperation today I threw even that miniscule fragment of caution to the wind and accepted an appointment with Daniele, pronounced Danyellie, whose English was broken but OK, but I did that thing of sitting down in the salon opposite the mirror for my consultation and then realising that my hair looked absolutely amazing and that I didn't want him to cut it at all, but not being able to run away for fear of being rude. And now my hair is quite a bit shorter and a lot more boring and I hate it and I'm £30 poorer and less feminine and more ugly. Such a DICK.

I also am sick to death of my freaking crap memory. Last night after a glorious first-Christmas-rehearsal-of-the-year choir practice, I was walking to the pub and introduced myself to a guy who then informed me that I'd already had a fairly long conversation with him two weeks previously, concerning my new parlour game for classical music losers: The Ultimate Mass (where players compile their ultimate mass from all existing movements of all existing masses by any composer). I had no recollection of this conversation until he reminded me. I didn't recognise his face, I didn't know his name, and it wasn't until I heard his Belfast accent that I could place him at all. It is a bit like being in an even more terrible version of 50 First Dates called 50 First Rehearsals.

But it wouldn't be so terrible, except last week my attention was drawn to another, more serious, memory lapse, and I am still feeling a bit fragile about it. Lucy came to my flat for Em's hen and left a belated birthday present for me on my pillow. A couple of weeks later, she asked if I'd got her present. I had no recollection of ever seeing it. I looked all round my bed and under it. Nothing. My only idea was that Em must have found it and thought it was for her. I texted Em: "Did you by any chance take my birthday present from Luce by accident? It was apparently on my bed and wrapped in polka dot paper." "I have your present!" she replied. "We found it on your bed and thought it must be for me since there was no card. I'll give it to you next time I see you." I was relieved that I hadn't lost or thrown away the present by accident, but slightly miffed with Em. It was a bit weird of her (and whoever else 'we' was) to go into my bedroom, find a wrapped gift on my pillow and take it for herself. Still, I supposed I could understand it - she was giddy, it was her hen night...

Last week, I saw Em. I couldn't resist a small dig.
"I can't believe you just STOLE my birthday present!" I laughed. She laughed back.
"What are you talking about?" she said. "You gave it to me!" My eyes widened.
"What the actual fuck?" I said.
"Yep. You came into my room and handed it to me."
"Tell me we didn't open it."
"We did." My jaw dropped. Then the consumerism kicked in.
"Did I like it?"
"I can't remember. I'll wrap it back up and give it to you again."

So there we have it. After I unknowingly re-read The End of the Affair, I thought my memory had reached its nadir, but clearly not. Now I have found a present on my bed, given it to someone else, watched them open it, and have no recollection of doing so. AND I pay people to make me look worse. If that isn't a lost cause, I don't know what is. Somebody stop me.

Evil corporation does amazing thing

Argh. I try to be good, really I do, but as Tammy Wynette nearly sang, sometimes it's hard to be a liberal. After the recent big business letter went round, supporting the ConDem cuts, I was all geared up to boycott every single one of those horrible, moneygrabbing companies like Gap, Next and Asda, but then I saw that Marks & Spencer was on the list, and if I boycotted them I'd be naked and without iced hot cross buns, a miserable situation if ever I've heard one. It was a tricksy little fella, ain't no mistake. And then I struggled again.

One of the stalwarts of any liberal boycotting list, just down from Nestlé, is Nike. First there's all the sweatshop hideousness, meaning that it is basically a certainty that your Air Max trainers were made by blind toddlers at 4am, who are paid a single lentil for each 1000 pairs produced, using materials and chemical processes that kill lemurs and are single-handedly responsible for 46% of all global warming. Then they ship the shoes back to the West and charge £100 for them, a mark-up of six quadrillion percent, which they spend on maintaining the champagne fountains in each of their global HQs and on advertising that makes fat people feel guilty. Also they sponsor Tiger Woods, the evil philandering golfer, which literally means they approve of adultery.

So a boycott should be easy, right? I can certainly resist their trainers - I love my Asics ones - but on the technology front, they've made something so irresistable that my liberal leanings have gone all panicky, a bit like they did when I found out that Nestlé make Nobbly Bobblies. I hereby confess: I am in love with the Nike+ sensor.

A small capsule, you put it in the custom-designed niche in your Nike shoe (or sellotape it onto the top of your Asics one). Then you press the Nike swoosh logo on your iPhone - for yes, this is sanctioned by Steve Jobs - and follow the instructions like the Matrix character you are. "Walk around to activate your sensor," says the nice American woman. You walk. Then you select your workout: time, distance or calories. You choose 30 minutes. You choose the music you want. And you start running. Every five minutes, the nice lady says, "Five minutes completed" or similar. For the final five, she counts down minute by minute. At the end, you get a "Congratulations, goal attained," and a rundown of how far you've run and how many calories you've burned. Then when you plug in your iPhone, it sends the data to the Nike site, where you can track your workouts on a graph and see if you're getting faster or not. For anyone who might drift towards the geek segment of life's Venn diagram, it is addictive. And anything that can make me actually want not just to run, but to run faster, is clearly suspicious.

Then this morning, it got even more extraordinary. I finished my run, desperately pleased with myself for going outside at all given that it had been a) cold, b) raining, c) gusty and d) the morning. I pressed "End workout', the nice woman summarised my goal and I was about to remove my headphones when all of a sudden a suprise male voice interrupted. "Hi!" It said. "This is Lance Armstrong. Congratulations - that was your fastest run yet!" I couldn't have been more thrilled if he'd cycled up and handed me an actual gold medal. I don't even LIKE Lance Armstrong although I can't quite remember why not - I've just been Googling him and found nothing. Was he using drugs to aid his performance? Did he cheat on Sheryl Cole? Either way, all is forgiven. From now on I MUST HEAR LANCE OR A. N. OTHER FAMOUS SPORTSPERSON CONGRATULATING ME AFTER EVERY SINGLE RUN.

And Nike, you evil genii, you can sit their stroking your big white cats, but hear this: I'm not fooled. I still don't approve of you one tiny bit. Well, OK, your sensor rocks and your Just Do It slogan is pretty amazing, but other than that you are big bad meanies and I encourage everyone wholeheartedly to buy all their sportswear items from other more ethical retailers. Except the sensor. Buy the sensor. As long as you resist all their other products, what could possibly be the harm in us all having things in our shoes that sends details of where we are going and how fast to a multinational corporation with a background in corruption? Sennnnnnssssorrrrrrrrr.