Out of steam

I HAVE NOTHING TO SAY TODAY. I just doodled this on the back of an envelope. I think it means I AM BORED. When is my next holiday?

It's a rich man's world

So like any good citizen, I totally forgot to watch the Chancellors' debate on Channel 4 last night, and only managed to catch up on the highlights via Newsnight. Paxman was as annoying as ever, making everyone look absolutely shit without allowing anyone an opportunity to redeem themselves or clarifying anything for the viewer; at one point his battering ram approach actually made me feel a degree of sympathy for Ed Miliband, in itself a staggering achievement.

One thing that always strikes me in discussions about government is the gulf between the soundbites and the actual complexity of each department. I am still gobsmacked on an hourly basis by quite how much waffling goes on in the big company where I work - so many people having eternal meetings to make fairly straightforward decisions, everyone inputting, designing charts, trying to cut costs in order to justify paying themselves more money - it's the same everywhere, I know, but there was quite a funny moment last night where the Tory guy was criticising Alistair Darling's plans, and the Labour guy said 'Well, you say you're going to make X amount of cuts, where's the money going to come from?' and the Tory guy said he couldn't say because as an opposition party, they don't have access to the information they need to be precise about things. So they say they will make cuts, but they can't say where from. And Labour are saying they can make cuts too, and we're all wondering why they weren't making them already, and Miliband's saying 'We are already making cuts, but these are on top of those cuts - we are already making huge cuts in my department' and I did just think of the office where I work, and if they were suddenly required to make huge cuts (which they were last year after the crash) and how people just had to pack up and go - and that if the government starts sacking loads of civil servants, they will be accused of boosting unemployment etc. It's a reet mess innit.

I started the weekend at an excellent party on Friday night, where, after several hours chewing the fat, it became clear that three of my friends were slightly the worse for wear. One of them took herself off home at a sensible hour. Another stood around smiling benignly as I made her drink water and then she took a taxi home. A third was put into a cab by a helpful accomplice, who assured the driver she wouldn't be sick. Throughout all this, I was extraordinarily capable and smug, delighted that I had managed to consume lots of wine and feel pleasingly footloose and fancy free without becoming emotional, tired or aggressive. But the moment tipsy gal number three had left, I treated myself to a reward glass of white and immediately tipped myself over the edge, lurching attractively across the dancefloor, having to let the window of the cab down to stay this side of violently ill and then standing on my parents' top floor, sticking my head out of the Velux to provide continued cool air. Fortunately, I managed to avoid doing anything other than sway gently, and after a motorway McDonald's milkshake and fries the following morning (on top of hot cross buns for breakfast) was feeling much better until I saw a photo that someone took of me that made me look as though I'd been injecting heroin into my face for the last four years, while smearing a uniquely staining excrement beneath my eyes. Despite the emetic physical appearance, my mood wasn't much dented by the hangover, and I giggled to tears with the girls at Lucy's as though we were back at school. A wonderful three days, culminating back at home with the successful erection of my new chest of drawers. We won't tell anyone about the fact I put the top on the wrong way round and then had to lever off all the nails I'd hammered in to the back and redo it all again. It looks beautiful now and that's all that matters. Could not be more excited or more crippled. Turns out DIY requires specific muscle groups, but I was just kneeling on the floor for most of it so I don't understand how my mid-back and outer-hamstrings specifically are quite so painful. Nothing Rodney Yee can't sort out.

My manifesto takes shape

I'm sure you are all on tenterhooks waiting for me to summarise my feelings concerning the forthcoming UK General Election. And I've been trying to decide my angle, really I have, but cor blimey it's a minefield out there. The Labour Government has made some big mistakes, but they've done a few things well over the past thirteen years. I kind of liked Darling's non-budget and I think they're fractionally better placed than the Tories to deal with the recession. However, I don't like the idea of endorsing them any further; I think ticking their box and rewarding them with another term after some of the fuck-ups of which they've been a part would be absurd.

That said, I would rather they won than the Tories. I cannot and will not vote Conservative. My primary concern for Britain is our vast and shameful income gap and the effect it has on our young people and the future of this nation. I will vote for any party that can persuade me that it will make Britain fairer by reducing the disparity between rich and poor, and the idea that the Bullingdon boys of the Tories will do this is laughable. A hung parliament would be my preferred option, as I think that in that situation, both major parties could field new leaders and we might actually get some fresh blood. But, ultimately, once again, we head into an election where my views, and those of many of my peers, are not represented by either of the broken old nags in this two horse race, and as a liberal, I cry out once again for serious electoral reform that will make our voting system, and our democracy, less of a sham.

Several intelligent friends have said that they will not vote at all, while several more have said they will spoil their ballot papers. I don't agree with not voting as a protest action - Westminster don't know you're protesting, they just assume you're too lazy and/or thick to have an opinion. Spoiling the ballot is certainly preferable in that it suggests effort, genuine political engagement and anger, but it's too risky in a tightly-fought constituency where tactical voting is the only way to go. My borough is safe Labour, so there's no need for game playing: I'll vote for the party closest to my heart and be done with it. But for those of you in close constituencies who are wobbling towards rubber-faced Cameron, remember that a vote for him is a vote for a less fair Britain. You may think that lower taxes and a smaller welfare state will help you in the short term, but like it or not, we all live here, and we need everyone to be as happy, healthy and well-educated as possible. The income gap is your worst enemy, whether you're at its top or its bottom. Read The Spirit Level and love your neighbour.

Apologies to anyone who feels deeply patronised by the above. To my parents: forgive me. And now: the weekend.

Amazing news

Readers, something WONDERFUL has just happened. I found this sentence:

"Omega-3 fatty acides are said to cut heart disease risk, with the best sources mayonnaise and full-fat salad dressing, followed by fish such as tuna, salmon and mackerel."

MAYONNAISE!

I could not be happier if they had written that doughnuts cure cellulite. Actually, that's not true. But discovering that the consumption of mayo could stave off heart disease has got to be the best thing I've read in a while. Oh beloved Hellman's, giver of flavour to chips and adder of je ne sais quoi to countless sandwiches, how I already cherished thee - but now, to discover you have also, quietly, without asking for thanks or repayment, been protecting me from fatal illness: truly, it is too much. I prostrate myself before you. My forehead toucheth the ground at the base of the pedestal upon which I have placed thee. I weep with humble grace at your extraordinary bounty.

In other news, did everyone see the volcano in Iceland? It's pretty spectacular. I love the idea of the Earth getting more and more tense, and then finally going 'RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH' and just exploding with burning rage, like a huge global whitehead filled with bright orange lava pus. But let's not write about mayonnaise and pus in consecutive paragraphs as that's not nice.

Formation anxiety

There appears to have been a shift in my local EAT while I was in Lapland, although I am not the only one who missed the memo. The EAT in question is a rectangular room, with sandwich refrigeration units running along the long left hand wall and the short back wall. The short front wall looks out onto the street and is glass, and along the right hand wall are the tills. Pre-Finland, in the busy lunchtime rush, we would all collect our chosen items and stand behind one of the tills, hungrily awaiting our turn. But yesterday, when I went to buy my sandwich, something had altered. A new, one-queue format had been adopted, with a snake from the front door, running along the length of the left hand refrigeration units and then doubling around the top, with the frontmost person going to the next available till.

I am a big fan of the one-queue format. It is the most fair system, without doubt. It didn't quite work in EAT, physically, due to the layout of the store and the volume of people attempting to line up, but I was enthusiastic about the shift in procedure and willingly took my place at the tail-end, putting up with the irritation as people leaned through the snake to get their sandwiches. Gradually, I moved further from the front door, up along the left hand side, and eventually rounded the top corner. Then I noticed that, with only two people ahead of me, the snake was being abandoned. No one was joining the back, instead reverting to pre-Finland protocol and standing in front of individual tills. Most frustratingly, the staff at the tills could plainly see what had happened and did nothing to rectify the shift. My blood sugar was low and I was furious, so I did what any self-respecting Brit would do: stood politely in silence, not wanting to be a pedantic dickhead, knowing that eventually my time would come. Victory.

EAT today was back to multi-queues. It may be less fair, but one-queue only works if everyone adheres to the system, and sadly EAT's vertical layout just doesn't allow for it. Frankly, I was relieved.

Last night I went to see Blaze at the Peacock Theatre in Holborn. It was excellent and rubbish in equal measures, almost schizophrenically so. My favourite bit was the beginning. There were approx. 12 pairs of trainers in a row across the front of the stage, and the three of us chose our favourite ones. Then suddenly, as the lights dimmed, Grania announced that we had to kiss the people who put on our shoes. A tall ugly guy put on the red velcro boots I'd picked. I was annoyed. Then I saw that Grania and Emily's favourite shoes were both being put on by girls. I felt better. The dancing started and it was very cool. But there just wasn't enough street stuff to sustain an hour and twenty minute show, so the choreographers padded it out with nods to Wii games, 80s pop and acid house that just didn't sit right. Inexplicably, the lighting was absolutely superb for about six minutes in total, and pretty rubbish the rest of the time (how does this happen?); similarly, a lot of the music was original and it was occasionally very good, but mostly a bit lame. And while there were three break dancing guys who were absolutely exceptional, several of the others seemed about as street as Prince Philip - they could do the moves, but it was all a bit staged and I felt like I was watching an end-of-term performance at Sylvia Young, and then I was, like, 'Well what do you expect, Jane - this is a theatre, they're on a stage, of course it's choreographed.' And then I was, like, 'Well, maybe street dancing shouldn't leave the streets,' and then I was like, 'Well, then you wouldn't be here and none of these lovely people in the audience would be having this nice night out,' and I was like, 'Well, I'm fine with that,' and then I was like, 'Well FINE.' So much for the show being schizophrenic. I think it's clear who is the mentalist.

Back to the groined

Oooooooh it's weird to be back here, wearing a black dress and high heels, perched on my kneeling posture stool in my little glass box, dreaming about huskies and sow-nas and reindeer kebabs. But it's fine. I mentally arrived back in London as the Gatwick Express crossed the Thames late on Sunday night and we saw Albert Bridge lit up to our left - there's certainly a shortage of limitless expanses of frozen lakes round these parts but it's still beautiful.

Yesterday evening, as planned, I hopped in my mother's car and we drove to Ikea. Mum has since revealed that, in her head, she'd thought I might buy a couple of scatter cushions and some candles, so, some four hours later, as we heaved the trollies towards the car, pushing in front of us a large chest of drawers, an oversized full length mirror, a tallish indoor palm tree, a floor lamp and several other items of varying bulk, she tentatively asked how I was going to fit this all on the tube, and I confidently said 'You're driving me home!' as in my head, that had been the plan all along. Note to both of us: relay plans from inside our heads when those plans involve other people.

The personal low point in an otherwise splendid evening was when I was trying to drag the huge mirror onto my wheelie crate thing in the loading area, and the crate wouldn't stay still and the mirror looked like it was going to slide and shatter, and I didn't want to ask Mum for help because I knew she would say the mirror was too big and that it wouldn't fit in her car (which she did indeed say, semi-accurately, a few moments later) so I struggled on my own, holding the trolley with one foot and manoeuvring the mirror with another, resulting in me pulling a muscle in my inner thigh. There are lots of reasons to dread Ikea, but getting a groin injury was not an incident for which I'd prepared myself emotionally. In the end, I forced Mum to drive with the mirror slid along the length of the car and out between the two front seats and the boot tied shut with string, a set-up that was almost certainly illegal but basically fine, and we got back to my flat without traffic dramas - there were verbal exchanges that my dad might have defined as 'a little iffy' but once back home, she phoned me to say that she'd calmed down. Today she admitted that she thought she was at risk of having a stroke but I maintain it is all good exercise.

I assembled the six drawers of my new chest last night between approx. 21:30 and 22:50, and have decided that putting together flat pack furniture is my new favourite thing in the whole world. It is like doing a jigsaw for grown-ups, and you get a new piece of practical home storage as a prize. What's not to like? I have vigorous butterflies about constructing the outer housing but sadly my next free window is on Monday 29th so I will have to quell my winged friends until then. The remainder of this week is firmly back to business as usual, with breakdancing (someone else, not me), ukulele (me and others), real ale (him, not me), a birthday party (theirs, not mine) and a country jaunt in the schedule. Loins are girded. Groins are sensitive.

Finnish

God I am sad. The last time I remember being so sad to leave a holiday was when I was a teenager in Corsica and pulled one of the barmen who was approximately twice my age and, in retrospect, possibly a paedophile, but as I left for the airport I thought I might die of heartbreak. The only thing keeping me going was my dream of the day in September that I might receive a letter from him once I returned to boarding school. Oh the naive yet charming idiocy of my youth. The soundtrack to that week remains Eric Clapton’s Unplugged album, which may give an indication of a) how long ago this was and b) how desperately, desperately uncool I have been, consistently, since I was born.

So today was our last day. We awoke early and went out for a final cross-country ski, just the two of us, gliding through the furrows like old pros, following the verbal directions Pascal had given us until we got down onto the frozen river and took a wrong turn, taking a stunning track several kilometers through a birch forest before emerging, sweating hard and laughing in shock, at precisely the point we’d left well over an hour previously. Back, eventually, to the hotel for lunch, packing and our final sow-na, a ritual that we now struggled to fit into an hour and a quarter, so comfortable are we with the heat and freezing swim combo. I have been astonished by how quickly I’ve acclimatised – at the beginning of the week I couldn’t be outside without my glove for more than thirty seconds without genuinely panicking about frostbite, and now I’m wandering about like a local. I am destined to be annoying forever when someone says ‘Oooh, it’s cold’ – I’ll always be sure to tell them they haven’t known cold if they haven’t experienced minus 35.

After he’d helped me wrap my reindeer skin in a black bin bag and tape it up for transit, we said an emotional goodbye to Pascal and presented him with his leaving gift of beer and Euros. The week has been exceptional, unforgettable, superlative – but I think we were particularly lucky to have such a nice guy looking after us, a man who genuinely loves the landscape, who for the past three years has left his family and friends behind in rural Belgium and travelled here to work in the snow. He has a foreigner’s objective love of the country and was always full of facts, explaining how the line of the Arctic Circle is defined (something to do with having 12 continuous hours of daylight after 21 June each year, and 12 continuous hours of darkness in the winter), and gleefully informing us that seal bladders make the most effective anoraks as we squealed obediently like piglets in a vice. His English was also charmingly foreign, as he pulled over in the car and said "Now we make photo," or when he was describing his Belgian girlfriend's appearance and said she had "long black hairs." Not a selling point.

What else can I tell you?

• Apparently I’m wrong about the trash situation – I had thought that the terrain was totally unspoilt by human debris, but he told me that Finns are some of the worst litterers he’s experienced, throwing oil drums and anything else unwanted out of their cars as they drive. Clearly now it’s all buried under several feet of crisp, white snow but come June when it melts, I understand that the picture may be slightly less esque.
• I am still pleased (is that appallingly patronising?) with the lack of Westernisation that we saw at the tourist attractions. No ‘have your photo taken as your husky sled rounds this hair-raising corner – then we’ll print it on a mug!’ offers, or overpriced T-shirts or marked-up soft drinks. They did what they did and nothing more, and we loved it.
• To save on resources and effort, bus drivers deliver local post in Finland. There are large post receptacles at bus-driver-window height along the roads, where they will lean out and deposit the mail for nearby houses. The receptacles are open-fronted plastic boxes, meaning that all the packages and letters are sitting there, free for anyone to claim. But there is no theft. Except in the big cities, people don’t lock their doors except if they are going away for a long vacation.
• I didn’t see a single non-white person in the entire week. That was slightly uncomfortable.
• What else…? I cannot exaggerate the whiteness of the landscape. Everything, but everything, is white. The roads are covered in a thick layer of sparkling ice, and all cars are equipped with spiked tyres that drive along it as easily as we would on tarmac. There is no sludge. No piles of brown, polluted snow lying to the roadside. No salt or grit. Just white, white, white and cold, cold, cold; so cold you cough in surprise when it hits your lungs every morning. And so beautiful it brings a lump to my throat.
• Finland is very expensive. Beers and wine are around 5 Euros per glass, a crappy novelty fleece in a tourist store that should normally be about £20 is nearer £50. Food, while delicious, is not cheap either. Petrol is extortionate. But wages are good too, and services are great. Just the fact that, twice a day including Sundays, someone drives around all the many hundreds of miles of snowmobile and cross country tracks, smoothing out the routes for all the local exercisers, is… well, it’s a lovely thing. Our tax money goes for local gyms and park exercise circuits, I know – but there’s something so special about the snow. The whiteness and the space. London will be a shock. Thankfully I’m going to Ikea in Croydon tomorrow afternoon so the Nordic adventure will continue. A final, slightly teary hey hey from Finland. See you in Blighty.

The End Is Nigh

Last you’d heard, we’d done a lot of skiing. My favourite Jack Dee joke has echoed through my mind a lot this week, where he takes the piss out of the Winter Olympics (“Just a selection of various forms of sliding”) saying how absurd it is that people can get so over-excited about a range of activities that you could do just as well if you were dead. But, while I concede that my skillset during the reindeer and husky safaris was pretty much limited to laughing and taking photographs, the skiing element has definitely required some effort.

After our successful three hour foray into downhill skiing on Thursday, Grania and I went back to Levi on Friday for a full day’s extravaganza, once again breezing through the absurdly efficient rental shop and lift pass purchasing process in a matter of minutes, a level of organisation that alone would justify the decision to ski in Finland, even without the non-existent lift queues, empty pistes, sparkling lavatorial facilities and breathtaking scenery. Once again, I found the new design of modern skis absolutely faultless, cruising down black runs without incident where previously I would have caught an edge or lost my balance on an icy patch and come bone-riskingly unstuck. I was going slightly faster than ‘stationary’ when I fell for the second time, losing my balance on an entirely flat stretch of off-piste snow between two runs, when I’d been pushing myself along with my poles. I had been moving marginally faster than an unstressed walrus, and coincidentally resembled one when I fell, as once again I found myself entirely unable to stand up unassisted. Pathetic.

Lunch was a delicious pizza in a piste-side restaurant, accompanied by two extortionate glasses of omnipresent Jacob’s Creek Semillon Chardonnay, the only wine available. Grania had the local speciality beverage which appears to be hot ribena with rum, which I’m sure is delicious if you like hot ribena and/or rum. (I do not.) As our plates were being cleared, I said thank you to our waiter, who answered with a phrase not dissimilar to ‘No worries.’ His accent was not Finnish. “You sound like you’re from East London!” I remarked. Turned out I was about twenty miles out, as he revealed he was from Rochester, in Kent. So over-excited were we to meet a chatty fellow English native that Grania and I went into giddy obsessive mode, peppering him with questions. He was, it emerged, 25 years old, and a fully trained electrician, but preferred life as a traveller - he works in Greece during the summer. He proudly told us that he is the only UK national working as a waiter in Levi, with his salary paid by a Finnish company, and that he has, he hopes, “paved the way” for other people to do the same. Having had my Jacob’s Creek, I was afflicted by what Grania affectionately calls my Tourette’s, and told him he had ‘player hair’ and that he looked like a heartbreaker. He said his hair only looks over-coiffed because his younger brother is training to be a hairdresser, and because everyone else in Finland has such terrible styles. I have to agree on that point: if Mrs Sassoon wants to help her husband avoid a stress-related heart attack, they should steer clear of the Arctic Circle.

Following our meal, we had a fantastic and too-short two hours on the piste in the afternoon before we had to rush back to meet our team for the taxi back to base. With a seven minute window pre-car, we decided to scamper to the shops across the road as fast as our Moons would carry us, on the hunt for some of the amazing reindeer fur boots we’d seen sported by the locals on the farm the day before. Sadly, the nearest we found were a pair of incredible grey boots that I loved until I found out that they were a) 350 Euros and b) made of seal skin. Later we discovered that they have now been banned by the EU, which perhaps would explain why the shop assistant had been so keen for me to buy them.

On returning to the hotel, we headed off for our daily sauna (with the first syllable rhyming with cow) and freezing cold plunge pool regime. While the other women in our ten person team haven’t seemed especially desperate to become bosom buddies with us while we are wearing clothes, the moment we hang up our dressing gowns and join them, starkers, on the pine benches in the 84 degrees Fahrenheit heat, they can’t get enough of gossiping with us. Maybe our British clothes gave off an unfriendly vibe. Personally I can’t think of many scarier sights than a naked me, half-baked in a Finnish sauna, but I’m glad I seemed approachable.

Since several of our group were leaving on Saturday morning, Friday night was our farewell meal, where we were presented with a huge wooden platter featuring smoked salmon, herrings in a dill and mustard dressing, another misc. fish (delicious), an incredible mushroom salad, potato balls and every conceivable type of reindeer: smoked, unsmoked, liver and some sort of pate. That was the starter. Then we had reindeer stew on mash with redcurrants, then delicious selected red berries and cream for dessert. It was freaking delicious. The food has been excellent all week – low, perhaps, on plate appeal, but extremely tasty, hearty, pleasingly fattening and educational. The highlight of the meal, however, was when our guide, Pascal, presented us with our Official Reindeer Driving License, valid (bafflingly) for five years. I shall treasure it always.

While the other guests retired (sensibly) to their rooms, Grania and I ordered our second bottle of wine and wandered through to Pilot’s Pub, which is conveniently the hotel bar and also the only bar in our village, hence jam-packed with excellent locals doing Finnish karaoke. Grania, who is always nicer to strangers than I, was inexplicably welcoming to two older gentlemen who were loitering in our area; they have since been referred to as ‘the man with no neck’ and ‘the man who kept touching my face’, which should give you some idea as to their desirability. My abiding memory of this portion of Friday, however, was when Grania seemed unable to stop begging me to do karaoke, and – my intelligent, clear and highly rational arguments clearly getting me nowhere – I resorted to making an exasperated growl of unmanageable frustration, which came out sounding somewhere between a snarl and a scream. Then I went to bed. We laughed a lot the next morning when she conceded that singing Dancing Queen to a room full of Finns would probably not have been as funny as she’d envisaged.

And then it was Saturday. Ten centimeters of snow had fallen overnight, making the countryside appear even more flawless. With most of our group homeward bound, there were just five of us who set off on a day trip – Pascal, the two of us, and the wonderful Geert and Trudi from the Netherlands, who were in their sixties and cool as ice, happily nattering to us throughout the week about topics such as Botox and hair highlights. They had met through a Catholic church group when they were in their late teens, and dated for two years before they decided to get married. Geert would come over to see Trudi, and at 9.30pm every night, Trudi’s dad would stamp on his bedroom floor to tell the young people in the kitchen below that their time was up. Forty years later, they were in Lapland to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Refreshingly, however, Trudi smilingly told us that she’d dumped Geert twice before she agreed to marry him, saying that she was worried that he was “too serious”. Clearly first impressions aren’t always to be trusted. They were a fantastic couple.

Our outing had been suggested by Pascal – strictly speaking it was his day off, but he’d found a Sami festival about 150km further north and we’d begged him to take us with him. The five of us bundled into his car and set off for a ten hour round trip that at one point took us about 50 meters from the border with Sweden to the west, and, later on, about 50 kilometers from the border with Norway to the north. Our first major stop was a town called Hetta, where we went to the market and ate delicious sausages out of paper, before bundling back in the car and going down the road to the festival. In a trip full of once-in-a-lifetime sights, this was one of the most extraordinary, a true snapshot of local Finnish life. The Samis are the indigenous people of Finland. Some of them wear the beautiful traditional costumes of heavily embroidered blue and red felt, ornate fur bonnets and the aforementioned reindeer boots, while others wear waterproof ski gear and heavy duty snow shoes, or a combination of the two. The mixture of old and new pleased me greatly. The four day festival was culminating on Sunday with the finals of many events, including lassoing and husky races, but on Saturday afternoon, we witnessed the heats of the young competitors’ solo reindeer races. These involved girls and boys aged around 13 wearing tight shiny lycra suits, helmets and cross country skis, being pulled around a long track on the stunningly beautiful and seemingly endless frozen lake where we were all standing, by a single reindeer, who was enticed to run faster by a rope threaded through his legs that was snapped against his testicles by the plucky racers. The animals shot out of the stalls like nuclear warheads, and the brave kids were jerked along behind in their tracks at terrifying speeds. It was fantastic. About two hundred racer reindeer were lying around in a pen nearby, waiting patiently for their turn and occasionally getting into fights. Other than that, not much was going on. It was exceptionally peaceful and seemingly timeless; an immense privilege to be there. We watched several heats before reluctantly returning to Pascal’s car, enticed only by his promise of a ‘really big souvenir shop’. But first, a stop at his favourite petrol station, clearly a Sami community hub, where we ate the world’s most delicious omelettes while Pascal had his cherished reindeer kebab, and I nearly bought a stuffed squirrel before Geert told me it was illegal to take taxidermy into another country. Then back into the car and a detour up a tiny white road, moving further north to the point where the altitude changes to the extent that the omnipresent pine trees can no longer grow. There was only birch here, and the landscape was totally different – eerie, still and stunning. We walked down onto another vast lake as the sun was setting, and were reminded of the salt beds in Arizona and Utah – I can’t think of a time when I’ve ever seen such massive flatness as that created by the frozen whiteness. It was humbling and awesome.

We got lost on the way home and took a frozen track for several kilometers, uneven and full of humps as only the main roads are covered in asphalt. The only major incident was a near-miss with an errant reindeer, who ran into our path and then pounded along in front of the car like a stupid sheep, before finally darting into the woods. After dinner, Grania and I donned our snowsuits for one final attempt to see the Northern Lights, but they were sadly unforthcoming, despite our best efforts to entice them with slightly inebriated singing of musical numbers including I Know Him So Well, My Favourite Things, I’m Getting Married In The Morning and Skimbleshanks The Railway Cat. Still can’t believe that didn’t work. Then we tried to do cartwheels and yoga positions in our snow gear, before waving goodbye to the star-crammed sky and heading back to the hotel. Although I was sad not to see the NLs a third time, there was something about a failed attempt that made me realise how lucky we’d been with our other two sightings. One more day left before our Sunday evening flight. I will be extremely sad to leave.

Sliding bores

Not quite so educational today but waaaaaaaay harder on the body. Still, my brain wasn't allowed to take a total back seat. Here is what I've learned:

• Cross country skiing. I mean. It is the most complete exercise form I've ever taken, other than swimming. Every. Single. Muscle. in your legs, your arms, your buttocks, your core, your back, your shoulders - all agony. But in a good way. Highly, highly recommended. We are going to go again.
• There are two types of cross country skiing - one where you go along in slim parallel furrows, which are carved out of the snow by a special piste machine. The other involves scooting along with your skis in a V-shape, far apart at the front and close together at the back. Each type of skiing has different skis, poles and boots. We did the former as it is easier. Your toe is attached to the ski by a binding, but your heel is free. You glide along like a beautiful ice dancer. Theoretically. In practice it is initially hard, and nothing like normal skiing. But we picked it up quickly.
• The Finns call cross country skiing 'skiing'. Downhill skiing is called 'downhill skiing'. So, if you're going skiing at the weekend, it's on the flat.

We set out, as a ten, at around 10.30am. Our ages varied from mid-twenties to mid-sixties. Within about ten yards, as I'd expected, I was pouring sweat like a jazz trumpeter during a seminal July set at Ronnie Scott's, pre-aircon. Fortunately, I know my body and was confident that, given time, I would acclimatise. After a few kilometers, I did. The older members of our party later admitted that they'd struggled, which seemed very reasonable to me. But although the activity was extremely energetic, there were no animals involved, which meant that it was inevitably slightly less incident-heavy than yesterday. I fell down on my knee at one point, and Grania headbutted the ground at another, but both those mishaps occurred in the first few moments and we were soon smoothly on our way.

After lunch back at the hotel, we took the minibus to the nearest big resort, Levi, pronounced like that which is dry in American Pie. Everyone else took the time to peruse the shops, but, ever-ambitious, Grania and I hired downhill skis, boots, poles, paid 2 euros extra for helmets, and set off for three hours on the pistes. The last time I skied was, I believe, in the late nineties, and things have changed somewhat. First, skis have shrunk about a foot, but gained about a stone. I don't know what they're made of these days, but I think it is probably uranium. (This is very heavy. I just looked it up on Wikipedia.) Boots are more comfortable than they were although I still have a panic that they won't do up around my calves. I also still fear T-bars after an incident which resulted in a cauliflower ear when I was approx. 11 and involved my parents laughing hysterically and insisting I pull my hair back off my face so they could photograph me like some sort of circus freak, ignoring the fact that IT REALLY HURT. But anyway. Basically, skiing is still the same: very fun, quite cold and slightly risky with a fair bit of adrenaline. It is way, way easier, cardiovascularly, than cross country skiing. We started out on the basic slopes but my map reading accidentally led us on to a black run and we both got down without incident. My only fall was, as usual, when I was standing completely still on a very flat surface. I recovered myself, turned my skis the right way and tried to get up. Panic set in as I realised I couldn't. I still don't quite understand what happened, but I think it is lack of upper body strength. I managed to lift my abdomen about a foot off the ground and then had to extend a pole and ask Grania to pull me through the offending middle section. Eventually I righted myself and we set off again. If she hadn't have been there I would have had to take my skis off, stand up and put them back on again. Unexpected result of ageing?

Skiing in Finland is great - the pistes are pretty much empty, the lifts have no queues and there is a good mix of runs. There isn't enough in Levi to keep you occupied for a week, but for a long weekend I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it. That said, after 2.5 hours we were cold and tired, almost certainly the cumulative effect of our active morning and punchy afternoon, so we ditched our hired gear and jumped in a taxi for the short ride back to HQ and a sauna/freezing cold plunge pool/sauna extravaganza followed by dinner with the team where we were asked whether we'd ever seen Diana or Charles in a pub in London. Now we have a possible film or reading window and then sleep. Fractionally less hilarity today, and I've probably eaten as many calories as I've burned off (she says, stuffing the core of a Terry's Chocolate Orange in her mouth, one of many treats she brought for the dual enjoyment of herself and Grania this week, only to find out on arrival in Finland that Grania has given up chocolate for Lent), but it's been excellent. Hope all is well en Angleterre and with the rest of the Faithful, wherever you may be. Hey hey.

Rein 'em in. Seriously.

What's brilliant about this holiday is that it's not only amazing in every conceivable way, but I'm also learning, which alleviates most of the normal I'm-on-holiday-and-achieving-nothing-and-even-though-that's-the-point-of-holidays-I-still-feel-guilty guilt. Here, in bullet form, are some of the nuggets we learned yesterday about huskies:

• Huskies eat dried nuggets of raw salmon and meat
• They start racing aged one and normally retire around ten years old
• The intelligent women go first in the racing pack, with the stronger men behind
• They can run happily up to 25 km a day but race even further
• The ears of the puppies are very soft

And today, we went to a reindeer farm. This was brilliant for many hundreds of reasons, but here are the educational highlights:

• Each reindeer-owning family has its own recognisable series of nicks that it cuts into the ears of each of their reindeer in order to identify them. These nicks are recorded in a detailed local book for everyone's reference.
• The fluffy slivers of skin that are removed from the ears during the nicking process are saved and threaded into curious mobiles for interior decoration. Why waste?
  
• When the babies are born, it's hard to tell whose mummy owns which baby, so instead of putting the nicks in the ear, they put a leather necklace with a carved wooden medallion around the neck of the baby to identify it tentatively. After a year, they come back and make sure they've identified the right baby, and if all the families are in agreement, they put the nicks in the ear to mark it as theirs.
• The reindeer people make shoes out of reindeer fur. The fur at the front of the sole lies facing the centre of the foot, and the fur at the back lies the other way, creating a gripping surface. It's really clever.
• The shoes hook up at the toe end so that straps can be passed around the front and attached to cross-country skis.
• There are two breeds of reindeer - mountain and forest. The former have really short legs. We didn't see any of those. The forest reindeer are more common in Lapland.
• The farm we visited wants to make its livelihood from growing reindeer feed, which it makes in the summer. This does not create enough income, however, so in the winter months they make more money by hosting tourist parties like ours. They also sell the reindeer to third parties to be killed for their meat and skins. They make 5.40 Euros per kg of live reindeer, but once dead the meat is sold for around 20 Euros a kg and the skins fetch around 50-70 Euros each. I asked why they don't kill the reindeer on site and sell them off if it's more valuable that way, but apparently the EU regs are so strict that it's not worth the effort.
• Each town in Lapland has a slightly different local costume. The styles are all similar but the colours and trims vary. The men wear a hat with four corners, each representing one of the four winds (N, S, E, W). The hats have tassels down one side. If you wear your tassels on the right, it means you're married - on the left and you're single and looking. Women's hats do not indicate their marital status. Brilliant.

After our gripping and edifying lecture, we went out and met our reindeer. We were in convoys of four sleds, with a reindeer separating each of us. We were in the front convoy. So it goes: reindeer, sled, reindeer, sled, reindeer, sled (containing us), reindeer, last sled. They are all tied together and each reindeer pulls the sled behind it with sticks attached to a girth round their middles. We set off. Just like the first few seconds with the huskies yesterday, it was hectic. The reindeer are going full pelt through deep sled-width tracks in the snow. Our sleds are low, and we're lying down in them with a blanket over us, fairly helpless. It's like being in a bobsled. Suddenly, we notice a reindeer running alongside us to the left. This should not be happening. It is the reindeer from the sled behind. He is trying to overtake. This will not be successful but we're going at quite a lick and it's not clear how it will play out. Then Grania yelps. We turn to our right. The front reindeer from the second convoy has barged past the back of our group and is making a bid for freedom. He has prodded Grania in the back of her head with his not-inconsiderable antlers. The face of the Lappish woman driving the runaway reindeer is one of abject terror. We realise the situation is not ideal but dissolve into uncontrollable giggles and shimmy down in our sled, paralysed. After thirty seconds, we recover and turn around to see what has emerged. The Lappish woman has driven her convoy into a snow drift in an emergency effort to control her fleet. Then we turn further and, with horror and hysteria, realise that there is no longer anyone in the sled behind us. The two Germans and their blankets have been deposited somewhere en route. We are incapacitated with laughter. It is now eleven hours later and I am still basically helpless with hysteria. The sight of the unexpectedly vacated sled, which had previously held a bemulletted woman, her absurdly high-tech Canon SLR and her clearly gay husband, was too much for us to bear.

When we arrived at our lunch venue and approached the lady who had been upturned, she was determined to make it seem like nothing remotely unusual had happened, saying 'Bof, it was nothing,' or the Deutsche equivalent, which made the whole thing even funnier. Then we fed lychen to our reindeer, which is apparently their special treat, and were taught how to lasso antlers. I was unexpectedly brilliant at this and was the only member of our group who managed to throw the loop over both the left and right protuberance. Unfortunately these antlers were not attached to a reindeer but were sitting, static, in the snow. When we were then ushered into a pen with two sprinting deer, we weren't quite so successful. Then a lunch of reindeer burgers in a hut, back to base, a tour of Levi, the local ski resort, and returning to the hotel for saunas, snoozing and a delicious dinner. Now: a screening of When Harry Met Sally. Hey hey.

Lapland: the journey begins

OK, it's not a great picture. In fact, I'd be willing to concede that it is crap. But in my defence, I'd unwittingly put my camera on a weird zoom setting on Sunday, and I didn't have a tripod. Either way, there it is: aurora borealis, surely one of the most magical sights a human can witness. On arriving at our hotel a couple of hours earlier, Grania and I had, without pause for discussion, abandoned our suitcases in the lobby and run into the gift shop area, laughing delightedly at the extensive range of amazing products on offer: fleeces with husky motifs, reindeer magnets, local Christmas tree decorations, Finnish balaclavas, furry boots, spa products – it was, we both agreed, justification alone for our trip. But then, just 120 minutes later, we were out in 'the swamp' (actually a stunning and deserted snow-covered field) in our Moon Boots and lucky enough to witness the Northern Lights as they shifted in the midnight sky for a good while. In some ways, they looked exactly as I'd imagined: hazy, ghostly and green. But standing there, together alone, on a white expanse in northern Finland, as the sun's rays bounced off swirling dust clouds in front of us... well, it was extraordinary. Truly. I can't recommend it enough.

Yesterday was our first full day, and our team of ten went skidooing - an 80km ride through the most beautiful landscape I've ever seen. I don't deny my natural tendency to be hyperbolic but I have given this much thought over the past 24 hours, and I really do think that this place is incomparably stunning. It is so fresh, so utterly unspoilt. We've covered a fair bit of ground, and the only piece of litter I've seen is one plastic bag caught on a tree. It is spectacularly pure and I feel extremely lucky to be here, so very grateful to the South African chalet company for going bust and so glad that Grania and I decided to do something a bit unusual instead of skiing in Switzerland.

We are finally understanding the old cliché about the Eskimos having so many words for snow – it really is different here. With daytime temperatures averaging minus 15, and those at night averaging 30 under, the conditions are different than anything I’ve seen before. It has amused us that when you ask a local about the temperature, they don’t say ‘minus’, though, so obvious is it that it is below freezing. As we in warmer climes don’t say it is “plus 20 degrees”, they merely say, “So it was 35 last night” – the minus is implied. Snow doesn’t fall often, but when it does, it freezes fairly solid. And because of the sparseness of the population, vast, inconceivable swathes of land are untouched, with perhaps only the footprints of an arctic hare disturbing the flat white expanse. The skies have been deep blue on both days, with only a tiny puff of cloud crossing the sun every few hours. Yet despite the lack of white clouds above, there is still a regular fall of tiny silvery particles, like glitter. This is not snow, but frozen humidity, that twinkles in the sunshine on its way down, enhancing the magic.

The skidoo ride was an exhilarating way to start our trip, bouncing over humps in the snow and trying to maintain a 25 metre stopping distance. At one point, Pascal, our guide, made the signal for us all to stop, and came to talk to us. "Up ahead there is a steep slope," he explained, "and then a main road. I want you drive up the slope, and stop at the top before crossing the road." We nodded our understanding. Inside, I felt nervous. I had visions of M25 levels of traffic hidden on the other side of the ridge, its roars disguised by our skidoo engine. He waved us on. I gingerly pressed the accelerator and we ascended the hill. At the top, I stopped. Grania and I searched for the road, and then realised we had stopped too late, and we were already halfway across it. No matter: it was deserted. Traffic in Lapland is not a problem. The mental image that we created following our London existence was clearly not typical. And in the three or so hours we spent riding in total, we saw one house. One.

Our lunchtime destination was a snow village and hotel, featuring two vast 60 metre domed function areas, several suites, twin rooms, a chapel for weddings (apparently mostly Brits) and an ice bar. Having been vaguely tempted to spend one night of our future lives snuggled up in an ice hotel with a fictional boyfriend, Grania and I both agreed that a 15 minute tour of the place was more than adequate. Save your pennies. Definitely an idea that’s better imagined.

Returning to our centrally-heated hotel yesterday afternoon, we did half an hour of yoga in our room and then had our first Scandinavian sauna experience – no clothes, obv., but a tear-off hygiene sheet on which to sit. We roasted merrily, having got fairly nippy at 30km per hour on the Skidoo, then returned to our room for a brief pre-dinner hiatus, where I fell asleep before I could do justice to the day’s events in blog form. Then dinner with our group – we are not only the only Brits in our team, but in the hotel, which is a wonderful novelty and just adds to the sense of distance from real life. Our team mates speak some English, but are all from Germany or Holland, so tend to communicate in German. We sit around guessing what they’re saying or doing ‘hilarious’ comedy translations, while feeling ashamed of our lack of linguistic skills.

If yesterday was a fantastic taster, today was a highlight, not just of this trip but of my 32 years. Husky sledding was the main reason why Grania and I had been drawn to this particular holiday, and consequently I made sure that I prepared myself for the (surely inevitable) anti-climax. Today, however, was every bit as dreamlike as I could have hoped and about 50% more on top of that. God it was good; we just got back to our room thirty minutes ago and I’m still high. My concern had been that all this stuff I’d heard about the dogs loving to run was just a line we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel better, like the children in sweat shops need all the money they can get and if we boycott Primark then they’ll suffer more. But blimey, those dogs really do love to run. They are absolutely unstoppable. My team of four, led by a beautiful blue-eyed gal called Fatima, could not get enough of it, pulling me up hills without complaint and whipping round enraged every time I applied the brake to prevent us from running into the back of the man on the sled in front. When we stopped for lunch, they rubbed their muzzles in the snow to quench their thirst and lay down for thirty minutes while we sat on benches covered in reindeer hide, gathered round a log fire , the sky above us vast and blue, and a frozen river as wide as the Thames in front of us. Returning after our meal, the dogs were hysterical, howling, desperate to carry on running, jumping vertically and straining forward with such force that it was extremely difficult for me to hold them. I was truly gutted when we arrived back at the farm, although I was distracted from my disappointment by the opportunity to hold two ten day old husky puppies. A day of a lifetime and one I’ll never forget (until dementia sets in). I feel so fortunate. Sickening, isn't it?

Right, now I must post this, awaken sleeping Grania, do yoga, go for our sauna, and then return for beers and a selection of Finnish treats that we just bought from the local supermarket. Big aurora storms are forecast for tonight so I'm crossing my fingers. ’Til tomorrow, Faithful - hey hey (that’s Finnish for bye).

Distraction techniques

So I was sad this afternoon so I did this instead of sitting round feeling sorry for myself. Now I must pack. But first: white wine.

TGIF. Seriously.

I appear to have exhausted my creativity after yesterday's upload, although following an email received this morning, I should probably clarify that I have been writing that poem for some time, and did, indeed, start it in February when I never imagined that it would end the way it did. The poem, and the real story. Yesterday I only wrote the final 2-3 verses. It passes the time, innit. Today, however, is poem-free and thus moving even. More. Slowly. I have nothing of note to say but I was reprimanded last night for not updating my blog during conventional working hours, so am doing my best to provide something for the Faithful here now, regardless of its mundanity. Following Grania's email of last night, forwarding me a link to the BBC website that informed me that it is sunny and minus 10 in Lapland, I have been to Marks & Spencer and bought emergency last minute thermals to supplement my already-impressive existing thermal collection (impressive in that it exists). And lots of tights. Now I am waiting for my tuna and cucumber baguette to digest so that I can go to the gym for the last time pre-husky. I have found out that Mark Owen has had ten affairs and am very disappointed. Honestly, sometimes I wonder whether Gary Barlow isn't the only nice man left on the planet. My friend met David Cameron the other night. Apparently he looks airbrushed in real life. Please don't vote for him. Not because of his face. Because he's crap. BA cabin crew are striking. Seems a bit dramatic. It's raining. My new handbag arrived in the post and it's just as cool as I'd hoped on the outside, but on the inside it has a hook for your keys that will save me literally moments each year. I'm very excited about it indeed. 2.5 more hours at work until my week off begins. Woop. Oh god, this is pathetic. No value added to your life at all. I will find you a joke.

Oh. My. God. I have just been searching for a joke and went to this site. Apparently we still live in the 1950s and all women should do is make sandwiches, all black people are criminals, people with red hair are ugly and physical disabilities are hilarious. I despair.

Q1 2010

January to February
On the surface I’m normal, he’d never suspect
The stuff that goes on in my head quite unchecked.
I’ve seen him three times in a month, maybe less,
But I’ve thought of him three times a minute, I’d guess.
I can’t sleep at night and my appetite’s crappy
Though the side-effect weightloss is making me happy.

Six weeks ago, I had not spared him a thought;
I was far more excited about new boots I’d bought
And whether they’d go with my TX Maxx jeans,
I didn’t have time for old flames from my teens.
But then when his message arrived in my inbox
The memories hit: I was instantly intox-
icated, intrigued, my heart was a-flutter,
Fine in one moment, the next I’m a nutter.
What would he be like? And would he remember
That magical August that stopped in September?
Was he getting in touch to be friends, was he single?
I cross-checked with Facebook, felt my fingertips tingle:
It said he was interested in “whatever he could get,”
What beautiful words! I broke out in a sweat.
I’d not seen him once in a decade and a half,
But I was pretty convinced that he’d still make me laugh;
His email was funny and the rest of his page
Showed a young man still happy to take centre stage.
His grin was infectious, his friends clearly loyal,
His holidays temperate. (The pan’s on the boil
For the bunny, alright, but stalking online
Is normal these days, I tell you, it’s fine.)

We exchange several emails, then meet at a bar
And the moment I see him I feel quite bizarre.
He looks just the same and he buys us some drinks
I’m trying to see - can I tell what he thinks?
But as ever, he’s perky and jovial and charming
His generous nature is almost disarming
He touches my arm and he’s joyous, hedonic,
So there’s no way to guess if it’s more than platonic.
A few minutes later, he reaches towards me
And straightens a lock of my hair: this affords me
A moment to think he is feeling romantic,
My stomach shoots skywards and heads transatlantic.
Yet when it’s all over, we walk towards the station,
He kisses me once on each cheek – such frustration.

And thus so began two point five weeks of hell
An email a day still unable to quell
The fact that I knew that unless he soon kissed me
I’d have to implore him: “Hey, please, don’t resist me.”
We finally found a date mutually convenient
(I must have seemed chilled – I could only act lenient).
When the eve came around, I felt shattered with nerves
Still, I tried to look hot and accentuate my curves,
And remember that he could still turn out to be
A drug-addict paedo with AIDS and TB.

But there’s nowt I can do on that second occasion
The sight of him hits like the Norman invasion.
We talk for an hour and laugh oh-so-much,
And I’m sure I can feel mutual sparks when we touch,
But still I can’t tell if he wants us to kiss
Or if this is just one other night on the piss.
I panic that after a glass or two more
I’ll blurt something stupid and kill the rapport,
So I finally stretch out my hand one more inch,
And thus starts a highly-charged manual clinch,
We lock eyes, mine green, his more aquamarine,
Then we kiss for the first time since I was eighteen.

The rest of the night is a haze of romance
We walk through the Barbican in some sort of trance.
As we reach Moorgate tube, I tell him adieu,
And he accidentally says ‘God bless – love you!’
I giggle and gasp and he looks a bit coy
But I know what he means and I feel the same joy.
So heady and vibrant, so dance on the ceiling,
It’s the best type of high, an absurdly good feeling.

By then, you’d think, I would feel quite reassured,
But I felt like I’d crashed my dad’s car, uninsured.
Yes, he did kiss me and was still sending emails
But he was probably writing to hundreds of females.
We set on a date a week later to meet
And my sanity once again took a backseat.
My whole life seemed to be: plan an email, write it,
Press send, re-read constantly, panic, recite it,
Worry that something has been misconstrued
And what seemed so funny is really quite rude,
Check inbox, check inbox, check inbox again
More stress in my head than within the U.N.
The reply appears finally, I scan for rejections,
Then read it again and spot spelling corrections.
The butterflies calm for a couple of seconds
But still I don’t know what he truthfully reckons.
His actions are keen, that’s certainly true
But until he has said, “I must be with you,
And I want you to be mine and just mine alone.”
I cannot relax with my status unknown.

The third date was much the same mood as the last,
A magical eve, for me unsurpassed.
We kissed again, laughed, and took pics on self-timer,
It could have been taken from ‘Dating: The Primer’.
But still I was worried that we weren’t exclusive;
The evening’s end was, for me, yet inconclusive.
He accepted an invite to dinner with friends,
A thought that would give most men bouts of the bends,
But Valentine’s came and our comms took a breather
(I was thrilled I had not sent him anything either).
We had a date planned and were still texting often
But I felt his affections were starting to soften,
And yes, I was right, because date number four
Was the last one we went on – our 'us' was no more.

When he told me that this was the end of the line
My jaw hit the floor, couldn’t claim to be fine.
I was shocked and felt foolish, could not comprehend
How I’d thought it was on while he’d hit a dead end.
He said all the stuff I’ve heard too much before,
How I’m awesome and perfect and gorgeous and more,
Yet there’s still something missing, a 'click' or a 'spark',
I tell him that’s bollocks, we light up the dark.
He admits to me that it is true he has issues
So why is it me who’s left holding the tissues?
I say that he’s wrong, that he’s missing a trick,
That giving up after four dates is just thick,
But there’s no point in fighting, he's drawn his conclusions,
And I’m not going to live with pathetic delusions.
So he leaves and I sit there, alone and bemused,
Bruised, refused, dazed, confused, quite unamused.

The hours go by slowly, his emails no longer
A highlight of work days, I slowly get stronger.
I still think about him too often, I know,
Although I’ve accepted I have to let go.
I know he had flaws but they weren’t deal-breakers –
It’s not like he wanted his kids to be Quakers.
I thought he was great, and it’s tough to admit
That my judgment was wrong and he’s really a git.
Well, OK, that’s too harsh, he’s not all that bad,
But surely he should be pursuing me like mad?
I’m clearly amazing, he must be insane
To be letting me go, for a life without Jane
Is not nearly so funny, or honest or thrilling;
In the cast list of London I’d give me top billing.

March
And now I look back on the saga, resigned.
I gave him my best, so I have peace of mind.
What’s good is that I still think I am a catch
And if he can’t see that, then we’re clearly no match.
I’ll trundle on forwards, to Lapland, beyond,
And then when the love god gives a wave of his wand
I’ll be ready and willing, albeit more cautious
The thought of this happening again makes me nauseous.
But opening one’s heart up to love is a gamble
It’s rarely plain-sailing, more often a scramble
O’er barnacled rocks that might just lead to heaven,
A private, untouched beach, a hot day in Devon,
Or, even more likely, a trip and a fall,
A grazed arm, a sprained leg, and joy? Bugger all.
But the risk that it might yet work out justifies
Continuing efforts, and many more tries.

I don’t need a boyfriend to buy me nice wine,
I pay my own mortgage, I’m doing just fine.
But that’s not to imply I don’t crave that sensation
Of strong arms around me (not a blood relation)
A deep voice that says ‘I’ll take good care of you’
A feeling of safety that seems overdue.
A sense of relief, it’s no longer just me –
No need to feel lonely, or all out at sea.
‘Til then I’ll continue to be young and glad
That I don’t have a boyfriend, they do drive me mad
With their moans and their lateness, their wet towels and snoring,
The un-PC jokes that recall Hermann Goering.
My life at the moment is totally easy,
I’m utterly selfish, sharing makes me queasy.
So maybe this whole thing’s a lucky escape
And one day the truth will begin to take shape.
For now I’ll continue to blunder with joy
And not let my smiles be dented by a boy.

Rave review

My routine when I go and see any culture, be it TV, film, art, theatre or opera is as follows: 1) Try to go in with an open mind. 2) Form my own opinion. 3) Force myself to see the other side - if I've loved it, try to guess how people will criticise it; if I've hated it, try to imagine why someone would love it, or (most often), if I've felt ambivalent, try to imagine why someone might give a shit. 4) Go home and read what the critics have said. 5) Digest. 6) Come up with a final verdict, taking everything into account. Fun to be me, isn't it? So footloose and fancy free? Nah, I do this readily, easily - it's not a chore, honest - I enjoy it.

So, last night I was lucky enough to be taken to see Jerusalem, currently the hottest play in the big smoke. It's had a brace of four and five star reviews from all the big papers, and won barrowloads of awards. I'd heard good things from friends and I was really looking forward to seeing it. I did not, however, know if I would like it. Good reviews from journos and friends do not automatically mean I'll enjoy something - and, in fact, in an unconscious effort to be deliberately obtuse, I think they often push me the other way. On this occasion, however, I will happily admit that they were right - I was captivated.

It was an amazing script, first and foremost. That was the best thing about it by a west country mile. Well-observed to the last syllable, the gags were topical, the references were spot on and the pacing was fantastic. The playwright, Jez Butterworth, found the perfect blend between classical allusion and timeless concepts of ownership and fairness, meaning that Jerusalem is accessible and challenging whether you're a theatre snob or a newbie who failed GCSE English. There's a fair bit of St George, William Blake, myth, legend, ley lines, spirituality, Shakespeare and Arden, and if you want to be poncey and compare the protagonist to Falstaff, Lear and Caliban, you can knock yourself out - but there are also mobile phones, Girls Aloud, drugs, all-night benders, The Prodigy, paedophilia, Trivial Pursuit, Morris dancing, giants, drums, BBC News West, a lot about the challenge, claustrophobia and limitations of growing up in a small Wiltshire village as well as a celebration of country life, the experiences borne out of boredom and the honesty that comes with the inability to be anonymous. I was agog.

And then there was Mark Rylance, labelled in our press as our best living actor. I'd never seen him before. He is really good. Rooster, the character he played, was phenomenal: grotesque, selfish, weak, aggressive, coarse, rude, greasy, physically damaged, emotionally horrifying, failed and angry, but generous, kind, struggling, vulnerable, incredibly charming and - yes - immensely attractive. A superb creation played to perfection.

Does it sum up modern Britain? Certainly it's a big chunk of what a lot of people feel. It's a comment on the English countryside so watching it in London felt a bit odd and removed, and there are definitely many general concerns in modern urban life that weren't touched upon, but that's not a criticism - better to do a few things to perfection than try to cover everything and fail. I wondered if the seven years I spent at a Wiltshire boarding school and the three years I spent at uni in Bristol gave me more of a connection (however tenuous) with what was going on than my life in the capital since. Place names such as Devizes, Wootton Bassett, Chippenham and Marlborough were all bandied around last night and it was immensely pleasurable when they fell on my ears; I'm not sure if that will resonate to quite the same extent with everyone.

Most affectingly, I felt - and perhaps it is the mark of a truly great piece of culture that everyone in the audience feels this in their own way - but I felt like it was written with someone like me in mind. I feel like I am lost in the no-man's land between the bored teens who just want acceptance and diversion, and the conservative townspeople who want order restored. My parents, and, in fact, the people I saw the play with last night, would have wanted Rooster out of his caravan faster than you can say 'Scarper'. I can see their point and I understand their reasoning - logically, I feel it too. But in my heart, I wanted him to carry on living right there in the forest, dealing drugs and behaving disgracefully. I don't know why - is it an immature desire to be a rebel, a childish refusal to conform? Perhaps. I'm certainly not holding myself up as a paragon of grown-up ideals, and maybe if I have kids one day I'll hate people like him, but last night I passionately wanted to protect and preserve the variety. The thought of sanitized order, manicured lawns, Singaporean cleanliness and Aryan purity scares the bejeezus out of me. The world needs Roosters. And I write this at home, while my downstairs neighbours are playing hard house so loudly that I can't hear my Sam Cooke. Maybe I should be annoyed, but I can't muster the energy. I love that they're enjoying themselves. Plus Sam Cooke is actually extremely out of tune. Seriously, listen to Lovable - it's painful.

My host complained that, at just over three hours including two intervals, the play was too long and self-indulgent, but I wouldn't have cut a moment: every exchange added something and I could have stayed longer. The set was breathtaking, and the direction was bold - I loved the fact that one of Rooster's most heartfelt outbursts was delivered into a video camera that was facing us, so that Rylance's back was to the audience throughout - an immense confidence in an actor's abilities.

So. I've seen it, I've read the reviews, I've listened to my friends and my own opinion and I've formed my Jerusalem verdict: possibly the best play I've ever seen, entertaining, funny, challenging and charming. I walked back to the tube, alone, and felt incredibly fortunate and full of joy. So why, then, did the snake return this morning? It's a mystery.

Live and let liver?

So do you like my new drawing? It's not quite as astonishing as I had imagined it, but then life rarely is. I like that the whale looks so happy.

I am happy today. I didn't go to the gym yesterday but I went this morning, and washed my hair, and now I am perky for no real reason. I met up with Em last night after work and we went to Tooting to be threaded at Shilpa's - 99p for eyebrows, it's a joke - and then for dinner at 409 in Clapham. It was nice. We shared foie gras to start, an example of my abject hypocrisy, where I disapprove of it with every cell in my body and yet can't resist it when I see it on a menu. Pathetic.

I was about to move on to another topic, but really, it is pathetic. OK. I'm going to address this. I'm off to Wikipedia....

...Right. Force feeding of birds has been going on since around 2500 BC, where the ancient Egyptians did it. I wonder if Joseph ate foie gras before the famine? I can just see him lying around in his dreamcoat and loin cloth, asking a nubile servant to bring him another tranche.

The Romans were fans, and apparently the emperor Elagabalus fed his dogs on it. That's a bit much, even for me. The last time I had a dog was a decade ago, but I'm pretty sure that if we'd given him pate, he would have been sick as... a dog. Very sick. But then Ernest was always a delicate fellow.

Anyway, back to the present - apparently France produced 18,450 tonnes of foie gras in 2005, which is 78.5% of the world's production. Hungary is the second largest producer. Apparently migratory birds are the best victims because they have a good capacity for weight gain (in preparation for their long journey). OK, this bit's worth pasting in:

"The geese or ducks used in foie gras production are usually kept in a building on straw for the first four weeks, then kept outside for some weeks, feeding on grasses. This phase of the preparation is designed to take advantage of the natural dilation capacity on the esophagus. The birds are then brought inside for gradually longer periods while introduced to a high starch diet. The next feeding phase, which the French call gavage, involves forced daily ingestion of controlled amounts of feed for 12 to 15 days with ducks and for 15 to 18 days with geese. During this phase ducks are usually fed twice daily while geese are fed up to 4 times daily. In order to facilitate handling of ducks during gavage, these birds are typically housed in individual cages or small group pens during this phase...

"The feed is administered using a funnel fitted with a long tube (20–30 cm long), which forces the feed into the animal's esophagus; if an auger is used, the feeding takes about 45 to 60 seconds. Modern systems usually use a tube fed by a pneumatic pump; with such a system the operation time per duck takes about 2 to 3 seconds. During feeding, efforts are made to avoid damaging the bird's esophagus, which could cause injury or death, although researchers have found evidence of inflammation of the walls of the proventriculus after the first session of force-feeding. Several studies have also demonstrated that mortality rates can be significantly elevated during the gavage period...

"Foie gras production has been banned in nations such as some members of the European Union, Turkey, and Israel because of the force-feeding process. Foie gras producers maintain that force feeding ducks and geese is not uncomfortable for the animals nor is it hazardous to their health."

OK. I feel bad about it. But is it worse than buying clothes that are made in sweatshops? I think it's less bad. I think I'd have to give up Primark before I gave up foie gras. And not just Primark. Pretty much shopping on the high street entirely. And, while I love vintage more than the next girl, second hand pants are not going to cut it with me. Then again, not giving up one bad thing because you do something that's even worse is just as pathetic as deliberately staying in denial about it all. So. Come on Jane. What are you going to do? Give it up, or continue to eat it despite knowing how it's made? Meh. I dunno. What do you think?

I'll tell you one thing for nothing. I bet my liver would be fucking delicious.

I fancy a Snickers. Unexpected craving.

Lost Looking For Energy

Ohgodohgod, so much to cover, so little desire to write about any of it, but so little desire to go to the gym, such dirty hair that should be washed, in the shower, after the gym, but which clearly could continue hiding under my attractive metallic blue hairband for the rest of the day and evening, but then I'm going to a swanky restaurant for dinner and it would be nice to feel glossy of barnet and facially pretty. Gah.

So it was the Oscars last night and the Stupid Hurt Locker won over Much More Stupid Avatar, so that was good, even though it wasn't NEARLY the best film, nor the best directed film. I can't work out whether I should be pleased a woman won or outraged that it's even an issue. I think I'm the latter. More importantly, no one wore an exciting dress at all, and SANDRA BULLOCK won an Oscar for some cheesy, vom-inducing role as some soccer mom or something FFS. Anyway. I slept through the whole thing and, in retrospect, I think that was the right choice.

Before that, I watched five hours of American Idol over the course of the weekend, which was brrrrrrrrilliant. This stage is gripping, when the final 24 get whittled down to 12, all 24 performing in a small studio every week. Their performances are really, really inconsistent and the judges' feedback is a lot more constructive in these early stages. It is genuinely fascinating. For me.

What else, what else? I saw Olivia and adorable Isla on Friday, and my parents, and there was An Incident at home at 1am on Saturday morning which I'm not allowed to discuss but which still makes me laugh so much that I get tears in my eyes. Later on Saturday we went, en famille, to B&Q in Wandsworth. I know. Could I be any more cutting edge? I bought storage boxes. Then we went to a couple of furniture shops and I bought a black ceramic swan. Then I went back to my flat and put all my stuff into my new storage boxes and rearranged my kitchen cupboards. On a Saturday night. I am old. On Sunday I went to Beckton Park to meet Kate who was FIFTY SIX MINUTES LATE and I sat in the freezing cold sun and read Prospect and then we walked nine miles, through Woolwich, under the Thames foot-tunnel (v. exciting), through Charlton and Eltham and then jumped on (read: waited for ages and then trudged aboard) a rail replacement bus back to New Cross, then London Bridge, then home for Ricicles. Yum. Still no sign of the snake but I can hear him hissing sometimes. It's definitely male.

Thrilled

Guess what I just caught myself doing. You'll never guess. I was whistling at my desk, proving without question that, for now, the snake has crept away. I can still see its tail-end, but it's definitely retreating, and I am watching it leave, waving it off with a maniacal grin on my mug. And it feels inCREDible, a new lease of life. I went for lovely gastropub chats with Kate and Ses last night and my perspective shifted, and today the sun is out, I ran for nearly five miles with Laura this morning through our beautiful city, over Waterloo Bridge, weaving around Southwark and back over London Bridge, up through Bank and back to the office, exclaiming every now and then at the architecture, stark white stone radiating against deep cyan, and making fun of an unfortunate man's running style. It was elating. And god it's good to be back.

Guess what I found out today? You'll never guess. Laura was telling me that Michelle told her that Lisa told her that a girl came out of our basement gym last week, went into the changing rooms and got into the shower, without her glasses (obv), and TROD IN A POO. Someone had had a poo in our work showers. Amazing.

God I'm excited. I feel like running through the streets singing and high fiving complete strangers. Also I feel like drinking a lot of white wine. Will do the latter but not the former. Woop.

Think positive

Meh. The Riesling was a bit too citrusy. I ate too much tuna pasta sauce and felt guilty about that, and the mature cheddar wasn't great quality so it wasn't quite worth the fat count. I watched Gran Torino but it wasn't nearly as good as I'd hoped. I went to bed early but I couldn't get to sleep and then I woke up on time but couldn't get out of bed. When I finally did, I made it to work and felt a bit blue, but I told myself I'd feel better having gone to the gym. I went to the gym a couple of hours ago and it was great, I genuinely loved it, but now I feel a bit blue again. And I lost 50p betting Laura that I could fit in a Mastercrate. Boo and meh. RIGHT. Let's be positive.

1. I have a Glasto solution - panic over.
2. It's ten days until my holiday-of-a-lifetime holiday.
3. The Dark Knight awaits me at home - surely a film that won't disappoint?
4. I have lovely people who want to see me tonight.
5. I'm going to see Jerusalem next week.
6. I feel better today than I did a few days ago.
7. Tonight I will apply fake tan and tomorrow I'll look better than I do today.

Well. That's OK then. In other news, did you hear about the fact that the recent Chile earthquake shook the earth a bit off its axis and now our days are slightly shorter? And I thought I was mental. Insania.

Honest to blog

So a guy came into my office this afternoon. I haven't seen him at work for a while but I was aware that he is one of the Faithful. He sat down and said he wanted to check I was OK, which was really nice of him. And it turned out that he was visibly shocked that I have depression. He'd had no idea, he said, and never would have guessed in a million years. It made me think.

I've never tried to hide it. And it's an illness that strikes every now and then to a point where, for a while, I am unable to function the way I normally do, so anyone close to me knows about it. I have talked several times on this blog about being on medication. But when I'm feeling good, it really isn't something I think about a lot. Actually, that's bollocks. I may not say it out loud, but I think about it every day, in much the same way that I imagine an ex-alcoholic thinks about his alcoholism. I thank my lucky stars, every single day, a) that I got depression in the first place and b) that I am one of the very fortunate ones who can live with it quite happily, 99% of the time. Because yes, I am grateful for it. The therapy I've had, the lessons I've learned, the decisions I've been forced to take as a result of it - I am, without question, utterly different than I would have been without the diagnosis and I am, I believe, a much happier, kinder, more appreciative, sensitive, relaxed individual, and I think I'll be a better friend and, one day, a better mother as a result. Obviously every now and then, the snake takes up residence, and that sucks. But we all have crosses to bear, and as far as the available crosses go, this one suits me OK.

That's not to say it's been easy, though. Grania arrived at midnight last night after I'd sent out a 3pm SOS admitting that I'd realised I wouldn't be able to leave the house this morning without third party assistance. We slept and then woke up early and did yoga, and I washed my hair and put on the clothes I'd laid out last night, and it was all going extremely well, and then we were outside and I put my key in the door and tried to turn it and burst into tears, and said I couldn't do it, even though inside my head I was shouting, 'OH COME ON you loser, turn the freaking key and go to work you cretin,' and eventually she coaxed me, sobbing as though something serious had happened, down the stairs of my building and outside, ignoring my teary suggestion that I couldn't go to work because I was too ugly, and eventually I followed her uncomplainingly, and we crossed the road, and she herded me, sheepdog-like, into the tube station, sensibly worried that I might dart back home the moment her back was turned, and I went through the barriers and down the escalators on my own, and got on the tube, and twenty minutes later I was literally fine. Fragile and shattered, but fine.

Anyway, the point was, why mention it? There's a stigma about depression. Some people find it shocking. Why not just shut up about it, keep schtum, and restrict myself to talking about tripping up the stairs in front of Lily Allen or similar? [NB this has not yet happened]. It's such a big part of who I am, though. Not always obvious, but always there - like diabetes. Writing about the past few days and not mentioning it would have felt like lying. And not writing anything at all for the past few days would have felt dishonest too, like this blog is only about the good times, whereas I believe strongly that LLFF is for the rough and the smooth. I have a lot of smooth, so it's only fair to admit that there's rough too. If not, you'd just get a sanitized version of a life, just another stream of 'Wheeee, I'm off on holiday!' and 'Look! Another really fun thing happened to me!' inanity - and we've all got far too much access to that kind of edited crap on Facebook. I am mostly great, but I sometimes suck, and if I were reading about you, I wouldn't want just one or the other as it would smack of bullshit. And really, there's no significant downside to the honesty policy besides the fact that no one who reads it will ever want to marry me. But fortunately, I don't want to get married anyway, so who's laughing now? Hmmm? [Note to self: this is utterly unconvincing]. Still, I'm guessing they were going to find out sooner or later. [Note to self: this argument is flawed. When it comes to major personality disorders, later tends to be better]. OK shut up.

So anyway, now I'm back home, knackered after a long day, and I have no idea how tomorrow morning will pan out but I'm going it alone so fingers crossed. I feel - tentatively - as though this stint is broken, though. I have high hopes that the snake is retreating. And, all being well, that'll be it for the next few months or years. I had a knock, and I got sick, and it spiralled. These things happen. But after a tough week or so, I'm on the upswing, I'm doing my best and that is, as we all know full well, all we can do. On tonight's menu, a dry Riesling that Simon bought me for my birthday in 2007, and a guilty pleasure dinner: homemade tomato and tuna pasta sauce with caramalised onions and garlic. But no pasta. Just a thick layer of mature cheddar. Mmmmmmm. Molten cheeeeeeeeese. Heroin chic, fortunately, is so last decade.

Avatarrible (eek soz)

On Friday night, before my self-imposed incarceration began, I went to see Avatar. It seems like an extremely long time ago that I was seated in the Imax, but I feel as though I must dredge up my memories as a public service, in the hope that they might dissuade any of you yet to sit through it from making a similar mistake.

I was at university in Bristol the last time I saw a James Cameron film, and I walked out of Titanic before it finished. I did not expect Avatar to be good. But I didn't expect it to be terrible. I had thought, since it has been nominated for so many awards, including nine Oscars, that there may be some elements of positivity therein. Sadly, I was uncharacteristically mistaken. It was abysmal. And I know there are people out there, friends of mine, who enjoyed it. I tell you this: I'm sorry, but you were wrong. You need to go home, sit on your own, and think about your powers of judgment. You are allowed to say you enjoyed it 'in spite of yourself'. You are allowed to have been briefly diverted by it. But you are not allowed to think it was genuinely good.

For it was not. Not even the much-hyped 3D, which was ok, but not flawless - and there's still a part of me that feels like it's cheating. If a film needs 3D to work on the most basic level, it's not good enough, and Avatar needs 3D. Obviously, the movie works. It is the most successful film of all time, and even I will concede that, given our currently capitalist society, that's undeniably pretty successful. I'd happily argue that Shakespeare is overrated and/or that crumpets are slimming, but I won't try to deny Cameron's box office success. Of course, we all know that a film's success doesn't equate to its worth.

Avatar works, but it's crap. Why? My first major complaint is the script, which was a by-numbers rubbish Hollywood action flick script. If I'd had to write a spoof, I'd have used many of the same lines - at one point, the baddie is shooting at a monster, snarling, "Come to poppa." It is absurdly lazy and heaving with clichés. Yes, the audience loved it, so it worked. But it was crap. Secondly, there was the plot, also astoundingly lazy and heaving with clichés, from the disabled hero who finds his feet in the new world to the gruff and tough female boss who softens over time; from the daughter who loses a father and finds a father-figure to the arrogant sidekick who gains a new respect for his co-worker's intuitive abilities and realises that science isn't everything. Yawn. And don't get me started on the portrayal of the relationships between men and women in the movie, or between humans and the benign, nature-loving aliens. It's meant to be so fuzzy and equal, but male humans come out as supreme overall, with the major females either kowtowing or dying. The king alien's death elicits a momentary howl of sadness from his daughter, but the sickness of a human causes hundreds of aliens to drop everything and enter a powerful vigil state. Growl.

Thirdly, there are the themes: humanity's disrespect for the environment, the privileging of money over nature, of greed and selfishness over instinctive generosity, of science over creativity, of the appeal of short term gain over the threat long term destruction, of having to possess rather than appreciate something in situ - not terrible themes when taken individually, sure, but not necessary all in the same movie. Due to this absurdly epic sweep, or, rather, the director's complete inability to leave any stone unturned, all this was hammered home with the subtlety of a hammer to the temple over the course of 162 minutes. And yes, you read that correctly. Two hours and forty two minutes, during which time the four teenagers sitting approximately seven rows behind me did not stop talking once. Not once. Not when Jake Sully was being covered in tiny white jellyfish spores, not when the two avatars were mating under the magic tree, not when the forest was being destroyed by the big mean bulldozers. It was relentless. But no one else shushed them and I was scared in case they pelted me with sweets.

Anyway. It was derivative, sloppy, lazy, blundering nonsense that made The Hurt Locker look like On The Waterfront. I thought I'd panic if Kathryn Bigelow won the Oscar, but if James Cameron gets it, I swear I'll never give a shit about the Academy Awards again, and in future will treat them as a gripping red carpet fashion show that ends the moment people go inside the Kodak theatre. Bet he's quaking in his boots.

They don't make 'em like they used to

Just finished watching brilliant BBC Four documentary about Clement Freud. Typed out several choice gems, but this one has to be shared:

"I heard rather a nice story about a man who drank a lot. His wife said, 'If you ever come home drunk again, I'm going to leave you.' And he went out and drank an awful lot, and threw up all over himself and said to his friend, 'If I go home like this, my wife is going to leave me.' His friend said, 'I'll tell you what, go home, and tell her somebody threw up over you, and put a £20 note in your jacket pocket, and show that to her, and tell her that they gave it to you for the dry cleaning bill.' And so he goes home, and he says, 'No, listen, someone threw up over me, and they gave me £20 for the cleaning bill.' And she says, 'Well why have you got two £20 notes in your pocket then?' And he says, 'Oh, the other one is from the man who shat in my pants.'"

Message from the dark side

Depression is the most extraordinary thing. For me, it's not so much the black dog with a pink tongue and a tail as a poisonous snake. I really feel it worming its way into my being, physically, pulling the backs of my eyes and tightening round my larynx, pushing down on my brain and constricting my stomach.

It started a week ago when a man I had thought was amazing suddenly announced that he didn't feel the same thing about me. That was the kick-off point. As an experienced depressive, I knew full well that there are only two things I absolutely must to do when something upsets me: 1) keep busy and 2) exercise every single day without fail. That's literally it. Other things that help are 3) don't drink too much booze and 4) don't drink too much caffeine. And normally, I would have done those things, and everything would have been fine. The nightmare this time was that I immediately came down with Girl Flu, which meant I was too ill to exercise, and too ill too socialise. Within a few days, the depression symptoms descended. I could feel them coming and tried to pretend it wasn't happening, but deep down I knew it was going to get me, and by then I was utterly powerless to do anything about it.

On Friday night, I went out with Kate, came home, and then didn't leave the flat for the rest of the weekend. I didn't want to see anyone, and I certainly didn't want anyone to see me. All I could do to distract myself was watch bad TV. Reading isn't powerful enough when I feel like this, nor is music or the radio. I need as many senses as possible to be occupied.

Self-obsessive that I am, it's always interesting to me to watch myself getting depressed. It's like I'm slightly schizophrenic. On one level, I know full well how lucky I am. I am not that bothered about the guy, and genuinely believe it is his loss as much as mine. I know I am attractive enough, and funny, talented, and kind, and that I have a ridiculously easy life. I am grateful for so much. I have lovely friends who simply wouldn't like me if I was a pain in the ass, so I must be OK. I know that, just a few weeks ago, I felt perfectly content. I am very aware that absolutely nothing has changed - I am still exactly the same person I was then. In fact, I'm even fractionally thinner, so that's good. But depression makes me use a vocabulary I don't normally access. Even though I know all that good stuff is true on a logical level, on a subconscious level, I start to disbelieve it. Depression makes me think I'm a failure. It highlights everything I do wrong, and laughs at my successes, telling me they're paltry. Where I am usually uber-confident, suddenly the thought of speaking to anyone fills me with fear. I can't make eye-contact. I dread the phone ringing. The thought of getting on a tube, having to stand close to another human, makes me cry. My appetite disappears. I have constant, CONSTANT butterflies, as though I am awaiting the result of my own murder trial. It is exhausting. I can't sleep at night, but as soon as 8am comes around, I can't stay awake. My dreams are (as discussed) shatteringly vivid, so when I do shut my eyes, I know I won't get any rest.

And all along, I'm saying to myself, 'This is an illusion, you melodramatic moron. You have been happy, non-stop, for a year. This is a tiny, irrelevant blip. You know you are actually fantastically lucky and very content. This brief spell has been brought on by the unfortunate and rare combination of a self-confidence knock and a week without the serotonin boost that you get from regular exercise.' So I feel like crap, and then I tell myself that I'm a dick for feeling like crap. It's a really fun cycle.

Yesterday I made myself do yoga. I can't do any cardio because I would cough up my lungs and possibly my stomach, but yoga was good. I told myself I would get up early this morning and do it again before going to work. But when my alarm went off, things were bad. I had woken up from nightmares several times, drenched in sweat, livid to have perspired all over my clean sheets. There was simply no way I could face my office. But now it's 15:30. I did yoga again at about 11am, had a shower, burst into tears for no reason, got back into bed, and then pulled myself together and got dressed in normal clothes. Having been wearing pyjamas since Friday, this was a turning point. The plan was to get myself out of the flat. And, about 45 minutes ago, I finally made it. I ran down to the postbox to mail back Blade Runner. I forced myself onwards. It is the most stunning spring day in London, which is ironically a massive problem when you're depressed. Feeling negative when it's chucking it down outside is one thing. Feeling negative when the world is all clear blue and warm sun makes you feel like the loneliest, most isolated idiot on earth. How can you not be happy when it's so beautiful? You must be seriously screwed up, and it's scary. But I strode on, almost running. It is a deeply unpleasant sensation when merely being outside in the open makes you feel so odd, highlighting how different you are, making you think 'Failure, failure'. It seemed like everyone was staring at me, thinking how ugly I looked without makeup. I clutched my arms round my waist, defensive, don't look at me. I couldn't make eye-contact with anyone, I just wanted to get back to my flat, but I knew that if I returned too quickly it could make things even worse, an aborted attempt, another fail. I made it to my local shop and tried to find something to buy. Nothing appealed. I saw Cheryl Cole on the front of The Sun, saying she was worried about being single, and once again I berated myself for having the audacity to complain. You are so lucky, you are so lucky, I said to myself as I walked round the shop feeling like the biggest reject in the world. The fruit and veg looked horrible. I considered buying a bag of Snack a Jacks but at 59p for a handful of MSG-flavoured polystyrene discs, I felt I was being ripped off. I left the shop and strode up the road, crossed the street and entered the park. Finally I made myself drop my arms to my side. Then I made myself slow down and breathe. Then I went into the flower garden and made myself sit on a bench in the sun, but that proved to be too much stillness. Sensing that tears were just a few minutes away, I stood up and walked on. I walked for about twenty minutes, past tufted clumps of crocuses and snowdrops, crows wheeling overhead, and then I came home. And I do feel better. The virus will pass, I know - the snake will slowly slither away to wherever it goes the rest of the time, when I'm feeling normal. I'll do yoga again this evening, and tomorrow I will go to work even if I have to pay for a taxi to take me there. And in a few more days I'll be back at the gym and this will all seem like a dark memory. Can't wait for that. But right now, this is me, in the pit, and I just thought I'd tell the Faithful what it feels like down here. I wouldn't wish it on any of you, but I'll tell you one thing: there's nothing like it for making you grateful for mere existence when it's gone. Hugs and kisses from the dark side.