Thanks to everyone who commented on yesterday's blog. It appears that I have a lot of existential philosophers among my Faithful, as well as one who's a fan of hipster llamas. And it could be said that some people seem keen to comment without actually having read what I've written. Which is fine. Maybe I still didn't make myself clear. Whatevs. I remain, drifting meaninglessly through time, working to come to terms with that, and trying not to criticise myself 24/7. My desire to become content with my own averageness isn't being helped by several gorgeous friends who keep stoking my ego by telling me that they believe in me and think I really can do something important, valuable and out-of-the-ordinary with my time - even if it is forgotten ten seconds after I'm six feet under. And of course I've still got my parents, who couldn't be more supportive if they stood around wearing matching games skirts and waving pompoms. Plus I have recently received undeniable proof that approximately 78% of the last few days' panic and introspection was probably down to overactive hormones. ANYWAY. I have simultaneously managed to 1) buy Take That tickets and 2) watch the below (found thanks to the peerless B3ta), which made me smile. Hope you enjoy it. Bon weekend.
Friday, 29 October 2010
Thursday, 28 October 2010
View from the near bottom
Maybe I've reached the limits of what I can blog about. It's all kicking off in my head - but perhaps I shouldn't have tried to type it. I don't think I can explain what I'm going through without trivialising it or misrepresenting it. Everything I wrote yesterday was true, but it's not the whole story, and what I've realised is that, by attempting to articulate what's wrong, it becomes bitesize and measurable, and the gulf between what you've packaged for others' consumption versus the total pus-filled mess that you're feeling inside is too large to cross.
I've tried in the past to explain to friends what I am feeling, and despite their best efforts to empathise or help change my warped, over-negative perspectives, I just end up feeling worse. They look at you with their heads on one side, and I can hear them thinking, 'You don't deserve my sympathy. This is ridiculous, you're absolutely fine, stop complaining!' And I think, 'You're right, you're right, I know you're right, I should be feeling fine,' but inside I'm thinking, 'You ungrateful bitch - you are so lucky but you're wasting your life feeling awful. Pull yourself together.'
I'm trying.
(Yes, yes, I know, trying in both senses - excuse me while I don my custom-designed abdominal support to prevent my sides from taking leave of each other).
In a final attempt to clarify: there's the surface problem, detailed yesterday, i.e. the fairly common what-am-I-doing-here? existential crisis, where I feel unfulfilled and like I'm wasting my life. I do fear failure and I do worry that I should be achieving more with my life - just like a lot of people. But (hopefully unlike the vast majority of you) I also criticise Every Single Thing that I do. Every outfit I wear, every haircut I have, every hobby I'm a part of, every meal I order, my handwriting, my face, my bra size, my feet, my voice (speaking and singing, for different reasons), my intellect, my desires, every boyfriend I go out with, every job I get, every decision I make, the trips I take, the parties I host, the food I cook, the presents I buy, my posture, my time-keeping, my ukulele-playing, my photographs, this blog - none of my achievements are ever, EVER good enough. Every single minute, I am criticising myself and pointing out what I should be doing that would be an improvement on what I'm actually doing.
Write something hilarious? You're still overweight. Make a friend smile? You're still single. Spark the interest of an attractive man? It won't last. Say something intelligent? The gaps in your knowledge are stratospheric, don't feel pleased with yourself for a nanosecond - you are not a contender for anything. I'm left feeling as though everything I touch turns to insignificance and that I have to invent Facebook or cause a food revolution to be justify my place on earth, all the while knowing full well that whatever goals I attain, as soon as I get them, they'll be meaningless too, because nothing I do is ever good enough.
Wherever I go, there I am.
There'd be no point moving to the country - I'd still beat up on myself every waking moment. And sincere thanks to the other commenter who told me to look at the positives. You are 100% right - and I do try, I promise. However, as every depressive knows, one of the worst things about depression is how self-indulgent and guilty we feel for being anything other than slavishly grateful. We know we have strengths, we know how lucky we are, we know that we can walk and talk and live and breathe and that it could be so much worse - but yet we still feel constant mental pain. It's not rational - it's an illness, a curse, a mindset, a plague.
I said to my therapist last night, 'Don't you listen to people like me and just think, SHUT UP?' and she solemnly said, 'I never think that.' And I thought, 'Wow. You're a saint.' Because I think that all the time about myself. Not that I'm a saint. That I should shut up. Every single day I show myself the countless positives about my life and thank my lucky stars that I have a roof over my head and employment and a wonderful family and such gorgeous friends - but underneath it all, there's a voice that looks at everything I do, and says, over and over again, "Jane? Are you listening to me? I have something to say. Are you ready? Here it is. You are a failure."
The good news? As noted in the title, I'm not quite at the bottom, because I still wholeheartedly believe that it's possible to change the habits of a lifetime. The only way is up and I'm pretty confident that I'll get there. It takes a lot of work to confront these things - it's not easy nor particularly pleasant, but with the right combination of therapy, medication, my gorgeous parents and my (as discussed) fantastically fortunate life, I am sure I will get better in time. Bear with me, Faithful. This too shall pass.
Right! That was fun, wasn't it?! I'm off to re-read Dr. Cantopher.
I've tried in the past to explain to friends what I am feeling, and despite their best efforts to empathise or help change my warped, over-negative perspectives, I just end up feeling worse. They look at you with their heads on one side, and I can hear them thinking, 'You don't deserve my sympathy. This is ridiculous, you're absolutely fine, stop complaining!' And I think, 'You're right, you're right, I know you're right, I should be feeling fine,' but inside I'm thinking, 'You ungrateful bitch - you are so lucky but you're wasting your life feeling awful. Pull yourself together.'
I'm trying.
(Yes, yes, I know, trying in both senses - excuse me while I don my custom-designed abdominal support to prevent my sides from taking leave of each other).
In a final attempt to clarify: there's the surface problem, detailed yesterday, i.e. the fairly common what-am-I-doing-here? existential crisis, where I feel unfulfilled and like I'm wasting my life. I do fear failure and I do worry that I should be achieving more with my life - just like a lot of people. But (hopefully unlike the vast majority of you) I also criticise Every Single Thing that I do. Every outfit I wear, every haircut I have, every hobby I'm a part of, every meal I order, my handwriting, my face, my bra size, my feet, my voice (speaking and singing, for different reasons), my intellect, my desires, every boyfriend I go out with, every job I get, every decision I make, the trips I take, the parties I host, the food I cook, the presents I buy, my posture, my time-keeping, my ukulele-playing, my photographs, this blog - none of my achievements are ever, EVER good enough. Every single minute, I am criticising myself and pointing out what I should be doing that would be an improvement on what I'm actually doing.
Write something hilarious? You're still overweight. Make a friend smile? You're still single. Spark the interest of an attractive man? It won't last. Say something intelligent? The gaps in your knowledge are stratospheric, don't feel pleased with yourself for a nanosecond - you are not a contender for anything. I'm left feeling as though everything I touch turns to insignificance and that I have to invent Facebook or cause a food revolution to be justify my place on earth, all the while knowing full well that whatever goals I attain, as soon as I get them, they'll be meaningless too, because nothing I do is ever good enough.
Wherever I go, there I am.
There'd be no point moving to the country - I'd still beat up on myself every waking moment. And sincere thanks to the other commenter who told me to look at the positives. You are 100% right - and I do try, I promise. However, as every depressive knows, one of the worst things about depression is how self-indulgent and guilty we feel for being anything other than slavishly grateful. We know we have strengths, we know how lucky we are, we know that we can walk and talk and live and breathe and that it could be so much worse - but yet we still feel constant mental pain. It's not rational - it's an illness, a curse, a mindset, a plague.
I said to my therapist last night, 'Don't you listen to people like me and just think, SHUT UP?' and she solemnly said, 'I never think that.' And I thought, 'Wow. You're a saint.' Because I think that all the time about myself. Not that I'm a saint. That I should shut up. Every single day I show myself the countless positives about my life and thank my lucky stars that I have a roof over my head and employment and a wonderful family and such gorgeous friends - but underneath it all, there's a voice that looks at everything I do, and says, over and over again, "Jane? Are you listening to me? I have something to say. Are you ready? Here it is. You are a failure."
The good news? As noted in the title, I'm not quite at the bottom, because I still wholeheartedly believe that it's possible to change the habits of a lifetime. The only way is up and I'm pretty confident that I'll get there. It takes a lot of work to confront these things - it's not easy nor particularly pleasant, but with the right combination of therapy, medication, my gorgeous parents and my (as discussed) fantastically fortunate life, I am sure I will get better in time. Bear with me, Faithful. This too shall pass.
Right! That was fun, wasn't it?! I'm off to re-read Dr. Cantopher.
Wednesday, 27 October 2010
Let the self-pity begin
Be gentle with me, Faithful, for I am feeling well fragile today innit. If my eyes were plugholes, the tears would burbling up through the U-bend and heading for daylight.
The almost-four-month boyban has been amazing in illustrating that I was pretty much obsessively judging my success as a woman on whether or not a man was telling me I was attractive and good company. With dating forbidden and no flirtatious emails to distract me, I can clearly see the error of my way: I was doggedly pursuing a goal, thinking it would bring me a sense of self/satisfaction/fulfillment, when in fact we all know that getting a boyfriend is not really the answer to any of the above - and if it is, it shouldn't be. So it's been good, I've got a new sense of perspective and I am sincerely glad of that.
However, it probably won't surprise many of you clever readers that, if you take away someone's raison d'etre (however unhealthy it was) without lining up anything else to replace it, an existential crisis is fairly inevitable. And so, ta da, here I am, no career to speak of, no babies, in a society where having one or the other is pretty much essential if you're going to have any sense of self-worth. Oh, and I'm an atheist, so the world's best psychological crutch isn't an option for me either. You're left with a verbose hedonist with no sense of purpose, just night after night of pleasant, middle-class pasttimes. I am one big fat hobby.
In the meantime, Grania has spent the last several months dedicating almost all her time to preparing for some of the toughest exams I've ever known, learning a zillion planning laws and documenting her every waking action, turning down countless fun events to pursue her goal. And Sarah's been promoted, and Sara's started a new role helping people, and Kate is bursting with job satisfaction, and Olivia's been promoted and got pregnant again, and Mills has had her second child, and Lucy's dealing with her existing two, and Em and Erf are on honeymoon, and Marina, Justin and Lucy G are changing the media world, and Lilly's going freelance, and Charlie's had Gabriel, and Nick's doing his writing course and an internship while being Deputy Editor, and Georgie's directing, and Hatta and Astrid are engaged, and two other friends are trying for babies but it's all hush hush, and Don's making a feature film, and Ed's having intimate dinners at The Wolsey with A listers.
And I know, I know, everyone can take this kind of highlights-only snapshot of their friends, filtering out the quotidian, ignoring the fact that everyone has down days and everyone panics, but it's human nature to compare ourselves to our peers.
I can only see three ways to cope with this kind of barrage of achievement:
1. Persuade myself that I'm still valid, but in some different way. I am finding this difficult.
2. Find new meaning elsewhere under some previously unturned rock.
3. Accept, as my mother suggested, that my time will come, and right now just "bob along" (her words).
I love my mother so much it hurts, but 3. makes me feel like self-harming. It is excellent, measured advice and I desperately wish I could take it; being carried along like a brightly-coloured rubber duckie in a burbling countryside stream, letting the current take me where it will, well, it'd no doubt be good for me, relinquishing control, enjoying the view, but... well, I can't help but feel that time is running out. Not to have kids, necessarily. But to do something. I'm 33. I'm never going to be any younger than I am now, or have any fewer responsibilities. I was already feeling like I was a bit of a wasted opportunity. Then I watched Jamie's American Food Revolution.
That guy, annoying though his perpetual "bruvva"s unquestionably are, is an extraordinary and inspiring force for good. He's married with three kids, and he clearly loves his family dearly, but he has realised that he has a position in society that can change a lot of people's lives for the better. He has a clear mission - to encourage people to eat more healthily; to make cooking from scratch appear easy enough that people turn to it instead of ordering a pizza; and, ultimately, to save lives. It's an amazing goal, and he's already pretty damn rich, owning assets worth tens of millions - but he's still pursuing his mission, heading out to spend three months in Los Angeles early next year to film a second series of his Emmy Award-winning show. He is attacked and ridiculed wherever he goes, but he doggedly continues, spending precious time away from his loved ones, because he believes in what he's doing, and because he is sure that he can make a difference.
I am jealous of his mission. I want one.
And then, as a nailgun in the face to any specks of optimism I'd salvaged, last night, Luke and I saw The Social Network. Bloody hell, where do these people get their drive from? Their certainty that their ideas are valid? Their optimism and confidence, that sense of entitlement, that if they think it's a good idea, it obviously is? The determination to stop gassing about it and actually sit down and fucking do it? I just whitter on, it'd be nice to do this, that'd be brilliant, but I never commit, I'm terrified of failure, and moreover I fear the claustrophobia of being trapped. What if my idea was good? Then I'd have to do it and I'd miss out on doing other stuff. Plus I'm already really tired.
So I do bob along, but resentfully, doing nothing except inhaling as much of this beautiful city as I can take in, and waiting for my Facebook, my Food Revolution, to hit me square between the eyes so that I can start work. Problem is, I know that that's not how reality works. Meaning is often only visible in retrospect. Life missions aren't always obvious at the time. They creep up. They need leaps of faith. They need hard work over long periods of time. They need blind commitment. And they don't always end in positive results. I'm categorically rubbish at dealing with every single one of those things. Need someone with a short attention span who'll tackle a high-profile project, complete it to her own absurdly high standards in two weeks and then, with a rush of 'problem solved' satisfaction, move on in a flurry, never to give it another instant's thought? I'm your gal. Need consistent, shire horse effort over years to lovingly create something that lasts, often for little reward, someone who doesn't let failure get her down, who doesn't crave recognition? Move right along. Nothing to see here.
That book you think I should write? Two years on one project that will be criticised by strangers? Not my idea of fun. The presenting work I could maybe do? I look too fat on camera and I stop being funny because I get too nervous. Politics? MPs have to work too hard and they get criticised. Lobbyist could be good but I can never find an issue that sustains my interest more than any other. I'm not academic or enough of a brown-noser to get into a thinktank or any massive corporation. I hate sucking up to people. I hate toeing the party line. But then I got extremely depressed when I was freelance: irregular hours, irregular funds, irregular job satisfaction, having to be pathetically grateful for every commission and never knowing if the next paycheque would be the last. And with a mortgage to pay, I can't afford to be skint. I want regular hours, recognition for hard work, a sense that I'm contributing to a greater good, a salary that will cover my pension (thanks for the terror lesson, mum), and my evenings and weekends free for wine. It's the blight of an only child: I'm not sufficiently gifted to excel, but I'm too full of myself to bear being average. And I am appalling at compromise.
Don't worry, my weekly therapy session is in under an hour. I'm sure absolutely everything will be solved then.
The almost-four-month boyban has been amazing in illustrating that I was pretty much obsessively judging my success as a woman on whether or not a man was telling me I was attractive and good company. With dating forbidden and no flirtatious emails to distract me, I can clearly see the error of my way: I was doggedly pursuing a goal, thinking it would bring me a sense of self/satisfaction/fulfillment, when in fact we all know that getting a boyfriend is not really the answer to any of the above - and if it is, it shouldn't be. So it's been good, I've got a new sense of perspective and I am sincerely glad of that.
However, it probably won't surprise many of you clever readers that, if you take away someone's raison d'etre (however unhealthy it was) without lining up anything else to replace it, an existential crisis is fairly inevitable. And so, ta da, here I am, no career to speak of, no babies, in a society where having one or the other is pretty much essential if you're going to have any sense of self-worth. Oh, and I'm an atheist, so the world's best psychological crutch isn't an option for me either. You're left with a verbose hedonist with no sense of purpose, just night after night of pleasant, middle-class pasttimes. I am one big fat hobby.
In the meantime, Grania has spent the last several months dedicating almost all her time to preparing for some of the toughest exams I've ever known, learning a zillion planning laws and documenting her every waking action, turning down countless fun events to pursue her goal. And Sarah's been promoted, and Sara's started a new role helping people, and Kate is bursting with job satisfaction, and Olivia's been promoted and got pregnant again, and Mills has had her second child, and Lucy's dealing with her existing two, and Em and Erf are on honeymoon, and Marina, Justin and Lucy G are changing the media world, and Lilly's going freelance, and Charlie's had Gabriel, and Nick's doing his writing course and an internship while being Deputy Editor, and Georgie's directing, and Hatta and Astrid are engaged, and two other friends are trying for babies but it's all hush hush, and Don's making a feature film, and Ed's having intimate dinners at The Wolsey with A listers.
And I know, I know, everyone can take this kind of highlights-only snapshot of their friends, filtering out the quotidian, ignoring the fact that everyone has down days and everyone panics, but it's human nature to compare ourselves to our peers.
I can only see three ways to cope with this kind of barrage of achievement:
1. Persuade myself that I'm still valid, but in some different way. I am finding this difficult.
2. Find new meaning elsewhere under some previously unturned rock.
3. Accept, as my mother suggested, that my time will come, and right now just "bob along" (her words).
I love my mother so much it hurts, but 3. makes me feel like self-harming. It is excellent, measured advice and I desperately wish I could take it; being carried along like a brightly-coloured rubber duckie in a burbling countryside stream, letting the current take me where it will, well, it'd no doubt be good for me, relinquishing control, enjoying the view, but... well, I can't help but feel that time is running out. Not to have kids, necessarily. But to do something. I'm 33. I'm never going to be any younger than I am now, or have any fewer responsibilities. I was already feeling like I was a bit of a wasted opportunity. Then I watched Jamie's American Food Revolution.
That guy, annoying though his perpetual "bruvva"s unquestionably are, is an extraordinary and inspiring force for good. He's married with three kids, and he clearly loves his family dearly, but he has realised that he has a position in society that can change a lot of people's lives for the better. He has a clear mission - to encourage people to eat more healthily; to make cooking from scratch appear easy enough that people turn to it instead of ordering a pizza; and, ultimately, to save lives. It's an amazing goal, and he's already pretty damn rich, owning assets worth tens of millions - but he's still pursuing his mission, heading out to spend three months in Los Angeles early next year to film a second series of his Emmy Award-winning show. He is attacked and ridiculed wherever he goes, but he doggedly continues, spending precious time away from his loved ones, because he believes in what he's doing, and because he is sure that he can make a difference.
I am jealous of his mission. I want one.
And then, as a nailgun in the face to any specks of optimism I'd salvaged, last night, Luke and I saw The Social Network. Bloody hell, where do these people get their drive from? Their certainty that their ideas are valid? Their optimism and confidence, that sense of entitlement, that if they think it's a good idea, it obviously is? The determination to stop gassing about it and actually sit down and fucking do it? I just whitter on, it'd be nice to do this, that'd be brilliant, but I never commit, I'm terrified of failure, and moreover I fear the claustrophobia of being trapped. What if my idea was good? Then I'd have to do it and I'd miss out on doing other stuff. Plus I'm already really tired.
So I do bob along, but resentfully, doing nothing except inhaling as much of this beautiful city as I can take in, and waiting for my Facebook, my Food Revolution, to hit me square between the eyes so that I can start work. Problem is, I know that that's not how reality works. Meaning is often only visible in retrospect. Life missions aren't always obvious at the time. They creep up. They need leaps of faith. They need hard work over long periods of time. They need blind commitment. And they don't always end in positive results. I'm categorically rubbish at dealing with every single one of those things. Need someone with a short attention span who'll tackle a high-profile project, complete it to her own absurdly high standards in two weeks and then, with a rush of 'problem solved' satisfaction, move on in a flurry, never to give it another instant's thought? I'm your gal. Need consistent, shire horse effort over years to lovingly create something that lasts, often for little reward, someone who doesn't let failure get her down, who doesn't crave recognition? Move right along. Nothing to see here.
That book you think I should write? Two years on one project that will be criticised by strangers? Not my idea of fun. The presenting work I could maybe do? I look too fat on camera and I stop being funny because I get too nervous. Politics? MPs have to work too hard and they get criticised. Lobbyist could be good but I can never find an issue that sustains my interest more than any other. I'm not academic or enough of a brown-noser to get into a thinktank or any massive corporation. I hate sucking up to people. I hate toeing the party line. But then I got extremely depressed when I was freelance: irregular hours, irregular funds, irregular job satisfaction, having to be pathetically grateful for every commission and never knowing if the next paycheque would be the last. And with a mortgage to pay, I can't afford to be skint. I want regular hours, recognition for hard work, a sense that I'm contributing to a greater good, a salary that will cover my pension (thanks for the terror lesson, mum), and my evenings and weekends free for wine. It's the blight of an only child: I'm not sufficiently gifted to excel, but I'm too full of myself to bear being average. And I am appalling at compromise.
Don't worry, my weekly therapy session is in under an hour. I'm sure absolutely everything will be solved then.
Monday, 25 October 2010
Take the cakes (and shove them)
This morning, the devil's own email newsletter, Daily Candy, sent all its readers a link to this webpage, which included instructions on how to make decorative cake balls. See these Hallowe'en themed ones below:
The instructions for making the basic shape are nine pages long. The ones above are finished off with edible marker pen and a green Tic-tac. You are also invited to coo over the Christmas ones, below - Frosty's hat is crafted from a lovingly-altered miniature Oreo cookie and his nose is a candy-dipped sunflower seed.
And that's when I lost it.
While I have no doubt that I would enjoy eating one of these little blighters, I genuinely, hand on heart, believe that the person who created these, and the people who thought we should, out of EVERYTHING GOING ON IN LONDON, a city of NINE MILLION SOULS, be pressed upon to recreate these, well, I think it is time for their friends and family to stage an intervention ending in some sort of permanent incarceration and hourly mocking.
In the list of things people should be doing with their oh-so-brief time on this fascinating planet, dipping sunflower seeds in molten orange candy in order to use them as a faux-tiny-carrot for the nose of a reconstituted cake ball snowman is about ninety eight billionth, several hundred thousand below causing deliberate harm to a third person, staring into space for days on end and eating more pizza even though you're fat and already full. At least kicking a dog would end up with one feeling some remorse, or, in the case of catbin lady, cause a media furore that might teach someone a valuable lesson.
Spending hours on end making miniature cakes with inventive tiny accessories is guaranteed to end only in pathological smugness, the only cure for which is death, and guaranteed years in therapy for any offspring of these carefree people, and so I sincerely implore anyone who's already begun stockpiling ingredients for these tiny existence-thieves to please, take those plastic sticks you bought to support your creations, and ram them slowly into your eyes as a permanent lesson that you must never, ever waste your precious life in such an imbecilic and desultory way ever again.
The instructions for making the basic shape are nine pages long. The ones above are finished off with edible marker pen and a green Tic-tac. You are also invited to coo over the Christmas ones, below - Frosty's hat is crafted from a lovingly-altered miniature Oreo cookie and his nose is a candy-dipped sunflower seed.
And that's when I lost it.
While I have no doubt that I would enjoy eating one of these little blighters, I genuinely, hand on heart, believe that the person who created these, and the people who thought we should, out of EVERYTHING GOING ON IN LONDON, a city of NINE MILLION SOULS, be pressed upon to recreate these, well, I think it is time for their friends and family to stage an intervention ending in some sort of permanent incarceration and hourly mocking.
In the list of things people should be doing with their oh-so-brief time on this fascinating planet, dipping sunflower seeds in molten orange candy in order to use them as a faux-tiny-carrot for the nose of a reconstituted cake ball snowman is about ninety eight billionth, several hundred thousand below causing deliberate harm to a third person, staring into space for days on end and eating more pizza even though you're fat and already full. At least kicking a dog would end up with one feeling some remorse, or, in the case of catbin lady, cause a media furore that might teach someone a valuable lesson.
Spending hours on end making miniature cakes with inventive tiny accessories is guaranteed to end only in pathological smugness, the only cure for which is death, and guaranteed years in therapy for any offspring of these carefree people, and so I sincerely implore anyone who's already begun stockpiling ingredients for these tiny existence-thieves to please, take those plastic sticks you bought to support your creations, and ram them slowly into your eyes as a permanent lesson that you must never, ever waste your precious life in such an imbecilic and desultory way ever again.
Thursday, 21 October 2010
Oh bloody hell
I'm not entirely sure this makes the spending cuts bearable, but it helps. The tail twitch at 0:25! The reverse! The joy.
Yuck yuck yuck
If any of you have seen ads for a recent horror film called The Human Centipede, where a psychotic doctor kidnaps people and stitches them together, mouth to ass, you'll have a vague understanding of my dream last night, where a selection of men who I don't know in real life, including Stephen Fry, engaged in a bizarre - and totally unsexual - gay orgy thing where each of them had erect penises about 18 inches long and I had to help feed these monstrous apendages into the next guy's bum, until they made a chain of three or four. They were literally bending them into S-shapes to see if it would fit into the next one's lower intestine. More bizarre, this was happening in broad daylight, on a wooden platform constructed up a tree. I mean. I think I should give up hope of ever being normal.
Last night, Kate and I went to see a play at the National called Or You Could Kiss Me, which sent me to sleep after less than ten minutes. Kate woke me up about an hour in and said she wasn't enjoying it and that she was happy to leave. So we did. The joy of £10 tickets. It was, I suppose, a nice idea, but Kate summed it up as 'crappy gay puppets'. Which would have explained my dream, but there was no gay sex and no huge penises. Just two old guys in South Africa trying to cope with death and the breakdown of their relationship. It was a bit worthy. The makers of War Horse don't need to fret too much.
And now it's today and the UK is being rocked with all the details of Chancellor George Osborne's extensive Spending Review, which basically means he is ecstatically slashing the state back, involving the loss of half a million civil service jobs and another half million private sector jobs that will be cut due to decreased contracting. So that's one in sixty people who are currently working who will now be unemployed. Nice going. And housing benefit cut, and disability benefit, and university to be more expensive, and less funding for culture, and and and. And the right says a) the cuts are inevitable and b) this is the fairest way to dole them out and c) that these evil benefit cheats are stealing from all of us.
And I - and all those on the left - say that yes, we need to find money - but not so soon, and not this way. Where is the evidence of the wealthiest taking a hit too? Why are there still tax breaks for huge corporations? Why are non-doms allowed to squirrel their money away in offshore accounts? We say that the cuts are massively unfair on the people who need money the most. And that benefit cheats aren't nearly as big a problem as they're made out to be - just a useful scapegoat to 'justify' demolishing the welfare state and preferencing those who are already wealthy.
Seriously. What kind of society do the Tories think this is going to create? We're already in a recession. Chuck in another million unemployed - jobs which cannot be picked up by the private sector or the Big Society, because - yes - we're in a recession. And chuck in loads more people losing their homes because their housing benefit gets cut. And those who were on disability benefit also losing their payout after a year out of work, who are then added to the pile of those looking for a non-existent job. How is this going to help this country improve?
My question is not rhetorical. HOW do David and George think that their actions are going to ameliorate the lives of the majority of UK citizens? They don't. They admit it's going to be tough. They say that it's going to be unpleasant for everyone, but that we're all in it together. Unadulterated claptrap. [Ooh. Claptrap, making its LLFF debut, if I'm not mistaken.] They are slashing the welfare state, taking things back to the old days of rich-get-richer, poor-get-poorer, increasing the income gap, making sure that their own bank balances remain unscathed, and keeping themselves lined up for cushty jobs in the City when they quit government. It's unfair, sad and worrying. (Click the link for a sinister New Statesman article).
And where are the LibDems in all this? Clegg patted Osborne on the back after he made his cuts announcement. I hope everyone else who voted yellow in May felt the bile rise. I certainly did. What a disgrace. I'd rather be Stephen Fry's personal penis feeder than keep schtum on this.
Last night, Kate and I went to see a play at the National called Or You Could Kiss Me, which sent me to sleep after less than ten minutes. Kate woke me up about an hour in and said she wasn't enjoying it and that she was happy to leave. So we did. The joy of £10 tickets. It was, I suppose, a nice idea, but Kate summed it up as 'crappy gay puppets'. Which would have explained my dream, but there was no gay sex and no huge penises. Just two old guys in South Africa trying to cope with death and the breakdown of their relationship. It was a bit worthy. The makers of War Horse don't need to fret too much.
And now it's today and the UK is being rocked with all the details of Chancellor George Osborne's extensive Spending Review, which basically means he is ecstatically slashing the state back, involving the loss of half a million civil service jobs and another half million private sector jobs that will be cut due to decreased contracting. So that's one in sixty people who are currently working who will now be unemployed. Nice going. And housing benefit cut, and disability benefit, and university to be more expensive, and less funding for culture, and and and. And the right says a) the cuts are inevitable and b) this is the fairest way to dole them out and c) that these evil benefit cheats are stealing from all of us.
And I - and all those on the left - say that yes, we need to find money - but not so soon, and not this way. Where is the evidence of the wealthiest taking a hit too? Why are there still tax breaks for huge corporations? Why are non-doms allowed to squirrel their money away in offshore accounts? We say that the cuts are massively unfair on the people who need money the most. And that benefit cheats aren't nearly as big a problem as they're made out to be - just a useful scapegoat to 'justify' demolishing the welfare state and preferencing those who are already wealthy.
Seriously. What kind of society do the Tories think this is going to create? We're already in a recession. Chuck in another million unemployed - jobs which cannot be picked up by the private sector or the Big Society, because - yes - we're in a recession. And chuck in loads more people losing their homes because their housing benefit gets cut. And those who were on disability benefit also losing their payout after a year out of work, who are then added to the pile of those looking for a non-existent job. How is this going to help this country improve?
My question is not rhetorical. HOW do David and George think that their actions are going to ameliorate the lives of the majority of UK citizens? They don't. They admit it's going to be tough. They say that it's going to be unpleasant for everyone, but that we're all in it together. Unadulterated claptrap. [Ooh. Claptrap, making its LLFF debut, if I'm not mistaken.] They are slashing the welfare state, taking things back to the old days of rich-get-richer, poor-get-poorer, increasing the income gap, making sure that their own bank balances remain unscathed, and keeping themselves lined up for cushty jobs in the City when they quit government. It's unfair, sad and worrying. (Click the link for a sinister New Statesman article).And where are the LibDems in all this? Clegg patted Osborne on the back after he made his cuts announcement. I hope everyone else who voted yellow in May felt the bile rise. I certainly did. What a disgrace. I'd rather be Stephen Fry's personal penis feeder than keep schtum on this.
Wednesday, 20 October 2010
Twix Fino: the verdict
A small percentage of my readers, I'd estimate about seven of you, may have noticed that there is a new chocolate bar adorning the shelves of UK newsagents and other sweet emporia. Initially I believed that the Twix Fino was marketing itself as a lighter alternative to Twixes, and indeed, it may have less calories than its Unfino brother, but having now tasted one, I believe the difference is to do with class. How very British.
The noise as my experimental Fino hits the floor of the vending machine instantly prepares me for disappointment - the thud is not nearly as loud as that for a normal Twix, and in the hunger stakes, loud clatter of item against metal floor = good, soft = less weighty and thus bad.
I canter back to my desk with a glass of milk, and tear open the wrapper. The two fingers are still identifiable as belonging to the Twix family but are, I would wager, more flat. I am girding myself for disappointment. I am expecting something akin to the devil's snack, the Kinder Bueno, all wafer and cream and sickly pointlessness. But I bite in and reality is joyous: a multilayered wafer, less sugary Kit-Kat and more classy, almost treacley, like the straw-shaped wafers that sometimes come with posh ice-cream. And then there's a layer of caramel and the outer coating of chocolate.
The fingers are gone in a quark - so fast that, a moment later, I look down at the packet for the second finger and realise with some shock that I had already eaten it. The Fino is many things, but filling is not one of them. For this reason, I do not believe it can realistically be classified as a chocolate bar. I would say that it is a wonderful biscuit, but any normal person will require at least six or seven fingers to feel as though they have actually eaten anything more substantial than a serendipitous morsel of food discovered wedged in one's upper molar.
The noise as my experimental Fino hits the floor of the vending machine instantly prepares me for disappointment - the thud is not nearly as loud as that for a normal Twix, and in the hunger stakes, loud clatter of item against metal floor = good, soft = less weighty and thus bad.
I canter back to my desk with a glass of milk, and tear open the wrapper. The two fingers are still identifiable as belonging to the Twix family but are, I would wager, more flat. I am girding myself for disappointment. I am expecting something akin to the devil's snack, the Kinder Bueno, all wafer and cream and sickly pointlessness. But I bite in and reality is joyous: a multilayered wafer, less sugary Kit-Kat and more classy, almost treacley, like the straw-shaped wafers that sometimes come with posh ice-cream. And then there's a layer of caramel and the outer coating of chocolate.
The fingers are gone in a quark - so fast that, a moment later, I look down at the packet for the second finger and realise with some shock that I had already eaten it. The Fino is many things, but filling is not one of them. For this reason, I do not believe it can realistically be classified as a chocolate bar. I would say that it is a wonderful biscuit, but any normal person will require at least six or seven fingers to feel as though they have actually eaten anything more substantial than a serendipitous morsel of food discovered wedged in one's upper molar.
Monday, 18 October 2010
Tired Film Waitress Hen Complaint
So it's Monday afternoon, so of course I am doing my customary, weekly on a Monday-afternoon thing, where I sit and think 'I am so tired that I cannot possibly go on. How is it that I yearn, week after week, for a week when I look in my diary and find that I have not much on, but then look in my diary in real life, and find that every night this week is busy, and then I complain about it to myself, but then spend my working life making plans for future engagements, ensuring that my future is then filled up with engagements? Why would I be so silly?' but then I remember that I do enjoy the engagements. It's a hard knock life although I don't get kisses *or* kicks which I suppose makes my life a smidgen better than Miss Hannigan's orphans but fractionally worse than the average girl's.
So on Friday, I met up with Sara and we went to see In Our Name, a film showing as part of the London Film Festival. I'd read up about it in advance and thought it sounded interesting - the psychological impact of being on the front line for a woman who, after 18 months in Iraq, returns to her family in Middlesbrough. Annoyingly, though, the plot went a lot further - her husband was a horrible, violent, racist fuck-up, and what could have been an enlightening insight into the PTSD suffered by thousands of ex-servicemen was instead a very bleak, unpleasant look at one extreme, and extremely unpleasant, situation. I didn't like it. Superb acting though. The husband and wife came on for a Q&A at the end and I just couldn't imagine how his real-life girlfriend/wife, if he has one, would be able to separate the real him from what she'd seen on screen.
Then we went to Pizza Express in Soho, where we encountered the world's oddest waitress. She was tiny, around five foot tall, with thin, black, chin-length hair parted on the side and held back with a hairgrip. Her eyes were terrified, and on the corner of her alabaster forehead was a dark, shining bruise that looked both recent and painful. As we gave her our order, she gave a series of approx. 1000 tiny nods of her head, as though being charged with the most important mission of her life to date. There was an issue with one of our requests and she said she had to ask her manager. Several billion years later, she returned saying she was so sorry but she hadn't managed to find out the answer to our question because her manager had been talking to someone and she'd felt it would have been very tactless to interrupt. We said we understood, and asked if, while we were waiting, she would mind if we gave her the five branded Pizza Express advertisements that had been on our table - pizza of the month, special wines, another notice around the flower vase etc. etc. Her eyes became even wider, giving her the impression of one of the girls in Soundgarden's video for Black Hole Sun, and she nodded sympathetically, before explaining at some length (and we're talking several minutes here) that she was from Slovenia and felt like the amount of corporate branding and advertising in the west was a real problem and that she thought there should be strict controls on what, where, and how much. You can take the girl out of the former Communist bloc...
Saturday was another big day - my friend Emily's hen, where I and a few others were entrusted to spend the hard-earned cash of Emily's 14 closest friends on their behalf, an endeavour that I found challenging and enjoyable. I think that, in the end, we struck a good balance between boat rides, ritual humiliation, drunkenness, new skills, old photos, gifts and bad music. Or, at least, the balance was there. I did not strike the balance quite so well on a personal level, as I awoke on Sunday morning feeling as though I possibly had food poisoning and remain nauseous and exhausted to this moment. I managed to go to a three hour singing rehearsal, which showed a level of dedication I wasn't aware I possessed. And I watched a lot of The X Factor. And I ate. Good lord, did I eat.
As a public service, however, I do feel that I should mention the hen activity we did on Saturday afternoon: a cookery class with a company I'd found online called The Urban Kitchen. I wouldn't suggest you use them, should you be in the market for a relaxing, fun group activity. To save me typing it all out again, below is the email that I sent the boss this morning. On the upside, in comparison to her, I seemed carefree and even laissez-faire, which was excellent for my ego.
I've now transferred the £11.00 to you for the extra wine on Saturday night. Everyone agreed the food was delicious.
Having received a few questionable emails from you prior to the event, including one where you seemed to accuse Joanna of deliberately ignoring or losing the forms you'd sent through, and being more than terse that all 12 hens had not filled in the dietary requirements form only a couple of days after you'd provided us with the link - oh, and the one where you asked us to start late and then said actually no, let's start on time, but it might be difficult as there's another group directly before us (not the best way to make us feel special) - we were hoping that our issues were only in print, and that in person it would be a more pleasant experience.
However, I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear that we won't be recommending The Urban Kitchen - several people overheard you making sarcastic remarks about us to your team, and the way you publically reprimanded people for accidental cooking errors was a long way from good client management. I had many comments from the group saying that they were terrified of you and that they'd been"told off" - it should surely go without saying that people don't pay nearly £70 to feel uncomfortable.
I wasn't sure whether or not to say anything, but I know repeat business is important for a small enterprise such as yours, and I felt it was important that you should hear that, at times, we found your manner very aggressive and unfriendly.
I am sure you can catalogue ways in which you didn't like me/us, but I'm afraid in this scenario, the customer should always be right!
I hope you can use this feedback to your advantage.
Between you and me, the above isn't the whole story. We did actually have a lot of fun - but it was no thanks to her. I've always agreed with Napoleon that it is important for group morale to have a common enemy (or was it Nelson? Isn't that where scapegoat came from...? OK... That was fascinating. Scapegoat comes from a mistranslation in the Septuagint, the early Greek version of the Bible. And I can't find anything on Google re. what I was talking about with common enemies. I remember reading somewhere that there was a captain at sea who, as a management tactic, deliberately made himself unpopular so that his crew would unite and work well together. Anyone know who or what I'm talking about? I clearly will never remember). Anyway, we all giggled a lot. It was a bit like being back at school: the more stressed the boss got, the more naughty and careless we became. We also ate extremely well (having cooked the food ourselves), so in many respects the event was excellent, but basically the woman in charge needs to sort her management skills out. That's all. I am now preparing myself for some sort of defamation case (which is not in any sense to imply that the above is inaccurate), so enjoy this blog entry while you can, I suspect it may not be here for long.
So on Friday, I met up with Sara and we went to see In Our Name, a film showing as part of the London Film Festival. I'd read up about it in advance and thought it sounded interesting - the psychological impact of being on the front line for a woman who, after 18 months in Iraq, returns to her family in Middlesbrough. Annoyingly, though, the plot went a lot further - her husband was a horrible, violent, racist fuck-up, and what could have been an enlightening insight into the PTSD suffered by thousands of ex-servicemen was instead a very bleak, unpleasant look at one extreme, and extremely unpleasant, situation. I didn't like it. Superb acting though. The husband and wife came on for a Q&A at the end and I just couldn't imagine how his real-life girlfriend/wife, if he has one, would be able to separate the real him from what she'd seen on screen.
Then we went to Pizza Express in Soho, where we encountered the world's oddest waitress. She was tiny, around five foot tall, with thin, black, chin-length hair parted on the side and held back with a hairgrip. Her eyes were terrified, and on the corner of her alabaster forehead was a dark, shining bruise that looked both recent and painful. As we gave her our order, she gave a series of approx. 1000 tiny nods of her head, as though being charged with the most important mission of her life to date. There was an issue with one of our requests and she said she had to ask her manager. Several billion years later, she returned saying she was so sorry but she hadn't managed to find out the answer to our question because her manager had been talking to someone and she'd felt it would have been very tactless to interrupt. We said we understood, and asked if, while we were waiting, she would mind if we gave her the five branded Pizza Express advertisements that had been on our table - pizza of the month, special wines, another notice around the flower vase etc. etc. Her eyes became even wider, giving her the impression of one of the girls in Soundgarden's video for Black Hole Sun, and she nodded sympathetically, before explaining at some length (and we're talking several minutes here) that she was from Slovenia and felt like the amount of corporate branding and advertising in the west was a real problem and that she thought there should be strict controls on what, where, and how much. You can take the girl out of the former Communist bloc...
Saturday was another big day - my friend Emily's hen, where I and a few others were entrusted to spend the hard-earned cash of Emily's 14 closest friends on their behalf, an endeavour that I found challenging and enjoyable. I think that, in the end, we struck a good balance between boat rides, ritual humiliation, drunkenness, new skills, old photos, gifts and bad music. Or, at least, the balance was there. I did not strike the balance quite so well on a personal level, as I awoke on Sunday morning feeling as though I possibly had food poisoning and remain nauseous and exhausted to this moment. I managed to go to a three hour singing rehearsal, which showed a level of dedication I wasn't aware I possessed. And I watched a lot of The X Factor. And I ate. Good lord, did I eat.
As a public service, however, I do feel that I should mention the hen activity we did on Saturday afternoon: a cookery class with a company I'd found online called The Urban Kitchen. I wouldn't suggest you use them, should you be in the market for a relaxing, fun group activity. To save me typing it all out again, below is the email that I sent the boss this morning. On the upside, in comparison to her, I seemed carefree and even laissez-faire, which was excellent for my ego.
I've now transferred the £11.00 to you for the extra wine on Saturday night. Everyone agreed the food was delicious.
Having received a few questionable emails from you prior to the event, including one where you seemed to accuse Joanna of deliberately ignoring or losing the forms you'd sent through, and being more than terse that all 12 hens had not filled in the dietary requirements form only a couple of days after you'd provided us with the link - oh, and the one where you asked us to start late and then said actually no, let's start on time, but it might be difficult as there's another group directly before us (not the best way to make us feel special) - we were hoping that our issues were only in print, and that in person it would be a more pleasant experience.
However, I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear that we won't be recommending The Urban Kitchen - several people overheard you making sarcastic remarks about us to your team, and the way you publically reprimanded people for accidental cooking errors was a long way from good client management. I had many comments from the group saying that they were terrified of you and that they'd been"told off" - it should surely go without saying that people don't pay nearly £70 to feel uncomfortable.
I wasn't sure whether or not to say anything, but I know repeat business is important for a small enterprise such as yours, and I felt it was important that you should hear that, at times, we found your manner very aggressive and unfriendly.
I am sure you can catalogue ways in which you didn't like me/us, but I'm afraid in this scenario, the customer should always be right!
I hope you can use this feedback to your advantage.
Between you and me, the above isn't the whole story. We did actually have a lot of fun - but it was no thanks to her. I've always agreed with Napoleon that it is important for group morale to have a common enemy (or was it Nelson? Isn't that where scapegoat came from...? OK... That was fascinating. Scapegoat comes from a mistranslation in the Septuagint, the early Greek version of the Bible. And I can't find anything on Google re. what I was talking about with common enemies. I remember reading somewhere that there was a captain at sea who, as a management tactic, deliberately made himself unpopular so that his crew would unite and work well together. Anyone know who or what I'm talking about? I clearly will never remember). Anyway, we all giggled a lot. It was a bit like being back at school: the more stressed the boss got, the more naughty and careless we became. We also ate extremely well (having cooked the food ourselves), so in many respects the event was excellent, but basically the woman in charge needs to sort her management skills out. That's all. I am now preparing myself for some sort of defamation case (which is not in any sense to imply that the above is inaccurate), so enjoy this blog entry while you can, I suspect it may not be here for long.
Friday, 15 October 2010
Baseless concerns
About two months ago I received a standard heads-up email from HR saying a new guy was starting at work, and when I saw his name, I realised that I knew him. We were part of the same extended social circle a long time ago, and when I was 17 I spent an afternoon or two sunbathing around his parents' pool in south west London. How odd, I thought. It's a small world.
So when he started, I sent him an email saying 'Remember me?' His desk is only fifteen metres from my office door, but I chose to send him an email not only because I am sometimes a bit shy (100% implausible but 100% true) but also because being greeted at your desk, surrounded by new colleagues, by a girl you may or may not remember from around 15 years ago doesn't sound like my idea of fun. So I sent the email, and he replied and said 'Yes, what the hell are you doing here?' and I told him and that was it.
And then yesterday, after he'd worked here for six weeks, I finally bumped into him in the vending area while I was getting a glass of milk to drink alongside my second piece of Laura's Marks & Spencer's chocolate birthday cake. And instead of saying 'How are you getting on?' or 'What's new?', the first thing I said to a guy I hadn't seen for 15 years, a guy who I SWEAR I do not fancy (and I know this because my friend still knows him and has told me enough about him for me to know for sure) was 'Oh god, how embarrassing, you've caught me on a day when I'm not wearing any make-up.'
I mean.
The catalogue of things which are annoying about that statement is tragic:
a) I very rarely wear make-up at work, so I don't know who I was trying to kid.
b) I do not fancy him, so why do I care whether he thinks I'm rough or not? I could have been naked except for an immaculate Hitler moustache and I still shouldn't have been self conscious about my appearance in front of him.
c) There is absolutely no WAY that a boy would hear a girl say that and not think that she does then fancy him.
d) Even if I'd thought I might fancy him at some undisclosed point in the future, that would have been up there in the Top 10 list of things not to Tourette's-reveal on first meeting him.
e) The fact that I'm even slightly annoyed about it will make everyone who reads this convinced that, in a Gertrude protesting too much fashion, I do actually really fancy him, which I really don't.
In short: I am a dick.
What was good, however, was that last night I had a vivid, VIVID dream about being seriously, morbidly, twice-as-big-as-Vanessa-Feltz-at-her-biggest, needs-a-winch-to-get-out-of-bed fat. My mum was telling me that I was disgusting and needed to do something about it, and I was crying and saying, 'How can you be so horrible and judge me like this?' but secretly knowing she was right and hating myself. And then I woke up and got dressed and looked in the mirror and comparitively, I am like the thinnest person in the history of the world, basically like Kate Moss but fractionally facially less pretty, so I'm off to have some garlic bread with cheese.
So when he started, I sent him an email saying 'Remember me?' His desk is only fifteen metres from my office door, but I chose to send him an email not only because I am sometimes a bit shy (100% implausible but 100% true) but also because being greeted at your desk, surrounded by new colleagues, by a girl you may or may not remember from around 15 years ago doesn't sound like my idea of fun. So I sent the email, and he replied and said 'Yes, what the hell are you doing here?' and I told him and that was it.
And then yesterday, after he'd worked here for six weeks, I finally bumped into him in the vending area while I was getting a glass of milk to drink alongside my second piece of Laura's Marks & Spencer's chocolate birthday cake. And instead of saying 'How are you getting on?' or 'What's new?', the first thing I said to a guy I hadn't seen for 15 years, a guy who I SWEAR I do not fancy (and I know this because my friend still knows him and has told me enough about him for me to know for sure) was 'Oh god, how embarrassing, you've caught me on a day when I'm not wearing any make-up.'
I mean.
The catalogue of things which are annoying about that statement is tragic:
a) I very rarely wear make-up at work, so I don't know who I was trying to kid.
b) I do not fancy him, so why do I care whether he thinks I'm rough or not? I could have been naked except for an immaculate Hitler moustache and I still shouldn't have been self conscious about my appearance in front of him.
c) There is absolutely no WAY that a boy would hear a girl say that and not think that she does then fancy him.
d) Even if I'd thought I might fancy him at some undisclosed point in the future, that would have been up there in the Top 10 list of things not to Tourette's-reveal on first meeting him.
e) The fact that I'm even slightly annoyed about it will make everyone who reads this convinced that, in a Gertrude protesting too much fashion, I do actually really fancy him, which I really don't.
In short: I am a dick.
What was good, however, was that last night I had a vivid, VIVID dream about being seriously, morbidly, twice-as-big-as-Vanessa-Feltz-at-her-biggest, needs-a-winch-to-get-out-of-bed fat. My mum was telling me that I was disgusting and needed to do something about it, and I was crying and saying, 'How can you be so horrible and judge me like this?' but secretly knowing she was right and hating myself. And then I woke up and got dressed and looked in the mirror and comparitively, I am like the thinnest person in the history of the world, basically like Kate Moss but fractionally facially less pretty, so I'm off to have some garlic bread with cheese.
Wednesday, 13 October 2010
Blood and (greedy) guts
Next time I give blood at around 3.45 or 4pm and they tell me smilingly that I shouldn't consume alcohol for at least six hours, can someone please just pop up and, in a totally unannoying way, gently suggest that, as employees of the NATIONAL BLOOD DONATION organisation, they may actually know what they are talking about? Yesterday afternoon, as the nice South African lady passed on her regulation list of things not to do shortly after a donation, I laughed jovially and said, 'I'm afraid that won't be possible!' and she said, 'Oh well, just watch yourself as you may get drunk a little quicker than normal,' and I said, 'Hahahaha, no problem!' and then I had Em and Ses over for dinner, and sucked up glass after glass of white, thinking all along, 'That woman didn't know what she was talking about, I'm hard as nails, this isn't affecting me!' and then woke up today feeling like I had been on a three day bender with Jim Belushi.
Still, I gave blood and that's the main thing. [Cue sound of wild applause].
In other news, I slightly hate myself. Today it's because I am trying not to eat unless I'm actually hungry, and yet I just went to the vending area to get a Diet Coke as I am struggling to stay atop my posture stool, so tired and hungover do I feel after last night's reduced blood session, but obviously the idea of just drinking a Diet Coke without having anything to dilute its nasty carcinogenic metallicness is hideous, so even though I'm still pretty much full from lunch, I knew in advance that I would definitely purchase an item from the snack machine, and it was my bad luck because my first pack of two fingers of shortbread got stuck, so clearly I had to buy another one, and of course any normal person would have put the second pack in her desk drawer to eat tomorrow, but I am not normal, I am highly special and gifted and talented and disgustingly greedy, so here I am eating my third shortbread finger and lining up the fourth. Yup. There it goes. Not remotely hungry. Why would I eat it? Why? My therapist says it's because I am using food as a reward for feeling shit the rest of the time. I'd buy that, although I haven't really been feeling shit recently. Except for today, and I would have been fine if I had listened to the stupid blood donor woman.
ANYWAY. Today is Chilean miner day and that is all very exciting. That said, I should probably admit that I am completely out of the loop with it and am basically just waiting for the film to come out so that I can watch the whole thing in one handy ninety minute segment rather than following the story unfold over several weeks. Real life is so high maintenance.
Still, I gave blood and that's the main thing. [Cue sound of wild applause].
In other news, I slightly hate myself. Today it's because I am trying not to eat unless I'm actually hungry, and yet I just went to the vending area to get a Diet Coke as I am struggling to stay atop my posture stool, so tired and hungover do I feel after last night's reduced blood session, but obviously the idea of just drinking a Diet Coke without having anything to dilute its nasty carcinogenic metallicness is hideous, so even though I'm still pretty much full from lunch, I knew in advance that I would definitely purchase an item from the snack machine, and it was my bad luck because my first pack of two fingers of shortbread got stuck, so clearly I had to buy another one, and of course any normal person would have put the second pack in her desk drawer to eat tomorrow, but I am not normal, I am highly special and gifted and talented and disgustingly greedy, so here I am eating my third shortbread finger and lining up the fourth. Yup. There it goes. Not remotely hungry. Why would I eat it? Why? My therapist says it's because I am using food as a reward for feeling shit the rest of the time. I'd buy that, although I haven't really been feeling shit recently. Except for today, and I would have been fine if I had listened to the stupid blood donor woman.
ANYWAY. Today is Chilean miner day and that is all very exciting. That said, I should probably admit that I am completely out of the loop with it and am basically just waiting for the film to come out so that I can watch the whole thing in one handy ninety minute segment rather than following the story unfold over several weeks. Real life is so high maintenance.
Monday, 11 October 2010
Long weekend
So apart from keeping my right hand gripping whatever fabric is covering my right buttock so that I don't suffer another unintentional reveal, I've been in Paris this weekend, which was excellent. I was there on a course called Adventures in Non-Fiction, which in true expat Parisian style was held at the world's most ridiculous bookshop, Shakespeare & Co. For the uninitiated, imagine you are a forty-year old American divorcee who has always yearned to jack it all in, sweep up her dog, Loopy, and her mop-headed son, Sam, and head to the French capital to fulfill her always-yearned-for-but-never-once-voiced-in-four-decades lifelong dream of setting up a bookshop. It's ramshackle, clearly in breach of all UK fire restrictions, with wooden ladders affixed to brass rails to help you reach the higher shelves. Our classroom was a reading area upstairs, the walls crammed floor-to-ceiling with second-hand tomes, wooden pews around the edges of the room with scatter cushions scattered liberally, pink geraniums in the window box, a view of Notre Dame beyond, bunches of lavender on the sills wafting their scent in on the Autumn breeze along the occasional sound of an accordian player busking for tourists, mismatched cups, battered tin trays, superlative biscuits, a faded Moroccan rug over uneven floorboards, a farcially well-behaved black dog called Colette, a friendly fat cat to stroke, charming bilingual staff, bedrooms available for free to struggling writers... Even better, it has history, with regulars to its old premises including Hemingway and other impressive writers I've already forgotten, and some seriously groovy cats from the seventies like all those French writers whose names I've also misplaced. They were cool though. And influential. Anyone who's anyone's been to Shakespeare & Co. And then there is me.
So I arrived on Thursday night, settled in nicely to my room on the 23rd floor of a tower block in the 13th, learned the word for mortgage in French (now forgotten again), went to bed, overslept, arrived fifteen minutes en retard for the start of the course, met my coursemates while covered in sweat, my previously bouffant fringe now plastered to my forehead, missed the croissants (instant overpowering foot-stamping rage), asked a billion questions and no doubt made the other participants wish I'd slept until sixteen hundred hours instead of only 09:15.
First day's tutor was Francis Wheen, definitely one of the most erudite people I've ever had the fortune to be lectured by for around nine hours, bursting with stories about everything and everyone, dropping so many famous names that the area on the desk in front of him looked like someone had given this year's Who's Who a vigorous shaking. Fascinating and not unfond anecdotes poured out, from the young Tony Blair to... for fuck's sake, I literally cannot remember anyone else. What the hell is wrong with my brain? Anyway. The stories were gripping. And alongside all that, we got a massively helpful masterclass in non-fiction writing, particularly biography, eight students sitting agog as Francis educated and entertained, seemingly without inhaling, until 5pm, and from 10am until lunchtime on Saturday. If he ever wants to turn his hand to the didgeridoo (or any other skill requiring circular breathing), I've no doubt he'll be a hit. In the relevant circles.
I wrote eight pages of notes about research and timelines and other important things, and went away from that section feeling exhausted and enthused. From Saturday lunchtime until Sunday afternoon, Francis' place at the desk was taken by Jon Ronson, non-fiction writer and documentary-maker for film and TV, best known for The Men Who Stare At Goats, who added to the absurdly impressive collection of names on the desk by telling discreet stories about the time he lived with Robbie Williams, and George Clooney's insecurities and... oh I honestly don't know why I bother. I think he mentioned The Fall, but I might have made that up. Basically, unless it's about me, I can't remember anything. And even then I struggle.
Equally fascinating but utterly different, this second half of the course was more about finding great stories and developing our own ideas. Having thought LLFF was the limit of my writing landscape, I am now considering attempting a longer project and it's scaring the M&S opaque tights off me.
But all in all, it was money brilliantly spent: dreamy lunches at a make-shift trestle table on the pavement outside the bookshop, juicy quiches, salads, chocolate, yoghurts and juice on two days, and a nearby couscous restaurant on Saturday; an inspiring and enthralling combination of course tutors; crisp, bright, Parisian weather; free accommodation; interesting, kind and impressive coursemates - one with a ridiculously cute baby that sat on my lap for ages and was all warm and podgy; an amazing vintage store in the Marais that's open til 11pm, where I bought three dresses for 10 Euros each; a vague frisson of flirtation with someone who I didn't really want to kiss as it would be in breach of the boyban and I don't want to reawaken my comatose libido, and I wasn't sure from looking at his lips whether he'd be a good kisser, but then who generously developed a cold so I immediately went off him which couldn't have been more convenient if it tried; some lovely white wine and a few episodes of Arrested Development on DVD. Basically perfect.
My alarm went off at 05:15 Paris time this morning, and I came back to London on the 07:13 Eurostar, nodding off during the 2hr 15min ride with my old favourite alphabetical list game ("I went home to London and I brought Apple tart, a Box of macaroons, a Computer, DVDs, Estee Lauder foundation, Finnish memories, Good ideas, Housekeys, an iPod, a book by Jon Ronson...) Am now in the office feeling like I've recently done an optical rinse with battery acid and wondering how I will manage to stand without weeping during this evening's choir practice.
Dead a long time, dead a long time...
So I arrived on Thursday night, settled in nicely to my room on the 23rd floor of a tower block in the 13th, learned the word for mortgage in French (now forgotten again), went to bed, overslept, arrived fifteen minutes en retard for the start of the course, met my coursemates while covered in sweat, my previously bouffant fringe now plastered to my forehead, missed the croissants (instant overpowering foot-stamping rage), asked a billion questions and no doubt made the other participants wish I'd slept until sixteen hundred hours instead of only 09:15.
First day's tutor was Francis Wheen, definitely one of the most erudite people I've ever had the fortune to be lectured by for around nine hours, bursting with stories about everything and everyone, dropping so many famous names that the area on the desk in front of him looked like someone had given this year's Who's Who a vigorous shaking. Fascinating and not unfond anecdotes poured out, from the young Tony Blair to... for fuck's sake, I literally cannot remember anyone else. What the hell is wrong with my brain? Anyway. The stories were gripping. And alongside all that, we got a massively helpful masterclass in non-fiction writing, particularly biography, eight students sitting agog as Francis educated and entertained, seemingly without inhaling, until 5pm, and from 10am until lunchtime on Saturday. If he ever wants to turn his hand to the didgeridoo (or any other skill requiring circular breathing), I've no doubt he'll be a hit. In the relevant circles.
I wrote eight pages of notes about research and timelines and other important things, and went away from that section feeling exhausted and enthused. From Saturday lunchtime until Sunday afternoon, Francis' place at the desk was taken by Jon Ronson, non-fiction writer and documentary-maker for film and TV, best known for The Men Who Stare At Goats, who added to the absurdly impressive collection of names on the desk by telling discreet stories about the time he lived with Robbie Williams, and George Clooney's insecurities and... oh I honestly don't know why I bother. I think he mentioned The Fall, but I might have made that up. Basically, unless it's about me, I can't remember anything. And even then I struggle.
Equally fascinating but utterly different, this second half of the course was more about finding great stories and developing our own ideas. Having thought LLFF was the limit of my writing landscape, I am now considering attempting a longer project and it's scaring the M&S opaque tights off me.
But all in all, it was money brilliantly spent: dreamy lunches at a make-shift trestle table on the pavement outside the bookshop, juicy quiches, salads, chocolate, yoghurts and juice on two days, and a nearby couscous restaurant on Saturday; an inspiring and enthralling combination of course tutors; crisp, bright, Parisian weather; free accommodation; interesting, kind and impressive coursemates - one with a ridiculously cute baby that sat on my lap for ages and was all warm and podgy; an amazing vintage store in the Marais that's open til 11pm, where I bought three dresses for 10 Euros each; a vague frisson of flirtation with someone who I didn't really want to kiss as it would be in breach of the boyban and I don't want to reawaken my comatose libido, and I wasn't sure from looking at his lips whether he'd be a good kisser, but then who generously developed a cold so I immediately went off him which couldn't have been more convenient if it tried; some lovely white wine and a few episodes of Arrested Development on DVD. Basically perfect.
My alarm went off at 05:15 Paris time this morning, and I came back to London on the 07:13 Eurostar, nodding off during the 2hr 15min ride with my old favourite alphabetical list game ("I went home to London and I brought Apple tart, a Box of macaroons, a Computer, DVDs, Estee Lauder foundation, Finnish memories, Good ideas, Housekeys, an iPod, a book by Jon Ronson...) Am now in the office feeling like I've recently done an optical rinse with battery acid and wondering how I will manage to stand without weeping during this evening's choir practice.
Dead a long time, dead a long time...
Thursday, 7 October 2010
Major hitch
Just a quick one tonight as I'm sitting in St. Pancras International, waiting for the Eurostar to speed me to gay Paris, but I wanted to have a quick pre-France rant about my wondrous new Moroccan carpet bag, thrilling in design and quite probably disgustingly over-priced, beautifully kitsch, covered in peacocks. Note to creator of such bags: you should mention on the label that this bag may look all well and good in the shop or on one's bedroom floor, but when carried along over one's shoulders with the handily-provided shoulder straps, the friction created by the rubbing of one's hips against the carpet fabric causes one's DRESS TO RIDE UP AS ONE IS WALKING ALONG, COMPLETELY unbeknownst to you, meaning that COMPLETE STRANGERS HAIL YOU as you are talking to your father on your mobile phone and say "Hey! HEY!" and then point at their ass, and you don't know what the hell they are going on about and you smile politely and keep on walking and they shout, "HEY!" again, even louder this time, and you think you must be on fire or perhaps you dropped your passport or are about to walk into a lion's den, but then you realise that the reality is in fact far worse and your dress has ridden up over your buttocks so all pretty much anyone walking behind you can see is your arse, thankfully covered in opaque black tights, but still.
The label should say that. It should be a legal requirement.
Right. Platform 10. I'm off.
The label should say that. It should be a legal requirement.
Right. Platform 10. I'm off.
Tuesday, 5 October 2010
Miss me?
Heave an hours-long sigh of relief, my Faithful, for I am not dead, nor am I unable to type for your amusement and continued edification. I have been abroad, often without phone reception or access to the internet, and my enforced separation from these facilities has been strange and wonderful. And at times slightly unpleasant.
Even before my travels began, however, I was aware that my desire to blog has been sluggish at best, and over the past weeks I have spent some not insignificant time musing over my writing. Not to get too spiritual at this early stage of what promises to be a scroll-heavy edition of LLFF, but my psychological goal has long been to become as self-sufficient as possible. Like most people, I need and thrive on human contact, and have a deeply-held belief that love is all we need. I am not aiming for some sort of hermetic existence atop a girthy Tibetan telegraph pole. However, true love is truly selfless, and doesn’t work too well if one half of the partnership is constantly craving attention, affection or none-too-subtley pointing out that the other person owes them a present because she bought them that T-shirt last week and you haven’t even worn it yet, and for fuck’s sake how many times have I asked you to please phone me if you’re going to be late?
And release.
So. Yeah. I know that love should be unconditional, and, like millions of others, I know that in the past I’ve sometimes struggled with that. After much thought over the years, I've reasoned that the best way to be able to give unconditional love, whether to friends, family or lovers, is to need them as little as possible. I am about six tons of cherished possessions away from being a Buddhist, but ideally, I’d like to be fairly zen about this whole life malarkey, and work towards needing less, not more, the idea being that the less you need, the more you are free to give.
Which is where the blog comes in. Is it right to write? If it is informative – yes. If it brings pleasure – yes. Clearly I don’t blog for money, but I still receive two rewards: the immense satisfaction and flow I gain from the act of writing, the decision to structure a sentence like this (and not like that), the clarity and stability I feel having recounted an incident in black and white. And secondly, the flush of gratification I receive when I discover that my efforts have brought others pleasure or support.
BUT.
If I'm going to be serious about self-sufficiency, shouldn't I fight this urge for third party approval, and take the decision not to write at all? Shouldn't I conclude that the very nature of blogging cultivates a needy side of me from which I should be moving away? I thought that I should.
But then I thought of all the wonderful stuff we'd never have witnessed if a desire for appreciation was unacceptable. All the plays and paintings, poems, programmes, companies, children, families, restaurants, songs and pizzas that might not have come into existence if financial remuneration was the only possible reward for effort, if humanity's enjoyment of recognition vanished altogether.
The experience of choral singing is meditative, transformative, but the surge that follows when the audience appreciates your sound is another rush altogether - not more pleasurable than the performance itself, but nonetheless a huge part of singing, one which makes the night of a concert so strikingly different to a rehearsal. Would I still go to choir practice if I could never sing in front of an audience again? Probably not, but not many people would think that's weird. You join a choir to sing - and to be heard singing. Only a few people would, on learning that you are in a choir, conclude that you're an attention-seeking spotlight-whore. But choose to write and publish your work on the internet, and the implication is that you think you've created something worth others' valuable time. There is a question that's asked when any creative output is put in the public domain: 'Do you think this is good?' And if that question is left unanswered, it hurts. Some performers say they don't care what others think. I think they're talking out of their asses. Anyone who puts work out there, hangs it in a gallery, plays it onstage, creates and shapes a young mind, offers themselves to the lives of strangers - if you do that, you care. You need.
Before I went to Morocco, I went on a one-day travel writing course, which was immaculately structured and very helpful, in that it made me decide that I do not under any circumstances want to be a travel writer. The hardest thing about it was that we had to do four short written exercises throughout the day. After the group of around 25 people had finished the first written exercise, I sat, heart in mouth, as the course leader selected who would read – and I wasn’t picked. No one heard my astonishingly original and hilarious efforts. I was livid. Mystifyingly – or rather, demonstrating vast social intelligence – others seemed to feel remorse when they were picked and, like true Englishmen and women, they carefully indicated that they were embarrassed or uncomfortable to be in the spotlight. I did my level best to seem relieved not to have had to share, but as my second and third efforts also went unwitnessed, I became more and more desperate to be heard. I was finally selected to share my attempt for the fourth and final exercise, the last person out of the entire group to read aloud, only a couple of minutes before the workshop’s end. After hours of anticipation, the hoped-for laughs I received for my work were gratifying and immediately internal order was restored, the butterflies went back to their locker and my heart rate returned to its un-attention-seeking-nightmare levels.
That night I went to stay with my mother, and read her the three exercises I’d written that hadn’t been heard. She said I was brilliant. I was fully aware that a) she is not objective and b) I have my moments, and it was all OK.
I will be frank: I want to write and I want to be read. Does that make me needy? Yes, but no more than anyone else who puts their time and effort into a project, a baby, that doesn't give them financial reward. And in my defense: I could be needier. I could be trying to be famous, writing bad chick-lit and living on a permanent diet. That's not what I want. I want to carry on trying to put words together in an order that makes me proud, and I want to receive recognition for any pleasure my hard work brings to others.
To conclude this absurdly overlong and introspective introduction: Lost Looking For Fish will go on. I've missed it while I've been away – not just the praise, but the process. And if one or two of you are still this side of comatose and are kind enough to tell me I rock every now and then, I’ll be happy as a lamb in a field full of tussocks on a sunny day.
On to where the hell I’ve been. Morocco has been a fantastic break. I flew out two Fridays ago, and went to an unexpectedly swanky hotel about 45 minutes south of Marrakech, where I felt like I should wear floaty dresses, light candles and be filmed by Zeffirelli singing songs about love in a plaintive but effortlessly beautiful folk voice while playing some sort of north African lute. Instead I wore floaty dresses, did yoga, read books, ate my own bodyweight in couscous and discovered an hitherto unknown penchant for Moroccan rosé.
My true Faithful may remember that I went on a yoga holiday last June to Dahab in Egypt, where I discovered upon my arrival that no one else had had the foresight to sign up for the same holiday, and that I was thus going to have around four hours’ private yoga tuition each day, just me and the lovely instructor. In between classes, I was left to my own devices, and spent my time lounging, reading, snorkelling, scubaing, horse-riding, shopping, battling with local internet cafés and climbing Mount Sinai by night.
This year was somewhat different, and for ‘somewhat’, read ‘a bit meh’ and for ‘different’, read ‘by comparison’. I meeeeeaaaannnn, the people were nice, the yoga was stretchy, the pool was glorious, the hotel was far better than I deserve, my books were fantastic but… it turns out that I am not one for set meals with 24 people split up into three groups of eight, seated round one of three rectangular tables for breakfast, lunch and dinner every single day, plus four hours of yoga together, plus nowhere to go outside the hotel, no sea to swim in, no horses to ride along the beach, no internet cafés, no internet, no cafés. I slept a lot, I relaxed, I even think some people may have enjoyed my company, and I feel rested and grateful, but I won’t be rushing back. The routine made me rebellious and by the end I had lost interest in mealtimes and yoga, desperate to assert my independence by doing the only thing I could think of: not joining in.
Oh but it wasn’t bad, it really wasn’t. The sun shone, I went brown, there were some absolute gems of people there – 22 women and 2 men with an age-range spanning five decades from twenties to seventies, a male/female ratio which inevitably descended into discussions about the topics women so often discuss when left to their own devices: periods, the menopause, tanning, biological clocks, raising children and the mirena coil. I spent some time imagining how the holiday would shift if five or six single, heterosexual men arrived, and envisaged games of waterpolo ruining Margaret’s laps in the pools, cheers from makeshift boules games upsetting the meditation sessions on the sun terrace, late night drinking games distracting many of the group’s less committed members from their 7am yoga practice the next morning. As it was, one of my principal bonding conversations involved a chat with a mother and daughter about how the woman with the world’s longest fingernails wipes her bottom.
Most people were very well behaved, and it was often left to one fantastic character called Kay to provide the hilarity. In her late forties, vocally somewhere between Frances De La Tour and Roseanne Barr, she was sorted and straightforward during the day, but a few glasses of wine down and she transformed into one of the most fantastically belligerent women I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.
“I don’t mean to make a scene,” she slurred gently on our second night, having made a mid-dinner trip to another table, “but everyone else is very dry. I know it's awful, but we definitely have the best table,” she emphasised, her voice rising an octave or so. “And I think we would do very well if we could just do a little wee, go on, everyone in their chairs now. Mark your spot and then no one else can sit here tomorrow. Go on. Just a few drops – you’ll thank me later, I promise you.” I never want to party without her again.
Then after a week, a short taxi ride into Marrakech, the pink city, a place I’ve wanted to visit for a very long time, a place I’m glad I’ve now seen, a place I won’t be hurrying to visit again. Wow I’m sounding like a grump. I had a great time. It was fascinating, very different to expectations and I could have stayed longer. But did I like it? Not exactly. The divide between touristville and normalville was so harsh – the souks were 3% functioning market and 97% get-your-hands-on-the-Western-dollar desperation – Times Square without New Yorkers, Leicester Square without the cinemas. I felt guilty for perpetuating it, but not so guilty that I wasn’t able to select so many of their wares that I had to buy another suitcase to get them all home. We had a great trip through the new town, Gueliz, where the real Marrakechis live, the ones who have a life other than that portrayed in SATC2. But the expensive restaurants are all full of white faces, sweating men from Bournemouth stuff dirhams into the bra tops of bellydancers in swanky bars that serve pink Champagne at £50 a bottle, while a few minutes down the road, veiled women sit outside tourist attractions using their cute kids as bait. I guess there’s the same mix of wealth and abject poverty in any other city, but the tourist market is one huge whopping part of their economy and it felt a bit gross, like holidaying in a theme park, escaping to my luxury air conditioned riad every night while the ride's staff just carry on living in the Pink Kingdom, never able to take off their uniforms.
That said, who am I to say their life isn’t fun? Maybe they’re having a whale of a time. I guess I often felt pretty uncomfortable – the women wouldn’t look us in the eye, while the men muttered obscenities under their breath while we walked by, desperate to woo us into their shops, angry when we ignored them, unbearably obsequious when we didn’t. I can't blame the girls for being pissed off - I'd be livid if London was 95% full of gorgeous women that all the men leer over while ignoring me. Oh.
Anyway. I can’t deny I found the attention fun for the first hour, my daily experience in Marrakech being the exact opposite of my life in London: I was getting so much male attention it was almost embarrassing, but when their hands started brushing against my ass, I quickly began to feel a bit sick about the whole thing. I’d been warned about this by other visitors, and wore my (blonde) hair back and up so as to stand out a bit less, but no matter what I did with my hair, my ass was, as always, shall we say, a ‘feature’, and on my final night as Trace and I wandered round the main square I was almost in tears, as every few seconds, a complete stranger would violate my dance space and lightly touch my buttocks as he walked by and disappeared into the crowd. Arguably, I should have chucked on a birka and been done with it, but there was a part of me that felt that would have been a capitulation that'd assist those people who say rape victims who wore short skirts were asking for it. Long sentence. Sorry. It's late and I'm out of practice.
Anyway. It was interesting. Other points of note:
Now leave me alone as I have a ton of X Factor to catch up on.
Even before my travels began, however, I was aware that my desire to blog has been sluggish at best, and over the past weeks I have spent some not insignificant time musing over my writing. Not to get too spiritual at this early stage of what promises to be a scroll-heavy edition of LLFF, but my psychological goal has long been to become as self-sufficient as possible. Like most people, I need and thrive on human contact, and have a deeply-held belief that love is all we need. I am not aiming for some sort of hermetic existence atop a girthy Tibetan telegraph pole. However, true love is truly selfless, and doesn’t work too well if one half of the partnership is constantly craving attention, affection or none-too-subtley pointing out that the other person owes them a present because she bought them that T-shirt last week and you haven’t even worn it yet, and for fuck’s sake how many times have I asked you to please phone me if you’re going to be late?
And release.
So. Yeah. I know that love should be unconditional, and, like millions of others, I know that in the past I’ve sometimes struggled with that. After much thought over the years, I've reasoned that the best way to be able to give unconditional love, whether to friends, family or lovers, is to need them as little as possible. I am about six tons of cherished possessions away from being a Buddhist, but ideally, I’d like to be fairly zen about this whole life malarkey, and work towards needing less, not more, the idea being that the less you need, the more you are free to give.
Which is where the blog comes in. Is it right to write? If it is informative – yes. If it brings pleasure – yes. Clearly I don’t blog for money, but I still receive two rewards: the immense satisfaction and flow I gain from the act of writing, the decision to structure a sentence like this (and not like that), the clarity and stability I feel having recounted an incident in black and white. And secondly, the flush of gratification I receive when I discover that my efforts have brought others pleasure or support.
BUT.
If I'm going to be serious about self-sufficiency, shouldn't I fight this urge for third party approval, and take the decision not to write at all? Shouldn't I conclude that the very nature of blogging cultivates a needy side of me from which I should be moving away? I thought that I should.
But then I thought of all the wonderful stuff we'd never have witnessed if a desire for appreciation was unacceptable. All the plays and paintings, poems, programmes, companies, children, families, restaurants, songs and pizzas that might not have come into existence if financial remuneration was the only possible reward for effort, if humanity's enjoyment of recognition vanished altogether.
The experience of choral singing is meditative, transformative, but the surge that follows when the audience appreciates your sound is another rush altogether - not more pleasurable than the performance itself, but nonetheless a huge part of singing, one which makes the night of a concert so strikingly different to a rehearsal. Would I still go to choir practice if I could never sing in front of an audience again? Probably not, but not many people would think that's weird. You join a choir to sing - and to be heard singing. Only a few people would, on learning that you are in a choir, conclude that you're an attention-seeking spotlight-whore. But choose to write and publish your work on the internet, and the implication is that you think you've created something worth others' valuable time. There is a question that's asked when any creative output is put in the public domain: 'Do you think this is good?' And if that question is left unanswered, it hurts. Some performers say they don't care what others think. I think they're talking out of their asses. Anyone who puts work out there, hangs it in a gallery, plays it onstage, creates and shapes a young mind, offers themselves to the lives of strangers - if you do that, you care. You need.
Before I went to Morocco, I went on a one-day travel writing course, which was immaculately structured and very helpful, in that it made me decide that I do not under any circumstances want to be a travel writer. The hardest thing about it was that we had to do four short written exercises throughout the day. After the group of around 25 people had finished the first written exercise, I sat, heart in mouth, as the course leader selected who would read – and I wasn’t picked. No one heard my astonishingly original and hilarious efforts. I was livid. Mystifyingly – or rather, demonstrating vast social intelligence – others seemed to feel remorse when they were picked and, like true Englishmen and women, they carefully indicated that they were embarrassed or uncomfortable to be in the spotlight. I did my level best to seem relieved not to have had to share, but as my second and third efforts also went unwitnessed, I became more and more desperate to be heard. I was finally selected to share my attempt for the fourth and final exercise, the last person out of the entire group to read aloud, only a couple of minutes before the workshop’s end. After hours of anticipation, the hoped-for laughs I received for my work were gratifying and immediately internal order was restored, the butterflies went back to their locker and my heart rate returned to its un-attention-seeking-nightmare levels.
That night I went to stay with my mother, and read her the three exercises I’d written that hadn’t been heard. She said I was brilliant. I was fully aware that a) she is not objective and b) I have my moments, and it was all OK.
I will be frank: I want to write and I want to be read. Does that make me needy? Yes, but no more than anyone else who puts their time and effort into a project, a baby, that doesn't give them financial reward. And in my defense: I could be needier. I could be trying to be famous, writing bad chick-lit and living on a permanent diet. That's not what I want. I want to carry on trying to put words together in an order that makes me proud, and I want to receive recognition for any pleasure my hard work brings to others.
To conclude this absurdly overlong and introspective introduction: Lost Looking For Fish will go on. I've missed it while I've been away – not just the praise, but the process. And if one or two of you are still this side of comatose and are kind enough to tell me I rock every now and then, I’ll be happy as a lamb in a field full of tussocks on a sunny day.
On to where the hell I’ve been. Morocco has been a fantastic break. I flew out two Fridays ago, and went to an unexpectedly swanky hotel about 45 minutes south of Marrakech, where I felt like I should wear floaty dresses, light candles and be filmed by Zeffirelli singing songs about love in a plaintive but effortlessly beautiful folk voice while playing some sort of north African lute. Instead I wore floaty dresses, did yoga, read books, ate my own bodyweight in couscous and discovered an hitherto unknown penchant for Moroccan rosé.
My true Faithful may remember that I went on a yoga holiday last June to Dahab in Egypt, where I discovered upon my arrival that no one else had had the foresight to sign up for the same holiday, and that I was thus going to have around four hours’ private yoga tuition each day, just me and the lovely instructor. In between classes, I was left to my own devices, and spent my time lounging, reading, snorkelling, scubaing, horse-riding, shopping, battling with local internet cafés and climbing Mount Sinai by night.
This year was somewhat different, and for ‘somewhat’, read ‘a bit meh’ and for ‘different’, read ‘by comparison’. I meeeeeaaaannnn, the people were nice, the yoga was stretchy, the pool was glorious, the hotel was far better than I deserve, my books were fantastic but… it turns out that I am not one for set meals with 24 people split up into three groups of eight, seated round one of three rectangular tables for breakfast, lunch and dinner every single day, plus four hours of yoga together, plus nowhere to go outside the hotel, no sea to swim in, no horses to ride along the beach, no internet cafés, no internet, no cafés. I slept a lot, I relaxed, I even think some people may have enjoyed my company, and I feel rested and grateful, but I won’t be rushing back. The routine made me rebellious and by the end I had lost interest in mealtimes and yoga, desperate to assert my independence by doing the only thing I could think of: not joining in.
Oh but it wasn’t bad, it really wasn’t. The sun shone, I went brown, there were some absolute gems of people there – 22 women and 2 men with an age-range spanning five decades from twenties to seventies, a male/female ratio which inevitably descended into discussions about the topics women so often discuss when left to their own devices: periods, the menopause, tanning, biological clocks, raising children and the mirena coil. I spent some time imagining how the holiday would shift if five or six single, heterosexual men arrived, and envisaged games of waterpolo ruining Margaret’s laps in the pools, cheers from makeshift boules games upsetting the meditation sessions on the sun terrace, late night drinking games distracting many of the group’s less committed members from their 7am yoga practice the next morning. As it was, one of my principal bonding conversations involved a chat with a mother and daughter about how the woman with the world’s longest fingernails wipes her bottom.
Most people were very well behaved, and it was often left to one fantastic character called Kay to provide the hilarity. In her late forties, vocally somewhere between Frances De La Tour and Roseanne Barr, she was sorted and straightforward during the day, but a few glasses of wine down and she transformed into one of the most fantastically belligerent women I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.
“I don’t mean to make a scene,” she slurred gently on our second night, having made a mid-dinner trip to another table, “but everyone else is very dry. I know it's awful, but we definitely have the best table,” she emphasised, her voice rising an octave or so. “And I think we would do very well if we could just do a little wee, go on, everyone in their chairs now. Mark your spot and then no one else can sit here tomorrow. Go on. Just a few drops – you’ll thank me later, I promise you.” I never want to party without her again.
Then after a week, a short taxi ride into Marrakech, the pink city, a place I’ve wanted to visit for a very long time, a place I’m glad I’ve now seen, a place I won’t be hurrying to visit again. Wow I’m sounding like a grump. I had a great time. It was fascinating, very different to expectations and I could have stayed longer. But did I like it? Not exactly. The divide between touristville and normalville was so harsh – the souks were 3% functioning market and 97% get-your-hands-on-the-Western-dollar desperation – Times Square without New Yorkers, Leicester Square without the cinemas. I felt guilty for perpetuating it, but not so guilty that I wasn’t able to select so many of their wares that I had to buy another suitcase to get them all home. We had a great trip through the new town, Gueliz, where the real Marrakechis live, the ones who have a life other than that portrayed in SATC2. But the expensive restaurants are all full of white faces, sweating men from Bournemouth stuff dirhams into the bra tops of bellydancers in swanky bars that serve pink Champagne at £50 a bottle, while a few minutes down the road, veiled women sit outside tourist attractions using their cute kids as bait. I guess there’s the same mix of wealth and abject poverty in any other city, but the tourist market is one huge whopping part of their economy and it felt a bit gross, like holidaying in a theme park, escaping to my luxury air conditioned riad every night while the ride's staff just carry on living in the Pink Kingdom, never able to take off their uniforms.
That said, who am I to say their life isn’t fun? Maybe they’re having a whale of a time. I guess I often felt pretty uncomfortable – the women wouldn’t look us in the eye, while the men muttered obscenities under their breath while we walked by, desperate to woo us into their shops, angry when we ignored them, unbearably obsequious when we didn’t. I can't blame the girls for being pissed off - I'd be livid if London was 95% full of gorgeous women that all the men leer over while ignoring me. Oh.
Anyway. I can’t deny I found the attention fun for the first hour, my daily experience in Marrakech being the exact opposite of my life in London: I was getting so much male attention it was almost embarrassing, but when their hands started brushing against my ass, I quickly began to feel a bit sick about the whole thing. I’d been warned about this by other visitors, and wore my (blonde) hair back and up so as to stand out a bit less, but no matter what I did with my hair, my ass was, as always, shall we say, a ‘feature’, and on my final night as Trace and I wandered round the main square I was almost in tears, as every few seconds, a complete stranger would violate my dance space and lightly touch my buttocks as he walked by and disappeared into the crowd. Arguably, I should have chucked on a birka and been done with it, but there was a part of me that felt that would have been a capitulation that'd assist those people who say rape victims who wore short skirts were asking for it. Long sentence. Sorry. It's late and I'm out of practice.
Anyway. It was interesting. Other points of note:
- Within a few hours of arriving in the city, Trace and I were in a local spa having a reflexology foot treatment, and I was amused to notice that the pan pipes were playing ‘Speed Bonny Boat’. You can take the girl out of Scotland…
- Moroccan horses stop at “Woah” too. I noticed no other Arabic/English convergences.
- Another day, another spa experience – Tracey and I went to a hammam for a steam and scrub, and were sitting semi awkwardly in our bikinis in the treatment room, waiting for further instructions, when a brusque woman with limited English came in, pointed at my boobs and said, “Off.” Clearly it was to be a topless treatment. We complied, lay down on an L-shaped bench, Trace along one wall, my head perpendicular to her feet. Another woman came in and started to rub black soap oil into Tracey’s front. “Tournez,” she barked. Trace slithered over onto her belly. I tipped my head back over my right shoulder to see what was going on, precisely at the moment that the lady gripped the lower hems of Tracey’s bikini bottoms and firmly jerked them up, giving a professional but unexpected wedgie that sent my friend giggling for some time to come.
- Moroccans aren’t without a sense of humour although their favourite joke is fairly simple: you ask a fairly innocent question, e.g. “Can I have a bottle of water?”, “Please can we have some lunch here?”, “Can we check out?” and they look you square in the eyes and say, “No.” And you say, “Really?” and they say, “No! Not really! It is fine! Of course you can have water/lunch/check out.” And they laugh as if it is a brilliant ruse. It is a bit funny the first time it happens. After that not so much.
- I did laugh one night though, when we were at the uber-swanky Western restaurant Foundouk, seated on the first floor mezzanine, overlooking a huge chandelier which hung deep down over the ground floor diners. The chandelier held twenty or thirty creamy wax orbs containing tea light candles, which any fool knows have a burning time of around four hours. How, I wondered, were these new candles replaced and lit every evening, when the chandelier was a good distance from any table or platform. I asked the waiter. “Nous avons un singe,” he said. “A monkey?” I said. “Oui,” he said, straightfaced. Then he laughed and showed us how the wrought iron panels in the balcony of the mezzanine slide to one side so someone can reach out and change the lights. I’m not a massive fan of animal cruelty but I’m afraid on that occasion the reality was a little disappointing.
Now leave me alone as I have a ton of X Factor to catch up on.
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