Enough's enough

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tell no one

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

I'm a legal alien

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crap!

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

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

Taken

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

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

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

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

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

Hair brained

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

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

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

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

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

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

Evil corporation does amazing thing

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

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

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

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

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

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

Floating, not gloating

Given the fact that I am trundling over rather rocky terrain at present, it seemed remarkably serendipitous that last night was the night that Emily, Grania and I had chosen, weeks ago, to use our £10-for-the-price-of-a-£40-session vouchers at Floatworks, Europe's biggest floatation centre. I wasn't sure what to expect but I was pretty certain that I'd come out of the experience feeling less stressed than when I went in.

Error.

I had my shower and peered into the pod, lime green on the outside, white on the inside, noticing as I stepped in that one of the previous users had left a couple of long, dark hairs behind. My over-sensitive reflex nearly kicked in but I reminded myself that I swim merrily in the sea, which I am told has a little more unpleasant matter in it than two long hairs. I sat down. The heavily salted water was warmish and a little over a foot deep. Body temperature, I think heated through a panel in the pod's floor. The liquid felt thick with the salt, almost syrupy. I extended my legs, put in the earplugs (supplied) and pressed the button to bring the pod's lid down. There was a red light at the foot end of the pod which emitted a comforting glow. I lay back, allowing my head to be completely supported by the water, and waited for the plinky plonky music I'd been told to expect: ten minutes to start with, followed by fifty minutes of silence, followed by more music to alert you that it's time to get out and shower.

I waited.

No plinky.

No plonky.

Just silence.

I waited some more. Without the music, I wouldn't know when to get out. I would lie there, not knowing when to get out, for an hour. Or I could get out then and there, wrap the clearly insubstantial towel around my naked form, slide my feet into the rubbery sandals and schlep back to reception to check. Given that I am always pro-active, always up for an adventure and always full of beans, I continued to lie still and hope a solution presented itself.

For the first few minutes I was intensely bored. Then I realised that you can curl yourself up, stretching one side and then the other, and hear your spine clicking. That was quite fun. Then I spent some time running my fingers through my hair, which was all ballooned out and made me feel like a mermaid. Also fun. Then I lay still, and realised that the water around your body gets really warm if you don't wiggle very much. That, too, was pleasing. Then I smoothed the water over the bits of my body that weren't submerged, and realised that it felt a bit like semen. Then I remembered being in Madrid about ten years ago and interviewing one of Scooch who said that his favourite place to masturbate was on sunbeds. And then I suddenly worried that I was lying in a pod full of strange men's semen. Then I started wondering how long it was 'til my hour was up. And basically I wondered that for ages until I got bored of wondering it and actually got out, and checked the time on my phone. I'd only had about 45 minutes but I was out now and I knew I wouldn't relax if I got back in. So I got back into the shower and then went to the hairdrying area to dry my hair. There was a lot of other people's hair on the floor.

When I got back to reception, I told the lady about my lack of music. "Did you have the green pod?" she asked, unflapped. I nodded. "Ah, well that one's temperamental." She wrote out a laminated voucher for another free session and handed it over. I felt placated but not yet relaxed.

When Grania and Emily came out, they too were unconvinced, although the woman behind reception said that everyone says their second float is miles better than their first because they know the ropes. That sounds to me like marketing gold. Then the three of us went over the road to the restaurant, where I took one sip of my delicious glass of cold white wine and then knocked the rest of it all over myself, much of it pouring into my left boot. The boots are ten days old and are lined with a massively-absorbent and warm fleecy fabric. So that's good. The left one will smell of wine FOREVER.

Then I had too much to eat and we set the world to rights and then I had to wait 14 minutes for a tube, so I went back up to street level which was DEFINITELY an error, and eventually got a bus home and felt exhausted and slept quite well, and today I am knackered but I keep thinking about floating and feeling, for some unexpected reason, like I really want to do it again as a matter of some urgency.

So, in conclusion:
Floating at the time: thumbs horizontal
Cold white wine in my mouth: thumbs up
Cold white wine all over my dress and tights, and in my winter boots: thumbs down
Memory of evening: thumbs up
Floating in retrospect: thumbs at 2 and 10 o'clock

Also: Blood and Gifts is a very good play at the National. It's about the diplomatic handling of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the early eighties and I recommend it. It's very funny and informative. A bit like me but with broader appeal.

Finally: I just found out that, due to a glitsch in the system last week, our office vending machine went through a spate of giving away Kitkats for 1p. This is what happens when I start liking Twix Fino. It is a conspiracy, I tell you. Livid.

Warning: continued introspection

I'm still thinking.

Feeling much better though, which is good. Or maybe it's bad, if you don't like me and want me to suffer. Everything's subjective.

I'm now wondering something that I used to wonder a lot when it came to boyfriends, and which I'm now wondering about just in terms of life. Are you ready? This is it:

How much is enough?

In relationships, sometimes boys would drive me mad. And I'd say to myself, 'Stop criticising them. You're never going to meet anyone who never annoys you - some degree of compromise is always necessary.' And then I'd think 'But how do I know whether I'm making the right amount of compromise, or whether I'm just ignoring the evidence and staying with the wrong person?' My argument was that, if you compromised on everything, you could persuade yourself that you were lucky to be with a vomit-covered tramp. So where should one draw the line? How could one know if one was being too critical, or whether one just wasn't suited to the boy in question? Eventually, in every case, we broke up, and I look back now and, without exception, it was absolutely right that we did.

And now I'm thinking about me in my life, and how much is enough. We all have flaws and character traits we don't like in ourselves. Some people are intolerant, or prejudiced, or hot-headed, or stubborn, or lazy, or prone to fat. I am several of the above - and I am also (as previously discussed) hungry for praise and recognition. I need more recognition than the average person. This is annoying, as it means I don't generally remain happy without lots of praise for very long, which makes me overly-reliant on third parties and means that doing regular things like having a normal job and normal friends isn't enough for me, and I need more stimulation and more applause, so I write about my normal life in a blog and still crave more readers.

Now, I have a choice. I can either put this need down as a failing, and try very hard to learn to be content with the norm and stop striving for further recognition, or I can just say 'Oh well, that's the way I am, I'm a show pony,' and just go with it, push myself to be recognised and grow comfortable with that part of my character - hopefully while keeping an eye on it so that it doesn't get too out of hand.

The important thing at the moment is that I start to respect myself, as I am right now.

Meh. I'm boring myself now. Anyone who's still reading, well done to you, you're made of kinder stuff than I am.

I weighed myself on Sunday. I am basically a million stone. So I took advantage of the clocks going back and the associated jetlag to get up earlier on Monday morning, do my meditation and go for a run. And then today I meditated and did yoga. And tomorrow I will run again. It is all going terribly well and I was so smug with myself that yesterday evening I bought myself a reward jumper, which I'm wearing today. My legs still look like rolled up duvets but I think that the jumper briefly distracts the viewer from my lower half. So that's also good. Unless you don't like me, in which case you should ignore my talk of my nice jumper and just focus on the bit about my legs. Also, you might enjoy finding out that yesterday evening, despite there being nothing I could think of that was wrong, I still walked through town, new jumper in hand, feeling like sobbing. It's a funny old world.