End of week summary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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