Rethinking reproducing

For most of my twenties, I didn't want kids. I found them annoying, needy and expensive. I was prepared to admit that one day I might change my mind, but I certainly didn't feel any pressing need to procreate. Over the last five years, things changed a bit, and for various predictable reasons my desire to have children of my own grew a fair bit to the point where I would say 'I definitely want them one day.' But still, I rarely felt broody. The only exception to that would be when I seriously fancied a guy, or while I was in a relationship, when my libido and my desire for kids would skyrocket together, but I've been single for a long time, and haven't fancied anyone of note for quite a while, so at the moment, my desires are low. I remained sure, however, that I would try and have babies at some point in the future. Until this weekend.

I spent Friday and Saturday nights in Oxfordshire at my friend Lucy's house, where she lives with her husband, her nearly-four year old daughter and her two year old son. And let me say right from the start, they are seriously good kids - not just from the perspective of well-behaved etc., but from an outsider's point of view, someone such as myself who'd need marketing to, they are excellent examples of their genres - the girl is very pretty with long hair and an amazing Cupid's-bow mouth, and the boy has huge wide blue eyes that he narrows winningly in a Blue Steel fashion to win over girls. He has quite nicely chubby cheeks and goes adorably red-faced when he's upset. They like to play games, they run around happily, the boy has a winning lisp, they go to sleep when they're expected to, they eat pretty much what they're given - it's all very good. But I realised this weekend that my other main experience of kids has been with my friend Nicole, who lives not far away in Gloucestershire and has three daughters but, crucially, has an au pair. Luce and Jake have help on three days when she goes to work, but other than that, they're on their own. This weekend, as it is for most families most of the time, it was just them and the kids - and me - and I think I found the amount of work quite a shock. I'll rephrase that. I definitely found it a shock.

I want to want kids, don't get me wrong. I think having them is the most natural thing in the world, and I look at people who've already got a nipper or two and feel like they are somehow more justified than I am: they've done the one thing that we're really here to do, whereas I'm just selfishly drifting along. More than just biologically, kids have appealed massively to me: they are endlessly fascinating. I loved tutoring them and I really enjoy the interactions I have with them, whatever their age. But god, the relentlessness of it this weekend, the Every Single Dayness of it, the utter sacrifice, the patience, the selflessness - I just don't know if I've got it. Lucy loves it, she loves being needed, she loves being a mother. Perhaps as a result, she is very good at it - and I'm sure her kids will be assets. I think mine might be asses.

Of course, this is all very fortunate, since I am about as likely to get pregnant as duet with The Wiggles, but even though it's totally hypothetical, it's still an interesting shift, and does make my hopes and plans for the future look a little odd. And I know, people say it's different when they're your own, and things will change if I meet a guy I love, but the fact is, I'm just not sure I can do it, and the world certainly doesn't need any more mouths to feed. Maybe I just shouldn't add to the number. I'm pretty sure it's the kind of thing you should be pretty sure about before getting involved.

Anyway. It was an interesting weekend. I ate Shane Warne's weight in chocolate mousse, plus Celebrations, wine, lamb, potatoes, fish, homemade pizza with puff pastry base, toast, cereal ack ack ack. Delicious. Jake and I lost to Luce, Em and Erf at Trivial Pursuit, which was annoying, but my pain was more than calmed by the discovery of an incredibly compelling group TV watching experience called 1000 Ways To Die, a couple of long hilly walks, clusters of snowdrops peeking through the grass, a relaxing hungover Sunday morning watching Andy Murray scream at his mum and trainer to shut up like the petulant dinosaur he is, many interesting discussions round the dinner table and two really good nights' sleep. A great break from the smoke, but, as always, the familiarity of the plentiful strangers were a welcome sight as I caught the tube back home yesterday evening. Friends rock but the perspective given by anonymity is vital too. I'm off to be acupunctured. Will report back tomorrow. Ohhhhmmmmmmmm.

Indecent exposure

"Ummm, Janey..." said Emily, while a few of us were seated around Kate's kitchen table last night, "are you... wearing hotpants?" I winced and nodded slowly.
"I think I might be, yes," I said.

I had already been told that they looked great by Kate and Joanna, but that is not the point. Yesterday morning, I examined myself in my bedroom mirror. "I do not need to worry," I thought. "These shorts are suitable for work - they are grey wool shorts and I am wearing them over opaque black tights with high heels and a black round-neck jumper. I look preppy and efficient." Then I arrived at work and took off my coat. As is so often the case, the lighting and atmosphere in my bedroom had been somewhat different to the vibe in my office. I had a moment of Damascene clarity. I was at work. Wearing hotpants. Grey hotpants.

I was in a quandary: should I admit my fashion crisis, or attempt to persuade everyone that my choice was fine by pretending everything was exactly normal and that coming to work out of the blue wearing a pair of microshorts was a perfectly laudable decision to make on a Thursday? I considered going to the shops and buying an alternative garment for my lower half, but as soon as anyone had seen me in the shorts, this option was rendered impossible, as the logical conclusion anyone would draw having seen me change from the shorts into an alternative would be: her bum was too big for her shorts and they ripped. I had to stay in them, and I had to act confident.

I resolved to move around as little as possible, and keep my beshorted legs under my desk, so it was then inevitable that I was asked to run more errands than I'd ever been asked to run before. I was sent back and forth to the vending area, to the post tray, to get things signed, a never-ending stream of reasons meant that I had to stand up continually and show people more of my thighs than anyone would ever choose to see. Two or three people visibly double-took when I walked by them, and I can assure you, it was at my audacity, not my legs. When you are used to someone dressing relatively normally and then they turn up to work wearing an outfit that would not look out of place on Rihanna at the Manchester GMEx, it can be a bit shocking.

Today I am wearing a demure polo-necked dress that comes down to below my knees. I feel safer. As, I'm sure, do my colleagues, who don't have to fear a flash of my cellulite every time they look up from their spreadsheets. Lesson well and truly learned.

Grass: getting greener

I don't read many other blogs. Most of the blogs I stumble across seem to be written by attractive, articulate, funny single women in their thirties, and I don't need to be reminded quite how average and unremarkable I am. Occasionally I find blogs written by miserable, articulate, single men in their thirties: these are slightly better because they make me feel like, however bad things get, at least I'm not them. Miserable single men seem to have a really tough time of it as they can't seem to shake off their negative self-image. Not that it's a breeze for us lasses - we just seem to find it easier to admit we need help. If it were up to me, I'd round up every thirty year old in the UK and book them in to a compulsory twelve month stint of psychodynamic therapy.

My session last night wasn't the easiest, but it was certainly enlightening. As a paragraph-length recap of approximately twenty hours of counselling, this whole thing started because I was miserable. I was miserable because I'd felt left out of my parents' relationship, and by hanging out with unattainables and doggedly offering my worship to anyone who'd look in my direction only to find them boring and unworthy when they reciprocated, I just repeated and reconfirmed this hunch over and over again for 33 years. Somehow I needed to find some inner strength, a feeling that I am good enough, that I don't need to replicate my parents' happiness to be a success, that my life's goal is my own and my own alone.

Thus began my search for inner peace. I reasoned that, if I found inner peace, I'd feel happy with the status quo and stop constantly feeling like I am not good enough and that I need a partner in my life to validate my existence. And, after months of therapy and meditation, it seemed to be working: around the beginning of this year, I suddenly realised that, somewhere along the line, I'd stopped feeling like a failure. The Greek chorus who'd stood at my side my entire life and criticised my every move had shut up, at last. I stopped feeling so ugly, I stopped feeling so undesirable, I stopped feeling like I had to prove myself every minute of every day.

Initially I was elated, but in the past fortnight, I've noticed that my old ways have started to creep back - I have been spending a lot of time thinking about the future, planning holidays and trips, forgetting about my life, the present, which is just slipping by unnoticed. I've meticulously planned lots of events (a busy girl = a successful girl), and had a few conversations about Grania's new love that left me feeling like she preferred him to me, as though her love was finite, that he'd taken my share, that we were in a competition and I'd lost. Turned out I wasn't so happy with the status quo after all.

Yesterday I said I felt like I was at a Y junction. One fork was a path where I choose inner peace, and I relinquish all need for anything. I become totally zen. But I was worried that that option sucks: if you don't crave anything, you never get the rush of getting what you've always craved. So you're kind of placidly happy, which is fine, but I looked at Grania and her Cloud Nine Hundred And Ninety Nine and I think, if I go totally zen, I'll never have that. Which seemed sad. The other fork is where I don't have inner peace, but still have needs and desires that get met and/or thwarted, and along the way there's a lot of pain and occasional pleasure. That's where I was before and it hurt a lot. In short, both paths suck.

But, said my therapist, you're still talking like there are paths. Trodden paths. And I said, oh. You're right. OK, there are no paths. But I'm still walking purposefully in one direction. And she said Mmmm. And I said, shit, I should be meandering, shouldn't I? She said nothing. I shouldn't really be going anywhere much, I said.

About this inner peace, she said. That was what you were trying to aim for? Yes, I said. And that means acceptance, right? Right, I said - accepting and loving myself, warts and all. [NB I don't have warts]. Doesn't that mean, she said, that you have to be at peace with every part of you? Yes, I said. Even, she asked, the parts that need a relationship? And I said, oh. I thought it was going to be a transaction. I thought I'd get inner peace and then I'd be complete and I would no longer need a relationship. I don't know if it's that simple, she said. I suppose, I said, the crucial difference is that one is at peace with oneself, and perhaps a relationship comes along that makes one a bit happier, rather than that one is unhappy, and searches for a relationship to solve their problems. She nodded. OK, I said. I think I can get my head round that.

And so the Y junction became overgrown with long grass.

At the moment, I am in the weird position of knowing that I'd love to meet someone who would join me in the meadow, but if you said 'I've got the ideal man for you, just click your fingers and you'll be madly in love' I'd be too terrified to do it. What's that about? Why would I not want the thing that I really want? Well, because I've been hurt. Badly. And I don't much fancy that happening again. One day I'll dip a toe. But right now it's fun working on this inner peace malarkey and spending time in the meadow on my tod. The flowers are lovely. It's like the Alpujarras.

Plus I don't know when I'd have time for this fictional boyfriend, anyway. Last night was our first uke band practice. My new bandmates seem extremely friendly and a talented lot, and it's hard to imagine that we will all want to bite out each others' jugulars in a few short weeks, although I know that's inevitable. We whittled our first songlist down to ten possibles - now I have a fortnight to learn how to play them. Terrified but excited: terrified about memorising songs, excited about getting dressed up in retro outfits and performing on stage. I'd love to do a lot more lying around but it just doesn't seem to be possible.

Do Not Read This Post

Topics I feel I should write about:

• Obama's State of the Nation address
• Osborne blaming the economy on the weather
• My aching upper body and how I think climbing might be the world's greatest cure for bingo wings ever

Topics I have the energy to write about:

• A big, fat zero in a harness

I got home yesterday full of good intentions for a productive evening at home. I was initially efficient, cleaning my bathroom and the 'utility area' where the plumbing work had created a lot of dirt, and then making peppers stuffed with couscous. At 8pm I sat down on my sofa with the intention of checking my emails and then starting to write. At 8:30pm, my eyes were stinging so much that one actually released a tear. I admitted defeat and went to bed, where I did some meditation and was asleep at 9:15pm. Woke up at 8:05am this morning. Just under 11 hours sleep. Something is not right. Maybe it's still hormones. Maybe it's that I'm so old now that I am STILL catching up from my 4am night on Saturday, even though I slept for 11 hours on Sunday night too. If that's the case, I find it seriously unfunny. I can't be sleeping this much on a regular basis, life's far too short as it is. Growl.

Here endeth the World's Dullest Blog Post, which I sincerely hope marks LLFF's nadir. I never know if it's better to write this than not write at all. I'd normally argue for quality over quantity but apparently in the blogosphere, different rules apply, and you need to go for frequency above all else. Meh. Shut up.

In other news, I desperately want this dress. I actually think I would look better than Angie in it, such is the scale and unpredictable nature of my body image. If anyone is stuck for a Happy January present to get me, this would be a good start. I don't need the Brad Pitt, she can keep him.

Climb every (artificial) mountain

So I went climbing. And of all the life lessons I've ever handed on to you, dear, dear Faithful, I cannot emphasise this one enough: girls, if you have any fat on your arse, any fat AT ALL, you must never, EVER go climbing with anyone you are trying to impress. On the scale of sexy events, I'd rate it one down from childbirth and a couple up from vomiting all over yourself in bed. I had prepared myself mentally for the issues inherent with the Bum From Below angle by wearing a long vest top which distracted the eye from most of the offensive areas. What I forgot to allow for was The Harness.

The Harness straps between and around your upper thighs, round your waist and - critically - under your buttocks, and is pulled taut, creating a selection of bulges that would make any remotely normal female look like the Michelin Man. If you, like me, are in possession of a derriere that regularly draws admiring coos from black males and lower-lip-biting, eye-widening stares of pity from girls who are not similarly afflicted, rest assured the long-top-over-tracksuit-bottoms-under-harness look is not one to adopt for Spring Summer 11. Combine it with a menstrual abdomen that looked like I'd swallowed a fridge and the look was pretty much totally terrible.

Just in case you were in any doubt, here is a before image of me from the rear:





















And here is me once the harness was donned. I actually think I've been quite kind in my buttock depiction. In real life it was worse.




















Now just imagine standing ten feet directly underneath that and try and fancy me. I told you. It's physically impossible. LLFF: testing potentially embarrassing things since 2006.

Vanity aside, though, the experience was a positive one. Over our ninety minute introduction class, we scaled various fake surfaces, using the coloured protusions to lift ourselves up and then enjoying the feeling of being winched back down to safety. I was a bit scared on my first go and exhausted by my eighth, but in between found it really quite satisfying although my soft sensitive girlie hands hurt a bit and my freakish size ten feet wouldn't grip some of the smaller nobbles. My gangly arms didn't last too long either, not a shock since I have the upper body strength of a T-Rex, so when the time came for the commemorative photographs to be taken, mine were shot with my trainer on a foothold approximately four inches from the ground. Gabe in Cliffhanger I am not. On the upside, it is unlikely that I'll get myself into a 127 Hours scenario any time soon, so that's something for which to be grateful. And I was in the work toilets today just thinking how lucky I am not to be one of the people in the developing world who have to use train tracks and other public ditches as latrines. Relieving myself in plain view of other people is quite high up on the Things I'd Like To Avoid Doing Ever list. PLUS the nicest plumber in Britain came this morning and fixed my washing machine. And my new phone is up and running. And I don't live in North Korea. And the hormones are on their way out for another 24 days or so. So all in all it's all good and all that.

Apple grumble

Grumble grumble grumble iPhone stolen on Saturday night grumble it's still on, ringing and ringing, then goes through to voicemail grumble but my service provider says that even though I locked the handset with a four digit PIN, £9-worth of international calls were made on it yesterday, which could absolutely have been WAY worse but it is still annoying that it has definitely fallen into the hands of thieves - I am insured but I have a £100 excess to pay, so I had to fork out for that this morning grumble. ALSO, it turns out that the damp smell in my 'utility area' (American accent there please) wasn't a figment of my imagination, but was in fact due to the fact that my washing machine has been leaking for several weeks during the rinse cycle, and I finally had to confront the problem after water appeared in front of the machine on Friday night, and I got down on my hands and knees and looked at the area under the machine that I'd been avoiding for approx. six weeks as I was scared that the rotting smell was a dead mouse or similar and I couldn't bear to be on my hands and knees, peering into a dark area and be faced with a dead mouse, so I didn't. But then on Friday I realised it was definitely water and not a mouse, so I moved all the stuff out from the nook under the machine and all the carpet has rotted away and I had a really complex operation involving hoovers and towels and rotten washing powder boxes and coat hangers but my efforts were unsuccessful grumble and I have to get lovely Rob the plumber over which will be more money grumble grumble grumble. And ALSO I have really bad period pains and am sitting here at work with a hot water bottle clutched to my stomach grumble and my back hurts too and I feel revoltingly bloated like I've been injected all over with plutonium botox grumble and I'm really not even making up the feeling fat part, I really have gained weight, even though I was watching my eating last week I'm two pounds heavier grumble, which They Say is definitely to do with monthly water retention etc. etc. but it's still a bummer because it's not easy being careful with eating and if you do it for seven days and then gain weight at the end of it, that doesn't feel parTICularly hilarious, especially if you're already grumpy about your phone and your washing machine. AND when I was out on Saturday night, I was with a group of people, a reunion, and one of them was taking a photo of a few of us and she asked me to take off my glasses. Is this acceptable?! I was in shock. Can I say, "I don't like your jumper, it's clashing with the rest of the set-up, can you put your coat back on?" Or how about, "I really think we need to cover up that double chin, how about letting your hair down and wrapping it round your wattle as a scarf, you flabby-faced monster?" I paid extra for non-relective lenses, before you ask, so it wasn't that. And the woman who asked me is in her seventies and wears her hair in a bob, and the arms of her glasses go through the sides of the bob about an inch back from the front of her hair but I WOULDN'T ASK HER TO TAKE THEM OFF FOR MY PHOTO. What is the world coming to? Grumble.

But on the upside I had a really fun weekend. On Saturday afternoon I saw the extraordinary Black Swan, which was unquestionably weird and unexpected and laughable at times, but afterwards I realised that if you took out all the weird bits and made it more conventional, it would lose almost everything that made it so captivating. Natalie Portman, who I've been in love with since Leon and obsessed with since the double whammy of Everyone Says I Love You and Mars Attacks!, is exceptional. As I'm sure everyone else has said, it's the performance of her career and she deserves every accolade in the Bumper Book of Accolades - there's not a scene she's not in, she's utterly spell-binding throughout, managing to make a obsessive, ruthless, miserable and ambitious character seem sympathetic and pitiable, and if she doesn't have an Oscar-shaped doorstop in a few months it'll be an outrage. The movie-going experience was additionally memorable as it was the first time I have ever been shushed during a film. Kate and I were next to two French ladies, and at one point I struggled to understand something Vincent Cassel's character had said. "What was that?" I whispered to Kate, who was sitting on my right. "SHHHH!" responded the woman on my left. I was agog. If I'd been talking throughout, that would be one thing, but I'd been sitting like a Henry Moore, and had even shushed Kate when she'd been crackling her packet of Love Hearts during the opening scenes. I almost lost track of the plot, such was my confusion. Maybe Intolerant French Woman had thought I was to blame for the sweets and the whispered question. It is the only possible explanation. Being shushed for a primary offence is too vexing.

Now I am back at work feeling confused as I was up til 4am on Saturday night and then asleep on my sofa by 7.30pm yesterday, so today I feel like I'm on GMT -5 and GMT +8 at the same time. All terribly confusing. Maybe I have slipped into The Matrix without realising it. I am certainly a bit wobbly of foot today as moments ago I accidentally fell onto a Giant Quality Street Caramel Swirl and ate it before I could realise what was happening. I am putting Inadvertent Ingestion down on my Food Log. Tonight I have a 90 minute Introduction to Climbing session in Swiss Cottage and feel like going about as much as I feel like taking off all my clothes and walking onto the trading floor to sing Ooh! Ah! Just A Little Bit. The thought of even putting on sports kit makes me feel a bit wrong, let alone hanging from a rubberised nook while a group of strangers get to enjoy that uniquely sexy view of me - My Bum From Below. There's a gag about menstrual cramp(on)s somewhere but I'm too weak to spot it. Wish me luck.

Spun

So no one rejected me yesterday, neither in my conscious life, my unconscious or my subconscious. It was a good day, involving old friends, delicious halloumi, white wine and stand-up comedy and I felt very lucky. Probably not feeling quite so sprightly was the guy sitting on a stool high up in the slips at the Soho Theatre who, halfway through Greg Davies' winning set, started having a massive fit. The lady next to him shouted out, the house lights came up, and we all swivelled our heads, Wimbledon-like, to the right where we helplessly watched the man slither off his stool and vibrate on the floor. The floor manager called out for a doctor and eventually a man went over and knelt down, trying to calm the fitter down. It initially worked, but he then started up again, probably freaked out by the fact that he'd come round to realise an entire theatre audience was watching him jerk and flail. The man had been alone, so no one could confirm exactly what was going on. After a minute or so, we were asked to decamp to the bar, and it was a fair while before the stretcher arrived and he was carried out. Returning to our seats in the auditorium, I asked the gentleman next to me (who hadn't decamped as requested) if I'd missed any major excitements, and he said that the guy had seemed fairly wrecked when he came to, slurring his words and being a bit aggressive with the paramedics, but he wasn't sure if it had been too much booze or if everyone's like that post-fit. After another couple of minutes, Greg bounced back on stage and we all got back to laughing.

I often don't have a bent when I'm writing - I just tell you what's going on in my head. Maybe I should start trying to be more polemical, but I can't really find an angle on the guy-has-fit-during-comedy-gig story. I didn't learn anything from it and it was handled well by the theatre. Still, it seemed like an anecdote worth recounting.

In a slightly more opinionated fashion, I can admit with pleasure that I am grinning from ear to ear at the news that David Cameron's chief spin doctor has had to resign due to being a lying, unscrupulous, Murdoch-loving hack. It is a glorious moment of karma and one that I'm sure is bringing a lot of shadenfreudic happiness to a lot of people. I can but hope that Coulson's departure will assist in exposing some of the disastrous decisions that have been made of late, the sneaky dismantling of our treasured NHS being only one example of many hideous neoliberal choices that are changing this country for the Much Worse. I'd be furious about it all but, as usual, I feel powerless and completely unrepresented, so whinging on here and on Twitter is about all the vitriol I can muster. I used to think it was laziness that stopped me getting involved - now I think it's a total unwillingness to compromise my ideals - I'd rather do nothing than pour a phenomenal amount of time and effort into a system that is inherently flawed for very little reward, safe in the knowledge that my incalculably large sacrifice will be shortly forgotten. Actually, that's basically laziness isn't it. Either way, I'm aware that it's a sad response to the current political state, but I don't think I'm alone in doing the maths and finding the situation doesn't add up. I've always suffered from black and white thinking, and a political life strikes me as a very grey area of no man's land: an over-academicised, over-wrought, out-dated, unfair system that I'm happier ignoring. Except when twats like Coulson get exposed - that bit's fun.

What else is news? I'm off for the weekend shortly, a lot of cleaning to do and then Black Swan and a reunion tomorrow and hangover brunch on Sunday. In amongst all that I need to squeeze in a run, some yoga and a substantial chunk of writing. I don't have much hope that the latter will happen, but maybe if I state my intentions here, I'll be forced to do something about it. Because looking like a failure in front of you would be unbearable, given that it's never happened before. Oh no. Not ever. Not even once.

I'm a dreamer (and it sucks)

So you know those sex dreams I had last week? Four of them? I asked my therapist about them yesterday. Inevitably, she visibly perked up at the mention of ruderies - prior to that, the session had basically been me revelling in feeling more at peace, so I can't blame her for being grateful for some grit.
"Was the sex itself the focus of the dreams?" she asked, kindly disguising her sobs of gratitude with a little cough. I told her about the one I remembered most clearly: a guy I know had been chasing after another girl for a while, during the dream. She knocked him back and, annoyed and with dented pride, he made it clear that he wanted to sleep with me as a back-up. It was like a contractual exchange: he'd sleep with me, but I had no illusions - I was second best. He didn't really want me, he wanted her. We had sex, but it wasn't any fun on an emotional level because I knew I wasn't his true choice.

"What about the other dreams?" she asked. The next one that came to mind was with a friend of mine, the one who's now married - unlike boy number one, this one seemed to be pleased we were finally sleeping together, but there was a palpable scent of guilt in the air - he kept mentioning his wife and there was a faraway look in his eyes. I was not a priority. And suddenly, the other two dreams dropped into place: one was with an ex-boyfriend who in real life is in a long-term and happy relationship, and the fourth dream was with a guy who has never been interested in me and who also has a girlfriend. The dominoes fell - all four times, I'd dreamt of having sex with men who didn't pick me as their first choice. The message is clear: I'll do - but I'm not a strong enough candidate to be anyone's number one.

I've spent the past few weeks feeling much better while I'm awake, but my unconscious still wants to ram home that I'm not good enough. If you'll excuse the weak pun, it's fucking annoying.

Why would my mind do this to me, I asked my therapist? Why can't I dream about people being MADLY IN LOVE with me, given that I am wondrous? Obviously she has NO IDEA because we're talking about the inner workings of the human brain - but she conjectured that my wounds are still recent, and that it will probably take a while for my unconscious to catch up with my rational mind. Super!

No, I'm patient, really. I can wait. Proof of that came last night, when I went online at 18:00 London time, which equates to 10:00 PST, and - with thousands of other people - pressed the button to buy tickets for this year's Burning Man festival in Nevada. I was given a queue position of 703. I refreshed. And refreshed again. And again. Still 703. Then the system froze. Facebook was crackling with rage. "Don't panic," the Burning Man people told us. "Our system has frozen but your place in the queue will not be lost. We're doing everything we can." I waited calmly. An hour later, the system rebooted itself. I was given a new position in the queue: 23,845. Everyone had been bumped back around 20,000 places. For a festival renowned for its peace and inclusive attitudes, some of the rage on FB was hilarious to behold. Numb, I carried on staring at the screen. My queue position automatically refreshed itself every minute. Just over seven hours later, at 01:18, I reached the front. I kid you not. 01:18. In the time it took me to buy a ticket, I could have flown to New York and made the booking at a more appropriate time of day. And apparently the online queues to get tickets are nothing like the physical queues to get in and out. I tell you what, this festival better be good. I want a king size feather mattress, air conditioning, a horse and carriage, and champagne on tap. That happens at Burning Man, right?

In which I go to the cinema

Last night I saw a film called Slackistan at the ICA. I'd read a couple glowing reviews about this movie, made last year about the lives of a clique of young trustafarians in the years following their graduation from university - Reality Bites set in Islamabad. If it had been set in Detroit or Manchester, I'd be laying into it: the script is more dire than Knopfler, wincingly bad; the camera work suggests a work experience project; the sound and lighting are awful. The soundtrack is hideously clunky too - songs about love at moments about love, songs about heartbreak at moments about heartbreak - and even though I was briefly distracted by the breathtakingly handsome leading man, no one is gorgeous enough to hide the fact that the cast's acting makes Bennie Hill look like Marlon Brando.

But this wasn't made in Detroit or Manchester, it was made in Islamabad, and with as little patronising generosity as possible, I'd say that makes it a bit different. Despite all the crappiness, I still enjoyed it and certainly learned a lot from story, which showed a far more liberal, Westernised portrait of the city than I'd imagined - not necessarily a positive picture at all, but very different to my preconceptions, and lord knows it's important we challenge those as much as possible.

The sold-out central London cinema was full of youngish Asians and what interested me was that the environment in the auditorium was WAY more like seeing a film in Mumbai than just off Pall Mall. Girls were gasping and giggling at crucial plot points, bad jokes received huge belly laughs, people wandered in and out frequently and mobile phones were checked every few minutes. There was definitely the frisson of a special communal event and it served as a stark reminder to me that the young, westernised, Pakistani community in London rarely, if ever, see films about their Pakistani peers. It must be seriously odd to be so under-represented by the culture of the country in which you were born and have grown up. My parents are immigrants too, but with American and Scottish roots, I don't feel like my cultural past is particularly elusive.

Anyway. I'm glad I saw it.

I'm not doing anything tonight which is lucky, as my hair is so dirty that if I took out the four pins holding it off my face, it would stay put - except if I stood with the wind blowing on my back, in which case the whole structure would flip inside out and my face would be stuck in a tunnel of my own lank barnet. Sometimes I think it is extraordinary that I am not pursued down the street by hoardes of gift-carrying wooers. Today is not one of those days.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

And again: GRRRRRRRRRRR. I am grumpy today about EVERYTHING and it is DEFINITELY YOUR FAULT.

Actually, it is my fault. I had way more white wine last night than I've had for a while and, fun though it was at the time, I am not happy about it now. I have been merrily healthy for the past however long, but today I cannot stop dreaming of pizza and garlic bread and it is no fun at all because I can't have what I want unless I am prepared to undo all my hard work which I don't want. So by getting what I want, I will also get what I don't want. This seems to me to be particularly cruel.

Plus in the past week I have had not one, not two, not three, but FOUR sex dreams involving boys I know in real life, none of whom I've ever seen 'in that way' before, except the one last night who I used to kind of flirt with but now he is married and the whole thing was really quite stressful what with him committing adultery etc. and really, it is getting rather tiresome waking up and finding that all that palaver was over nothing and that I'm still sprawled out diagonally across my big bed wearing a faded blue T-shirt from a club in Zanzibar, and not languorously spooning SOME RANDOM NAKED ACQUAINTANCE.

And then I got to work specially on time today, which is no mean feat on a normal day but a Victoria-Cross-winning effort this morning when I felt like someone had painted my eyes with white emulsion, because Elbow's fan site had sent me an email yesterday saying that they were putting some special tickets on sale at 9am this morning for a hush hush fans-only warm-up gig in March, to be held at a tiny venue in Cambridge, so at 09:00 hours I clicked the link and requested two tickets, and got through to the next page and entered my details at breakneck speed, name, address, email, card number, the works, and then pressed enter, and it said there was an error and took me back to the homepage, so I was like, stay calm, Janey, stay calm, and I reselected two tickets and painstakingly entered all my details again and pressed enter, and it said there was an error again, and took me back to the homepage, and then I went back to the gig listing, and it was sold out. At 09:04. And I was like, NOT FAIR. And then I spent about a zillion minutes trying to find the customer services email so that I could complain to them about their irritating and surely ILLEGAL system that allows OTHER PEOPLE to buy tickets but not me, even though I got up especially early and with a HANGOVER. And I finally got through to someone on the phone and they gave me the email address, and I started typing the email and then I just thought, 'Oh, you know what? It doesn't matter.' And I deleted the draft and moved on to dreaming about macaroni cheese.

But despite the irritating fallout, last night's masked gathering was really fun, involving a lot of giggling and not many masks, which is how I'd imagined it. I did go to Angel's beforehand and bought two amazing facial accessories - I will see if I can post a photo of myself in the more flamboyant one, on the understanding that I am still anonymous in LLFF. I also tried on a dark haired wig, and showed it to my friends. They say I should stay blonde. It was conclusive, and I like conclusions. Here's another one.

On your masks

I am not a Buddhist, nor do I aspire to be one, but this article by the Dalai Lama is one of the simplest, warmest, most encouraging messages I've read in a long time. On this day, allegedly the most miserable of the year (nice to get it over with so quickly), I heartily recommend reading it if you can make time.

I, of course, am already fully signed up to its messages, and it is perhaps for that reason that, as I strode through the clattering rain on my way to work this morning, I felt positively buoyant. I had a really lovely weekend. This would normally be where I'd list all my engagements in a nonchalant manner, achievements masquerading as activities, trying to persuade myself (and maybe even you) that I am worthy. But that's the Old Jane. This weekend, I'm happy to tell anyone who cares that I didn't do very much at all. I was meant to go out on Friday night, but I didn't. I'd never intended to go out on Saturday night, and I stuck to that plan. And although I went round to my friends' house for a delicious Sunday lunch, I was back at home by 6pm for a third consecutive evening with myself. It was wonderful OH MY GOD IF THAT MAN SITTING NEAR ME DOESN'T STOP CLEARING HIS THROAT IN THAT UNBEARABLE FASHION I WILL HAVE TO RIP OUT HIS LARYNX. See. I told you I was zen.

I'll admit, I did have one task booked for the weekend, and it was a blinder - on Saturday morning at 10:30am I was in Brick Lane for a one day Introduction to Sewing Machine Skills course and I totally loved it. I made a skirt! Not a REAL skirt, it actually fit round one of my thighs, but it had seams, and a hem, and a waistband, and a CONCEALED ZIP. I am like Kirstie Allsop but without her bank balance or her penchant for Smythson. From now on I will be making cushion covers like there's no tomorrow. If you are my friend, you may as well accept now that your birthday present will be square and squashy; if you have a fabric or pattern preference, I take requests. I am like a wedding DJ, only with soft furnishings instead of records.

But that was it. Sewing, admin, reading (I finished Hearts & Minds by Amanda Craig which was impressive but occasionally fairly unconvincing), eating, jogging - oh my god, jogging! Nike+ have released a new version of their app that works with GPS. It also syncs with Facebook, so if you choose to do so, you can tell your friends that you've started your run, and then if they 'like' that status while you're out, you get a motivational cheer in your headphones. How amazing is that?! Someone liked my status, but not til I got back, so I missed the cheer. :( I still ran though, for the first time since I hurt my leg and yelped like a beaten Labrador last year, so I'm pleased with myself.

This morning I got up early and did thirty minutes of Pump with Davina McCall. Then I was afflicted by the occasional, unexpected but always-paralysing condition, 'I can't decide what to wear' and then the tubes were a nightmare but I am now reading Nothing To Envy, a report about real lives in North Korea and it is FASCINATING so I was thrilled when the train stopped in the tunnel. I'm going to leave work shortly because I initiated a large group gathering for this evening, and off-handedly suggested the theme of 'masks' and then forgot to bring my cardboard Gordon Brown one that I had leftover from last year's election party, so now I've got quite excited about going to Angel's in Covent Garden before they close at 5.30pm and getting a ridiculously big feathery one, or maybe a catwoman one, even though I am pretty much certain that no one else will have remembered their masks either so basically I'll be in a Green Park pub on a Monday wearing an elaborate facial accessory while everyone else just looks damp and miserable. But still. A theme's a theme.

Catwoman: "White Russian. No ice. No vodka. Hold the Kahlua." Purr.

In which I am annoying

So yesterday was unendingly hilarious. I was giggling pretty much non-stop all day, until about 6pm, when I giggled even more, and then stopped for about 20 minutes, and then started giggling again. I'm still giggling, even now, at the memory of what happened. And the annoying part is - I'm not telling you what made me giggle. Nope, not you and DEFINITELY not you. Not even if you ask really nicely. The only reason I'm mentioning it at all is for my own reference, and because I think it's important for you to remember that I don't write down EVERYTHING here, and just because you read my blog regularly, it doesn't mean you, y'know, KNOW me or anything. There is more to my life. Not much, admittedly, but a bit.

Giggling incident aside, I was also able to be a good friend and listen and offer incredibly sensible and supportive advice, while drinking white wine and eating pan-fried cod in King's Cross. Today I am feeling less giggly, slightly meh about the Labour by-election win, annoyed with my hair and its slow growth and desperate to get home so the weekend can begin. There is a reporter on Sky news with a banner below her head saying TUNISIA TURMOIL. I briefly thought that was her name. That happens quite often to me. There was a guy on the other day who I momentarily believed was called PONZI VERDICT. He looked a bit Italian, it wasn't impossible.

Things I recommend without hesitation:
Mac laptops
When Harry Met Sally
Davina McCall's workout DVDs
Investing in a good pair of walking boots
Therapy
Braeburn apples
Fresh air
Regular massages
Wine
Crying
Giggling
Weekends

LLFF goes to the Renoir cinema

I saw The King's Speech last night. When I first saw the trailer, I thought it looked brilliant. Then I thought about it more, and realised it looked really schmaltzy and superficial and crap, but I knew it would be a big talking-point, so I knew I would see it anyway. Then the reviews came out and I didn't read them because I wanted to make my own opinion, but all the Oscar hype made me dread it even more. And now I've witnessed it for myself and I can say this: it wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting. It was schmaltzy and over-simplistic, and I found Geoffrey Rush a bit annoying, and all the class stuff was AWFUL, and our continuing love for all this stiff-upper lip olde Englande is terribly depressing, and they hired an Australian to be Edward the whatever, and they hired a Brit to play Wallace Simpson (is it spelled as in Grommit or as in the sub-Dorothy Perkins clothes shop? Can't be bothered to Google), both of which annoyed me, and it was hardly a break-out role for Colin Firth, but his stammer was really convincing, and it was a nice story, and no one can blame the person who found it thinking 'Ker-ching!', and I laughed out loud two or three times and although I winced when there was a smattering of applause as the credits rolled, I still left the cinema feeling warm, and not just from the fact that it was heaving.

I had not been optimistic when I arrived at the Renoir in Russell Square's Brunswick Centre - there was no automatic ticket machine for pre-paid collections, so we had to queue for ages, and then it turned out that I'd absent-mindedly flicked my mouse's track wheel like a total spanner after selecting the Renoir, and had instead bought tickets at the Curzon Chelsea, so I had to rebuy tickets to see it at the Renoir. Livid when your email confirmation clearly states Chelsea and you realise that you have been an unarguable div. The nice lady looked at me like it happens all the time, and said that I might be able to get a refund, which was unexpected but would be a relief, as paying £22 to see Colin Firth struggle with a speech impediment is not my idea of fun. And - goodness, what a coincidence - the man from the King's Road Curzon has just this minute called and given me back my money. Which is amazing and completely undeserved. But anyway, so the cinema was heaving, and because it was in Bloomsbury, and it was an independent, and the film was about the Royal family, there was a noticeably different clientele (Em and I saw two different women in full-length fur coats), but still always with the freaking coughing in the winter months, and the well-dressed man in his sixties sitting next to me may have had immaculate manners and behaved perfectly in every other area, but he still stank of stale sweat, and the smell travelled in putrid wafts over to me every time he shifted in his seat.

Other than that it was a really fun night. AND I ordered a plate of delicious risotto afterwards and didn't eat all of it, even though I could have. Things really ARE changing.

General update

So this morning I was sent some junk mail by a swanky London bar - the first sentence hoped I'd had "a good festive period" and really, there's no need for that phrase is there? It makes me think of womb lining and holly. Ick.

The spring in my step today has come from the fact that a) after 24 hours of intense internal deliberations, a sleepless night and a bilateral summit meeting in my office with Laura, I have decided what I am going to do in the April/May amazing 12 days off for 3 days' holiday extravaganza, and b) the ukulele band I auditioned for on Monday evening have accepted me and I am 100% thrilled, particularly about getting dolled up in 40s gear on a regular basis, and 89% terrified as it will involve me learning things off by heart and then performing them in front of an audience, and as we all know, my memory is not the best. Still, I have been medium-sized parts in Shakespeare plays before, one of which involved me learning a two-page speech, so I know I could do it in the nineties. I just need to remember how to do it now.

Other than that, I have no news. The world is still turning, the floods in Oz are horrific, the Tories are screwing up, my opinion of Nick Clegg has gone up a fraction but not enough, England's win today at the 20/20 cricket was pretty tense, America needs to sort out its gun laws, Julian Assange needs to be taken down a peg or two (although I definitely still would), the Croatian Wikileaks equivalent is going to be exciting, and everyone in the world should watch this teacher in action. I am drinking a lot of diet drinks and slightly worried I may die of aspartame-related causes.

Until next time.

This is all there is

So all's changing in the state of Janemark. I'm loath to talk about it for too long as Margaret from last year's Moroccan yoga holiday emailed me last week and said all the navel gazing was very tedious, but then I remembered that I'm not blogging for her but for me (although I did type that out the other way round first so maybe my Freudian side knows she's right) and I can go on about whatever I like and if she gets bored, she knows how to shut the window.



And actually, I really don't have that much to say about myself, except that a couple of years ago, I was on a date and the guy played me a tune on his iPod: Peggy Lee singing Is That All There Is?. I loved the sound of the song, it was laconic and cool, but the words I managed to make out through his rubbish headphones didn't really ring true for me. I listened to it again at the weekend. Now I get it. I thought it was about life being inevitably disappointing - but now I think it's about accepting what is. Society spins everything; relationships, university, jobs, kids, holidays - they're all going to be life-altering, just change this or that, pay your money and your future will be bright. But as all the Faithful should be chanting right now, the future is an illusion. All we have is the present. That's all there is. And it's wonderful, truly. I was talking to Kate at the weekend and explained the shift thus: it's like I used to get excited about £10. £10 mattered. If someone gave me £10, I'd be thrilled. But most days, I wouldn't get £10. And now, my life is all about pennies. Of course, a thousand pennies make up £10, and those pennies are valuable in themselves. But the hit of joy you get from each penny doesn't seem so impressive right now, to me. I think, basically, my existence is now about a steady stream of pennies, a warm glow from the small things rather than a thrilling rush at occasional highs. I'm just adjusting to that. I think it will be glorious. Right now it's strange, new, not unpleasant but not the norm.

I keep thinking back to one of those Zen proverbs I posted eons ago - I'll paste it in here for those of you who have joined more recently.

'A student went to his meditation teacher and said, "My meditation is horrible! I feel so distracted, or my legs ache, or I'm constantly falling asleep. It's just horrible!"
"It will pass," the teacher said matter-of-factly.
A week later, the student came back to his teacher. "My meditation is wonderful! I feel so aware, so peaceful, so alive! It's just wonderful!'
"It will pass," the teacher replied matter-of-factly. '

When I first read that story, I found it depressing. I wanted good things to last and bad things to go. Why would anyone want to be all Zen, unable to get excited about the highs, condemned to see all things as fleeting? But I've now had this insight, and I can't unsee it. And suddenly, everywhere I look I find it again. A quotation by George Gissing was at the front of the book I'm reading, saying:

"It is the mind which creates the world about us, and even though we stand side by side in the same meadow, my eyes will never see what is beheld by yours. My heart will never stir to the emotion with which yours is touched."

It might seem sad initially, but a parallel truth is that no one will ever see the meadow the way I see it. And, now that I (somehow, strangely, unexpectedly, miraculously) respect my own opinion and my own viewpoint, I can enjoy the knowledge that this take on the meadow is mine and mine alone. It's special.

I don't know if it's a coincidence, but today was strange. I woke up feeling decidedly odd, and when Laura asked me to explain the oddness, I realised that I was experiencing something profound: I was in a good mood FOR NO REASON AT ALL. I'm not sure this has ever happened to me. The day has been busy and I'm less perky now, but I know that the stress that used to be a permanent fixture in the pit of my stomach has gone. I am worthy. Extraordinary times on Lost Looking For Fish, I'm sure you'll agree.

Now then, for Margaret's sake, let's talk about something else.







Nope, can't think of anything. Soz. Bye.

Acute accent

I was in Tesco's yesterday afternoon buying some stuff for dinner tonight, and the man at the checkout was very chatty.
"No plastic bags," I said, smiling. "I'm saving the planet."
"It is too late for that," he answered.
"What, so we should just stop trying?"
"Not stop trying, ma'am, but to fix the trouble we're in, we must start all over again."
"With a new planet?"
"With a new planet," he confirmed.
"Where will we get it?"
"I don't know. But we have grave problems here. It is too late. Too much digging and toenails."
"Toenails?"
"Yes, you know, underground - it is all going to collapse."
"Underground toenails?" I asked again.
"Noooooooo, not toenails," he said. "Toenails."
"TOENAILS? You are blaming the ecological death of this planet on buried toenails?"
"Tun-nels," he said, slowly, like I was the thickest person alive. I think I might be. We laughed. In the end I needed a plastic bag anyway, cos I'd forgotten my handy bag-in-your-handbag bag. D'oh.

Later on, I went to the National Theatre with my mum, where we had a nice dinner and then saw Men Should Weep, a play about working class Glasgow set in the 1930s. My dad's from Glasgow so it was interesting hearing them use vernacular I've been around all my life. There was a moment when the performance started that I thought how sad it was that he wasn't there with us, having decided that theatre is simply Not His Bag. It seemed like it would surely be of interest to him - but ten minutes in, it was clear that the kitchen sink drama would have made him flip his combover. And even if that hadn't have been enough to freak him out, the audience certainly would have done the trick. I have never heard so much coughing before in my life. It was like a whooping ward, with hacks going off every two or three seconds, obscuring the dialogue on many occasions. I managed to bite my tongue but admitted to mum later that, about halfway through Act Two, I'd been about two seconds from screaming "SHUUUUUUUUUT UUUUUUUUUP!", only containing my irritation when I realised that the disruption would probably get into the Evening Standard. I don't know what can be done with coughers. You can't expect the theatre to refund their tickets, so I don't blame them for coming along, but it is pretty darn irritating. On top of which, anyone with a vague penchant for hypochondria e.g. me inevitably spends the entire production convinced they're catching a bit of everything. I don't know about you but that's not my idea of a fun evening out. Maybe compulsory shots of Benylin and/or squirts of First Defence for all audience members are the way forward.

I'm feeling chipper today as I had a really positive session with my therapist yesterday afternoon. I'm still a long way from my target destination, but I have unequivocally left my departure point behind forever, and that's an amazing feeling. I am en route and there's no going back. It's not an easy journey, but as I sat in the wingback chair sobbing yesterday, saying how hard I was finding it all, I managed to ask her a question.
"Do you spend pretty much all your working time watching people fighting this same battle?" She nodded. "I just can't believe they're all strong enough," I sniffed. "I mean, it's so hard, it physically hurts."
"Oh, not many people are strong enough," she said immediately, and I felt a bit better. It's not that I am pleased to be winning or anything. It's an acknowledgement that what I'm trying to attain is not easy. It makes me feel more able to cope with the continued struggle. For now, I will push on. And you, up ahead, clear the path to the River of Inner Peace. Incoming.

Comedown

You know how, when you haven’t been to the gym for a while, and you are absolutely dreading it, and then you finally drag yourself down there and resentfully, furiously get changed and then flap your big feet into the room, and stand there looking at all the fit people and you mentally shake yourself and say, ‘COME ON, I CAN DO THIS,’ and you clamber onto the treadmill or the step machine or whatever, and off you go, and then, to your profound surprise, you find that in fact it wasn’t nearly as hard as you were expecting, that actually, it was positively easy, and you conclude that clearly you are not as unfit as you’d feared, not even close, and that it is now apparent that you are just one of those very fortunate people who has a high level of latent fitness, who can lie around eating and boozing for weeks on end and then just decide on a whim to run a half marathon and find it irritatingly easy, and you leave the gym with a bounce in your step, and then a day or so later, you’re feeling optimistic and almost perky about going again, just like any latently fit person would do, because it won't be any problem for you, and you go and get changed and jump onto the treadmill, and set off full pelt, iPod blaring, only immediately it’s like trying to sprint through the sea, and your face goes red and the sweat starts pouring and some good Samaritan comes over to help you off because it is obvious to all and sundry that you are but moments from death, and you can't understand how you've gone from latently fit to dangerously unhealthy in less than 48 hours, and then reluctantly you have to admit to yourself that maybe what you called 'latent fitness' was, in fact, your body finding something so unfamiliar that it doesn't know how to respond in any helpful way, and it just bounds on happily, unprepared for any consequences, and that the second time around it knows what to expect, and makes it immediately obvious that a-ha, I've been here before and I know about this, and please stop as a matter of urgency because this is not actually something I am comfortable doing due to the fac that it may well lead to my imminent death? Well, it is very lucky that you know about that, because it is a metaphor for what I feel like to be at work today.

Having been, AND I QUOTE, “thrilled” to be back at my desk not 24 hours ago, sprightly, efficient, and uncharacteristically smiling, I now feel as though my eyes have been sluiced with nail varnish remover and my posture stool, far from feeling pleasingly challenging, is now rock hard against the flesh of my buttocks. Gasp. Maybe I have lost too much weight and am now at risk of posterior bruising. I will just check. No, that’s not it.

I think maybe yesterday I was delirious from lack of sleep, whereas today I have lost the delirium and am merely utterly exhausted. And guess what I have to do tonight? Go to the THEATRE. Yes. I must sit in a dark, warm room watching people talk about serious things. I will be asleep before they set foot onto the stage. Help. Oooh but what is that I see on the horizon? Double gasp! It is the man from the loading bay bringing me A BOX OF NEW CLOTHES FROM ASOS. I could not be more excited than if I was 11 and he was bringing me a note from the head saying my mum had called and that I need to leave early, and I already know that she is getting me out of school because we are secretly going to meet Joey MacIntyre from New Kids on the Block. Right, I’m off to the loo to try everything on. Oooh AND my boss is simultaneously putting on his jacket which means he will leave… yes, he’s leaving, which means I can be ages trying things on and NO ONE WILL KNOW. Except you, but you won’t tell anyone, will you. Will you? Hmmmm. Maybe I will wait until after the clothes-trying-on session to post this, to cover my back. Yes, I think that is sensible.

OK, I'm back, and I've tried everything on and I am keeping one blouse, one pair of shorts and one pair of leggings. I am sending back four jumpers, one dress and an alternative pair of shorts. Non-existent God bless ASOS for doing free next day delivery if you spend over £100 and free returns, and not minding that I totally take advantage and order pretty much anything I like just to bump my small order up over £100 so that I get it the next day. I'm now even more shattered following the adrenaline frenzy of trying on new things. Consume sleep consume sleep consume sleep die.

The past and the future are illusions. The only thing that is real is the I, and the now.

Almost famous

I have a dirty secret and it is as follows: I am literally thrilled to be back at work. It's not that I've missed the people in particular, although it's really nice to be emailing Chris and Laura with warp-speed frequency once again. It's more that I have a role here, I'm needed, and that feels nice. Doubt it'll last long but there you have it. I am a grateful hamster, running in my little wheel and scampering over to my water bottle every now and then to lick the little silver nozzle that's sticking through the bars of my cage. Maybe later I'll go to bed in some newspaper.

There's been a funny hashtag on Twitter today, #lametofame, where people list their most spurious brushes with celebrity. Due to my past life as a pop journo, I have more than I can count, but those would be cheating. So, magazine life aside, here are a few of my non-working highlights:

• I have Rod, Jane and Freddy from Rainbow's autographs
• The house I used to live in (with my parents) had previously belonged to Michael Ball's ex-girlfriend
• I once saw Graham Norton in the Covent Garden branch of Pret a Manger, but he was too far away for me to see what sandwich he was buying
• My dad once played golf with Mark Knopfler
• I was so gripped talking to Jonathan Phang, ex-judge of Britain's Next Top Model, at my friend's wedding that I set fire to the shawl I'd borrowed without asking my mother on an exposed tealight
• Kirsty Young admitted to me that she fancied Sting a lot while we were in a portaloo. Sting was also at the party - it wasn't a propos of nothing, that would have been really full on
• At the same party I danced with Sting to Dr. Alban's It's My Life, a song known at the time for its use in a Tampax ad
  
• I stayed in the same hotel as Amanda Holden when I went to Cuba and she took a photograph of a stone column with my camera. 'Stone column' is not a euphemism
  
• I saw David Gest in El Pirata in Mayfair
• When I was about 12, my dog ran away near the Thames, and Nigel Havers helped us find him
• I once spent New Year in the same pub as Sally from Home & Away and she kissed me (and everyone else in the room) on the cheek at midnight
• I shared a lift in Los Angeles with Jon Bon Jovi and Matthew McConaughey or however you spell it. At the same time. Both of them were shorter than me
• I deliberately blanked Lisa Snowdon at a party once because I don't like her. I bet she was gutted
• I served Gwyneth Paltrow a canapé when I was waitressing at a film premiere
• Chesney Hawkes pinched my bum. We were in a pub and I was 18. There is a chance that he didn't so much pinch it as accidentally brush it while we were at the bar waiting to be served. But I've told the pinching story so many times that it has become true

That's all I can think of for now although this is definitely going to be one of those things where I remember more the moment I put it live. Still, fun though it is, I'd rather go home. So I'm gonna. A demain.

3 January 2011

2011 always seemed likely to be a bit of a meh year, sandwiched in the No Man's Land between the pleasing roundness of 2010 and the Olympics horizon of 2012, so hopefully you will forgive me for not weeping with excitement at its commencement.

On top of this gambolling levity, I had a bit of a psychological breakthrough last night while I was listening to Eckhart Tolle, and, with some initial shame, I faced up to this: the basic fact of my existence does not bring me pleasure. I have not yet experienced a gladness at just being alive. Before you call the Samaritans and draw up some sort of suicide-watch rota in Excel, I would like to clarify that I do not by any means wish to suggest that I'd rather not be here. I'm just pointing out that the mere fact that I live and breathe - miraculous though it unarguably is - is not enough to make me ooze with contentment. Currently, it takes more.

And I don't think that this is especially unusual. Many people would point out that everyone has basic human needs that need to be met in order to be happy, and that several of my boxes remain stubbornly unchecked. I am not in a loving relationship, you could point out. I don't have a strong sense of place in my local community. I don't have a clear career path or a clear idea of my life's purpose. How can I expect to be happy?

But I'm not talking about happiness: I'm talking about peace.

Some big things have changed for me in the past few months. I'm no longer angry with myself 24/7. I no longer feel like a failure. But I've spent my whole life thinking I was one, and now that conviction has gone, now I don't have to beat myself up for not being good enough every waking moment, I'm not really sure what to do with my time.

I know this: there are people who are way worse off than I am who still feel, at their core, that they're glad to be here on earth. I know I should be thanking my lucky stars, but I live feeling constantly trepidatious. I wake up in the morning and wait for the next thing that will trip me up. If you've read this blog before I hope you'll be more than aware that I'm more than aware that I have more than a lot for which to be thankful. But an awareness that one has, for some improbable reason, landed pretty much at the zenith of the planet's fortunate doesn't equal peace. For me, it equals guilt, and pressure. Those lolling-tongued dogs running about in the park don't need a raison d'etre. They don't feel guilty for being happy, or for not being one of the starving dogs in Africa. They just are.

And so, this is my resolution for 2011: to be at peace with reality - not what could be, or what was, but what is.

Admittedly, it's not one of those HILARIOUS resolutions that I will recount down the pub and look down self-consciously as I receive a wry chuckle from my assembled friends, smiling to myself as I pretend not to see them exchange knowing glances about my unarguable Wildean brilliance, but since the whole 'going down the pub with a group of friends' thing that I thought would be a constant staple of my existence turns out to be a pathetically rare occurrence in adult life, what with none of one's real friends knowing each other particularly well, and everyone living in different places and most people having to get back for the babysitter and the others not really concentrating on your answer, even though it was them that asked you the question in the first place, because they are too busy checking their emails to see if anyone from Soulmates has emailed them, which of course they probably have because everyone else seems to meet people at the drop of a hat, maybe that's not a problem. Anyway.

So my year has started off with plenty of potential for growth. I was feeling flat as a steamrollered sheet of A4 on NYE itself as I got off the tube at Liverpool Street station, and then I received a text from Grania. Its mere arrival was enough to irk me as I'd been consoling myself that the reason why she hadn't messaged me from wherever she is in the Middle East is because she couldn't due to bad reception. Then its contents turned irk to vex, as she confirmed that she was having an amazing time with her new man, and I was flooded by a combination of genuine happiness at her good fortune and the shameful hatred of being excluded. Then Sarah was ten minutes late and I suddenly wanted to give up altogether. I was a minute away from going back home, redonning my velour and climbing back into my risk-free bed, but then she arrived and it was lovely to see her and we tottered over to Brick Lane and met up with the others. It was a good night in the end, although we were definitely a friend group who'd tagged on to someone else's friend group, which is better than not tagging at all and just being a tiny unit, but, as discussed above, it'd be nice to be the dominant friend group for a change, rather than the taggers. I spent a lot of my late teens and twenties being part of the dominant friend group, and I know that at the time, it wasn't perfect. It was pretty claustrophobic and limiting, but there was also something comforting about it that I do miss. But I'm sure I'll have that claustrophobic set-up again all too soon and then envy those heady days when I drifted around, unfettered, from group to group, all varied options and non-committal freedom.

I cycled home in my leopard-print jumpsuit at 3am, singing and waving at the people who wished me Happy New Year en route, and was thrilled to get back, so happy, in fact, that I haven't opened the front door since. By the time I leave to go to work tomorrow morning, I'll have been in here for 77 hours, or 4650 minutes. I haven't achieved much in that time. I made two lots of soup, did three loads of washing, ironed patches onto my slippers and cleaned up my hard drive. On 31 December, I had realised that my diary was bare for this three-day stretch and I thought I should make some plans. I invited a ton of people over for lunch today, but barely half replied and, of the ones who did, only two could make it and they didn't know each other and probably wouldn't have got on, and an awkward lunch for three wasn't quite what I'd had in mind when I'd sent out the invitation, envisaging rowdy Trivial Pursuit and daytime drunkenness. Everyone else I asked was going to see family or already had plans. So I cancelled it. Initially, I felt sad. Then I listened to Eckhart and I calmed down for a bit. Why fight what is? Silly me. Then I realised I was tired and I didn't want anyone to come over to my flat anyway. Then I thought about Grania and felt left out again. Then I told myself to stop being such a self-pitying nightmare. I thought about Glastonbury but realised that inner peace doesn't come from using future excitements to cope with present boredom. Then I tried to meditate but couldn't concentrate. Then I sat down and wrote this.

Meh.

For someone who doesn't want their blog to be about mental health, I seem to spend a ridiculous amount of time writing about it.