Let the self-pity begin

Be gentle with me, Faithful, for I am feeling well fragile today innit. If my eyes were plugholes, the tears would burbling up through the U-bend and heading for daylight.

The almost-four-month boyban has been amazing in illustrating that I was pretty much obsessively judging my success as a woman on whether or not a man was telling me I was attractive and good company. With dating forbidden and no flirtatious emails to distract me, I can clearly see the error of my way: I was doggedly pursuing a goal, thinking it would bring me a sense of self/satisfaction/fulfillment, when in fact we all know that getting a boyfriend is not really the answer to any of the above - and if it is, it shouldn't be. So it's been good, I've got a new sense of perspective and I am sincerely glad of that.

However, it probably won't surprise many of you clever readers that, if you take away someone's raison d'etre (however unhealthy it was) without lining up anything else to replace it, an existential crisis is fairly inevitable. And so, ta da, here I am, no career to speak of, no babies, in a society where having one or the other is pretty much essential if you're going to have any sense of self-worth. Oh, and I'm an atheist, so the world's best psychological crutch isn't an option for me either. You're left with a verbose hedonist with no sense of purpose, just night after night of pleasant, middle-class pasttimes. I am one big fat hobby.

In the meantime, Grania has spent the last several months dedicating almost all her time to preparing for some of the toughest exams I've ever known, learning a zillion planning laws and documenting her every waking action, turning down countless fun events to pursue her goal. And Sarah's been promoted, and Sara's started a new role helping people, and Kate is bursting with job satisfaction, and Olivia's been promoted and got pregnant again, and Mills has had her second child, and Lucy's dealing with her existing two, and Em and Erf are on honeymoon, and Marina, Justin and Lucy G are changing the media world, and Lilly's going freelance, and Charlie's had Gabriel, and Nick's doing his writing course and an internship while being Deputy Editor, and Georgie's directing, and Hatta and Astrid are engaged, and two other friends are trying for babies but it's all hush hush, and Don's making a feature film, and Ed's having intimate dinners at The Wolsey with A listers.

And I know, I know, everyone can take this kind of highlights-only snapshot of their friends, filtering out the quotidian, ignoring the fact that everyone has down days and everyone panics, but it's human nature to compare ourselves to our peers.

I can only see three ways to cope with this kind of barrage of achievement:
1. Persuade myself that I'm still valid, but in some different way. I am finding this difficult.
2. Find new meaning elsewhere under some previously unturned rock.
3. Accept, as my mother suggested, that my time will come, and right now just "bob along" (her words).

I love my mother so much it hurts, but 3. makes me feel like self-harming. It is excellent, measured advice and I desperately wish I could take it; being carried along like a brightly-coloured rubber duckie in a burbling countryside stream, letting the current take me where it will, well, it'd no doubt be good for me, relinquishing control, enjoying the view, but... well, I can't help but feel that time is running out. Not to have kids, necessarily. But to do something. I'm 33. I'm never going to be any younger than I am now, or have any fewer responsibilities. I was already feeling like I was a bit of a wasted opportunity. Then I watched Jamie's American Food Revolution.

That guy, annoying though his perpetual "bruvva"s unquestionably are, is an extraordinary and inspiring force for good. He's married with three kids, and he clearly loves his family dearly, but he has realised that he has a position in society that can change a lot of people's lives for the better. He has a clear mission - to encourage people to eat more healthily; to make cooking from scratch appear easy enough that people turn to it instead of ordering a pizza; and, ultimately, to save lives. It's an amazing goal, and he's already pretty damn rich, owning assets worth tens of millions - but he's still pursuing his mission, heading out to spend three months in Los Angeles early next year to film a second series of his Emmy Award-winning show. He is attacked and ridiculed wherever he goes, but he doggedly continues, spending precious time away from his loved ones, because he believes in what he's doing, and because he is sure that he can make a difference.

I am jealous of his mission. I want one.

And then, as a nailgun in the face to any specks of optimism I'd salvaged, last night, Luke and I saw The Social Network. Bloody hell, where do these people get their drive from? Their certainty that their ideas are valid? Their optimism and confidence, that sense of entitlement, that if they think it's a good idea, it obviously is? The determination to stop gassing about it and actually sit down and fucking do it? I just whitter on, it'd be nice to do this, that'd be brilliant, but I never commit, I'm terrified of failure, and moreover I fear the claustrophobia of being trapped. What if my idea was good? Then I'd have to do it and I'd miss out on doing other stuff. Plus I'm already really tired.

So I do bob along, but resentfully, doing nothing except inhaling as much of this beautiful city as I can take in, and waiting for my Facebook, my Food Revolution, to hit me square between the eyes so that I can start work. Problem is, I know that that's not how reality works. Meaning is often only visible in retrospect. Life missions aren't always obvious at the time. They creep up. They need leaps of faith. They need hard work over long periods of time. They need blind commitment. And they don't always end in positive results. I'm categorically rubbish at dealing with every single one of those things. Need someone with a short attention span who'll tackle a high-profile project, complete it to her own absurdly high standards in two weeks and then, with a rush of 'problem solved' satisfaction, move on in a flurry, never to give it another instant's thought? I'm your gal. Need consistent, shire horse effort over years to lovingly create something that lasts, often for little reward, someone who doesn't let failure get her down, who doesn't crave recognition? Move right along. Nothing to see here.

That book you think I should write? Two years on one project that will be criticised by strangers? Not my idea of fun. The presenting work I could maybe do? I look too fat on camera and I stop being funny because I get too nervous. Politics? MPs have to work too hard and they get criticised. Lobbyist could be good but I can never find an issue that sustains my interest more than any other. I'm not academic or enough of a brown-noser to get into a thinktank or any massive corporation. I hate sucking up to people. I hate toeing the party line. But then I got extremely depressed when I was freelance: irregular hours, irregular funds, irregular job satisfaction, having to be pathetically grateful for every commission and never knowing if the next paycheque would be the last. And with a mortgage to pay, I can't afford to be skint. I want regular hours, recognition for hard work, a sense that I'm contributing to a greater good, a salary that will cover my pension (thanks for the terror lesson, mum), and my evenings and weekends free for wine. It's the blight of an only child: I'm not sufficiently gifted to excel, but I'm too full of myself to bear being average. And I am appalling at compromise.

Don't worry, my weekly therapy session is in under an hour. I'm sure absolutely everything will be solved then.

Take the cakes (and shove them)

This morning, the devil's own email newsletter, Daily Candy, sent all its readers a link to this webpage, which included instructions on how to make decorative cake balls. See these Hallowe'en themed ones below:


The instructions for making the basic shape are nine pages long. The ones above are finished off with edible marker pen and a green Tic-tac. You are also invited to coo over the Christmas ones, below - Frosty's hat is crafted from a lovingly-altered miniature Oreo cookie and his nose is a candy-dipped sunflower seed.


And that's when I lost it.

While I have no doubt that I would enjoy eating one of these little blighters, I genuinely, hand on heart, believe that the person who created these, and the people who thought we should, out of EVERYTHING GOING ON IN LONDON, a city of NINE MILLION SOULS, be pressed upon to recreate these, well, I think it is time for their friends and family to stage an intervention ending in some sort of permanent incarceration and hourly mocking.

In the list of things people should be doing with their oh-so-brief time on this fascinating planet, dipping sunflower seeds in molten orange candy in order to use them as a faux-tiny-carrot for the nose of a reconstituted cake ball snowman is about ninety eight billionth, several hundred thousand below causing deliberate harm to a third person, staring into space for days on end and eating more pizza even though you're fat and already full. At least kicking a dog would end up with one feeling some remorse, or, in the case of catbin lady, cause a media furore that might teach someone a valuable lesson.

Spending hours on end making miniature cakes with inventive tiny accessories is guaranteed to end only in pathological smugness, the only cure for which is death, and guaranteed years in therapy for any offspring of these carefree people, and so I sincerely implore anyone who's already begun stockpiling ingredients for these tiny existence-thieves to please, take those plastic sticks you bought to support your creations, and ram them slowly into your eyes as a permanent lesson that you must never, ever waste your precious life in such an imbecilic and desultory way ever again.

Shameless Twitter steal

Annoyingly, things aren't yet all better. Grania and Sara are both on holiday (separately) (together would be grounds for divorce), Chris is still off work, I have zero energy and am all in all very grumpy. That said, the below screengrab has made me laugh every single time I've looked at it. And I've looked at it a lot. Actually, I think it has got funnier.

And finally

Just because I have been rambling away in typical self-gripped fashion, it's not to imply that I am not hooked on the extraordinary Wikileaks/Afghanistan revelations. General buzz from the UK seems to be, 'What, you didn't already know that this was a shit war that's getting shittier?' and that if anyone believes the right wing yarns re. spiffing war heroes and possible victory, they're more naive than a kitten born in a nunnery. Not to deny that there have been some heroics along the way, of course. But really. Let's get out of there. And, in the meantime, thank our lucky stars that Wikileaks and its whistleblowers are still around to prove what everyone suspects.

Also: hilarious

Thanks to Buzzfeed for this. Fat Suit Barbie. With carefully positioned coffee table. Brilliant.

Antisocial networking

I'm not sleeping, I've even lost my appetite... I can't be sure, but there's a fair chance I'm headed for one heck of an anti-climax - although to be honest, I don't have any firm mental pictures. I think I'm most excited about six consecutive days off work - if all I do is walk around and get a bit of a tan I'll be delighted. Throw in some good music and around thirty pints of overpriced beer and I fail to see how it can be anything other than the most fun thing in the history of my life since Glastonbury 2009.

In the brief peekaseconds (made up) that I haven't been thinking about the forthcoming festivalivities, I've been building up to a bit of a rant about Facebook. Or rather, people who don't use it. This rant is not directed to people who do not have a community on FB. If you are sixty years old and only three people you know have accounts, then fine. Or if you're still a toddler, then I think you've also got an excuse. But if you're between 20 and 40 years old and you live in the UK, I think it's safe to assume that well over 50% of your friends will have a Facebook account. I would estimate that, of the people I know, about 95% of them have signed up. Not all of them update very frequently, but every time I log on, there are reams of news and photographic updates from my family, friends and acquaintances from all over the world. There are also alerts from things I like, such as, well, Glastonbury, or the National Theatre, telling me new stuff is on sale. And my friends post links to things they think are funny or interesting, so I learn about all the different cool stuff that's happening around the world. It usually takes me about 5-10 minutes to go through what I've missed since I last logged on; it's not a huge time commitment. Obviously I could explore in more depth, but I'd say 5-10 minutes a day keeps me abreast of most of what's going down.

Of course, that's not ALL that's going down. I know that FB isn't real life and it certainly isn't a substitute for friendship, any more than people can read my blog and think they're fully up to date with what's going on in my life. But it's a good window into the nice things to which people get up. And so, what I want to know is, who in their right mind decides not to have a Facebook account? Facebook requires nothing. You don't have to pay. You don't have to update your status. You don't have to upload a photo: you can be pretty much entirely anonymous. You can hide all updates from people who annoy you, or block them altogether. And of course, should you wish to share your own news, you can do so easily - with whomever you choose. You don't have to show everyone everything. You can hide information from selected friends - so everyone can see your birthday photos except the one person you forgot to invite. All in all, it is a lovely, easy way to keep up with your friends and spy on your enemies. Sure, there are concerns about sharing of private data, but like I say, you can opt out of pretty much all of that. So why not sign up?

I know only about six people around my age who have resisted FB and, using that incredibly limited sample size, I have come to the conclusion that FB refuseniks are one of two things. Either they are a) unforgiveably arrogant and don't care what their friends are up to. Or b) they are unhealthily isolated. Either way, I think that if you peel back the layers, you'll find that they need help. Yup. Help. Like a shrink. Rich coming from me, but there you have it. I am deeply suspicious of people who don't FB.

Anyway. Rant over. This time in twenty four hours, I have high hopes that my tent will be pitched and I'll be watching England vs. Slovenia on a temporary screen at the Pyramid stage, while wearing my bikini and going brown as a berry. Cross your fingers for me. I'll be back on Monday afternoon.

Pfff.

So the kisser from Sunday still hasn't been in touch. Not that I'm paranoid or anything, but I think this is the third consecutive date I've been on where the guy has seemed extremely interested, mentioned meeting up again, told me how attractive I was and what a fun time he'd had, kissed me and then vanished. My mum will tell me it's only Tuesday, but as anyone normal/under 60 knows, these days if a guy is properly interested he doesn't hang about. It seems that internet dating breeds this kind of maybe-the-next-girl-will-be-even-better inability for men to stop looking and say, "This lass is fantastic," but given that in the last approx. seven years, 98% of my romantic liasons have been with guys met online, I struggle to believe that signing off the website altogether is the answer. Anyway. He was a bit old and fat anyway. Unless he gets in touch. In which case, wisdom and breadth is exactly what I've always been looking for, and let's face it, I'm no Cheryl Cole.

Not much else to report. A girl from choir is a social worker, and at our rehearsal last night she said that one of her colleagues had been round at a case family's house, helping them out and doing assessments or whatever, and while she was there, she saw another one of her case families on Trisha. Brilliant.

Ehowtogetbeatenup

Still on yesterday's school reunion tip, I feel I must share with the uninitated a selection of suggestions that I stumbled across here, describing how to prepare for a high school get-together.

1. Dedicate yourself to an exercise regime. In the months leading up to the big event, tone up, burn some calories and get physically fit. You'll not only look better, but you'll feel more confident.

OK. Given that I found the site less than 24 hours before the reunion, I left it a little too late to action this. Even so, I had fortunately considered that my appearance should be at top notch on the big day, so I was thrilled when I stepped on the scales on Saturday morning and found that I'd actually gained nearly a kilogram last week. Additionally, my face had chosen to reward me for my largely spot-free teenage years by breaking out in a liberal sprinkling of zits. Excellent.

2. Splurge on a stylish outfit. Don't break the bank, but treat yourself to some flattering new duds that accentuate your assets.

Assuming that turning up to the reunion wearing a burka might be thought of as a little odd, I didn't have many options. It was far too late to buy something new so I went in an old dress from Marks and Spencer's, the only selling point of which is its low neck - normally I'd hope that my cleavage may distract from my face, but in a room full of heterosexual girls, I knew I was barking up a tree of desperation. On the upside, I gained solace from the knowledge that I am not a person who uses the word 'duds' instead of 'clothes'.

3. Pay a visit to your hairdresser. Update your look with a new cut or color. Whatever you choose, make sure it's different from the style you had in high school. If you're not ready to lop off those locks, opt for a trendy up-do.

This tip had me crying with relief that I no longer have to write crap like that for magazines. And also slightly panicking that my appointment with my beloved Japanese hairdresser isn't until next Tuesday. My roots are almost longer than the dyed portion of my hair and the style doesn't know whether it's 60s or 70s, long or short, blonde or brown. In short, it looks awful. Ah well. I reminded myself that these people knew me when I went to school, so there's little point pretending that I'm anything other than rank - they know the truth.

4. Define yourself professionally. Even if you're in-between jobs and not exactly sure of your career path, prepare an impressive response. You're likely to be asked what you do for a living more than once.

Define yourself professionally?! FFS. I've been trying to do that since the late nineties. My career path is about as easy to define as irony. At this point, the tips were making me want to skip the reunion and stay at home doing something more fun, like stabbing myself in alternate ears with skewers. Mercifully, on the day itself, the only two people who asked me about my job were two old teachers - my peers either know the truth already or didn't care, and for that I love them.

5. Count your blessings and your bragging rights. From your perfect children to that marathon you ran, recall your many accomplishments. You'll want to mention these things at the reunion.

Oh yes! Of course! Thank god you reminded me about the CHILDREN I DON'T HAVE AND THE MARATHON I HAVE NEVER RUN. I recall my many accomplishments. They include interviewing Britney Spears on the phone over a decade ago and then listening back to the tape and becoming convinced that the PR had sent a stand in, so the rest of my office were helpless with laughter that I'd actually spent half an hour on the phone talking to 'Jipney'. And there was that time I fixed my washing machine unaided in 2008. I no longer feel like doing the ear skewer thing. Suicide is clearly the only option.

In addition to the five dos, there are also a few additional pointers, including the helpful suggestion that I bring my business cards (which I don't have because I am SUCH AN UNDERACHIEVER) and a warning not to drink away my nerves. Apparently it's fine to loosen up with a couple of drinks but we should be careful not to overdo it. Lolz etc. As if I would need to be told not to overdo it! Moi, the epitome of self-control and abstinence?! In the event, I took things at my usual refined pace, only having very small, delicate sips of sparkling wine, white wine and red wine, and going to bed at the civilized hour of 3am after re-straining my right groin muscle while attempting to pole dance in the sixth form common room.

So, thanks to ehow for telling me that I should turn up in precisely the opposite state to that in which I managed to arrive, and then behave in a manner absolutely not like my own character, while handing out BUSINESS CARDS.

LLFF's tips for a reunion are as follows:

1. Don't bother getting too dressed up, losing loads of weight or doing an 'ornate up do' because you'll look like a wanker. Plus, everyone will know you never normally look like that - we've all seen you on Facebook.
2. Don't worry about your job or your achievements - no one worth your time gives a flying fuck what you do between nine to five, they just want to see that you're happy and healthy.
3. Take business cards and hand them out. If you truly are that much of a dick, this is a helpful way of identifying yourself to the people who aren't over-formal nightmares.
4. Drink as much booze as you can possibly pour down your gullet. You've paid for it, you may as well enjoy it.
5. Finally, never ever rely on the internet for tips about anything. The content is written exclusively by morons. Oh.

A lot.

Action items for today:

1. Last night
2. Digital economy bill outrage
3. Boys are MENTAL

Last night, I went to see comedian slash activist slash smug man Mark Thomas present his people's manifesto at the National Theatre. He's been touring the country compiling audience suggestions for a real manifesto - and the results have been fairly funny. Last night we decided (among other ideas) that a) if it pisses with rain on a Bank Holiday, it will be considered a rollover and b) people who complain that there are too many immigrants will be banned from restaurants serving anything other than British food. We also voted in favour of invading Jersey, on the basis that they have around one billion UK tax pounds there, and that a maximum wage should be announced. I'd thought about that previously, and had concluded that no one could reasonably argue that they need to earn more than £250,000 a year. Mark Thomas had spoken to a Marxist accountant, who said that you could never cap it at a set figure, but rather at a multiple of the national average wage - say, ten times. Coincidentally, our national average wage is £25k, so I was pretty much on the money with that one. And, as the Marxist accountant pointed out, if you wanted to raise your own income above £250,000, the only way to do it would be to raise the national average wage. Brilliant.

Other suggestions that got my vote were the idea that all models for fashion/photography/film/TV should have to be selected at random from the electoral roll, and that all 4x4 vehicles should be required to drive at least 50% of every journey they make 'off road'. Everyone seemed to agree without question that drugs should be legalised, a Tobin tax should be introduced asap, and that newspaper retractions should be printed in the same font size and on the same page as the offending article.

It was an interesting night, not really realistic (sadly), but still good to get your thinking cap on and think about how you would change things if you had the power - and thus realise how powerless we all actually feel. There was a painful irony when Mark announced they were fielding a candidate in Bristol West to represent these issues and there was a woop of delight from the audience - four weeks today, there will be hundreds of candidates standing all over the UK, and they're all supposed to represent us. We shouldn't be wooping - we should be taking it for granted. But no one feels represented and everyone's furious...

...which leads me nicely on to the OUTRAGE that is the Digital Economy Bill, which a nasty group of Labour and Tory MPs shimmied through Parliament late last night. Apologies to any people with their finger on the pulse, but this is a deeply complex issue, where the wording of the Bill has been revised three times, based on the objections of any sane person who cares anything for the internet and freedom of speech, but it's finally been pushed through in a deeply suspect fashion, meaning that the secretary of state for business can now legally order the blocking of "a location on the internet which the court is satisfied has been, is being or is likely to be used for or in connection with an activity that infringes copyright", an absurd catch-all definition that could easily be applied to hundreds of sites, including the vital Wikileaks resource (which I last linked to when they published the BNP membership lists in 2008) and even Google. The web community is fuming with Labour, furious with Mandelson and livid with the Tories (see the comments here for a taster) - the only party who has consistently argued that examination of the Bill be held off until after the election is the LibDems. Either way, this is two fingers up at democracy and a fatal stabbing for freedom of expression, and it's mighty depressing.

Finally, on to boys - and a shift from the usual 'bad things come in threes' to a slightly tweaked 'odd things come in threes'. I was emailing a random German guy, and we were all set to fix a date to meet, but then he sent me a very curious email, which I couldn't quite understand. It had, for example, included the phrase 'Why do I have to think of a ferret and a bathtub, now?!' I wrote back asking him what he had meant by certain things and he said it was time to surrender, that it had been an attempt to be dadaistic. Riiiiiight. I asked him to clarify further, and he said 'Sorry for playing this the pathetic way, but I needed to find out how you'd respond. Afraid, I'm not up to your personality.' Hmmmm. So he's dumping me before he's even met me. He was too short anyway. And it wouldn't have been that remarkable, but I was simultaneously emailing a guy who reluctantly revealed yesterday that he makes missiles. Missiles. Apparently he'd met people who work for British Tobacco who are appalled and people from the liberal left who think it's fine. I said I thought it was pretty disgusting to spend your nine to five designing weapons that kill innocent people, but then I also think working for a bank is pretty questionable, and I've been doing that for three years. It pays the rent. He said,
"Well, obviously I don't think that weapons are great or that blowing people up is really cool, but then I don't think what I do is disgusting or inherently immoral either. If I did think that way then I wouldn't do it. Personally I think I would have more of a problem with someone who continues to do something which they feel to be morally wrong just to pay the rent rather than someone who makes moral judgements which I disagree with (up to a point obviously)." I think he is trying to say that he'd rather I worked for a bank and loved it than worked for a bank and hated it. I can't see how if you a) think that weapons are not great and b) think that blowing people up is really uncool, you can c) think that designing weapons is not inherently immoral. I haven't replied yet, but I'll keep you posted. And then this afternoon, there was the guy who sent me a photo of his erect penis, while I was sitting at my desk booking aeroplane tickets for my boss. Insania.

500

Well knock me down with a post-it note. The clever stats on my Blogger dashboard tell me that this here is my 500th entry on Lost Looking For Fish. Since November 2006, thousands of words have been strung into sentences full of self-obsession, self-regard, self-derision and self-doubt. My teenage diaries catalogue, in fine-ruled page after fine-ruled page, my love for boys, the objects of my affection changing so frequently that I now find it very difficult to understand who is who. At several points I genuinely believed I was in love with two or three different people at once, in many cases having talked to them for less than two or three minutes and certainly never having been alone in a room with them. The extent of my own fickleness is breathtaking. These days I worry about crows' feet, debilitating illness, early menopause and getting behind with Desperate Housewives. I don't know which is worse. Anyway, sincere thanks for being here for the last 500 chapters. This blog is one of my most favourite things in the world and your virtual presence is much valued.

Last night I went to my ukulele class and we learned to play Delilah by Tom Jones. It's all fine except the transition from B7 to E at the beginning of the third line of the verse, when all of us needed to pause for about six seconds to get the next chord. I think it'll be a while before we're ready to lay down our first tracks. Then I went home and watched Three Colours: Blue, the first film in the 1990s trilogy that I must have lied to about seventy people and told them I'd watched before, but I haven't. Apologies if you were fooled. It was excellent: Juliette Binoche was astonishingly good in quite a brutal role. If her nostrils were fractionally smaller, she'd be perfect. Looking forward to the next two instalments.

This morning I was on the tube and miraculously got a seat around London Bridge somewhere. The man next to me was about my age, meticulously dressed in a very dapper grey suit with a bright shirt, and had a neatly-trimmed goatee/moustache combo going on. I felt like he should be a stereotypical gay tailor in the 1980s. In his hand was a large paperback book, about the size of a weighty school textbook. It looked like a textbook too - thick white paper, heavily illustrated with line drawings and colour pictures, and large chunks of text explaining things. Always keen to learn, I looked closer. The pictures were of fantasy creatures. The words were discussing a place called Hive City. I have since looked it up on Wikipedia, and found that Hive City is the capital of a computer game land called Necromunda. And then I found this adorable geek's account of his obsession. And then I found all this fan fiction that people have written, that is published and available on Amazon. And really, isn't humanity amazing? You think you're getting your head round it, I'm just about coming to terms with World of Warcraft and Second Life and accepting them as part of the modern world, but then you realise how many games there are, how much of a contribution they've made to people's lives, formed friendships, started real life romances, ended marriages, caused real life deaths and bankruptcies... It's strange, and I don't have the time or the inclination to get involved, but I love that it exists. Variety FTW.

Children of the (Facebook) revolution

Warning to those of a sensitive nature, those in denial about the youth of today, or those likely to think that the behaviour of one or two teenagers equates to the behaviour and/or deepest desires of all young people, globally: clicking on the image to the left to embiggen it may seriously damage your health.

For all others: Oh. Emm. Gee. This is horrific and hilarious on so many levels. There is a full description of the scenario if you scroll down to below the scanned bit of paper, but to explain in brief: some girl ratted on her brother to their parents, and they grounded him. Desperate for revenge, he was going through her room and found a list she'd written of all the boys she knew and what she wanted to do with them. He posted the list on Facebook, and everyone in her school (and now millions of others) have seen it, singlehandedly making me thankful to be an only child. NOT THAT I HAVE EVER WRITTEN A LIST LIKE THIS and yes, the girl seems deeply unpleasant and in need of a bit of ego-crushing / life-lesson-learning, but wow. Not sure anyone deserves that intensity of humiliation when they're still at such a formative age. Could their relationship ever recover from this? Shudder. Laugh. Shudder.

I have just returned from a 40 minute run with Laura when I felt like someone had filled my lungs up with treacle. It was a lot harder than the 10k I did in 2008. It's so weird when that happens, isn't it? I ran along the Southbank for 45 mins on Monday and it was absolutely fine, then did 45 mins of cardio in the gym yesterday and quite enjoyed it, and then today I almost had a hernia on Southwark Bridge and had to stop outside M&S on Old Broad Street because I had a stitch. Sooooooooo cool. I am still in shock now. Yoga tomorrow, methinks.

Last night was a cultural highpoint. I went to see a modern reworking of Moliere's The Misanthrope on Panton Street and it was absolutely fantastic. I was totally prepared to hate it because it was a) in the West End and b) had celebrity cast members (Damian Lewis and Keira Knightley) but I was hooked from curtain up. The script, echoing the original, rhymed. Throughout. This was brilliant because it forced the audience to really, really listen - as a consequence, it was one of the quietest congregations I've ever enjoyed. It was also brilliant because it was massively clever - two hours of rhyming isn't easy, whatever the topic, but when it's also satirical, topical and believable, it's a huge technical and linguistic achievement. Most of the way through I sat there fuming that I hadn't done it first, but ten percent of the time I had to concede that it was way beyond my abilities. I got the jokes, sure, but I don't think I could have thought of them in the first place. Maybe in a few years... It's the first time I've ever left a play and bought the script in the foyer. In fact, the last time I bought anything in a foyer was the twin cassette of Starlight Express in the mid-eighties and I'm pretty sure my parents will have paid for that.

I suppose it resonated because, in some ways, the play's central premise is so close to what I battle with a lot - whether one should be open-minded and forgiving of humanity's failings or rail against them and fight for the right to be different. In the same way that the planetary YouTube clip I posted the other night made me feel tiny, culture like that makes me feel pleasingly irrelevant: people have been worrying about this stuff since the 17th century and they'll be worrying about it long after I'm gone. I'll do my best, bumble along, and eventually I'll feed the worms. Nice.

It wasn't just the script that was wowing, though. Damian Lewis was good, as expected, but Keira was a revelation. I really like her and think she's absolutely gorgeous, so I'm possibly not the most objective viewer, but her portrayal of a whining American superstar was confident, utterly convincing and, at times, very moving. She gave me goosebumps and I send her props. Also, if she's reading, I'd really like that black dress from the final scene in my size. Any way you can help? Thanx.

After the play, I went home and watched Celebrity Big Brother, which sadly grinds to an end this weekend. Last night's episode was absolutely fantastic and I was grinning compulsively as Alex Reid was covered in spray tan. Brilliant entertainment, a blast of MSG escapism, and anyone who's snobbish about reality TV knows where they can shove their superiority complex. Byeeeeeee.

Electric dreams

Two typos and a misused 'which' yesterday but due to rushing I didn't spot them until long after my self-imposed thirty minute editing window had past. Tut tut. Am distracting myself with my consumer excitement of the day: I am going to go to John Lewis after work and buy a fleecy heated underblanket. My arctic bedroom conditions have beaten me - I went to bed last night wearing velour bottoms, a T-shirt, a velour long sleeved nightie, a snood and slippers and was still so cold that I had to heat up my microwave beanbag and arrange it over my face so that it heated up my nose while still allowing me to breathe. Basically, I need another radiator in my bedroom, but a fleece underblanket is a) cheaper and b) easier so we will all have to ignore the fact that c) it makes me feel like I should also be applying for a freedom pass.

Not much to report from this end. New eyeliner is lovely. I am waiting to see what the Apple Tablet looks like. The Guardian's editor says that Murdoch is wrong to charge for online news access, but I can't see how it's sustainable to give all this journalism away for free when so many individuals are prepared to do it on a smaller, more niche basis without getting paid or by generating advertising revenue on their sites. Of course, the big papers generate online ad revenue too - huge amounts - but it's simply not enough to cover their overheads: apparently the Graun is losing £100k a day. Hmmm. The next few years are going to be very interesting.

I feel so lucky to have been born with one foot in The Past and one in The Future. I got my first mobile phone and email address when I was 18, but I still clearly remember life without them, when home computers were rare, TV only had four channels, and I spent most termtime nights queuing with ten other girls, waiting to use the landline at our boarding school, trying to get through to the house of some uninterested boy who was out playing sport or doing something really cool and would never get the breezy messages we left. Now Skype videocalls are normal, I can watch live TV on my phone and I frequently leave the house without a clue where I'm going, but by the time I've reached the tube station I've copied and pasted the postcode from an email into the maps app, found my destination, worked out which stop I'm headed for, and then found out which part of the platform to get on the train in order to be nearest the exit stairs on my arrival. I can't imagine how the future of technology could be much cooler than it is already but I'm sure it will surprise us all. Hold on tight.

Haiti, Leona and self-absorption. Just another day on LLFF.

A couple of weeks ago, when Islamists were protesting in the town of Wootton Bassett, Newsarse, the brilliant satirical UK news website, posted a headline saying that all over the country, left-wing Guardian readers' heads were exploding because they couldn't find the correct stance on the matter - the conflict between a true commitment to freedom of speech, a desire not to write off all Muslims as violent wannabe bombers and a simultaneous and firm dislike of terrorism put us into a state of mental overdrive, whereupon we blew up. I'm going through a similar situation with cruise liners in Haiti. What's happened over there is utterly devastating, the piles of corpses stacking up outside the morgues is heartbreaking and the thought of such a turbulent country being kicked so conclusively in the nuts when it's already so weak is just mind-shattering. And now we read that hundreds of tourists are being shipped in to a port sixty miles away, where they are free to sunbathe, jetski and relax. The Guardian article points out that the boats and their passengers bring valuable money to the port in this time of urgent need, and one of the commentators rightly says that if there was a huge disaster in London, we wouldn't want tourists to stop going to Brighton. But there is something undeniably gross about holidaying so close to human agony. I know, I know, it's a pointless question of geography - would we give someone a hard time about going ahead with a planned holiday in Marbella while the earthquake is being cleaned up in Haiti? Probably not. So what does it matter if they happen to have booked near the site of a recent natural disaster? But, like sitting down next to a homeless person and tucking in to a Big Mac, it seems more than a little insensitive. The cruise ships justify it by giving 100% of their profits to the rescue efforts. How about giving the profits anyway but diverting the cruise somewhere else? I dunno. I'm only a born again liberal. I don't have the answers. I just feel a bit sick. I gave £100 to the relief effort this morning and my company, in a rare it's-good-to-work-for-a-City-bank moment, will double all its employees' donations. I'm not sure if any of it will get to where it's needed, but I can do nothing else. Please visit Unicef and donate, if you haven't already. I wouldn't normally mention the amount but I thought it might add gravitas. Yuck yuck yuck yuck yuck we're so lucky.

In other news, it appears that Leona Lewis forgot to remind her skivvies to iron her dress before the Golden Globes. Oops. Sure, there's the crushed silk look, I know about that, but what she's wearing isn't it. She looks like she did my usual trick of pulling the garment out of the washing machine, brushing it down firmly while it was still damp and hoping for the best. Instead, the thigh-height creases just draw attention to... the wrong places. Obviously if the girl had even a spectre of a personality I might be more forgiving, but as it is, I feel like I'm poking fun at a waxwork, which is not only fine but to be encouraged.

And finally, I am thrilled to confirm that the anti-biotic stint is working its way to a close. I'm off out tonight with Simon and I'm so excited about my first glass of cold white wine that I could weep. Given that we're seeing The Road first, I'll probably already be inconsolable, either with disappointment that it's not a patch on the book, or with genuine grief, the tears might be less hilarious hyperbole and more actually embarrassing. You'll read it here first.

Curiouser and curiouser

A few weeks ago I started emailing a boy through the dating website I use. He was exceptionally tall and attractive and seemed unpredictable and hilarious, so I let him off the usually unforgiveable spelling mistakes in his profile. After a few messages, I agreed to meet him at some point in the future. Then time slipped away and I realised I owed him an email. To refresh my memory, I checked his profile again to make sure I really did want to spend an evening of my valuable time in his company. And at the bottom of the first paragraph, I saw a sentence I hadn't noticed before. "I'm not a believer in monogamy," it read, "so if that's important to you, be warned." I emailed him immediately. "Hang on," I wrote. "You don't believe in monogamy?!" A day later, he replied, his profile updated and the offending sentence removed. "This has happened a couple of times before," he explained. "An ex thinks I cheated on her, which I didn't, but she found out my password and broke into my page." He apologised profusely, said he knew it wasn't the best start but was pretty funny about it, and I saw no reason to disbelieve him - he said he'd taken the precaution of changing his password. We agreed a date to meet.

Then, the day before the date, I saw that his profile had been updated again - and this time, the changes weren't even in the meat of his description paragraphs, but rather in his headline, the first thing anyone reads about you. "Looking for an easy lay," it read. Charming. I emailed him again. "Fuck fuck fuck!" he wrote back. "I'm going to delete my profile. Do you have another email address I can reach you on?" I said I was pretty wary, and he said he didn't blame me. I emailed him my real email address. Five minutes later his profile was deleted. And I never heard from him again.

I think he deleted my email address accidentally when he deleted my profile. Grania thinks he is schizophrenic and was altering his profile himself to create drama. I'm unconvinced, but I do think it's fairly unlikely that if someone broke into your profile and changed stuff in a way you didn't like, and you decided to take action and change your password, that you would ever change it to something even REMOTELY guessable. Surely you would choose the most obscure combination ever? How could she possibly have broken in more than once? Then again, if it was him making the changes for a bit of excitement, why would he delete his profile, which he'd paid for? All very odd. And thus my list of incredible vanishing men increases by the week. I can't really be offended if they disappear before they even meet me, but still, I spent Monday afternoon half-waiting for an email that never arrived and it's annoying.

That said, he clearly wasn't my husband because he can't spell and has psychotic ex-girlfriends, and I would have had to cancel the date anyway, as it was meant to be last night, and last night I had to be horizontal in velour. I was asleep on the sofa at 7pm, having made 24 mince pies that looked beautiful before I baked them, and now could be mistaken (and used successfully) as orangey-yellow hockey pucks. The pastry to filling ratio that I was advised to maintain by Delia turned out to be erroneous, and I am left with hard balls of pastry containing a small pocket of mince within, like a rock solid, shrunken mince doughnut crossed with a festive gobstopper. That's not to say they're not absolutely DELICIOUS. They're just not mince pies. Whatever they are, I've eaten three of them - two last night and one for breakfast. And now I'm off to my work Christmas lunch at a steak restaurant. Drool.

Disconnected

Some emails I’ve sent to Laura today:
09:52 ‘Internet’s down. Home time.'
09:55 ‘I literally have nothing to do.’
11:12 ‘I think it should be illegal to expect someone to sit at a desk without the internet.’
12:10 ‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggghhhhhhhhh.’
12:51 ‘Is there someone I can sue about this?’

It is now 15:37 and this is by far the longest I’ve gone without proper internet access at work since I started here 2.5 years ago. Of course, I still have the ability to check my emails and read the internet on my phone, but when there are over five consecutive hours of work time to kill, it’s simply not a substitute – the iPhone is superlative for passive browsing on-the-go, but when it comes to researching holidays, finding fun social things to do on evenings off or spending hard-earned cash buying jigsaw puzzles on Amazon, a screen the size of a four finger KitKat and the ability to type with only one thumb is somewhat limiting, dextrous though I am.

I genuinely have finished my work, I can’t read my book at my desk, and I’ve been reduced to writing this on Microsoft Word in the hope that I’ll shortly be able to work out how to post to Blogger via email. The situation is untenable. Without full access to the internet, continuing in my current job is absolutely not an option. I need the web to maintain some semblance of sanity, to distract my mind from the unbending futility of my nine to five. If they don't fix it soon, I will have to resign.

And no, it’s not weirdly liberating, you sanctimonious crap-weasels. It’s absolutely fucking awful. If no-one in the world had the web, I might be able to find some joy in the situation. But being cut off while everyone else in the surrounding buildings is still happily connected is like not being invited on a really fun holiday, and while all my friends are there having a seminal time and sending me unbearable postcards, I’m stuck at a bus stop in leaking shoes, and then a van drives by and drenches me, and a really over-confident child laughs and three ex-boyfriends walk by, all with new girlfriends, and see me looking like a fat otter, and then I finally get home and realise that I’ve lost my house keys, and then I get to my parents’ house and find that they’re out for dinner at a Michelin-starred restaurant, so I have to go back to work and sleep on the floor of my office, and I wake up with the indentations from the carpet tiles printed onto my face, and then I look in the newspapers and find that all Londoners have been infected with a deadly and completely incurable virus and we have three days to live.

Latest update: "We currently experience high connection issues to the browse environment. This causes the services on the environment to be unavailable for a period of time. At this moment it is not clear what and who is causing this high amount of connections. We will continue our investigation." I’m feeling murderous.

Also...

I've been very bored this afternoon and reading a lot of Emails From Crazy People. This is my favourite one so far.

Same shit, different day

Embargo lifted.

So the guy who, last Sunday eve, suggested we meet for drinks, and then, having vetted me over beers, suggested we go on for food; who then kissed me, and told me I was beautiful, and said he wanted to see me again; who then texted me when I got home, suggesting we meet again; who then texted me again early the following evening, in full sobriety, saying he was a little busy this week but that he would drop me a line over the weekend to make a plan for the following week, and then added a previously-unused 'x': that guy? I never heard from him again.

I spent the week in my most hated state, that of feverish impotence, where someone is making a decision about me and I can do absolutely diddly squat to affect the outcome. The utter loss of control is, for an organised, capable, absolutely unspiritual individual such as myself, nothing short of torture. I would rather have spent the week being called ugly on successive days by a selection of lice-infested tramps. Ugly I can deal with. Ugly is in the eye of the beholder. Ugly is subjective fact, and can be altered. Waiting, on the other hand, is unbearable. Waiting affects me every second of every day. Waiting ruined my week and then it pretty much ruined my weekend.

I went away to the countryside on Friday afternoon, desperate for a change of scene having been in London for 55 consecutive days and, my diary informs me, in at home resting for only six of them. Lucy and Jake were in fine fettle and their two gorgeous nippers were bright of eye and bushy of metaphorical tail. The rain lashed against the windows and we snuggled in front of the fire, ate cake and watched The Thick Of It, and all would have been perfect if there hadn't been a silent iPhone on my bedside table, screaming 'HA HA HA YOU ARE STILL REJECTED' every time I checked it. The butterflies that had descended heavily into my stomach and larynx last Monday had grown fatter and angrier, and by the time I got back to the safety of my flat on Sunday afternoon, I so longed to be without the uncertainty that I engaged in an act of deliberate self-sabotage, and texted the guy. It was a bad text, utterly pointless with undesired yet completely unavoidable undertones of 'I reeeeeeeallllllyyyy liked you', but it had the desired effect - within five minutes, the guy who had avoided my phone for seven days replied, saying nothing of any import, asking no questions and typing no kisses. I sent back a sarcastic one liner smacking of unconcealed bitterness, and that was that.

Instantly, like clouds of bats swooping and screaming out of the Batcave, the butterflies departed. I felt my stomach calm and settle for the first time in a week and since then, I've been back to my old self. No joke. I barely care. I mean, obviously it smarts a bit. I'd rather he had found me irresistible, but I am old enough to know that not everyone will, and that is fine. They're obviously idiots, but it is fine.

None of the saga was about him specifically. I can hardly even remember what he looked like. I do remember us getting on really well, but I also remember that he was obviously fairly apolitical, and the fact that he basically got expelled from his school, and went to a rubbish university, and can't really string a sentence together on paper, and smokes like a chimney. I had not planned on spending the rest of my life with this man. All I knew was that I wanted to see him again, and that someone I fancied was weighing me up. The powerlessness was everything that I detested - the boy himself, and the outcome, seemed almost inconsequential. I didn't mind if he liked me or not - I just wanted to know which one it was so that I could adjust my mental abacus accordingly.

Normally, when I emerge from a grim experience, I can reassure myself that I've learned from my mistakes. There is an upside, I tell myself - I won't do that again. But in this situation, there's nothing I could have done differently. All I did was meet him, like him, and agree to see him again. I didn't screw up, so I can change nothing about my behaviour next time. The one thing I'd like to be different - the butterflies - are beyond my control. Believe me, I did my best. I told myself fifty times a day not to get excited, that he probably wouldn't call, that it would hardly be the end of the world, that he was too short anyway and that there are plenty more fish in the sea. But the butterflies remained, flapping their stupid fat wings and wiggling their antennae at all times of the night and day. I dearly wish I could meet someone fun, go on a great date, and then wake up the next morning feeling the same level of excitement as if I'd been to the supermarket. I'd love to wait until a boy has proved his worth to me before getting ants in my pants about him. But it is just not possible for me. If I like someone, if I think someone might have potential, it's exciting. The unpleasantness and the butterflies are inevitable. There is no way to trust someone straight away, and thus this stage of not knowing is an intrinsic part of falling in love. It is, surely, impossible to meet someone without it. So basically, unless I give up on love altogether, I will have to go through this again, possibly several times. Not a prospect I relish.

It is the first sign of madness to continue to do the same thing repeatedly but continue to hope for a different result. However, maybe, as my friend Sara pointed out, if the same action is repeated with different boys, then it is not quite the same thing, and therefore it is not madness, but merely hope, which sounds simultaneously better but sadder. For hope is not far from desperation. The fine line we tread as single women who ultimately would like a mate is barbed. Either you settle for second or third best - something I've tried to do and failed. Or you give up and buy a cat - something I don't want to do. Well, I want the cat. But not yet. So I carry on along the thorny path, hoping that against all the odds, one of the two remaining single men in London who aren't complete twunts realises that I am a ridiculously good catch. The last thing I want is to become one of those haggard old cynical cows who laughs bitterly in the face of any guy who dares pay her a compliment - but I do wish I'd stop having these disappointing experiences. Un. Pleasant. And it does get a bit depressing when the only thing my mum ever seems able to say to me is 'Keep on trucking.' It's good advice, but we all need a trip to the service station every now and then. Where is my Leigh Delamere?

Ah well, it's over again. Until the next time.

Being @lostlooking

The speed at which my mind works is, quite frankly, impressive. And yet terrifying. A few moments ago, I tried to access the blogger.com site, in order to log in and write my next enthralling blog entry, and instead of the familiar navy and beige landing page, I was greeted with a stark, black typeface reading Error 503. In the next 4 seconds, I copied and pasted the text into Google, searched, and discovered that this particular error is generally caused by a temporary overload and is resolvable. I then tried to access blogger again and it loaded perfectly. The whole incident had lasted less time than it takes to peel a banana, yet the monologue I had in my head went something like, "Ohmygodohmygod, it's broken, why is it broken? What if ohmygod seriously though WHAT IF my work have blocked the site and I'm no longer able to blog from work?! What will I dooooooo?! My whole career and possibly my self-esteem is on the line here. Oh I know, I can write it at work and then email it to myself and upload it when I get home or I can email it to a third party and get them to upload it for me, but then help I wouldn't be able to get them to upload photographs because that's too big an ask, but then I suppose I could just upload the pictures myself at a later date and really the pictures aren't that big a deal as I don't upload them very often do, although maybe I should? But at least it's all manageable and oh thank fuck for that the page is loading now, god that would have been AWFUL."

So anyway, apologies for lack of blog yesterday - I do try to write every weekday but sometimes my life causes problems. This week has been slightly tricky for me, but I'm going to the countryside for some TLC shortly and we'll all be able to move on soon. For various reasons, I haven't been sleeping well, and last night I had the most vivid, VIVID sex dream about a guy (married, kids, not that attractive) who works in my office. It was one of those ridiculous dreams when they've been so lovely that you wake up and still slightly fancy them. I've seen him about five times today and keep on blushing. We had, no joke, flown to another planet and he was washing my hair with tea tree shampoo. There's no point pretending I'm not mental. Thankfully I have ridiculously nice friends and a lot of fun things going on so I have no complaints. See you next week. Virtually.

Six degrees of separation

One of the worst things in the world, up there with cholera and Tesco's own mayonnaise, is the Guardian Soulmates popular list. The website apparently has over 130,000 active users, which makes us sound like energetic heroin addicts, and out of that unfathomably large online population, larger than the number of residents in Slough, the twenty girls and twenty boys who are a) made a 'favourite' by the most other users and are b) sent the most emails go onto a chart. The top twenty girls are listed first. Pretty much without exception, they are in their mid-twenties, very attractive, with long hair, a big smile and their head tilted slightly to one side. They all say they're happy to meet guys up to around aged 35, which means that the boys I'm interested in also have these lithe, uncellulited beauties to choose from. Not that I post photos of my cellulite on Guardian Soulmates, but, like the real story behind the moon landings and Tom Cruise's sexuality, the Truth Is Out There.

Then there's a list of the men. They are a handsome bunch, mostly in their early thirties, and not fans of the head tilt. Instead, they go for a rugged, wide smile, and stare straight to camera, indicating openness and honesty. Out of the twenty, only one has anything other than a full head of hair, which cannot be representative. And of course, like all truly awful things (spider plants, smallpox), the situation is horribly self-perpetuating. Once you're on the popular list, far more people see your profile, and you get far more emails.

Needless to say, I, with my mid-length hair and untilted head, have never been on the popular list. The closest I've come to it was going out on a date once with a guy whose sister had been at number three and was so devastated when she fell to number seven that she had to leave the site altogether. It's always seemed like the kind of webpage I should probably avoid unless I wanted a good cry. And, mostly, I was able to steer well clear. Until a few days ago, when I went on a date with a guy who's on the list - and I liked him. Very Katy Perry. Now I hover round desperately hoping for him to drop off the chart (and sadly he's in the top ten so it doesn't look likely), while trying to block out all thoughts of how many hundreds of coquettish messages he's getting each day from leggy, tilty-headed vixens.

Sadly, I don't see that there's much I can do, except campaign for this irritating section of the Soulmates website to be removed immediately. Singles of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but a small fraction of your terrible self-hatred! Join me in fighting to ban the popular list! Popularity stinks! Who wants to be popular? Not me, that's for darn tootin'! I want to be kooky and different and have only two or three balding men emailing me at any one time! Yes siree, that's why I pay my £22 every month. Yup. It's alllllllll good.

Overconnected?

Ways I Know I'm Old, Part 32: The way that my carpet slightly lifted up from my underlay due to the supreme suction created by my hoover once I'd put in a new bag made me go, "Ooooh!"

Last night, I got home, put on a pair of very fitted, grey Nike tracksuit bottoms that belonged to my mum in the eighties, and an oversized grey sweatshirt featuring a large picture of Mickey Mouse. I put my hair in a topknot, slid into my FitFlops, and cleaned my flat. I emptied the bins, I did the washing up, I did three loads of washing, I watered and pruned my plants, I plumped my sofa cushions, changed my sheets and vacuumed my floors. I also kind of tidied my V+ box, watching lots of month-old TV programmes, mostly on fast forward, while I scurried about. I ate my guilty home alone meal of microwave wholegrain rice, fried onion, tuna and mayo, drank two glasses of white wine, had a mini Magnum and received a couple of fun emails. Then I went to bed and nearly finished Prospect magazine. All in all, it was a brilliant night, accompanied by a Genius mix which started with my choice of Work by Kelly Rowland, and went via Play by JLo, Tears Dry On Their Own by Amy Winehouse, Superstar by Jamelia, My Love Is Like Wo! by Mya and Chain Reaction by Diana Ross. Pig in shit. Genius really is genius.

I do worry a bit about my obsessive love of technology though. The internet and its associated facilities affect the way I find out about news, the way I communicate with my friends and family, the way I cope with boredom at work, the way I find out about what fun stuff is going on in my city (and thus it directly impacts what I do in my spare time), it's the way I find out about new films and new dates and new music... I was standing in the shower yesterday, thinking that if someone threatened me with never being able to go online again, I would swap almost anything. Including possibly a limb. Any amputees out there will probably spit with rage at that, but I don't mean it flippantly. I am aware, though, that my perspectives might be slightly skewed, so (in an instance of fighting fire with fire) I downloaded an app to my iPhone called 'Disconnect', a hypnotherapy programme that is meant to make you less reliant on technology. I listened to it last night and although it didn't seem to be remotely profound at the time, I haven't checked Twitter today. Or Texts From Last Night. Hmmm. Maybe after a couple more listens I'll give up LLFF. Be a shame though. You'll be the first to know.