I Woz Robbed

I literally was. And it's not like me to shy away from a dramatic encounter, but I've been dreading this. Still, for some weird reason I want to put it in writing.

I posted my last blog entry at 15:29 on Wednesday. Thirty minutes later, I left work, walked to the tube station and boarded the southbound Northern Line to go see my therapist. Usually, I cycle to her house every Wednesday. I quite enjoy the twenty minute blast of air - it's a useful chance for me to get my thoughts in order before I spent one hour and £45 discussing them with a paid professional. Wednesday night, though, was to be book club, and I still had thirty-odd pages of the book left. I thought I'd use the tube journey to try and finish the last section.

I got to her stop, took the lift up to street level, and began the familiar 8-minute walk to her house through a mixture of quiet Victorian squares and across a couple of arterial main roads. Gripped by the final few pages of The Wisdom of Whores (well, gripped plus my usual I-can't-believe-this-writer-is-such-a-dick scoffing), I approached my therapist's house while looking down at my book, a biro and my iPhone (to tell me whether I was on time or not - I don't wear a watch) in my left hand, my handbag over my left shoulder. The streets weren't busy - I saw a father and son walking home from school, and an elderly woman coming back from the shops - but I was pretty free to walk along reading without worrying that I was going to bump into anyone.

At 16:29 I was about two doors away from my destination when a man seemed to jump in front of me and grab me round the neck. I was utterly terrified and simultaneously completely confused. My hands shot up to my neck to prevent him from hurting me, and I tried to back away but his hands came with me. I couldn't see what he looked like, his head was up close to my shoulder, and helpfully I think I closed my eyes in fear. Within a couple of seconds I was screaming and thought very clearly, "Jesus CHRIST that is a lot of noise you're making." It wasn't a dramatic, Hollywood heroine scream, but rather an uber-womanly, gutteral noise, like when Pippa The First found out she'd lost her baby in Home & Away. I wasn't enjoying the fact that this was the sound I made under duress, but I couldn't stop. I screamed and screamed, and threw in a couple of desperate "Get off me!" attempts at the guy, but he didn't give up. I'd known he wouldn't give up, but I wanted someone to hear me shout - I hoped they might come and help me. It was a quiet road but I didn't know what else to do other than make a racket.

Give it to me," he started saying after a few seconds of struggle. "Fucking GIVE it to me." I couldn't feel the blade of a knife but I knew he might have one. I was absolutely prepared to give him what he wanted but I couldn't work out what it was: his hands were near my neck, but my bag was still over my shoulder and my phone was still in my hand. Then it clicked - he wanted my necklace. At pretty much the precise moment I worked it out, the chain finally gave way, and he hared off up the street. It had been about ten seconds, fifteen at most. I was left alone, sitting on the pavement, my glasses three or four feet away, my book out in the street, my splintered biro across the road by the wheel of a parked car. My neck was stinging a lot and there was a cut from his fingernail in the flesh of my left hand. Without all the screaming it was eerily quiet.

I thought about standing up but then realised I didn't want to. I stayed there. A few seconds later, a woman approached from the left.
"Are you OK?" she said. I didn't really know what to say, so I didn't say anything. I just stared into the gutter. "You're not OK."
A man came out of another house, saw what was going on and went back to get his phone to call the police. I just sat there, shocked and upset that I was going to waste a good chunk of my urgently-needed therapy session on this stupid guy who took my necklace. The woman introduced herself. I managed to confirm that I was basically fine, that I'd lost some jewellery. My wool dress was ripped and she said I had bad scratches on my neck. The man passed the phone to me and confirmed that the police were on their way. I gave a few details and handed the phone back. Then I rung my therapist's doorbell. She'd heard the screams, but hadn't known it was me. In London, you hear screaming at night, it's drunken morons - during the day, it's stupid kids. You don't react to screams. I don't.

The police pulled up, only about three or four minutes after the guy had called them. Two male officers got out of the car.
"Get in," they said to me. "Let's go see if we can find him."
The tears started in earnest then. I knew I'd not got a good look at the guy and I really didn't want to go after him. My main concern could have been so easily explained if I'd managed to articulate it: what are we going to do if we find him? I'd be in the back seat. Say we find the guy - then what? He gets into the back seat with me and we sit side by side? You put him in the back seat and I get out and sit on the lap of the police officer in the front? You leave me at the side of the road while you drive back to the station with him? I didn't want to see my attacker again. I didn't want him to be able to identify me, not ever. I just wanted it to go away.

I told them I didn't want to go, that I didn't want to see him and that I was pretty sure I'd be unable to recognise him even up close. The policemen looked really frustrated and I realised then how pumped up they both were. The adrenaline was flowing and they wanted to go catch a thief. I just wanted to forget about it, sit in a wingback chair and discuss my existential crisis. I knew I was being unhelpful but I left the two helpful neighbours talking to the police and, with a few apologies, took refuge in my therapist's sitting room.

I cried a lot over the next thirty minutes or so. The session was a write-off and I came out of her house pretty rattled, terrified. I didn't want to go home so, as planned, I went to Emily's house for book club. On the tube I took a photo of some of my scratches. I'd not seen them in a mirror and I wanted to see what had happened. They made me feel sick. And then I wrote down what I could remember. How my first thought was about wasting my therapy session. How annoyed I was that the guy had been black, how time and time again the stereotypes are backed up, how hard it gets to blame the police for being racist. How I'd wondered if I could call my recent ex and ask him to meet me at the tube tonight, and how straight away my grown-up voice had come into my head, saying, "You manipulative BITCH." How I knew straight away I'd be using my vulnerability to get his pity and affection. How the police's hunger had scared me almost as much as had the attack. How I started worrying that the scratches would fade before book club and I wouldn't be able to show anyone my war wounds. How one minute I'd thought it would make a good blog entry, and the next I was shuddering at how terrified I felt. How I had always been able to say that I'd never been mugged, and how I'd always thought it was because I was tall and strong-looking, and how maybe this meant that I'd lost so much weight that I now looked vulnerable, and that in a way it was a bizarre compliment. And how fucked up that made me, that I was in a tiny glad to be mugged because it meant I looked THIN.

And so I got to book club, and I told Emily, and then I told Kate when she arrived, and then the others came I really didn't want to talk about it any more, and then I had a lot of white wine and felt a lot better, and at the end of the night, I walked back to the tube with Ness, and a guy came up to us, close up, and asked if we could spare any change, and I leapt into Ness like Scooby-Doo into Shaggy, so then I had to explain to her why I was so jumpy. And I got home OK, determined to walk into my flat alone even though Ness had offered to accompany me, and I got into bed and turned off the light, and all I could feel was my scratches stinging and all I could hear was his whispered, urgent voice going, "Give it to me, fucking GIVE it to me," and so I put on a podcast and slept fitfully.

Yesterday I got up and went into work, and the police came and took a statement, and then later in the afternoon, a forensics guy came around and photographed my scratches and the cut on my hand, and although I knew it was no big deal, after he'd gone I think the tiredness overwhelmed me and I did a fair bit of crying. Today I've had a row with my insurance company, and it just doesn't seem to stop. But I know it will.

The necklace was my favourite. It was a long gold chain with a gold pear at the end, the pendant given to me by my parents, the chain handed down to me by mum, although it had been given to her by dad when they were first married. I remember being in my mum's arms as a toddler and playing with the chain, and as a grown-up I've loved wearing it. The guy didn't get the whole chain - it snapped in two places and I was left with a small section of it. I never want to see it again. My ripped dress is in the bin, next to my laddered tights and the biro he must have crunched underfoot as he ran away.

I couldn't sleep last night either - it's one of those times when you tell yourself not to think of elephants. I was up late playing crappy computer games on my phone, trying not to replay the details, wonder why he'd not stolen my phone, or ask myself whether he'd seen me on the tube and got a good look at the necklace so decided to follow me along those streets, whether he'd still have grabbed me ten seconds later when I would've been two doors further down and in my therapist's front garden. I know it's just bad luck, that it could have been so much worse, that this is what you get in modern life, that he was desperate, that the memories will fade, that I'm healthy, that the scratches don't really sting now, that there won't be any scars, that it wasn't near my house, that it was only a theft, that it happened in daylight, that I will sleep well again. But right now, I'm still pretty wobbly, and I don't like it one tiny bit.

Anyway. It's done now. I've spoken to the police, the insurers, my parents, my boss, and my Faithful. It's over. Just hope my crappy Alzheimer's memory selects this as one of the 97% of all events it chooses to forget. Wishing you all a happy weekend. Be a bit vigilant. Love all the people.

Since I've been gone

Clearly I am losing the will to blog. We can discuss what this says about me another time.

I am going to tell you what you've missed in reverse chronological order.

Today I am counting down the hours until I can go to see Aida at the Royal Opera House.

Last night I had a racist French waiter at Les Deux Salons in Covent Garden. This was the conversation:

Waiter: I am afraid we are all out of the chicken on the menu tonight, but we do have a chicken special, it is black leg chicken served with leeks.
Jane: What is the difference between black leg chicken and normal chicken?
Chris: It's just a different type of chicken. Stop being difficult.
Waiter: [Thinks about it...] The black leg chicken he runs faster.
Jane: I think that might be racist.
Waiter: [Nervous giggle.]
Jane: [Grinning] It is! You're racist. I think you should leave before we have you fired.
Chris: Shut up Jane.

You see, it's weird, I've been putting off writing for days, and now that I'm doing it, it's really fun.

On Tuesday I went to see Kevin Eldon at the Soho Theatre - he is a stand-up comedian who was almost exactly 50% funny. I think I might recommend you go see him in about five years when he is a bit better at his job. Don't bother now. If you need to see stand-up comedy now and you want it to be funny, I think there is only one good one: Terry Alderton. Also Daniel Kitson.

Last Sunday evening my choir done a concert innit. We sang Bach and other stuff and it was really good. My life is a wonderfully varied cultural melting pot, sprinkled with croutons of self-doubt and interwoven with noodles of reality TV and a rouille of fake tan.

Last Sunday morning, I went to see David Eagleman speak about neuroscience and ting. He is amazing - I would pass on the pearls of my wisdom but I wrote them down on the handout, and the handout is in my bedroom. I am in my office. I have no memory. Something about there being as many neuron connectors in our brain as there are galaxies in the Milky Way. What was best though was that I got to feel really superior as he used all these anecdotal experiments in his talk to back up his points e.g. the runaway trolley one and the if-you-are-holding-a-cold-drink-you're-more-likely-to-be-grumpy-in-some-measurable-way-than-if-you're-holding-a-hot-drink one. And everyone was laughing in shock at these fascinating stories and I sat there smugly unimpressed, thinking 'I know this already' which is, like, my favourite state EVAH. I was not holding a cold drink.

Last Saturday, Kate and I finished the Capital Ring. It was an amazing achievement and we should be really proud. So we are. We went out to dinner in Highgate to celebrate, and I ate too much greasy food and drank some red wine, and then when I got home I was sick.

Last Friday, I went on a date. I don't want to discuss it, but I feel like I'm lying if I don't mention it.

So there you have it.

Harrowing

What with all my "tedious" navel-gazing (copyright A. Reader, 9 January 2011) and pontification on the subject of love and relationships, you'd be forgiven for expecting me to be a Full and Vocal Member of The Valentine's Haters Club. Actually, I kind of like it. I know, I know: it's horribly commercial, and yes, I know that Real Love happens 365 days a year, and I am fully aware that restaurants put their prices up just to cash in, and I know that the whole thing seems designed to make people who are alone feel much worse about themselves, increasing the sense single adults often have of being second class citizens.

But hey. At its loosest extremes, it's about telling people you love them, and I'm all for that. I just stretch the boundaries a bit, and send cards to my parents, and a few friends, and then yesterday Grania came to my office early in the morning and dropped off a small, red, heart-shaped helium balloon on a stick, so anyone who cared could see I was loved. I put it under my seat on the tube home so as not to be too unbearable, but I still enjoyed seeing it waggling along beside me as I went up the escalators. And I got a card from Astrid, and one from my dad, and then I got changed and wore a heart necklace and heart earrings and a vest-top with hearts on it, and three single girlfriends came over and I made a three course meal including heart-shaped lamb burgers, and we drank a lot of wine and I felt pretty happy, all things considered.

Doubtless, it's a good deal more fun to look down one's nose at those willing morons who allow themselves to be duped by Hallmark and Cafe Rouge into spending their hard-earned cash on cardboard and marked-up set menus; to tell oneself that one is a vastly superior specimin because one doesn't buy in to all that capitalist claptrap, because one refuses to let one's emotions be controlled by such a cynical and commercial endeavour. But I just can't do it. I'm a sucker for love.

Kate and I did the next section of the Capital Ring on Sunday, from Greenwood to South Kenton. It was grey, windy and drizzling, and by the time we reached Harrow, the only photo I'd taken was of a decomposing dead fox floating in the Grand Union Canal. I was boiling from the climb and my rucksack had created an attractive sweat patch on my back, meaning that I became absolutely freezing as soon as we sat down in the Blues cafe in Harrow for a bowl of tuna pasta. The room was slightly less frosty than the waitress, but more potent was the thudding fug of oppressive, eternal Sunday mid-afternoons that one can only understand if one has been to boarding school, where you're bored out of your tree with nothing to do and yet painfully aware of a conflicting sense that tomorrow morning is approaching at speed and that the ever-craved weekend will shortly be over for another five days. You're thrilled for the change in routine that is heralded by the arrival of your parents to take you 'out' for lunch, but then are cripplingly embarrassed by their every move and spend the longed-for, fantasized-over, hour-long pizza lunch fervently wishing that your mum was more glamorous and that your dad's voice wasn't so loud, desperate for them to stop asking stupid questions about such OBVIOUS stuff but then spitting with rage the moment the subject meandered even a millimeter from yourself. And then they tell you they love you and kiss you goodbye and you don't even want to be seen with them in case someone sees you together and finds another reason to think you're uncool, and then they get in the car and start the hour and a half drive back home, and you're left alone in the cold gloomy evening, filled with sadness and regret and self-loathing and homesickness and a physically painful feeling of loneliness.

Surrounding us in the cafe were many clusters of hopeful parents feeding their costly offspring, following in the footsteps of Winston Churchill and Baby Carrot, oops, soz, Benedict Cumberbatch in being educated at this esteemed establishment. The MILF next to us chatted to her penne-chokingly handsome teenage son about the upcoming BAFTAs and other hip things, and then casually paid for the meal with one of several crisp £50 notes and five one pound coins. On the table behind Kate, two slightly uncool brothers sat opposite their slightly uncool parents and discussed forthcoming sport fixtures over burgers, pizza and a chicken caesar salad. So much money, so many extraordinary facilities, so many privileged, forlorn boys walking outside in the drizzle wearing tailcoats and a mournful gaze. It was all just desperately sad.

Why do I feel sorry for these young men? Because it's not about love. You can pay many thousands to send your son to Harrow, or Eton, or St. Mary's Whatever. They can grow up with like-minded friends on tap, an unrivalled circle of influence, guaranteeing them entry into society's highest echelons, a free ticket into advantage that never expires. They can wake up on a Sunday aged 14 and have a golf course at their disposal, a running track, swimming pools, tennis courts, squash courts, a judo room, an art school, theatres, photography and film facilities, music rooms, recording studios, computer labs, open fields, a farm, and wealthy parents to take them out for pizza. They can be educated by top teachers for five years and come out with top grades and places at top universities, where the grooming process can continue. They can have every head start it's possible to have. But they can never be normal. They can never un-go to boarding school. And although it was wonderful in so many ways, and although parents are only doing what they think is best, the fact is, it breeds difference and it's unfair. And - vitally - for every over-confident Churchill or Carrotbatch, there are men and women who were permanently scarred by the experience, who will never fully recover from feeling abandoned during those formative years.

I'm not blaming boarding school for the snake. I just... I just wish it didn't need to exist. I wish state education was so good that even the richest felt that private education was unnecessary. Some are more equal than others and I wish it weren't so. I just want us all to be friends. Underneath the confident tone of voice, I am, as an ex-boyfriend once told me, just a big bundle of love. I think he meant it as a compliment.

I'm also massively hormonal AGAIN, and hungover and needy, and all I want to do is eat dark chocolate with sea salt and then lie in a huge bed, enveloped in some strong arms, and sleep. What I do NOT want to do is schlep over to west London and have a FREAKING CHOIR PRACTICE.

Tell no one

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

Bare naked ladies

I went back to the Porchester Spa last night, London's oldest, which was built in 1929 in the Art Deco style and originally called The Turkish and Russian Vapour Baths. My first visit was a couple of years ago, when I went with an ex on couples' day. Before he was an ex, that is - not after. Going to a spa with an ex is not my idea of relaxation. Anyway. He didn't like it, but then he didn't really like much except being important and having lots of money, so I pushed the bad memories aside and returned, taking Em and Grania with me. In the ex's defence, I can see why he wasn't a fan. It's definitely grimy. Sanitary conditions are one of the mainstays of a good spa, and this one doesn't have 'em. But it's been going for eighty years and the gorgeous original tiling in the high-ceilinged relaxation lounge is hilariously juxtaposed with crappy green plastic sun loungers and a pretty unromantic steam room. You're given two big towels and a gingham sarong on entry, so you've always got something to sit on, and if you wear flipflops I don't really see the problem.

The definite difference between my first and second visit was that this time we were there on a ladies' only evening and boy, was there a lot of bush on show. There weren't nearly as many total wax jobs as you might expect, and in fact, many of the muffs were of impressive height and width, looking like a quarter of a large hair pizza had been laid down below the wearers' belly buttons. Emily even spotted one lady who seemed to have shaved a strip down the middle of her 'region', leaving a wide dark band on either edge. We discussed it and I decided that, given that she was of a certain age, she must be a victim of unfortunate selective pubic balding. As an image of our future, it wasn't particularly inspiring.

I'm quite a big fan of nudity, although to spare my friends the pain of looking at my birthday suit for four hours, I kept my bikini on last night. I did, however, appreciate the levelling effect of a bunch of women walking around starkers. In the time we were there, I only spotted one figure that I would have swapped, in its entirity, for my own. So many fantastic legs with rubbish boobs out there. Who knew? It was humbling and comforting and relaxing and, eventually, irrelevant, which is (of course) how it should be. I'm not sure, but the impression I get of men's changing rooms is that they are pretty nude-happy. Many grown women, on the other hand, still do that 'I'm-getting-changed-under-this-towel' thing that they do on a crowded beach. I don't know what we're all so repressed about, and I wish it wasn't the case. That said, tonight I'm off to eat seven courses at Marcus Wareing, and the chances of me wanting to show anyone my body in the immediate aftermath are, well, slimmer than I'll ever be. The boyban continues unchallenged.

'Sup

Hmmm, odd. Don't know what happened there. One minute you couldn't shut me up, the next I totally lose interest. Not that my life's dried up, by any means. Edited highlights of the last few days include:

• Saturday's trip to the ukulele hootenanny, including a run-in with mad Paul who muttered something under his breath about me and, when I asked him to clarify, said, "Nothing, nothing," in a way that meant, "I dream of your death."
• My first ever collection from Freecycle - I have donated many items in the past but never gained anything. What was the object that was so desirable for me that I got up and left my house especially to pick it up from a house under five minutes' walk away? A pair of bowling shoes. Yup. I have enough cupboard space to squeeze in another couple of matchboxes, and I collect free bowling shoes, despite the fact that a) every bowling lane offers shoe hire included in the price; b) that I bowl less than once every two years on average; and c) I am literally crap at it so turning up with my own shoes will be a bit like taking driving lessons in a Mercedes Gullwing. Madness.
• With meditation becoming ever trickier at work, I discovered our office prayer room and have tentatively walked back and forth to it, past the HR department, hating the fact that they all think I am now a Christian or something. Urgh. The prayer room itself is said to be 'laid out in an appropriate way'. I had imagined perhaps some chairs, a little altar, and space for prayer mats. Instead it's just an empty room with a whiteboard on one wall, upon which an arrow, drawn in green pen, indicates the direction of Mecca. In a corner are three or four prayer mats folded into quarters, but they haven't moved since I've been in there. It's definitely a Muslim prayer room, not a multi-faith area. And I'd definitely feel like quite a dick if anyone walked in and caught me sitting on the carpet concentrating on relaxing my neck and shoulders. Beats trying to get zen while sitting next to a shrapnel pooer, though.
• I've read two brilliant books: And When Did You Last See Your Father? and George Orwell's essay collection, Books vs. Cigarettes, a small but immaculate selection of thoughts, ranging from reading to press freedom to school recollections and the snobbishness inherent in children. Both highly recommended.
• I saw a film, Sweet Smell of Success, which was good but not brilliant. I don't get why people fancied Tony Curtis. I think he looks like a waxwork.

That's all for now.

In which I write a lot

So it turns out that even when I'm not trying to meditate in the middle of someone else's intestinal warzone, I find it freaking hard. I actually think I'm getting worse at it. Last night's attempt was so bad that I have lost motivation and now can't be bothered to try at all. Which is sad and actually I will rectify that asap. This week, I have to do a short body scan, when you briefly focus on different parts of your body from toe to head, and then focus on the supposed heaviness of my arms, my legs, and my neck and shoulders. Then I have to repeat that I am at peace three times. Then I have to 'cancel', by opening my eyes and taking a deep breath, and then do the whole thing again.

Problem is, I can't focus on anything at all. I think watching Sherlock just beforehand is probably not helpful, and Sunday evenings are never good for me anyway, in a mental sense, but last night things got so bad that I briefly wondered if I am not, in fact, human, but some rare and supremely gifted yet undervalued uberspecies whose mind can process infinite thoughts per second, trapped in the restrictive body of a thirty two year old woman. Thirty three year old woman. Shit. Anyway, my brain was moving so fast that I decided it might be interesting to try and record its absurd trajectories and discuss them with my therapist on Wednesday. So I switched on iDictaphone, and instead of saying the words in my head, I said them out loud. When I got too distracted I jumped back a stage. I transcribed the recording a moment ago and I sound like a lobotomised amnesiac. This is roughly what came out - the bits in brackets are the thoughts I had accidentally in between the thoughts I was meant to be having:

Feet
(Recording)
Feet
Ankles
(Sports day at school)
Feet
Feet
Ankles
Calves
Shins
Knees
(Brigitte)
Legs
(Period)
Stomach
Chest
Shoulders
(My face is itching)
Feet
Ankles
(Truck outside)
Feet
Ankles
(My stomach's rumbling, I’ve eaten a lot today, my head’s itching)
Feet
Ankles
(Yogatoes)
(My face is itching)
Feet
Ankles
(Eczema [other people’s. I do not have eczema])
(Simon)
(My head’s itching)
Feet
Ankles
(Come on)
Shins
Calves
Knees
Thighs
Stomach
Down my arms
(Skiing)
Elbows
Forearms
Hands
(Massage)
(Fish pedicure [more on this later])
(Grania)
(Robert)
Small of the back
Up the spine
Over the top of my head
(Lorry driver)
Eyes
Nose
Mouth
(Haven’t brushed my teeth)

Listening to the sounds outside
Back into the room
(Badminton with Sara on Tuesday)

My left arm is heavy
(Chest tightening)
My left arm is heavy
Both arms and both legs are heavy
Both arms…
(My friend Kate)
and both legs are heavy
(My boss)
(Going to work tomorrow)
Both my arms and both my legs are heavy
My neck and shoulders are heavy
(That bar in Kennington where I went with Kate)
My neck and shoulders are heavy
(Someone giving me a neck massage)
(Japanese hairdressers)
My neck and shoulders are heavy
I am at peace
(My blog entry about not being at peace)
I am at peace
I am at peace
(Heard a noise like a frog, thought about the rockery in Luke’s parents’ garden)
Cancel
(Exhale)

My left arm is heavy
(Thinking of Eva, Kit, photography, the guy at the photography course)
My left arm is heavy
Both arms… (Claire, Henry, Gordon)
Both arms and both legs are heavy
Both arms and both legs are heavy
(That film, Sliding Doors, the end of it, John Hannah on the bridge)
Both arms and both legs are heavy
(Walking through Battersea Park with Kate and Sarah and Simon the morning after that New Year’s Eve)
My neck and shoulders are heavy
My neck and shoulders are heavy
My neck and shoulders are heavy
I am at peace
(People outside)
I am at peace
(Yoga at the Ayurvedic spa in India with Simon, tea planting, photos, being smeared with red paint)
I am at peace
(Grania)
Cancel

My left arm is heavy
(Denouement of Sherlock Holmes in the pool)
Both my arms and both my legs are heavy
(Quite smug that I never thought it was John, I knew straight away that he had the stuff on, it was good though, bad beginning, my eye is itchy, my ear is itchy, you’ve gone right off course, go back)
Both my arms and both my legs are heavy
(Rucksacks)
Both my arms and both my legs are heavy
(Going to the States)
(Grania, Andrew)
Both my arms and both my legs are heavy
My neck and shoulders are heavy
(The School of Life)
(That came out of nowhere)
My neck and shoulders are heavy
My neck and shoulders are heavy
(What if the dictaphone’s not working?)
I am at peace
(Peace be with you in church)
I am at peace
(The sheet music on Brigitte’s piano)
I am at peace
Cancel

In have no idea if this is normal, if this is along the lines of everyone's head contents, or if it's a total miracle/outrage that I haven't yet been locked up. Either way, you can hopefully understand that my thrice-daily meditation sessions are more exhausting than I'd anticipated, and sandwiching them into my normal life is not easy.

Friday I had a gathering at Charlotte Street Blues, where I drank a mojito and then several litres of white wine, and danced and laughed and received quite literally astonishingly cool presents, not one dud, and I'd for some reason got some business cards printed last week, and started handing them out to all and sundry, feeling like it wasn't quite breaking the boyban if all I was doing was handing out tiny glossy rectangles to virtual strangers. And then we went to The Roxy, where a minging guy basically tried to have sex with me on the dancefloor without a) removing any clothing at all or b) asking, and I was faux disgusted by another guy who was really flirty while wearing a wedding ring, but then he turned out to be an amazing dancer and that was really fun. And then we left and Trace and I walked to Soho Square and my stupid key for the Londikes didn't work AGAIN and I wondered briefly whether there was some hidden breathalyser mechanism because I clearly shouldn't have been allowed on a bike under any circumstances, but then I couldn't remember where my nightbus left from and I ended up walking to Victoria, and pretty much the entire way there I was talking to the woman from Barclays Cycle Hire, chattering away about how annoying it was that my key didn't work and all the while she was probably playing Solitaire and saying, 'Mmmm. Mmmm. Yup.' about every six seconds until I bored myself and hung up. And then I got on the bus and met the guy from Cameroon and then came home.

So Saturday was a bit groggy, but I got dressed up and went over to West London to the Mary Poppins land that is Holland Park to see some friends and then down to Aqua Sheko just off Ken High Street for London's only fish pedicure. Ohmygodohmygod. I found out about this approx. one week ago and immediately knew that even if it was £100 and/or absolutely crap, I still had to try it. Fortunately it was neither. Grania has a photo of me where my leg looks weirdly amazing [now posted], so I will wait until she sends that to me to post it, but basically, you submerge your feet in these tanks and all these little catfish-like brown fish, about an inch long, come and EAT ALL THE DEAD SKIN. They like it. It is like putting a platter of doughnuts in front of me. They can't help themselves. Apparently they gorge and gorge and gorge, and then every now and then they go and sit on the bottom of the tank and have a rest for 5 mins and then they're ready to go again. They are insatiable. For dead skin.

Anyway, so you put your feet in and these fish swarm around and between your toes, and it's tickly and initially very freaky and Grania said she was going to be sick and I was so worried that she was going to vomit into the tank that I was completely distracted from the fact that I, too, thought I might vomit into the tank. But after about two minutes, it's fine, and then after five minutes it just becomes really nice and relaxing. And you sit there for thirty minutes and then your feet feel amazingly soft and then you get an incredible foot massage for fifteen minutes. I won't lie. It's not the most incredible pedicure on earth. I could have had the fish chowing down for another hour or so. But it was an experience. Possibly don't go when you have a whopping hangover. Other than that, I'd recommend it.

Then we went to a charity shop and I bought a red jacket and then we went to Waterstones and I decided to buy The Slap on Amazon, and then we went to Bethnal Green, to Bistrotheque which was great, and to the Working Men's Club, where a guy was dancing and then chatting to us, and I realised that I don't like going out dancing with one other girl because if I meet someone nice, I feel really guilty about abandoning them for even one second, and sad for them that they aren't being chatted up by someone. Even if she has a boyfriend, I still feel sad for her that no one is chatting her up, and I realise that is probably ridiculous, but on reflection yesterday I realised that I still have clear memories of being the fun girl at teenage parties who was always making sure there was an amazing song on the stereo and who knew all the words to everything and who was funny and confident, while all the pretty ones were outside in the foliage snogging Anna's brother's friends. And I may have looked like I didn't mind but fucking hell I did. And I guess that's why I now would feel so uncomfortable ever putting anyone else through that. Which means that really the only time I feel comfortable meeting someone is on a date, because everyone present is involved and no one feels left out. Because there's nothing worse than going out with someone, a platonic friend of either sex, and realising that while you thought you were meeting up to have a chat, they were meeting up with you as a platform to meeting someone else - someone they've never met before, someone they can kiss - and they want you to stand there and talk to them until they meet that person, and then once they've met them, you can go away please, and hopefully find your own person, but if you don't, then that's just your tough shit slightly.

ANYWAY. So I wasn't particularly friendly to the really quite attractive guy who came up to me at the Working Men's Club, in fact when he accidentally spat while he was talking to me I said, 'I asked for the news not the weather,' which I haven't said for about thirteen years, but Grania said she laughed so much internally that she slightly did a wee. But then I felt bad, so I was a bit nicer to him and danced with him for a bit and then these beautiful girls came on stage and started doing an amazing routine, and we were all agog, and I said to him, 'You need to go for that one on the right, she's amazing,' and he said, 'I'm not sure my girlfriend would be too happy about that,' and I was thinking inside, 'Girlfriend?! Things that make you go hmmmm.' I mean, of course, he did nothing wrong, he just danced with me, but why are two guys going out and doing sixties dancing with strangers except if to pull? And later I spotted him bumping and grinding with someone else, and I tell you what, on paper he was behaving himself, but I'm pretty sure his girlfriend wouldn't have been too happy with pretty much anything he was up to that night.

Eventually it all caught up with us and Grania and I called it a day and started the trek home via nightbus, and met an adorable blond South African guy who seemed so sweet and gentle, who told us that he worked in a salsa bar and then told us that he'd got the deep cut on his knuckle because he pushed his ex-housemate's head through a window during a fight, which all seemed rather extraordinary, and eventually I got home and slept and then woke up and cooked and mum and dad came over for DIY and eating, and my flat is at a new level of amazingness, and then I watched Orchestra United and Sherlock, and then I couldn't meditate and couldn't sleep and then it was time to get up.

It's all excellent.

What it could be like all the time if i wrote when drunk

God i love london. i just gt back home from my birthday party and everyne and everything is amazing. but i wante d to say especially what was briiillant aside from al the amazing presents was hte man on the nightbus back home. it was his first day in lodnon, he's from camerooon, nad he didn't know his own address. he knew he hadtaken this bus route in the other direction earlier today, but that's all. and he got on the bus, and asked the driver 'do you go past a big church?' and he was like, 'ye-huh.' which wasn't helpful. os me and this other passenger helped him, through a process of elimination, at 2am, and it was lovely.

Not remotely free wheelin'

Well, that was exciting. The sun came out, the clock struck twelve and I left my office, crossed the road, stuck my new navy key thing in the terminal, extracted the brand new bike (with assistance) and cycled off round the City for ten minutes of fully exhilarating liberation. The brakes worked, the tyres were bouncy, the three gears were efficient and it was a bit like being Kylie as everyone is transfixed by the turquoise and watched agog as I glided by. Or maybe it was my cleavage that they found distracting. Either way, it was fun. It's been three years since I was a regular cyclist - living on the second floor of a building that's a drunken stumble from the nearest tube station doesn't encourage one to buy a bike - and I'd clean forgotten what a fantastic feeling it is. It's not cheap - £45 for a year's access, plus charges every time you use a bike for more than 30 minutes - but if I keep all my journeys under half an hour, the £45 is all I'll pay, and if you compare that with the inflexibility of bike ownership, plus the chances of them being stolen, it's a veritable bargain. As long as it works.

Now we just need to settle on a name. Barclays Cycle Hire is a) too long and b) features the Evil Corporate Sponsor. Thus I also discount Barcycle. Montreal's scheme is called the Bixi, a (what's that word that means when two words are smooshed together? Not enjambment is it. Grrrr.) smooshing of bicycle and taxi. Paris has the Velib (velo plus libre or liberte, not sure, either way: free bikes, or bikes plus liberty. Ca marche.). Some people are suggesting Borisbike, or Borike, but that seems to give Bojo too much credit for an idea that's been in the pipeline since way before he became London mayor. Equally, fan though I am of Mr Livingstone and happy as I am to admit the idea started in his tenancy, he didn't bring it to fruition so I think the Kencycle is a bit more than he deserves. I think something to do with the city will work best. Capcycle (capital bike)? Or does that sound like an ice cream? Londike sounds a bit lesbian but maybe we should grow up. OK, maybe I should grow up.

In unrelated news, last night I saw Toy Story 3 in 3D and didn't cry. Apparently this means I am technically dead. Am enjoying the novelty of being the one who's not emoting for once.

Trick photography

It would be easy to imagine that I have a touch more get up and go than the average girl, but the fact is, my desire to move is far weaker than my Scottish penny-pinching habits. Sure, I want to learn new things. I genuinely want to improve myself and the things I decide to do always sound really appealing. In theory. In practice, I just want to quiche. I'd pretty much always rather go home and eat mini Babybels. Tell me about a new fun activity that's happening in a couple of months and I'll get butterflies of hypothetical excitement. Ring me up at 5pm on a day when I have no plans, and ask me to join you, free of charge, and I'll mutter something about needing to get my eyebrows threaded and totter off home to lounge in front of the TV in Primark velour.

Over the years, I've worked out that the only way I can force myself to do pretty much anything is to pay up front; if I don't book, I don't go. I find a course I want to do, I shell out in full; theatre and gig tickets are bought months in advance; cinema seats are booked asap, even when I know there'll only be about six of us in the screening room. So I reserve my space, and I schlep along grumpily, wondering why the hell I forked out for another STUPID course, and then I turn up, and everyone's really nice and I learn things and I go home and I'm so full of adrenaline and new-found enthusiasm that I can barely sleep.

This totally happened last night. I was sitting on my sofa at 18:15 hours, thinking I would pay £99 not to have to stand up and go on the After Dark photography workshop I'd merrily paid £99 to attend when I booked it six weeks ago. I'd been excited about it for six weeks, but now that I was on my sofa and it was due to start in under two hours, I suddenly wanted to do it about as much as I wanted to drink a mug of someone else's mucous. Actually, that mental image is too far even for me. Apologies.

But because I couldn't bear to waste £99, I stood up and went, and dealt with the vague humiliation/kudos that I'd had the cajones to turn up even though my camera wasn't an SLR and was the cheapest in the room by several hundred pounds, and the tripod that pre-dates me that I'd borrowed from my mum was described within minutes by the course leader as "particularly shit", and everyone else pulled their equipment out of expensive padded bags, whereas I have jettisoned my case as it's too fiddly for quick access, and now store my beloved Canon G11 in an old sock, one of a pair taken from a Virgin Atlantic flight back in the days when I was a pop journalist and used to accrue cool anecdotes about my job that I could impress people with at dinner parties.

And everyone else had amazing lenses, and apparently zoom lenses are rubbish for night photography as all the layers of glass create 'noise' or 'flare', but I did what I could and I am pleased with some of the results. My camera definitely has its limitations, but it fits in my handbag and if I even if I had an SLR I doubt I'd use it because I couldn't be bothered to carry it round. Although I'm not denying it would be fun to try.

This first shot is taken in the deserted Petticoat Lane market, looking towards the City. The brief was to capture the emptiness. I just put my camera down, allowed for a fairly long shutter speed and this was the first picture I took:

Just F everyone's I, if you're interested... On a shorter shutter speed, the same photo came out like this:

Then I moved my tripod to take a different photo. This was the best one I managed. Could have improved on it but the group moved on. The guy in the jeans was our teacher.

Then we went to the Gherkin. It was really hard to get an interesting shot of this in the dark, so he suggested we leave the shutter open and up the exposure as much as we could. The maximum shutter speed my camera allows is 15 seconds, but it's interesting that, whereas in my earlier shots, the sky was totally black, here there is so much light in the London sky that it appears to be almost daytime. (Possible point of interest - our teacher's longest ever night time exposure was seven hours.)


By now it was nearly 11pm, and we walked to London Bridge. Here my camera failed me - shots of the next bridge along, Tower, simply didn't have enough clarity, the lights were blurred and it just didn't work. I'd need a prime lens for that, I think (ie. a lens that has a fixed length and cannot zoom), but like I said, the zoom is inbuilt in my camera and most of the time I'm delighted it's there. You win some, you lose some. Instead, I turned around and took the old favourite: long exposure of traffic as a bus passes. The vehicle moves too fast to be captured, but the lights make an impression and streak. It's cliched and hack, but I bloody love it. That's Southwark Cathedral in the background, and my night was worth it just for that shot.

So yeah. I get home after work and I'm floppy as if I've had a skeletonectomy, and all I want to do is stay draped across the sofa. But I've paid in advance for something, so I have to go, and I do, and it's great and I get home buzzing. It's just the law of my land. My guess is that we're all mad; the challenge of life is to work out the best ways to trick ourselves into behaving like people we respect and with whom we can live. Just call me Debbie McGee.

Whirlwind.

I've been crap and I'm sorry to all three of you. Thursday I had a second date. It was good and now I wish I'd never met him. Nothing less fun than the vulnerability associated with actually liking someone. Will try and forget all about him forever. On Friday, Lucy came to London and placed upon me the heavy burden of the fact that she has two children and doesn't live in town and rarely gets a night off and had driven all the way just to see me so, well, you know, we just HAD to go out in Hoxton and eat Thai food and drink much wine, and then go to another bar and have fruit smoothies for health and cookies for fun and wine for stupidity, and Lucy decided to see what zambuca coffee tasted like (fail), and then go to a club and dance until 2am with boys who were born in the latter half of the eighties, boys who were good looking enough to take their shirts off when they got hot, and of course I had to kiss one of them although I can't remember which one, even when I look at the photos - all I can remember is pulling away and going, "Urgh, you taste of Red Bull." What a charming and petite nymph I am. And then chips from a kebab shop and absurd and unexpected self-control from me, only about seven hours too late, and home on the nightbus.

And then on Saturday I woke up in that curious and deeply unpleasant wasteland between still drunk and more hungover than you'd ever known it was possible to be, and Lucy and I had bacon sandwiches and then I got on a coach in Waterloo and drove to Cambridge to sing in a concert in King's College chapel, to the best of my knowledge one of the most glorious buildings in the whole world, with a nine second acoustic and, at 8pm after five hours of rehearsal, a distinguished audience; and at the party later I was able to say thank you to my choral hero, nonagenarian Sir David Willcocks, without whom etc. etc., and when he'd thanked me and turned away it was all too much and I burst into tears. Pulled myself together afterwards with some Oyster Bay and then tepid rosé in plastic cups on the coach, got home, passed out, woke up on Sunday aching as though I had been a woefully underprepared contestant on Overnight Gladiators without my knowledge, did yoga, sweated as though doing Bikram while actually just in my normal-temperature flat, then went to see Eva's new baby and then off to Mayfair for more rehearsals during which I thought I was going to faint or be sick, or both simultaneously, collapsing into a pool of my own vomit, a bit like I was dissolving into bile a la the Wicked Witch Of The West, or was it East?, but managed to avoid that attractive end by sitting down, and then drinking Lucozade and eating Soreen, and then we performed another whopping great concert, exhausting and exhilarating, followed by a restoratative pint with my parents and an unexpected lift back to my home and a phonecall with Grania where my tattered sanity was hacked into some semblance of shape with her cat o' nine tails and Polyfilla.

Today I am mostly trying to stay upright.

Eruption imminent

A brilliant weekend but my mood is probably an additional six-or-seven-points-out-of-a-possible-ten more buoyant than usual because I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT GLASTONBURY I MIGHT ACTUALLY BURST which would of course be a crying shame given how much time and money I have spent on the ticket and preparations etc. That aside, Friday night was fun - Grania and I went to Secret Cinema, which (I can now safely reveal without damaging the secret element for anyone else) was Blade Runner. We wore cyberpunk wigs and accessories, and goggles, and arrived at Canary Wharf at the correct time, got on one of the coaches that was then 'hijacked' by a man with a bad American accent wearing an overcoat, and taken to a dodgy warehouse/container area near Canary Wharf, where there was Chinese food and massages and amdram antics and loud music and beer and wine and snakes. And there was also, of course, the film itself, which I'd annoyingly just seen for the first time a couple of months ago, but this was, I believe, not the director's cut, and was thus a lot shorter. Which was a good thing, because really I was preferring galivanting around drunkenly in 'Chinatown' with 1000 other revellers than watching an eighties film, seminal though it clearly was.

Saturday was good too, brunch and lunch with two separate friends in the same venue, and then ironing and much ukulele practice. Yesterday I met up with my parents at 11:30 and we took the Thames Clipper from Embankment to Canary Wharf, where we walked to a gastropub and had a wonderful time and lots of booze to celebrate my dad's birthday, and then walked back to Canary Wharf, stopping at an All Bar One en route, then took the boat back to Embankment. I staggered home full of good intentions to pack for Glasto and organise my admin, sat down on the sofa at 7pm, started dozing about five minutes later, slithered off the sofa onto the floor by 7.30pm, woke up at 10pm, went to bed, and slept through until 8am. So a good 13 hours, punctuated by a selection of vivid dreams where I was fancied by three men, one of whom is almost certainly gay and definitely does not fancy me in real life, one of whom is famous and so hasn't yet had the chance to fancy me, and another of whom is far too young for me and may or may not fancy me. Woke up feeling confused and on heat. Have calmed down now but still panicking about headtorches and earplugs. So much to do so much to dooooooooooo.

Still not dead - but definitely closer

Sometimes I lie. Most of the time I don't plan it in advance. They just slip out, like newborn calves, all shiny and wet. Last night I was on a date, and for some reason I told the guy that I don't get hangovers. I have no idea why I would suggest such an absurd thing; it is about as rooted in the truth as Scientology and the idea that the fashion world's labelling of beige as 'nude' isn't inherently a bit racist. I think I wanted to emphasise my youthful resilience to such a curmudgeonly problem. Weird lie to tell though, and I think today's aftermath has been markedly worse as a result. The Lie Detector karmic fairy saw me coming and made sure I suffered. I have debilitating cramp in my frontal lobe and my amygdala is weeping softly. It has not been a good day for my (let's face it, never particularly impressive) productivity levels. Yesterday's nine hour date began at a pub in Mile End and ended with a brief kiss at Old Street tube station, the brevity due not to either of us wanting to cut things short, but to the fact that I was slightly inebriated, up on tiptoes with my eyes shut and lost my balance, veering off to the right and very nearly staggering barefoot into a tramp. Not my finest hour.

On Friday I had birthday massages and fun with Em, who is now 33. For dinner we went to Fakharldine or something spelled a bit like that - it's a swanky Lebanese place on Piccadilly and it was delicious but overpriced. On Saturday I went out to Colchester where my tour guide, Oliver, showed me around his neck of the woods. We went to Frinton and paddled in the sea, before we got annoyed by all the ball games so stropped off to Walton on the Naze where he found me a shark's tooth that is between 40 and 60 million years old. It's now wrapped in a New Look receipt in my wallet. Not really sure what to do with it but it's freaking cool. On Saturday night I went to see The Prophet in Bermondsey. Like Audiard's A Bout de Souffle, this was hard going. I watched about 40% of it with my hands over my eyes and was tempted to walk out at one point as it was all so stressful and razor blades and not what I felt like after my day by the seaside. But I'm glad I stayed - an amazingly dark portrait of youth and guts. Impressive how he manages to make one root for such unsavoury characters. On Sunday Kate and I did the next segment of our Capital Ring walk - Crystal Palace to Streatham and slightly too hilly for my liking. Then I went home, had a bath, went on the tube, got impossibly painful blisters from my shoes the INSTANT I reached Mile End, and shortly afterwards began my steady descent into my definitely-very-present hungover state today. I am dying. Perhaps a Kit Kat will help.

Haughtyculture

You get off the bus where Lower Sloane Street meets Royal Hospital Road. Immediately, your eardrums reverberate with the unselfconscious braying of people who are fully comfortable in their surroundings. They are laughing and wearing sensible footwear. You walk into the grounds of Chelsea Hospital and hand over your ticket. Stretching far in front of you is a wide tree-lined avenue, with rows of temporary shops set up on each side. On the tarmac between the shops is a thrusting river of rich people. They stream forward, collecting items in their wake like driftwood: paintings of flowers, paintings of fruit, secateurs, hanging baskets, ergonomic foam kneelers, candles, bunches of lavender, Hunter wellingtons, socks for Hunter wellingtons, seeds, watering systems, commemorative mugs, commermorative trays, commemorative aprons, state-of-the-art garden furniture and Pimm's.

To the west of this heaving flow of consumption is the main event: a vast marquee surrounded by outdoor exhibits. The show gardens are each about the size of a tennis court and apparently cost around £250,000 to put together. The winning one is sponsored by The Daily Telegraph. It is rubbish. Well, what you can see of it is rubbish. It is impossible to get too close as the posh rich flower-lovers who look at displays are slightly more burly and aggressive than the posh rich flower-lovers who like to shop. They get to the front, where there is a rope, and they stand and take photos and chat to the design team about concepts. But they do not move on. It is not like being in a crowded gallery, where people are aware that others are trying to see and so adopt a conveyor-belty shuffle. At Chelsea, once you are in your patch, you stand there, by the rope. Perhaps they are waiting for Blur to do a quick set, although this is unlikely in The Telegraph garden as there is no room to swing a labrador. It is full of weird rusty metal sculptures, water features, cacti, bad furniture and wildflowers. It looks like a child has gone into Homebase, picked up one of everything, and then told her autistic next door neighbour to organise them all. It is incoherent and thus unrelaxing. This sense of pressure is augmented by the volume of be-wheelchaired elderly women. There are hundreds of them, their heads lolling, their knees under blankets, brought out for the day, pushed by upbeat Australian carers. You wonder whether this is what this is what your life will be like in sixty years.

The best garden is made by a man called Tom Stuart-Smith. In his photo he is wearing a brown corduroy blazer, a white shirt, and a navy blue jumper. He did not go to school at a comprehensive in Blackpool. He has won a gold medal every time he's exhibited at Chelsea. He is clearly a Very Good Gardener. There are a lot of wild flowers, things that look like cow parsley, mixed in with more angular urban shapes. It's a nice mixture - but there's not so much variety that it becomes hectic. The colours are mainly green, purple, yellow and white. There are some bulbous hedges on the right hand side that are a bit out of place, and some more rusty metal, which is clearly very in at the moment. It's good. There are some invited guests wafting around among the show gardens, quaffing champagne out of real glasses and acting as if this is their actual land. It is annoying on several levels.

The crappest garden is the most expensive one, worth £19 million. It is called The Ace of Diamonds. It is not loads of really expensive plants, as you might expect. It is loads of really mediocre plants, surrounded by white gravel. Strewn in the white gravel are huge gems the size of bisected tennis balls - sparkling blue sapphires and fat emeralds. It looks like someone nicked the Queen's jewellery box and tripped over while escaping through SW3. It is impossible to overstate what a waste of £19 million it is. There are nineteen million better ways to spend that money. You move on, huffing lightly.

The marquee in the middle is full of people who spend their ENTIRE LIVES thinking about plants and flowers. It is a strange experience, like suddenly stumbling across a collection of people who think that collecting different types of staple is a perfectly normal activity. There are amazingly straight lupins - lupins are gross, naff, phallic flowers, but getting them to be straight is apparently a task worthy of someone's time - and carrots that start out normal at the top but have really, really, really long thin ends, as if they're made out of plasticene and someone's got a bit carried away stretching them. There are some gorgeous bonsai trees but the organisers haven't positioned them very sensitively as it is impossible to set up that hilarious photo where you stand behind one and it makes you look like a giant. There are some roses but they don't smell much these days as the new breeds are apparently less diseased but less scented as a consequence.

Around the edge there are more displays - courtyard gardens where the Green & Black's sponsored one is jungle themed. They had a special jungle inhabitant shipped over specially to advise on the correct architecture of a hut made of banana leaves. It is gross. Not the hut. The 'let's bring over a native' yuckness.

And then there are the marquees filled with people drinking more champagne and more Pimm's. It is now nearly 8pm and you are staring enviously at their booze but cannot justify spending £9.50 on your own glass. Eventually you find yourself flagging and leave the grounds. It is good to have seen what all the fuss is about but you don't think you belong in that crowd. And for that you are grateful. As you read your book about South Africa the next morning, you are sickened by the account of a teenage girl's rape. Some people grow poker straight lupins and others rape children. Others sit at a desk and do nothing of note. You put your head in your hands.

I Didn't Die On Wednesday Either

I've been having a lot of very interesting talks recently. It's been a fascinating couple of weeks and actually, I think it's healthy to go through these career crises every now and then. It's made me remember how lucky I am and how much I've got.

I'm not going to stop writing. But, on the basis of the conversations I've had, I don't think I'm going to plough a huge amount of effort into doing it as my full-time job. I think I'd rather do something else. I mean, sure, there are many people the world over who I'd give my right arm to interview. And many fascinating stories I'd love to tell. But getting a secure job doing that - I'm just not sure that's possible. And I know I need security. Much as I'd love to be one of those fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants gals who doesn't know where the next ten quid is coming from, I'm just not that person. I've got gig tickets to afford, and mortgage interest to pay off. The people I know who have that kind of lifestyle are either independently wealthy or happy being skint and insecure. Clearly I'm neither.

So, if writing's out as a career (unless anyone has some specific suggestions as to how I can make that work), then it's got to be something else. I've got an idea and it's going to require some sacrifices. But all in good time. There's no rush. I'm happy enough right now. I do need to start saving as whatever I do next will involve a paycut. In the meantime, I'll be right here, plugging away and enjoying myself as much possible.

Last night I went to KaraUke at Bloomsbury Lanes. No one else wanted to bowl, so Grania and had a lane to ourselves, an unusual opportunity to focus on our technique and become Good At Bowling. We improved significantly but didn't quite reach that elusive goal of being officially, empirically Good. Then we talked to Chris and his friends, drank wine, and got up on stage to sing The Shoop Shoop Song in front of a band of ukuleles to a surprisingly enthusiastic crowd dancing below us. It was a good night. I also saw Sara for an early evening pub visit. We had a lovely time and a tramp told the table next to us a joke. Q: Why couldn't the drummer get into his house? A: Because of his high hat. I got 20p out to give to him but he didn't come back to us, so then I gave it to a different tramp who was trying to sell us the Big Issue. He didn't tell us a joke but he did look like he might drop dead any minute. Hopefully he spent the 20p on some nourishing fruit and vegetables.

Bonne weekend, Faithful. Jusqu'a lundi.

The omens

I had a couple of hours to kill after work yesterday before I was due to meet my date. Normally I would go to the gym, or shop, but yesterday I was ex-freaking-hausted so I went home and had a nap, like the true hipster I am. When my alarm went off, I got out of bed with resentment, made myself look as pretty as I get, and set off for the agreed place of rendezvous: a pub in Battersea.

I took a seat on a bus. After another couple of stops, a man got on and tried to buy a ticket with a five pound note. The female bus driver said she didn't have enough change so she couldn't let him on. He said it was OK if she didn't have change because he was going to take the bus to its final stop, and that somewhere in between here and there, she'd get some change from another passenger and could give it to him then. She said no, that she wasn't allowed to do this. He said that was ridiculous. She stood her ground. At this point, I was kind of on the side of the guy. It was his risk to take: if she didn't get change, he'd lose out, not her. But then he got angry. In a strong West Indian accent, he started shouting, "Why you gotta treat me like dis? Make me embarrassed in front of all dese people? I got money! I'm a grown man. I'm givin you dis money. Take de money and you give me change later. I'm married. I got six children. Don' make me look bad here. I ain't gettin off dis bus, lady. I got my money." I took his point, but he was being a bit too shouty. The driver turned off her engine. Clearly, we were not going to move. Another bus pulled up behind us. I dinged the bell, several of us disembarked and we got on the bus behind. The joys of a travelcard.

Moments later we arrived at a bus station from where I was planning to catch another bus. I walked to the appropriate stop. There was a huge crowd there. I looked in the direction they were all looking. The entrance to the bus station was cordoned off and an ambulance was parked there. No buses were going to get through. I started wondering if these signs were from Cupid, telling me to turn back.

Then I saw a guy I'd dated last year. It was unmistakeably him, standing there with his same arrogant, self-satisfied face on, still urgently requiring a slap. He had his iPod on and was carrying an overnight bag. I was immediately staggered that I'd ever thought, even for a milisecond, that he was attractive. I mean, he was breathtakingly not good enough. The power of my brain to tell me I fancy someone when I patently do not will never fail to amaze me. All because he'd had a few poncey articles published in Time Out, one of which said that some element of a shit play we went to see was 'Lynchian'. I am a dick. It made me cringe and then laugh. Meanwhile I hurried to hide behind a bus stop partition, desperate for him not to see me. He clearly saw me: I was wearing a huge yellow flower in my hair and clippy cloppy high heeled date shoes. Thankfully he ignored me too. God even thinking about him now makes me feel a bit sick. Yuck.

The first bus had had to stop unexpectedly. The third bus was not able to reach the stop and collect me. And a hideous spectre from my past had reared up to haunt me. Plus the boy I was meant to be meeting had only ever been borderline appealing over email. The temptation to run home, don my velour and eat popcorn was stronger than a tightly-woven rope, the thickness of a giant's neck, made of steel threads and coated in superglue, but I knew it would be terrible to cancel at such short notice. Bravely, I tottered on towards the next stop, where we had been told we'd be able to pick up a diverted bus. Suddenly the 344 was visible in the distance. I knew I had to sprint. I took off. And then I saw a distinctive overnight bag beside me, and realised that I was, momentarily, engaged in a race with Mr Time Out. In his so-last-year battered Converse, he easily overtook me, but we both made it onto the bus. I went upstairs, he stayed down. And that was the last I saw of him. Until we both got off at the same stop, stepping down onto the pavement in unison. I can't imagine two people wanting to acknowledge each other less. I've never walked away from anywhere so fast.

Heart still in shock after my Olympian sprint, Beyonce-style in stilettos, I entered the pub. I couldn't see my date. I scanned more thoroughly. There was a guy in the corner I hoped was him, but knew it wouldn't be. I texted my date. "Either you're not here, or you are here and look nothing like your photos." A few minutes later, I heard the door open. He looked exactly like his pictures. And he was late. His excuse was that he'd come from his parents' house where he is 'staying temporarily' and they'd left him a note saying 'Please feed the cats and tidy your bedroom.' This was not the most erotic start to an evening. Then he suggested cheating in the pub quiz. The last time I saw someone cheating in a pub quiz - in fact, they weren't even necessarily cheating, they were just using their phone, possibly to send a harmless text message but also potentially finding out an answer - I shouted out "CHEATING!" and pointed at the cretin across the bar. The people I was with wanted to murder me, so intense was their embarrassment, but I didn't care. That's how much I don't like cheaters.

He was a nice guy though. On the list of Things I Want To Kiss, he was probably above 'The Pavement Outside Tottenham Court Road Tube Station' and some way below 'Louis Walsh'. Doubtless he felt similarly unmagnetised by me. Nonetheless, despite a total lack of chemistry, we spent a happy evening together, came fifth in the pub quiz and went home our separate ways. I am tired today.

Perky Maundy

Oooh I'm in a good mood today. London looked fantastic on my run; I listened to Justice, a French act that Chris described as 'dirty house' and that I found to be exceptionally positive and upbeat; I sweated profusely but my new make-up stayed put: thank you, Max Factor, for being half as expensive yet three times as good as your rivals. After thirty minutes or so I jogged down the ramp into the Tate Modern shop on Level 1, picked up my Richard Tipping sign as agreed with Daisy in customer services, and jogged on to London Bridge. It was all very smooth and well-organised. Isn't it lovely when things just work out?

News: I'm pregnant. It's a boy. We're calling it Nugget.*

Item number 769 on the list of things that are slightly weird about me is as follows: my waste management is utterly moronic. While I am extremely uncautious about the amount of shower gel I use, cavalier when it comes to spending money on gig and theatre tickets and downright evil in terms of leaving lights on and flying places rather than staycationing, I am meanwhile ridiculously over-zealous about waste in other areas. When I eat lunch at my desk, something that happens about four times a week, I have a supply of salt and pepper sachets in my top drawer. I use them fairly sparingly and, at my meal's end, instead of throwing any remaining salt grains or pepper granules into the bin, I fold over the edge of the sachet and replace it in my drawer. I am similarly zealous about recycling paperclips. And Jiffy bags, for some reason - I hoard them like a crazy old lady who's expecting a run on padded envelopes at Ryman's. I can't explain it, but that's how it is. Bon weekend.

*April Fool's. Hoping the shock didn't actually kill my parents. That would be unideal, especially as I need my dad to come round as planned on Saturday and drill holes in my wall. And then I need my mum to cook us the delicious steaks she's told me about. Don't die, parents. I'm not really pregnant. I'm basically celibate. Aaaaaaaaaand stop.

Back to the groined

Oooooooh it's weird to be back here, wearing a black dress and high heels, perched on my kneeling posture stool in my little glass box, dreaming about huskies and sow-nas and reindeer kebabs. But it's fine. I mentally arrived back in London as the Gatwick Express crossed the Thames late on Sunday night and we saw Albert Bridge lit up to our left - there's certainly a shortage of limitless expanses of frozen lakes round these parts but it's still beautiful.

Yesterday evening, as planned, I hopped in my mother's car and we drove to Ikea. Mum has since revealed that, in her head, she'd thought I might buy a couple of scatter cushions and some candles, so, some four hours later, as we heaved the trollies towards the car, pushing in front of us a large chest of drawers, an oversized full length mirror, a tallish indoor palm tree, a floor lamp and several other items of varying bulk, she tentatively asked how I was going to fit this all on the tube, and I confidently said 'You're driving me home!' as in my head, that had been the plan all along. Note to both of us: relay plans from inside our heads when those plans involve other people.

The personal low point in an otherwise splendid evening was when I was trying to drag the huge mirror onto my wheelie crate thing in the loading area, and the crate wouldn't stay still and the mirror looked like it was going to slide and shatter, and I didn't want to ask Mum for help because I knew she would say the mirror was too big and that it wouldn't fit in her car (which she did indeed say, semi-accurately, a few moments later) so I struggled on my own, holding the trolley with one foot and manoeuvring the mirror with another, resulting in me pulling a muscle in my inner thigh. There are lots of reasons to dread Ikea, but getting a groin injury was not an incident for which I'd prepared myself emotionally. In the end, I forced Mum to drive with the mirror slid along the length of the car and out between the two front seats and the boot tied shut with string, a set-up that was almost certainly illegal but basically fine, and we got back to my flat without traffic dramas - there were verbal exchanges that my dad might have defined as 'a little iffy' but once back home, she phoned me to say that she'd calmed down. Today she admitted that she thought she was at risk of having a stroke but I maintain it is all good exercise.

I assembled the six drawers of my new chest last night between approx. 21:30 and 22:50, and have decided that putting together flat pack furniture is my new favourite thing in the whole world. It is like doing a jigsaw for grown-ups, and you get a new piece of practical home storage as a prize. What's not to like? I have vigorous butterflies about constructing the outer housing but sadly my next free window is on Monday 29th so I will have to quell my winged friends until then. The remainder of this week is firmly back to business as usual, with breakdancing (someone else, not me), ukulele (me and others), real ale (him, not me), a birthday party (theirs, not mine) and a country jaunt in the schedule. Loins are girded. Groins are sensitive.

Thrilled

Guess what I just caught myself doing. You'll never guess. I was whistling at my desk, proving without question that, for now, the snake has crept away. I can still see its tail-end, but it's definitely retreating, and I am watching it leave, waving it off with a maniacal grin on my mug. And it feels inCREDible, a new lease of life. I went for lovely gastropub chats with Kate and Ses last night and my perspective shifted, and today the sun is out, I ran for nearly five miles with Laura this morning through our beautiful city, over Waterloo Bridge, weaving around Southwark and back over London Bridge, up through Bank and back to the office, exclaiming every now and then at the architecture, stark white stone radiating against deep cyan, and making fun of an unfortunate man's running style. It was elating. And god it's good to be back.

Guess what I found out today? You'll never guess. Laura was telling me that Michelle told her that Lisa told her that a girl came out of our basement gym last week, went into the changing rooms and got into the shower, without her glasses (obv), and TROD IN A POO. Someone had had a poo in our work showers. Amazing.

God I'm excited. I feel like running through the streets singing and high fiving complete strangers. Also I feel like drinking a lot of white wine. Will do the latter but not the former. Woop.

Needy much?

So there I was, enjoying a second consecutive pretty good Thursday night, when a girl sat down at our table. She had been at an adjacent one up to this point, being a bit raucous with some guys that she clearly hadn't known until that evening. We chatted to her for a minute or two, she was Australian and quite funny although possibly mental. Then later, when I was left on my own for a few minutes, she came back and started talking really fast.
"I know this seems weird, but I'm 35, right? And my two friends here are so lovely, but they're in their early twenties, and you might wonder why I'm not here with people my own age [not so much, no] but they're all MARRIED WITH BABIES, and I know it sounds desperate, but here's my card, and that's my mobile number, and if you ever want to, you know, hang out or whatever, I'm not a lesbian, I swear, I'm not gay, I'm not a psycho, I just want to be friends, you know?" I was a bit tipsy by this point, and I said,
"I hear you, and believe me, I've been there with the friends getting married and reproducing thing. But trust me, handing out your card to complete strangers in bars is not the way to forge lasting friendships. Can't you take up a hobby? Meet new people that way? Sing? Play the ukulele?"
"HA HA!" she said. "The ukulele!"
I glowered.
"Well, whatever floats your boat. Just... this [gesturing at the business card] isn't going to work."
She slunk off eventually and we didn't hear anything more from her 'til she started saying her earmuffs were the coolest thing ever to anyone who'd listen, and my competitive streak came out and I had to put mine on too, and she insisted that hers were cooler because they were stripy, which, if stripy earmuffs with matching mittens are your thing, then maybe she was on to something - but if you want an earmuff which will keep them toasty but not dominate an outfit too much, and you want to avoid looking like A PLAYSCHOOL PRESENTER, then I think a beige faux fur is the way to go. We both preferred our own. Nice when the world works out like that, isn't it.

I hope the young lady, Angelique I think she was called, is now sitting at work booking onto beginners' classes in two or three different disciplines, but I think she's probably feeling very hungover, refreshing her email every six seconds, and staring out at the miserable London greyness, wondering what people are getting up to 12,000 miles away.