The Year of the Snake

And so we bid farewell to 2010 and the Noughties. I spent Millennium Eve in a small restaurant in Putney with my then-boyfriend Henry. I was 23. We'd been together for three years and I was pretty darn certain I'd spend the rest of my life with him. I was deputy editor of a pop magazine, living with my parents, and he was running a web design start-up with two friends in Dalston. We broke up, unacrimoniously, in 2001. Now he's an IT teacher and lives with his girlfriend of several years in a bungalow just outside Canterbury. I've been a PA in a City bank for a fair while and have far less clue about the future than I did ten years ago.

2010's not been the greatest for me although it's certainly had some spectacular moments. It started high as a kite, drunk and delighted in Prague, peaked again in March with probably the best holiday of my adult life in Finland, followed by the baking bliss of a glorious Glasto in June. Since then there have been many fun times: Morocco was relaxing, Paris was inspiring, Edinburgh was funny, the school reunion was hilarious, Lady Gaga was fantastic, Twitter has been life altering, and the Boris Bikes have been transformational. But there's been an awful lot of introspection too: a fair amount of heartache in the early portion and, for the past six months, the strange void left by the boyban, which was without doubt the single most important decision I made this year. It's left me utterly and terrifyingly bare, unable to distract myself from the truth, and I think I'm more honest, more vulnerable and more confused now than I was at the beginning - and I mean all of those things as positives.

If growing up is about realising we know nothing, then I am certainly a fair bit older and wiser than I was twelve months ago (when I was still convinced that the only way missing from my life was a man) and categorically better off than I was ten years ago, when pretty much my whole identity was Being Henry's Girlfriend And Interviewing Popstars. Not that that was a bad place to be, but it's not quite a picture of someone with a strong inner core of self-esteem. When I first went into therapy about five years ago, I remember describing myself as totally surface - together on the outside but an empty mess within, like a Rubik's Cube - easily able to alter my colourful outer persona to suit my audience. Sure, underneath there's an unattractive jumble of strings and black plastic underneath, but who cares about that as long as the others are fooled? These days things are slowly reversing and the value I place on the opinions of others is fading. I'll never turn their volume down all the way, and I don't want to - but there's more in my middle than taut lengths of fishing wire (NB this metaphor only really works if you've taken apart a Rubik's Cube). As I've started to care less about how I'm perceived, I've actually grown a bit more fond of myself, which in turn has made me feel less like I have something to prove. Which has probably ended up making me more attractive to that audience I used to be obsessed about pleasing. And that's a nice irony.

So. 2011. It's weird but perhaps fitting that I'm going into it feeling fairly zen, actually. I have no idea what it will bring and I'm not sure I'm really that fussed either way. I'm sure it'll be OK. I don't know if I'll still be in my job in another 365 days but I kind of hope I am. The boyban still holds, for how long I'm not sure. I'm looking forward to writing more, and travelling somewhere hot at some point. I'd like to get better at the ukulele, take some good photographs, do a lot of yoga, learn to use my sewing machine, see some good music at Glasto and elsewhere, be a good friend, a good daughter and a good member of society. I'm ending 2010 feeling exceptionally grateful to the many people who've been supportive to me, and thankful to those who've been unreliable or disappointing - I've learned from you too. Right. I'm off to meditate and make lunch. Wishing you all a great night out. But a) don't worry if it's rubbish, it doesn't really matter. And b) if it IS really fun, spare a thought for those who are struggling. You're one of the very lucky ones. Happy New Year.

More moans

As the Faithful will know, after someone described LLFF as 'about mental health' I became a bit unsure. I'm happy to be honest about the rubbish that goes on in my noodle, but I didn't really want this blog to be labeled as single-topic when I've tried quite hard to make it fairly broad.

If I'm to be truly open, though, there's another reason I quash the compulsion to share my deepest thoughts. I know deep down that this is utterly absurd but that's hardly a rarity among my observations... and... well, OK, out with it: I worried that some handsome (or bearable) young man could be reading, and that my admitting to being a divider short of a lever arch file might deter him from, one day, tentatively emailing me to ask me on a date. Yes, I know: absurd. I cringe even to admit it. I mean, a) Fictional Bearable Man has four years of LLFF to read back on, so only writing about HILARIOUS antics from now on will hardly cancel out 650 entries of questionably certifiable content. b) In four years, I've only ever had one person get in touch with me flirtatiously as a result of what they've read here, and let's just say that didn't end well. c) I AM MEANT TO BE ON A FREAKING BOYBAN so any worrying about Fictional Bearable Men is absolutely against orders, and should be ceased IMMEDIATELY.

So with all that in mind, here's a description of my mental state over the past few days. You can read about it as long as you allow me to apply the caveat that I really don't think I'm THAT much more mental than anyone else, just fractionally more open about it. Allow me that indulgence, I prithee.

Last Monday I thought I felt the symptoms of PMT. I'm not sure what our problem is, but it seems like, despite menstruating more or less monthly for around two decades, the women I know tend to greet each new period with irritated surprise. You'd have thought we'd know exactly when it was going to happen, but no - the last one finishes and we just bury our heads in the sand and forget about it until the next one creeps up like an unwelcome drunk houseguest and ruins an otherwise perfectly good week. For the record, my PMT symptoms tend to include: body temperature always being wrong; near-constant exhaustion; physical sense of having ingested around ten pints of thick soup or porridge that has oozed through my intestine and is now filling up legs and arms et cetera; a perpetual feeling of foreboding. It is not unbearable, but equally it is not rib-ticklingly good fun. After about five days of this, I become convinced that the PMT is about to end and that good ol' MT should surely be about to begin. But no - I had a fairly over-sensitive weekend feeling anti-social and quiet, and then yesterday, day eight, I metaphorically hit the fan.

It started when Chris came into my office at around 11am for a chat. We nattered harmlessly for a few minutes and then he made some very light-hearted but unarguably derogatory comment about the Welsh, and then the Scots. I told him not to be racist, he (quite sensibly) told me to lighten up, I refused, and he (entirely reasonably) swore at me and stropped off. I sat there wondering what to do. I knew I was being insufferable and deserved to be firmly mocked. Equally, I do think that people should stick to their principles, and that 'harmless' prejudiced jokes between friends, even friends who know the other isn't really racist, aren't ideal. I get miffed when people use 'gay' as a derogatory term too. It's boringly puritanical, but I'd feel really awful if I went the other way. There's loads of ways to slag people off without relying on their nationality or their sexuality. (As an aside, I'm not even sure he was theoretically being racist. I don't think Welsh is a race, is it?) Either way, I didn't like him being prejudiced, but I should have let it go.

So I was a bit upset about that, annoyed at myself for being a dick, but I went off to Boots at lunch and got a few things sorted out, and the nice lady at the Benefit counter gave me 'dramatic eyes' (think Twiggy in the Sixties rather than this) and I went back to the office feeling slightly better. And then I got a phonecall from a very chipper friend, who told me I should be being more positive about something that I was being negative about, and for some reason I was so determined to persuade her that I was right to feel negative about it that I started crying. Fortunately my colleagues weren't in their offices so no one could see me as the decidedly-non-waterproof Benefit products coursed down my cheeks but I still worried that someone might come in and ask me something, so I thought it best to hide. I ducked under my desk and sat there, cross legged and sobbing, for about an hour. Then I got up, not really very sure at all why I had been crying for quite so long, wiped off as much of the sediment as I could, sat back on my posture stool and stared into space for another hour, unable to decide what to do. I didn't want to go to my non-negotiable evening engagement that I'd been excited about for AGES because I felt antisocial and ugly and boring and I knew I'd be expected to be loud and opinionated and hilarious. But I didn't want to go home to an empty flat. And I didn't want to see anyone else because I felt rubbish.

Then I realised that I had presents for two of the people at the non-negotiable evening engagement and I accepted that I had to go, but I couldn't shake off this weird under-confident paralysis. In the end I had to ask Chris to come and get me out of my office, which he did (after he'd emailed me to tell me he wasn't a racist). And he gave me a hug and I cried again and FUCKING HELL his dad is recovering from a stroke but will be paralysed for the rest of his life, and I know Chris must look at me like 'SHUT UP with your insignificant issues' but these freaking hormones are just so powerful - half the time you don't know why you're crying, you just feel so utterly negative and fed up. I wish boys could experience it just once because there is nothing more frustrating about knowing something isn't real but still not being able to ignore it. I imagine it's a bit like having a bad trip. And there's part of me that thinks we should all keep schtum about how it feels, that it's blog entries like these that spread the idea that women are mental and difficult and that boys are straightforward and superior. Perhaps it'd be better for women if people didn't come out and say 'Yes, I'm irrational. Yes, I cry when very little seems wrong. Yes, it sucks to be me sometimes' and instead, for the sake of equality, acted like all the other ladettes and said 'We're just like you but with bigger boobs!' Anyway. It's too late now. I write, therefore I press 'Publish Post'.

I went to the evening engagement for half an hour and handed over the presents. And it was weird - I'd felt so withdrawn, so utterly shy and gross, but then I got there and we were carol singing outside the Southbank Centre, and this crowd had gathered to listen to us, even though it was really flipping cold, and people were filming us on their phones and it was all sounding lovely, and I realised we didn't have a hat down to collect any money, and I put my furry hat down and everyone laughed, and then Christina said we weren't allowed to collect money and she picked up my hat. But what I thought was odd was how, even when I'm feeling utterly awful, I still can't quash my instinct to show off or get attention or put a stamp on things, to walk into the middle of the semi-circle and ask strangers to give us money, when thirty minutes earlier I couldn't even get the strength to re-don my Moon Boots. And I hate that. I wish I'd just be consistent and stay quiet rather than act up like some seal with a compulsion to bark. As soon as the singing had finished and a few people came up to say hello to me, I panicked again and went straight home. I watched the final of The Apprentice, which was long enough to take my mind off things, and then I went to bed.

No tears today but haven't managed to leave the house yet. I dunno. I'm off to the doctor in a minute. It's not remotely life threatening but I'd rather not hang round waiting for this to happen all over again in 28 days. And if the NHS don't have any answers I'm going to have to get me some waterproof mascara. To all the women out there: I love you. To all the men: love your women. We need you.

Pretty complicated

Well, this complimenting-pretty-people thing is certainly interesting, in that most people think I am indeed insane, and that pretty people do still get told they're pretty, and that being told you're pretty is not some perverse code for 'You aren't that pretty.' I guess what it comes down to is that some of my friends get approached by guys in bars left, right and centre and I never do. I just assumed that it was because they were much prettier than me. Maybe it's more complex than that and that instead of worrying about my appearance, I should worry about the fact that my face says, 'I will eat you for breakfast. STAY AWAY.' Anyway. Food for thought. Unless you want to be thin, in which case don't eat it.

I went out with Grania last night to watch some comedy including the v. clever Abandoman, an Irish hip hop improviser, very impressive. There were four other acts too, some excruciating, a couple fairly funny, but no one made us laugh even an eighth as much as we did after they'd all finished and were clearing away the chairs, when we suddenly started reminiscing about Lapland and went through the runaway reindeer incident in graphic detail. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to stop laughing at the sight of the shockingly empty sled behind us, no sign of the Germans, the blankets, the expensive camera bags, just a bare slab of Scandinavian plywood. Categorically the funniest moment of 2010, possibly ever.

Tonight it's Lady Gaga at the O2 - can't wait. Have donned my festive meat bikini in her honour, trimmed with tinsel. I'll send you a photo.

Taken

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

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

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

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

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

Warning: continued introspection

I'm still thinking.

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

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

How much is enough?

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

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

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

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

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

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

View from the near bottom

Maybe I've reached the limits of what I can blog about. It's all kicking off in my head - but perhaps I shouldn't have tried to type it. I don't think I can explain what I'm going through without trivialising it or misrepresenting it. Everything I wrote yesterday was true, but it's not the whole story, and what I've realised is that, by attempting to articulate what's wrong, it becomes bitesize and measurable, and the gulf between what you've packaged for others' consumption versus the total pus-filled mess that you're feeling inside is too large to cross.

I've tried in the past to explain to friends what I am feeling, and despite their best efforts to empathise or help change my warped, over-negative perspectives, I just end up feeling worse. They look at you with their heads on one side, and I can hear them thinking, 'You don't deserve my sympathy. This is ridiculous, you're absolutely fine, stop complaining!' And I think, 'You're right, you're right, I know you're right, I should be feeling fine,' but inside I'm thinking, 'You ungrateful bitch - you are so lucky but you're wasting your life feeling awful. Pull yourself together.'

I'm trying.

(Yes, yes, I know, trying in both senses - excuse me while I don my custom-designed abdominal support to prevent my sides from taking leave of each other).

In a final attempt to clarify: there's the surface problem, detailed yesterday, i.e. the fairly common what-am-I-doing-here? existential crisis, where I feel unfulfilled and like I'm wasting my life. I do fear failure and I do worry that I should be achieving more with my life - just like a lot of people. But (hopefully unlike the vast majority of you) I also criticise Every Single Thing that I do. Every outfit I wear, every haircut I have, every hobby I'm a part of, every meal I order, my handwriting, my face, my bra size, my feet, my voice (speaking and singing, for different reasons), my intellect, my desires, every boyfriend I go out with, every job I get, every decision I make, the trips I take, the parties I host, the food I cook, the presents I buy, my posture, my time-keeping, my ukulele-playing, my photographs, this blog - none of my achievements are ever, EVER good enough. Every single minute, I am criticising myself and pointing out what I should be doing that would be an improvement on what I'm actually doing.

Write something hilarious? You're still overweight. Make a friend smile? You're still single. Spark the interest of an attractive man? It won't last. Say something intelligent? The gaps in your knowledge are stratospheric, don't feel pleased with yourself for a nanosecond - you are not a contender for anything. I'm left feeling as though everything I touch turns to insignificance and that I have to invent Facebook or cause a food revolution to be justify my place on earth, all the while knowing full well that whatever goals I attain, as soon as I get them, they'll be meaningless too, because nothing I do is ever good enough.

Wherever I go, there I am.

There'd be no point moving to the country - I'd still beat up on myself every waking moment. And sincere thanks to the other commenter who told me to look at the positives. You are 100% right - and I do try, I promise. However, as every depressive knows, one of the worst things about depression is how self-indulgent and guilty we feel for being anything other than slavishly grateful. We know we have strengths, we know how lucky we are, we know that we can walk and talk and live and breathe and that it could be so much worse - but yet we still feel constant mental pain. It's not rational - it's an illness, a curse, a mindset, a plague.

I said to my therapist last night, 'Don't you listen to people like me and just think, SHUT UP?' and she solemnly said, 'I never think that.' And I thought, 'Wow. You're a saint.' Because I think that all the time about myself. Not that I'm a saint. That I should shut up. Every single day I show myself the countless positives about my life and thank my lucky stars that I have a roof over my head and employment and a wonderful family and such gorgeous friends - but underneath it all, there's a voice that looks at everything I do, and says, over and over again, "Jane? Are you listening to me? I have something to say. Are you ready? Here it is. You are a failure."

The good news? As noted in the title, I'm not quite at the bottom, because I still wholeheartedly believe that it's possible to change the habits of a lifetime. The only way is up and I'm pretty confident that I'll get there. It takes a lot of work to confront these things - it's not easy nor particularly pleasant, but with the right combination of therapy, medication, my gorgeous parents and my (as discussed) fantastically fortunate life, I am sure I will get better in time. Bear with me, Faithful. This too shall pass.

Right! That was fun, wasn't it?! I'm off to re-read Dr. Cantopher.

Miss me?

Heave an hours-long sigh of relief, my Faithful, for I am not dead, nor am I unable to type for your amusement and continued edification. I have been abroad, often without phone reception or access to the internet, and my enforced separation from these facilities has been strange and wonderful. And at times slightly unpleasant.

Even before my travels began, however, I was aware that my desire to blog has been sluggish at best, and over the past weeks I have spent some not insignificant time musing over my writing. Not to get too spiritual at this early stage of what promises to be a scroll-heavy edition of LLFF, but my psychological goal has long been to become as self-sufficient as possible. Like most people, I need and thrive on human contact, and have a deeply-held belief that love is all we need. I am not aiming for some sort of hermetic existence atop a girthy Tibetan telegraph pole. However, true love is truly selfless, and doesn’t work too well if one half of the partnership is constantly craving attention, affection or none-too-subtley pointing out that the other person owes them a present because she bought them that T-shirt last week and you haven’t even worn it yet, and for fuck’s sake how many times have I asked you to please phone me if you’re going to be late?

And release.

So. Yeah. I know that love should be unconditional, and, like millions of others, I know that in the past I’ve sometimes struggled with that. After much thought over the years, I've reasoned that the best way to be able to give unconditional love, whether to friends, family or lovers, is to need them as little as possible. I am about six tons of cherished possessions away from being a Buddhist, but ideally, I’d like to be fairly zen about this whole life malarkey, and work towards needing less, not more, the idea being that the less you need, the more you are free to give.

Which is where the blog comes in. Is it right to write? If it is informative – yes. If it brings pleasure – yes. Clearly I don’t blog for money, but I still receive two rewards: the immense satisfaction and flow I gain from the act of writing, the decision to structure a sentence like this (and not like that), the clarity and stability I feel having recounted an incident in black and white. And secondly, the flush of gratification I receive when I discover that my efforts have brought others pleasure or support.

BUT.

If I'm going to be serious about self-sufficiency, shouldn't I fight this urge for third party approval, and take the decision not to write at all? Shouldn't I conclude that the very nature of blogging cultivates a needy side of me from which I should be moving away? I thought that I should.

But then I thought of all the wonderful stuff we'd never have witnessed if a desire for appreciation was unacceptable. All the plays and paintings, poems, programmes, companies, children, families, restaurants, songs and pizzas that might not have come into existence if financial remuneration was the only possible reward for effort, if humanity's enjoyment of recognition vanished altogether.

The experience of choral singing is meditative, transformative, but the surge that follows when the audience appreciates your sound is another rush altogether - not more pleasurable than the performance itself, but nonetheless a huge part of singing, one which makes the night of a concert so strikingly different to a rehearsal. Would I still go to choir practice if I could never sing in front of an audience again? Probably not, but not many people would think that's weird. You join a choir to sing - and to be heard singing. Only a few people would, on learning that you are in a choir, conclude that you're an attention-seeking spotlight-whore. But choose to write and publish your work on the internet, and the implication is that you think you've created something worth others' valuable time. There is a question that's asked when any creative output is put in the public domain: 'Do you think this is good?' And if that question is left unanswered, it hurts. Some performers say they don't care what others think. I think they're talking out of their asses. Anyone who puts work out there, hangs it in a gallery, plays it onstage, creates and shapes a young mind, offers themselves to the lives of strangers - if you do that, you care. You need.

Before I went to Morocco, I went on a one-day travel writing course, which was immaculately structured and very helpful, in that it made me decide that I do not under any circumstances want to be a travel writer. The hardest thing about it was that we had to do four short written exercises throughout the day. After the group of around 25 people had finished the first written exercise, I sat, heart in mouth, as the course leader selected who would read – and I wasn’t picked. No one heard my astonishingly original and hilarious efforts. I was livid. Mystifyingly – or rather, demonstrating vast social intelligence – others seemed to feel remorse when they were picked and, like true Englishmen and women, they carefully indicated that they were embarrassed or uncomfortable to be in the spotlight. I did my level best to seem relieved not to have had to share, but as my second and third efforts also went unwitnessed, I became more and more desperate to be heard. I was finally selected to share my attempt for the fourth and final exercise, the last person out of the entire group to read aloud, only a couple of minutes before the workshop’s end. After hours of anticipation, the hoped-for laughs I received for my work were gratifying and immediately internal order was restored, the butterflies went back to their locker and my heart rate returned to its un-attention-seeking-nightmare levels.

That night I went to stay with my mother, and read her the three exercises I’d written that hadn’t been heard. She said I was brilliant. I was fully aware that a) she is not objective and b) I have my moments, and it was all OK.

I will be frank: I want to write and I want to be read. Does that make me needy? Yes, but no more than anyone else who puts their time and effort into a project, a baby, that doesn't give them financial reward. And in my defense: I could be needier. I could be trying to be famous, writing bad chick-lit and living on a permanent diet. That's not what I want. I want to carry on trying to put words together in an order that makes me proud, and I want to receive recognition for any pleasure my hard work brings to others.

To conclude this absurdly overlong and introspective introduction: Lost Looking For Fish will go on. I've missed it while I've been away – not just the praise, but the process. And if one or two of you are still this side of comatose and are kind enough to tell me I rock every now and then, I’ll be happy as a lamb in a field full of tussocks on a sunny day.

On to where the hell I’ve been. Morocco has been a fantastic break. I flew out two Fridays ago, and went to an unexpectedly swanky hotel about 45 minutes south of Marrakech, where I felt like I should wear floaty dresses, light candles and be filmed by Zeffirelli singing songs about love in a plaintive but effortlessly beautiful folk voice while playing some sort of north African lute. Instead I wore floaty dresses, did yoga, read books, ate my own bodyweight in couscous and discovered an hitherto unknown penchant for Moroccan rosé.

My true Faithful may remember that I went on a yoga holiday last June to Dahab in Egypt, where I discovered upon my arrival that no one else had had the foresight to sign up for the same holiday, and that I was thus going to have around four hours’ private yoga tuition each day, just me and the lovely instructor. In between classes, I was left to my own devices, and spent my time lounging, reading, snorkelling, scubaing, horse-riding, shopping, battling with local internet cafés and climbing Mount Sinai by night.

This year was somewhat different, and for ‘somewhat’, read ‘a bit meh’ and for ‘different’, read ‘by comparison’. I meeeeeaaaannnn, the people were nice, the yoga was stretchy, the pool was glorious, the hotel was far better than I deserve, my books were fantastic but… it turns out that I am not one for set meals with 24 people split up into three groups of eight, seated round one of three rectangular tables for breakfast, lunch and dinner every single day, plus four hours of yoga together, plus nowhere to go outside the hotel, no sea to swim in, no horses to ride along the beach, no internet cafés, no internet, no cafés. I slept a lot, I relaxed, I even think some people may have enjoyed my company, and I feel rested and grateful, but I won’t be rushing back. The routine made me rebellious and by the end I had lost interest in mealtimes and yoga, desperate to assert my independence by doing the only thing I could think of: not joining in.

Oh but it wasn’t bad, it really wasn’t. The sun shone, I went brown, there were some absolute gems of people there – 22 women and 2 men with an age-range spanning five decades from twenties to seventies, a male/female ratio which inevitably descended into discussions about the topics women so often discuss when left to their own devices: periods, the menopause, tanning, biological clocks, raising children and the mirena coil. I spent some time imagining how the holiday would shift if five or six single, heterosexual men arrived, and envisaged games of waterpolo ruining Margaret’s laps in the pools, cheers from makeshift boules games upsetting the meditation sessions on the sun terrace, late night drinking games distracting many of the group’s less committed members from their 7am yoga practice the next morning. As it was, one of my principal bonding conversations involved a chat with a mother and daughter about how the woman with the world’s longest fingernails wipes her bottom.

Most people were very well behaved, and it was often left to one fantastic character called Kay to provide the hilarity. In her late forties, vocally somewhere between Frances De La Tour and Roseanne Barr, she was sorted and straightforward during the day, but a few glasses of wine down and she transformed into one of the most fantastically belligerent women I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.
“I don’t mean to make a scene,” she slurred gently on our second night, having made a mid-dinner trip to another table, “but everyone else is very dry. I know it's awful, but we definitely have the best table,” she emphasised, her voice rising an octave or so. “And I think we would do very well if we could just do a little wee, go on, everyone in their chairs now. Mark your spot and then no one else can sit here tomorrow. Go on. Just a few drops – you’ll thank me later, I promise you.” I never want to party without her again.

Then after a week, a short taxi ride into Marrakech, the pink city, a place I’ve wanted to visit for a very long time, a place I’m glad I’ve now seen, a place I won’t be hurrying to visit again. Wow I’m sounding like a grump. I had a great time. It was fascinating, very different to expectations and I could have stayed longer. But did I like it? Not exactly. The divide between touristville and normalville was so harsh – the souks were 3% functioning market and 97% get-your-hands-on-the-Western-dollar desperation – Times Square without New Yorkers, Leicester Square without the cinemas. I felt guilty for perpetuating it, but not so guilty that I wasn’t able to select so many of their wares that I had to buy another suitcase to get them all home. We had a great trip through the new town, Gueliz, where the real Marrakechis live, the ones who have a life other than that portrayed in SATC2. But the expensive restaurants are all full of white faces, sweating men from Bournemouth stuff dirhams into the bra tops of bellydancers in swanky bars that serve pink Champagne at £50 a bottle, while a few minutes down the road, veiled women sit outside tourist attractions using their cute kids as bait. I guess there’s the same mix of wealth and abject poverty in any other city, but the tourist market is one huge whopping part of their economy and it felt a bit gross, like holidaying in a theme park, escaping to my luxury air conditioned riad every night while the ride's staff just carry on living in the Pink Kingdom, never able to take off their uniforms.

That said, who am I to say their life isn’t fun? Maybe they’re having a whale of a time. I guess I often felt pretty uncomfortable – the women wouldn’t look us in the eye, while the men muttered obscenities under their breath while we walked by, desperate to woo us into their shops, angry when we ignored them, unbearably obsequious when we didn’t. I can't blame the girls for being pissed off - I'd be livid if London was 95% full of gorgeous women that all the men leer over while ignoring me. Oh.

Anyway. I can’t deny I found the attention fun for the first hour, my daily experience in Marrakech being the exact opposite of my life in London: I was getting so much male attention it was almost embarrassing, but when their hands started brushing against my ass, I quickly began to feel a bit sick about the whole thing. I’d been warned about this by other visitors, and wore my (blonde) hair back and up so as to stand out a bit less, but no matter what I did with my hair, my ass was, as always, shall we say, a ‘feature’, and on my final night as Trace and I wandered round the main square I was almost in tears, as every few seconds, a complete stranger would violate my dance space and lightly touch my buttocks as he walked by and disappeared into the crowd. Arguably, I should have chucked on a birka and been done with it, but there was a part of me that felt that would have been a capitulation that'd assist those people who say rape victims who wore short skirts were asking for it. Long sentence. Sorry. It's late and I'm out of practice.

Anyway. It was interesting. Other points of note:

• Within a few hours of arriving in the city, Trace and I were in a local spa having a reflexology foot treatment, and I was amused to notice that the pan pipes were playing ‘Speed Bonny Boat’. You can take the girl out of Scotland…
• Moroccan horses stop at “Woah” too. I noticed no other Arabic/English convergences.
• Another day, another spa experience – Tracey and I went to a hammam for a steam and scrub, and were sitting semi awkwardly in our bikinis in the treatment room, waiting for further instructions, when a brusque woman with limited English came in, pointed at my boobs and said, “Off.” Clearly it was to be a topless treatment. We complied, lay down on an L-shaped bench, Trace along one wall, my head perpendicular to her feet. Another woman came in and started to rub black soap oil into Tracey’s front. “Tournez,” she barked. Trace slithered over onto her belly. I tipped my head back over my right shoulder to see what was going on, precisely at the moment that the lady gripped the lower hems of Tracey’s bikini bottoms and firmly jerked them up, giving a professional but unexpected wedgie that sent my friend giggling for some time to come.
• Moroccans aren’t without a sense of humour although their favourite joke is fairly simple: you ask a fairly innocent question, e.g. “Can I have a bottle of water?”, “Please can we have some lunch here?”, “Can we check out?” and they look you square in the eyes and say, “No.” And you say, “Really?” and they say, “No! Not really! It is fine! Of course you can have water/lunch/check out.” And they laugh as if it is a brilliant ruse. It is a bit funny the first time it happens. After that not so much.
• I did laugh one night though, when we were at the uber-swanky Western restaurant Foundouk, seated on the first floor mezzanine, overlooking a huge chandelier which hung deep down over the ground floor diners. The chandelier held twenty or thirty creamy wax orbs containing tea light candles, which any fool knows have a burning time of around four hours. How, I wondered, were these new candles replaced and lit every evening, when the chandelier was a good distance from any table or platform. I asked the waiter. “Nous avons un singe,” he said. “A monkey?” I said. “Oui,” he said, straightfaced. Then he laughed and showed us how the wrought iron panels in the balcony of the mezzanine slide to one side so someone can reach out and change the lights. I’m not a massive fan of animal cruelty but I’m afraid on that occasion the reality was a little disappointing.

So it was fun. It was relaxing and enlightening. I’ve learned stuff. I know now that my ideal summer getaway needs to involve the beach and, ideally, snorkelling with fish. I know that DBC Pierre’s new novel is a masterpiece, as is The Way Young Lovers Do by Van Morrisson. I laughed often and I whimpered with pain a fair bit, and I nattered away a lot and made new friends. And it was great, and I’m very glad I went and I’m happy to be home, and I don’t need much, but a bit of love every now and then doesn’t go amiss.

Now leave me alone as I have a ton of X Factor to catch up on.

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.

All the threes

Of course, when you're young you want to be old, and when you're old you want to be young, but in your early/mid thirties, having an August birthday is good because pretty much everyone you know from school and university turns the new age before you do. It's been nearly a year since my first peer turned 33 and I'm now so used to the concept that I wouldn't dream of feeling ancient. Plus I have no grey hairs, even under the dye. And minimal wrinkles. So there's lots for which to be thankful.

Not much to report as yet, but a lovely evening last night despite a disgraceful performance from Purity Spa at the Park Lane Hilton. A few months ago, I spent £75 buying a special offer voucher, entitling me and a friend to a 30 minute massage and a manicure and pedicure. They told me to allow 1.5 hours for the experience. I took Em in May for her birthday, and found they'd lost our appointment, which was a bit of a shit present. They managed to squeeze us in for a massage that was as lengthy and relaxing as being brushed past in a corridor. Then they gave my friend a manicure. To apologise for the screw-up with the bookings, they gave me another voucher to do the whole thing again another time. We booked in for yesterday evening. This time, they at least remembered we were meant to be coming. Once again, the massage was pretty cursory, and the manicure and pedicure were not remotely as described - no soaking of feet, no moisturiser, just a shape and polish with performed with slightly less skill and certainly less affection than if I'd done it myself. The entire thing was finished within 55 minutes. On the upside, we were given two plastic glasses filled with cava. Which was a highlight.

Goodness me, what a boring, self-indulgent, middle class whinge. Apologies. Feeling a bit meh today, to be honest. There's something about spending the larger portion of one's birthday sitting in a corporate environment with harsh lighting, rain gobbing down outside and passive aggressive emails in the inbox that makes one feel a bit like taking a four day nap under one's desk. Not long til dinner.

The naked truth

Last night at choir we were talking about hair maintenance and the effects of age. "Don't get me started," a fellow singer said, pointing firmly between her eyes, "my pubic hair starts here." I laughed a lot and then began a nineteen hour reflection on the many ways that growing older has changed my body and mind. When I was younger, I thought that people started getting noticeably old in their sixties and seventies. There were children (who were short), grown-ups (who were tall but basically the same), and old people (who had wrinkles and grey hair). The idea that I would start getting old while still in my thirties didn't cross my mind. Now that I'm here, of course, reality has hit like a netball in the face. And since revelations from others about their secret pubic monobrows make me feel better about myself, I thought I'd perform a public service and admit the dark secrets of my own moribund form.

I'll start at the top. My hair used to be lovely. Now it is drying at the ends, itches in the mornings, gets greasy when I moisturise my face and occasionally produces dandruff. This alone is enough to make me want to be sick. Then there's my face. It used to be smooth and even. Now it is spattered with large pores. I get regular spots - more every month than I had in a year as a teenager - and I have scars where I've squeezed them. There are tiny red veins visible all round my nose, which make me look like I have a permanent cold. There is hair on my upper lip. If I dye it, it appears blonde but thicker. If I wax it, I get a red rash and ingrowing hairs. If I have it threaded, I get spots. There are hairs on my neck, around the place where my Adam's apple would have been if I had been lucky enough to have been born a man. And there's a patch of skin stretching up my larynx to my chin where the pigment is strangely white. I think this is the onset of vitilligo, an incurable and ridiculously unattractive condition of the epidermis. Hooray.

Moving down, my bingo wings, which are here for life, now seem to be developing baby cellulite and, unless they are suntanned, are emetic, making the wearing of strappy sundresses ill-advised, a shame as my shoulders are basically the only part of my body that don't make me want to hurl myself into the contents of an open bottle bank. My fingernails - once strong and glossy - now peel and ridge. My back aches. My breasts, while still a fairly nice size, are covered in stretchmarks - white furrows that don't tan and thus become more obvious in summer, and when I bend over and look at them hanging down, the 'rocks in a sock' label becomes acutely recognisable. My stomach is no longer flat and the dark hairs known as a garden path on men have emerged, although I doubt they serve as such an enticing invitation to any visitor that should find himself in the vicinity. There is a weird white mark around my solar plexus where there was once a mole. My body surrounded it with a white 'halo' (official medical term) and then basically consumed the mole, so all that's left is a white, pigmentless blob. I think it's quite clever that my body got rid of something dangerous, but I wish it hadn't left a residual stain that looks like some bizarre fungal condition in the middle of my abdomen.

Lower still, and we're getting beneath the waist, into the truly nuclear zone. Beware the truth. As admitted recently, a good portion of my considerable buttocks is covered with red spots, as persistent as cockroaches and possibly less erotic. Thanks to my beloved course of laser hair removal, my bikini line is less horrendous than it might be, but unfortunately the laser was not able to remove several inches of fat and thus leave my legs in perfect order. My thighs are rippled with cellulite. I have always had it, inherited at a young age from my mother, but the older I get, the worse it becomes. It is deeply, deeply unattractive. If my legs were otherwise slim, brown or smooth, the cellulite might be able to be borne. Needless to say, my vast, white thighs resist all tanning attempts, and the hairs are dark. There are even several long ones that grow horizontally on the back of each leg in a patch around the size of an average paperback. These make me wonder whether I am actually human and not some sort of minotaur sent to confuse people.

Beneath the cellulite and the hairs are the onset of varicose veins, a blight that I have miraculously fought off thus far as my father was having operations on his when he was in his twenties. I have several patches of blue behind my knees, waiting to pop at the most inconvenient moment and ensuring that - if the girth, orange peel effect and wolverine hirsuitedness weren't enough - I will never wear hotpants.

Finally, my feet - once so long and slender, now covered in mysterious lumps and knobbles. There are several dark hairs on the neck of my big toes. I have bunions emerging, in particular on my left foot - a condition that I would consider justified had I spent my life in stilettos, worn while successfully wooing Russian oligarchs, but given my absurd shoe size, I have spent almost all my life in men's trainers and lesbian Birkenstocks and have wooed a succession of men that have been almost universally labelled Not Good Enough. My high heel use has only emerged in the past three years or so, during which time I have researched the incidence of bunions and discovered that they frequently occur even when people spend their entire life in orthopaedic flip-flops and barefoot. My mother's toes are ghastly, veering off in different directions like bizarre coral, so I think it's clear what's coming to me, in the pedal sense.

And thus we reach the end of my thorough physical examination, a study driven not by self-pity but by a selfless desire to alleviate the panics of others through the admission of my own flaws. It is a sign of my own unbelievable arrogance that I do not believe my physical appearance to be the reason for my single status - rather, I think that, when covered up, I am actually quite attractive. I know for certain that I will never pull while wearing a bikini, but it's safe to say that I've missed the boat for a starring role on Baywatch, and anything that keeps me out of the arms of Mitch Buchannan is fine with me. May the fictional god bless physical imperfections - I'd be unbearable if I was beautiful.

Filler

I have nothing to say. Sorry. But tonight I'm going on a date, and, given past form, I'm sure there'll be some new material tomorrow. In the meantime, here are some things you can do in the absence of LLFF:

1. Take a moment to appreciate the wonders of existence.
2. Be thankful that you are not five stone heavier than you are now.
3. Stare out of the window for a bit.
4. Eat some malt loaf.
5. If you've been to China, Vietnam and/or Cambodia, jot down some helpful bullet points for me to consider as I try to decide where I'm going.
6. Write my first award-winning novel/non-fiction work of unquestionable brilliance for me and send it to me as a Word document so that I can adapt it into my own unique style for submission to publishers and agents the world over.
7. Have a really good stretch.
8. Memorise the names and faces of everyone in the new cabinet for future pub quiz victory/dinner party smuggery.
9. Make my day: tell a friend about LLFF.
10. Drink some water. You know you should.
11. Write a thank-you letter. I'm sure there's one you owe.
12. Phone your mum and tell her you love her. If you don't have a mum, tell your dad. I don't mean tell your dad that you don't have a mum. I'm presuming he knows that. Tell him you love him, you fool. If you don't have a dad or a mum, then give yourself a big hug. Parents are amazing; not having them must suck. I high five you.
13. Do some pelvic floor exercises.
14. List three things about yourself that you think are amazing. Then bask in your own brilliance.
15. Love me always.

Shang, hi?

So I know the comments section at the bottom of each of these posts is often fairly barren. I have a few loyal people who have managed to sign up and say things in public, but the vast majority of my feedback comes from those who know me in Real Life, who seem happy to tell me in person, but not so happy to write it for the World To See. Either way, I bask like a lioness in the sun when people say nice things about LLFF - along with whiskers on kittens, it is one of my favourite things - and yesterday was a good day, when four or five different and highly respected friends contacted me to say how much they'd enjoyed my witterings, and how nice it was to see me sounding so perky.

The irony is, I spent this morning in tears at my desk, the snake coiled round my feet.

I went on that date on Sunday night, and when I got home we texted briefly. He said I was amazing and mentioned 'next time'. Then we texted a bit yesterday morning, but the speed of his responses sounded the Gong of Warning. It became clear that he wasn't that keen. And the annoying thing was, I hadn't been that keen either. I mean, he was really really funny. But I guess the sexual chemistry I felt could have had more to do with wine than I'd admitted previously. And he is as laid back as it's possible to be - to the point where, given a choice between two date venues, he genuinely doesn't care which one we go to, which is all fine and dandy, especially because I do obviously have an opinion so then we just get to do what I want and everyone's happy, right? Except that is a recipe for unmitigated disaster in relationship terms. I of all people need a leader, not a follower. I dunno. I didn't think he was perfect, sure, but I certainly didn't think he was perfectly awful, either. And he'd been so persuasive about how much he'd liked me, really ladling on the compliments, and then... poof!

GASP. Maybe the magician has made him vanish.

That is surely it.

But anyway, for whever reason, he's stopped texting me, and he's still on the dating website checking in regularly, so he's a) still alive and b) surfing around for other options. And, I mean, obviously that is fair enough, in that I am doing it too, and have a date coming up this Thursday. But still. It's this gaping chasm between a) my friends, who always say "I don't understand why you haven't been snapped up," and b) boys I fancy, who always say, "I don't want to see you ever again."

And so then I sit here and think - hmmm. That's the first date I've been on since my confidence took a beating in late February. And now I feel like shit again. Why do I keep on dating if it keeps giving my confidence a beating? And then I think: well, because I want, ultimately, to be in a relationship - because love is the best feeling on earth and, like pretty much everyone I know, I'd love to experience it. And then I think: well, that's fine, but we all know you can't look for love, and maybe you're just not occupied enough in the rest of your life and you're hoping too hard for love and coming across as desperate. And then I'm like: but hang on, how could I do any more? I'm basically so Ms Extra Curricular that I annoy myself with my smuggery, what with choir last night and uke tomorrow and late night museum tickets on Friday and Capital Ring on Sunday and god knows what else lined up for the coming months. But then we all know that merely being busy doesn't mean you're happy. But then what else could I do to make myself more happy and satisfied with my existence? I have wonderful friends and family. I'm deeply fortunate to be pretty much fit and healthy (snake excepted). I love my hometown. What else can I do? Maybe it's time for a break... I could go away for a bit. Change of scene. Writing opportunity... I've been talking about that for months. Maybe I should finally put my money where my mouth is and actually book something. But then... could doing that jeopardise my job? What if I go away and then whoever is covering for me ends up being better at my job than I am (e.g. by not spending all day writing blog entries) and they don't want me back? But then my job could end suddenly anyway. It certainly won't last forever: I need to confront what will happen when I leave. I should line up other options. Maybe if I went away for a couple of months, I could write while I was away and then I could start putting a safety net in place for Life After This Job. But then I read that and laugh, and think, for goodness' sake, moron, who ever heard of using writing as a safety net? Writing is about as safe as Gaza. Don't risk your security. Don't bite the hand that feeds you. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Don't you forget about me. But then... security is so... stable. I'm 32, with no kids, no relationship, an affordable mortgage and some savings. Why not go away? Go to China for two months, explore, have some adventures, come back and see what happens? And then I'm like: that's freaking terrifying. I hate rocking the boat, it feels grim. I'm a control freak. I like controlled fun: medium sized waves and lifejackets, not tsunamis and kayaks. But then... maybe the medium waves and the lifejacket is a bit boring. Maybe I'm feeling stifled. And then I was, like, ooh, my boss has just walked in, and before I knew it I was asking him about a sabbatical, and he said that it definitely could be doable, and now it looks like I'm going to China for eight weeks in September and October this year. All because some moronic short boy from Hull didn't text me back.

Madness.

Six days in April

Rage. I've done it again: left writing my blog for so long that I am now overwhelmed with information and feel as though I should split it up under subheadings. Maybe I will.

Cocksuckgate
Last Thursday morning I phoned my mother just before I got to the airport, to say goodbye and reassure her that I had not yet died, an almost-daily ritual for which she seems to be grateful.
"Oh, Jane, I'm glad you called," she said, solemnly. "I was just about to email you." She sounded close to tears.
"What's wrong?" I asked in a high-pitched voice that indicated my panic.
"Your... your blog, Jane..." she said. I wasn't much the wiser.
"What about it?"
"Dad and I... we're both... shocked."
"What about?"
"I can hardly say it... You used the word..." (I tried to scan my memory of what the offensive item could possibly be) "...cocksucker."
I roared with laughter.
"So?!" I asked. Mum was not reassured.
"It's awful, Jane," she said. "So vulgar. So... unfeminine."
"Really? Worse than fucking?" I asked.
"Oh god, yes," she said, emphatically. "So much worse than fucking."
I told her that I believe this is a generational difference, but she seemed so gobsmacked by my labelling the volcanic ash as something that fellates that I felt it necessary to do a straw poll on arriving in France. I asked around twenty people in their early thirties, none of whom felt that a cocksucking volcano is any worse than a fucking volcano. Of course, we all agreed that fucking and cocksucking are both vulgar and unfeminine, so mother, you are indeed correct on that point. But for any of my mother's friends, or indeed any others, who read this blog and feel that she has failed in her parenting duties as a result of my free use of profanities, I apologise. Only the good bits of me are a reflection of her, i.e. my skin that tans, my love of birds and my US citizenship. Everything else is my dad's fault.

France
So I went to France for Emily's wedding and it was one of those cominglings of beautiful people and beautiful surroundings and beautiful emotions and beautiful food that made me simultaneously joyous and painfully and continually aware that, of the youth contingent, and as a fairly normal size 14 gal, I was the fattest female there by about nine stone. I kid you not. I genuinely reckon I could have got three of the other wedding guests into each leg of my jeans. There were literally miles of smooth, slim, tanned thighs on show, and the men's eyes were, naturally, out on stalks. I could have collected the drool and irrigated southern Africa for a month.

To distract myself, I forwent my wheat ban and ate baguette, and I sunbathed and met tiny ponies. It was all going rather well until I got dressed up on Saturday afternoon for the wedding, and had one of those rare moments when I looked in the mirror and thought I had managed to make myself look momentarily bearable. To celebrate, I asked Kate to take some photographs of me outside for posterity. She snapped away for a minute or so and said she'd got some good ones. I retrieved my camera and looked at the screen. In the (approx.) six minutes since I'd put on my make-up in the bathroom mirror, the circumference of my face appeared to have inflated by around an inch. I briefly became convinced that I was the victim of a cruel pre-wedding allergic reaction but then I double-checked with Kate, who assured me that the photo was, in fact, normal and that I was looking at a picture of What I Look Like. This could not be true. Desperate for a second opinion, I showed Christianne the mutant image and was sorely disappointed at her distinct lack of horrified gasps or attempts to shield my eyes from the appalling aberration. On the contrary: it appeared that the grotesque image before me was not only fairly representative but actually flattering. Shortly afterwards, we got in the car and drove to the wedding, the other three girls chattering happily as I tried to come to terms with the realisation that I look utterly, utterly different to what I thought and that my fictional version was much prettier.

Of course, the weekend was not all about me. We had a fantastic few days in and around Mirmande, made all the more precious as the volcano had done its best to keep us away, and I made new friends and passionately loved my old ones. The bride was stunning, the groom's speech was excellent, the venue was magical, I didn't fall over on the dancefloor, the lunch the day afterwards was dreamy, my skirt didn't blow up in the wind and reveal my pants, the band were crush-worthy and best of all, I managed to get a mild tan which, as Kate continually stated, will "set us up" for the summer. Here's hoping.

Election 2010
What is weird is that I have voted. I posted it yesterday. Fortunately I haven't yet regretted my decision although I'm not denying that might happen between now and 6th May. I almost regretted my entire existence last night, however, when Sara, Rog, Grania and I sat through the most excruciating event ever at the Union Chapel. Instigate Debate was meant to be a cutting edge two-fingers-up at the mass media approaches to politics; the NME called it "the most important underground movement," which, if true, is enough to finish me off once and for all.

Invited speakers were Dame Vivienne Westwood; Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Harriet Harman; ex-Labour MP and current Green candidate, Peter Tatchell; ex-Mayoral candidate and LibDem hotshot, Simon Hughes; and Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Jeremy Hunt. Music was to be from the Magic Numbers, Shlomo and Rose Elinor Dougall, and we were promised comedy from The Amazing Tommy and the Weeks.

In reality, Dame Viv didn't turn up and nor did Jeremy Hunt - in their place we got the Tory candidate for Putney, a dumpy young thickie who tried admirably to compete with Tatchell, Harman and Hughes and got absolutely nowhere. The Magic Numbers turned out to be one-of-the-Magic-Numbers, which is a bit different, while Tommy and the Weeks were about as Amazing as a pavement. The host, John O'Sullivan, was a self-satisfied, shambolic, patronising blunderbus who encouraged the audience to ask questions and then ignored what they said and asked his own. He sneered at an intern who passed him a note during the evening, consistently called 'his hero' Peter Tatchell 'Thatchell', and introduced beatboxer Shlomo as 'one of the best rappers in the world'. The evening had an absurdly obvious LibDem bias which shat all over any concept that we were watching a genuine 'debate' and I was fully embarrassed to witness the politicians going through such a risible two hours. It was an unmitigated disaster. On the upside, Shlomo was great, but watching him work his magic in front of a stifled smattering of uptight politicos sitting in church pews was painful. £5 I would rather have spent on something useful, like Compeed or stamps. Meh. You win some, you lose some.

Right. Must go hang out my whites wash.

Honest to blog

So a guy came into my office this afternoon. I haven't seen him at work for a while but I was aware that he is one of the Faithful. He sat down and said he wanted to check I was OK, which was really nice of him. And it turned out that he was visibly shocked that I have depression. He'd had no idea, he said, and never would have guessed in a million years. It made me think.

I've never tried to hide it. And it's an illness that strikes every now and then to a point where, for a while, I am unable to function the way I normally do, so anyone close to me knows about it. I have talked several times on this blog about being on medication. But when I'm feeling good, it really isn't something I think about a lot. Actually, that's bollocks. I may not say it out loud, but I think about it every day, in much the same way that I imagine an ex-alcoholic thinks about his alcoholism. I thank my lucky stars, every single day, a) that I got depression in the first place and b) that I am one of the very fortunate ones who can live with it quite happily, 99% of the time. Because yes, I am grateful for it. The therapy I've had, the lessons I've learned, the decisions I've been forced to take as a result of it - I am, without question, utterly different than I would have been without the diagnosis and I am, I believe, a much happier, kinder, more appreciative, sensitive, relaxed individual, and I think I'll be a better friend and, one day, a better mother as a result. Obviously every now and then, the snake takes up residence, and that sucks. But we all have crosses to bear, and as far as the available crosses go, this one suits me OK.

That's not to say it's been easy, though. Grania arrived at midnight last night after I'd sent out a 3pm SOS admitting that I'd realised I wouldn't be able to leave the house this morning without third party assistance. We slept and then woke up early and did yoga, and I washed my hair and put on the clothes I'd laid out last night, and it was all going extremely well, and then we were outside and I put my key in the door and tried to turn it and burst into tears, and said I couldn't do it, even though inside my head I was shouting, 'OH COME ON you loser, turn the freaking key and go to work you cretin,' and eventually she coaxed me, sobbing as though something serious had happened, down the stairs of my building and outside, ignoring my teary suggestion that I couldn't go to work because I was too ugly, and eventually I followed her uncomplainingly, and we crossed the road, and she herded me, sheepdog-like, into the tube station, sensibly worried that I might dart back home the moment her back was turned, and I went through the barriers and down the escalators on my own, and got on the tube, and twenty minutes later I was literally fine. Fragile and shattered, but fine.

Anyway, the point was, why mention it? There's a stigma about depression. Some people find it shocking. Why not just shut up about it, keep schtum, and restrict myself to talking about tripping up the stairs in front of Lily Allen or similar? [NB this has not yet happened]. It's such a big part of who I am, though. Not always obvious, but always there - like diabetes. Writing about the past few days and not mentioning it would have felt like lying. And not writing anything at all for the past few days would have felt dishonest too, like this blog is only about the good times, whereas I believe strongly that LLFF is for the rough and the smooth. I have a lot of smooth, so it's only fair to admit that there's rough too. If not, you'd just get a sanitized version of a life, just another stream of 'Wheeee, I'm off on holiday!' and 'Look! Another really fun thing happened to me!' inanity - and we've all got far too much access to that kind of edited crap on Facebook. I am mostly great, but I sometimes suck, and if I were reading about you, I wouldn't want just one or the other as it would smack of bullshit. And really, there's no significant downside to the honesty policy besides the fact that no one who reads it will ever want to marry me. But fortunately, I don't want to get married anyway, so who's laughing now? Hmmm? [Note to self: this is utterly unconvincing]. Still, I'm guessing they were going to find out sooner or later. [Note to self: this argument is flawed. When it comes to major personality disorders, later tends to be better]. OK shut up.

So anyway, now I'm back home, knackered after a long day, and I have no idea how tomorrow morning will pan out but I'm going it alone so fingers crossed. I feel - tentatively - as though this stint is broken, though. I have high hopes that the snake is retreating. And, all being well, that'll be it for the next few months or years. I had a knock, and I got sick, and it spiralled. These things happen. But after a tough week or so, I'm on the upswing, I'm doing my best and that is, as we all know full well, all we can do. On tonight's menu, a dry Riesling that Simon bought me for my birthday in 2007, and a guilty pleasure dinner: homemade tomato and tuna pasta sauce with caramalised onions and garlic. But no pasta. Just a thick layer of mature cheddar. Mmmmmmm. Molten cheeeeeeeeese. Heroin chic, fortunately, is so last decade.

Message from the dark side

Depression is the most extraordinary thing. For me, it's not so much the black dog with a pink tongue and a tail as a poisonous snake. I really feel it worming its way into my being, physically, pulling the backs of my eyes and tightening round my larynx, pushing down on my brain and constricting my stomach.

It started a week ago when a man I had thought was amazing suddenly announced that he didn't feel the same thing about me. That was the kick-off point. As an experienced depressive, I knew full well that there are only two things I absolutely must to do when something upsets me: 1) keep busy and 2) exercise every single day without fail. That's literally it. Other things that help are 3) don't drink too much booze and 4) don't drink too much caffeine. And normally, I would have done those things, and everything would have been fine. The nightmare this time was that I immediately came down with Girl Flu, which meant I was too ill to exercise, and too ill too socialise. Within a few days, the depression symptoms descended. I could feel them coming and tried to pretend it wasn't happening, but deep down I knew it was going to get me, and by then I was utterly powerless to do anything about it.

On Friday night, I went out with Kate, came home, and then didn't leave the flat for the rest of the weekend. I didn't want to see anyone, and I certainly didn't want anyone to see me. All I could do to distract myself was watch bad TV. Reading isn't powerful enough when I feel like this, nor is music or the radio. I need as many senses as possible to be occupied.

Self-obsessive that I am, it's always interesting to me to watch myself getting depressed. It's like I'm slightly schizophrenic. On one level, I know full well how lucky I am. I am not that bothered about the guy, and genuinely believe it is his loss as much as mine. I know I am attractive enough, and funny, talented, and kind, and that I have a ridiculously easy life. I am grateful for so much. I have lovely friends who simply wouldn't like me if I was a pain in the ass, so I must be OK. I know that, just a few weeks ago, I felt perfectly content. I am very aware that absolutely nothing has changed - I am still exactly the same person I was then. In fact, I'm even fractionally thinner, so that's good. But depression makes me use a vocabulary I don't normally access. Even though I know all that good stuff is true on a logical level, on a subconscious level, I start to disbelieve it. Depression makes me think I'm a failure. It highlights everything I do wrong, and laughs at my successes, telling me they're paltry. Where I am usually uber-confident, suddenly the thought of speaking to anyone fills me with fear. I can't make eye-contact. I dread the phone ringing. The thought of getting on a tube, having to stand close to another human, makes me cry. My appetite disappears. I have constant, CONSTANT butterflies, as though I am awaiting the result of my own murder trial. It is exhausting. I can't sleep at night, but as soon as 8am comes around, I can't stay awake. My dreams are (as discussed) shatteringly vivid, so when I do shut my eyes, I know I won't get any rest.

And all along, I'm saying to myself, 'This is an illusion, you melodramatic moron. You have been happy, non-stop, for a year. This is a tiny, irrelevant blip. You know you are actually fantastically lucky and very content. This brief spell has been brought on by the unfortunate and rare combination of a self-confidence knock and a week without the serotonin boost that you get from regular exercise.' So I feel like crap, and then I tell myself that I'm a dick for feeling like crap. It's a really fun cycle.

Yesterday I made myself do yoga. I can't do any cardio because I would cough up my lungs and possibly my stomach, but yoga was good. I told myself I would get up early this morning and do it again before going to work. But when my alarm went off, things were bad. I had woken up from nightmares several times, drenched in sweat, livid to have perspired all over my clean sheets. There was simply no way I could face my office. But now it's 15:30. I did yoga again at about 11am, had a shower, burst into tears for no reason, got back into bed, and then pulled myself together and got dressed in normal clothes. Having been wearing pyjamas since Friday, this was a turning point. The plan was to get myself out of the flat. And, about 45 minutes ago, I finally made it. I ran down to the postbox to mail back Blade Runner. I forced myself onwards. It is the most stunning spring day in London, which is ironically a massive problem when you're depressed. Feeling negative when it's chucking it down outside is one thing. Feeling negative when the world is all clear blue and warm sun makes you feel like the loneliest, most isolated idiot on earth. How can you not be happy when it's so beautiful? You must be seriously screwed up, and it's scary. But I strode on, almost running. It is a deeply unpleasant sensation when merely being outside in the open makes you feel so odd, highlighting how different you are, making you think 'Failure, failure'. It seemed like everyone was staring at me, thinking how ugly I looked without makeup. I clutched my arms round my waist, defensive, don't look at me. I couldn't make eye-contact with anyone, I just wanted to get back to my flat, but I knew that if I returned too quickly it could make things even worse, an aborted attempt, another fail. I made it to my local shop and tried to find something to buy. Nothing appealed. I saw Cheryl Cole on the front of The Sun, saying she was worried about being single, and once again I berated myself for having the audacity to complain. You are so lucky, you are so lucky, I said to myself as I walked round the shop feeling like the biggest reject in the world. The fruit and veg looked horrible. I considered buying a bag of Snack a Jacks but at 59p for a handful of MSG-flavoured polystyrene discs, I felt I was being ripped off. I left the shop and strode up the road, crossed the street and entered the park. Finally I made myself drop my arms to my side. Then I made myself slow down and breathe. Then I went into the flower garden and made myself sit on a bench in the sun, but that proved to be too much stillness. Sensing that tears were just a few minutes away, I stood up and walked on. I walked for about twenty minutes, past tufted clumps of crocuses and snowdrops, crows wheeling overhead, and then I came home. And I do feel better. The virus will pass, I know - the snake will slowly slither away to wherever it goes the rest of the time, when I'm feeling normal. I'll do yoga again this evening, and tomorrow I will go to work even if I have to pay for a taxi to take me there. And in a few more days I'll be back at the gym and this will all seem like a dark memory. Can't wait for that. But right now, this is me, in the pit, and I just thought I'd tell the Faithful what it feels like down here. I wouldn't wish it on any of you, but I'll tell you one thing: there's nothing like it for making you grateful for mere existence when it's gone. Hugs and kisses from the dark side.

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.

A list and some links

Ooh, the last 36 hours have been splendid in the most wonderfully mundane way. See here:

1. I had the day off work.
2. I got up just before noon.
3. My bedroom was warm, thanks to my new retro heater.
4. Davina went into the Big Brother house on Wednesday night and all the housemates were dressed up in animal costumes and god it was funny in quite a strange sinister way.
5. Also funny was this.
6. Then there was this which is also amazing.
7. Then I was opening my post and found a letter from the bank which said that the mean bankrupt skiing people had refunded almost all our money! Hooray!
8. Then the Tesco man came and brought me lots of lovely food.
9. He also brought me two bunches of daffodils (I'd ordered them, they weren't an impromptu gift although that would have been great) and now they are sitting in my flat in jam jars, about to pop and it's the best thing ever.
10. I had sardines in tomato on toast for lunch and it was freaking delicious.
11. I listened to lots of new (to me) music. If you are bored of waiting for the new Fleet Foxes album, just buy Person Pitch by Panda Bear. If you don't like Death Cab For Cutie's album on first listen, give it another go. It improves. Although not a huge amount.
12. I tidied my whole gorgeous flat from left to right and put things away and did laundry and bleached my shower curtain and wiped down the fronts of all my kitchen cabinets and hoovered and now it looks like a show home but in a kooky, unique and extremely comfortable way. Not like this (thanks Sara).
13. I watched some of the new series of American Idol and am now comforted that there is reality life after Big Brother finishes.
14. I marinated the lamb that I'm going to cook tomorrow night, and slow roasted some tomatoes and made some raita. Yum.
15. I realised that the amount of money that Grania and I were going to be spending on a skiing holiday was equivalent to the amount of money someone might spend travelling somewhere absolutely extraordinary and having a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, rather than getting drunk in Switzerland and pointing at over-confident Etonians. So maybe we will go somewhere extraordinary instead. We are discussing it over the weekend. More to follow.
16. For dinner I had an absolutely amazing Thai prawn curry and some very nice white wine. And a Nobbly Bobbly. Yes. You heard me. A Nobbly Bobbly. It is an ice lolly.

And now I have been to the gym and done rowing and other cardio, and am off to enjoy my weekend, kicking off with a trip to the BFI for another Ozu masterpiece. But before I do... I am aware that two of my most loyal Faithful have had very sad news this week and my thoughts are with both of you. The death of a parent is something that I am so lucky not to have had to deal with - yet. But the funeral I attended recently showed me that, no matter what wonderful terms you are on with the deceased, no matter how expected it was, no matter much pain they were in nor how much of a blessing in disguise it may be that a long illness is over, the loss of someone dear to you is agonising. The thought of never hearing my dad crack another joke, or not receiving another email from my mum telling me she loves me a propos of nothing, oh, it makes me feel physically sick. I am grateful for every moment and my attempts at levity above are not to suggest that there is nothing more important going on in the world, but merely to highlight my belief that taking this crazy little thing called life too seriously is a terminal disease in itself. Kisses to you all, my pretties. Tell your loved ones you love them. And then look at some daffodils.

Underground Mafia

At the western extremity of a nondescript dead-end in the heart of London's Soho, there is an unremarkable pub. As you enter, on a Wednesday evening sometime after 7ish, you'll struggle to notice any defining features - just a hazy yellow light and the usual rabble of midweek drinkers losing their inhibitions and forgetting about spreadsheets. But after your ears become accustomed to the chatter, you will perhaps detect a rumbling 'neath your feet, a rowdy stamping and the strains of a chorus emerging from the deep. Intrigued, you turn away from the bar to find the stairs down to the basement, and as the music grows, you turn a corner into a cellar crammed full of smiling people, seemingly aged anywhere between 18 and 80, laughing, drinking and singing with force. The people are in all shapes and sizes but all of them are holding something against their chest, a small stringed instrument shaped like a baby guitar, and they are playing it vigorously, carelessly, with unselfconscious love and abandon. This is the Ukulele Jam, and when I sat down amongst a group of strangers last night and they shared their songbook with me so I could strum along to Like A Prayer by Madonna, I knew I had found my spiritual home. God it is fun. But it's mine, and no, you can't come too. At least not until I've established myself as a core member. Only child? Attention seeking? I'll take down anyone who suggests such blarney. I am merely charming, magnetic and multi-talented - and you love me.

In other news: I look deliberately rough. I have no plans tonight and I am literally so excited I think I might cry if anyone offered me something more fun to do than go home and achieve. Tasks for this evening: one hour of Rodney Yee; don velour; scrape fringe off forehead with ridiculous towelling headband; iron in front of Glee; water and feed houseplants; remove misc. dark matter from leaves of bay tree; upload photos to online photo processing site; eat cereal for dinner; exfoliate; wear face mask; watch Celebrity Big Brother. I know. I am a goddess, a modern day Helen of Troy. And you still love me.

TGIF. Not a new photo format.

Ooh goodness. I am one sleepy kitten. The antibiotics are definitely working their magic, but not quite as fast as I'd hoped. On the upside, I was only woken up once last night by the pain of my teeth. On the downside, I was still in an unfair bit of discomfort. I haven't slept through the night for about six days and I'm properly exhausted.

On top of teeth-induced tiredness, there was also the fact that I was all over-excited on Wednesday because it was the first night of my six-week ukulele beginners' course in Soho, so that probably wore me out. I can now play Wild Thing and Stand By Me like a pro. I've been told to practice for ten minutes a day every day and I missed yesterday; not the best start. I had a good excuse though: I had spent the day in Leicestershire, singing at a funeral with a few others. I didn't know the deceased, but from the eulogies it was clear that he had been a remarkable man. Blimey funerals are sad. Even though this guy was apparently 93 and had suffered with a long illness, meaning that his death was a bit of a release, the family obviously loved him deeply and almost everyone was in floods. My last grandparent died when I was 11, and I'd never known any of them particularly well. Watching this man's children and grandchildren unable to speak with grief at his loss left me a) crying and b) strangely envious of their relationship. I can't imagine what it would have been like to have had a close bond with someone nearly seventy years my senior. Even if they had not died when I was still a young girl, for purely geographical I don't think my relationship with my grandparents could have been very close, with one in Scotland and the other in the US. I hope that my kids, if I have them, are able to get to know their grandparents. Because they rock.

I don't know why the puppy is here. He just is. In Any Other Business, I'd just like to reiterate an earlier post and draw your attention to the check box next to Show Me You Love Me at the bottom of every blog post. I don't seem to be getting nearly enough ticks for my liking. I know from my Google Analytics stats that there are hundreds of you out there reading every week, but only about three of you comment, and hardly anyone ticks the box. Go on. If you've enjoyed something I've written, TICK IT. It takes less than a second and it makes me feel like I've had a pat on the head. I received an email this morning from a friend, who said that her friend (who I don't know) was talking to two other people (who I don't know either) about a wedding, and the two other people hadn't been to the wedding but said it sounded vaguely familiar, and it turned out that I'd been and they'd read about it on LLFF. Brilliant. I'm practically required reading. Meeting adjourned.

Penultimatum

I couldn't feel less like writing tonight but I am aware that if I don't, then tomorrow I will have to write my last LLFF of the Noughties and it will all be a bit of a hideous rush, so I thought maybe if I am grown up now then I will feel the benefit tomorrow. There is certainly a fair amount to write about today, or not very much at all, depending on how you look at it. I am choosing to take the median option. We couldn't possibly get out of bed on time this morning and ended up missing breakfast, which was a disappointment as we were both looking forward to a traditional selection of cholesterol-boosting foodstuffs, and instead were reduced to drinking free tea in the hotel lobby while using the wifi to book the JAZZBOAT and eating the last of my mother's banana bread and my final mince pie, which I'd wrapped in tinfoil and carried here in my suitcase, because I am clearly an octogenarian hiding in the body of a 32 year old. And then we went to book tickets for the ballet tomorrow; we had been told that it was the story of the girl with the flaxen hair, and we thought it must be Rapunzel, which was fine, and then when the woman came to the ticket window to help us, she had just taken a gargantuan bite of cake, and we said we wanted to see the ballet tomorrow, and she said 'Goh-GOH-goh' or something, with bits of pastry flying everywhere, and Nick started nodding and I thought we were buying tickets for a ballet called Godzilla and then I realised she had said Goldilocks. Quite how a story about three bears going on a daytrip and leaving their breakfast on the table, and a girl coming and eating it, and them coming back and complaining, is going to take up a 2 hour ballet, I have no idea, but I'll keep you updated.

Then we crossed over the river and I very nearly spent approx. £150 on a bottle green fox fur muff but then didn't, and we took a funicular up a hill and then went into a mirror maze which was very kitsch and good but not QUITE as funny as everyone else in there thought it was, largely because the mirrors had steamed up due to the cold and there were snowy footprints on the wooden floor so you would have had to have been one mascara short of a make-up bag not to work out which was the correct path almost immediately. Then we walked down a hill, past a macabre human statue of a jester, to a monastery, which didn't make a massive impression on me, and from there we went to the Loretta, which I was keen on because it was so absurd - basically, there is this place in Italy where there is a little house and rumour has it that it is the exact house where the Angel Gabriel first appeared to Mary to tell her she was up the duff with God's baby - obviously this house wasn't in Italy to start with, but the Italians claim that angels flew it there. Anyway, the Bohemians love this idea, and built a replica of this Loretta house in Prague - it's one of forty such replicas in the Czech Republic. And basically it's just a really nice, small, red brick barn, about the size of an average room in a Hotel du Vin. But without the eight foot bed, obv. And around the barn they've built this massively ornate ivory-coloured casing, covered in reliefs of saints, so from the outside it looks like a gigantic Arc of the Covenant, and inside it looks like an intimate gastropub waiting to happen.

So from thence to the castle complex, and neither of us do art, so we missed out the galleries and went to the gorgeous, gorgeous St. Vitus or Vilnius o.n.o.'s Cathedral, which had the most breathtaking stained glass and a lot of people. And then to Golden Lane, where there are all these tiny houses that have now been turned into extortionate tourist shops, mostly containing puppets. And then to a concert in a lovely church, where a small chamber orchestra including a very flat second violinist played some Grieg and some Mozart and some Sibelius and some Tchiakovsky, while we sat there turning slowly to stone. It was far, far colder in there than it had been outside. Then we down a lot of steps and then to a pub for a warming beverage and some overpriced pistachios, and then over the deliciously spooky and atmospheric Charles Bridge, where my lifelong scaffolding blight continued, and then for further wanderings round the Old Town Square, Wenceslas Square (where we found a Debenhams and a Tesco) and to dinner at a lovely secret restaurant that no-one knows about except us and the people who were there tonight.

And tomorrow we have a lot more to do, and the same on Friday, and I simply cannot believe that this year is at an end. I feel as though it has flown by, but when I think back to waking up on 1st January, it does seem like an awfully long time ago. I don't think I was truly happy in my life until 2009, if I'm honest. It's been a long and magical journey up to this point, but tough too, and I finally feel as though I am Good Enough. I used to have a permanent feeling that things could be better, and at some undefined point in the past twelve months, something shifted, and now I pretty much continually feel aware of how much worse things could be. The glass is exactly the same, but where it was once half empty, it's now half full, and I couldn't be happier about it. Half full glass FTW. I have wonderful parents and some truly entertaining friends, but ultimately I'm me, on my own, and I'm grateful and content. 2009: I salute you for your part in my story. It's been a joy and I can't wait to see what's next. Butterflies in my tummy, ants in my pants and Czechoslovakian chicken fricassee in my small intestine.

My Noughties (recalled semi-drunkenly, late at night, after a long day's sightseeing, with no access to any memory-jogging apparatus save an iTunes library and a digital photo library begun in 2005 and some computerised diaries from 2001-04 that talk about nothing, and I mean absolutely NOTHING, except boys): Went out with Henry, lived in Shepherd's Bush, went to Cuba, did a car boot sale on a site which is now the Westfield centre, went to LA, interviewed Justin Timberlake, interviewed Britney, went to Bruges for an emergency summit with Henry, went to Frankfurt for the MTV Awards, broke up with Henry, moved back home, wrote off my Fiesta, got made redundant, was obsessed with several unsuitable boys, drove through Spain with Bee, met Luke, loved The Rolling Stones, started going out with Luke, went to Paris for Easter, joined the choir, went to Marseilles and Cassis in the summer, loved Elvis, was bridesmaid at Lucy and Jake's wedding, went to Tanzania and Zanzibar, loved early Elton John, went to visit my family in the States with my mum, broke up with Luke, was single for a year, had a Vespa, wrote a cafe book, started my MA, met Simon, tutored my favourite ever student called Lola, got my best-ever score in Scrabble ('quixotic' on a triple word square), loved Rufus Wainwright and Gorillaz, learned about Marxism and post-colonialism and feminism, wrote my dissertation in the British Library, graduated from my MA, loved The Clientele, went to India for two months, loved Nick Drake, started LLFF, started working at a bank, walked the Thames Path, loved M. Ward, went to Croatia and Montenegro, went to New York, broke up with Simon, loved Amy Winehouse, Sondre Lerche, Martha Wainwright, Tom Malmquist and Fionn Regan, bought my flat, went to Amsterdam, met Paul, loved Tosca and Monteverdi, moved out of my parents' house, loved Elbow, went to Vegas and Seattle, went to Latvia with choir, broke up with Paul, went to Paris with my parents, loved Bon Iver, fell for the gardener, did a politics course, went to Egypt, went to Glastonbury, fell for the Glastocrush, went to France with choir, recovered from Glastocrush, became comprehensively selfish, had several months of independent bliss, took up the ukulele, and here we are, in Prague on a minibreak, with crow's feet aplenty and a smile as wide as a mile. Happy New Year.