Threading festival

This morning on my way to the office, I saw a small fat woman clutching a print-out of a map, being given directions by two other women. If you can't find a London street when you have a London street map, you've got problems, haven't you? I shall add 'Being able to map read' onto my list of Blessings I Clearly Should Have Been Counting But Wasn't Because It Didn't Even Occur To Me.

Aaaaanyway. In the interests of full disclosure, I think I should report that yesterday after work, I was threaded. This, for the uninitiated, is a method of hair removal that originated in China, is now the norm across Asia and is gradually sweeping into The West. It involves making a kind of miniature cat's cradle out of some cotton thread, trapping the hairs therein, and pulling them out. It is popular on very sensitive areas or where more precision is needed, most usually the eyebrows. The woman who I went to see was called Feroza and being in her 'ladies-only salon' (a room with a curtain) sent me right back to being in India. All preference was given to the mobile phone, which she always answered immediately, even if she was mid-treatment. Originally from Bombay (her word), she was typically charming while being aggressively bossy. There was absolutely no discussion about my opinions on brow shape, just a list of things I'd done wrong when I'd plucked in the past and a catalogue of instructions for the future. The whole thing took about eight seconds, wasn't particularly pleasant or agonisingly painful, and I will probably go back - that said, I've also been recommended a lady in Tooting who does threading for £2.50 which is certainly tempting, although there is something about someone who charges approx. 10% of the standard going rate that makes me slightly edgy.

It's now 14:21 and I am counting the hours until the extended Easter break. I'm not too keen on Christianity or any faith, but naturally I do love the public holidays. When I am Ruler, I will of course make the UK a secular nation and remove all religious symbolism from the state, so I'll have to replace the Christian bank holidays with other ones. I think a bank holiday to recover after the clocks go forward will be essential. I'll also give all my subjects a day off every time an British national sports star or team is in the final of any event. I'll make three new annual holidays: National Music Day, National Exercise Day and National Learning Day, where you get the day off work to try something new in each of those fields - unless you do them all the time, in which case you have to help someone else to expand their repertoire. And I'll give anyone a week off if they acquire a new kitten or puppy (up to a maximum of one baby pet per annum). To support the resulting loss of income to business, I will raise extra revenue by taxing anyone who lives in a house that has a Smeg fridge, an Aga bought since the turn of the century and/or household items made by Alessi at 50%. God, it's sounding GREAT. Vote Lost Looking For Fish! It's the only way out of this mess!

Emotional rollercoaster

I'm not sure this photograph is one of my better ones, but you'll have to trust me that it illustrates perfectly the idiocy that is displayed around this wonderful planet all too frequently. It was taken yesterday evening on the ground floor of Zara Homes, Regent St. It is the third or fourth time I've visited this establishment, and the third or fourth time I've been stopped in my tracks by the lettering on their stairwell. On each occasion, I browse the ground floor, and then meander towards the staircase to continue my shopping experience. To help me decide whether to go up or, indeed, down, I peer at the steel art deco letters on the wall - but instead of telling me what I might find, should I walk up or down the stairs, the sign merely has an arrow pointing in an 'up' direction, labelled 'First Floor', and an arrow pointing 'down', labelled 'Lower Ground Floor'. I mean. Has it come to this? That when we're on the ground floor, we need instruction labels to help us know that, by walking up a flight of stairs, we will find the First Floor? Or that by walking down, we may come across a basement? Growl. Like any good shopper, I went both up and down the stairs, possibly as a result of the mystery and intrigue provided by the lack of labelling (perhaps this was their intention), and my rage died down when I spotted the most incredible gold leather sausage dog. It has shot straight into my top five favourite purchases of 2008, along with my Bookworm shelf, my sugar bowl from Anthropologie in Seattle, my cherry blossom fairy lights and my carpet.

My life has been extremely weird since approx. last Thursday when overnight, any hint of the summer ended and it suddenly became Autumn. As soon as I started wearing my delicious pea-green coat and little blue hat, so beloved last winter, I started experiencing the most overpowering feelings of deja vu and nostalgia, so intense as to be almost unpleasant. The Faithful will know that I am up there in the World's Most Unspiritual, and weird sensations such as these are unheard of in my past. I think it's something about having an August break-up and then going on a couple of interesting dates, which is precisely what I was doing a year ago - I feel like a completely different person in so many ways, very much happier, older and wiser than I was in 2007, but history still repeats itself...

Last summer, I went on a weekend in Devon with a group of friends and remember feeling startlingly relieved to return to the varieties of London. And similarly, this weekend just past, I went to stay with a girlfriend in Wiltshire, who is now married with three gorgeous children and three dogs. I had a fantastic time helping out and going for long walks, interspersed with drinking Cava and watching The X Factor, but there was just no denying the breath-taking hit of relief when I boarded the Bakerloo line at Paddington and looked around me at all the different, unfamiliar faces - people from every walk of life, going through every permutation of experience. It is just impossible to feel alone in London. Whatever you're going through - someone else has got it worse, someone else has it better, someone else has been through it before. I never feel isolated here - but the anonymity also allows one to have time to oneself, soul-space to consider and grow. In the countryside, the geographical space is beautiful and wonderful and energising - but the lack of people mean that there is an intense claustrophobia, a blinkeredness that, while it may also exist here in London, is so much more easy to avoid in the Big Smoke. The dream of retiring to the country is popular for many - but I'm a City girl through and through and I'm proud of it.

So I was feeling very odd. But then last night was the start of the new choir term and it was so incredibly lovely to see everyone again that I felt almost emotional. And we sang Christmas music which just filled me with atheistic joy. And then today, I received an email from a prospective suitor, a 46 year old currently living '15 miles north-west of New York' who effectively sent me his CV, including his diet, his exercise regime, his background (where his parents were born and where his mother died) and the fact that he is looking for a permanent relationship. Terrifying. I won't be dating him but it made for interesting reading. I showed Laura his photo, which is admittedly not the most reassuring, and she said:
'Jane, he looks like a serial killer.'
'What does a serial killer look like?!'
'That.'
I had to concede that he had a guilty mouth. Sad really, but what can you do. Thankfully I have also received messages from other young men who sound lovely. And, just in case, I'm keeping schtum about that this time! And then I received a phonecall from Westminster council, admitting that they'd been idiots, and dropping the charges against me for when they towed my car from Soho Square back in May, and so I'm going to be refunded £260. All that and my unbelievable gold dachshund - ah me! All of a sudden, life is good again and I am appreciative.

The geese are getting fat

In keeping with seasonal expectations, it's been pretty busy in my vicinity of late. Thursday night was my office Christmas party, and I must say how refreshing it was that my first experience of this type of event managed to live up to every single generalisation and stereotype that I had ever imagined. There were drunk people making a fool of themselves by tripping up the stairs (incl. me at approx 10pm); a fair few people wandering around the large venue having lost their friends (me at approx 11pm) and inebriated people trapping innocent victims in feisty embraces and trying to persuade them that a quick kiss would not turn into office gossip (me in the role of 'victim', shortly before my departure at around 1am). The food was disappointing, the music was mediocre and the skiing game with which I became obsessed after an early victory left one with polystyrene bean-bag balls in many private areas which were difficult to extract while retaining feminine mystique. It was fun.

On Friday I was feeling somewhat the worse for wear and was substantially slower as a result. I ate enough carbohydrates to fuel a marathon runner but did less cardio than a fat man in a coma - and when I left the office building my hangover meant that I became extremely irritable very quickly when my card wouldn't let me through the security barriers. I swiped it repeatedly to no avail and then felt suitably idiotic when I looked down at my hand and realised that my card had fallen out of its holster and I was rubbing an empty plastic case over the reader.

The highlight of Saturday was bowling and karaoke with my choir friends, particularly the latter. Karaoke is fun anyway, but when it's done truly unashamedly with eight part harmonies and comedy voices, it's seriously fantastic. I did manage to get a little carried away at a few points but thankfully I wasn't the only one who threw themselves into the part with gusto. This festive shenanigan was followed by delicious food and then the X Factor final - probably not many people's Saturday of choice but it hit the spot for me.

Today I have been efficient and happy - I have been for a run for the past two mornings which has sent my smugometer off the scale and ensured that I could lay into the roast chicken and bread sauce with a touch less guilt. My irritation levels did veer towards the russet/crimson zone earlier this afternoon, however, when my father showed me an article in the Sunday Telegraph which reported that a scientific advisor to the Labour government has said that women should stop fancying men with fast cars if they want to help the environment. Allow me to clarify: the purchase of a fast car by a man is the fault of women and nothing to do with the man at all. Consequently, any contribution to global warming made by male-purchased sports cars is not the responsibility of their owners. Rather, a man's innate (and thus uncontrollable) desire to impress us girls is the defining factor in 100% of car purchases, testosterone dragging them helplessly towards higher fuel consumption. OK. On behalf of all women, I'll accept the blame for the global warming arising from men's car purchases if men will concede that, by fancying us when we dress nicely, they are thus entirely responsible for child labour by 'making' us purchase clothes which could be from unethical sources. Scoff. I don't remember such a pathetic denial of the consequences of one's own actions since fat people started suing McDonald's, and anyone who agrees with the report's writer should be forced to do something really unpleasant that would enlighten them to the true stupidity of their perspective. Perhaps they might have to make some efforts to educate themselves to a minimal standard - something akin to the level of liberal sensitivity of the average Swedish eight-year-old should do the trick. And of course, they should never be allowed to view the Telegraph as a news source again.

Five things

One: Extremist Islamic literature in east London libraries: should it be banned? Apparently in Tower Hamlets library there are eleven copies of a book written by Abu Hamza but far fewer works that represent a more moderate view. I was initially surprised that Newsnight even entertained the debate yesterday, since any hint of censorship is absolutely unacceptable in a democratic society - but I do accept that if libraries only contained Mein Kampf and other polemical literature, the world might be a very different place. So while the government can't (and shouldn't) stop certain books being present, should it enforce the presence of others? Certainly an issue that started my brain cogs whirring until I fell asleep halfway through the item.

Two: David Cameron's plans for voluntary summer activities for the UK's 16 year olds: military training, volunteer work with the aged, projects abroad. It all sounds quite good but I fear he hasn't thought it through yet, given that he has already admitted that no-one has worked out where the funding's going to come from. Props to Dazza Cazza for thinking of something that might actually make a difference to teenagers, it's a nice idea an' all, but I fear it will take more than shopping for grannies and doing assault courses to stop the spiralling lives of British young people.

Three: People in my office building, just like people outside, seem to fall into two camps: those with a brain and those who have used their brain so tragically rarely that it has disintegrated. This is illustrated with alarming regularity in our elevators. In a lift that is around five feet square, a person still in possession of an active brain will walk in, press the appropriate button to select their floor and stand to one side. Sadly it is the case that many of my colleagues fall into the disintegrated category, since they choose instead to walk into the lift, press the appropriate button and then turn to stand directly in front of the buttons. Even when one person has said 'Excuse me' in appropriately hushed tones, they don't move out of the way, preferring instead to lean awkwardly to one side for every single individual button pushing request. If they were short I would pick them up and move them to the lift's opposite corner but shamefully the perpetrators are normally fully grown adults who should know better. It is precisely this lack of self-awareness that leads to people texting in the middle of the stairs down to a tube station or standing alone on the left of the escalators when sixty others are on the right. I could be grateful that my brain has not yet begun to dissolve but I think, frustratingly, that those without one, like Winnie the Pooh, are in fact happier than the rest of us.

Four: That said, I can't claim that my brain is always in pristine condition. I certainly cursed its workings a few moments ago. I had been for a tough session in the gym, doing 400m sprints on the rowing machine and kicking the punchbag until my vision was affected. Returning to the changing room with my customary 'fell in a lake' look, I rifled through my bag to find my shower gel and towel. When I realised that the latter item was still in my office on the second floor, I exhaled a sigh of frustration and assessed my options. Going without a shower was out of the question. Showering and drying myself on my wet gym kit or dry work clothes didn't seem to work either. So I sank to a new low, took a deep breath for bravery, lifted the miscellaneous small towel hanging on a hook near my belongings and took it into the shower cubicle. I had no clue as to its owner but, having dried myself with it post-shower, I would say she probably had brown hair or possibly a long-haired chocolate-coloured pet. It was a dark moment but I'm now dressed, back at my desk and trying to block out the incident.

Five: Luciano Pavarotti
RIP.

Grinding woes

Would it be wrong to ask the rotund sandwich maker in the basement canteen at my workplace to adjust her salt and pepper grinding skills? I am concerned that it may be a case of teaching one’s grandmother to suck eggs, or perhaps teaching an old dog new tricks, although I’m not sure which of those labels she would find more offensive. Either way, it is an issue that I may have to confront, given that she almost ruined my eagerly-awaited lunch today with a prime case of disastrous seasoning mismanagement.

Personally, I am of the opinion that, when offered ‘Salt and pepper?’, I can take that offer to mean ‘Would you like salt and pepper sprinkled liberally all over the contents of your lunchtime snack?’ Sadly, on this issue at least, the rotund sandwich maker and I have differing interpretations. For her, ‘Salt and pepper?’ means ‘Shall I put a large and deeply intensive sprinkling of black and white flavours on a microscopic fragment of your sandwich, leaving 94% of it unseasoned and 6% of it so over-seasoned as to render it inedible?’

Upon first witnessing said lady’s apparently insensitive and careless S&P distribution this afternoon, I soothed myself with the idea that my initial fears were caused by my own neuroses. What had in fact occurred, so I told myself, was that the seasoning had been applied evenly: my perception of its concentration on one area of my egg mayonnaise bap had been due to a freak optical distortion created by the sloping glass counter that separated me from the sandwich-creating area.

Sadly my attempts to give the rotund sandwich maker the benefit of the doubt were a waste of valuable brain time, for when I reached my sunny four square inches of the park across the road from my building, slotted myself between two other gently sweating office workers and commenced my nourishment, it quickly became apparent that my worst fears had materialised.

On this occasion, when asked, ‘Salt and pepper?’, I said, ‘Yes, please.’ In future, I may have to offer some further direction.

Needless to say, despite the misplaced flavouring, I somehow managed to consume the sandwich in its entirety, an act of bravery and derring-do that I am sure my readers will consider to be something rather special.