Any major dude will tell you

Hauled myself out of my pit today. Went to an exhibition with a lovely friend, talked talked talked over lunch and Pimms. Took advice from friends old and new. (Specially liked what I got from Mr S; most useful.) Discovered I had a big bruise from arm-wrestling a super-strong chap on Friday (good grief, that Lebanese rose!). Mused. Hmmm....

All or nothing

I've been feeling marginally awful for a while. These are the edited lowlights of what I was going to post about three weeks ago, but didn't think it was a good idea. Now it's all 'out there', I am. Maybe I'll regret it - but as you're reading this, I've pressed the 'publish' button and it's too late, isn't it?

Thank you for your comments. They mean a lot.

I thought long and hard before posting this entry. It could actually be the last here, as it might blow things apart on the jolly, witty and amusing front. The absolute ache I feel from being alone is hurting me greatly at present, which was the main cause of my disappearance this week. That 'alone' which is defined by not having one person to whom you matter the most; the person whom you can share stupid secrets with, disappear at parties for a snog, sit on the sofa and not talk to.I was thinking of about Nottingham's Mr Sex, advising a woman who was having an online affair, 'Sometimes,' he wrote, 'a hug at the end of a shit day at work is worth 300GB of backed-up e-mails'. He's right, you know. Whilst it's lovely to have so much cyberlurve, I don't have anyone to give me a real hug and I miss that so much.

It's bizarre. I know men who are marvellous. Men who'd love to go out with me, but only once they've left the hated girlfriend, and I'm supposed to wait. Men who tell me the most intimate details of what they like in bed, with the postscript of '...and I'd definitely be going out with you if I hadn't just started going out with X'; ones who I have extremely close friendships with, but the boundaries of those friendships have got a bit wonky. I'm everyone's favourite consolation prize; the woman who'll be there for them with something unconditional to make them feel good. And yes, I do get a lot back from these relationships...but nobody gives me what I really want, which is simply a willingness to move things on.

There are other things going on in my life at the moment which aren't adding to the particular jollity of it all, but it's the 'alone' thing is eating me up at present. I suppose I maybe come across as some hard-boiled broad who doesn't care; that comes from years thinking nobody would be interested anyway. Now I'm over 21, and probably look better than I have in my life, and am a bit worldly-wise, you'd think I could get over all that. Easier said than done. You can only be consoled so many times by mates saying 'some men are crap', or 'well, you're rather intelligent, it's hard to find a bloke when they're probably a bit intimidated'. Or maybe I'm just shit.

I don't care who knows this..

but I can't live this lonely life any more. I can't live this lie that I am jolly and happy - I am so very lonely, and I am tired of keeping in all the things I really want to say - oh for anonymity. All I want is somebody to be with at the end of the day; to not be alone any more. So this post stays up for 24 hours and then the blog goes, because I can't face writing this shit, and neither should you have to face reading a barefaced lie. Thanks for your support, but I just can't do it any more. x

'I'll do you a tape'

I missed David Quantick's The Disappearing Art Of The Mix Tape on Radio 4 this morning, but I wish I hadn't (but yay, we can all Listen Again!). Nobody makes them any more - not even a compilation CD - but of course, they used to be all the rage; a way of imposing your musical tastes on other people, or impressing someone whose underclothes you rather fancied getting into.

I've got some great ones in the car still, with titles like 2 Busy 4 Luv, The Mince Generation and Afternoon Delights, and I love them all. It's just delightful to think that somebody's gone through their music collection and bothered to simultaneously press the 'record' and 'play' button just for you, and chosen as many tracks as you can pack onto a C-90. On these tapes there are always a few certainties: something the compiler is currently majorly obsessed with; something smart-arsed and/or 'eclectic', and something with a hidden meaning that the recipient never actually gets.

I suppose the modern equivalent is the iLike facility on Facebook, which shows I have far too much time on my hands, as I have 1,065 songs on mine. So, in the equivalent of a mix tape, here's what the randomizer has selected from them on my profile page:

Betcha By Golly Wow - The Stylistics
Born To Run - Bruce Springsteen
Almost Saturday Night - Dave Edmunds
Hey Nineteen - Steely Dan
The Bucket - Kings of Leon
Withered And Died - Richard and Linda Thompson
Looks, Looks, Looks - Sparks
So Broken - Bjork
New Gold Dream - Utah Saints
Temple Of Love - BWO

Blimey. I don't know anyone who I'd put that on a mix tape for, not knowing any extremely camp old people with a secret rock star fantasy and a tendency towards lachrymose folk. What were your best mix tapes - and the ones with the worst consequences?

New blog larks!

Go here. Just do it, don't ask questions.

Cool girl

Nothing to report today, other than you ought to read this interview with kd lang and then listen to this and this. I think she's lovely, and it's just nice to read an interview with a musician who's an adult, rather than just another big baby.

Hullo, weirdos!

Anything that drives traffic to this here blog isn't generally a bad thing, but this programme that was on last night has brought some rather unsavoury searchers here, due to me writing about the little girl in question on a previous occasion. I was out coming third at the pub quiz (as Ms B said, quite rightly: 'damn you G Rossdale and your bafflingly generic gruntings'. Oh yeah, and those people cheating by using mobiles), so I watched the show on the iPlayer.

Poor little kid. Her parents' - in particular her mother's - desperation for fame for Sasha was blatant and despicable, and especially painful as Mum was revelling in it like a pig in a mire ('When they get to meet these celebrities, their mum will go too!'). They were hugging themselves with delight when they all went on GMTV with Lorraine Kelly, but when Ms K wrote a disparaging (but truthful) column about their precocious daughter, dad went mad. 'Two-faced cow! All publicity is good publicity...let's face it, Sasha is going to be a household name, and if people make us out to be bad parents, Sasha will be a household name and that will help her career'. As Eddie Yeats used to say in Corrie, 'Oh, nice!'.

* Gareth McLean writes that the show must have been a real treat for paedophiles. I agree; I think a fair few have arrived here with less than honourable intentions.

Gated Community Cred

Oh, what larks breaking the Daily Mail link ban is! It allows me to illustrate that top-selling R&B is about as street as I am. Imagine you are Jay-Z. Who do you want to come to your party? Well, I certainly wouldn't want berks like him or him. Oh, hang on, you got two bits of coverage in a single issue of one magazine! Brilliant!

And can I also add that I don't give a horse's fart about Brangelina's twins. Look at the bloody Mayor and his PR opportunity. Bah.

Talking dirty

There are a million things I ought to be doing - mainly housework - but not only am I posting a blog entry instead, I am doing it whilst watching a TV movie on Five US called Love Is A Four Letter Word, starring Teri Polo and Robert Mailhouse as two lawyers who fall in love. Yes, the Teri Polo and Robert Mailhouse, in a film written by Jill E Blotevogel.

Yup, that's how much I hate housework (paperwork, too). I'll do anything to avoid it, even though it has to be done. This morning, I've already hacked back the jungly bits of the garden, cleaned the kitchen, done a load of hand washing and cooked lunch. I think I deserve a break, but the flat looks like a bomb's hit it, so I am going to have to get my arse into gear (ooh, in the film, Ms Polo as the marriage-avoiding, man-hating lawyer has just accidentally caught the bride's wedding bouquet in her hair! I think we can see where this is going...) and make sure what happens a few months ago never happens again - a friend came over after the pub and was clearly convinced I'd been burgled because of the state of the place.

Oh dear, Teri and Robert have just gone to the beach to avoid the rest of the wedding, oh, and he's just said 'I dumped the last girl I dated as she thought Gorbachev was a brand of vodka', I may well have to go and chain myself to the kitchen sink. Especially as they've just stolen a plot device from When Harry Met Sally. Ooh,and it turns out that our lawyers are individually representing THE OPPOSING PARTIES IN A DIVORCE! Aaaaaaghhhh...

*click*

A Grand Day Out

I'm breaking my self-imposed Daily Mail link ban to bring you this story that Margaret Thatcher will get a state funeral when she shuffles off the mortal coil; the last PM who was accorded this honour was Winston Churchill. Compare and contrast, eh? Sorry, but although I'm not as rabidly 'build a disco on her grave so we can all dance on it' as I used to be, I still think that a lot of the social problems we face today can be linked back to her governments' greed is good/there is no such thing as society policies which include selling off Council housing - still, I think, the most damaging policy of recent times as it's made a level of basic support that we can give people almost disappear. (Spot the New Town kid.) Not really something I think worth celebrating, frankly.

A pal was telling me that he's been spending time with youthful political activists, and that they have absolutely no comprehension of the divisive days of Thatch and her cronies. Ask your Nana, or Steve Bell, a great chronicler of the Eighties in the Guardian, kids. Even I wouldn't deny that her changes were all bad, but I do think that British society became very unkind under her leadership.

Anyway, if the funeral goes ahead, you'd think Maggie would be delighted that all the troops are over in the Middle East defending 'democracy', wouldn't you? My name's Ben Elton - goodnight!

Mmmmmeat

Back from a meat-based lunch. Saw this. Laughed.

'Extraordinary how potent cheap music is'

This song came on the radio this afternoon. It took me rather by surprise; I hadn't heard it for absolutely ages, and I forgot what a punch in the solar plexus it packs for me. I felt emotionally hijacked on hearing it as it reminds me of some rather unhappy times. I feel the same way about this, even though it's a fantastic record - I think it's the bit about the people on the bus that's so evocative of filthy London nights in the dark of winter when it's all going pear-shaped that hammers the gloom home. I tend to avoid these two tracks like the plague as they make me feel desperately uneasy - but that's the power of music, isn't it?

I think these are the only two songs that I just can't bear to listen to at all; but there are those that it's actually quite nice to wallow in when you're glad to be unhappy. So if you feel the need to have an interlude of feeling a bit miserable, may I recommend this, this, this, this and this.

Now, blow your nose and let's have a nice restorative cup of tea whilst I get this thing out of my eye, eh?

The Workplace

Swung up to Soho yesterday for a lunchtime coffee with my chum. It was a lovely day and we had a couple of really good 'flatties' that left me bouncing all afternoon (I was lively enough to start with; I really ought not to mainline caffeine). I really do love Soho, and I thought about how lovely it would be to work there - it's such a proper little community with people who seem to know each other, and lots of undiscovered nooks and corners. Camden - where I work now - is full of nasty shops and nastier smells, even if it does house the 10p basement.

It got me to thinking about all the locations I've worked in over the past 120 years - hold on to your hats, there have been a lot of jobs.

Stevenage - I worked in bars and caffs, and for the Council when I was one of Thatch's Millions on some ludicrous job creation scheme after I left college. It was horrid; working with silly old women who'd been there forever, and who smelt like fags; also working with people who came into work reeking of alcohol - you'd never find a journalist doing that....

Clerkenwell - that was before it were fashionable. There was bugger all to do apart from visit Leather Lane market and the Hat and Tun - known to us regulars as the Hat and Scum - pub. Still, I did discover The Three Kings, always a reliably lovely boozer.

Watford - not as bad as I thought, apart from one of the bosses who was an old moo, and when I last heard of her, she was a psychotherapist. No doubt fixing up the people she'd screwed up in her career. Scene of many outrageous pub nights, including trousers being dropped; for a change, not mine.

Swiss Cottage - one of London's most nothingy areas, I think, most notable for the Odeon and the pub on a road island. Used to have one or two of those rather old-fashioned restaurants half-full of elderly Eastern European emigres, which was rather sweet.

White City - never have I felt less part of London, and indeed, life. Working, albeit briefly, in a big, soulless building with nowhere to go at lunchtime was grim in extremis.

Holborn - on the edge of Covent Garden. This was a lovely office with a big skylight. Its proximity to shops made it v. expensive, but I've still got the classic leather jacket I bought when the magazine I was working on launched.

Charlotte Street - echoes of Lloyd Cole and The Commotions. Nice office covered with bizarre pin-ups like Harry Hill on a badger, Peter Stringfellow in a thong, and the Trainspotting poster with the actors heads replaced with those of kittens. Easy access to the West End and the original Bertorellis. The magazine closed. Boo.

Docklands - awful, but not the most awful place I've ever worked, location-wise anyway. At least you could go for an ADB Meeting at Asda over the road (All Day Breakfast) and buy beverages for Two Teas at Le Munch Bunch. Or wet yourself on the way back from the Chinese Boat. Er. That's about it.

Shaftesbury Avenue - lovely offices, again, so expensively handy for Covent Garden. Shame it didn't last due to being headhunted to work on a hopeless magazine by a boss who let me and a colleague go two months, three weeks and four days into our probationary periods. Still, who needs to be patronised by a ludicrously dull publisher and have to lie for your boss when she says to tell the staff she's gone to the dentist and comes back with a different hairdo. Hmm. I did get to meet one of the people who is now a favourite blogger, though, but he won't remember me.

High Street Kensington - Shoppers's paradise. That's about it. Bought some amazing cow-print shoes. Went for lunch with a Gladiator. Lots of time in the Royal Garden Hotel with the world's most bizarre selection of folk. Worst work journey ever, though. I asked an LU staff member how long the next Circle Line train would be; he replied 'How the fuck should I know?'.

Baker Street - a bus hop from Selfridges. Good fun. Nice kosher restaurant with excellent salt beef. We soon decamped to the South Bank, next to Waterloo Station. I lasted not very long before being made redundant by the world's strangest company.

Canary Wharf - Now this was my most-loathed location. Pretty to visit, this particular hell-hole is full of dull types who think they're lots of fun, especially when they change into their Ralph Lauren polo shirts for a Friday night getting drunk in one of the many horrible pubs and bars and go home, vomiting, in an account cab. It felt like working on the moon. Awful.

And it's been pretty much Camden all the way ever since. Here's to a little eyrie in Wardour Street next time, where every tea break involves a walk to Maison Bertoux for a pot of English Breakfast and something delicious with raspberries and cream. My treat.

Tat's yer lot

I think this is my new fave tattoo. Although this slightly wonky one works for me, too. However, this woman has the most bizarre I've ever seen. Mice and...well, you know.