http://lejournaldelaphotographie.com/entries/10393/a-love-letter-from-emilie-blachere-to-remi-ochlik
I can't.
God, it's so hard to not to know something even approaching this.
Sunday, March 03, 2013
Monday, December 31, 2012
Box set
'Oh, we spend the weekend with a load of box sets.' That's what smug couples say, isn't it? All lovely and cosy and Christmassy, snuggled up with a box of appallng chocolates and each other.
I've just spent three days by myself with some box sets. Weather so appalling, not worth going out. Haven't seen or spoken to anyone. Oh, met someone for an early dinner last week, someone I met ages ago at a work thing. Nice bloke, all got quite flirty. Realised he seemed more familar than someone I met a year ago should. Then I realised that his girlfriend had written about their relationship quite a lot. With pictures. Funny how she never got mentioned, innit?
Anyway. Now I have to haul these old bones out to pretend to have a good time when I'd rather stay in. But what's the point when you're only company is a four-disc Scandicrime box set?
Fuck you, 2013.
I've just spent three days by myself with some box sets. Weather so appalling, not worth going out. Haven't seen or spoken to anyone. Oh, met someone for an early dinner last week, someone I met ages ago at a work thing. Nice bloke, all got quite flirty. Realised he seemed more familar than someone I met a year ago should. Then I realised that his girlfriend had written about their relationship quite a lot. With pictures. Funny how she never got mentioned, innit?
Anyway. Now I have to haul these old bones out to pretend to have a good time when I'd rather stay in. But what's the point when you're only company is a four-disc Scandicrime box set?
Fuck you, 2013.
Friday, November 30, 2012
I was in love once
It was lovely. It lifted me. It didn't last. And life without love or loving is pointless.
Monday, October 29, 2012
A house is not a home
Am currently looking for somewhere to live. It's nice; a new start somewhere else, but the aggro factor is high as ever. And for the singleton, the aggro factor is ramped up by a few degrees as ever. It's expensive, of course, with nobody to share the cost with, and it's also miserable schlepping around the homes with only an estate agent who keeps saying 'yourself' instead of 'you' to keep you company, and just wants your money.
And I never thought house-hunting could bring on intimations of mortality. When you realise you can't have a long-term mortgage as you're too old, you think 'WTF am I doing this for, anyway?'. 'What are the priorities for yourself?' asks the ten-year-old estate agent. Personally, I just want somewhere where the ceiling won't collapse, and I can be as far away from this arsehole as possible. Anything else is just gravy, because it's not really a home, is it?
A home is...somewhere with a heart. Somewhere beyond somewhere to shut the door and shut out the world, somewhere where you want to go. Somewhere where there's another warm body to go home to. Before I die, I would love to have somebody I care about, and who cares about me to go home to, but I fear that wherever I end up will be just another box with some stuff in it, until I end up in a box.
And I never thought house-hunting could bring on intimations of mortality. When you realise you can't have a long-term mortgage as you're too old, you think 'WTF am I doing this for, anyway?'. 'What are the priorities for yourself?' asks the ten-year-old estate agent. Personally, I just want somewhere where the ceiling won't collapse, and I can be as far away from this arsehole as possible. Anything else is just gravy, because it's not really a home, is it?
A home is...somewhere with a heart. Somewhere beyond somewhere to shut the door and shut out the world, somewhere where you want to go. Somewhere where there's another warm body to go home to. Before I die, I would love to have somebody I care about, and who cares about me to go home to, but I fear that wherever I end up will be just another box with some stuff in it, until I end up in a box.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
The Invisible Woman
I find myself out of town for work purposes on this Bank Holiday weekend, at an event where egos are rampant, and anyone over 40 who turns up by themselves is a *makes L-sign with forefinger and thumb, raises hand to forehead*.
It's a scene I'm so not part of any more; I haven't attended said event for at least 20 years and the whole industry must have gone through several incarnations since then - most of the attendees at parties too noisy for me to bear were old enough to be my kids. Aagh.
It was one of the many occasions where I've found myself in some of the world's loveliest places, but on my own (and in this case where I find folk especially unfriendly, even some people I thought I knew a bit. Hey ho). This time a couple of years ago, I was in a five-star hotel in Rome, exploring the city by myself. I've been to Tokyo, Barcelona, New York, Cairo; you name it, there's been nobody else to share the experience. It's lovely to be able to travel and see amazing places, but when there's nobody to say 'Remember when we went to Deauville?' to, and none of your holiday snaps have you in them, it's pretty hopeless.
On this train is a young guy from Cardiff University, chatting up a pretty blonde American girl and I have a feeling that this moment will end up in his speech at their wedding, as they've met on the train. Earlier, there was also one of those golden, John Lewis, nice couples, with two gorgeous little boys, one with yummy red hair, and another baby on the way. And me, rattling out bitter rants on the laptop as I rush back home to spend a bit more quality time with myself over what remains of the long weekend.
When I get off the train, nobody will be there to pick me up. I'll buy a bottle of wine and an individual ready meal, and go home to an empty house, and think about anthropologist Margaret Mead's quote : 'One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don't come home at night'. If I didn't come home, not a soul would give me a second thought.
I loathe a Bank Holiday, especially this one. A few years back I had an especially lovely one. I might have know it would all turn to shit in the end. With me it always does. I think I can actually feel the neurons that connect me with other people frizzling out like an old lightbulb, but the good news is that I think I'm on the verge of not actually caring about being by myself all the time.
Complete lunacy beckons.
It's a scene I'm so not part of any more; I haven't attended said event for at least 20 years and the whole industry must have gone through several incarnations since then - most of the attendees at parties too noisy for me to bear were old enough to be my kids. Aagh.
It was one of the many occasions where I've found myself in some of the world's loveliest places, but on my own (and in this case where I find folk especially unfriendly, even some people I thought I knew a bit. Hey ho). This time a couple of years ago, I was in a five-star hotel in Rome, exploring the city by myself. I've been to Tokyo, Barcelona, New York, Cairo; you name it, there's been nobody else to share the experience. It's lovely to be able to travel and see amazing places, but when there's nobody to say 'Remember when we went to Deauville?' to, and none of your holiday snaps have you in them, it's pretty hopeless.
On this train is a young guy from Cardiff University, chatting up a pretty blonde American girl and I have a feeling that this moment will end up in his speech at their wedding, as they've met on the train. Earlier, there was also one of those golden, John Lewis, nice couples, with two gorgeous little boys, one with yummy red hair, and another baby on the way. And me, rattling out bitter rants on the laptop as I rush back home to spend a bit more quality time with myself over what remains of the long weekend.
When I get off the train, nobody will be there to pick me up. I'll buy a bottle of wine and an individual ready meal, and go home to an empty house, and think about anthropologist Margaret Mead's quote : 'One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don't come home at night'. If I didn't come home, not a soul would give me a second thought.
I loathe a Bank Holiday, especially this one. A few years back I had an especially lovely one. I might have know it would all turn to shit in the end. With me it always does. I think I can actually feel the neurons that connect me with other people frizzling out like an old lightbulb, but the good news is that I think I'm on the verge of not actually caring about being by myself all the time.
Complete lunacy beckons.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Hopeless
What do you do when you finally realise you've run out of hope? It happened to me just now and I am at a loss in every way. A middle aged woman who men are not interested in, all wrapped up in a package of 'oh, you're really great, let's be friends while I go off with my flatmate/your mate (who I've hoped you'd line up for me)'; therefore destined never to have a child. Too late now. Hopelessly lonely.
The Bad Egg cracked me a long time ago, but now I'm finally broken.
The Bad Egg cracked me a long time ago, but now I'm finally broken.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
What I've become
You remember that film Notes On A Scandal? That horrible, bitter
spinster Barbara, as played by Judi Dench? That's who I've turned into ;
a lonely, pathetic figure unable to take any pleasure in anything,
least of all other people's happiness. And treating her diary like her
only friend; why I'm writing this here, of course, in typical self-pity mode.
Out in Soho tonight (with somebody else's husband, of course), I felt as if I was in a montage in a movie. It felt like I was walking through the streets, my life staying exactly the same as I walked along with my freezing hands in my pockets, but other people's lives were changing. When I first knocked around the place, friends were single, childless, like me. Now the place, and my life, are filled with coupled-up people, people with little children, people with children at school, people with children who have left university, people whose lives have had peaks and troughs; different stages. I saw them all looking into the windows of the West End bars and restaurants; friends, new dates, old dates, couples on date nights. Changing, changing, changing in the montage, but in the midst of that I'm still walking along to Leicester Square on my own and going home to a crap-hole of an empty flat.
Going out alone, coming home alone never changes. Getting older, being alone never changes. Trying to change things never changes; somehow I always end up raising my hopes and getting a big smack in the face. Same same same. I've stopped feeling anything very much, certainly feeling close to anyone or anything. My parents have been dead for almost 20 years; when other people's parents die it's very hard to remember how I felt when mine died. It's another country, one with a vestige of unconditional love in it. Once your parents go, you're on your own when it comes to being rated by other people. And of course, most people find someone who chooses to be with them because they quite like them, which is pretty nice.
And some people don't. Some people have to rely on themselves, unanchored by parents, partners or children, like me, and let me tell you that it's a vile place to be. It's living a life, but not being touched by much in it. People move on, die, reject, bullshit; it's so much easier not to get involved with anything as it can only end in disappointment. It makes you terribly selfish, but you do it because it makes you hard, and feeling nothing is preferable to feeling things too deeply. It also makes you feel like a freak, so you turn your back on people even more.
Another 20 years of walking into parties alone, and leaving the same way? No thanks.
Out in Soho tonight (with somebody else's husband, of course), I felt as if I was in a montage in a movie. It felt like I was walking through the streets, my life staying exactly the same as I walked along with my freezing hands in my pockets, but other people's lives were changing. When I first knocked around the place, friends were single, childless, like me. Now the place, and my life, are filled with coupled-up people, people with little children, people with children at school, people with children who have left university, people whose lives have had peaks and troughs; different stages. I saw them all looking into the windows of the West End bars and restaurants; friends, new dates, old dates, couples on date nights. Changing, changing, changing in the montage, but in the midst of that I'm still walking along to Leicester Square on my own and going home to a crap-hole of an empty flat.
Going out alone, coming home alone never changes. Getting older, being alone never changes. Trying to change things never changes; somehow I always end up raising my hopes and getting a big smack in the face. Same same same. I've stopped feeling anything very much, certainly feeling close to anyone or anything. My parents have been dead for almost 20 years; when other people's parents die it's very hard to remember how I felt when mine died. It's another country, one with a vestige of unconditional love in it. Once your parents go, you're on your own when it comes to being rated by other people. And of course, most people find someone who chooses to be with them because they quite like them, which is pretty nice.
And some people don't. Some people have to rely on themselves, unanchored by parents, partners or children, like me, and let me tell you that it's a vile place to be. It's living a life, but not being touched by much in it. People move on, die, reject, bullshit; it's so much easier not to get involved with anything as it can only end in disappointment. It makes you terribly selfish, but you do it because it makes you hard, and feeling nothing is preferable to feeling things too deeply. It also makes you feel like a freak, so you turn your back on people even more.
Another 20 years of walking into parties alone, and leaving the same way? No thanks.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
The World's Greatest Unsung Heartthrob
Paul Quinn. The voice, the looks, the 'tude. Still turns me inside out almost 20 years on.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Not fair
I'm permanently angry about this, but what to do? The report on HMRC this week made me especially apoplectic; the implication was that the organisation felt that it was a law unto itself. Excuse me, you collect taxes for the benefit of all of us, you're part of government and not a private bloody club. And you wonder what will be the result of the report anyway - a mild wrist-slapping and a nice job for Dave Hartnett at Goldman Sachs, probably.
Whilst I admire the actions of UK Uncut, their actions, whilst drawing attention to the appalling abuse of power by big companies, what actual change is happening? And the St Paul's and Finsbury Square protesters - like, what? How many of these people have any real understanding of society and the world of work? And I'm very interested in their supporters - I understand that some of the protesters have been receiving gifts of clothing, including cashmere sweaters; nice for the rich (possibly City bankers themselves?) to drop off a few secondhand woolies, nicer still if they didn't take bonuses for being shit, and paid the tax they should.
No political parties stand up for any kind of radical change against the rich, who are screwing the rest of us (along with feckless bastards at the other end of the scale, but a large slice of money from the rich - non tax-deductible, please - might help put these people on the right road). This great piece by Richard Murphy sums it up for me, especially the quote: 'What they’re saying is the bankers have won, the shift in wealth in the economy is permanent, there’s nothing we can do about it so austerity for most whilst a few enjoy massive wealth without responsibility is the new order we must accept.We do so at our peril. Down that route lies social chaos and worse.'
We need some kind of revolution, and Ed Milliband might get me on his side if he suggested starting it, but as a campaigning leader, he's as useless as a chocolate teapot. All I want is for someone to take the radical decision to take society back to a level playing field, where we all pay our FAIR share, but I don't know how to start, beyond banning programmes about billionaire heiresses taking their dogs for a beauty treatment and any Chelsea trust-funders.
Does anyone have a way out of this, or do I have to start throwing bricks through the windows of merchant banks, screaming 'Stop whining, you fuckers'?
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