Wibble wobble

It’s been a funny week so far… after a little wobble at the weekend (probably brought on by not enough sleep or getting out of bed on the wrong side), which had me thinking ‘why am I here in Singapore? What am I doing? Why don’t I go back to London?’, I’m now loving it again. Every week that passes by I see more of this country and experience the kindness of the people. Because everyone speaks English, well, Singlish to be precise, lah, it’s easy to ignore the cultural differences and expect things to be as they are at home. But Asia is Asia, and I’m only just beginning to understand the Chinese culture. Living with a Chinese family is probably the best thing I’ve done in my whole adult life, just being with them and chatting about their experiences, views on the world etc has opened up my mind to a whole other world. Lucy, who’s the same age as my mum and just as lovely, is teaching me to cook Chinese food. So far I can make Hainese Chicken Rice, Char Siew (Chinese Roast pork), Roti Jalu (India lacy pancakes) and dumplings! Legend. When I’m back I promise to have you all round for a feast…

Ooo it's warm out here!

I've been meaning to write something about the weather for ages, but have procrastinated as I didn't want to appear like I was bragging or anything. It's been between 28 and 34 degrees since I arrived and it's now hotting up even more. The thing is, the heat doesn't bother me in itself, in fact it's quite nice to be wearing flip flops all the time, but couple that with the damp humidity and you're in a whole world of trouble! I hadn't really experienced humidity like it until coming here, I suppose it is a tropical climate though! I've adopted various tactics from the locals to aclimatise to the stickiness:

• Wearing two layers rather than one, the bottom one absorbs all the sweat, even though you do get a bit hotter
• Putting something called a 'thirsty hippo' into my wardrobe. This hippo absorbs the moisture from the air and stops my clothes going mouldy
• Putting a damp cloth on the floor in my room before I go to bed so that I don't wake up like a shrivelled orange from the air con
• Moth balls ... hmmm. All my clothes smell of them, but better than being holey
• Don't walk anywhere, ever, if you can help it. Not even to the end of the road

If you're reading this wearing four layers and a hat to keep the draught from coming in then I apologise. I would change places with you tomorrow.... ummm, can you hear the insincerity in my tone?

Japanese wisdom...

"Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who's in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It's like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven't seen in a long time."

Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

Ballet

I finally made it to ballet this week! I just couldn't live without it, my legs were turning into jelly and my back was getting all lazy and rounded. So, with anticipation and a nervous excitement I ventured to Tanjong Pagar to be the new girl in the elementry class at a performing arts school. I love ballet, I can't explain it in words, but something in me is addicted to the combination of beauty and structure that it entails. I'm rubbish, and I'll never be a ballerina, but in pointed feet and graceful arms I've found a home, something to calm and soothe and warm my heart. There were only seven of us in the calm, white studio, an attentive teacher encouraging and faithful to the art that has captured these few girls in a hot city. I'm about 100% happier now, I must be easily pleased :-)

Frothy tea anyone?

Starbucks really are missing out on one mother of a marketing opportunity… Haven’t they heard of a tea-chino or a milo-chino, or a horlicks-chino for that matter? Obviously not. Well I think they’re missing out. Today I tentatively stuck my neck out and tried a ‘tea-chino’ in my local Muslim Indian seafood restaurant. For starters, I caused a bit of a stir by virtue of being a Caucasian woman dining alone, but once I’d managed to establish that I knew what to order and how to pronounce ‘roti prata’ in just the right accent, the over-attentive waiter with bad moustache left me alone. A few seconds after ordering (better service than Starbucks), a beer mug of frothy tea, with a head that deserved the glass, appeared in front of Jules’ eager eyes. I’ve never fancied frothy tea, assuming it was caused by lime scale and unidentifiable bits in the kettle, but this was lush… sweet with an illusion of ginger somewhere in there… The ladies at work think I’m really adventurous, maybe I’ll show them just how adventurous I am and order a ‘horlicks dinosaur’* next time…

* that’s a little mystery for you all… answers on a comment and dinner to anyone who can guess what it is. (Singaporeans not allowed to answer!)

Clementi, Thursday, 8.53pm

Ebony sky
Five stars, seven
Palm trees,
A slither of moon, silver
I see,
From my water vantage.

Splish, splash, my ears tickle,
Hands pull through cool treacle.

Alone in my paradise,
I marvel,
At cool water,
And a bikini
In February.

Miss you, you miss...

Ahhh how I miss certain things from home... I decided to make a list of what they were to weigh up if it was really all that bad living without them for six months:

• Unsweetened soya milk (everything here is full of sugar)
• Green & Blacks, though was sent some recently so kinda ok
• A friend in a stripy jumper and flat cap
• Houmous, yeah baby, the Greeks have yet to make it to my neighbourhood
• Oat cakes - I actually paid S$6.50 for some recently, that's the same price as two chicken dinners
• Being able to walk for more than five minutes without being drowned in sweat and ready to sit down
• A duvet to sleep under (way too hot)
• You
• Ballet, I miss it so much!
• My bike, especially the basket.

That's pretty much it, so not going too badly. I think I'll survive!

Aussie Archtitecture

Turn a corner in this great Australian city, and your eyes will no doubt great something of brilliant man-made beauty... the photos don't do justice to the city holding this year's Commenwealth games next month, but you get the idea...

This silver cubist form holds the state art collection... not quite as impressive as the Tate Modern, but then I'm probably biased!

A big artichoke? Or something more ephemeral?

Blogiversary

I'd like to coin a new word... 'blogiversary'. Today it's almost exactly one year since my first posting on this blog... The idea came one weekend when I was away with some friends, and I resolved to write something, anything slightly creative, every day. After a tenative start and some re-assessing throughout, here I am, a year later loving every minute of it. So if you're reading this thanks for your kind words and your time, it makes me smile when I hear that people are enjoying reading my reflections...

Talking of reflections, here's one of me in Federation Square, Melbourne...

How's the pressure m'am?

Now that I lay my little head in a country where the bus fare to work costs 34p and a great meal costs less than £1, there’s a little more room for ‘luxuries’. Feeling like a Stepford Wife I guiltily enjoyed a pedicure after work last week, the first in my 26 and a bit years on this green earth. Sitting reading Asian woman’s magazines with my feet in a rose petal bubble bath, I was temporarily transported into someone else’s life. I tried to imagine what it would be like not to work, but to have all day every day to entertain myself as a lady of leisure. Every weekend I wish that there was an extra life, and I love a holiday as much as the next person, but I really don’t know what I’d do to pass the time… there’s only so much lunching and pampering one can stand. Anyhow, I digress. I left 45minutes later leaving a gorgeous pile of dead skin on the floor that looked rather like desiccated coconut. My toenails are sporting a very fetching shade of pale green, and my heels are soft as a cushion.

So toenails all sparkly, I was feeling slightly too excited for my own good when myself and two friends decided to book into the 'Javanese Massage Hut' at the end of my road for a one hour 'full body' massage. I've had a 'full body' before, so thought I knew what to expect. I'm pretty o-fey with being almost entirely naked in front of a complete stranger, and anyway, there were going to be two friends lying next to me. So in we go, laughing hysterically at the paper knickers and loving the smell of the herbal oils. What none of us were prepared for though was the Javanese definition of 'full body'. I know there are men reading this so I won't elaborate, but let's just say there was touching in places I wasn't expecting...

Places I've been to, tra la la...

Now that I've seen a bit more of the world, here's a map showing the countries I've visited... it's a pitiful 8% of the world, but I'm hoping to add a few more over the next few months...

G'day!

My gorgeous friend Graham once went out with an Austrian girl who used to complain that everyone's view of her home country was based solely on The Sound Of Music. I remember thinking this was quite funny, and then realising in horror that my view of Austria really was based on the singing Von Trapp family! I was ashamed and tried to rectify the situation with a quick google search and a vow never to be in the same narrow-minded place again.

This morning as I woke to the sun stretching his fingers through an unfamiliar window, I heard the sound of a small animal screaching outside... My brain works on go-slow at that time of the morning but today the realisation I was 'down under' kinda hit me at top speed. (I'm the furthest away from home I've ever been in my entire 26 and a bit years of existence, yet everything feels normal. Anyway, I digress.) The lady I was staying with had told me that the screaching sound was the noise of 'little possums' (said in a Dame Edna-esque voice!) outside. "Do you know about possums?" she asked? "Oh yeah," I said. "Hannah from Neighbours adopted one once..." Arrrggghhh!! I suddenly realised that my view of Australia was based almost wholly on a bad tv soap... Must be more cultured and wise. Must be more cultured and wise...

Internet Junkie

Do you find your life incredibly liberated by, yet stupidly restrained by the internet? Take this week, I have a ‘to do’ list that’s a fairly impressive length, and more than half of the stuff on there requires surfing before I can smugly draw a tick in the little box I draw next to each item. It’s not that I mind, in fact I really love looking stuff up online, it avoids travel agents, going to the train station, speaking to real people about my bank account, but it’s also really anti-social. I figure I could spend two evenings this week and still not get all the stuff I want done finished. Hmmm. What to do? I could always get up really early, go to Starbucks and connect to wi-fi and drink cappuccino, but hang on, I’m walking the dog, and if I were to get up any earlier I’m sure my legs and arms will fall off before I even made it into the shower, they’re so heavy early in the morning! Well, maybe I’ll just relax and hang loose and look forward to the weekend in Australia before I tick all the boxes…

Monkey monkey

Well here's a picture of a monkey made of pink flowers hugging a post in a shopping centre... now you don't see that very day, do you?! I think this particular monkey had something to do with Chinese New Year, but you can't be too sure.

Anyway, the exciting news is that I'm off to Melbourne tomorrow! Can hardly contain my excitement, I'm sure I'll be awake all night with excitement. Speaking of being awake all night, I have been having trouble sleeping due to being woken up by by a fat cockroach running across my floor two nights running.... and you thought you were jealous of the tropical climate!

Loving Life

I’ve just had the most lovely weekend ever… sometimes life is so good that I can’t quite believe it, if I shut my eyes I almost believe it won’t be there when I open them again. I’ve been here for just over a month and things are getting more familiar… I have a routine, (including walking the aforementioned pooch), and have established a couple of favourite lunch places, as well as a much longer list of things I’d really rather not ever eat again in this life… I’ve gone swimming loads, loving the warmth of the water and the sun on wet skin, and have developed the habit of carrying my bikini around with me on the off chance I’ll be invited somewhere with a pool (happens quite often!) The lifestyle here is certainly one I could get used to. I miss my friends and family from home, and the Tate Modern (!) but apart from that I’m happy. Love it! As my gorgeous friend Tana would say!

More tea?

My landlady is a top cook, she thinks nothing of whipping up four dishes for dinner in half an hour, all with ingredients I haven’t even seen before, let alone tasted… so you can imagine the fear when she asked me to teach her ‘British cooking’. Now, us Brits now that while we can all whip up an Uncle Ben’s sweet and sour or a thai curry with ready made paste, it’s another thing to be Delia Smith with the old beef and Yorkshires… Rather than starting with something complicated I suggested scones, even though they’re really a bit boring and don’t take much effort to do. She absolutely loved it! We made about 80 on the table in the garden, no joke, flour everywhere and the smell of baking competing with next door’s fried bee hoon. Hilariously we then sat down to a cream tea with Earl Grey and jam and cream… it was ace. I thought the English cream tea was all over until I found that while I was out the following day, her and her husband set up a table in front of a row of sunflowers in the garden. They brought out the best china and set up the scones on a cake stand, donned their best clothes and took photos of themselves eating the scones!! Don’t you just love it! I was glad to be of service to the Chinese community. In return I learnt how to make wantons, be warned, they look easy but mine tasted of glue.

Pix at last...

Can you believe it! I’ve finally managed to get a laptop which means I can download my photos and make you all envious of blue skies (except when it’s raining), lying by the pool all weekend and eating unidentifiable food.. talking of which, here’s a few pix of Chinatown at Chinese New Year including some of the ‘delicacies’ that are eaten/endured at this time of year. The green pear shaped things are pomelos, kinda like a big sweet grapefruit, and the stuff hanging up is Chinese sausage ... yum.

Rain

So what’s new? It’s getting hotter here… the rain has stepped up in defense of the rising temperatures too. I don’t think I can ever call the trickling from the sky that we get in England rain again. Walk one metre in Singapore’s afternoon monsoon and your clothes become part of you cos they’re so stuck to your skin. Hmmm. I’ve learnt that forgetting your umbrella is the equivalent of social suicide. If it’s raining you’re basically stuck where you are until it stops.. fine if the storm lasts ten minutes, but not so funny if it pours for an hour. Catching a cab in the rain is also a feat similar to not falling off the luge in the winter Olympics.

Koala

Just got back from a hot weekend in Kuala Lumpur. I'm still not completely set-up computer-wise, so you'll have to imagine the photo of me at the Petronas towers... KL was cool. I hadn't realised how this tiny island can start to feel a bit claustrophobic... everything here is squeaky clean (I saw a man cleaning the road signs the other day), and I was desperate for a bit of raw reality. So I set off with my toothbrush, sunscreen, bikini (well a girl can dream!) and hopes for a change of scenery and the 'real' Asia. The bus journey takes five hours and was better than any I've ever taken in the UK, this was no National Express. The seats were huge and reclined, we were served lunch and snacks of watermelon and red bean dumplings at various stages along the way and best of all the journey actually took the time it said it would.

Highlights of KL included:

- buying a pair of really nice sandals for less than 4 pounds
- eating chey keow in Chinatown just next to a lady killing frogs by whacking them on the head with a hammer (hang on, that shouldn't be in the highlights section, you call yourself an editor?!)
- sleeping for a really long time in a king size bed (yes on my own!)
- watching or should I say listening to the lion dance for Chinese New Year as it went through Starbucks to bring 'luck and prosperity'

Walkies

Do you ever find yourself in a comedy situation and wonder how you got there? This seems to happen to me more regularly than I consider funny, but hey, makes life more interesting. I asked myself this exact question this morning as I was dragging a very old dog through a park at 7.30 am. Now, for those of you who know me, even a little bit, you'll know that Jules + early morning = bad idea. Most of my good friends have learned not to even try to engage me in conversation until I've been up for at least three quarters of an hour. I'm grumpy in the morning, I know it and I don't pretend to be otherwise. Also, I don't really like dogs. (I was going to say I 'hate' them, but I think hate is a very strong word. A friend of mine tells her kids to say something isn't their 'cup of tea' as it's more polite... so to clarify, dog's aren't my cuppa of choice.) So when my new neighbour asked if I'd mind walking her old boxer dog while she's on holiday, I said yes. What was I thinking?! I can only assume that the rational part of my brain was otherwise engaged in watching a gekko or something. So, for the next two weeks the girl with clothes hastily thrown on, pulling an old dog through Cheng Seung past the ladies doing tai chi is (unfortunately), me.

The case of the invisible photos

Everyone wants to see photos... I'm sorry to say that I haven't quite got 'round to installing the software from my camera to upload them... Watch this space though, I may become organised overnight and treat you all to a colourful slideshow!

Things I've Eaten over Chinese New Year

(Knowingly or unknowingly, not sure which is better):

Fish heads
Sea cucumber
Liver (raw)
Chicken feet
Dried oysters
Black moss
Insects (though later realised they actually weren't supposed to be in the dish)
Abalone (anyone who can tell me what it is wins a prize)
Pigs' insides (didn't ask which bit)
Some glutunous stuff wrapped in peanuts

Oh for a ham sandwich....

Meatballs

The other day it was one of my new work colleague's birthdays. I only found out on the day itself and was immediately concerned about my lack of card/present/bunch of flowers for the birthday girl. But no need to fear, it soon transpired that no one else had anything to give her either... perhaps they're not that into presents, or maybe it's too near to Chinese New Year for anyone to bother. Time went on and someone did suggest that we take her out for lunch, and a discussion started about where we should go. I was only half-listening, I've been involved in many of these discussions with my London workmates, and know how boring they can get. Also, since being here I often can't quite tune my ear into the place names and the conversation is often half conducted in Mandarin. So 1pm comes, my stomach is saying 'I'm hungry but please no more carbs!' and we clamber into a taxi. Ten minutes later we arrive at our destination... it can't be, no. Someone's joking! No, really this is it, we're here. Where did we go for lunch guys? You'll never guess... Ikea! Yes, the Swedish furniture shop! It seems that meatballs and salmon hollandaise are the height of trendiness in these parts, maybe the equivalent of Itsu at Brompton Cross...

So when I'm back and offer to take you for a birthday lunch, just watch out, we may be buying a kitchen on the way out.

Everything and nothing

So, ten or so days since leaving the UK, what has changed? Well, everything and nothing. I'm here in the office with a decaf soya latte from Starbucks. Earlier, I chatted to the girl at the coffee counter about the weather in London (everyone asks how cold it is... but how can you describe what four degrees and wind chill feels like to people who live so near the equator?), and then stepped out into the (warm) rain to go back the office. I'm here at my computer and as I look up I can see photos of people I know, books I've worked on, resources I've helped produce. At lunch today I ate dried chilli chicken and rice, which came with a rather nice fried egg on top... a bit of a change from Pret A Manger. I'm craving carrot sticks and houmous, and wholemeal bread with seeds in it. I'm sure I can buy all those things but it's not really the authentic Asian experience.

What'ya gonna be?

A new country offers constant scope for comparison with the familiar. Things I've accepted as 'normal' are up for questioning, and other things are just plain weird.

Every bank in Singapore seems to be running some kind of ad campaign along the lines of: 'What if your child exceeds your expectations? Plan now for a great education.' One shows a photo of heavily pregnant woman with the caption, 'Doctor? Engineer? Start saving now to release your child's potential.' Something in me revolts at the sentiment behind all of this - that people are valued because of what they do or achieve, rather than who they are. Why doesn't the ad say 'Great friend? Caring teacher? Start loving now to protect your child's mental health'? The implication is that you wouldn't be proud of producing kids who don't make it to the top of some career structure. I've heard that deaf people here are given a really raw deal - some only get primary education because there's a feeling that someone who can't hear is never going to achieve anything anyway, so it's best just get them out to work as fast as you possibly can. Maybe I've got it wrong and I'm sure (well hoping) that the ad man has more to do with this than the general sentiment, but I'm not so sure.

King Bean

If you want to be hip, be a soya bean! Everyone loves the humble bean in Asia. I love soy and I'm in Asia , so I guess that's a good thing... At home people react with a mixture of horror, disdain or annoyance when I order soya milk in a coffee shop. I'm sure they suspect I'm only doing it to be cool, or different, it's so trendy to be intolerant to something nowadays. But here, soya is so cool! Everyone loves it! Soya drinks come in cans and are proudly chilled next to the coca-cola and green tea in restaurant fridges. I must admit, I still haven't got to the stage of drinking it straight, but stranger things have happened... Downtown there's a whole shop/cafe that only sells stuff made from soya... fake ice cream, bread with soy in it, cakes, a zillion flavours of soya drinks. I can't imagine it catching on in London as most people I know wretch at the thought of the lack of animal fat in their white stuff.

Naked Truth

Can you believe it? A man got arrested here recently for walking around naked. Hmmm. Ok, a bit harsh I thought, but then it's not really great to be scaring small children is it? He might not have been very attractive either... Hang on, the story continues.... he was arrested for walking around naked where? No, you can't be serious? IN HIS OWN HOME!! Imagine. He's now been sent for psychological testing and will be fined or sent to prison for this indescretion. I'm now getting worried... it's so flipping hot here, what if I inadvertently let the towel slip as I'm stepping into my room after a shower? Eeekkk! Better buy a bath robe...

The Kindness of Strangers

I remember thinking before I came out to Singapore that for the first time in ages, possibly in my whole life, I was going to have to rely on the kindness of strangers. When you come to a country knowing not a soul there's little else to do. I can honestly say that I think it's going to be good for me. In some ways my life in London was very much set – not in stone, but in routine, and in the cold country there's always a plethora of people to call up and go out for coffee with. This Sunday I was forced to swallow my 'everyone knows me' identity and start again… I met up with a couple who are friends of friends from home, (in fact, they're famous, every time I'd mentioned Singapore their names came up.) They don't know me, nor I them, yet they were awesome! They completely looked after me and didn't seem to mind as I tagged onto their day out with an ex-pat family. In a few hours we were drinking red wine and playing mah jong on the porch in the last of the balmy evening's light. Ahhhh. The grey London sky is a million miles away.

Arrival

Well, here I am in Asia! I arrived at Changi Airport, jet lagged, hot and slightly apprehensive, to a wall of pink and white orchids and people vacuuming the already-clean carpet vigorously. Coming to a new country there’s a mixture of emotions – a constant battle between nervousness and excitement. Every new experience is evaluated again and again as I try to answer the question 'Am I going to like it here?' A few days on, rested and acclimatised I can safely say that I think I'm gonna love it… more later.

Visa

There's nothing like a trip to the Indian Embassy to increase your heart rate on a Friday morning. I've just spent the best part of four hours sitting in a crowded room with about two hundred others, all shoving and getting stressy, all for an A6 greenish sticker in a passport that will allow me to enter the Dairylea shaped country as many times as I wish for the duration of half a year. I knew it was going to be a laborious task and as such had been putting it off for days until the realisation dawned that my passport wasn't going to walk to The Strand on its own.

At one point, a man in a black beanie hat, a bomber jacket and slightly-too-tight jeans that show his fat thighs to be, err, fat, strides confidently up to the counter. I watch him suspiciously. Now, I know that he was behind me in the queue and that there were at least 300 other poor souls before us, and my calculation tells me that I'm not going to get to the counter for at least another two hours. I'm trying not to get cross when the very stressed lady behind the counter realises what he's up to and sends him to "Please sit down sir and wait your turn like everybody else! What makes you so important?" Ahhh... peace and love and harmony.

Leaving

Is it easier to leave knowing that I'm coming back?
I'm not sure...
I want to change, grow, live a new life
I'm slightly scared that I might change beyond recognition
And outgrow my old life, here.

Packing chaos

Well, here we are in January 2006! Every year I'm astounded by how shocked I get that another year has passed and we're on the cusp of another twelve months. This year feels quite different from other new years though - I'm on the verge of a huge change, moving to Asia and seeing my entire physical, social, personal and work life transform before my eyes. I'm slightly scared, but also hungry for newness. I can't wait to have a new view from my window, a different feel to the sheets on my bed, new voices to hear, food to eat. I'm gonna miss London, my incredible friends, Green & Blacks Maya Gold chocolate, Earl Grey tea and the feel of my wooly coat around my shoulders. I'm sure those things will be replaced by others though... and I'll be back before you know it!

Waste

Have you ever spent a whole lot of energy on something only to realise it was all a complete waste of time?

Things I hate about Christmas

Spending money on presents I know the recepient doesn't really want
Receiving presents I don't really want or need or like
Parsnips
Rubbish trains costing more than normal to take twice as long without a seat
Being away from people I love
Christmas pudding

Things I love about Christmas

Mince pies
Port
Guilt-free TV watching
Cold hands and a warm fire
Family
Cracking nuts
Sparkly lights on trees on the South Bank
Champagne
Loving people
The promise of hope in a gold package

Arrrggghhh!

Where has the time gone? It feels like the last few weeks have been swallowed up by a large whale, just like that, gallons of minutes whoosing into its open mouth. I suppose blogging is a bit like having a pet, you like looking at it but the maintenance can sometimes get a bit laborious, and before you know it people are asking why you haven't fed the screen recently. Perhaps I'll get reported to the Royal Society for the Protection of Blogs.

Asian Adventure

Well everyone, brace yourselves! I've got some news... (those who know me well should probably sit down for this next bit) I'm going to Singapore for six months in January! Soon I'll be wearing summer clothes though it's January and eating asian food outside at night... Can't wait. Please come to visit, you'd be very welcome.

Reflection

Sometimes things aren't quite what they seem. That's been true of my life recently, situations that I've made a snap judgment about have completely turned around, evolved, renewed themselves. On Wimbledon Common recently I stumbled upon this reflection in a pond at the bottom of two small inclines... The surface still as glass and the reflection an exercise in beauty.

Thanks to Sam for the photograph.

Sick

I'm a bit sick at the moment, approximately every 45 seconds a rasping sound leaves my chest, shortly followed by about ten seconds of hacking. I think this is what's known as a 'chesty cough'. It's interesting to note people's reactions. Mothers of small children in crowded tube carriages move their precious youngsters out of reach of my spluttering germs. I don't tell them that the little bundle of goodness is picking up more germs from the tube seat than from coughing commuters such as myself.

Being sick so far has changed my routine in the following ways:

• Sleep or lack of. I've kept myself awake most of the night with my incessant coughing.
• Benylin surely a class A substance?! I don't consider myself to have an addictive personality, but where treacley, sugar sweet, ethanol spiked cough syrup is concerned I don't trust myself.
• Christmas cards: when I should have been out having fun like ordinary people two weeks before Christmas, I managed to make all my cards. Writing them is another matter. Hmmm. Might email everyone instead.
• Food seems to have lost all its taste. It's seems a shame to eat it.

Anyway, when my life gets more interesting I promise to post something more exciting on this blog. Until then, excuse me while I cough my guts up.

Vision

‘without vision the people perish’

A famous person said that, so famous I can’t recollect who on earth it was. There’s truth in those five words, one syllable short of the iambic, yet perfectly balanced. True. For about a year my life has been stagnant, claustrophobic, ‘same-y’ (I discovered recently that our American friends don’t use that word, hence the quotation marks). I’ve walked down the same streets, eaten at the same restaurants, stared through the same sky in the city I love, but it’s all been largely without feeling anything much at all. Each week was just a prelude to the weekend. Each weekend a prelude to another week. Though the sun recedes and the leaves fall the feeling remained, until now. These days I’m so excited sleep alludes me, at 3am I’m thinking of a thousand things that are to come. Walking with you on Wimbledon Common I see scarlet and orange and gold and crushed poppy and pale grey and honey leaves, dappled light refracting through elegant trees, life coming up through the soft earth. I stretch out my arms and breathe in the earthy dampness. There’s a path through the trees, and my eyes are looking down it, sparkling.

Trees

I would really like a Christmas tree this year.

(Re)collection

A few years back, I found myself in a Weatherspoon’s pub at Leeds City Station. I forget what I was doing there, presumably I was about to catch a train and had some few minutes, or hours, to spare. Gorgeous Lizzy and I sat on stools, (this is hazily recollected) sharing a table with two middle-aged Yorkshire women, the path between student and local temporarily open. I had just bought a book called ‘Beyond the Binary’ and it was sitting temptingly on the shiny pub table, waiting for hungry eyes to devour words and thoughts and theory. The lady on our right noticed the book and harped up, ‘Beyond the bin – ary? What’s a bin – ary? Well I never, you young people today!’ ‘It just means opposite,’ I replied, probably a bit smug.

I probably thought I was really intellectual and informed then, now I just know I’ve got a lot to learn and theory never got anyone anywhere, apart from a mental hospital. I still have the book, I looked at it last night as I got into bed. Its blue cloth cover and gold embossed print stared across the room into tired eyes. It has lost its appeal, and I realised with amusement that the only association I have with this tome is Lizzy and I in a smoky pub in a train station, waiting to go somewhere, anywhere, nowhere…

Cinnamon honey

The sun setting gently over Paris yesterday afternoon had a hazy dusting of cinnamon and orange light, which calmly caressed clouds and long-since-painted grey buildings, narrow in their form, reaching up to the sky. For five minutes, no more, I stood on the sixth etage of the Centre Pompidou, nose to the plate glass, with my thin, papery hands blocking out the interior strip gallery lighting. Gratitude poured out – a quasi-religious experience – towards the distance. As far as I could see the nutmeg light was fading, pouring its truth and safety through smeary glass, tired eyes and shiny skin.

I’m safe here, with you.

You muppet

A phone rings. A short pause.

J: ‘Hello?’
A: ‘Hi it’s me.
J: ‘Hi, how are you? Why are you calling in the middle of the day? I’m at work.’
A: ‘I was just calling to say I’m on the train.’
J: ‘Which train?’
A: ‘The train to London.’
J: ‘Oh – why are you coming to London?’
A: ‘To see you, you muppet!’
J: ‘Oh.’
Brain audibly chugs.
J: ‘When did we arrange this?’
A (exasperated): ‘Last week.’

Sigh.

Oh dear. I used to pride myself on having a good memory. Of late, my brain has developed craters. Not just small holes through which I lose phone numbers, forget to take my lunch to work. No, these are huge gapping caverns that swallow whole conversations, situations, meetings, events. Maybe I should start doing the sudoku – isn’t that meant to prevent dementia?

Weather

Lately I’ve been wandering around wondering whether I’m becoming obsessed with the weather. Whether I’m one of those auld before their time old people who use up to a thousand words a day chatting about the heat, or lack, the rain, or lack. This weekend there was the ‘threat of snow’. Next the BBC weather site reported that the place I was heading to for the weekend had ‘driving sleet’ forecast. Neither prediction came true. It just rained a bit and was so cold my knees wouldn’t bend and my friend Alex had to help me over a fallen tree. Temperature has become a perpetual enemy. Like a temperamental gas fire that needs banging and stroking to get it working, I’m at the mercy of heat, cold hands that turn yellow and lose all feeling, lack of warm socks, too hot legs under thermals. Maybe I should live somewhere where it’s sunny all year round… but there’d be nothing to write about.

Wisdom?

Jim Carrey, in a recent interview in Playboy magazine said:

Heaven is on the other side of that feeling you get when you're sitting on the couch and you get up and make a triple-decker sandwich. It's on the other side of that, when you don't make the sandwich. It's about sacrifice.... It's about giving up the things that basically keep you from feeling. That's what I believe, anyway. I'm always asking, "What am I going to give up next?" Because I want to feel.

Decisions, decisions

Is anyone as bad at making decisions as me, I wonder? I have absolutely no faith in my own paper-thin, fickle judgement, especially this week. I’m caught in the middle of one of those ‘between times’ where I’m really not sure what to do. It’s no small matter, and whatever decision I finally come to (assuming I don’t curl up and die of cold in the indecision) will affect pretty much all of my life. I’m being pulled by a string through each ear, looping through my brain, and the pull is tugging a different way every single day. People say all kinds of things, some kind, some heartfelt, some selfish, some wise, some crap nonsense. I’m grateful for them all, but I need to make my mind up. Trouble is it just won’t stay down.

Wintering

It is winter here.

If you get the reference then you're more like me than you thought!

Guy Fawks Night

Some gorgeous photos of this year's fire and noise celebrations at Dan's house. He puts on a good bash!

Cheer up!

A friend sent me a selection of 'the worst album covers ever'. This was my personal favourite!

Belly to the moon

Did you know that tuna fish
Float up to the surface –
Belly to the moon –
Just to cool their heart down?
‘Cos it helps them just to think
About the hurtful things.
I guess it’s just one way
To get them some sedation.

Emiliana Torrini, ‘Tuna Fish’

I suppose we all need to cool our hearts down sometimes… the words floated through the centre of my skull today, between doing what felt like the sixtieth edit of a book I’ve worked on for two years… Reaching the surface must be the most incredible thing for a fish. The promise of light, huge flat rays penetrating the rippling surface and reflecting off anything in its way. The sea is full of life, ever-moving, ever-changing, evermore. There’s nothing stagnant about the ocean. Those tuna fish taking a few seconds to float under the midday sun must be the luckiest creatures in the world…

Tired :-(

Hmmm. Last night was a write-off. Normally, I’m fab at sleeping, snoozing, drowsing, napping, shutting my eyes, drifting off to wherever, whenever. It’s a rare occasion when I lie awake for longer than ten minutes before succumbing to slumber. I’m sure I’ve slept through storms, car chases, police helicopters, endless arguing neighbours. My sister is the same. We’d probably win a family sleep-off. Anyway, last night was an anomaly.

12.25 got into bed
12.35 turned off light and chucked book on floor
1am still awake
2am get up for a drink
3am read three chapters of ‘The Sea’ by John Banville (v. disappointing use of propositions)
4am still awake
4.15 flatmate gets up to go to Devon. Listen to water in shower.
4.45 think just about get to sleep
5am rudely awaken by phone call wondering if I’m a taxi firm. ‘what?’ I say, before hanging up
6am realise have been awake all night and will have rubbish day as result
6.10 drift off
6.45 alarm goes off
6.46 turn off alarm in horror
7am realise boiler man is coming any minute
7.10am get up
7.35am realise was too excited to sleep all night!
8am hope adrenalin really exists.

Yasai Itameru

Today I ate
Yasai itameru with
Green tea, delicious.

Rice noodles, spicy
Coconut, coriander
Tongue swollen, alive.

Wintering

Nothing and everything is the same. I wake from half-sleep to a cold nose and heavy limbs, sinking into the cold mattress. I’m so cold that if I even move an inch I’m afraid the steely air will reach through my thin cotton trousers and penetrate the core of my body, and if that happens my chances of getting up are zero. I press snooze several times and drowse, eventually facing the inevitable – rushing upstairs, half-blind, scratching around for a mug. Water bubbles up inside the kettle, and there’s a sharp smell as a thick slice of lemon flops onto thick wood. It’s winter here.

Leche/Latte/Milk

This year’s birthday was Lush (initial cap intended!) Much better than the Bridget Jones’ style crying-in-the-bath episode last year. I took the day off (should be a human right), and spent a luscious, indulgent afternoon on the South Bank, breathing in the air swirled around by passers-by and tall London busses on Waterloo Bridge (‘with tears in my eyes...’*). I saw the Jeff Wall photography exhibition at Tate Modern. I studied some of his stuff in American Photo-texts for my MA, and I’d forgotten how clever he is at distorting reality so intently that it comes full circle and appears real again. Take the image Milk.

At first glance it’s a shot in a lifetime, the hapless photographer happens upon a vagabond cracking open a lively carton of milk outside an anonymous looking building. That first reading/viewing is an illusion though. All of Wall’s work is set-up and directed like a movie. Even so, the message is still as strong. I kinda love this photo. I read it as a commentary on the eclectic nature of city life. The only action in the image is the milk, which we see in full flight spraying out of the carton. It’s beautiful, a white fan reaching up to the sky. Of course, a second later the liquid will stain the man’s clothes and run over the clean paving stones. We’re privileged to be caught in a moment that is not-quite, never going to reach its destination. The man is looking away from the action, and in doing so he chooses to occupy a space outside of the image. He’s every bit involved and every bit detached from his surroundings. Like so many in the city, life carries on around him, just inside his peripheral vision. Part of the action, yet completely passive, disengaged. ‘Love it!’ as my friend T would say!

* Ref to a Wendy Cope poem called 'Jenny'

Art

There's an awesome exhibition at the Hayward Gallery at the moment. It's called 'Universal Experience: Art, Life and the Tourists' Eye' and is an amalgamation of photography, film, installation art, sculpture and general strangenesss. They have one piece that I've seen before in many a modern art gallery in the states - it consists of a pile of sweets piled up in a corner. Visitors are invited to take a sweet and therefore actively engage with the artwork. The weight of sweets at the start of the exhibition is the weight of the artist's partner, who died of AIDS. As the shiny-wrapped candies diminish there's a continual remembrance of the diminished life of one man. It made me think of communion and thousands of people carrying around a symbol of a man's death digesting in their stomachs.

Scarfing Again

I've started to knit a scarf. I merrily chose wool in the habberdashery department of a local store on Saturday, and with a few false starts with casting on (I can never quite remember how to do it), I managed to get going. The wool is kinda tricky, it has all these little bits sticking out which require continue rescuing from the stitches, but I was determined. I spent two concentrated hours on the train to London clattering grey needles together, and having completed about six inches I was getting a bit smug. Ah, I thought, I'll be an expert! I'll knit everyone a hat for Christmas! I'll impress them with cables and pom poms! I'll get labels made and sew them onto the plethora of finished products... That was until I realised that I'd managed to get from 25 stiches to 52 in the space of about 20 rows. I think I have more practise to do. I've ripped it all out and am going to start again. Hmm.

Hooks

It was Graham Greene who wrote ‘Hate lay like boredom over the evening ahead.’ On reading those words from an earlier blog again, I’m overcome with the dreadful realisation that boredom lies like hate over my life this week, generously covering the minutes, hours, evenings, weekends, weeks ahead. I’m devoid of stimulation, creativity and newness and the old paranoia has begun to creep in. The rain is hitting the window vengefully, and the pounding and darkness sweeping through the room adds to my glum mood. I’m seldom this bored. Something, or someone usually hooks through the grey and tugs on my hair with a word, photo, story, recipe or exhibition, and my attention is turned towards iridescent light, colour, texture and gorgeous paragraphs flow through and around and into my ever-decreasing mind. I’d see the light transmigrate through the twinkling rolled-glass on the window, and my eyes would turn to see doweling shaped lines of sunlight stretching through the trees. The right corner of my mouth would turn, ever-so-slightly upwards and the stiff air retained in tight lungs would gush out, leaving a lighter, gentler being on the heavy couch.

But today there are no such distractions and I’m alone with myself, the loneliest kind of aloneness. Mindlessly, I hit ‘next blog’, and there I am. The hook curves into my mind, and for the next ten minutes I’m hooked reading about sewing and appliqué, knitting and small children. For similar creative refreshment, check out this blog, and these fantastically gorgeous little people:

More haiku

I definitely
Want to see you again – thought
I should let you know.

Turning leaves

It’s my birthday in exactly one week. In seven days time I’ll be turning twenty-six. (I wonder why we say ‘turning’ instead of ‘getting to’ or ‘becoming’. Turning reminds me of people turning in their graves.) When I was younger, well, maybe 13 or 14, I used to imagine what life would be like when I ‘grew up’, and I would visually see a kind of ladder with each year as a rung, and there would be all kinds of pictures of things sitting on the rungs. Like for 23 I’d have a cool job wearing grey pinstripes and tying my hair back in a slick professional style. On rung 25 I would imagine me being married, and at 30 there’d be like three kids and at 32 holidays in Australia and a big house. How little reality there is when you’re 13!

Anyway, the purpose of this blog was to say that if any of you gorgeous people were in any way thinking of buying me a birthday present (and I really don’t expect any at all, and if you've just clicked 'next blog' then you really won't be) then please, please, please could you either:

Give the money to the poor or
Get a book token?

I know homeless people might spend your hard-earned cash on drugs, and book tokens are boring and disappointingly difficult to wrap up nicely, but all I would like in the whole world is like half of Foyles, or Borders, or that cool bookshop called Pan on the Fulham Road that stacks its books really crazily in piles like cry out to be knocked over like dominoes. There’s a list in my head of stuff I want to read, and it’s getting longer and longer. Thanks for reading. Reading for thanks.

Gassing late at night

Tonight I got home to a house full of wood dust and cardboard and furniture in strange places (we’re getting renovations done), and after twenty minutes sitting on a dusty sofa half reading Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk and half watching The West Wing (which my flatmate is completely addicted to, she’s like hooked up with a venflon or something), I felt so filthy that I decided to have a nice warm bath. We’ve got one of those really satisfying Victorian baths that is about five and a half feet long, so I can actually lie down in it and my toes only just reach the end. It must be really dreadful for the environment when it’s full up with steaming H20, but it’s a luxury I really appreciate, honestly. As I was running the bath water I realised there wasn’t any steam and the smell of Radox muscle soak had taken on a gas like odour… It turned out that the boiler had stopped working and there was gas leaking out from the extractor pipe. Do you know what though? I used to work for British Gas and am a legend in the gas department. (Though ‘legend’ is open to interpretation, and no, I don’t do house calls.) A simple investigation found that the builders had been chucking their rubbish (wood, old carpets, smashed up kitchen tables) down the front of the house, and this plethora of scrap had blocked up the flue pipe! Ten minutes in damp air outside heaving underlay layered with grime and trying not to rip my (new and unfortunately too big) Earl jeans on numerous bits of gripper rod, and the pipe was visible once more. A quick fiddle with the pilot light and we-hey! Hot water. it was actually one of the most satisfying things I’ve done in ages and I realised there must be immense satisfaction in manual labour, fixing things. I only really fix my hair. Anyway, the moral of this story is: always hire a skip.

Sunset

My dad sent me this photo the other day. It kinda makes me smile when I get stuff from my Dad on email, because I always know it's taken him ages to send it... Anyway, it was worth it, take a look at the photo and then read the text below.



The photograph attached was taken by the crew on board the Columbia during its last mission, on a cloudless day. The picture is of Europe and Africa when the sun is setting. Half of the picture is in night. The bright dots you see are the cities lights. The top part of Africa is the Sahara Desert. Note that the lights are already on in Holland, Paris, and Barcelona, and that's it's still daylight in Dublin, London, Lisbon, and Madrid. The sun is still shining on the Strait of Gibraltar. The Mediterranean Sea is already in darkness. In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean you can see the Azores Islands; below them to the right are the Madeira Islands; a bit below are the Canary Islands; and further south, close to the farthest western point of Africa, are the Cape Verde Islands. Note that the Sahara is huge and can be seen clearly both during Daytime and night time. To the left, on top, is Greenland, totally frozen.

Edited

The editors were ace, even though I felt faint just as they played their opening song and had to sit at the back on a step for most of the gig. They pretty much played the album and a couple a new songs. ‘All Sparks’ was cool. From chatting to some mates I was surprised how many people haven’t heard of them, so for more info click here.

Editors

Yay! I'm off to see these guys tonight at The Astoria, pretty cool. I wonder how it'll compare to seeing them in front of about forty people in the Square Pie Tent at Glastonbury earlier this year. There we were, eating chicken pie for breakfast, well, brunch, resting our weary calf muscles from wading through knee-deep mud, when a couple of guys got up and played an acoustic set, complete with wellies. They were awesome and I was hooked.

I'm kinda chuffed about the irony of liking a band named after my profession.

Tales of Loss

This weekend, my mobile 'phone decided to take a break. Maybe it was fed up of ringing, beeping, waking me up in the morning and storing a random assortment of strange images on its memory card. For whatever reason its little screen stayed black, and it stopped working. At first, I looked at it incredulously and began a little game (often played) of turning it off and back on again. Only this time nothing happened. The black screen was still staring at me.

Never mind, I thought, it's just a 'phone and it can be fixed.

Thing is, it's not just a 'phone - it's kinda my life ... in that little silver lump of moulded plastic the size of a bar of soap lies my contact with the outside world. I couldn't go to a party because I didn't have the address, and the numbers of all those I could have called to get it were stored inside. It's weird, I feel like I've lost a friend... or I have no friends, I can't decide which. At least ten times a day I reach into my bag to check for messages and missed calls, but the handbag is devoid of items the size of a bar of soap this week. Maybe I'll get used to this and become one of those irritating people who only have a landline and are never in, those you have to arrange to meet at precise times because there's no way of texting to say you'll be ten minutes late. Hmmm. It's a thought.

Another go...

Trying to tie up
Shoelaces with cold fingers makes
My heart long for spring.

Haiku

why aren’t there more
syllables in this wretched
poetic form, I ask?

--

you can’t do much with
five, seven, five, a season -
three lines, that’s the end.

--

give me a sonnet
anyday and I’ll laugh through
couplets and rhyming.

Journeying

Familarity breeds claustrophobia, especially in the city. This weekend I had the fortune of leaving the smoke behind to cross county after county by train and car. It's a sad fact of life that I find car journeys more than a bit exciting, more than likely due to their rarity. Changing gear and sitting at trafic lights in a private metal box has long been replaced with the clatter of a tube carriage, or the hum of displaced air past cold ears as I pedal my way through grid-locked streets. On Saturday evening between 8 and 9 o'clock, I sat silently, alone in the back of a blue VW Golf streaming through Gloucestershire in the twilight. The sky played out a light show for an audience of one, wispy grey clouds and twinkly stars fixed my eyes without blinking. With the simplicity of the sky and familiar white noise, sleep came gently.

Raining Again

"I'm just kind of tired. Like a monkey in the rain."

Haruki Murakami, Norweigian Wood

Dramarama

He smiles, the taste of Colgate fresh in his mouth, and all is right in the world. Her reaction is normal, returning the favour perfectly with straight white teeth. They walk next to each other in the twilight. In thirty-seven minutes exactly, it will be dark and they’ll sit cote-a-cote on blue crushed velvet seats as a mediocre badly-adapted drama plays out before them. He booked the tickets a week ago on a friend’s recommendation. Theatre isn’t his thing, but she said once that she liked it, and he filed the thought away, just in case.

“Have you been to the Old Vic before?”
“No, I haven’t – though I’ve always wanted to…”
“Oh, you’re gonna love it. I’ve seen loads of stuff here. Kevin Spacey is the artistic director.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, did you hear about The Philadelphia Story – it was a bit of a flop in the end, all the reviews slated it. You must have heard about it?”

Drat. His ignorance is poking straight through the chest of his Ted Baker shirt, and she she’ll be faced with the naked truth that when he said he liked plays, what he actually meant was he saw Puss in Boots once when he was nine, and he’s only trying to get the girl.

Haiku

I've developed a fascination for all things Japanese, including haiku. Here's my first, precarious attempt:

Dusk falls. A blanket
Of ash. Cool shoulders desire
Thin cotton v-neck.

- Fire -

Arcade fire,
Sun rising,
Clouds disipate.
Gentle footsteps,
Warm boots,
Tired arches.

Soho

Soho. Tuesday. Autumn. 7pm.
Girls in squeaky knee-high leather boots,
Yet too-warm coats slung casually over fragile arms.
The last of the sunlight lowers behind Autumn’s curtain.
King prawns. Phad Thai noodles, eaten quickly.
Alone,By an open window.
Crisp Pinot Grigio in a bowl-shaped glass.
Tongue pulsating with chilli sauce.
Bench seating runs into fellow lone diner:
Male. 20s. Dark hair (Toni & Guy). Duck curry. Thai Calamari.
Craving newness and a way through this cavernous life, this maze of a city.
Wherever I go, you’re there. You’re eating noodles with bamboo chopsticks.
Reaching into Louis Vuitton leather for change.

Seasons

How can I feel homesick for a place I've never lived? There's something disctinctly Manhatten about London at the moment. The way the cold is beginning to wrap its fingers delicately around my waist whilst the sun strokes my face. His rays have changed. They're blinding now.

I feel cold air on my skin and am grateful for cotton, polyester, rayon. I try on a wooly hat in Urban Outfitters - to buy it would be premature, but I play with the idea. Central Park on a crisp Autumn morning, auburn leaves scrunch underfoot.

In my head the seasons jump from summer to winter overnight. I'm expectant, as if waiting for a long-awaited visitor... I have the necessary objects ready: blankets draped across the end of the bed, black opaque tights and gentle knitted jumpers. I'll push three pairs of Havianas and two sundresses to the back of the wardrobe and move from pale pink to chocolate brown in the space of 24 hours. I'll dream of New York, steam coming up from the Subway, mittens wrapped around hot coffee... winter.

Countries

The wonders of modern technology. If you have nothing to do on a Thursday evening, like me as I'm waiting for some friends to go for a drink, you can go on the web and make a map of all the countries you've visited in the world. I thought this was pretty cool, until it told me I've only been to 7% of the world... that's really pathetic! And only went to Scotland on holiday this year!

Thanks to Paul for the tip on this one!

Diary (mis)management

Today I spent a good ten minutes on the phone trying to arrange to meet a friend for a drink. Or a coffee. Or dinner. Or five minutes. Or even a longer phone call. It kinda went like this:
Hi!
Hi! It's been ages!
Yeah, we should meet up.
Definitely. How about Tuesday?
No, can't do Tuesdays.
Next Thursday's no good - work thing.
This weekend?
Hmmm, got friends coming up on Saturday.
How's a week Friday for you?
Oh, that's my friend's birthday.
Right, two weeks on Monday?
No, doing a course on Mondays now.
Ok. I've got it. 14th October? Any good?
Yep, suits me!
Bit far away.
Yeah, but best to get it in the diary.
Might have to cancel though... think I might have a launch that night.
Never mind.
Well, catch up properly then.
Yeah, really looking forward to it.
Great, take care.
You too.
Bye!

Yeah, whatever!

You guys...

I don't know if I tell you guys this enough, but I love you! I love you all - my friends that is. If you've just clicked 'next blog' and hit upon my rambling, then I probably don't love you, as I'm not that comfortable with strangers, but if I do know you I want you to know that I have some of the best friends in the world. Between you, you're wisdom personified. Thanks everyone.

Feeling faint...

Today I visited a friend who's very sick in hospital. He's on oxygen, bloody venflon protuding out of his arm, machines bleeping. The bay he's in holds five mostly unconscious looking patients, and he's the youngest by miles. Somewhere nearby a woman is crying and screaming, "I don't want to go anywhere, just let me die. Don't make me move, please. Just let me die." A white-haired corpse of an old lady next to my friend doesn't open her eyes the whole time I'm there, though a rasping cough speaks of life -just - hanging on in her veins.

I'm scared of hospitals. I find it difficult to sit in the doctors' waiting room without feeling faint. Today was a test. I just about overcame my fear with friendship. At various points myself and the other visitor are ushered out of the cubicle. We wait at the nurse's station, making small talk, and I'm overcome by a wave of nausea and have to sit down, head between my legs. It's embarassing and completely psychological. I think about leaving, getting straight into the lift and walking outside. Yet I know if I succomb I'll have angry tears cascading down hot cheeks. I feel stupid. My friend is here through no fault of his own, gasping for breath, sweating, nil by mouth, and I can't even last half an hour. The other vistor chats normally, as if we're at a cafe on a Sunday afternoon, and after a few minutes the feeilng passes and I'm ok again. We wait for the consultants to finish their ward round and then reappear at the bedside. We chat about insignificant things, my face must betray my fear. The boys chat about the cricket and I smile, I know nothing about wickets, overs and LBW. He looks better and sits up for a few minutes and starts reading a magazine. Things feel normal for half a second and I rub his feet under the scratchy hospital blanket. The conversation dries up and as if on cue his whole family turn up for visiting. It's 5pm, they must all have rushed here from work. I quickly gather up my stuff and stretch out a hand. He squeezes and our eyes lock. His say hope, and I wish mine could say the same.

All you need is Graham Greene

"Hate lay like boredom over the evening ahead. I had committed myself: without love I would have to go through the gestures of love. I felt the guilt before I had committed the crime, the crime of drawing the innocent into my own maze. [A kiss] may be nothing... but at any time it may prove to be everything."

The End of the Affair

Cranes

A lot of what I write on this blog has an underlying subconscious reference to the loneliness of this great city. A friend commented that these words and phrases, clauses and subtle gestures were a verbal commentary on Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, above. The thing is though, I love being a fly in the ointment of the city, it's the annonymity that has the intrinsic appeal. I have heaps of friends - I love you guys more than you know - yet the privacy of the crowd is a constant comfort. I can walk through Green Park alone on a Sunday afternoon and lie on cool grass whilst reading the paper without anyone bothering me. I'm part of the chattering crowd, we're the red, blue, pink, yellow paper cranes hanging from century-old branches. Eventually the rain will soften the paper, colour will drip down onto the grass, sunlight will devour the pigment and we'll fall, gracefully to our end. Trodden into the ground from whence we came.

Saturday, 5.53pm

Are you scared of dying?
I’m on the verge of a fundamental lifestyle change.
It’s 4am, we’ve just got home and it’s almost light.
Do you like these ones? Too secretary?
Did you know the tube was closed today?
This is just between ourselves.
I think you’re hot.
Ow, get off my foot!
You don’t understand.
I love you.
Do you have the Hard-Fi album?
No, I don’t eat cheese.
If you carry on doing that I’ll be really pissed off with you.
Can we go now?
It’s one-thirty already.
I’m gonna make an almond torte.
How was the wedding?
I’m going to work at 5pm.
It’s all too much.
How can one person be so ….?

Back again

Ok, I've been away for a while.
You may have noticed.
You may not have noticed.
Maybe you missed me.
Maybe you didn't notice enough
To miss me.
That's ok.
I kinda missed you,
But this thing called:
Life
Got in the way.
But I'm back again now,
And it feels good.

On the shelf

Ever thought how many people live their lives in books?

We are sailing...

So I'm all packed. Bright orange neoprene waterproofs, wellies, four jumpers, tights, long socks, a torch, three books, sunscreen, mossi guard, three woolly hats, a pair of gloves (no scarf as risk of strangulation) etc etc, and this time tomorrow I'll be sailing on the Corryvreckan off the West coast of Scotland. I'm excited, but slightly dreading it - what if I fall overboard? or have to eat squid? I'll post some pix when I'm back and you can all laugh at the tangerine package before you.

Papier Maché Life

There’s a heaviness in the air tonight. A lukewarm breeze floats through yawning sash windows, grazing soft white petunias as it comes. Our character sits on the sofa, tired but content , sated by Chinese noodle soup with salty chicken and rubbery spring onions. He thinks he’s happy, though the weight of the night air sits uneasily on his legs and there’s an ache in his head that he can’t shake. The sounds of the city drain in from outside, a microcosm of displaced life on an anonymous street. The gay Irish man next door is dining al fresco with a friend this evening. Their cutlery clatters amicably on solid plates. He envies their freshness, lounging outside in the cool night air. He wishes he could see them, but the hawthorn is prolific and sick, obscuring the view. They deserve privacy, he decides. Two ‘phone calls add to the hum of white noise, one from the friend he loves. She’s sad, contorted inside with paranoia and fear. He listens and sends clouds and petals – soft things – her way. He imagines here smiling, as he tells her for the thousandth time that it’s ok to feel down, that life is a papier maché lantern, beautiful to the eye, an iridescent glow emanating out, yet fragile as duck eggs, the delicate paper ready to ignite at any opportunity. We live between times, love, unloveliness, pain, fear, truth, beauty. They’re strangers yet they’re every bit at home on this journey of theirs through life and love. She listens graciously and agrees. They part, he bites his lip and gulps cold tea from a chipped mug. The breeze caresses his face, and he wipes it away with the back of his hand.

Saturday, 5.45pm

It's Saturday, 5.45pm. I'm indulgent, living a new kind of life. I lie under angora-soft covers and listen to the rain outside my window. It sounds like fresh peas being poured into a steel collander. Upstairs my flatmate is watching TV, ensconsed on blue sofa staring through a glass screen. For a moment our paths meet in unconscious thought, then diverge. The gentle pounding of the rain on the laurel hedge echoes a sadness feelings its way through my torso. But I love you. I love you. I don't care if you love me or not. I'll love you anyway.

Home

Late last night, in the cool familiarity of speckled London air, I dragged my weary, thinner-than-usual frame towards a silent doorway. I have never been quite so happy to be home, especially as hard purpley-blue creatures were scraping their way through cramping intestines with their rough pincers. My ride smiles and waves, so I turn and lift a yellowly hand in his direction. Keys are reunited to embrace familiar locks, two soft clicks and I'm in. The tiled hallway has an elegant quality at this hour - faint blue light accentuates 1940s charm held in crumbly walls. Three bags are half-pulled, half-carried to the top of the stairs and I slouch as the last one falls from weak shoulders. I love this house, I always have. My bed invites me in, beckoning with friendly sheets, the warm familarity of a pink herringbone coverlet. Hmmm. Sleep. A wave of increasing deadness caresses grateful limbs and I'm home. I'm home.

Friends

How did I grow up so fast? I woke up yesterday to the reality that I have among my friends:
some bankers
three youth workers
a singer
a paediatrician
six doctors
several nurses
a dentist
some lawyers
a womaniser
a musician
an ex-convict
a TV presenter
a florist
two models
and a magician.

Life was a whole lot more simple when we were all defined by the colour of our PE kit.

Honesty

We hide
Under our
Canopy of
Honesty,
Sometimes.

(A)long

Does love deplete? Like lonely eggs floating away each month? Do I love you any less today than yesterday, though we've never met? I think of you often; I see your smile on a hundred strangers. Grey-blue eyes search their faces in vain. You may not exist. You may not ever notice me, let alone love me. Time affects slow change here, and a year later I remain. Sitting, reading. Looking, being. Another year, and the first warm salt tears begin to work their way out of the corner of each eye. Seven months on, it's Christmas and the light is short and grey, the kind of light that invites sleep. It's just after two in the afternoon, and as I stir dark flakes of green tea into lukewarm water I look up from my book to see small intriguing eyes entering mine. Slowly, graciously, ordinarily, I realise you've been here all along.

Actions

This week I've been:

swimming in a lido, cold water grazing shocked skin
dancing
wearing too much lyrca
falling over
sitting with my leg up on the desk with an ice pack on my knee
enjoying the reaction of those who've never seen my hair straight before
eating lentils and raspberries
missing you
chatting with Italians
sleeping
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Will

Have you ever noticed how some people are way more stubborn than others? We wrap up this character trait in other terms - determined, driven, willful, headstrong, persevering - but they all mean the same thing. This filled my thoughts this morning, as I prised aching muscles and a fuzzy head out of bed earlier than normal. Clothes left out the night before hung on tired limbs, and the door shut behind me into blinding sunshine. An hour and a half, two bottles of water and much sweat later, I reach my destination. Cool azure water, shouting children, the Sunday paper and a good friend greet me. I'm overwhelmed - sunshine this good belongs in Italy, Greece, Spain, not in North London! I'm reminded of a cold winter's day, walking with my gorgeous sister on the heath, looking for Parliament Hill. We walked and walked, hands grew stiff and breath floated white on the air. Three hours past, yet my pleading to stop, give up already, was ignored. She was bashful, alive, determined, stubborn... Yet she was right, eventually we gradually ascended to the rounded peak. We stood, catching our breath in the cold and allowed the horizon to scan our eyes. At the bottom of the hill there was a pool, grey water lapped to the edges and the wind caressed a spiritless surface. Another day, another season. It feels like another life.

Disappointment

Man: Sorry to trouble you, but do you have a mirror I could borrow please?
Girl: A mirror, ummm, I think so, hang on [pause] It's in here somewhere...
Man: It's just that I had a tooth out yesterday and it's very sore, I'm not supposed to smoke, but I just smoked today and it's hurting.
Girl: Oh, I bet that's horrible. Here you go.
Man: Thank you. Do you mind if I take it over there, near the light?
Girl: No, that's fine, go ahead.
[a few seconds pass, the coffee machine hisses over piped music]
Man: Thank you very much. You are very beautiful, what's your name?
Girl: [hesitant] Julia.
Man: I'm Ted. Nice to meet you. I have terrible pain in my tooth. What do you do?
Girl: I work nearby, at X.
Man: Oh, yes I know it, you are very beautiful. How old are you?
Girl: Listen, I have to go. I have a meeting to get to. Nice to meet you though.
Man: Yes, nice to meet you. Thank you for the mirror.
[the door closes and clean air greets young skin]

Question

Why is it that all the guys who ask me out aren't ever the ones I actually want to have dinner with?

Anwers on a postcard.

Ballet

Next week I'm going to submit my body to a week's worth of plies, stretching, barre work, arrabesques... the arches of my feet enhanced by bloch elastosplit canvas, you can hardly call them shoes. I love ballet. I can't understand, or explain why... there's no freedom, only restriction. Muscles are forced unnaturally and feet wrecked, yet there's grace behind the pain, light creeping through the darkness. Far corners of my mind awake from years of slumber, feet and arms beat unfamiliar rhythms, sweat slides down my back, and in the corner of my eye I see someone in the mirror. She isn't me. For a flighting moment I leave myself and find newness in an assemblé.

What a difference a day makes

This weekend I've hopped on a Virgin Pedalino and leaned my way out of the city to my former life. I'm spending a few days with my family in the house I grew up in. My room is no longer my room. Each time I go back more of my hoarded belongings seem to have entered obscurity, lost forever to a charity shop. I don't really mind. Though I love the city like the paving stones are my long-lost friends, after Thursday's events I was kinda relieved to be breathing different air. London has changed. I have changed. Things will never be the same again. On the tube to Euston on Friday evening, I caught myself getting up way before my stop, so eager was I to leave the coffin underground that was choking my breath. I've never been one of those claustrophobic tube-haters, or a Ken Livingstone grumbler moaning about the price of a travelcard. I loved the tube, it was a bit exciting burrowing underground every day with thousands of others, watching strangers in stranger clothes with stranger habits, all pretending not to look at each other. I'm not sure it will ever be the same again. For now, I'm sweaty from cycling in the park with my sister, on the bikes we rode as teenagers. Now slightly less fit and more unsure of the way to the lake, we ride side-by-side reminiscing. Punctures and falling off miles from home, mum letting us swim in a lake with a red danger flag, the adrenelin of rushing down a steep incline with the wind in our air. People grow up. Bicycle chains rust. Lungs get smaller. Cities cry.

Control

Her life is out of control. She has no time. No space. No grace. Strangers grasp at her clothes as she walks past, shouting their demands and flailing in front of her dying eyes. She sees them but doesn't respond. She has no clean clothes. The fridge is bare. She hasn't called her parents for weeks. At lunch, she eats out at a scruffy Chinese cafe to save the bother of ingredients, collanders and greasy pans, an infinite choice of sauces. Once, she loved cooking - the hiss of sesame oil on a hot wok. Life has been overtaken by appointments, expectations, wrong motives, no meaning yes. She's sad and powerless. Her life is formless and empty. She begins to weep, slowly and deliberately, silent salty tears staining warm cheeks. She loves you.

city of lies

"When I lie on the floor and relax by listening to my breathing, I can hear the slower respirations of the city itself, a sound like the rumble of a surf: subway trains crowded with people who are teaching themselves how to be here."
Jonathan Franzen, 'First City' in How to Be Alone.

The city teaches us how to be, how to walk through its streets, run down train platforms, eat unfamiliar food until unfamiliarity becomes part of our familiar experience. We learn to feel at home even though we need an A-Z to find our friend's flat and Streetmap to get to a bar we never knew existed that's ten minutes walk from our front door. We live in blocks, hamster cages stacked up to the sky, our neighbours known not by name, but by irritation: the lady upstairs with the screaming baby, the family with the yapping dog, the girl who plays Xfm too loudly on Saturday mornings. We feed off the unfamiliar - it excites us to know there are infinite as yet undiscovered places within half-an-hour, yet the unfamiliar is not natural. By virtue of postmodern life we live in fear. We only buy latté from Starbucks, lest the feel of a strange cardboard cup disorientate. Lunch in a thousand cafés means a Prèt-a-Manger chicken and avocado wrap and a yoga bunny detox. I'm scared, not of the strange, or the new, but of a resignation, a subtle eroding of choice and experience that comes from living too long too fast too ugly in a city of lies.

Do you speak English?

Earlier today I stood up in front of 60-or-so people, of varying ages, heights, social classes, tastes in clothes, religious backgrounds, and talked for just less than an hour about a subject I'm more than passionate about. Ok, it was hot. Ok, it was 10am on a Saturday morning and the coffee was lukewarm. Ok, they got me and not Bono or Tony Blair... but they were so unresponsive! I couldn't believe it! I could have been demonstrating how to clean out a hamster's cage for all the interest they showed. During my talk I noticed:

1 woman asleep (later awoken by friend)
2 football-hooligan lookalikes scratching their heads repeatedly in uncomprehension
3 people leaving, 1 politely creeping out the side, two making a noisy exit
1 guy looking at his watch
my mate Phil smiling at me encouragingly.

Thank God for Phil! That's all I can say.

Uncontrollable

My life is out of control. Muzak hums constantly providing white-noise, a blanket on which I lie, powerless, as worlds, words, people, emails, voicemail rush past like gangly schoolboy legs flailing in a 100-metre sprint.