Mission Statement

Mood:  quizzical
Now Playing: Late night radio phone-in

I like smelly food;
I always want a kebab after a night on the piss;
When someone tells me a problem, I try to think of a solution instead of just sympathising;
I'm pushy, and I think what I think is the right thing to think (actually, that's just as female as male, innit?);
I find irrelevant debates good fun;
I assume housewives need to escape from their lives;
Find it quite awkward to talk about girly emotional stuff;
I shudder at the pity-me culture that allows people to do what the hell they like (one person I know shagged around her fiance, married him anyway, wouldn't take her meds, spent 20 hours a day online, became totally messed in the head, lived a totally self-centred self-obsessed life whilst ignoring husband, then shagged around some more. When he finally wised up and dumped her, it was all testament to how Truly Brave A Poppet She Is. Made me want to puke.)
(Yep, there'll be no more Pity Me posts on this, Your Daily Charlatan's Blog. Thank fuck for that.)
I really don't care what other people think (PMT apart, though);
No matter how voyeuristic anyone reading this feels, I'm never going to blog the stuff that's really important;
I pick the scabs on my scalp;
There's fifty-seven varieties of ageing curry sauce in my fridge. And an onion;
I love driving, and when you're in my car, then everyone behind is a wanker, and everyone in front is a fool;
I judge people on how they look. Always;
Doing the washing seems unnecessary until the basket is more than full:
Actually, when I lived in Balham, I used to chuck my dirty washing in the spare room and buy more clothes rather than go to the launderette down the street. Eventually, even when I threw the clothes out, the room smelt too much to let out to any lodger with a human physiognomy, and I moved out, leaving the rest of the dirty laundry where it was;
I make the first move (well, unless I really really fancy someone, then I'll be all girly and terrified);
I don't want kids or a marriage or a house with a garden - a brilliant record collection is far superior;
Speaking of which, my record collection is sorted by musical style and era. I look forward to the day when I'm so bored I sort by musical influence;
I own three hi-fis, four walkmans, three TV sets, two videos, one dvd player and three computers. This does not seem an unduly large amount;
I can't be fucked opening letters if they don't look interesting;
I luuuurve a good action movie;
Phone conversations should be short, and communicate information;
I worry what beer is acceptable to drink in the pub;
If I try keeping plants, they die;
Skirts are for girls;
Going out for a few jars means I won't be back till 5am tomorrow;
I can be very very very scary if I want to be. I tend not to want to be, but knowing that makes you more confident than most girls;
I eat my steak blue.

This was originally going to be called 'Things About Me That Seem Blokeish'**, till lemonpillows messaged me on MSN and said it sounded more like a mission statement.

**That probably just reveals how little lesbians actually know about blokes....

Food cures all evil

Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: slurping, gobbling, ice-creamy sounds

Gawd bless my yesterday-self. My whining, self-pitying, gratuitous self. Because in the gaps between attention seeking, and melancholy, I spent four - yes, four! - hours logging onto Tesco online and ordering groceries.
This means I had to crawl out of my stinking pit by lunchtime, to accept the delivery. Even better, I had to actually shower - a great service to humanity and the other beings who have to inhabit my airspace (mostly feline, but you never know).

Brushing my teeth and commiserating on the hard life I lead, I noticed that my lips are chafed. Strange. Was I attacking my own lips in the night, in a furious search for solace? Or did the bloody cat have at me with her claws when I missed the alarm again?

Aaaaaaaaanyway, as lemonpillows says, by this morning I had no memory whatsoever of what I'd ordered, just that it had taken four long, infuriating hours to do it, and that it had cost a bomb. Oh, and that I'd been drunkenly upbraided by ex-DH for not ordering her favourite brand of toothpaste (Bad Mexican Maid: but stuff it, when she pays for any of the food she eats, she can claim priority in toothpaste branding). Cue about eighty bulging carrier bags and one Nice Man who didn't mind carrying them up to the third floor ("it's my job miss" - bloody hell, the whole concept of 'uncomplaining' was enough to shock me from my stupor - I hadn't even tried The Ankle Excuse).

And --- praise --- benedicite --- gramercy to my Sick Self: I'd ordered everything a Sick Person could possibly require. No, not that sort of Sick!

Nine bottles of very expensive wine (shameful!);
Eighty-two sadbastardreadymeals (including five variants of Ocean Pie);
Four pots of ice cream (three low fat, one B&J Cookies n Cream, currently sinking into an insatiable hollow) (ie. my face);
Deep Heat anaesthetising sprain spray (yay! just in case there really was a sprain, which, dammit, there is) (Note to self: do not spray on face, even if depressed);
A billion English apples (that's the sort of thing I always presume will make me healthy - conveniently forgetting you have to eat them as well)
Great toast-making bread, crumpets, choccy biccies;
Quaker oats (so I can imagine a warm orange glow from the 1970s, protecting me from harm);
Every type of continental cheese I can eat (none of which would go into a fondue, but hell, I can work my way up) (sorry to Dave for the frequent references to cheese of late!);
Eggs! For the frying of! With Beans! and Toast!
Some German salami (to enable me to make my favourite salami and grilled feta sandwich, yay).

Now I am one happy bunny.
And what's more, listing these gustatory delights has knocked the blog entry where my girlfriend dumped me from the front page. So life does go on.

CNPS: 20
I weigh: 68.4kg (lemme see how much I can gain by tonight... hehehe)
The Gender Genie algorithm still says my blog is male. Dammit!!!!

fractured femur

Mood:  accident prone
Now Playing: my anguish filled screams, vying against neighbour's muffled telly sounds

Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow!

Not only is my nose running onto the keyboard, the cats are heat-seeking missiles (ie, pestering me constantly to sleep on my shoulder), and I emanated noxious fluid onto the sofa.
Further humiliation was to arrive when I tried to simultaneously uncross legs, avoid leaning on either cats, hop over PC, navigate items strewn across the furry rug, and take back to the kitchen the remains of an old sweetcorn tin (all the better for chucking up later) (I've degraded one day beneath sadbastardreadymeal).
Note to self: do not jump over things while carrying breakables when your leg has gone dead.

Landed fairly effectively, although with loud cracking sound as dead leg failed to hold upright, keeling me totally over, and pitching the contents of my sweetcorn tin everybloodywhere.
Spent five good minutes rolling around the rug ... clutching leg ... screaming ... waving off nosey cats (for whom this constitutes almost as much excitement as a litter change) ... screaming a bit more for effect. Then thought about it a bit, and realised I still couldn't feel my leg below the ankle.
This could of course mean that it was hanging by a thread. Tried a few more tentative screams, and felt to see if foot was still attached. Screamed instinctively when I touched it, and again a few times in case it hurt.
Decided to sprawl on the floor choking in putrefied sweetcorn juice, mangled limbs dangling until I starved to death and THEN the world would be sorry, but I became bored.
After a few seconds, the feeling came back to my leg, and I got up and cleared the sweetcorn away.

I swear I heard it crack.

BAD Mexican Maid!

Mood:  hug me
Now Playing: care in the community blokes making screaming noises in some dialect outside

Dammit, angelfire seems to have been up and down more than a tart's knickers this afternoon.

Blogwarning: I have flu, and therefore I am entitled to whinge constantly without recrimination.
I find it a little bizarre that I was more than happy to accept that I was skiving without any real excuse, but had to be forced under pressure to admit I was actually genuinely ill. Perhaps I'm even more arrogant than I thought.

Last night, when I retired to my [shitty little] [spare box] room [crammed with the ex's stinky spare washing] [and no space to stand], I had that awful feeling that you're not asleep, you're dead. You know when your limbs feel heavy enough to pull down through the bed? Mine felt like someone had lassoed them and they were shooting groundwards at high speed.
So, to take my mind off the snivelling and self-pity, I decided to mentally blog myself to sleep, with a spot of whingeing, snivelling self-pity, and thought up things that feel deeply scarey about being single again:

I'm not sure if I have anywhere to live;
Never going on holiday again;
Or if you do, then being the person the waiter pities in the restaurant (I know this is a stupid thing, but something jatb said once in an amusing diatribe about Israel made me think of it);
Living with an ex-DH is sending me insane;
Particularly since it's me who has to do all the cooking, shopping and cleaning so far - I've renamed myself: the Mexican Maid;
Actually, that should be: the Bad Mexican Maid - while suffering the worst flu / mild cold ever, I only managed to provide three breakfast options this morning.
Bad, bad, bad, BAD Mexican Maid!
Christ! Perhaps *that* time was the last sex I ever had?!
My mates have already set up two blind dates. Bastards;
Which is hypocritical of me, because I've already chatted up four women;
Unsuccessfully;
Actually, the Bad Mexican Maid thing has all the hallmarks of a Future Fetish;
If ex-DH opts for the best case scenario and offers to let me buy her out of the joint mortgage, then I need to come up with something like seventy thousand knicker to stay here;
Which means opening letters from banks ever;
Oh, how DULL;
Never being hugged back to sleep after a nightmare.

[end maudlin tosh]
For the record these fookin stupid emoticon things at the top of each post are ARSE and NOT TRUE! So there. :o)

online dating

Mood:  amorous
Now Playing: screams of horror

Another day off work, with mild stomach ache. Sometimes. What a wuss, eh? I'm hoping the image of me as 'unreliable' is being sharpened in their minds.
Spent the day worrying that one of the search terms that led to my blog in the last month was "nude girls spreadsheets".
This led me to check into udate, and update my pictures and profile. I widened the age range of potentials to 18-99 years old, and specified a particular liking for tubbies.
Here's my profile:

Sarsparilla: female, London (UK), Korean, 240lbs+;
Over 6ft 6, small/petite build,I don't like children, ethnicity: other;
Hair: Not much left, black eyes, beard & moustache, single, gay, looking for marriage, stunning looking, masters degree, occupation: celebrity, annual income over #1K;
Left Wing Extremist, no religious beliefs, I drink to excess, maxed out with tattoos, maxed out with body piercings, 1 or 2 pieces of jewellery, I take drugs to excess, non-smoker;
Won't cook, won't clean, won't do housework, love food shopping, hate all other shopping, won't garden or do DIY, depend upon others to clean up for me;
Quite feminine, not really warm, not at all caring, not at all supportive, not really understanding, extremely aggressive;
Extremely successful, ambitious, extrovert, impatient, I am angry all the time;
I am not really intelligent, not at all faithful, not really passionate, fitness fanatic, pride in my appearance? Not really;
Not really spiritual, extremely superstitious, I'm a sex bomb, who's not at all deep, and anything goes;
I'm not at all reliable, I have no willpower, am extremely selfish, am always late. Sorry, I'm not at all spontaneous;
I dislike the following forms of food: English, Italian, fast, pizza, Japanese, Indian, Chinese, French and McDonalds. I like to eat KFC cuisine;
I hate bars, pubs, clubs, movies, the theatre, museums, raves and discos, and The Arts are above my head, I'm afraid. There's nothing better than a walk in the park;
I hate reading, and only take the Financial Times, Telegraph and News of the World daily. My TV tastes run to game shows, game shows and game shows; I also enjoy magazines about automotives, housekeeping and religion;
I play bowling, boxing and disabled sports, but only enjoy watching wrestling;
The best place to go on a date with me is Embankment, and three years from now I shall be in Brazil, working as a gravedigger;
What really really makes me happy is licking gingivitis from teeth.

In fifteen minutes, 43 blokes suddenly checked me out. One look at 'MarquisDeSuave's handsome wrinkles and bulging packet, and I swore never to brush my teeth again.

Just lettin' ya know, girls, where you're going wrong......

Another day on the road

Mood:  not sure
Now Playing: sound financial advice which I will not follow

Just got in after six hours driving Duch to Oxfordshire and back, (via a stopoff at my parents' in Wiltshire for refuelling - human - and some wild pony poo chocolate) to be vetted by a Mad Cat Breeder for suitability. She's buying a Maine Coon kitten - the ones that look like weirdly still tigers and grow to about 35 pounds. Jeez!
Right now, it's an adorable bundle of damp smelly whiskers that mewls and bounces and scratches. Whereas Mad Cat Breeder's whiskers rustled with annoyance if we even so much as moved, and her fur well nigh stood on end as she waved us off with dire stories of how that friend of Duch (me) had dangerous, sickly, plague ridden cats who would murder her kitten one day, "mark my words". I am saving up for the bell to warn Duch of my proximity, in future, so she be ready with the bleach and plastic socks.

Last night was great fun, wandering around olden time East End boozers, full of crooning old blokes who looked like Jack Duckworth - I visited The George at Terminus, The Ten Bells, where you were on permanent display to armies of visiting Americans doing the rather morbid Jack the Ripper walking tour (although I rather preferred to think it was me they were pointing at, it was the dilapidated old Hoxton trendy wine bar that has replaced the pub, cleverly keeping eight of the original tiles for historical relevance), the Brick Lane Beigel Bake, The Approach, and The Palm Tree's late night singalonga old joanna lock-in.
Martin was terribly interesting company, whereas I was bloody blotto yet again, and spent most of the evening bothering Dave with drunken texts, apparently, while he tried to concentrate on delivering a competent fondue party. Why he would attempt such an insane undertaking is patently his business, and I was wrong to assume he had lost all sense of proportion and sanity, and quite deeply wrong to assume these could be regained in a Hoxton pub.

< == Two new blogs on the blog roll over there.
Yidaho and JATB are two (real life) (!) friends of mine who have been secretly blogging without allowing me to look at what they're written. I know it's customary for bloggers to pretend a degree of humility, (what this ole blog? no, no, no, surely nobody would read it...) but really, that's an outdated ritual that no-one ever believes.
Writing a blog is in and of itself an exercise in arrogance constrained by irrelevance. Embrace the lunacy! Be proud of the insensitivity. And blog more.
I want to see at least one divorce and two family feuds from these two blogs by Christmas, gels.

High Drama

Mood:  surprised
Now Playing: Not Cosi Fan bloody Tutte
Fuckit! Went to the ENO (at the sodding Barbican, which is a sod to get to), ordered interval drinks, found the vertiginous precipice 'pon which I'd booked my cheap seats, then me and Martin proceeded to attempt to bully six shy 19 year old girls out of their seats, all the while clutching the safety pole in a mild panic, when I looked back at the bloody ticket.

October.

Mood:  celebratory
Now Playing: Cosi fan tutte

Off to the opera... tra-la-laaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Cannibalise this

Mood:  hungry
Now Playing: wind blowing the leaves of the hawthorn that's outside the window

I've been wasting my sickie day browsing blogs in the sunshine and eating cheese on toast (PURE eighties food... I may move a step up to sardines by tomorrow), and came across some real gem quotes:

"Safeway, I'm convinced, is run by ex-convicts and sexual deviants. Why do I say this? I don't know, call it a hunch. This all may make me sound like a cheap, judgmental bastard and that may be true, but who gives a rats ass?" Tiberius Furioso

"Not that this really represented any real sort of problem for me because I definitely am a creature of habit - get off of work, go home, check out the same newsgroups in the same order looking for porn, go to the comic book store every Wednesdays (or Thursday in the event of a Monday holiday), rinse and repeat. [...] I am in obvious need of more social interaction." I Have No Life

"So what did I do ? The Cumbrian sausages are now mine, so is the cheese, the HP Sauce and not just the one, but both jars of Marmite. " My Boyfriend is a Twat

"The last time I was in church was for said mother's funeral, and I had to go to communion because all the old biddies would have been horrified if I hadn't and I forgot what you were supposed to say when you got the wafer. It's Amen." My hero, Eurotrash

"What the fuck's wrong with me, you ask? Well, I have always been very, very particular about my toys. I don't like them exposed to direct sunlight. I don't like them handled by unclean hands. And I don't like them near potential chemical fumes or even strange smells. Don't ask why; this is just how I am. [...] I am obviously overly paranoid something will happen to my stuff. It's a miracle that I've kept "The Girls" on open display like I have. The only way I've been able to handle this and keep my sanity is to start buying two of anything I really, really like. One can be taken out of the package, the other stays sealed." Fuck Everything

"Quit staring at my cunt."CreepyLesbo

God, people can be interesting. I just whinge about eating cheese.

Diarrhoea of a Nobody

Mood:  lyrical
Now Playing: Planes screeching as they prepare to land at City Airport

My blog looks like poo. Oh dear. May have to re-think that.
I know I could spend the afternoon doing a proper, more visually arresting template, but clicking on 'brown' somehow seemed less time-consuming.

< # Girls Blog UK ? > Powered by RingSurf! < # Gay Diary ? > < L DykeWrite3 # > < # Blogging Brits ? > < # BloggingBitches ? >

This is my blogchalk: United Kingdom, London, East London, Bow, English, German, Vanessa, Female, 31-35, Literature / Movies, Food / Eating / Drinking. Read THIS blog:

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booooooooks

Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: cars driving down a quiet street, sounding like waves on a beach

Time for another reading list:

Antony and Cleopatra - 2/10, still can't get past the first scene;
Julius Caesar - 8/10, so good I read it twice;
History books about Cleopatra - 8/10, but I only read the pictures;
History books about the Roman Empire - 6/10, mercifully brief;
History books about the changeover of the Elizabethan / Jacobean era - 9/10, bloody useful stuff for work;
Machiavelli's The Prince - 8/10, better than expected, but skipped the first half;
Plutarch's Lives - 4/10, I cheated and read the study notes first;
Playscript of Twelve Angry Men - 7/10, great reading when you're pissed, but difficult to recall a word the next day.

Is it just me, but when you leave the house at night time, do you hear something in the wind whistle and think it might be your sanity slipping past?

Days Missing

Mood:  rushed
Now Playing: target practice with the cat

Been way too lazy about blogging this week.
Tuesday was stressed at work till about 9pm, got home and split up with girlfriend - had way too few braincells left functioning to paraphrase that in any polite sense afterwards, so left it.
Thursday I went out to a pub in Balham to watch some liquid laughter-aerobatics, and drink way too much. For some reason, I thought the last tube home wasn't that important, and thanks to Tristan's superior taxi-directing skills, ended up back here at 1am, trying to sober up enough to focus on the two scenes of Coriolanus I had to read for Friday morning's 5.30 start (yes, really! Got to stop thinking about work constantly, it's becoming deeply sad).
Eventually I woke up in a foetal position slumped and drooling over the damn scenes at around 4.30 this morning, and realised that I was never going to sober up enough to drive within the space of one hour, so called in a sickie today.
It took me two hours to write the bloody fax necessary for [wankers I work with] to [disregard] the work that they'll [try to avoid doing] for me; at this point the hammering behind my eyes was matched by the concrete drills of the builders who've spent the last year and a half doing up the house opposite. Oh joy. Still, ex-DH has spotted them mostly playing footie inside the house rather than working, so maybe the day will be mostly tea-break and I'll get some kip.

celebrity stalker

I do, like most people, enjoy the odd moment of stalking my neighbours.
Mostly it's the odd, futile, (unexpressed) burst of (mildly contained) rage at their too-close coexistence. I'd purse my lips and mutter profanities at common or garden outrages: making any noise whatsoever, for instance, or daring to express their individuality in such unacceptable ways as smiling in the street, chatting to their friends and relatives on the step, calling to a pal from a car, or lounging on the window sills naked (despite lacking any visible sign of attractiveness, clothed or not) (yes, YOU, Vincent).
However, I don't actually tail, photograph, or collect jottings on the habits of common or garden neighbours.

One tends to find this all changes when you spot someone famous has moved in nearby, though. I mean, the East End of London has had in its day plenty of infamous residents. But not so many modern day slebs have fallen for the tawdry attempts at yuppification (read as: cheap housing for not-so successful City Boys and traders). The best I could muster was that awful Scots bloke who shagged Gwyneth Paltrow in Sliding Doors (really really not worth stalking... unlikely to last more than a week on Celebdaq, if he ever made it on there in the first place) - and Graham Norton.

Poor Graham. He must wonder how many times a week one not very fit jogger can run across his drive and back. And why she's so often eating fish 'n' chips.
Eddie Izzard once popped into a corner shop in Kennington for a pint of milk and some bread, and was not so discreetly followed around by me for a good half an hour.
The British method for noticing a famous person goes something like this:

rolled, swivel eyes,
pointedly ignore sleb,
hiss through teeth at friend,
determinedly stare in other direction, even if sleb is trying to get your attention
(for e.g. if you are about to mow sleb down in traffic, you must maim first, and protest "oh I didn't realise it was YOU" later)
kick friend and hiss even louder "Noooooooo, don't LOOK",
stare at sleb straight in face and pretend ineffectually that you don't recognise said megastar,
stiffly attempt to face a direction 65 degrees to the right of the sleb, while never allowing eyes to leave sleb's face at any time,
if sleb moves away, then shuffle clumsily behind him/her (in much the same manner as a comedy 1960s spy dressed as a large pot plant),
once sleb is almost out of sight: jump, lunge, run, shove, clamber over any obstacle until sleb is back within sights,
return to rolled, swivel eyes and ignoring sleb stage.

You can imagine how many night shifts I've had to spend parked across his drive while trying to work out the floor plan of Graham's flat.
So today, news breaks out that he's moving to America, where he hopes Comedy Central will appreciate his brand of humour! Camp humour in Britain is by now (and largely thanks to the massively over-exposed Graham) the exclusive preserve of bingo-loving pensioners and the Faliraki-going working classes. This applies equally to the gay audience.
Graham, current holder of last year's UK Worst Dressed Man award, will export his own personal brand of "chase me! / ooo-er, I said 'cock'... missus!" humour. He'll infest the light entertainment channels and make them his own. And at some small, oblivious level, he'll no doubt miss the shy, reserved class of well-brought up English stalker found even in the rough old East End.
Bet you Americans can hardly wait, can you?

Mono

Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: BBC1 (Cripes, it's gorn downhill, etc...)

Me: Where did you go in Melbourne?
DH: The Great Ocean Way.
Me: Where's that?
DH: It's near Melbourne.

Recent conversations with the DH have developed a theme:

Me: How was your day?
DH: Uh.
Me: Sorry?
DH: Weird.

I may be well dense but even I can spot a pattern if repeated frequently and emphatically enough:

Me: So what did they ask you to do at your new job?
DH: Work.

Upon analysis I think I may - perhaps - have detected a slight recurrence.
Now I just have to work out what I did wrong, when and where....

Mystic big-Mouth strikes again

Mood:  accident prone
Now Playing: I Am Kloot; Suede; The Kills (while in five hour traffic jam)

My buttocks ache like anything, and not from sex, from exercise. This is where the countryside has it all wrong.

Spent ten hours driving to and from forest this weekend. Made super special by spraining my gas-pedal ankle last Thursday. (wearing stiletto heels and a wee skirt all Friday definitely improved that situation... oh yes.) Agonising rictuses 'r' us... After six and a half hours, I decided to buy a map (just after I spotted the English Channel, lurking somewhere it really shouldn't have been).
After 8 hours, I stopped slowing down when driving past wild forest ponies. If they want to be cheeseburger, it's allright by me.

Still amazed by how powerful the Ageing Goth Pound is becoming in this country. Small five-house town Burley possesses two working covens. Apparently Lymington's 'literary links' are all satanist or Dennis Wheatley-related (according to the local information centre's leaflet). Someone somewhere is about to make their fortune out of mass-marketing string fingerless gloves and frilly white shirts, no doubt.
Added to this, every town I've visited ever now has a crappy shop selling plexi-glass wizard figurines, or tin dragons and sorcerors (often on motorbikes).
There's some new national magazine called something like 'Psychic Take A Break' which is staffed by the most extreme camp / mentally defective looking journos and one newsreader type dishy/classy woman writer. The dishy, classy looking journo turns out to be the worst of them all - works a problem page racket where problems like 'my little boy has liver failure' are answered with dodgy tripe that advises turning off the dialysis machine and trusting in the power of a tibetan spit candle, instead.

And finally, the marketing wonder that is EvanEscence. These people should be required reading on MBA courses - the first musicians to spot and exploit the gap in the market that allies Goth doomyism to Christian youth.
So simple! Why did nobody else think of fleecing this lot? It's the Pope's very own Marilyn Manson.

Mucus

Mood:  lazy
Now Playing: Arvo Part - Fur Alina

Oh dear, I have a stinking cold. Woke up with a cat nestled at my groin and another at my shoulder, and half a snail drizzling down my face. Apparently I had been snoring like hell - perhaps this sounds to cats like a giant tiger-purr.

Caviar and Camping

Mood:  hungry
Now Playing: Rachmaninov

Today I made my own Russkie blinis, and ate them with creme fraiche, caviar, rose petal harissa paste, smoked salmon and a big marinated olive and tomato salad. Turns out that once ensconsed in your stomach, fifteen blinis feels very much like three normal sized pancakes. Hom! (As we used to say back when we used to take the piss out of munching with too much in your mouth, Ken Hom and poofs in the same breath.)
I also had lunch on the roof at work, with a magnif view of most of London's skyline. The morning mist had cleared, and the horizon stretched from Elmstead Woods to Crystal Palace transmitter, to Canary Wharf, the London Eye and the Gherkin.
If anyone ever does see the view from the south east, can you tell me what the abnormally large tree is? The one that has looked for the past five years like an abnormally large Mr Staypuff man, waving? It's abnormally large.
Not bad for a Friday's feasting, and so I'm off to bed early, liberated from the horror of Sex and the City at last.

Up early tomorrow to drive to the New Forest for a weekend en famille. Ooo-er!

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Mood:  accident prone
Now Playing: silence

I got an unexpected reprieve from Shakespeare duty today, which means I don't have to read the play for another week. I shall spend all the extra three hours this gives me fantasising about getting enough sleep tonight.

I also no longer have to record the dreadful SATC on Friday nights for HarvardBoy, as the DH can take over now. The idea that some real humans somewhere might be like this overpaid, overaged, self-obsessed materialistic gorgon-fest was getting me down considerably.

Went out to Duch's place last night, where we both downed an entire bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape while loudly boasting of our new no-alcohol regimens...hmm....
No doubt this had more than a little to do with The Whingeing on yesterday's blog, which got posted eight separate, drunken, premenstrual times. D'ohhhh.

Recent - verbal - comments on my blog:
"it is funny, but it makes me feel slightly weird and stalkerish to read it"
"here's my IP address; so you will know when I'm reading it"

I love having bonkers friends, me. :o)

whingeing

Mood:  incredulous
Now Playing: jatb on the phone

Have you ever been forced into a role you didn't want to fulfil?
I mean, something a little like when you visit your parents* for dinner in your thirties and they still tell you to eat your carrots; there's a split second of shame when you realised you actually whined.
(*generalised example, I don't mean my parents! before Sue tortures me with carrot anecdotes while camping in the forest this weekend.)
About six months ago I felt that I was stuck in (what I suppose US psychs would term) a holding pattern of always being the bad guy in pretty much all the relationships I have. Friends, colleagues, partners. The one who says no, the one who gets annoyed, is hard to contact, is selfish, doesn't think about others, never returns calls, cuts you off for weeks without reason, doesn't react rationally, goes off on one, etc. There's a certain, icy power in that, but you also end up finding it difficult to speak about any emotion. Not good. Not progress.
So part of the purpose of the summer, alone with me, (well, the purpose after the Having No Money At All purpose) was to be On My Own. Nobody to incriminate me, or tempt me to be difficult, or make me feel emotionally blackmailed into being what they want me to be.
It was a tad lonely on the odd occasion, but what happened little by little was that I seemed to turn back into me again. Slowly. Slooooo-o-o-o-owly.
I could do what I want, listen to what I want, go where I want, see whomever I want, to do whatever I wished. This is not normally the case. It wasn't all roses, and I think the bloody blog itself is testament to how dispiriting enforced isolation can be at times.
Come September - new academic year, new promotion, old girlfriend returning; the old habit of feeling the pressure to fit into other people's expectations of how they'd like me to be resurfaced. I resisted; I like this new freedom. And people don't like it. The DH does not like it.
I'm getting used to the rolled eyeballs when I don't respond as demanded to some barked request. A heavy sigh if someone enters a room and I'm in it. The sulks if my comments are not quite what was expected. Friends and colleagues who've hung in there over the summer have already been through this, seem to have given up trying to shove a stereotype onto me, and mostly now comment on how much more like my old self I seem after more than a few years of being rather remote, distant and unreliable.
I have to gamble that the long-term positive response is a pattern, a prevailing one.
I wonder if this change is a good thing? Or am I just becoming older, more stuck in my ways? More smug in my selfishness? Perhaps it's more of a fear of change than a change at all?
I turned down that promotion today. I haven't spoken to anyone I saw when out socialising about it, because I don't care what they think. I'm sick or carping competitivity, snappy one liner put downs, working all hours to show how bloody successful I am. I don't want to be a fucking management consultant. I want to please me, not you.
But then, the question becomes... how far does the Brand New Selfishness go before it needs to be stopped?

aversion therapy

Mood:  sad
Now Playing: muted teev, showing images of carnage and violent bloody deaths..... eeek

Some people are scared of snakes, frogs, mice, bluebottles. I go freaky at cockroaches.
I saw a programme on teev tonight where people explained morbid fears of hedgehogs. The phobia, right, is that they might sink their teeth into an ankle high death grip, and have to be sawn off.
Another (nice, normal, apparently well-adjusted bloke) needed intensive therapy to open a tin of Heinz baked beans. This involved taking a bowl of baked beans and using his finger to sculpt a baked bean map of Australia. Even I found that a little disgusting...
Makes me feel a bit better that for the last seven weeks, incrementally, in fact, my fears have focussed entirely on visualising everything that could go wrong when the DH comes back.

Like the people in the teevee show, perhaps it's actually a sign of progress when all your fears are realised for you.
I have to admit that barricading yourself in the bedroom and yelling 'I don't give a shit' could be improved upon as a greeting.

Minor good things:
New Model Blogger Eurotrash, has linked to my blog, after I de-lurked on her comments, called her "wet" and told her wake up to herself. Rah! What a woman.
Coincidentally, according to a New York Times algorithm, my blog's writing style is decidedly masculine. I queried this in terse, masculine sounding emails, to no avail. Apparently, terse, snippiness is a male preserve. (tell the boss that...) Call me Leon.
In the which case, fuck off.

No, really.