Apparently I planned it all

This is the latest theory of Wickedex and her friends. That I masterminded breaking up with her, and had been planning it for months.
Here, then, is a visualisation of my meisterwerk - The Grand Plan to do the moneygrubbing larcenous icy cow out of her rightful fortune:

Stage 1 - Easter
Temporarily split up with Wickedex, have nervous breakdown, nearly lose job.
Forward thinking: minus 40 points.
Grand strategy score: minus 10.

Stage 2 - Spring
Pull life together, lose two weeks' wages after not turning up to the |genericjob| - it interrupted my nervous breakdown schedule. Regain sanity. Use up a year's promotion pay to fund Wickedex's ten week holiday in Australia as an early birthday gift. Receive a fake birthday present in my turn that ends up costing me sixty pounds, because she forgot to get me anything.
Approach whole Oz trip thing with trepidation as Wickedex morphs into Scrooge. "Why the hell are you buying that shampoo?! Don't you know I have a trip to Australia to save up for?"
Reason for paying for her trip: wanted her to stop being with me out of habit. Wanted her to be with me out of choice. Had intended to pay another eight hundred pounds to join her there for part of the trip - until I crash the car. Wickedex refuses to pay any money towards replacing it. "Don't you know I have a trip to Australia to save up for?" New car costs #5K. Lambasted for being jealous of her trip. Fuck me. I don't want to go to Australia. I can get racism in Bermondsey, mate.
Forward thinking: minus 20 points.
It could be that I faked the car crash as a convenient excuse. From the grassy knoll.
Grand strategy score: minus 30.
Hitler would have been too poor to annexe Austria at this rate.

Stage 3 - Summer
Spend a summer blogging, overheated, immobile, and being fairly drowned in tedium.
Wickedex effervesces with lengthy descriptive emails while alone in New Zealand, but once back in Sydney has more important things to do than email me. Gets annoyed that I invited round four friends she doesn't like. How dare I forget the rules about not mentioning my friends, etc.
Doesn't telephone as it would "cost too much money".
Have to spend time convincing people that although the blog may sound action packed, leaving the house once every fortnight doesn't actually constitute a giddy social whirl.
Everyone I know tells me to stop whingeing on about missing her. The frostiness penetrates even my thick skull though, and when people set dates for late September, I begin my reply, "it depends if I get dumped or not..." (no unregistered friends rule, remember?)
Forward thinking: 40 points.
Good choice not to blog the seventeen all-night lesbian orgies. Then my lies and deceit would have become transparent. And - aha! I mentioned "dumped"! Could it have been any clearer what I was up to?
Grand strategy score: minus 10.
Weak.

Stage 4 - early Autumn
Wickedex returns. Is furious that I didn't skip work to collect her from the airport 25 miles away, and that the freeholder changed the lock on the front door. Everything I say is wrong; if I speak, eyes are rolled, if I enter a room, she clucks her tongue. Apparently jet lag makes one do this. Privately, I resolve that if this continues for more than a fortnight (jet lag's supposed to be over in 48 hours, isn't it?) then we probably need to split.
Wickedex gazumps me. She dumps me within six days flat. I am told how cruelly ignorant I am of the sheer pressure of doing a temp job for three months. (Those three years I temped to fund my travelling do not count.)
Tiny flat seems smaller. Two people who are supposed to loathe each other, suddenly. Not good.
Forward thinking: 20 points.
Aha! Clear, crystal evidence that I planned it - had the date set all along. [This is not at all comparable to pretending that jet lag makes you bitchy for weeks on end.]
Grand strategy score: minus 20.
Shoulda thought about the somewhere to live option . . .

Stage 5 - late Autumn
Not wanting to be homeless, I agree to buy the jointly owned flat we live in. Ooops. Worst point in the market to do so - prices are high. Wickedex sets the price at well over #200,000. Easily five times my salary. At which point I wig out, and demand she leaves. She does so.
Spend large amounts of time ill. Overcome previous problems with opening mail or using the phone. Manage to find a fool who will lend me that sort of money, and a willing victim to rent a room from me. Still, it's pretty near the breadline; will have no disposable income ever again (working for local councils catches few big raises). Wickedex posits getting back together again. I refuse.
Despite the fact that she dumped me, everyone I know is under the remarkably coincidental impression that I've made her homeless, jobless and penniless, and that her life is ruined.
Forward thinking: 50 points.
It's so pleasant, here in her flat, surrounded by all her things, knowing that every weekend she's going to turn up and smash things at random. I don't need holidays or clothes, surely. All has turned out beautifully.
Grand strategy score: 50.
Patently, I'm making a bundle out of the poor woman.

Stage 6 - Winter
She demands I pay her half of the mortgage. I refuse. Wickedex will not countenance a lodger in "her" property. When I offer to reimburse half her current rent once the flat is sold, am instructed to pay half her rent now. Not sure what that means, as she's living rent free and bill free with my friends. Wickedex protests how poor she is. I point out that I know full well she has enough cash on hand to pay a deposit and two month's rent right away. Saying this out loud is construed as a Very Very Bad Thing. Must not contradict the doctrine that She Is The Victim Here.
I give up, and agree to sell. The Wickedex Moneymaking Machine moves into action, and the place is besieged by moneygrubbingbastard agents. Who say it's overpriced. They suggest dropping the price to #220,000 for the one and a half bedroom flat.
I offer to move out and let her live here. Things in the flat keep breaking. She's here when I'm not, and things are moved; yesterday I came home to a definite instinct that she'd been in my bed.
I point out that I could afford the flat myself, if the price drops. "Well, you think about that." Am unable to stop crying and the lack of a lockable door is sending me mad. Am told by a third party that I planned this all along.
Forward thinking: minus 20 points.
Should have thought about the going mad part back when you planned the whole 'Steal Wickedex's Earthly Fortune' campaign, back in January.
Grand strategy score: 150.
I'm not sure how.

So there you have it. How to make yourself homeless, turn all your friends against you, and send yourself mad, in six easy months.
Fergawdssakes, I planned it ... ? A mongoloid chimp could have planned better than that.

crying, eating, walking, speaking ...

Now Playing: Paul Mc Cartney, on the District line tube; then 'Solsbury Hill'. Again.

Conversation last week with Wickedex:
"Did you smash my new camera?"
"The cat did it."
"Oh. Did you go a bit mentallist, then?"
"Believe me, you've never even seen mentallist."
"oh. I don't want to see it, really."
"Really. You haven't a clue how mentallist I can be."
"I'm no longer under any obligation to see you being mentallist, though. I can do without it."
"Oh. I guess."

***

Why the hell did I wear stilettos? It just draws attention to the fact I haven't ironed my suit. Without glasses, there's not even a reason to visualise freakish sex.
I hate when short guys turn away as you approach. As if - if they can't see you, then no-one can see that they're short. They could just start muttering and shaking / twitching, instead - it's no less clear that they have a problem. I never had a problem dating blokes shorter than me as a teenager - I find it odd that grown men - men who are short every single day - can't get over themselves on this one.

***

I need to eat more. I think I ate rawish steak last night, but most of the evening is a total blank, so I can't be sure. But I do have a trace memory of sitting on the bus home and realising my legs had the look of a pipe-cleaner woman. Besides, if I eat more, I might not end up crying so much. You never know.

***

Footnote about crying all the time:
Perhaps it's hormonal. It doesn't feel any worse than not crying, and I'm certainly no more upset than when I'm not crying. It just sort of comes out.
Usually I'm pretty circumspect about that sort of thing. If someone cries in front of me, it's a shortcut way to get me to be nasty to them, because I automatically assume it's an attempt at emotional manipulation. It's a little galling to keep being the damp over-emotional person myself.
Helpfully, the |genericjob| is engrossing and interesting enough to take my mind off it. Also, I find very very loud singing can prevent it (useful when driving - I'm sure crying before an accident would invalidate the insurance.) Might be frowned on upon the tube, though.

Strange how I have no such self consciousness about vomiting on the tube though.
Having lived in central London through all of a particularly wild twenties, I estimate I've splash-backed on about sixty to seventy perfect strangers. Tube etiquette being what it is (the madder anyone behaves, the more fixedly one stares at a safe spot behind their head), not a one of them complained. Four have even offered medical assistance. Bless. They don't do that when you're crying.

But anyway - the crying references - I'm not blogging them for piteousness, or as another bloody way to mope. It's just something that's happening.
Do feel free to take the piss.

Barely Ever Asked* Questions

Now Playing: Bob Dylan

Why do I have to smash my mobile so bloody often that it has to be wrapped in clingfilm?

Why can't I get through a five hour stretch without crying?

Why is losing your home so fucking personal? It's not the possessions. Might not even be the place. It's the door. Why does that have to be so fucking important to me that I can't function without it?

Why do we have to tolerate all our old friends' foibles and idiosyncrasies, just because they're our circle of friends? Why do old groups of pals keep acting like we're out of a Richard Curtis movie script, where we all swear and wisecrack continuously, but nobody says anything important?

Why can't she apologise?

Why is music so powerful? It's like a torture and a retreat at the same time.

Why do I spend my time deadening things? What's wrong with experiencing what you feel?

(*probably because it makes for a shit, whiney blog)

restoring order

Mood:  blue
Now Playing: Coldplay. How depressing.

Woke up at six today, to the sound of an alarm clock further away than it should have been. Realised I was curled in the hallway around a sleeping cat, head all but in the litter tray. No memory, but location alone indicates I must have come in, shut the door, slid down it crying and stayed that way.

So all told, I think I've done relatively well to get up at eleven, cancel appointments, open a week's mail, fix the bog, wash up, tidy up the flat so the Wickedex (for she is no longer a DH, oh no, not even an ex-DH, and transitional though Wickedex may be as a name, it's what four hour crying jags caused by her larceny deserve. Give me some credit, I didn't call her Shylock) could show the moneygrubbinglyingbastardagents the place at three, when I will thankfully be absent, and buying frilly knickers in Selfridges. I'm sure to be told again how selfish and lazy I am, but I couldn't care less. She wants her top price, she can tidy for it.

Last night I went to a "banging" bar to meet fmc and her new beau, Swansea. He coped admirably when I began to call him by the name of a previous boyf of hers, and I think was only feigning tears when fmc also picked up the habit (accidental, surely, he's much nicer than the fat boring blimp he replaced). Several bottles of loonyjuice later, even Swansea was accidentally calling himself Simon. He paid for the privilege of this abuse by coughing up for the whole meal.
That's what I call a good sport.

Dwelling on Freakishness

Now Playing: Foo Fighters: 'Tired of You'

Blogging on the tube -- cripes, I hope no-one reads over my shoulder.

Was ranking people on the platform by height and width. I do this whenever I'm wearing stilettos. Heels tip me just over six feet tall, so I tend to amuse myself by crowing about the fact; stalking about the place trying deliberately to clatter past short people.
(Politically correct is 'petite' is it not? Petite makes me think of Sindy-size. If I were below five foot, frankly I'd prefer to be 'stunted' than 'petite'.)

It struck me that whenever I see a tall good-looking bloke and a short woman, I can't help but imagine sexual congress occurring between the two.
Similarly, walking past really really short but foxy chicks. It's quite an involuntary reaction to try to judge their lofty bearing against the height of my minge. It's a little like the reflex response when you see a really stereotypically introverted minging person, you always imagine snogging them.
Go on, try to contradict me - you know it's true. The more Elephant Man the features, the more 'trapped in a prison of my unreal skin' their haunted eyes look, the more the sudden mental snoggage occurs.

Might explain why I've not taken that hot Luis Guzman DVD back to the shop yet, then.

I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains' enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.

Adrienne Rich - From 'an Atlas of the Difficult World'

Thanks to Lux whose blog made me read this poem.

What the hell is Vanessa PLAYING at post

Now Playing: games

I did explain the whole project, but things are upside down on a blog, so the explanation possibly merits reposting, especially given the grief I've received over this. So here's the skinny:

I usually loathe blog entries based around google search terms of yore -- shock, horror: people use the internet to fuel their sexual perversities. You blogged about wanking onto a Caesar salad, are you surprised your site figured in the tally?
Nevertheless, I'm going to make an exception today, because, well, the rules don't apply to me, 'cos I'm just so fucking different -- okay?

In the spirit of catering to the needy, isolated, minging and unfulfilled (my brethren!), I feel compelled to do more than my usual meaninglessly disconnected bullet pointed data burst.

Today, what was searched for shall be found.

So there you have it. I listed the search terms that brought up my site in Google, and retrospectively made up a post for each one.
Below is a set of links to each of the posts. The idea was that I had to do them all within twenty four hours, while still doing a full day's work, and going out in the evening to sort out with the ex-DH whether we sell the flat I live in or not. Diversionary tactics much?

Anyway, I failed a little on number 8 , I cheated somewhat by blegging for guest bloggers on numbers 11, 10 , and 6. And my personal favourite got knocked quickly from the front page, so probably nobody ever read it - it's number 2 .

Google Fruition Frission:
0 why i did it
1 duch rabbit pictures
2 smog in london in the edwardian times
3 vanessa's lunch box
4 groped in public
5 vanessa bell, a conversation
6 cat deely in rubber
7 scarygirls
8 GREEK NUDIST COLONY
9 squealing belt 'washing machine'
10 virgin gynaecologist
11 vanessa's french feet

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Fruition 11: "vanessa's french feet"

Now Playing: games
Guest photo blog of my feet, donated by Yidaho:

Guest blog donated by my stalkee: Three Jugs of Cocktails:

Sarsparilla's [sic] reluctance to blog this entry herself is entirely understandable.
On her continental sojourn, she passed through many different regions, including at one point Alsace.
In those days, times were hard, not like the good times she now knows so well, so to pay for her next night on the campsite, some temporary employment had to be sought.
The local artisans needed help with their recolte that year, due to unexpected high milk yields from the franco-germanic cows.
The traditional method of making Munster requires using the toes to manually-form the traditional round shape. This gives the product its famous "dimpled" appearance.
Sarsparilla removed her shoes and started to fondle the cheese gently with her toes.
For this, the remuneration was a sprightly four francs per hour. Six hours would be enough for a square yard of field for the night and a glass of vin de pays.
I may not have mentioned the particularly fragrant aroma that Munster propagates. I may not also have mentioned that, sadly, use of the washroom facilities at the campsite was extra. And this is where the still-famous throughout Alsace appellation controlee 'Vanessa's French feet' obtained its name.
The cows, however, were not best pleased with this outcome. They retaliated accordingly.

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Fruition 10: "virgin gynaecologist"

Now Playing: games
Guest blog by Vic Jameson

I've read my fair share of pornography, thumbed through discarded copies of 'Razzle' and 'Electric Blue', and well before the age of sixteen I had seen my fair share of punani. No matter how often my mother found and promptly binned my copies of 'Mayfair' I would always manage to find replacements from one place or another and it simply served to increase my poontang-tally. Naturally when I reached the age of sixteen and of legal age to observe real life ladies in the nude and interact with them I assumed it would happen. None the less I would still keep my magazine collection close to my bed for those odd occasions when I couldn't find a girl to interfere with, if indeed that were ever to happen. Sadly reality and expectation were two complete opposites, and my magazines were there to show me what I was missing, and so I became rather attached to them, as some of the pages were to each other for some reason. I started to notice the idiosyncrasies in the vaginal structure, the differences between coiffured mounts, their curved buttocks without a hint of tan-line, it was fascinating. This state of sexual interaction with women of a printed nature was surely as educational as any kind of medical degree on the external characteristics of minge. By all rights I should have been a professional gynaecologist practicing on the most beautiful women alive, but I wasn't, what had gone wrong?

Years later I was to discover the truth with my first sexual encounter with a real life girl, who wasn't in my mind or on a bit of paper, she was real and there and in front of me. I knew what to expect, I had educated myself well in the way of the gigolo in theory if not in practice, I knew exactly what was beneath those clothes, I could close my eyes and literally see it. The moment of unveiling came, and to my horror I realised I had been lied to. Breasts should be pert and perfect surely, not like fried eggs nailed to a plank. Pubic hair should be trimmed back and well maintained, everyone knows that, not a ravenous brush scrub running down the inside of the thighs and across the buttocks. I can't even bring myself to write of the further disappointment when my patient revealed that the labia is not always a well behaved small strip of flesh just budding from its hiding place. Needless to say I have well and truly learned my lesson and the number of partners that have allowed my interference truly do qualify my for my position of gynaecologist now. My practice is open from Wednesday to Friday, and my fees are very reasonable.

Dr. Vic Jameson

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Fruition 9: "squealing belt 'washing machine' "

Now Playing: games
1. Panic/blog:

Vanessa says: ack, I'm never going to get this bloody blog written in time / write me a blog entry will you?
yidaho says: long as it's not sorebum massacre
yidaho says: get out.. i can't even find the time to do my own this week / too busy watching the idiots on Addictz
Vanessa says: write me one on 'squealing belt washing machine'/ pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease / I have no ideas for that one at all
yidaho says: lol, i've not suffered a squealing belt problem before..
Vanessa says: me either. I've made them make a slapping sound that's quite satisfying, but not a squeal - I think that's a 'dom' too far for me
yidaho says: can't you make one up..
Vanessa says: MAKE ONE UP!? sacrilege. wash your marf art.
yidaho says: you shrunk a fabric belt in the washing machine.. and wearing it made you squeal?
Vanessa says: that's asinine!
yidaho says: lol
Vanessa says: Go on....... pleeeeeeeease write it for me; pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease
yidaho says: lol
Vanessa says: stop not answering 'yes', you; you could write about that washing machine wank advert - where she's on the machine for a bit *too* long. She squeals in that.
yidaho says: lol, trooo
Vanessa says: Go onnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn, do it. You know you want to
yidaho says: are all these posts about search strings? i didnt read through them properly. I was saving it for when i got on holiday.. you know, print it off and take it on a 10hr flight to USA, or something..
Vanessa says: Pah; I don't care if nobody reads them, I had a reason for writing them
yidaho says: oh?
Vanessa says: Anyway, anyone repeats those searches, they'll get ME; hahaha
yidaho says: lol, i noticed that too
Vanessa says: have you not noticed that when people do a search string entry, the next week or so, their blog is awful racy -- not in style, just the odd words / trying to get the perverts onside?
yidaho says: most of my visitors arrive by mistake
Vanessa says: rubbish!

2. Further research reveals
That 'washing machine tv wank advert' was for a mobile phone company, and their official site encourages mucho sex with household appliances. I quote:
"welcome to orgasmatic washing machine, where the spin cycle is saucy and the rinse rampant."
Apparently it was the first ever orgasm shown on a British advertisement. They kindly allow you to watch the advert online, and offer a 'win an orgasm' competition. Weird.
But not as weird as the 'which sex doll fits you?' quiz one finds if you google for the mobile phone shop's company logo, 'are you ashamed of your mobile?'

Before Martin turns it up, here's some proper research (sponsored by the same ever-liberal phone company) on UK incidence of sex with kitchen gadgets.

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Fruition 8: "GREEK NUDIST COLONY"

Now Playing: games
1. Panic/blog: Aargh. This is the one I failed on - failed to finish the post within the twenty four hours. Dammit. Damn my eyes.
Okay, okay, it's coming, it's coming.
And it's all true, I'll have you know.

2. Actual/blog:

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Fruition 7: "scarygirls"

Now Playing: games
I thought this particular search string may just have referred to that goth girlie site that attempts to atone for its very very soft pornishness by having dominant looking pale geek-bunnies wearing scary shoes and piercings (all skinny as hell, though, whereas hard experience teaches you that most goth girls weigh 18 stone, and go on about healing auras in west country pubs before drunken crying jags) ... but it turns out I was quite quite wrong. The truth is actually rather refreshing. Here are your scarygirls. Bagsy the fox in green.

(don't fancy yours much.)

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Fruition 6: "cat deely in rubber"

Now Playing: games
1. Panic/blog:
dammit, dammit, dammit, I emailed this one from my phone, and ..... lost in the ether. Dammit!
Just picture the rubber gear and be quiet.

2. Guest photo blog by: Yidaho!

3. Actual/blog:
Errr, it was something deep and meaningful that wondered who is the target market for celebrity culture: teenagers, gay men, adult males, mums, or me.
I decided it was all my fault, particularly because I dislike the idea of celebrity yet the idea of knowing the truth behind Prince Charles' buggery rumours, or having access to sleb before and after plastic surgery pics is something i find deeply worryingly satisfying.
FS, I know someone who has Scary Spice's old boob implant, and is waiting for a disaster to befall so she can ebay it at the highest price. Blame me.

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Fruition 5: "vanessa bell, a conversation"

Now Playing: games
Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf, sisters and members of the Bloomsbury set. Here's Bell's painting of herself and Woolf at Kew, 'The Conversation':

"The people in Woolf's work talk about paintings and people, objects and sights we cannot see. The people in Bell's paintings speak words we cannot hear"

"Vanessa paints many figures that are faceless. This is exactly what we see Woolf doing when she attacks linear plot in her novels."

"In [Between the Acts], she shows her characters...between time present and time past, between creation, recreation and the frustrations of repetition. In a brilliant phantasmagoria, she could drain her own visions, empty it of colour, light, sight, rhythm, sound. How shocking it is, when she suddenly takes it all away. She had brought it all up so close, with her seductive synaesthesia - her crooning, buzzing sounds, her shifting perspectives, her resonant colours, her gentle, shimmering light - that while we were reading it, we thought it was ours, we thought it was real. How reassuring it is when she resumes her narrative each time, and each time brilliantly extends her vision. Art for the post-impressionist is illusory, a complex, complicit conjuring trick on the parts of both artist, viewer, and reader" (Roe )

"Readers can really see the influence of art on her writing. When we describe her novels it is as if we are describing a Cezanne, perhaps. Painting was imprinted on the mind of Woolf and appeared throughout most of her novels. She attacked her fiction through a painter's eye, too. She wrote of Orlando that she has "scrambled & splashed, & the canvas shows through in a thousand places. " She also said when she was editing Mrs. Dalloway that it is "as thus one works with a wet brush over the whole, & joins parts separately comprised & gone dry". Finally by the time we reach her last novel Between the Acts, she writes that luckily she is only, "covering...a small canvas" (Gillespie). The painting that Woolf mocked early on in her life had now become an integral part in every aspect of it."
Source

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Fruition 4: "groped in public"

Now Playing: games
It's said that travel broadens the mind. On the contrary, travel tops up your intolerance.
As a seventeen year old I hitched and backpacked around the middle east. I say this not to show off, but to underline how dense I was at that age.
Secure inside that peculiarly insular pocket of The World of The Lonely Planet Guidebook, barely any contact at all is made beyond the hermetic bubble of the 'likeminded' traveller. Looking back, the arrogance of the Generation X backpacking culture was amazing: you are a tourist, I am a traveller. You distort and destroy your host environment. I support and treasure indigenous culture, as long as

they conform to a panoply of liberal orthodoxies,
I can take grainy 6 by 8 shots of poor people, and
the German girls get their knockers out.

Given the ease with which the children of the {wealthybutpoliticallycrippledbyguilt} left are marshalled and shepherded into 'souks', 'authentic' local fare, and relieved of our dough in carpet buying rituals, we were no less a source of steaming manure-brained fools to scam to the locals than any package coach tour.
Frequently one would encounter the same fellow faces in a Budapest hostel as in Alexandria or Marrakesh. They could be Mexican, British, Canadian, whatever; the common currency was: rich enough to do this, with poverty enough of imagination not to do it well.

Accordingly, the cultural strictures and conventions of your host country tend, after a few months to feel pretty, but inconvenient. Eventually, the guys at the hostel would hang out in bollock revealing shorts, the girls a bikini top, simply on the basis that, jeez, the other kiwis here don't mind.
The effect is to delete any contact with native culture beyond the clammy grasp of the professional shyster. In the middle east the shyster is a profession taken so seriously by its adherents as to be practically institutionalised (gimme baksheesh and I'll tell you different). In Rio, they use a knife to take away all you own. In Cairo, a smile.
So in reality, the only true, unpoliticised, honest contact a Western tourist / traveller (Travest?) has with their host culture is located in the groping.

I can't speak for men, I have no idea what their experience abroad might be. Women? They all know what I'm referring to. jatb told me tales of The Speeding Grope perfected in India. It necessitates the groper be cycling toward the gropee. The standard self-defensive western female self-protective shrug ensues - after all, we've been here before, we know full well what is coming. The opportunity for grope passes, Travest heaves relief, uncrosses arms - and a left arm flashes out from behind at the final opportunity. One quick honk, and he's gone. It struck to me as a more seemly, fair play sort of a grope than the more traditional sixth sense that tells the gropee that the man standing behind in the not so crowded square really isn't forced to be pressed against your nether regions; the same peripheral vision that tells you obliquely that the meat in his hands is not a hot dog. Masters of this art are Turkish winos, who, faced with a scantily clad Travest moving sharply away in a petrified fashion, will follow doggedly, as if this were part of some normal bedroom seduction routine.

Whatever city you visit, any female user of public transport has been groped in public - watch out gropers, though, as the most effective crowded bus response is to quietly judge groper position then aim a hard punch in the solar plexus region. You get some dirty wounded looks (and a side order of panicky guilt that you've hit the wrong man), but to date, the grope has never continued past this stage.
The worst public groper I've encountered is The Worldly Wise Groper. A guy who will loudly commiserate with your troubles, lament the sexist attitudes of his unenlightened countrymen, invite you to explain in graphic detail the horrors to which you've been subjected, including lengthy descriptions of clothing worn, grope technique, regularity of offences ... only to introduce some pressing compulsion to expose himself to you.

Naturally, many of us don't grope in public. And it's not a sex-pest life sentence if you do - it'd be a dull long trawl through the days if you never ever did cop a sly feel sometime. To a certain degree, overly naive tourist / travellers bring it upon themselves, too. By the very nature of being a Travest, they're either too young or too stupid to avoid worse scrapes at home, and have been sent out into the world to be safe*.
(* ~ In many respects, the outside world is far safer for a teenager than staying at home: safe from pregnancy, safe from child brides, from alcohol induced psychoses and injuries, TWOC, perverts, and safe from the stultifying danger of the nine to five McJob - all far more irreparable horrors than a five knuckle shufty on the trans-Siberian railroad.)

I seem to have argued myself into a corner, so I'll curl up with my sarcastic notebook and stay there. Go in peace, fellow Travesties - grope with abandon, be free.

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Fruition 3: "vanessa's lunchbox"

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Once, two years after leaving a |genericjob| I had abhorred, upon comprehending that the grass was no greener - in fact most grass elsewhere had a sallow, post apocalyptic tinge - I swallowed my pride and took up the same post I had left behind.
As it turned out, it was the best decision I've ever made about any employment. I really enjoy my job. It may be |generic| but it's utterly fulfilling.
That's to jump ahead, though .... at the time of my return to the Hellhole As Was, I felt meek and vanquished. Shamefaced in fact. I'd spent two years blaming this |genericjob| for being everything tawdry, demanding and inescapable in my life and now here I walked nonchalantly back into The Pit.
They'd tried to entice me, sway me, reassure me, naturally; but precious little can quieten that small, unfaltering twinge in the depths of our bellies that tells us we've failed.
The first day progressed quickly, but still the twinge crept over my innards.
Back in The Pit. The Hellhole As Was. You didn't excape.
Downhearted, I reached under my desk, to fill - prosaically - my misgivings with food, carbonated drinks, caffeine. It had been my intention to grind up the lunch hour masticating, and leave no pockets of air in which to think.
Reaching down, there were two packs beneath the office desk. One dustier than the other.
It seemed familiar. In the pack was a plastic box, lightly dusted inside with a greenish-black powder - some solids, too.

Realisation slowly dawned. Two years had passed, but the box remained. It was vanessa's lunchbox that had dwelt in The Pit all along, its egg sandwich mouldering alongside my soul's decay, waiting to be reclaimed.

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Fruition 2: "smog in London in Edwardian times"

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Awwww. I like this one. I like the idea that my worthless bloody blog could be linked here somehow, however tangentially. (I'm going to maintain the stubborn fiction that this isn't someone's geography homework.)
I'm going to seek assistance by looking to my best source / authority on Edwardian London smog, Peter Ackroyd.
"Smog in London in the Edwardian Times" -- the redoubtable Mister Ackroyd only gives one reference to smog in his opus (London: a Biography) - although he does helpfully suggest 'fogs' as an alternative (and I know he indexes the books himself, longhand, hopefully before repairing to a pub). But there's no poetry in fog, Mr A.

That's what I had foolishly assumed, anyway. The quotation will be lengthy, I warn you. I really can't stop myself urging you to read the entire chapter 'A Foggy Day' (chapter 47"). But as ever, every word will count as gold:

"The very texture and colour of the city carried all the marks of its fog ... Heinrich Heine [described how] ... 'this overworked London defies the imagination and breaks the heart.' (1828) ... [he] observed that the streets and buildings were 'a brown olive-green colour, on account of the damp and coal smoke.' So the fog had become part of the physical texture of the city, this most unnatural of natural phenomena leaving its presence upon the stones. Perhaps in part the city defied the imagination ... because in that darkness 'which seems to belong to the day not to the night' the world itself was suspended; in the fog it became a place of concealment and of secrets, of whispers and fading footsteps."
"When Carlyle called the fog 'fluid ink' he was rehearsing the endless possibilities of describing London through the medium of the fog, as if only in the midst of the unnatural darkness could the true characteristics of the city be discerned."
"[Sherlock Holmes sees] 'a dun coloured veil hung over the housetops looking like a reflection of the mud-coloured streets beneath.' [A Study in Scarlet]"
"[In The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde:] the taste of changing identities and secret lives takes place within the medium of the city's 'shifting insubstantial mists'. In many respects the city itself is the changeling, its appearance altering when 'the fog would be quite broken up, and a haggard shaft of daylight would glance in between the swirling wreaths.' Where good and evil live side by side and thrive together, the strange destiny of Dr Jekyll does not seem quite so incongruous. Then for a moment the mist melts and the curtain lifts, revealing a gin palace, an eating-house, a 'shop for the retail of penny numbers and two penny salads', all this life continuing beneath the canopy of darkness like a low murmur of almost inaudible sound. Then once again, 'the fog settled ... as brown as umber, and cut him off.' ...
This also is the condition of living in London - to be 'cut off', isolated, a single mote in the swirl of fog and smoke. To be alone among the confusion is perhaps the single most piercing emotion of any stranger in the city."
"The fog that Tacitus described in the first century AD still hovers over London."

You can buy Ackroyd's urban biography of London here.

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Fruition 1: "duch rabbit pictures"

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I have in my mind Musical Youth, all bright scrubbed naivety, singing "pass the duchy on the left hand side." That song mystified me as a child.
Up in darkest Merseyside (ethnic minority population in 1980: 1) nobody in our small town had the foggiest. I had to move down south*, lose my innocence, and get into fights before I would pick up a grubby dog-eared Smash Hits magazine (then edited by a Pet Shop Boy who barely concealed his repugnance for the target market of 11-13 year old girls) and find that a duchy was a cooking pot.

Shyah, right. As an adult, I conscripted the ex-DH while working in NJ to get me a Dutch Oven from Macy's. I can't lift that fucker, let alone pass it one-handed to the side. How could a little perky bright-eyed rapping boy pass a whole dutch oven of stew to the left? And they were by a campfire on TOTP, that 'duchy' was hot.
Man, I know a secret code when I see one.

Anyway, duch rabbit pictures (see how I cheated? right there?): in my imagination, these innocent little singing gimps have a huge hot cast iron stewpot to get round that campfire somehow. And what's the obvious mental image of a really ferociously overboiled bubbling stewpot (...sorry ... duch?)? Manifestly, only the boiling bunny wabbit from Fatal Attraction can fit this chimera.

Let us not forget logic. Why would the toothy tunesome preteens be hefting a seething scorching cast iron stovepot filled with dead pet rabbit across the campfire to their left? Simple.
Any good catholic knows you seat the person you like least to your left at dinner. (Think back, now...)

Anyway, those are my nearest mental duch rabbit pictures. It could be that a bunny tail or somesuch is common usage amongst Dutch dyslexics to represent a fluffier than expected minge. I like my version. It involves torturing pets and burning ten year old child stars.

* ~ Okay, Musical Youth may not have been the sole motive...

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Fruition?

I usually loathe blog entries based around google search terms of yore -- shock, horror: people use the internet to fuel their sexual perversities. You blogged about wanking onto a Caesar salad, are you surprised your site figured in the tally?
Nevertheless, I'm going to make an exception today, because, well, the rules don't apply to me, 'cos I'm just so fucking different -- okay?

In the spirit of catering to the needy, isolated, minging and unfulfilled (my brethren!), I feel compelled to do more than my usual meaninglessly disconnected bullet pointed data burst.

Today, what was searched for shall be found.

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What I Could Buy:

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I've been house-hunting, in forlorn desperation that I will never afford to buy this place from the ex-DH, and may well have to leave.

100 yards' walk from my flat, I can buy:

A neon sign. A driving lesson.
Someone's old gold from the pawnbroker's shop.
A powder from the ex-flyweight boxer, Charlie Magri, called 'Get Off My Grass'.
Charlie Magri also sells a spray: [Viz] 'Stay Off My Grass' [/Viz]
If I could stand the wide open frightened deer eyes and super funky brand new threads of the freshers at the university ten yards down the road, I could buy bread, chocolate, milk and beer at Budgens.
I can buy what I'd consider an overpriced artsy fartsy curry, but you would consider cheap and subtly spiced (unless you're reading this in Brum).
I could spend #10 to stuff myself with as much fine sushi, sake and singapore noodles as anyone could ever want.
If I buy some petrol, the old hindu granpa who sweeps the forecourt and is a drumming uncle of my Builder neighbour will stop and chat about his dog.
Maps. Hysterically partial local papers (each column must be prefixed 'East End' - when UK Passport offices delayed processing new applications for minors, the headline that ran was 'East End Kids Denied Passports' - strewth!). A flouncy overfrilled sofa. The cheapest street heroin in the country. German brand biscuits. The best chips in the East End (frying overseen by yet another portrait of Charlie Magri). A contract killing (according to Kray legend), a Jack the Ripper sightseeing tour, a lock-in, an evening of old-time jazz, or a good time, no rubber.
A vegan nouvelle cuisine organic meal. With vegan organic beer. And vegan organic wine. Vegan organic tampons in the toilet machine. Crisps that smell of wet dog. Cough syrup. Pie and mash.

10 yards' walk from the flat in Greenwich that I viewed tonight, I can buy:

A Domino's pizza from downstairs. An Iceland bargain bucket anything. Body piercings and nail art. Charity shop pee-stained overcoats, overpriced spectacle, Monday Mega Meat offer from the Co-op convenience store.
Live crabs and iron hatchets from the Chinese supermarket that got done for food hygiene violations. An under aged whore. A Raleigh bicycle.