bah!

Let’s not do a round-up of the whole year shall we?

Jesus, that would fucking kill us all; wouldn’t it?!

Here’s a short version…..a round up of the week, in fact, in pictures……and in moving pictures x



Friday night:

Work don't. Dishevelled from the tumultuous rain we gather at a north african restaurant. I pull a learning disabilities drumming teacher in the duration. All goes well till the belly dancer appears.

Godiva is dragged to the floor to private dance for her new beau.

Old boss tells new boss about the time I went to work with spunk embossed on my arm pretending it was a skin complaint. And made her stroke it.

Minimal damage.

Diablo reminds me of the time it was on my stomach. Cum-ins comments that this doesn’t happen anymore. Condoms.


Saturday:

Strap-on-guitar.

Arty arsemas drinkie-poos in regency apartment.

PA to head honcho at young vic. Swipe. Tips on converting wmv files for macs. Swipe. Home-made Swedish cinnamon buns. Gulp. Mulled wine, mulled wine. Fuck that, red wine’s better if you need a hit. When you hit me baby, hit me hard….

Small japanese children designing their own christmas cards. Performance artiste naked in a giant jamjar gives me bum reading. Class. Classy arse. She doesn’t want to tell me there and then. I demand to know.

I am vulnerable, like a child. Not a bad child. Not a bad vulnerable. I am new. Do I? Do I?....she pauses…..‘need?’…..oh god!

It’s a hug. Do I need a hug. Yes sir, but watch yerself or I’ll blab christmas party tears all over yer lovely soft furnishings.

Escape. ‘pop’ to chavvy neighbours ‘do’ in the basement. Seven pm. Fairy dust. Meaty chavs galore. Not enough blood-flow to the head.

Who is this I’m curled up on - like a good, vulnerable child. Ricky, apparently. He’s telling me he’s going to look after me. Hmmmmm.

‘cuddles, that’s nice’, says a semi-lesbian barmaid who’s convinced I’m going out with an oversized jack-black lookalike, or her ex-boyfriend.

I come to. Luckily, I haven’t come too.

I make films:

Fairy dust wears off. Godiva escapes, alone. A big day ahead….


Sunday morn

Early morn train to brockley for cavalry rehearsal.




Sunday night

The doctor's. The neighbours…..

Moon day

Christmas shopping results in single jar of marmalade. And champagne – for me. G-ma’s coming…

it's beginning to look a bit like christmas...

Moon night

Me and jangle-bells rehearse with the band for our gig on wed night. Which mainly involves drinking copious amounts of wine, scranning Pringles till the msg hits us, and pissing ourselves at the hilarious instrument that is…..the tuba




Tuesday

“Work”. Get dragged to HQ christmas do. Fried cheese, garlic bread, head of facilities trussed up bopping about to wham. Female press officer demands slow dance as I try to slope off, head of finance attempts a grope at 7pm. Run to the hills. There aren’t any in london bridge. I make do with steps. A bag-lady witch talking about mother earth and the radioactive urban fox provide me with more intellectual entertainment.

Wednesday

The big day. The gig. Camden. Godiva severs several arteries hitlering the choir.

Just about to unleash ourselves on the unsuspecting camden trendies, I receive a text from mother:

Result.



Thursday I receive another, less fruitful text from mummy:

Happy fucking christmas one and all – mine will involve a bottle of taittinger and seven temazepam….xx

For whom the bell tolls….

Though new life can bloom in the darkest of winter nights, flames that burnt so brightly suddenly burn so pale….

On monday night, as samson drove me to rack and ruin gallivanting around the spaceship like a demented puppy setting up my new mac, I realised that for the first time in eons I hadn’t been on the internet all day.

I’d been ‘shopping’. I’d been lying on the beach until a hobo came and did strange things to me. Borrowing software from gunter. Drinking cwaffee.

I visited mr fish in his studio to do his tarot. On the way there I walked through the busy tourist area, and by the church - usually full of frustrated misunderstood buskers - time stood still.

A coffin.

Made from wicker. Right in the middle of town. I caught the exact minute the undertakers started to shoulder it in.

Compelled, I went to follow them in. I wanted to see, wanted to know. Who was time standing still for?

Genuinely moved by this experience, I shared it with mr fish, who immediately premoniced that the death card would appear. He hadn’t had the tarot before. In his back room, amongst fish plastercasts and seaside visionscapes, we cleared room for the cards.

He picked strength.

Reversed. (of course).

And still he was convinced it meant death.

My day continued, and I found myself at nightfall kiltering out of control - with samson rearranging me circuits and the realisation that drinking neat vodka and climbing into a cauldron of mulled wine the night before probably wasn’t the most congenial course of action for getting my shit on.





And then I said I’d better check my mail.

Very rare of me to be slack-alicing about the beach and idly enjoying myself of a daytime. Very rare of me not to have been stuck on my decrepid laptop for hours on end working up a nervous breakdown over my imminent choral downfall…

And there was a message.

Inviting me to a funeral.

The messenger had only written the first names of the deceased. A recently married couple, killed in a car crash on the final leg of their road trip through canada before returning to london to settle.

Panicked, I tumble, jaundice-faced onto the love rug. What do I do now? My mac’s asking me what language I want it to speak, but all I want it to tell me is….who’s dead?

It’s not zed.

Nor does the news compute. Can it be who I think it is? A kindred soul, long departed from my life, but doing his bit for the universe in worldly corners? A man who meant the world to me because he was a prolific being. Better to burn out than fade away?

Someone I had met fifteen years ago when I stole his take that fan mail that he never collected from his pigeon-hole?

No- please, the powers that be, no.

There’s a flickr account set up for us to post our photos of them on. I go to it. This will show me who is no more.

I get the photos up.

I have NO IDEA who the man in the photo is.

I breathe. IT’S NOT HIM! IT’S NOT HIM!

I’m so relieved. It’s some other fucker I vaguely knew. Sad, but okay. Samson is helping me. But he says that I’d better reply to the message and find out who the hell is no more.

I message the reaper back and wait for the answer. We eat dinner, we talk it through. I decide it’s almost definitely another member of the band. Shame, but not going to break my back.

Then I get the dreaded reply.

“I’m afraid you guessed right”. What?! But the photos?! He can’t have changed THAT much?! WE looked at flickr. I’d clicked on some random bird’s link. And imagined all of her friends were dead. Glory be.

Samson continues setting up my new beast of burden, whilst flirting on his iphone. Not one for multitasking, I suddenly feel the need to uproot him, turf him out -

“EITHER HELP ME, TALK TO ME, OR GET OUT! I NEED TO MOURN FOR A MAN I LOVED!”

I am distraught. I shake and I rattle. Though often one to smugly think she’s beaten death’s grizzly sickle, (I’m used to suicide – their choice, or illness – their body’s choice). I am not prepared for the advent of someone I fundamentally loved being whisked off the planet.

It’s a new one. I’m broken.

I light a candle. I film myself distraught. The candle goes out on camera.

I drag myself to work the next day. I take my hat off. The light above me goes out.

Has my angel found time to visit me? Everyone else has known for two weeks, has he had time from his busy haunting schedule to come and show me he cares?

I can’t begin to think how to say goodbye. But I can’t go to the funeral. For the brave and sullen-faced family and close friends would coop-up together, but I would act despicably. I would cry. I would throw myself onto the floor.

The guy who broke the news has asked us all for poems and songs for the funeral.

What would I give the mourners? Some shite poem from four weddings and a funeral? No, he’d covered the poetry bit neatly before he left us.

In an email he asked a few friends to design him a tattoo using a quote from the beginning of hemingway’s for whom the bell tolls. Which is actually an excerpt from donne’s meditations.

Along with the above picture, he wrote in his request,

“as an artist your work will be displayed for as long as I’m around, which I hope will be for many more years.”

I didn’t end up putting crayon to paper for his body art, but I did consider sending ‘the up the bum song’ to be played at the funeral. They’d better not play his band’s music at the funeral – although John Peel liked it, the deceased thought it was shite. He was a drummer. He liked reggae, not wispy electropop…..

I would want to tell the wakers just how much this man meant to me. Means to me.

From the moment we met - him carrying a toothbrush in his lunchbox, to the gig where he said “THANK GOD YOU’RE ERE!” when I turned up late, in his amazingly endearing bexleyheath twang.

To the time we went to a party years later and he mused upon my buttocks whilst copping a feel,

“your arse isn’t that great, really, it’s just that YOU fink it is!”

Singing the stones and dancing the jagger as only true believers can.

I’d tell them about the time I sent him the only valentines I’ve ever sent in my life.

A simple message inside. A beat poem he’d appreciate.

‘sometimes I feel like a priest in a fish and chip queue,
quietly wondering as the vinegar runs through,
what it would be like to buy supper for two’. (mcgough)

The only valentines I have ever sent.

But now I’d like to tell you, my understanders, my favourite story about him……

The surprize….

I’d organised a rave. I was supposed to be the compere. My job was to co-ordinate a massive ‘stick it on’ in a farmer’s field, (yes, the police did shut us down at 9 in the morning).

Well compere I was not. I slacked off work that night…..

I had messaged loads of random londoners and south coasters inviting them to this chemical happening, and didn’t get much response, which was fine.

But whilst warming up for the grandiose event, I received a text:

‘see you there in twenty – walking from haywards heath. SMx’.

Haywards fricking heath? That was miles away….

And who the hell was SM?

He did it purposefully. A tease. I was too busy hoovering up daisy dust to get quizzical, but there was a surprise waiting for me, (well, stuck up the arse end of haywards heath somewhere).

About an hour and twenty minutes later, a sweaty be-cowboyed figure could be seen staggering up the mud track towards us urban hippy twats.

The birthday girl frantically waddled to get to him first, hoping it was a random raver she could bloodsuck as maiden of dishonour. A prize pig for the suckling.

But I strode before her, greeting him and welcoming him into this hazy muckfest, this sweaty breast of oblivion. My sir-prize.

We spend the night together, partying with wild abandon like unleashed zoocreatures. We stuck it on a massive sound system by a roaring fire and danced our tits off.

In a tent we did other things.

Yes, dear readers, my lifted angel stays with me in my behazed memory for good reason.

I have wanked over it regularly.

I realised with horror I have done it very recently. I was going to write a love song, but I thought this was more fitting:

His hard bones saved in my memory bank
But no more a-wanking shall I go-.
Ain’t nothing worse than a dead-man’s wank.
Something I wish I didn't know….

Sorry, it just slipped out….

And now never shall I gaze upon him no more. Truth be told, the chances were fairly slight before he died.

And I don’t really know when it happened, or anything about his life since we left the rave and my house caught fire. That was the end of our road together.

Already having grieved our passing relationship when living, on angel wings must I steal away to him now, just to catch a glimpse, just to get some way of seeing him.X

I envy not in any moods
The captive void of noble rage,
The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods:
I envy not the beast that takes

His license in the field of time,
Unfetter’d by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes;

Nor, what may count itself as blest,
The heart that never plighted troth
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;
Nor any want-begotten rest.

I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
’Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

there is a light that never goes out….


Or Espagnola! (he spoke it very well)

instant karma’s gonna get you….

Who said spending money replaces some kind of basic emotional need that isn’t being fulfilled?! WHO?! Money can’t buy me love….pah! you been to thailand?!

Pie-fingered, I am a busy girl at the moment. I love it, I still have choice. In what to do with the dark wintry nights. Sometimes I use that time wisely. Sometimes I don’t….

Tonight, after a full-on blurting session with monsieur henderson, (he was wise, I used his yime), I returned to the witches hut and pondered over, (other than soup-eating), what to do with my precious hump-night.

Hmmmmm. I know - I’ll spend a thousand quid on a mac and final cut express, so that I can completely whirl off the radar and become a goggle-eyed stinking obsessive for the duration of my hibernation.

Done. Purchased.

Does this lift my weary spirits? Marginally. Yes.

Do I feel guilty? Fuck no! Tried to dip into the old ISA but compu’a said no, so did a bit of tinkering, and along with my £400 bonus I found out I’m getting this month, the shit won’t flick me till mid january, when I shall be so addled with hallucinogenics I won’t much care. Or I shall find it all terribly amusing.

The less money I have, the less it means to me.

Godiva shall provide.

I’ve had to create a third eye-dentity, by the way. It occurred on another momentous train journey. I was on the way to honk out a jackie green at an irish free-for-all, and two snubby-nosed colleagues boarded the train, and hesitantly sat, with me.

“don’t worry, I don’t bite”, I muse, twinkle in the old mince pie, moving my half-dead rucksack to make space for a pair of cleaner-than-thou tight buttocks.

A ‘middle-aged’, (what the heck is that nowadays), gentleman, and his pert twenty-something posho female compatriot crack open some plastic bottles of wine, (unoaked darling). I eye them up. The wine bottles.

But no offer of sweet supplement sublime for me this evening. Instead, some dry, chin-stroking conversations about blah. Egocentric projections.

I pretend to sleep with one peeper open. They talk about the x factor. I don’t watch, but I’m quite clever at music. They keep forgetting the names of bands. I casually slip out the nuggets they require.

The man now retracts his houghtiness and gets excited about john legend. I pipe out ordinary people for the girl – she doesn’t know it. He ignores her.

“put a bit of the old romance back in the relationship, eh?!” I say – on learning he’d taken his lady wife with him to see the legend.

Now he’s interested. He used to be a journalist. Interviewed simon thingie who knocked up baby spice. What journal, I say. Entrepreneurial, he says. Hmmmmmmmm. None of my alter-egos are the least bit impressed.

The train pulls into the ever-wondrous east croydon. I gather up my morsels.

Suddenly:

“who ARE you? What do you DO?!” In desperation he loses the false air created daily for the dear guinevere beside me.

“Er, I’m on my way to a gig actually. I’m playing”.

“WHERE?!”

“pub.”

He looks out the winda:

“in east croydon?”

“no. london bridge”. I need to exit. I reach into my sow’s ear and produce two blog cards. I hand them over in a deliberate fashion. He thanks me.

“BUT WHO ARE YOU??! WHAT’S YOUR NAME?!” - slightly manic now.

I panic - sloth in the headlights - what do I say? Godiva? Ridiculous.

I hurriedly whimper my ‘real name’ and scurry off. I feel dirty, used, name-raped if you will.

So I got to thinking – I need a normal name that’s not me god-given one, so that I can mix godiva with pleasure.

Mother came on facebook.

What a statement.

Mother came on facebook, and asked me how to get foreign characters on her status, as in ‘touché’, as in ‘doppelgänger’, as in ‘שִׁירָה’, But not as in ‘epikhairekakia’, (greek) or schadenfreude’, as it is known in german. (all the journos are getting that one in).

Wickedly, I comment that special characters are a writer’s secret. Let the old girl figure out something technotastic for her good self. And in the process of copying and pasting these scripts, I see my real name - in greek script. And it looks beautiful. And it spells a new name. And I like it. And it begins with ‘G’, which feels right.

The wife tells me that according to psychologists, you shouldn’t change your name. This is because you are attempting to alter your whole identity, and are not addressing the past and are attempting to leave behind the great big shitheap of a mess you have created for yourself for the past blogteen years.

I met a guy in india who kept bragging like a bloating and syphilitic dead squirrel about how he’d changed his name. His new name was a foul mixture of random syllables and paedophile’s dreams. Repulsive.

“and you’ll NEVER know my real name!” he poops out like a mangled trumpet.

Blankly staring at him I realise I have not the strength to kill him with my snake tongue, so I take solace in the knowledge that he has a great big shitheap of a life behind him, and needs to declare this to the unlistening public of india.

But I need my new name, and I’m falling in love with her. I’ve told three of my close advisors, and they love her too!

And as if my bank could sense this new freedom from the shitheap, I complete my order in the online apple store.

And I get an 0845 phonecall. Is it a hoax?

No, it’s a strange recorded woman. With multiple personalities. ‘She’ is ‘calling’ from my bank. They have detected some unusual activity.

The woman on the end of the blower says I have to press various buttons that remind me of my age and fading mortality, in order to validate my overspent existence.

It’s okay, I can do this. I’m quite intrigued by the fact that some duffer keeps interjecting mrs clarity’s monotone with certain personalised words in cockerney.

And this malarkey goes on for quite some time. I have to verify my recent spending. Eek. Did I just spend £978 in the apple store? 1 for yes. Did I spend £16.89 in a, (interjected voice), ‘UK SUPERMARKET’ yesterday? Probably.

Did I, in fact, fritter £4.20 in a bookshop in luxembourg yesterday?....

WHAT?! Erm! Well, it’s only £4.20, but I wasn’t in luxembourg yesterday as far as I can recall. I was tripping through the town centre with ms mushy pea on a paranoid mission to mars, as I remember?

Frickin freezing and there’s a smith’s round the corner.

Was I in a bookshop in luxembourg yesterday? 1. I press. Yes.

The list goes on. It’s only transactions for the last twenty-four hours. It’s getting a bit dreary. Then the lovely tin lady says thankyou, I am permitted to stop pressing the dodgy buttons on my new fifteen quid phone and fuck off.

Unless, she says, I am planning on using my card in the next two hours. In which case, I must press 1, apparently.

I pause. I think I may have spent enough in the last twenty-four hours. But what if?! What if I win ‘learn to dance with strictly come dance dancersize’ in that time and can’t show my ebay-eagerness to the willing seller?! What if I get snowed in and need asda to come to my rescue? What happens if I suddenly remember to pay my council tax online?! Press 1! Press 1!

I wait, with baited breath – what happens if I don’t press 1? 1 is the only option the kind lady is giving me! If I hang up, will the phone start wibbling again and remind me of my instant karma?

“casually spending a grand on a computer you don’t really need godiva? Changing your name willy-nilly just for a bit of bemusement are we? Not likely love, and your purchase ain’t going through till you’ve verified these details. You are old, and you are stupid enough to go all the way to luxembourg to buy your jazz mags.”

I don’t press 1. The lovely lady says all I need to do now is hang up. Hang up and not spend anything for two hours, if I can possibly manage that. Not spend my service charge fund money on a computer I don’t really need. Then sit here and wait patiently for my plastic friend to regain its freedom.

And then tomorrow, I must patiently wait for the object of my love to arrive. And not feel guilty.

No matter how the bloodsucking, recession-causing motherfuckers of banks, who run from their shitheaps of past existences by bankrupting the whole country, repossessing our rot-ridden boxes of ‘homes’ just in time for a fuelpoverty, povertyfuelled winter of discontent, want me to feel.

I shall not feel guilty. No. I shall nurse my winter-bruised coldwater bottle of a soul with some spending balm. I shall tell it, ‘there there, timid wonder, stop your rumbling, goodheart.’

No guilty pleasure shall I gain. But RSI, a mortgage repossession, a clinical diagnosis and some emotional displacement shall all be mine come the morning delivery…..

---------------------------------------------------------
RIP John (but I ain’t your frickin yoko….):




blog-about-u demo by godiva

CANCEL YOUR LIFE -

the turkey king is dead.

Long live processed, waterpumped, cancerous products to worship;

Let golden drummers of iceland march us to our greasy graves.

Let crispy-crumb and potato supplements shower down upon us;

Fill us with golden delight.

*rumble*

I must point out, I’m a ‘near-vegetarian’, (my wife HATES me when I say that).

And apart from vegetarianism nearly killing me in India, I’m quite good at it. Give me falafel, broccoli and tomato surprise every day of the week.

But also give me clucked-out chickens and tortured turkeys – I love to eat their fucking ugly faces. But more about bernard's legacy later….

pensive turkey

This week, dear readers, I thought it best to mention some current stuff. Never much fancied myself as a current affairs journalist, but I’ll have a go at my current affairs. Mmmmmmmm, affairs.

Yes yes - it’s all very well talking about plectrums, tortorti and mentally ill lovers, but one has to enter into some serious, timely journalism at some point…..or at least attempt to enter a journalist….

A quick summary of the week’s news:

• Played penny up the crack at a photography launch, primark tights pulled down round my ankles, (buttocks not malleable enough in 80 deniers I discovered).

• lived with the neanderthal.
• Went to the midlands, stuck myself in a boxing ring, got mullered in the head by a small asian named wing lok. Horrific. Hilarious. Quite good by the end. Might have helped if I’d had a fight before.
New nickname: “the dynamo” – starts slow, but once she gets going she doesn’t frickin stop. Comparisons to bikes not needed here…. If you know my alter-ego, ask her for the link to the video.
• recorded blog-about-u with a manic schizoid. (http://soundcloud.com/godiva/blog-about)
• filmed more footage for my blogumentary.
• sang with an irish band, complete with midget ukulele player.
• built a sixteen-piece choir for a gig in camden at christmas out of leftovers.
• wrote a song for a 70 year-old gangster.

And now for a summary of tasks I was also supposed to do this week:

• teach a blind person sign language.
• go to spain.

As well as boxing my face off - oh, and of course finding time for my first passion (not THAT) - writing.

and breathing also.

You could say I’ve been busy….

Godiva’s been feeling the pressure. Enjoying the creativity, but feeling the pressure. Having plenty of two-in-the-morning moments and trusting the breaking waters that gush out of my subconscious like female ejaculate - my creative flow.

But then suddenly getting all kerfuffled when remembering that I need to learn daydreamer by adele, pay my council tax, MOT the spaceship and get an escapaders choir together for the christmas single - don't you put it in there......that plus my newsletter, travel writing competitions, portraiting and scrabbling about on the floor looking for plectrums and weed, has led me to lead a fulfilling but exhausting existence.

All that in me hat plus turkey ham for breakfast.

And, like a twizzled turkey,  I had been saying to anyone who’d listen, and broadcasting my witchety grubs into the universe, (also works when in need of substances, I discovered today),                                      
"I just need life to stop for a bit."

If the turkey ham doesn’t kill me then god will (cit bad boy bubby)

I got as far as ticking the schizoid, the singing, the choir and the gangster off the list, and then life got cancelled.

Snow. You know?

Now, I don’t need to honk on about how incompetent the british are compared to the russians; the all-seeing innovators known as the media have that covered in a winter-wonderland, stupid-reporter-freezing-her-tits-off-for-a-minute-on-the-box, snowy blanketsworth of safety.

And we all know that incompetence is what makes britain great.
And yesterday after stuffing myself sick all day with all-day-sickening-breakfast sandwiches in my ‘accessible documents training’ in london, (the irony of that course title - always hiding me blog), thought it best to pop back to the doctor’s house before I 'got the train home'.

That’s when I dived bagpuss-first into a deep slumber.

An hour later I woke up, scooted out the door bleary eyed and rancid, and got to london bridge.

That’s as far as I got.

This train don’t stop. Or start, in this case.

‘Stranded’. I told my boss. How very dramatic and unfortunate of me. She hopes I’ll get back ‘sometime tomorrow’. Aaaaaaaaaaaa. Bisto. Sorry, Bernard Matthews bootiful gravy, with butter in.

I turned back contentedly to the doctor's – life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.

But I’d posted my key back through his letterbox and was fobless. 

One thing for it. I rang the piglady. She was also ‘stranded’. In a pub full of bus drivers eating party sausage for terry’s retirement. Excellent. That’s dinner sorted, (sorry Bernard – not a twizzler in sight).

The doctor called. ‘Smoking man’ next door has a spare key. I bid farewell to her pigness and held my breath as I knocked upon smoking man’s door. His half-vietnamese thai-boxer son answered. Words escaped me ‘I – er – I used to live (she points) – there!’

He stares at me.

‘DAAAAAAAA!’

Scottish, apparently.

Smoking man appears from a strange be-beaded curtain. Lanky and tall in a multi-coloured shellsuit top.  Wincing slightly, as always in our brief encounters,I ask him how he is:

‘Och, not so good, not so good! One of those days, y’know? Not so good’.

Oh just give me the bloody key will you?

Next, a careful demonstration of how and how not to use the new council key-fob, a warning that the string could get caught in my bag, and after I said I’d go to tescos for ‘supplies’, him asking me what I need – valium, prozac, morphine and a good shagging please mr supplier - I escaped.

And twenty-four hours later I'm still here, in a peaceful winter wonderland far from the madding news. And flights to spain have been cancelled. And right now I’m not going anywhere.

No longer do I have to furiously laminate tenuous facts about hare krishnas.

Move from the sofa.

Pay invoices.

Or teach sign language to a blind man.

I can breath now; mostly fumes, bin-smell and smoke, but bernard I can breathe!

And I have all the time in the world to do all those thoroughly important things that I think I have to do. That I want to do.

But now that I’m sitting here - arse melting into oblivion, throat husky, eyes weary, I can’t remember what it is that’s so pressing. Is it Richard and Judy? Are they even ON any more?  What about Trisha, Ricki Lake? 

Did they get cancelled?

Reader, you too can cancel your life.

Forget what you had. Stop worrying about what you need to do. Stop dwelling on the living……and eat more death-giving turkey products:

In memorium…Bernard Matthews, 24th January 1930 – thanksgiving, (gobble gobble), 2010:

Art is pain. So is the culling of 372 million turkeys, according to one angry journo –

“BBC News: ‘Turkey King Bernard Matthews Dies’ Surely that's like calling Hitler ‘King of the Jews?’"

Found that on ‘sickipedia’. If they’re allowed that, I’m allowed ‘pootube’.

Ivanovich the kitsch via the glorious medium of FB:

“Of all Bernard Matthews' poultry products perhaps the most sinister is turkey ham. I shudder to think what the monstrous hybrids that meat comes from must look like.”

And no longer must I dream of a certain mysterious cub……I’ve been stalking his arse off. Not sure his current girlfriend, ‘carebear8119’, would appreciate it….I know her real name, and the fact she loves take that. I love the internet, it encourages us all to be psychos….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q4RG8PND0A

post-script:
just had immense pleasure typing ‘bernard’ when searching for someone named bernadette in my blackberry, (no product placement intended – shite), only to realise that ‘Bernard’ shall never lead to ‘Bernadette’ (no R…)

Goodbye sam, hello samantha - all hail the late Sir Clifford….whoops, they haven’t announced his death yet….:

WATCH: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUh60Ru62mI(he seems to have an awful lot of teeth, do you think he choked on them?!)


pick-me-up

My older brother, yay-son de la mare, once remarked upon picking up one of my guitars and having a strum,

“god (iva)! this is the quietest guitar I’ve EVER played!”

I came over all mutton-ish – I’d been playing his majesty for 14 years but had rarely picked him up in all that time. Quiet guitar. Yes, sir. Silent, if you will…

My brother is a guitar psychic.

He gets vibes off every wood there is and can tell who has been honking on it.

Once he went into a music shop, had a good go on one, then put it down immediately in shock and disdain.

“this is the SADDEST guitar I’ve ever played!” he quipped. Good at phrases, my brother.

Turns out the owner had just tried to top himself…..

Years after the first ‘quiet guitar’ moment, I proudly presented yay-son with my new guitar - my dear Petula – a lovely cheeky ginger little thing.

Unfortunately her predecessor – Derek – had died a terrible death when a deformed housemate of mine wanged him round the head with his gammy elbow and smashed the bastard right up. The neanderthal fixed him, then the guitar, but things between me and Derek became even more estranged…..hence my need for the ginger beauty.

On presenting my new instrument of my affection to my brother, seeking his psychic approval, he had a good old strum on her.

Then he said:

“Gorrrrrrrrrrrrd” (how does one write that without writing ‘good’ I wonder?)

“this is the QUIETIST guitar I’ve ever played”……..

Is my brother a frigging goldfish?

Nope - mice were more our thing. Poor old splodge, died of cancer bigger than ‘er head. RIP. (You’d worry about me if I didn’t mention death).

*my ex-boyfriend the axe-murderer once told me, when plump with protection, ‘never eat food bigger than your head, in an encouragement to fuck me up further*

No, I’ve realised that poor old petula and her broken-backed predecessor WERE both quiet little things. Even though I had sat up all night long tinkling with my dear petula, still she be not loud.

They both WERE quiet guitars……

But not because I didn’t play them - because I didn’t play them WITH A PICK.

That’s a plectrum to those who don’t live in the mid-west, and I ain’t talking chipotle sauce.

The boy was the first to try and make me play with a pick. I was off my head on fat lesbian glitter mdma, and he reported back that no sooner had I got the pick in me chipolatas, I’d dropped it and started blithering around on the floor.

An unsuccess I’m sure we can all agree. From a musical perspective.

Quite a feat for someone with dodgy knees waiting for the knacker’s yard.

But Samson has teased me since then, drawn me in, cajoled me, by leaving a few plectrums around my spaceship.

And all these months later, last week no less, for no real reason, I picked one up. A pick. And I had a go.

And I only went and fucking blew my doors off, didn’t it?!

Wahay! Imagine my new-born neighbours’ delight at me jangling out every song I’ve ever faffed about with. Not fingering this time; out-and-out strumming. Full on.

When I asked him, after being late for a meeting in the flat below, bonking my socks off whilst they disdainfully looked into their coffee, whether I made much noise, good old sheils asked me if I had been ‘treading the boards’. I really didn’t know what that meant. I’d been laying on the floor at four in the morning playing the ukulele whilst the room span for my client. And now I was pissed still and cock-handed, at a service charge meeting.

And when I asked my other neighbour whether he could hear me playing dear old petula, he remarked,

“well……maybe a bit of strumming, but HARDLY oasis”.

Erm, is that an insult? Or am I JUST QUIET!!

No More.

With every song a new life, a new realisation – I can do this! I can play annoyingly loud guitar and hound every dog in town till they listen!

A cherry-pop a minute.

Not only my shall the world come to bear my deranged writing and my cack-handed crayolas, but now my shredded vocal chords for the world to hear.

Yes, no longer is my dear petula quiet, she roars day and night in luminous glory.

And I’ve recorded a song to flog; blog about you.

And I’ve played it live in a pub, with a pick, to the boy. Who remarked that he loves the way I write in the grand reveal. Yes, dear readers, I have truly exposed myself, the boy has the blog. And now the boy is among us - do make him feel welcome. Twisted muse.

And the last time my brother picked up my petula, he remarked upon her beautiful bold sound.

And come January 8th I shall be spreading her twanging love upon a wibbly wobbly boat in east london for a rabble of mafiosos, fashion designers and ruffians. And I’ve literally just picked up my beatles book for the first time – and haven’t picked it apart yet.

My first proper gig.

And my new-found lost-virginity.

To a pick……nearly as satisfying, but not as tasty, as prick.

But I still can't play C sharp.  What a cunt.......

http://soundcloud.com/godiva/blog-about
(meant to be ‘shitty’ weather, but y’know….x)

the tortoise and the tortoise....

When I was four we moved house. The couple we bought it off, (note I was involved in this transaction), had five torti. Tortoises. Tortorti.

Free to roam in a large back garden, life was bliss for them. Rebecca, Sebastian, two others that they took with them, and a baby – tee-toe. Very cute.

Yes, took not they did Rebecca and Sebastian – a gift with the house.

Now this were back in the day when you were still allowed to stuff tortorti up your jumper and round the back with no questions. Always thinking value, you see, always thinking value.

According to wilf, the old mucker who owned the pub at the back of the garden (sounds strange, kept chickens), Rebecca was around 100 years old. Cool. Very likely a complete fabrication but I went with it.

Rebecca was a bit crusty with a hole in her shell. Sebastian was a right smooth mover. Rebecca used to break out of the garden, and one day I was at my friends house four doors down and she strolled in, or I’d see her on the way back from fine fare, walking down the road!

I love tortorti.

Now, I know quite a lot about them. Things you wouldn’t think were true.

Like how high their sex drives can be. Yes, for a slow ancient creature you’d have thought they’d just plop out a few eggs and give em a spray every now and again.

No.

Though we feared he was her son, good old Sebastian decided to hump Rebecca at any living moment he could. His mother. Hurrah for evolution.

He’d get the horn (literally, frightening thing curling out the back of his shell). Then, like some kind of 1980s simulator ride, he’d launch himself up on his claws and absolutely cane it to find Rebecca to give her a little bit of loving.

My mate used to pick him up and put him at the other end of the garden to delay this rape.

But it was only ever a delay. He’d find her, bite her legs and fuck her rotten.

Such was the soundtrack of multiple summer barbeques – his multiple orgasm.

We’d be settling down to charred blue-marked back-of-a-lorry chops, the charcoal taste of the 80s, and it would begin.

“what’s that noise”, would say a prudent aunt. We’d all pause.

“EEEEEEEEEEEEE………………………EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…………..EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE………………EEEEEEEEEEEEEE”

Erm, it’s the tortorti fucking.

Sod the birds and the bees, no wonder I turned out like I did. Behind, all the way, behind all the way…………

Well, as we all know, life has a way of paying back your bad deeds.

Years later I was living in chelsea in mr murray’s flat. I get a call from my dad.

“erm, bad news I’m afraid. I was cleaning out the pond. And I found Sebastian at the bottom of it. And from the state of him, he’d been there for quite some time”.

Lovely, what a romantic policeman’s knock on the door. Not only was my favourite rapist dead and gone, the last image of him in my mind was of a slimy green decomposed swamp monster.

RIP sebastian – you knew not the wrath of your horn.

And what happened to rebecca?

The beautiful rebecca lives on, alone now, probably desperate for a fuck.


MUST WATCH:

Ode to the ill.......


O give me a boyfriend oos got the OCD;
who'll scrub the bathroom floor more compulsively than me
stop time, stop all the clocks on the number 23
smashing glass into spirals as his mind drills into me......

spare me the man with the maniac's depression
who'll get high then crash low during morbid sexy sessions
from the fifteenth floor he'll cling, hanging onto tension
though his words have all gone his dead mother gets a mention

i'll run from the man who has lots of different voices
his unwelcoming friends overriding all his choices
stick an axe in my head but it wasn't him who did it
turn my face for a moment and there's one born every minute

but show me the man that the world describes as normal
try and box me on a shelf where the running order's formal
let his mum and his dad and his sisters all adore me
watch me jump off the edge as the cliff drops down before me

no:- give me a man who is mad in every way
who constantly surprises me - a new brain every day
who exalts me in his worship though his head has gone away
yes the man who's lost forever is the man to make me stay

R.I.P Jimmy x



what went wrong?!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GFlRZBOk6w

drugs don't work   
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRG-CqnMWlI

search for godiva's escapades on FB and add me.....
wanna reminder of the URL?  email godivasescapades@hotmail.co.uk x

hubble bubble....

If you’ve been sitting on my facebook recently you may have noticed that, yet again, old mrs blogger is in trouble, again. It’s wearing me cables thin, I’m getting frayed.

Thank you thank you thank you, by the way, for the kind messages and friend adds – it works. Hallelujah, or I’d be off to the knackers yard for sure. More please. Sit right on it, (search for godiva’s escapades).

Yes. Trouble. Trouble is. I’ve been causing it.

It all started when I proudly went to watch my wife squeeze her box on halloween. Not usually one for forced occasions, (remember g-ma at christmas?), I relish in the delight of turning up dressed like a dead whore to numerous establishments in town and blending in for a change.

And I had the vodka in my bag, as usual. And I managed to reserve a booth - unheard of. And secured two concubines for the evening to assist me in wrecking the joint.

The star of going to the chapel was present, spouting such extremities as ‘your royal blogness’ – though still claiming not to have read about his future demise. He brought a pet with him who had adhd. Fine, just don’t touch me. I said don’t touch me – I’ve just got my blue belt…..

Yes yes, time to digress – the whole kickboxing debacle. After my fight being cancelled I’ve chilled out about it. Kick bitches in the head a few times a week still, occasionally reel when I see veins still popping out of my arms. Pick people up and throw them across the room. Attack concubines in killer heels.

The day before all hallow’s was my kickboxing grading. Passing through streets of middle-class white kids with a bit of hartley’s jam on their straw boaters, (zombies apparently), I was glad that I am happy doing what I do, whilst all around me, others are doing as they do (‘If’’).

I grade. And a few palpitations and dodged flirtations later, I am being presented with my blue belt.

I’ve earnt the highest grade, but now it’s over my mind’s not on the job. And it’s not because I’m knackered. It’s because I’m not bothered. I’ve got a blogumentary to make - ‘yeah, give me the highest grade ya buggers, what’s for tea?’ - and both grown grading men are looking at me expectantly, and I keep bowing on the spot. Which is extremely fun, because they have to bow back.

‘You’ve got to come here and get your belt!’

I’d just been stuck on the spot thinking about chicken dippers, doing my best bow for a few minutes….

After this it was time for my pre-halloween warmup. I decided to go and see ms foto:

I was supposed to have a quiet and innocent fish dinner, then strictly home for filming and blog. But that’s when I ended up drinking sake and doing an abba film shoot in a crumbling regency building with a pair of 3D glasses on. Dancing with overjoyed labradors on the beach. Playing twinkle on the violin in the street that a lush had passed out of her window.

How I ended up stranded like a debauched banshee at samson’s, with a clearance sandwich and half a twirl.

So, still warm from the night before, on all hallow’s eve, there I am, in a busy bar. All my wife’s counsel are there – baked up to the nines, skanking about to dance of the clown, (a song I forced her to write about ex following my miserable howlings). Tits out in george street’s there, and the guy from the music shop who lurches at me tongue first. The gospel man with his adhd sidekick. We sit with the owner of the bar and are soon drinking shots of cough-medicine.

Before I know it I’m being carried out of the bar sideways by two men, and getting double-spanked in public.

Yes, me and my bit of fluff have picked up another speck. Half-italian. Tick. Young. Tick. A bit like ‘the boy’, on a post-coalition budget. I’ve blabbed about the blog. It’s been handed over. We arrange to do a photo shoot of me and my martial girls post-session, sweaty and pumped.

And I think no more of it.

Until tuesday, that is. What is it about tuesdays?

Monday had me all happy-go-lucky, a motorbike ride in my witches costume, crotchless tights and all, along the coast. Lunch with gunter and monsieur henderson, borrowed aviators a must. Squeezing into an extra-small leather £200 dress that got my tits all barbarella. ‘Rock chick’ the effeminate staff commented. No shit, thought this mwag. .Home to studio G to create some filmic mischief.

But tuesday. At work, which is a problem in itself. I text jim to ask for the italian’s number to set up the photo shoot. He replies – just to warn me, jules’ ex is on the war path. The italian’s tipped her off about three men and a little ‘lady’, my offering to them for a lovely night out. I am puzzled – I don’t remember any incriminating evidence? Then jim reminded me – the bit where jules tried to pull a girl ‘with a face like a spade’. Yessssssssss. And jules, if you’re reading this when I published it, Friday November 5th, don’t give the blog to the boy - it’s not monday yet,we haven't done the blogumentary interview. Don’t go changing history before it’s happened eh?! (Now there's a temptation if I ever gave one).

So I ended up deleting the damn thing. My blog post. And that’s a first. But it’s safer. Yes, I can kick arse, but when there’s psychosis involved I’m straight out the back door. Though I must say I am beginning to see the funny side of the whole affair – I said it, I wrote it, they read it, so did the italian, who also said it. I came, I saw, I deleteth.

*For those of you who haven’t read three men, and want the background to this sticky web I’ve spun, drop me an email. Or come and sit on my facebook and I’ll tell you a story.*

But mainly, I’ve been causing trouble with my latest project; the blogumentary. The blog becomes her. You’ll be hearing a lot about this in the next few months:- you’ll most likely be in it in the next few months….

And I’ve planned a scene with ‘the boy’ in it. It’s been three months since I texted him with all my hinges broken, and I said that I would give him the blog in three months so that he could find out what I didn’t say. Because, as you may remember, we didn’t say much to each other. But I said quite a lot on this here forum.

In bed, delirious at three in the morning after my ordeal with the axe-yielder, (hi if you’re reading by the way, you sound like at least two barrels of fun), I cooked up a good ‘un. What if I could get the boy round on the three month date exactly, saying I wanted to film him? What if we then went and did open mic with my steel-stringer that I will have partied with on Saturday? What if I ask the boy to film me singing blog about you at him, surrounded by a pub full of confused onlookers?

And lo and behold, come wednesday it’s arranged. The date is fixed for monday. And come monday he’ll be reading this. Hello. I hope our interview went well. I hope I said what I meant to say on camera. I hope you haven’t launched a campaign that will send me rollicking up a catalonian mountain. Again.

In preparation for this hideous event I’ve created, I’ve read every single blogging entry and edited none. And it’s time. And I should be careful what I wish for. And he’s game - unaware of my alter-ego becoming me, but curiously aware of some serious trouble-making I’ve caused.

So, to ‘the boy’ - I genuinely hope you like this. You were always good at getting me. You like creativity. Dear god please say you do. If you do, sign in as ‘the boy’ and leave a comment. If you do, please write me a song called spank for my blogumentary.  If you don’t, find a way of telling me so my innards don’t erupt, like they do every time I receive a random email from an escapader:

Like (in response to an email entitled mmmmmmmmusicians that you may have received - send me an email to be added to the mailer):

'FUCK OFF, WHO ARE, STOP SENDING ME THIS CRAP'. 

That beautiful, succint use of grammar and language overwhelming me.  Ah?  You don't like me?  I knew it.  It's my friend's husband.  She knows 'who are', mr disgruntled, she knows 'who are'.
Or, thank you ms mushy pea, (portrait to follow when I get my hands on you, interview for blogumentary earnt):

‘your last blog finally pushed me into sharing the joys of godiva with other friends. A thing that was long overdue. I have been loving you in silence for too long. I want you, with spicy fries and mushy peas. Soon, dear god let it be soon xxx’

And somehow, for ‘the boy’, and for all of us, we can choose our attitude. Make peace with the unknown and the known. Let the things that reel out of our control keep on rolling…..let witchery guide us into oblivion…….

postscript: Readers, I invite you to re-read this blog pretending you are ‘the boy’ reading the whole thing. This is the first post you’ve ever read. And somehow, it’s all about you. And somehow, the readers know you already as a character. He wouldn’t be the first…
-----------------------------------------------------------

Which choose your own misadventure will you go for?

Mushy peas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqaOp7sIy0w

or

Double mushy peas with klithpy bits…(what a dilemma): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrVDViSlsSM

love you, G x

book my face

I have a few ‘real-life’ friends who haven’t yet succumbed to the lower levels of loneliness expressed from the milky boob known as…..the facebook.

You are not alone.

And look what happened to that poor bugger, might have been happier if only he’d discovered farmland, instead of just caging monkeys for fun….

In the beginning, you’d say to these non-bookers, ‘yeah, check my facebook, zebras from botswana’, or, ‘I’ll send you an invite – all the info’s on there’, or, ‘look at me singing about bum sex at a party’.

They don’t get to leave ‘comments’ like I do:

A: we’re ENGAGED!
Random: really? Wow...already ? Seems like you just started dating. You silly, impulsive kidz! The best news EVER! (like)
Random: Congratulations x
Godiva: is that just because you left the country and you’re coming to see me?

Hadn’t contacted her for sixteen years. Apparently her fiancé got a bit worried after seeing my profile pics……Not sure I’ll be seeing her again.

But no, the friends who have not yet ‘signed up’, (what a subscription), retain their highly-esteemed sense of freedom and individuality……

Well they did, but now they’re champing at the fucking bit. ‘Hmmm, maybe I should just join, it would be easier…..’

COME AND JOIN US.

My mother has. That means it’s got to be time….and welcome to FB, Mr Murray, and thank you for the advice on getting some smackeroons for my blogumentary…..

And I hope you ‘like’ it. What a fantastic fucking function eh? When it first appeared, bookers would seem a bit coy - it’s not very british to openly exclaim a ‘like’ for something now, is it? But we got used to it like the other apps, (or is it function, or is it something I’m not down enough with the kids to know about yet), and we let our floods blow full swing. Like baboons on viagra, we enthusiastically ‘like’ everything! Everyone!

Douglas has got the shits. Like!
Deborah is going shopping, then home for a nice cup of tea and some lamb chops. Like!
Godiva only goes to bed with her phone when she's got a boyfriend..............or seriously suicidal friend of course...but often just sleeps under the table..

You guessed it….I Like!

And I’ve just discovered the ‘like’ button on godiva’s facebook. And I was just about to write ‘godiva’s escapades like the like button’, when I realised that this would surely foil my marketing ploy. Yes, I have to think strategically these days….

So to increase traffic/comment/banter on godiva’s book, I realised I could ‘like’ everyone’s status on my news feed! And then they’d like me back, right? Comment, get a bit friendly with the old ‘likes’. Bit of harmless flirting….?

Clever, huh?!

No, not a pippin.

Hundreds of people manage to like godiva when she’s safe inside her blog page, but not many people want to sit on her facebook.

Does that mean no one really likes the poor bitch? Is she such a conniving little whore that no one wants to befriend her?

No.

It means that zuckerberg has excellent spamming restrictions, and thinks..I am..a tin..of spam.

Thanks mark, your face ain’t exactly one for TV either.

So facebook is an AMAZING networking tool, I love it. But it doesn’t love godiva.

I have around 32 dutiful friends, and not for want of plastering my facebook all over my blog. But clicking on a simple button is sooooooooo boring these days!

Well it’s time for you, reader, to bother. With 32 friends it’s more like a wake than a party. I love you guys…love me back!! I bet you would if I died…….

So join me. Now. Or else.

Come and sit on my fucking facebook…..xx

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/profile.php?id=100001527947316

if that don’t work, (zucker ain’t bein too sugary for me these days), search for godiva’s escapades and add me! xxxxxxxxxxx

(then watch this week’s song…AFTER!! Yeaaaahhhh - it’s on me facebook)

GO-divas...!

This week a video special; directed, filmed and edited by the one and only DOCTOR, and starring hers truly.

This is what happened last friday night…….enjoy! xx

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXX2Ny9Zmc0   WATCH IN FULL SCREEN!! x

Three men and a little ‘lady’

Oh god.

I’m a mwag.

But before I tell you how revoltingly drunk I got last friday night, let me fill you in with a little tangential context, (for a change).

Since midsummer I’ve been building myself up, physically and psychologically, for my first big kickboxing fight. In a ring. With some other bitch.

It’s been a great, if daunting, focus for me after what has been a rather large comedown of a post-summer.

Veins have appeared above my skin, I pretend they’re not there, for fear they’ll rise further and burst. I appear to be eating the diet of a horse – oatcakes and carrots mainly, but a LOT of them, and still my stomach is that of a gymnast and my legs occasionally gangle and splay like a thin person’s.

I gave up drinking. I was training three times a week, even if it involved getting a terminally long bus through town on a saturday morn amongst cagouled bag-hoarders and hut bulles on their way somewhere.

It felt good, like I was heading for an achievement. Progression. Something to work towards. The future.

And then just about a week ago, I got the heeby jeebies after training. My teacher asked if I was fighting in november. Yes. I said. But also in october – if that’s alright?

Bit of a silence. Hmmmmm, adrenalin comedown? I skulked off to blog one out, (thursday night’s epic for me), and put it to the back of my mind. But then on the tuesday it was revealed that I hadn’t been entered into the fight. And I hadn’t paid my eleven pounds.

So I did a proper speech. Said how I was really ready, had been gearing up for it, could do with a bit more sparring practice but yeah, well up for it.

And the teacher heard this as ‘I am a puny pathetic wimp who doesn’t keep my word and am petrified of other girls’. So I explained again, (yes, I know I’m not the most straightforward of speakers), and she offered me this ‘truce’.

‘Well, come along anyway, bring your kit, and if someone drops out you can fight!’

Hmmmmmm. A completely shit compromise, methinks.

Then she adds a bit of insult to ‘injury’ (if only):

‘Then you can fight in november and have a non-decision’.

Right. So I can fight with loads of other gimps in fucking november and not even know if I’ve won. Up yours.

Not being one for negativity, I try and turn it round in my head. What good could come from this confusion? All the girls at class can’t understand it, my whole family and friends keep asking me about it, and I’m not sure what the best simple line to say is. Erm. I’m not fighting. The teacher didn’t enter me. Crap.

The only consolation was that I had turned down a guest place at the last ever show of a famous dance outfit, because it was the night before my phantom fight. Perhaps I could go and get fucked off my face with a load of musicians instead? So I text my mate. But the spaces are more than full. Bugger.

I feel like I’ve gone and dumped myself again. Is it me who doesn’t say what I mean, or is it that nobody else gets me? What part of ‘I’m ready’ could be interpreted to mean ‘oooo I’m scared, wibble wibble, please don’t make me fight!’?

The same part of ‘I love you’ that was misconstrued to mean ‘myeah, whatever, yeah, that’s fine, let’s go our separate ways’, with the boy.

Right. How to deal with this defeat that didn’t even produce a bruise?

I’m going to go out and get fuckfaced, that’s what. Frig all this moderate sobriety, (erase spain, readers, erase spain).

And I’m sitting with monsieur henderson on his birthday, drinking overpriced tea out of thimbles, and who should saunter towards us? The boy. Yes, the boy. The boy in glorious, sunlit technicolour. Me in soggy-arsed tracksuit bottoms. Always the way, always the way……

And I’d been thinking how nice it would be to see him, not whilst honking out some heartbreak hotel numbers on the ukulele, but just to have a drink with him. Might clarify things further….

So I ask him out on friday night, apparently spontaneously, but secretly pre-meditatively, (how’s that for a word?) Yep, he’s free. It’s in the can pete, it’s in the can. Might be a bit toppy, pete, might be a bit bottomy, with any luck pete……

And I’m going to get wankered. And see some bands.

I opt for the writer’s dress costume - a bit tired now but comfortable and fairly calamity-free. New shoes. A bit high and wobbly on the cobbles. Half a bottle of vodka in my bag. A classic disposition.

We meet. On time, like in olden days. We drink, like olden times. We talk bollocks at each other, like golden times. We opt for duty, and get up to head off to a dingy karaoke bar where a friend is honking out some good uns.

And bump smack bang into mummy. Yes, you may remember mummy from way back when….

We have a pleasant chat about scientology and horses, and I make a note to use this as a bloggortunity for my next project; undercover cunt (U/C), where I expose dark practices under the guise of an innocent bystander. Yes, mummy, I would love to come to the scientology do with the grandiose marquee, thank you.

At the gig we bump into my lovely wife, who has been silently disapproving of our date, but at least I told her about it, unlike my husband, who will only catch news of my dangerous decision to meet my ex as he reads this.

Sorry. I am weak. And eternally randy.

The boy receives a text from a musician friend of his. A name from the old days, when we were fanciful and hooning round london bridge, bruising hips on cello cases, ejaculating on sheets and escaping near-murder in seedy hovels.

We go to meet him and his friend in another musical establishment. I now have three men to my bow. I curtsy instead. It’s safer in a short dress. And we watch a band together, the half bottle of vodka in plastic going down a treat. Then to the bar for more drinks and inane yabbling.

I end up with the pretty blonde one, who remarks on how nice it is that me and the boy were together for ages, then not, then are again. Yes. That does sound rather fucking nice I think, but this is a double date now, and the boy is busy chatting up the other man. We’re not together, I explain, imploring the boy to finally lay his balls on the bar and explain something to someone.

But no, a few jägermeisters later and there’s nothing to explain, as we fly off to another venue, skip the queue and take up residence on stage next to an awesome screaming trumpeter. I blab on about my non-sensical existence. I take one of the new men to the toilet, holding his hand. I chat to a jovial fatty about something or other, and my blog cards are all over the shop, and my wallet’s left on the table as we move on, yet again, to a last-chance establishment.

And there we blab more, and I realise I haven’t had the boy on my own all night. Yes, this night was another attempt to finally draw some kind of line under some kind of chapter in my life, and woe be gone nothing’s materialised. And suddenly one of the new men has gone home. And now there are three. Which is a far more complusive number.

I remember I was seeing a guy once, full-blooded phallus, empty-blooded brain, obsession with lollipops and japanese schoolgirls, who rammed me from dusk till dawn. A few stone lighter, three days later still in bed, he commented how he thought I could probably take on quite a few men. I asked him; honestly, how many? And he came up with an honest, if slightly ambitious number.

Six.

Six whole men. All for me……

Anyhoo. There’s only two here, and one of them is quite small, and one of them is a child, so it must be manageable…..

The blonde disappears inside to let some out, and I am left alone, at last, with the boy. And he tells me he’s off home soon. And it’s quite clear there’s no room at the inn for this magdalene, and he looks petrified, the poor lamb.

The blonde returns. The boy sits next to him to like a scavenging parasite, sorry, networker, and I desperately look for a way to corner him. COME ON! Just tell me to fuck off will you, so I can set about causing certain destruction elsewhere. But no. I see no other way, and plonk my stocky load upon his lap, full pelt. Even anaesthetised by the vodka and other tonics, I can feel his bony knees screaming to my fleshy arse, ‘go away, go away, hideous woman!’

So I let him go. What’s to lose?

Then there were two. Okay, this should be easy. The blonde is lovely. Bubbly and smiley, he knows me now - he’s been wedged in the front seat of the godiva express all night. I have a good old pre-menstrual moan about my terrible longing for what was never there; the scent of roses in the morning air.

And he’s got the horn. Scanning the desperate, late-night crowd, he picks out a shape which looks vaguely human. Her face looks like a spade, I say. He doesn’t care, he says. Near her is a fatty. A smiling, joking, fun fatty. She’d be up for anything, I suggest, but he’s up for the spade. The hideous spade.

I evade my glance as some kind of unparallel transaction fails, and we decide it’s best out of there. And there’s no way I know where my home is, so I’m going with him. The booze train takes us back to a high rise flat nearby and suddenly everything’s brightly lit. My brain, still dimly lit, turns me into some kind of manic machine.

I shriek around the flat, pointing at non-descript, generic up-with-the-joneses fixtures and fittings that the previous owners have inflicted upon the place. IT’S SO GAY! I keep yelling at everything.

There was a strange half-vibrating chair, broken by god-knows what, a guitar that seemed completely allergic to me, there were large glasses filled with brown potent liquid that I administered confusedly.

And there was godiva, the blonde, and the other one.

Jules et Jim, I think. Jules et Jim.

Again, time has slipped away and there’s no awake left in any of us. The blonde (jules) nips off, invariably for a drunken wank where you forget to be conscious half way through. And then there were two again.

I look at the sofa. It’s a gay reject of a leather squeaker. Everything’s too bright, there’s no way I’m sleeping in here. I look at jim. Words tumble out, and no thoughts follow.

‘I’mnotsleepingonthatgaysofa
i’msleepingwithyouinyourbedan
icantbebotheredtohavethisconversation’.

He laughs. He offers me the floor. Not fucking likely. I take all my clothes off save for my primark panties. I collapse.

And now it’s day. I’m not sure which day.

And now I’m nearly naked with this jim. In the light of a day. By proxy.

Proxy is good. He’s nearly naked too. I have no idea what time it is. I just know I’m not fighting right now, and judging by my inability to be vertical, I have definitely achieved my aim of getting completely rat-holed. And now I’m in a completely new space with a completely new person. And I like it. And he’s a musician. But not a child this time.

And we have a lot in common when it comes to important things such as mental illness and suicide, which is what most of my encounters seem to be based on nowadays.

And we spend the day together, me so riddled with toxins I can’t even look in a mirror, thank god for my poor eyes, and him, easy going and enjoying my demented company.

But as it gets to around teatime I look down at my costume for the day – ragged writer’s dress, bruised bare legs, oversized flip flops and boy’s sunnies, with a furry lesbian jacket and zebra bag, and realise that not only is my carriage about to become a fucking pumpkin, my ugly sister emigrated to australia two years ago and glass slippers don’t fucking exist.

We head back to his flat – I don’t appear to have many belongings anymore, and I think I’d better go and have a look round his gay laminate flooring. And as we are about to enter the hungover lift from hell, an unknown number calls me.

It’s some guy called james with the most feeble voice I’ve winced at in a long time. He’s calling from a bar. I realise he must have my wallet there! I tell him I love him. He goes silent. I tell him I’ll come and get it. I think he’s scared.

Only when I terminate the call do I wonder how he got my number. I realise he’s not the jovial fatty I imagined he was from the night before, and that to him I must be a monstrous stranger. A stupid stranger who leaves her wallet splayed open, blog and all, on the table in a crowded bar on a friday night.

Now it’s definitely time to leave. I bid farewell to the smiling, contented jules et jim, barking various imperatives at them as I stagger out of there. And into the bar to pick up my wallet. A nonchalant lump gets in before me looking for his keys defeatedly. No fucking chance. I barge through him, and present myself, stinking in my be-flip-flopped glory.

The feeble man from the blower looks at me passively. But I’m not going to explain to him. Oh no. He must know that this creature presenting herself before him can only be….

He reaches behind the bar and holds my wallet, the slight whiff of a question mark lingering between us. I open it. And then I see it. The calling card. The cursed card of cannes I use to get leery business men off my back and into a divorce suit with their wives. THAT’s how he knew who I was.

James the weak, meet godiva the rank. Best viewed in the dark after a bottle of turps.

Liked by artists, tramps and madmen alike, the world over.

Now chant it together; ladies, men, and infants:

Mmmmmmmmusisians……….Mwag x x

---------------------------------------------------------------------------


For those who spotify:  http://Open.spotify.com/track/3ofD5S8sLXoPdnMgY4gIsO

And for those who don't (the video is not my fault):  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOaJlYY2Q9k

autumn brings the retrospective

Autumn brings the retrospective. Like a squirrel-woman with OCD, I clear out cupboards galore and try to hurl my unwanted baggage into distant memory. I find myself as I clear out my bureau – I find my old travelling notebooks full of poems and diary entries.

Poetry is, and always has been, my first love. But as adrian henri guiltily whispers to me:

You keep our love hidden
Like the nightdress you keep under your pillow
And never wear when I’m there

So I’ve published some poems on this site – scroll down on the left and see after ‘who the hell’. I hope you like them. And it is national poetry week, after all.

And I will be quenching my guilty thirst for the past, and will be publishing from time to time writings from that never saw air, that have been sorrowfully tucked up in damp drawers for far too long……

First up is a diary entry from udaipur in rajhastan, india.

My wife and I had been travelling together, (well mainly laying down actually, riddled with dysentery), and she had left me to my misadventures for a month. On the eve of her leaving, I sat upon a rooftop and starting endlessly scribbling away, with no blog at the time in which to plant my words. And here is what I wrote:

independence day

Start the tab.

Stop the clock.

What a difference a day makes.

Hot showers and mosquito cocktails await me.

A fresh page beckons me.

Loula has left me to return to the UK, smiling with love and joy. Mr mahuna from our overpriced hotel has curtly accepted my request for the use of his pool and dilapidated internet for the rest of my stay in udaipur, even though I am crossing to the other side to a far more fitting, crumbling haveli of an abode.

I walk over the bridge over dried-up water, singing to myself for wont of familiar culture:

‘as long as I gaze on, udaipur sunset…….’


‘welcome to the ‘otel panorama!’

This is my first of 38 days as a lone woman in a country full of confused men.. Seamstresses of men. I pop in to see one, and a pleasant mute fixes my jagged zip whilst his ageing father snores on the ground.

This is fresh inspiration:- the cool breeze in the morning, lazy days and as much uninterrupted masturbation as I can finger.

Viewing the world as beautiful, the horizons as endless, and pen and ink as my treasure trove.

No distractions, having to find my own fantasies.

Again, I go to the yoga ashram to find no yoga tonight. A quick chai saves me from certain deflation, and I head to mr mahuna’s pool for my customary sixty lengths, praying that the irksome lanky indian boy will have finished his desperate splashing and leave me alone in my watery world.

As I swim, the sky grows dark and the wind rises. If lightning strikes now…

But it doesn’t, and gaily swinging home commando under my ali ba-bas I have to reprimand a group of indian men, including my tailor and his dad, who are trying to make me bend over.

Another constant bystander ogles me,

‘look nice, like indian’.

Oh, what a shawl over the head can do for an arian.

Back at the ranch, I sit upon the roof, sipping hot milk coffee under the canopy shelter, and again the sky breaks.

The clouds swarm and the thunder roars.

Three months without relief of my beloved english rain, and the gods have answered my prayers:

on the eve of gangaur the sky breaks
the thunder comes and lightning strikes down
the lizards come to rest in my witches haven
the begrudging rain stubbornly falls upon the lake


with full but unsatisfied belly i sip my cinnamon milk
still only a thin layer of rain refuses to quench the arid wasteland
i can hope for more but settle for less.


uninterested humans stuff their holes, eyes not registering the transaction.
a mosquito declares battle with my covered body.
nearing drums and bells provide a dramatic soundtrack to the non-action.
periodically i repeat the mantra; 'do not force octopussy on me again'


and at last the rain thumps down upon the tin roof:


soothes our souls, saves our souls, cleanses our palates.

And to finish, an inspirational quote from my beloved Steinbeck, to help see you through this rainy windscreen of a week:

‘Men do change, and change comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.


Change may be announced by a small ache, so that you think you’re catching cold. Or you may feel a faint disgust for something you loved yesterday. It may even take the form of a hunger that peanuts will not satisfy. Isn’t overeating said to be one of the strongest symptoms of discontent? And isn’t discontent the lever of change?’

I think I’m getting a beret….xx

india: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVL3UzEhrIE&feature=related

or

rain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6_7B9avI0c&ob=av3n

or

change: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl3vxEudif8&feature=related

go, tell it on the mountain

Spain. Hot. Phwoargh; no more pasty faces, no more pastie faces, for that matter. Though the spaniards have been known to hog down a few carcasses of an evening. Jamon y queso all the way.

The transition from blighty to euroland is effortless enough. I manage to be completely manky for my trip, having sunk a vodka or six with monsieur henderson the night before at a magazine launch.

On the dazzling budget flight I have the pleasure of sitting with a herd of british idiots. One is definitely gay, though I don’t think he’s out, and the ample woman to my right shoulder plies me with cheap mint imperials and keeps shrieking ‘oo, I wanna wet me lettuce’.

A charming backdrop for my romantic gazing out at the mashed potato clouds, as my inflight, inhead transistor plays Paul Weller’s above the clouds…..

“Above the clouds, what's to be found
I have to wonder - will I be around
As my anger shouts - at my own self doubt
So a sadness creeps - into my dreams
When you're scared of living - but afraid to die
I get scared of giving - and I must find the faith to beat it”

And someone guffs very near my face. I shield myself from these heathens and pray that the bloke who keeps shouting daily mail jokes at me will disappear up his own flatulent arse. We are not amused. We are an artiste.

My phone tells me I am now a ‘movistar’, and the edge of reason crosses my mind – I ain’t no Bridget Jones, but I do always stop breathing whenever police are present, and though I packed my own bag, I have no idea what’s in there….

Border control let me in less a good frisking to my dismay, and I realise I have no map, instructions or compass, and pray that my famed aboriginal tracker instinct will kick in and won’t lead me into a dark forest of donkeys as history has had it….

I make it to the central train station, and head to the tourist info. Which is shut. I ask a nonchalant sweaty pig for a map but he just shrugs. I want the old town. Viaje? No, that’s journey. No bother, I set off using my tracker instincts, and find I have led myself towards the port. Once a sailor’s girl….And a heap of dodgy looking Vietnamese set me scuttling in the other direction. Which is a short cut. To nowhere.

I swig down some 17c warm water to avoid turning into dust, and stumble upon a quaint town map, that tells me I am here, and that the place of the virgin is somewhere near some trees. A bit of an extreme from sailor’s girl to virgin, I wobble off in a vague direction.

Fuck the virgin, there’s a quiet street café where I can write. The raging queen behind the bar informs me that the 3.60 special, advertised as available ‘todo el dia’, is only in fact available up to 2pm. So I ply myself with uht coffee, dismissing unlikely salesmen selling jingle-jangles, and thank Vishnu that body language is 80% of communication, as all I can muster right now is some scratchings of Hindi.

I catch the train to the countryside by a small miracle, and enjoy the wild landscape , which alternates in glorious european style, between expanses of mountain wilderness, hideous industrial outskirts, and villages from days gone by. I can sleep, the only babble being in catalan. Then a hideous englishman boards and bores the fishermans pants off his lady friend by musing upon who Les Dennis might actually be. They have the wrong tickets and the stern conductor gets his fire up. I do my best impression of a russian prostitute, (fairly convincing), and manage to keep him from severing my head in the name of the Queen.

I arrive in Tortosa, and my lively friends rock up, beers in hand, wind in their sails, freedom in their hearts, and the holiday has truly begun. At their solar-powered mountain ranch the sun sinks sleepily below the jagged horizon and we feast on ham, cheese and vino before drink-driving to the local village fiesta.

Now we’re not talking bestival here. We’re talking a difficult-to-find google image of a few confused women dancing with tea trays in handstitched 70s a-line skirts. Right up my avenida.

This time, we are denied access to the main event of the night; trestle tables adorned with food in colours according to your suburb. I am particularly horrified at the yellow table’s unidentifiable fried objects, and the poor local ceramicist who has dyed her hair baboon-orange, but has been allocated to the blue table. To eat blue food.

There being no room at the inn, we sit in the street at a local bar slurping free-hand vodkas with some other ex-pat outcasts.

It’s time to make our own fiesta, armed with some miscellaneous children, some olives so salty I develop rod-stewart cheekbones, and some help from a certain columbian friend…

Suddenly I am no longer in the darkening street framed by posters of bocadillos and julio eglesias, I am in a four by four, baby slung on lap, performing lines from a narcotic play…and when we emerge, alienated but hungry for the night, we are allowed into the abandoned hanger of a festival. The fruit of the looms have disappeared, as have the trestles, save for a few hepatitis-lined bottles of grappa and cava, which we purloin.

But rather than a chas n dave tribute band, which would have been equally as fun and more apt, we have a spanish ska band. Through my altered perception they are amazing. Suddenly we form a freakish troupe of blonde skankers, crazed looks on our dials, swigging second hand liquor and keeping a boggling eye out for the baby….

But as I start a conga, kickbox with some eighteen year olds and perform acrobatics with any man strong enough to hold me, the baby disappears from sight and we are three crammed into a rickety bog, locals aghast, baby in the mosh pit….

Still having not caused sufficient damage, we cram into another four by four down a dirt track, and carry on carnaging. At which point I start to feel a little sick. What’s wrong godiva? Can’t handle your class a, b, cs and ds anymore? Was it the fourteen hour viaje to get here? I switch on my phone as a plea for any kind of reality to hit me.

It does. It’s seven in the morning.

I am a twenty-four hour party person.

Thankfully my good companions burn out and we wind our way, stupefied, up the olive-covered mountain and truly finish ourselves off at the ranch with a dribbled philosophical debate on the purpose of life.

Which, according to me, is to form a union with any troubled soul who should call out to me, and to him is to buy up land with water for when the end really kicks in….

So the non-existent itinerary for the next few days, including the kickboxing match with five stallions I had arranged the night before, disappears further into the void, and instead I declare myself ‘aunty death’, and immerse my shaking, ageing body in vitamin d, nurturing my soul with hermaphrodite-drawing competitions and chorizo.

And the sun beats down, and we are without dongle, and the world floats off satisfactorily beneath us. And though I haven’t had a sufficient shit, there’s time to try. And the warm rays erase a comedown, and I love my friends, and from the mountain I never want to comedown.

So for six days I don’t. Not exactly soaking up the local culture, as the nearest neighbour is three miles away, but enjoying every drop of this simple life.

Alas, easyjet calls. At the train station the man informs us there are no trains the next day. There is a general strike. Like the one I narrowly avoided in france the week before getting here. Will this be another near-miss, or will we have to charge up the dongle and send apologies to my life that for the next few days there will be no life happening.

I would like to pretend that I was enraptured with the news, but the truth of the matter is I couldn’t be bothered with that degree of change after watching time stand still save for the drift of a few falling petals for the last week.

The autobus saves us. I am to leave tonight and stay in valencia. Adventure. That’s more like it.

Although not a cheap ticket to ride, the clientele on this bus needs a lot of help to be desired. Using my survival skills, and armed with a ham and cheese baguette, I sit next to a man whose prostrate has dropped significantly low enough to have a wee problem rather than a libido of any kind, and I dream and I dream out of the window.

This is even more awesome than the train journey, and as the sky blackens I gaze out at the silhouetted mountains and dream of being among them, with nothing but time on my side.

I stave off the temptation to realise that my bladder is near to bursting, and we stop at a place called castillo, where the bus terminates. This is not valencia. I garble in spanglish at the driver, who, in true public transport fashion, shrugs at me but indicates haphazardly that the bus shall be travelling on. Can I have a cigarette, I ask? He looks extremely disapprovingly at me. But I’d heard his ‘cinqo minutos’ at another passenger and repeat this to him, my head swelling up with pride that I have not been deterred by the barrier of language.

But unfortunately, the man loitering behind me has also heard, and follows me off the bus. He starts cooing slimily at me. I move away. I snarl, ‘ingles’, he says that I speak spanish though don’t I? For the wont of a more mediterranean expression, I opt for what I thought was a universal one, and growl ‘fuck off’ at him. But it doesn’t work. ‘BYOOTIFUL’. He says. Now, I’m all for women’s lib, but this ain’t it. The slimy fucker. Where’s the old man who smells of piss when you need him?

Well he’s back on the bus, but now three other old men who smell of piss approach me from the other side. Like a twisted, boosh-esque lambada, they encircle me. I can’t be arsed to find out what they are actually pretending to want, and skedaddle sharpishly back onto the bus. It seems no assault course in india can numb me from the perils of sexism, and I make a mental note to burn my bra. And strap my tits down.

I arrive at the hostile bus station in valencia at around ten pm. Having purloined a map at last, I plan to walk like a true brigadier to my prebooked residence. But even I am not stupid enough to risk dodging the unsavoury characters that belay me, and I get in a cab. And the fat fucker behind the wheel is not willing to understand my catalan. Or my map. I repeat words endlessly and hope we aren’t driving to my demise, and suddenly nearing the hostel he understands me. It’s not ‘HO ME’, it’s ‘HO ME’. Well that’s a lesson learnt……..

Yes, dear readers, a distinguished lady such as myself had vowed never again to stay in a hostel, but with twenty euros to my name I succumb. Will it be a repeat of the last time I stayed in a bedbug-ridden dorm with a stunted goblin monkey swinging into my bed to spoon-rape me, I wonder?

I gingerly ask how much a single room is. No singles. A double room? No. Six, twelve or sixteen-bed dorms only. I take my starched linen and enter room 32. A bald man suddenly sits bolt upright in the dark and mumbles canadian at me about the only spare bunk being above him. I wonder if I’ll flash my nether-regions at him from betwixt my be-moo-mooed legs, and try to disguise my horror at this mixed-sex modernity.

I go downstairs to write; the promise of a roof terrace quashed as it shut at ten pm. Outside the front I am taken hostage by hostel-dwellers. A grolsch-voiced dutchman informs me that the national strike tomorrow will affect all transport including aeroplanes, and that I’d do well to book myself in for another night here as spaces are filling up. Not with the consumption to withstand enforced panic, I abandon the writing session and wait for a free computer.

And I’m forced to take part in a deranged game of pictionary-charades, where, being the only english native, I keep winning by mistake.

I check my hotmail. I’m not ready for the seventeen facebook messages and mundane, evil chores that hotmail demands of me, and I wonder whether the lack of dongle for the past few days was an oversight.

There’s a message from easyjet a few days before saying I should change my flight. Horror sets in – how many nights will I be forced to lay awake on a soggy mattress waiting for the teenage maladjusted to clonk in from their late-night sangria sessions?

Well, one, as it turns out. No problema. And despite being the only female in the room, I sleep easy, borrow toothpaste the next morning and head to the roof terrace for some final sunsoaking and a discussion on east berlin, pre-wall.

And I know how much I love travelling. And I don’t care if it’s escape. I just want to stand for myself in my own context, surrounded by the unknown.

And I find my way home smiling, with no problems and a near-empty plane.

And I want this feeling to last. But as we touch down a grey sky awaits me, and as I switch on my phone reality bites me. And as the rain pelts upon me like acid from nuclear fallout, I wonder how I’m going to survive this holocaust.

And I wonder if I should follow the sun…...

Godiva went over the mountain, Godiva went over the mountain
Godiva went over the mountain, to see what she could see……….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90u1IV4dw8o