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