New year’s day is every man’s birthday Charles Lamb
The reason for me not writing sooner is the universal, impending sense of doom that new year’s seems to bring to all mankind.
I wanted to inspire you all, offer you comfort for the coming year, fill us all with uplifting hope for a successful journey ahead….
Well call me temaze-Pam, and I could blame her for my sluggishness, but I could also blame a number of other factors:
- spare time – I finally have it, meaning I have the arduous task of transferring all files, including a lot of documentary footage, from my PC to my mc. Laborious. Boring. Frustrating.
- lack of hot-rod.
- the hopelessness that surrounds me – the most inspiring sight of late has been two homeless men sitting in the public toilet shelter near my house, shaving off half of their beards and blasting out nina’s 99 red balloons.
But I do feel change.
“Doc was changing in spite of himself, in spite of the prayers of his friends, in spite of his own knowledge. And why not? Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it 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?” Steinbeck, Sweet Thursday
A sense of rebirth.
Which began on christmas day. Which went surprisingly well.
I awoke in the witches tavern, hoovered, blogged my socks off and waited for willy b to arrive. With a smile wider than cheshire, , santa hat at the ready, in mum’s new wagon we blast out a great choral version of we will rock you rock you rock you as the sun shines over the hills.
Armed with my bottle of taittinger and some tokenistic gifts, we get to the family bosom unscathed, and we are welcomed with open arms. Dad has dinner on the go, and my older bro, his wife and her parents arrive, schnauzer in tow.
No one gets pissed. We have an epic mini fussball and pool tournament. Me and my brothers plug in and jam the funk. I find a trumpet, which I pass around my nucleus. We can all play. That’s mum’s birthday present sorted. (Anyone know a good trumpet book for beginners?)
G-ma is well-behaved, and her crazy probing comments are anaesthetized by the fact she gives me a cheque. For £500. Good news. Suddenly ‘oo, you’ll find a man, have a baby and become a housewife all of a sudden – you’re one of them!’ isn’t an absurd comment anymore. I pause before I react. We all do. It’s okay.
Apparently this is dead-woman’s money- and there was £20,000 to dish out so god knows where she stuck the other £18,000 or so. But never mind.
Suddenly it’s past eleven. And we haven’t watched telly, vomited, shouted or attempted to kill each other. A mammoth 9-manned game of balderdash results in hilarity. Seems the in-laws have a habit of stirring things up purposefully by reading people’s definitions wrong.
My favourite:
Tarassis
Of which my brother clearly wrote ‘bosnian pudding made of suet’. (shit description)
To which said mother-in-law pronounced ‘bosnian pudding made from shit’. Which she read out about five times.
‘Paralysed carcass’ was another embellished great that tickled even the frostiest corners of the room….
Howling and clutching our co-op stuffed bellies this was all the entertainment needed to bring Christmas to a close.
Apart from, of course, the inaugural spliff with willy b to round everything off. We sit in his den, listening to dubstep on his oversized telly via his laptop. Our arian eyes turn decidedly asian as the weed slithers in and takes hold. I remember how good he is to talk to, and tell him about my recent loss – the death of my friend.
As we sit side by side, grooving along absent-mindedly to his teenage music, talking about the other side, there is a knock at the door.
It’s dad. On the other side. In his p-js.
Like a floppy rabbit in the headlights I look to my younger kin for guidance. Will my drug abuse ruin this whole occasion? Did I eat all my sprouts like a good girl in vain? Will dad go off on one?
I mean, what must it look like?! His offbeat, but vaguely glamorous daughter, (and one of the more successful offspring), monged out on a stinky couch with her surrogate son.
Beavis and butthead. At best.
Patsy and a character out of tank girl more probable.
I look to the apple of my eye for behavioural guidance in this unfamiliar situation. Yes, yes, I’ve been off my knob before in front of the olds; searching fro non-existent chickens in bushes in the front garden. Piling a whole tureensworth of courgettes onto my plate and pronouncing ‘I LIKE COURGETTES, MUMMY, DON’T I? DON’T I!’ over and over again whilst the tortorti got down to it in the radish patch.
But not for a long, long time now. Not since I locked myself out after jiggying someone on a roundabout wearing nothing but a sarong at four in the morning…..particularly proud of that one.
And the guidance from willy b on how to deal with da when caught green-handed is this: look at him and snarl. nonchalantly shrug your upper lip, shake your head and roll your eyes. Lord, I don’t think I’m up to it.
What does dad want in the midnight hour anyhow?!
He looks shocked and panicked at the disgusting sight and smell that belies him, but decides to simply wave away the torrent of green smoke that launches a psychedelic attack on his equilibrium:
“erm….I’ve left the light on in case grandma gets up in the night and falls down the stairs”……
I splutter. Not just, ‘leave the light on in case grandma gets up in the night’. No. Leave it on should poor old crazed g-ma tumble craggily down the stairwell to her certain death.
Ha! I decide that seeing as my pubescent compatriot, (who I brought up, badly it now seems), has nothing to offer but utter disrespect, I should offer a morsel of response:
“erm….is the alarm on?”
The answer seems to be no - the mood, pure confusion. Father exits.
I look at willy b. he shrugs non-committally at me.
In bed, I lye? with some paper and a biro I’ve purloined from the den. Blog is spurting out of me, but the THC has taken hold and has me in a state of euphoria. Paralysed euphoria.
And I experience a deluded rebirth.
I feel new. In every way. A blank page. Nothingness, me, now, allowed to go forth with a cleared record….
The next day I err against serving up the taittinger with the smoked salmon and scrabled eggs I’ve created for everyone – my mum got so excited about some prosecco, that I decided it would be unwise to piss all over her parade with a vintage so crisp to be wasted upon her spam-infused tongue. More for me……..all in the christmas spirit.
I go to samsons for boxing night. I force tarot on him and take some left-over fairy dust from the neighbour’s party the week before.
The next day sees me getting up at 3pm, and unable to cope with solitude, samson and mistress white come round for some doobie. I am naked save for a quality seconds fleece. And I should be on a train to london. Jim pops round with emergency mince pies and chocolate and it fuels me.
Snowy footed, I land at the swanky converted mill apartment of a canadian film director and a dutch architect. For dinner. I blither. I pop open the booze. I stuff my face with barbecued venison and other high art, and find myself at the end of the evening lying? alone with the architect on a sofa, him caressing my inflated, bloated stomach.
I can’t freaking do this. It’s all part of my weird rebirth! I want to be me, just me. Nothing anyone expects. Not the belly-dancing, open-legged fool people add to the guest list for kicks. Not the outspoken, vitriol-tongued wench everyone loves for tea. Not the oddball, staggering artiste people love to ogle at in starbucks. NO.
So when he says ‘goodnight darlink’ and stoops to conquer, I stare blankly at him. I cannot bear the ‘sleep in my bed’ conversation. I have successfully secured two of his pillows for my deathbed, and I am happy to rest in peace alone.
My god. What has happened?
Dear readers, I am ready for love. The coming of my jesus-age. The tiredness of the revolving door that is slutdom. The thirst for truth, peace and comfortable familiarity calls me.
I wish I’d fucking known this was on the way – all those years of wondering if I had a maladjusted attitude towards sex and relationships need not have happened. Yes, you shall turn into a desperate, self-questioning thirty-something trying to leap off the shelf. I wish I’d known before – I’d certainly have taken more advantage of those two slovenians…..
In preparation for my windfall, I join sugardaddie.com, to find 69 messages in twelve hours, from wonderful, rich catches such as these:
 |
| evil |
Money can’t buy you love, it would seem.
And when on new year’s eve I awoke to find my entire hotmail inbox had vanished, and my mother telling me she’d been sent a message saying it was my birthday, I thought I’d better mark my rebirth.
I go for dinner at samson’s to dread the coming in of January 1. We cook half-hearted, haphazard cuisine and I collapse under the weight of my temazepam withdrawal and several hundred mice pies. Sorry, mince pies.
At midnight we go to the beach. An apocalyptic stench alludes from the crying atmosphere. Eerie. Apparently this is collective consciousness. Five-a-pack death-lanterns from asda. Pah.
I have prepared a witches treat. I have scrawled upon paper my desires and fears for the new year. I have declared what I am grateful for in my life. The list is quite small.
I trot up and down the shingle, fucking-up my suede heels and bulldozing through groups of people to steal their candles. I set light to my dreams, and at the stroke of midnight the sea takes it. Slurps it under its milky, sinister tide. Takes my breath away.
And now, hurrah, be it all too late, I have blogged. After spending the day evading my responsibilities by aimlessly wandering about he seafront in my mackenzies and a headscarf, in denial of writer’s block, I have blogged.
I’ve had writer’s block, by the way. The internet advice is ‘smoke pot’. In a minute, in a minute.
Saved, hence me putting finger to keyboard, by the voluminous ms mountain, who yanks me out of starbucks, (where I have to squat over the piss-riddled toilet. Eat yer heart out those who got to thailand or india, keeping it real right back here on home shores), and gives me perspective.
I must put together my set list for the party of the century. This saturday. Aboard the wibbley wobbley. I am honking some out on the geetar and have no set list. The occasion shall be ‘wide-eyed’ she says.
And the week after, I shall dine in my favourite chelsea restaurant with my first love.
And hopefully, hopefully, by then, the world will be the right way up again, all this rebirth bullshit will have conked it, and godiva will be back again……xx
Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence. (Desiderata)
what a lovely man
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1 comment:
good start
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