All aboard the wibbley wobbley.....

All aboard the wibbley wobbley….

You may recall that I do ridiculous things fairly often.

Last weekend was no exception.  It was time.  For my gig. On…… the wibbley wobbley!

The wibbley wobbley is a mad little boat in the docks of east end london.  That sells booze.  And curry.

Ms mountain had FBed me from spain in the christmas furore.  Her father, a notorious east end ‘business man’, was turning seventy – could I rustle up some songs for the occasion?  Say, johnny cash, tina turner, fats dominoe?..…

And, seeing as I thought it a good idea to leap around in camden singing elvis with my cavalry choir, I thought it also a good idea to say yes, I’d do it…..

I thought I’d better warm up for the gig by getting pissed the night before with kolvitch and tone.  Saturday came and all I could muster was a bit of croaky tina-crooning and some roast potatoes from the chrisso near the pissy bus stop.

At canada water tube I waited patiently amongst the straggle for my mountainous friends to embark upon me.  And sure enough, through the barricades came mcpherson, ms mountain, mr diy and rambunctious rubekins.

Trotting along the cobbled docks, haphazardly avoiding broken heels, we stumbled, ms mountain and I making an odd couple – me, guitar slung on back, her, baby seat.

Aboard the boat we get down to the important stuff.  Moet, veuve and some sort of pink shit greets us.  That’s better. 

Within five minutes of the party starting the boat is crammed full.  And though still waters run deep, I am not out of my depth, but I realise with horror that I may be the poshest thing there.  And that’s a first.

Later, I sourced a tall girl named margot who I decided was posher than me.  But she was by no means acting posh.  No one that night was.

Animal print is back.  But these people have been wearing it since the first time round.  Cockney mob women, bronzed and cackling, mysterious fat geordies screeching at me through my soundcheck.  I point out I can be violent if pushed.

Violence was a whiff in the curry-soaked air.  An old conspirator tells me he overheard four seventy year-olds in the bog together discussing an old mucker from days way-back-when.

“yeah, ‘e was alright.  ‘e ran a good pub….”

“Me only regret was that I never robbed ‘im.”

Fabulous.  They all have three-syllable names like ‘tony brown’, or ‘jackie ‘obbs’.

Robbie jobs.

And although the septuagenarian birthday boy has dragged a PA system halfway across the old smoke for me, samson’s words ring through my befuddled head with horror:

‘so, who’s doing the sound then?’

‘erm….’

‘do you know how to set up a PA?’

*silencio*

‘and what songs are you singing?’

*more silence…*

So after a couple of bubblies I curtail mr diy and tell him of the technical issues we may be facing.  He gets on it.  Someone’s boyfriend plays the bass, he’ll know.  Gold.

But as they do in these east-end slapstick situations, everyone mucked in and ‘ad a go.  At some expense….

Yes, dear darren ‘meant well’, but he has added to the top two most unwelcome groping incidents of this year, (mafioso waiter from last week being decidedly more sinister).

Yes, cheery darren set to work with his wires and buttons, but wouldn’t perform a trick without a little treat…..so as he gaffered an old microphone to some sort of makeshift pole and I barked orders as to exactly where I wanted him to put it, he’d slyly give my hips a good rub as he searched about the floor. 

I implored at ms mountain but she shrugged – you don’t get somefink for nuffink nowadays.  So I allowed the molestation to continue till we were set up, then turned into a complete screaming diva. 

Well I ain’t class, but these men do not seem to relate to women in a way I find familiar.  One man I shiftied past on the rockaboat said ‘nice voice’.  ‘Thanks’, I disinterestedly half-snarl.  But I can’t move for the thick whisky air.

‘not really’, he toothlessly grins, ‘I’m just tryin’ to get in your knick-as!’

Well there’s a sophisticated line.  Tried and tested before, no doubt.

What would be the appropriate response, one muses for a millisecond?

Probably all babs windsor, “oo, you saucy bugger!”  *laugh laugh, hand on tit*

I am not having it mister.  Do not mess.  Sucker.

I tentatively launch.  I decide I can’t look at the be-pied bugger, so instead turn to his surly scottish friend:

“what kind of a fucking response is that?  What kind of a fucking line is that?  Erm, you’re good at singing, no, not really, I just want to get in your pants?” *LOTS of gesticulating*

but the scottish one gets overexcited by my firey outburst:

“tell him, go on, I dare you to say to him, fuck off!  How fucking you dare say that to me!”

I recoil, serpent as I am.  No, I will not perform like an organ-monkey.

“you tell him.” I order.  “I have people to do that kind of thing for me”.  I haught off, the scottish one shouting “fuck off” in his friend’s face.  Mission accomplished.

And the actual gig?  A confusing, ridiculous, old-fashioned, knees up muvva braan.  And where the fuck was dirty darren when I needed him?  Up the galley and round the piss-soaked stairs with a wrap of our little friend, that’s where.

Set list:

·      Happy fuckin birfday, led by ms mountain

·      The one I love is gone – learnt whilst eating roast potatoes and dribbling, still not entirely sure of the chords but it shut ‘em up.

·      THE GRAND SUPRENDO – a song written for the birfday boy.  I forced him to stand before me, he didn’t like that.  I managed to fit in the words ‘I can tell you why he’s so gay’, which did not go un-noticed.  Word after the event was that he exclaimed ‘it’s all a bit overwhelming’, and snuck off to mischief.  But I made a mobster stand to attention before me whilst I sang about his funny games….

·      Tina Turner, I don’t wanna lose you, for mcpherson.  Classic.  Honked out in true country style.  Approved of by the person’s boyfriend who played the bass, someone’s husband and someone else’s husband.  I collected a pile of partners before noticing in close wibbley proximity their wives and others.  Whoops.

·      Grand finale…..what do you think it was?  Yes, that old classique, jesus don’t stick it in there.  To hell with it, why the fuck not?

To add to the disrespectful pile of chancers trying to stick it in there, was an old dude called albert.  I was on top deck quaffing pink shit, when he curtailed me by the cramped bar.

‘very pretty…….but you used to ‘ave dimples’, he says, to an audience of gizzardish women in leopard-print.  They laugh.

I decide to give him the benefit of the doubt, and assume, wrongly, that he thinks I am the birthday boy’s daughter.

‘oh, I’m, not his daughter you know!’

He shifts uncomfortably and goes red, poor old bugger.

‘well no, I didn’t fink you was, but you got me all imbarissed naa’.  The gizzards laugh.  I smile, forcing dimples.  We all knock it back.

And, after resisting several substances, it was definitely high time to leave the boat.

News came on deck that someone I girned with years back would be leaving to go…somewhere.  So I should too.

As she stoops to conquer a bag of hidden booze from the bushes, she explains to her new traveller squeeze how she knows me.

She tells him that they all cried on boxing day 2005 as they thought they had lost me to the tsunami.  And I have been thinking about my dear friends at this fraught time of year, those I’ve lost, those I have and those I’ll come to know, and the words of the DOCTOR resonate throughout my being:

“dance like everybody’s watching,

Love like you'll been hurt,

And sing like everyone’s listening”

Well, the wibbley wobbley wasn’t much listening, but it was full of friends – old, new, lost and found, which no tsunami could sweep away:

(listen out for when you hear me shout darren)

Shaft from the past……

“I’m still trying to work out how my cock ended up in your mouth”, he texted me this evening.  Me too, me too.  I’m considering setting up a support group due to the frequency at which this happens….

Yesterday evening, after waxing my legs in the bosses office and colouring in the portrait of my dear samson, I embarked on an escapade to london town.

Planned costume: high-class escort – foul new wardrobe composed of leopard, giraffe, tiger and zebra print. 

I intended to pull on shocking stockings, squeeze into a skintight black lycra minidress, and top it all off with a mohair jumper, but by the time I dragged myself from my postwork-deathbed at 6.30pm, I had ten minutes to get ready.  The carriage waits not for godiva.

Fuck it, I pulled on my ebay jeans, complete with beef gravy stains from a roast dinner fight with samson a week before, a slinky camisole and the leopard mohair number to attempt a persona.  Extra small.  Result.  Only it’s some sort of fashion style that means it stops above my midriff, and the shoulders are ruffled up like tense rejects from dynasty.  The persona is unconvincing, and my date goes back thirteen years to university, and it appears I have nothing to hide beneath…..

When I met ‘quantum jump’, he searched the whole town for a white rose to show me his love.  And this is why I am here.  I need some ‘love’.  “I am ready for love”, I text him in my new year’s crisis.  “Only took you thirteen years”, he quips.

- Will we, won’t we? -

I remember from our yonder years that he is prolifically late, and as I wait for the number 11 at victoria station I instruct him to get moving, shivering in my scanties.

We are both late.  We are shown to our table. 

“I like your jumper”, he says.  “I’m still trying to get used to the shoulders.”

“dynasty?” I enquire, hopefully.

“I was thinking more edwardian”, he rebutts.

- but will he rebutt me, WILL HE? -

Sandwiched between dysfunctional sloany drunks and sensible americans eating giant green olives, I go with edwardian escort for now.

The restaurant we are in is my favourite chelsea establishment.  Definite mafia connections, overpriced food chosen off a music stand, baby squids that induce tears, bresaola and pears, fucked-up poshos looking for a food-excuse to get rat-arsed.

The fruity house white is flowing, and soon enough so is the conversation.

The hours disappear, and suddenly the buck-toothed south american waiter is speaking fluent italian at me and rubbing various body parts of mine, as quantum jump relieves himself downstairs.

“I’m paying you”, I shout at the sinister waiter who has scrawled my name in the diary as ‘dori’, (one away from doris),

“I’m paying you”, I say, “not to touch me up!”

The doors are now locked, and we are the last men sitting.  A young mobster stares at me quizzically across the room.  A look that says ‘why are you here’, with no question mark.

The oldest waiter opens his mouth only to sing “it’s just another glass” each time the south american pours another shot of limoncello down my willing throat.

I can’t see anymore.  It must be time to go.  White roses adorn all tables.

I grab a rose.  We wobble off into the night, walking to kensington via victorian townhouses.  Me shoving my wilted rose under noses of unsuspecting toffs. 

Punching bushes, stumbling over, spanking some girl, which I am told she liked.  This all recounted to me the next morn - my memory now locked away in the wine vault of my liver. 

We reach the hotel and I ask quantum why it is that we are going into a hospital.  Has this whole night been a devious ploy to finally get me sectioned, categorised, labelled and put on a shelf forever?

No.  It is a hotel, I am told.  In the room we drink tea and watch a terrible shopping channel where the ladies wear animal attire too hideous even for lady g.  And then it’s the very late time.  The time for bed time.  Yes.

Well…….not really as it turns out.  I’m sure he omitted to tell me he was seeing someone.  He said I was babbling too much for him to slip it in edgewise.  I brush this information aside – ‘seeing’ is not the same as ‘being’ with someone surely?  And I’ve waited all these years for the grand reveal of what I remember to be quite a conspicuous member….

“I’m going out with her.  There’s two single beds here.”  He points.

“THAT one is yours”.

Not happy.  NOT HAPPY. Feeling like a rapist tortorti physically removed from the subject of my affections, I put myself in the bed.  It’s like a hospital.  Okay, I can smile when saying ‘single’ on buses.  Not so when saying ‘single bed’. 

Knowing there is a feeding creature beneath the sheets lurking but a metre from my thirsty loins feels like torture.  I’m sure it’s twitching at me.

I do the undoable.  The shouldn’t-doable.  The “oh god NO, get out of my face-able”. 

I tell him I am getting in his bed. 

I get in.  Its singledom ensures close proximity.  He tells me to be ‘good’.  Okay, I’ll be ‘good’ alright….

We snuggle, him rubbing up significant pile on my fluffy tank top to make it unreturnable.

Then it’s massage.  Back massage.

Suddenly we take a quantum leap.  Suddenly I have worked my way down his erect nipples, to his smooth torso, to his……whoop, there it is!

I hold a psychic conversation with ‘little mystery’, as I call it.  I am transmitting to my new friend that the chocolates and biscotti weren’t enough.  I want my just dessert….

Staring at my lost love from thirteen long years ago, it is time to be reacquainted, and I realise with drunken delight that never before has this mystery entered godiva’s wanton face-orifice.

The waiting is over.  I stop just short of the money shot.  Dagnamit, I need this gig.  And then I wait….anticipate…..for

“STOP!”

OH NO!

“We have to be good.”

WHAT?  How much restraint has this man got?  Having a girlfriend never stopped him before, as I recall.  But he is no spring chicken.  And I shall never be his hen.

He goes to spoon me gently, and I erupt. 

I eject myself into the hospital stretcher and don’t bother to disguise my utter contempt at this no-show.  Don’t get me wrong, one in the mouth is great, but it isn’t two in the bush.

I burst into angry tears.  Having escaped my entry, he is probably familiarising himself with the emergency exit. 

‘I’m going to kill myself’, I think.  Or maybe I say it.  Through my angry, hospitalisationable tears.

All consumed by fired-up reptilian desire, I want to quench this fire.  Which would mean rape, at this stage.  Or masturbation?  Angry masturbation.  Doesn’t work.  Luckily for both of us, plans for my suicide are interrupted with the wine kicking in, and me passing out.

It’s the morning.

I am still drunk.  I can see the funny side of it all in the blinding light of day, thank god. 

Good on him for stopping where we did.  I don’t want another man’s homewreck etched upon my epitaph.  And he knew that I was only wanting what I shouldn’t have, as always.  Which is all I ever want.  Which is usually all I ever get……

The curtains are drawn, time has disappeared altogether.  We have passed through the twilight zone, and I have to get back to the squirrel’s nest for a gig, and I have no idea where I am.

My favourite.

Stumbling through the hospital-like reception I make it into the street.  And suddenly I’m on high street ken, staring at beige smocks in the m & s window, with a vague memory of admiring them the night before, though completely unaware of what city, let alone time zone I was in.

I have shades on.   I haven’t fallen over yet.  I join a similar casualty at a bus stop.  He is cute.  I start up a conversation  -which way to victoria?  But he is not amused, and in a plummy voice banishes me to the tube.

Not bloody likely;- though underground is probably the best place for godiva right now, she can’t bear the thought of a crammed black hole, and staggers on.

Not sure whether drunk, hungover or about to lose her bowels completely, she walks. 

Past the irish embassy where she performed an impromptu gig for some midgets, past the royal albert hall in its splendour.  Giving up at south ken and hopping on the district line.  Overpriced baguette and an engineering-works train.  Two hours finding remarkable comparisons with a marketing student who attends the same university we did passes quickly and strangely.

And home.  To feel wretched.  To feel guilty at not blogging.  To feel hungover and frustrated.

£100 quid for cock-breath, and no cigar. 

There’s only one thing for it - I’m taking back the fluffy-piled jumper, (£24.99), and replacing it with a one-month subscription to sugardaddie.com, (£21.99), to sustainably farm some hungry fish.

bind us together lord....

Unibind boy couldn’t get enough of me.  Thought I was hilarious.  Kept exclaiming over the phone how FUNNY I was, how NO NONSENSE!!

‘Was I a manager?’, he stammered excitedly in disbelief at my imperative manner.  

‘No’,  my reply. 

"But I do speak on behalf of the managing director when I say

STOP WASTING MY TIME!”

*shriek!*

He keeps trying:

“I was in an office the other day giving a demonstration, and they showed me their binding system, and you wouldn’t BELIEVE how complicated and antiquated it was……..you may think we’re expensive, but honestly, you should have seen how bad their system was…”

I GIVE HIM THE BENEFIT OF SILENCE……

ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS UNIBIND BOY? 

ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?!!

“Look”, I cut him short, “you sound like you’re about to spiel an overused sales pitch.  And I’m not listening.”

He hurriedly drums up another angle from his tired backlog of laminate excuses:

“I can speak to my manager.  I can see if I can get you a deal…”

“Look, don’t bother.  It’s a rip-off.  I’ll speak to my budget holder, and I’ll get back to you if we need any, okay?!”

*silencio*

“okay.”

“ and I MIGHT call you next week, but DON’T call me”.

“alright”

“and have a lovely weekend now, won’t you?”

*gasp*

*slam*

£72 fucking quid for a piece of shitty plastic.  Fuck off out of it, unibind boy….

and unto her a blog was born.....

 For last year’s words belong to last year’s language and next year’s words await another voice…..T.S.Eliot

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:

1. 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.
2. lack of hot-rod.
3. 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

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?!)