fight of the wrongchords

Is it just me, or does anyone else love a comedown? A creative low, a blur low? No?...

I’d be a manic depressive if I could only get the hang of this depression.

It’s good to be sad sometimes…….

Anyway, it’s been quite a week. Last Friday I took my honourable wife to Worthing for a dirty weekend. It was weird and dark, tinged with relationship breakups. She bought my mum flowers to take. They were dead…..

Which brings me swiftly forward to tomorrow. (linear time is for wimps). The young man leaveth to travel far and wide and stray from the good path. The lady doth not vanish……

How do I feel about him being away for six weeks? Gawd knows. I found this bit of paper I had to write to myself following a course on diversity and inclusion, and on it I’d written ‘hahahaha remember what you did on April 10’.

Remember, yes I do sir, I pulled the boy! So I’d written to myself trying to cheer my future barren self up with the fact I had squeezed the lovejuice from a near-minor.

Well I did, and I have been ever since, the poor fucker. I just thought one of us would have died by now, or something. But instead, he’s leaving me on the longest day, the shortest night, midsummer.

And in fact, tomorrow is daddy’s day. And he has a ‘complex’ relationship with his Mafioso sperm donor. And I will be with him and his mum, eating some kind of traditional food. Help.

I know I shouldn’t be a twat, I know it’s just his mum. I know it’s the only way I’ll see him anyway, and he isn’t bothered. But I don’t think mothers are my thing, that’s all.

Boyfriend number:
1. mother thought I was a slut. Used to smoke post-coital fags with his father in the kitchen in dressing gowns.
2. irish mother. Thought I was a slut. Once remarked she’d like daniel o’donnell’s shoes under her bed. Nothing in common. Banned me from the house.
3. horrible psycho mother. Lasagne and quiche. Volatile and sinister relationship with son. Goodbye.
4. dead mother.
5. dead mother.
6. dead mother. That one was a good one, he’d carried her to sleep paralytic at Christmas and the next thing she was dead. Broken boy. Good for sex and writing songs.
7. can’t remember many others

the point being that I really haven’t had that much practise at it, most look appalled, and this one has been described to me as ‘fragile’. Jeremy beadle, where are you now?

Sitting at a table (I sit on the floor), eating her food (I scavenge from bins), wanting to squeeze her son (11 years my junior). It’s going to be a breeze.

‘don’t worry about it’, he tells me. Oh, for a young-man brain transplant.

I told him I’d prepare my costume. I may as well annoy him as much as I can before he leaves. It’ll take longer to forget that way……………….

Anyway, for the rest of my strange and hectic week; Monday, pop video in the arches of london bridge. Indian trousers, fluorescent balloon, pissed stain doorway. Tuesday, dinner with the boy. Spat my food on the table and talked about bum sex and puking. Wednesday, open mic night with my wife – terrified the crowd into fear as I unleashed my untamed country powers on them. The rest is a blur.

So tomorrow comes, eh Ronan? I want to enjoy him, I want to enjoy me, but I fear that ejection from finishing school may make number 8 on the mother list

‘mother found clubbing cougar to death on the lawn’

You’d be crippled if it wasn’t for my constant kneading…….

So I told my Mum. 21. I told her I couldn’t talk to her cos I was in a van the other week, and her response was,

‘oo, that sounds exciting!’

Oo, that sounds exciting does it, being in a van? Does it? She must have smelt it; she knows I’m trouble, and she loves it.

When including her on my pentathlon of hour-long decision-making telephone calls, she told me that I, in fact, make better decisions than her. I do, do I? Dating a child with OCD and other animals……

She’s only ever fucked my Dad, you see. And they’re three years apart. No wonder I’m a bit odd, telling your daughter she should go with a man who was six when I was sucking off various drug dealers at Glastonbury.

Hilarious. She’s often commented that she’s only ever slept with my Dad. But they never came that close to divorce, I think that was just the menopause. Sorry, the man stop.

Perhaps she purposefully raised me as a slut. That’s what the boy calls me, dirty bird, slut.

I allowed myself the other night to lie on my rug when I was high on teenage weed, and let the love shower forth. I don’t let myself usually, you see. Hold that pain inside, sister.

What actually ended up happening is that I felt sexual energy surging from beneath me. The other night was starting to ‘cum’ back to me.

We’d scored some drugs with popping candy and glitter in, from a fat lesbian on a toilet. Which was a new one for him.

It was my little plan. What shall we do on Friday night? Dinner. Boring. Film. Boring. Pub. Stupid. Drugs and fucking. BRILLIANT!

I cajoled him back to mine with promises of music, guitars and as much neighbour nuisance as we could muster. I played him his fucking song I wrote, ‘I ain’t your Yoko’. He smiled and laughed a lot. And then he said

‘Right, let’s go to bed. Or not….’

At which point I recall……absolutely fucking nothing.

But the other night, lying on that rug, I felt sensations returning to me. Which was a bit inconvenient as it happens, because my mate was round for a feast of smashed meat dicker (it’s a bit like Bolognese). So getting the terrible horn off my rug was most inappropriate.

I wasn’t brought up right, y’know. I don’t say please, thank you or sorry. I confront my mum about it regularly, and the old fishwife just laughs. I told her I had delusions of grandeur recently, and she shrieked

‘you DO NOT’.

Classic, a girl with an inflated sense of self-worth, and my mother being appalled at the suggestion that she could have created such a monster. Unconditional love, eh? Can’t beat it……

I’ve renamed the teenage weed, by the way, to love weed……….

‘may you never lay your head down, without a hand to hold
may you never make your bed out in the cold’

a gush of blood to the bed

‘I keep bleedin, keep keep bleedin’
Leona Lewis (well, some other out of work songwriter), 2007

The thing is, I’d like to say I’m a liberal-minded free-loving uber-modern girl who doesn’t mind her bloke fucking anything that moves, but that’s simply not the case.

He is so fucking fit: women, men, children and beasts throw themselves at his massive, flat feet. Yes, he has no soul, sorry, I meant insole, no, bridge. Anyway.

He has flat feet in common with my little brother. The one I brought up from birth. The one that was in the year above him in school. Yup. Changed his nappies.

So I don’t blame him for fucking other people, as long as that’s all it is. As long as I’m in his pecker order somewhere. It was the text methadone that got me going all schizy. Talking to all and sundry about absolute proliferations, and having no conclusion other than pain.

So I had to ‘talk’ to him. By text. I asked him straight.

‘My mind’s been all over the place, juts tell me if you’ve been screwing other people.’

‘I may have. Didn’t think it was a problem.’

What a beautiful reply. And it went on……I just had to let him know I was not the fun-loving cougar he had in mind. Or had pushed to the back of his mind. And there’s only a month till he drives a bulletproof truck through Chechyna and I move to London. So there’s a natural end……………..ooooooo that old trap, the ‘I’ll carry on cos it’ll end then anyway’, only to fucking find you’ve sold up and are living in Slough with nothing but a weight problem for company.

However, in all honesty, I don’t think his mind is wide enough to actually give a shit. He aims to please, and by god he achieves it, but he’s 21. And a man. Things are straight or bent, yes or no, there’s none of this moon-induced hippy shit that I’m full of in his world.

So we met for a ‘talking drink’. He’s done this before. Poor sod had prepared all of his ‘choose your own adventure’ endings (though he’s too young to have read them, he’d have been frigging off his tamagotchi). What if I say he can’t sleep with other people? What then?

But of course I didn’t make any demands on the poor lamb. Just spouted hungover ramblings at him till he was really confused. Which was far more enjoyable than giving him an ultimatum after which I’d surely lose.

‘I don’t get it. You need to translate it into man or something’.

Oh shit. That’s the best I’ve done in years. The last one hung himself. So that was easy.

So I try again to explain. My life is on an even plane, I’m a very happy person, I’m not used to there being someone else there, and my brain just went a bit mental.

There, now I’ve written it down it doesn’t really have much of an instruction.

‘what do you want me to do?’ He asks.

‘Nothing’, I answer. How sweet and pathetic is that?

But actually, what he can do, is behave himself slightly or I’ll get fucked off, and fuck me incredibly beautifully for as long as possible. I have mentioned whips, and he isn’t afraid to use them.

To god be the glory, great things he hath done.

Is there a cure for this paedophilia? Honestly, I thought I’d done them all, but this is a new category, and I’ve got a horrible feeling the next may swing the other way. Sugar daddy o.

Busloads of groaning hormone-fuelled college boys hoon past me and I elate, mixed race chavs call me sugar in the street. My ex boyfriend sent me a brilliant teenage blog containing the lithe, vulnerable fuckers. Ah! Whatever this is, cure me!

Love, said one friend. Oh get fucked, I have to zone out when he’s talking just to wait till he’s naked. He offered to meet me in the day on Saturday. Nice gesture, freak, but it ain’t near enough bed time. Which more or less sums up my text reply to him.

And the only thing that seems to have made me act like a teenager is the fact that in the six weeks I’ve known him, I’ve bled on him twice and narrowly escaped a third. Yup. Met him at the ‘end’ of my period, fucked him on day two three weeks later and ruined my bed, at which point he confessed I’d ruined his the first time. Then yesterday I imagined the talks could end up in forgiveness sex which is always nice.

Thank fuck for the bottle of wine, half of vodka and five sambuca shots I’d put away the day before with my best friend. And the three hours of mod dancing. Which had basically made me able to only dance and cycle, but not stand. I actually started walking backwards at one point on my way to meeting him. Was I walking back to happiness?

Woop by oh way-hay-hay.

He, on the other hand, had outdone me and been doing the good stuff till nine in the morning, then spent the day roaming the marina with an old tramp. Marvellous.

So neither of us was in a state to go to each others abodes, and now I’ve pinned him down on free dates for the next week when I shall have stopped menstruating. Hopefully.

Oh how we love Leona….x

cock rock

I’ve had all sorts of lovely dick -
Small ones that have done the trick
Big cocks that have started to drop
Tradesmens dicks that have finished me off
Two in the hand and one in the face
All fours in the garden of a stately place

My friend had sex and it made her cry
She got fisted while being lifted and it gave her piles
I stopped breathing once but he carried on
but at least he had a condom on

Cut cocks in Israel on the banks of the dead sea
Army boys cocks coming all over me
Old men’s cocks and young boys shanks
Joyless cocks - should have said no thanks

Pilots and painters and dealers and hicks
Licked Kiwis balls while they called me bitch
Transvestites and gays and women and strays
Pump and squirters never cease to amaze

French boys and models and men with no names
Been shat on by birds doing the walk of shame
Sucked off a bouncer in the front of his motor
Worn their string of pearls like a Gucci choker

Got my knickers ripped and found out through my mum
Got fucked up on a barge then got fucked up the bum
Had sex on my friend in the koh tao sea
It served him right for pissing on me

All these things are true, and all these things I like
You could say I was the world’s best bike
But I like your cock, and you know why?
Cos it’s on the end of you, but I know it’s mine.

I beg your pardon…..Go Cougars!

He’s sooooooooo mental. But he’s soooooooooooo cute.

Now there’s a new dilemma (or is it just an old one I’ve forgotten?)

The last one was pig ugly but spiritually vast. Wouldn’t commit – not even to texting me, but showed me a secure loving place where I could exist.

Boring.

So now, let’s see what the remedy is for that poison…..

Beautiful boy. Beautiful. The kind of beautiful that made me remark to my colleague:

“ Well he’s obviously a bit mental – well I know he’s a bit mental – cos it’s always either that or serial fucking monogamists that like me.”

To which she gave me a small teaching on self esteem.

“Yeah, but that’s what I always say – they must be mental if they like me……..”

Etc. Not realising how literal and grounded I was being. Sad when you know it’s not necessarily you they like, it’s just that they need someone. Back off sunshine.

He commits like a boy scout giving a blowie for a mars bar – oh sorry, was that consents? He texts me every waking minute – chirpy, youthful (ahem) delightful little quips that warm just more than the cockles. Yet he does not show me a secure loving place where I can exist.

No, I thought we were living in parallel – that’s as far as I’d got, and decided to call him my squeeze. What a lovely fucking squeeze he has….

And how funny when you let yourself start to believe in that other side – maybe this is something, maybe there are no rules - maybe I’ll never frickin eat again, that’s when it comes crashing down.

Well I’ve been on the flakes tonight, guys and gals, that’s for sure.

This blog entry was intended to be called any or all of the following:

• My boy lollipop
• I am a child
• You’re only as old as the boy you feel
• 21 again…..
• Age before beauty
• All the young dudes

It started a year ago. I met a young lad in a bar in town when I’d taken a married man to see an old flame’s band. Said young lad was working behind the bar. And fit. And young, again. Twenty years old.

So miss doley pants squeezed a few more red wines out of her tight purse (wink), and chatted his fucking face off all night.

Musician. Tick. Wanted me to see his band. Yes.

And for the next year we myspaced each other and he invited me to various gigs, all of which I couldn’t make cos of boxing, or Michael Jackson dancing at love box, or laying in a darkened room masturbating.

Then, eureka, he’s playing at my charity event. Karma karma karma karma karma chameleon. Let the boy cometh unto me.

And cometh he has being, sometimes a bit sporadically, every which way and loose. We’ve been gallivanting through London town with rock equipment in tow, gracing the seediest corners of Southwark I know.

I even let him into my spaceship, which is an honour. And by the way, he’s twenty one now and his voice has broken.

But at six this morning I get a text. He says he’s done something ‘silly’, might have ‘harmed’ himself and didn’t know who else to tell. I say what harm. He’s frigging OD’d on happy pills. Christ. What am I? Childline?

He calls me. I’m not impressed. He calls an ambulance, he has tests, he sees a psych nurse. Let’s hope there isn’t a knock at the door…..

So I spent the morning ripping up carpet with my dad. Hurting a bit. Then trying to work out why. Is it the emotional manipulation of involving me, is it that I’m hurt he wants to hurt himself, when he blatantly has got a good catch (this one isn’t so convincing), or is it cos I’ve bagged yet another freakin nutter?

You do the math.

When I texted my faithful John in London to tell him I was thinking of opening my own mental hospital, he pointed out that you’re not meant to sleep with your own patients. So that’s where I’ve been going wrong………………..

So today maybe I’m thinking I’m going back to being one of Beyonce’s single women. Hurrah, throw your fucking hands right at me.

And of course, when in the throes of love everything is poignant, let’s do that bipolar twist and have the falling out of love poignancy. Four emails in my inbox from dating websites saying they hadn’t seen me for a while. Cunts.

With pride I delete them, knowing soon my fate awaits……..

And old mister agoraphobic-pants texts me for some morning sex, and I tell him ‘I’m kind of seeing someone’. He tells me to get in touch when I’m not. I hope, with disbelief, that’s not now.

So, dear readers, now I go to bed, to have a massive fat great orgasm on my own. Look on the bright side, he timed his going moonie with my period.

And like the squirrel-woman I am, I leave you with a lyric by Doolittle:

“Never more shall we find you bright in the snow and wind.
The snow is melted, the snow is gone, and you are flown:
Like a bird out of our hand, like a light out of our heart, you are gone.”

Well it must be over – I’m writing about it……………….

bring me my bow of burning gold….

So after sifting through me blog dashboard, I was correct when I feared you can’t edit the order of your blogs……..so my confession now is that I write this blog in retrospect, in glorious shimmering colours – my trip to Israel (copied from a three shekel Kohinoor notepad from the aeroplane):

Is it a delusion, or does serendipity come knocking as soon as you’re near an airport?

Is it the synthesised calm that amplifies the poignancy of happenings?

I had lazed around so much that morning that I was tired again by the time it got to three.

All dressed down with somewhere to go, I locked the apartment I had come fondly to know. The strange grill-oven and the tired and sweaty sepia tiled floor. The grates on the windows where popmusik wannabes bashed out their woes nightly at the studio behind.

My own keys. Not to be returned. The ultimate souvenir. Down the steps and into the street, where dust and stray cats and people went about their non-business impatiently.

The familiar uncertainty of Tel Aviv streetlife.

My last supper a bureka and some fish eggs, my via de la rosa a memorised google map.

A soft pride fills my beshawled chest as I make my way past the broken warehouses and caryards. Shoken. Herstel Levinsky. Look for the bus station. Get to a bridge. Find the train station.

And I did.

Without my local guides I can’t get away with being Jewish. Possible a Russian. Prostitute. The guards are always nice enough, but no messing. The girl in front of me in the queue asks for a single to Ben Gurian. Handy. The train leaves at 3.33. I ask for the same and my OCD kicks in as I hear it’s Stein – platform 2, the same as my envisionment of the journey before I set out.

The girl in front turns out to be Polish. She has my middle name, and took the same flight as me to get here. She stayed in a hostel around the corner from my dwelling. She possibly passed me in the street.

She has a crusty face. I wouldn’t have looked at her. I understand why our paths never crossed.

So, is this a help or a hinderance? She is happy enough, but has that Polish bluntness about her, with large, sudden movements contradicted by muttered, semi-shy ramblings.

We both do kickboxing. She is a white belt, I am green. You do the math.

But it’s good to be interrogated together. She dismisses my intuition at the terminal and we wander into an entirely deserted departure hall. Sometimes reading the sign is not equal to being given a sign.

Anyway, the bogs are empty so I happily pontificate with my luxury tampons (four times the price of anglo equivalents), whilst she doesn’t interfere with my luggage.

We get severely frisked. I by a young hormonal guy. She by an alien. And the valium-inspired airport feeling starts to kick in.

At the duty free lounge I want to shake free, and eventually I do, weaving between teenage skull-capped school trippers and exchanging wise looks with older Jewish women. It’s all gone a bit Mossad.

My nicotine cravings start to outweigh any sense of Anglit politeness, and I start to eliminate people in the queue. An american couple twang away in front of me:

“ Oh my gwod, I’ve been searching all week for some decent hamburger”, as he tucks into a flat McDeathburger.

Look pal, if you want some meat in your mouth, go home and get stuffed.

Talking of meat in the mouth………

Tourism versus friend-dossing; yes, I never saw Haifa, but I saw an old man hurling abuse at a worker, then telling me a bad joke with a lisp, and asking me to translate the word ‘furry’. As in ‘I am covered in fur’. Trivial, one might say. Bizarre another. But lying on a crate next to a portaloo reading Bukowski beats dinner with ten other tourists followed by bed bugs in a bunk bed.

No, I’ve never been to Galilee, but I came somewhere near me.

And I sucked someone off on the banks of the Dead Sea.

By the way, there are no fish in this dead sea, giving a refreshing twist to the old saying…….

I kissed the wailing wall and a riot broke out, stoning, tear gas and all.

I touched Jesus’ grave with a crucifix, then spat semen over the quicksand, like a proper Magdalene to my false prophet.

I can say ‘okey dokey’ in Hebrew and enjoyed philosophical debate on the subject of foreskins.

I drank double-kosher ritual wine and took a toddler to the park to hang out with the other suburban nannies.

I cooked burnt soggy pancakes with my estranged lover and shot arak down my neck like the messiah had arrived.

I stuffed my face fuller than ever in an Arabic fish restaurant in the old city, then smoked fags in a shady bar whilst listening to Balkan Beatbox.

And the bloody rest.

Action points:

• Change my voice message to a faux-holy greeting
• Visit Sinai to slum it in a shack with sweet FA to do all day
• Learn some Hebrew
• Let my floods blow
• Embrace ritual
• Remember I am not a womble, but a sacred, rare animal
• Love and follow my dreams
• Throw that pinch of salt over my shoulder, and remember there ain’t no fish in the dead sea.

Too late for new years resolutions I hear you say?!....

040410 WE ARE NOT YOUR PETS

A phrase coined by a good writer friend of mine, of whom Muriel Sparks’ Loitering With Intent would describe perfectly.

The guy I so triumphantly ditched into the gutter of my mind performed a somewhat miraculous resurrection in the form of an email. In which he dumped me.

NO FAIR! NO FAIR! I dumped you! But without even bothering to dump you! Nay, these things, apparently, must be concluded properly. In one of those tired-old, bile-inducing soliloquies made apparently less formal by their delivery over electronic mail.

A lethargic, shallow, inoffensive offering to make things okay.

An insult in the form of a compliment.

I saw him in my inbox and recoiled at the first sentence. By the time my adrenalin had excelled my reading speed to whole email in one second, I had to eject myself from my desk. But not before I automatically banged out a reply and pressed send.

Gawd, what had I done? Was my pride really so dominating that the fact someone had offered an explanation was fundamentally unacceptable to me?

Bile.

Anyway, poor bugger, although I am a ‘great lover’ (hurl), apparently I left him feeling empty and confused. DEAL WITH IT SUCKER! Some of us have been on that shelf for yaaaaaaaaaars.

I got over it. I had to; my childish, knee-jerk reaction even making me question whether it was time for a visit to the hypnotherapist. Erase me, for everyone’s sake. Erase me.

But don’t you know it, karma, or fate, or cause and effect, often takes a strange turn, and last night I was unfortunate enough to be put in his shoes.

A long-standing friend from work was having a birthday do at a bar with a terribly pretentious name, on the bitterly cold and wind-torn seafront, and to make it even less appealing, kick-off was at 10pm.

Having stayed up till 3am the night before putting the world to wrongs with a fellow kick-boxer, a cup of cocoa and the Doctor Who rerun was a far more appealing option. But I’m being careful at the moment not to look the social gifthorse in the mouth – moaning about a god-awful night is better than moaning that you never go out….

So off I popped, slightly delirious, for a pre-freakshow bevy with my wife, before blustering down to the seafront to a soulless bar to meet my destiny…..

And what was this destiny that confronted me? I could have drawn it before I saw it. Oh how stereotypes reinforce themselves. A plethora of fag-haggery, fake amphetamine-induced smiles and hideous fancy-dressers wriggled about before me. A girl in a bear suit with the most morose face trudged past me before I realised it was a man. A transsexual with a very peculiar accent conversed with me weakly about tattoos. Very Jane McDonald.

Too many grins, not enough light shone out of these people. And I’m sorry to say it, but I could definitely smell shit at certain intervals. As I bopped to some lame latin dance music, several rotten-toothed gays who had obviously been through the mill a few times tried to join me.

I am not your master. You are not my pet. Now get!

A middle-aged chrisso radio-dj type stood by the door in a sci-fi t-shirt, misplaced but grimacing along.

And as karma would have it, like my ex-lover, this circus makes me feel empty and confused. Although sometimes when he was in me I felt the same…..

I decided to track down the shit smell for want of anything more tasteful to do, and it belonged to a man wearing shaggy animal trousers. Now I do remember a monkey suit smelling of shit a bit after one-too many parties, but what if…..what if…..

My saving grace was my friends. The gays who choose to define themselves not by their shitty animal-pants, but by their glorious personalities. More Hitler youth and surfer boy, we ensued several dancing competitions from the artful dodger to the riverdance, a few rounds of the splitz and it was off. Thank Gawd.

Could have been worse. Somehow, could have been worse, and I was still standing. Miraculously I hail a cab and jump in. It’s a warm-looking curly-haired Pole at the wheel and instantly I love the way about him. I bet he gets some abuse for his thick accent, but I love it. Right now, I could be anywhere, going anywhere, and it is sweet refuge for me. We narrowly miss running over several hen parties and laugh along the way.

And it occurred to me – such is life: some of us are just driving along, some of us are just staring out the window, and some of us are trying to run the fuckers over……

260310 Fuck. That. Shit.

I always remember my own words of advice ‘work do, don’t do’.

Yes, but each time I have an eternal optimism, until someone seems to slip into my drink the opposite of Prozac. Some fucking hideous depressant, some horrible incubated infectious mental condition.

This Friday, all went well to start with. Various people stared at me wide-eyed saying, ’I don’t know what you’re talking about’. But that’s normal for us higher beings without opposable thumbs.

Work to live. Live to work. Or do what I do – deny you work at all. Some semi-posh girl approaches me and my dandy gang to tell us about the list of top totty the men have leched upon.

And these men are not nice men. Some, frankly, make fascists seem like florists.

Poor little Rach is top of the list, and the pervs are named and shamed. She seems oblivious, which is good. When I ask where I appear on this rancid list, it’s ‘maybe near to the bottom ten , but we’re old’. This girl is nigh on forty and I’ve just started my ‘ascent’ into my thirties.

Then she expands upon the detail:

‘You need to put some conditioner on your hair and get a new wardrobe’.

What?! WHAT?! Who has ever said that to another woman? Yes, it’s true my hair has been likened to straw and hay on several occasions, but keep it to yourself, I’m doing all I can! And the wardrobe – do I want to look nice for work? Or more specifically, the men at work? I purposefully deter; tonight alone a married man with children has told me he can no longer hug me due to his sexual feelings, and another remarked on my facebook pic in a pair of pants (dressed as Micky Jackson you understand). And they are the hottest of the bunch.

Why do people care about what people think of them? Why do people care about what the pondlife of drudging ordinaries think of them? Where does their sphere extend to? I’m all for a cup of Horlicks, but Horlicks with a hit list is another matter…..

I go off in a huff. Oh dear. What’s wrong? Am I premenstrual? NO, I’m at a frigging work do, and it always turns……….for every season.

When I regain my position at the purgatorial table, I grimace and look to my partner in crime Ivan for some support. The support comes in the guise that we will leave in approximately three and a half minutes.

But I don’t want to burn bridges with this girl – she keeps me in marmalade year-round. We have also conversed in the kitchen about men a lot. She is the one who, after two weeks with a new man, says it’s great if you know where you stand, then you aren’t wondering if you should move in together……………can’t say THAT thought ever crossed my mind.

Anyway, now she lezzes onto me, saying she wants to know what makes me TICK, what makes me go LOOPY. I realise now more than ever that she is clinically unstable, and wonder how to best explain my way ‘tactfully’ out of this one.

I tell her I hate work dos. I tell her the only reason I attend is to get to know the people OUTSIDE of work. I tell her nothing makes me tick, or loopy, that I am completely sound.

She tells me she admires me and wants to ‘cross-pollinate’. She can get me laid. I tell her I can get me laid. She says she doesn’t know what she can offer me. I tell her she can offer me herself.

She goes outside for a rollie.

Thank fuck. I leave……………………………….

180310 shalom, farewell, auf wiedersehen - goodbye

So I mentioned my friend’s dealer. Yes, that’s how I like to refer to him. The South African that was sourced for me to fuck.

You have escaped a convoluted pondering on spiritual connection, and a lecture on time and space being abstractly relative.

It’s been nearly two months. And Five occasions. And yes, I do count.

That’s the point. I do count.

I can cope with ‘I’m not emotionally available’.

But as my good friend Johnny puts it, ‘I’m not emotional’.

We had good times. Really deep fucking. The kind that’s good. Books, film, alternative culture, that sort of thing.

But he never texted me. And so tonight was the unbeknown grand finale. Or maybe he knows it, shallow in his waters…………

He cooked for me, which is sweet. He drank my chai. I wrote him a poem that ended:

Some

Bitch

Some

Shit.

I like to leave something behind. And it’s him.

And ironically, I think he’s the only man to walk me home, ever, in my life. As in, purposefully make the decision to walk me home. Mainly to get me out of his flat. And I was going to decline the offer, being the well-travelled hardened bitch that I am. Then I remembered that thing they refer to as ‘self esteem’.

And now I feel great. The queen of premature endings. Don’t wait till the light’s burnt out. Don’t wait till you’ve inflicted so much pain on each other you can’t turn over in bed at night. Just end it. Beautiful endings.

Or worship me. Or fuck off.

Fin

291209 so I fucked Elvis…..

And it wouldn’t be the first time he’s come on to me. The last time, as I recall, was in a real ale pub in the middle of nowhere. He was a Geordie Elvis, rather rotund, with an accent that certainly added a quirk.

The London boys were down, and their mouths still thought they could drink eighteen pints of old stinker, but their bowels thought otherwise. At regular intervals the makeshift dance floor would fill with a sulphurous stench too vintageous to bear.

I pointed this out to Geordie Elvis, who shouted down the microphone in true whayayman:

‘som wons fockin pomped! Eeeeeeeergh, who’s pomped?!’

Very alluring I’m sure, but I was incestuously paired up with my friend’s brother so escaped his greasy charms, and will never know the wonder of him.

So to the new Elvis. It all started with my new year's resolution. Simply. More. Sex.

Reviewing this past year it has not been a convincingly successful run, and last year scraped by the acceptable mark. So however, whatever, whenever, it’s got to be the rule. I ain’t getting any younger and I can’t disappear into my squirrel’s nest forever.

Hence Elvis number two.

Unaffectionately referred to as ‘the Belgian’ in circles who know my pain. All the reassurance in the world cannot hide the fact that I am physically repulsed by his European torso. Small pinky nipples nestled in auburn fur. Love handles to match.

Not his fault! I hear you cry. But now my problem.

He comes to my flat on exactly the same day we convened last year. Except last year we had some fresh magic and a party at Dave Gilmore’s kids house to fuel the fire. And an imminent escape to India where I could shake off any shudders.

Although recovered from the tremors of G-ma, I have a cold and am feeling less than horny. It is nice to see him, but all night I keep my distance. And glug down as much red and spliff as I can muster. He goes to Tescos and buys war-food and drooping tulips and I am reminded of the town from which we were spawned.

But I know I’ve got to do it.

He’s spent the best part of 2009 touring in Italy with an Elvis tribute show and he’s gone all pelvis. Talking about his seventeen year-old cousin who’ll be ready soon……………….ignoring the fact he’s already past it. And some story about an Argentinean woman from the internet who wanted to go to the Ivy, and that curious Thai prostitute he met at the station. Now this is a 'nice' guy, but I’m starting to find him a tad sinister. What’s Elvis gonna do when I turn out the light? (And have no fear that it will be dark).

There is no more idle chat or wine left, so we go to bed. We haven’t even touched, and I’m seriously worried about the absence of my animal instincts.

We lay down. He looks at me with a wry smile and says, 'Merry Christmas', then launches! Aaaah! It’s Elvis! Hunka hunka burnin love! How'm I gonna deal with this one? I close my eyes, that’s a start. And I frantically rifle through the folders of my back catalogue – who can I pretend he is??

And of course, I manage. Until I hungrily climb upon this Belgian hound dog to strut my stuff.

In a delirious flu-ridden cock-ophany of lust I lose all of my senses. And then I look down at him and he has displays a look of utter disdain.

“I said........stop!” He says with incredulous disbelief.

Whoops! Was that in the bit where I stopped using my ears and eyes? What had I done? Was it truly as awful as his words?

I had just got going, but now it was definitely time to get gone. I had done what I had set out to do, but it was fourteen pumps short of a success.

In the morning it was porridge and polite goodbyes. And I haven’t heard from him since.

Now what is that I'm always forgetting about not crossing bridges?

261209 so this is christmas…..

And what have you done? Only gone and invited fucking grandma for the second year running.

I warned mum in the car that I would be appearing for a millisecond on Christmas eve - cooking, going to bed, then avoiding grandma for the next two days. She said she would cry if grandma stopped me from coming home at Christmas. Honesty is the best policy, and heck, do I tell myself the truth!

Last year grandma decided that someone had stolen her handbag IN church on Christmas day. Yep. Ridiculous. My poor long-suffering father patiently rang up all her credit cards to cancel them.

Two days later Worthing police station, (yes, it’s true), called to say they had found it intact – she had dropped it outside the church.

What a knob.

Naturally, this year the handbag was banned from church, and I banned myself.

We’d been to church the week before – my step-cousin’s, (sounds almost cool), wedding in the snow in the countryside. We sang the songs, including my wedding fave; get your tits out for the lads.

At the beloved wedding breakfast I had been placed next to Ivan the organist, who jumped out of his skin every time I spoke. And then I sang for my supper –

‘oh lord and father of mankind, forgive our foolish ways’.

‘quite a voice’, he quipped.

Mistake. For the next two hours the poor sod had to escape from my rantings –‘let’s go into the church and sing, come on!’

‘but how can we get in?’, he says, and my eyes narrow:

‘you've got a key!’

No shit Sherlock. When I went to cause havoc elsewhere he leaned over to my too-cool-for-school brother and said ‘do you know, I can’t understand a word she says!’ Loving my work.

It was fun, and we did the religious thing, (I had my first rockabilly dance with a vicar), and as a result I decided I would NOT be accompanying my mum and grandma to church at Christmas.

I did have a virus, so I chilled out, learnt Desperado on the piano and opened my little brother’s stocking with him. Perfick.

So grandma. Highlights to share with my readership:

1. me burning the top of my fish pie, then dishing it up to find raw salmon inside. ‘ooooooooo, if you can cook like that, you ought to entertain!’. All this whilst standing at my shoulder peering inanely at me.

2. my dad and I remarking pleasantly to each other how long it’s been since he ventured to church on jesus day. of course she thinks it has to be a conflict: ‘oooooooooooooo, you get what you want, don'tcha!’ Creepy.

3. my lovely sister-in-law flying into the kitchen where me and mum were taking refuge, in tears of disbelief:

‘I’ve always stood up for her, but she’s done it this time!’. Apparently grandma kindly volunteered a comment on her appearance; ‘you’ve put on weight, but it suits you!’ - what not to say. To anyone. EVER. I quite enjoyed this episode, as sister-in-law turned from polite snow-woman to stony ice-maiden in a blink. Opening the box of black magic, (my mum’s favourite, she doesn’t like dark chocolate), she plonked them on the table with a look of dismissal.

4. my older brother opening grandmas gift - a bootleg pouch of baccie, to my mum’s horror, whilst me and little bro discreetly tucked away our twenty-five quid.

5. A simple, festive game of Pictionary turns into a horror story, as it transcends that grandma, or G-ma as my mum refers to her by text, can draw very strange pictures of mutant animals that have no relevance to the subject, then tells us the answer straight away.

6. Balderdash: in a similar vein, the descriptions she makes up for words are preposterous and laffable. And when it comes to voting for the answer, she always tells us which description she made up. This would be ignorable, but my sis-in-laws bawdy mum keeps screeching out ‘you can’t vote for your own, grandma!’ Overwhelming.

7. 'come and stay with me': this old classic pops up year upon year. She stares at me and says I must come and stay with her. I look straight ahead hoping that somehow I exist in a parallel universe which does not include grandma. Or Decima, as is her name.

I have since found out that I am her favourite.

I have also stated very clearly, both before and after, that my Christmas visits would be somewhat syncopated should G-ma be in attendance.

Let it be said that christmas in this country should be avoided at all costs.

And what a bloody expense!

141109 charity case

Oh sweet lord, who needs canapés when there’s natural acid?

I am in the middle of a charity ball. Writing with a fucking pencil, hiding in the corner awaiting opportunities to thieve hand-made chocolates.

And my brother’s band is on. And a million posh drunk people are dancing. Which is a contradiction in terms. Do I stroll onto the dance floor and perform an elaborate buleria, I wonder? And the band are fucking good; better then they deserve.

But what’s this on the official invite I’ve swiped? Burger and chips. BURGER AND FUCKING CHIPS, for £100 a head? And I’m with my friend’s husband. And we’re stoned. What could be more appropriate?

The piece of paper I’m writing on says,

‘The Big Love Ball. Sorry! Not this time!’

You’re telling me! About to menstruate at any given moment, I sit ballooned but neatly tucked into my glittery tights and Balinese whore’s dress.

Too many manners to spit at you, but not enough to have developed any self-awareness, they waft before me in varying states of disarray.

There are three women who look like they’ve necked a couple of Es. One of them, hardly a spring chicken, is spiralling out of control. She gushes over to an upper-class hippy in a chiffon tunic and kisses her. When she walks away, the others curl their lips and turn their noses up.

I love them.

Give me your fucking money.

What is it you’ve been wishing for, Godiva? Wealth. I’d buy enough time to sort myself out, then I’d sort everyone else out. Personal kickbox instructor, dance teacher, yogi, masseuse, chef, stylist and surely a discreet gigolo, I would, indeed, be sorted. And here are the ones who could give me that.

And they either bob from side to side like they’ve got something itchy in their control pants, or they swagger about being snapped and papped; a host with a boyband version of Stephen Fry’s quiff poses with a punter. Before the flash goes he wriggles his body smarmily from side to side to create some sort of cad effect. Repulsive.

Sitting here, I remember I have a purpose here. I remark to the well-kempt blonde next to me that my job is to scream at the end of every song, hoping she will imagine a sense of irony in my tone. Alas, she politely dismisses me, I’ve obviously got a bit rusty.

No, my job is to help the photographer with his nift camera work.

Horrified, I realise that this is the closest I’ve been to a date in ages. In fact, have I been on one this year?...........

The answer is, if I remember at all correctly, (which is a worry), yes. But if you want to get down to statistics, let’s just say I ended up in bed with less of the dates, and more of the animals I led to be slaughtered in my farmyard.

And now I am on a warped date with my friend’s husband, the photographer. Well, if it’s a date, statistics prove that we won’t end up in bed, which is a relief. But other people’s husbands are known to like me. A kind of cheaper, feral alternative to a wife. Oh lord, thank you for the guilt you have bestowed upon me, for I simply couldn’t.

You hear about these women who go off with their friend’s husbands, and I imagine it to be a cheap glittery shift dress from new look and a couple of bottles of lambrusco that did it. But now I understand. Should the wife really have been the catalyst in someone else’s love story? Whatever happened to networking?

He just tried to steal this piece of paper from me, and he doesn’t know about my blog. Or the fact I’m writing about him. Shit, that could’ve been an awkward moment - or a lambrusco moment. A writer and a photographer, and he hasn’t got his wedding ring on. Hmmmmmmmmmm, best unpublish this blog if they ever clock on.

*ASIDE: Talking of things catching, my stalker’s back, isn’t he? Had to turn him away from twitter, ignore him on facebook and block him on ‘friendster’, and that’s just today. I ask you. What the fuck’s ‘friendster’ anyway. One of those weird sites you added when you were following Malaysian teenagers’ lead in social networking, only to discover facebook a month later.*

Back to the big lurve ball. The old bird on E is psychotically staring intently into the eyes of a relatively-innocent looking Greek guy. He looks like his burger didn’t go down well and he’s still hungry. And it’s me he wants a slice of, as I provocatively bop in a mock-posh way from side to side.

Smell the danger baby, that’s a corned-beef upbringing for you, come and get a bit of rough! I’ll give you burger and chips, a lemon curd sandwich AND a spam fritter if you play your cards right!