Festivals

Sorry for the delay in getting blogs out to you lately, blog fans. I’ve been trying to write entries about taking photos and about ennui, but I haven’t got very far with either of them – I haven't really started the first one and, hilariously, I haven’t been able to be bothered to finish the second. I also wrote one about trying to kiss boys but decided not to put it up just yet. I might change my mind about that one now, though, as I think the topic has become a bit less sensitive than it was.

However, the idea of writing about festivals occurred to me on the way to work this morning, so I am going to try to write about that and actually finish writing this time.

So… here’s my question… has anyone ever been to a festival and, at some point in the process, not had a heart-felt wish that they simply hadn’t bothered? I’m not saying I spend the entirety of every festival I go to wishing I wasn’t there – absolutely not, I’ve had many of the best times of my sad little life at festivals – but always, at one point or another, there comes a point when I can’t think why on earth I ever decided it was a good idea to go on such a jaunt and genuinely wish with all of my bones to just be able to zap myself home, without all the back-breaking carrying and panic-attack-inducing driving that that involves first. And yet, I always go back for more. I think it must be a bit like childbirth.

There’s one aspect of festivals that is definitely like childbirth in my poor deluded mind, and that’s the packing. I always seem to think that I only need one rucksack, and that’ll be it, and, further, that that’s all anyone needs, so of course we can absolutely fit five people in the car no problem. I *might* remember that I also need a tent, but I will, with absolute certainty and beyond any doubt, forget about the mattress, the duvets, the pillows, the food, the booze, the extra shoes… if I’m DJing, I’ll have forgotten that I need to pack CDs and headphones… and it’s only when I’m standing, looking at the mountain of totally-essential-stuff-that-I-can’t-live-without-even-if-it-is-just-for-one-weekend that it all comes screaming back to me.

A recent example of this quite ridiculous memory loss comes from the most recent festival I went to. My friend and I went to the supermarket before the festival to buy the food and alcohol we needed for the weekend. I took a bag for life with me cos, well, a) it’s good for the environment, innit, and b) I know they’re quite good for lugging stuff about at festivals without breaking. So yeah. I took A bag for life. One.

I never thought I’d say this about myself, but apparently I am ever the optimist. James and I spent £135 on food and alcohol and took approximately 10 Tescos bags with us to add to the one puny bag for life I had oh so hopefully taken with me. And I was genuinely surprised, although this must have happened to me at least 65 times in my life by this point.

So of course, the many, multiple bags and food and booze one has with one – and invariably, apart from the booze – totally ignores – adds to the cargo.

Which leads to the first problem I have with festivals... I hate carrying stuff. I really, really hate it.

I'm going to guess it's probable that hefting stuff around isn't top of anyone's list of fun things to do, but I genuinely believe it I hate it more than most people do. I’m weaker than a kitten with three legs and pneumonia, which doesn’t help… I have trouble opening slightly stiff doors, never mind carrying half the contents on my life on my back. One of the most miserable memories of my life was standing in the queue for the Glade at Mattingly Bowl with a rucksack, a tent and a load of food bags strapped to me. The queue was up a really steep and rocky hill, in the blazing heat, and lasted for what seemed like at least eleven and a half hours. I actually wanted to vomit from the pressure on my back and shoulders. Of course, every time this happens to me, I swear that next time, I’ll bring less piggin’ stuff with me. But does it ever happen? Of course not.

Given my hatred of carrying, it’s only natural that I would want to reduce the amount of it I have to do. And that leads me onto the next big festival dilemma… train, or car? Car, or train? Since I can drive, and I have a car, and I hate carrying, it seems only natural and sensible to drive, right? It’s one of the major perks of having a car, really, not having get the train to festivals. And it means instant popularity in the form of being able to offer your mates a lift. Well, yes, in theory… apart from one thing… and that thing is that if there's one thing I hate more than carrying stuff, it's driving on motorways. I have a roaring, phobic fear of motorways that leads to me having the screaming ab dabs, as my mum would say, at the sight of them, and seems to be raging more and more out of control with every year that passes. And please don't be telling me about how motorways are actually safer than normal roads and how easy they are to drive on etc etc. The point of phobias is that they're not very rational. You're not going to be able to talk me out of it, I'm afraid.

I used to be fine on motorways – I used to be absolutely dandy on them. When I got my first ever car, I lived in a small village called Alsager, in Stoke-on-Trent, during term time, and home with my parents in London during the holidays, and my boyfriend, the lovely David, the Platonic ideal to which all following boyfriends have been held up and, frankly, found failing (ah, the magic of rose-tinted nostalgia-specs – don’t you just love it?), lived in Leicester. So I spent a lot of my time driving on motorways between the three places, totally on my own, listening to compilation tapes as loud as I could and having a whale of a time. I used to positively look forward to driving here and there as it was the only sustained time I had to sing as loudly to the Wu Tang Clan and Prince as I really wanted.

It’s actually only as I’m typing this that I’m really, really remembering what that used to feel like - the freedom and the confidence of it - and goddamn I’m jealous of my younger self. How the fuck did I used to do it? I didn’t have a sat nav, I didn’t have an especially hardy car, but I used to get myself about on motorways all the time with no problem at all. It merits saying it again – how the fuck did I used to do it?

I had to sell that car to a scrap yard, much to my eternal sadness, when I left uni, and for about a year I would borrow my mum’s car occasionally, but never had any call to drive on motorways. That changed the day I went to visit a friend in Stratford-Upon-Avon. I was just getting onto the M25 at Potter’s Bar when it occurred to me that I hadn’t been on a motorway in a really long time, and that I hoped I’d be alright. As I was thinking this, I glanced across to the other lane, and there’d been a really big accident. The way I remember it in my head now, there were 18 - no, 25 - no, probably 150 vehicles piled up, police choppers overhead, cars in a million pieces, bits of mangled body strewn hither and tither… of course, I’m sure it was nowhere near as dramatic in reality, but it was enough to shit me up and make me realise how really, really wrong things are capable of going on motorways.

I spent the entire drive to Amy’s hunched over the wheel, gripping it with fingers that were locked to the wheel, willing myself to get there as quickly as possible but feeling scared to go too fast… it was not a good scene. And ever since then, every time I’ve got on a motorway, it’s been worse and worse, and I now get actual panic attacks – or at least, that what I think they are – whereby I start to feel pins and needles in my fingers, traveling up to my arms, going into my shoulders and my neck, especially just behind my ears, and then to my face and, most crucially, my lungs. These pins and needles make it impossible to move or relax, and when they hit my lungs, it’s like Sauron has got his hand inside my chest and is squeezing my poor little airways into a pulp. It’s really unpleasant, and it’s really unsafe.

And so, when I’m in my right mind, I remember all this and don’t drive to festivals. Yeah, I can go on A roads, but even those have started to freak me out a bit, and sometimes they turn into motorways for a junction and there’s nothing you can do about it. And it’s just seeing the signs in blue rather than green that makes me start to panic these days. But then that means going on the train. And that means carrying everything. And that sucks arse, so I do that for a year or so and then kid myself that it’ll be ok to drive again.

What I actually need is more than one other friend who can drive and owns a car. There’s only two of us in my close group of friends, which means we always do all the driving. Come on, the rest of you! Get behind the wheel – it’s loads of fun, I promise! ;-)

Ahem – anyway… I was meant to be talking about festivals, right? The carrying stuff and the driving, those are my two main dilemmas. But let’s not, for heaven’s sake, forget about tents. Oh, how I hate tents. Wet walls. Muddy porches. Freezing cold at night. Baking, sauna hot by 5am. Never being able to find the one thing you’re looking for, whilst everything else you own (and that you were looking for the night before) is everywhere. Needing a wee in the middle of the night but not being able to face the troop to the portaloos until it’s pretty much too late and you have to run and pray there’s no queue. Slopes that make your sleep all funny. Mattresses that deflate after 15 minutes. What I really, really need is a camper van. And, natch, someone else to drive it for me.

Yes, I think it’s safe to say that camping is just about up there with being poked in the eye with an overly long finger nail for me. And that moment I was talking about at the start of this diatribe, the moment when I wish I’d never even heard of festivals as a concept, never mind this one I’m at right now – that often comes when I alone and shuddering, juddering, shivering and quivering enough to make the canvass walls shake, freezing my behind off in a loathsome tent and longing for my lovely, civilized bed.

And yet. I do keep on going to festivals, don’t I? I swore to myself not two weeks ago, alone in a tent feeling cut off from my friends, blank inside, and wishing I was home, that I wouldn’t go to ANY festivals at all next year, but I already know that that’s nonsense. Because, despite all this moaning, festivals generally are the greatest weekends of the year. And yeah, I could have chosen to focus on the positives instead of doing all this moaning, but I didn’t want to alarm you all and make you think my mortal coil been taken over by some kind of optimistic, cheerleading body snatcher.

And anyway… you all know the positive sides to festivals, right? You all know about the unbridled joy that sitting in the golden sunshine with your greatest friends, listening to your favourite music can bring. You can remember the thrill of a glass of rum and a packet of hula hoops for breakfast brings, right? I don’t need to remind you about the thrill of bumping into old friends that you haven’t seen since last time and that have a million funny stories to regale you with. I’m sure you don’t need telling about the amazing clothes and hats and bargains you can pick up on festival stalls… which you generally don’t wear until the next festival, but which seem like treasure at the time. I guess I might need to tell the non-DJs among you about how DJing in the sunshine to a whole new crowd of enthusiastic people is the best time to DJ there is. But I’m sure you all know about how even tents can become fun when you’re giggling tent to tent between friends and getting ready for the next fun-filled, unexpected, bursting over adventure of a day.

Yeah… festivals. I’ll probably go back.

Love is the Drug

So, as I think I may have explained in a previous blog or six, I have no vices any more. For one reason or another, I’ve had to give almost everything up over the past year and a half, and it’s left my life with a fairly different landscape from the one it had not so long ago. Mostly, things have changed for the better. Sometimes it feels worse, but not very often.

What I have realised, since the whole Bang Fail thing, followed by a pretty miserable weekend or two, is that I am going to have to start looking for some new things to fill the time that used to be filled with these long-lost extra-curricular activities. This has happened naturally somewhat anyway. I now go to yoga on Friday nights whereas before I would have been going clubbing. I have a New Hobby in the form of taking photographs, which I am enthralled by… I even tried to do an evening class, but not enough people signed up and it didn’t happen. Hopefully I might do one in September, though. I think I want to do more with my writing as well – like maybe join a writers’ group or do an open mic night every now and again with some poetry. It seems a bit odd to me that I had over a year of New Lifestyle before I realised that I needed to do something to fill the gaps, but I guess, as I say, it was partly happening without me making a conscious decision anyway, and my head was somewhat occupied with other things throughout most of 2010.

However, having said all that, I do still have one vice, one addiction left… one thing I use as a go-to thrill, that has all the allure and bedazzle of the purest marching powder… and that wears off and leaves me needing more just as quickly. There is one more thing that gives me a hit and that I doubt I will ever be able to give up. As Bryan Ferry said – oh, ho, can’t you see? Love is the drug for me.

I’m saying love, but that’s not really what I mean. What I mean is flirting. Possibility. The thrill of the chase. The best bit of any relationship, as we all know – the bit before it actually starts and reality can come crashing in to ruin everything, reminding us that no-one is perfect and nothing ever lasts.

In this post-modern, 21st century, multi-media world that we inhabit, there are numerous ways to flirt with people that don’t actually involve the horror of having to speak to those people in reality. Emails. Text messages. Private messages on forums. And the Mac Daddy of them all – Facebook. Facebook walls, Facebook statuses, Facebook messages, Facebook pokes, Facebook instant chat… each of these can be utilised as a weapon of maximum flirtation and used as a method to, let’s face it, massage my ego. I realise how horribly self-involved that makes me sound, but I’m going to guess that I’m not the only person in the universe that engages in this process in order to make said person (me, in my case, obvs) feel better about themselves. If I am – well, then I guess I am horribly self involved. I can live with that, though.

What is it about the thrill of flirting via the written word sent over telephone wires in one guise or another that feels so compulsive? Perhaps it is partly that I feel more myself when writing than I do when speaking. I can command a keyboard much more masterfully than I can command my own vocal cords. I am better, bolder, bigger when I am typing than when I am orating. Online, I can talk to strangers, and I can say the sassy things I could never say to a man’s face, especially now I’ve had to quit the old Dutch courage.

And of course, the messages that I get in return can be saved, pawed over, held up to the light like precious jewels, rather than forgotten in the transient haze that life is. Not that I ever forget a thing that anyone says to me, of course (how could I have become this bitter if that were the case?), but the written word is so much more tangible than the spoken one.

Of course, we all know that this addictive thrill is in its purest, most uncut form when it’s with one person and you know it’s really going somewhere, somewhere possibly really big. At least, I say of course we all know that, but even as I type this I realise what nonsense that it. That’s when the thrill is biggest for me, because I harbour occasional fantasies of getting married one day and don’t want to do the ‘juggling’ thing I read about in American novels… I don’t know how anyone can do that in reality without spending their entire time wanting to vomit from the guilt, even if everyone has agreed it’s all ok… I’m just not that modern. However, I realise that for some people, lots of low-level, non-committal flirting is the most addictive sort of all, and that’s why the idea of being with one person forever terrifies those people so much. So I shall amend that sentence and say that for ME, the flirting you get at the beginning of a real relationship is the biggest thrill of all – the 90%, weapons-grade, top shelf Colombian.

When that’s the situation for me, that is, when I think a relationship might be in the offing, I don’t think I go more than ten waking minutes without checking my phone, my emails, my FB page for any communication. And every one that comes in feels better than the last, each one tops up the buzz… and each time I check for communication that isn’t there, it’s like I’ve taken the plastic baggie out of my wallet expecting it to be full, but instead it’s already been turned inside out and licked clean. It becomes my whole life. I know it shouldn’t. I know I should be more independent than that. But I am what I am, and ‘hopeless romantic,’ with all the different levels that implies, are probably the first words that will get written in my eulogy when I finally shuffle off this mortal coil.

However, in the absence of any promising relationships, I have noticed that I will tend to try to gather a collection of potential flirtees around me. All the better to boost my confidence with, my dear.

Because that, ultimately, is what is going on here, for me at least if you not for you, dear reader. My opinion of myself is a tricky, double-time dance along the mountain ledge of wellbeing, with narcissism and self-loathing as dancing partners. Sometimes narcissism takes the lead, and I think I am the new best thing since the last best thing, which probably involved me on some level anyway. But frequently it is self-loathing that heads up the dance, whispering with every footstep that I am too difficult, too forgettable, too awkward, too fat, too clichéd, too eager, too gauche, too plain, too miserable, too demanding to ever deserve love. The older I get, the stronger in some ways that voice becomes – although in other ways my self-esteem seems to grow in equal measures, so that the end result is actually just that the shouting in my head is louder than it was before, and I still have no idea if I am the greatest gift god ever gave the world or something that most people would wipe off the bottom of their shoe, given half the chance. Of course my rational brain knows that I am somewhere in the middle, just like everyone else, but rational is not my middle name.

All the received flirtation is ammunition for the narcissist’s side. And although I hate the narcissist, because she’s loud and screechy and she makes me squirm in bed at night when I remember what she’s done, I hate her less than I hate the other one. I’m happier when she’s winning – or at least I think I am. Each rush of seeing that I have a new text, more notifications, noting that I’ve got mail – each one is a new high. But is that high just as empty as the highs I have already cast aside? I don’t know. Communicating with people has to be better than communicating with a mirror and a straw, but if none of it means anything, then really, what’s the difference? Have I just replaced one shallow attempt to fill the hole where my soul should be with another? Am I the new Russell Brand? On a much less real and showbiz level, I must point out – I am in no way addicted to sex. But to the thrill of being absolutely sure that I meet the approval of some man or other? Yes. That is my poison. And I as I type this, I realise that I hate myself for that.

*****

Hmm, this blog was meant to be funny. Sorry – not quite sure what happened there. I want to find a positive note to end things on, but am not in a fabulous mood, so I don’t think that will happen. Instead, perhaps, I shall show you a new poem I’m working on, the intention of which is to make people laugh. I hope it works. It’s a bit of a work in progress, so if there are any bits you think are rubbish… well, those are the bits I’m gonna change. ;-)

My life as a middle-aged fuss pot.


There’s oh so many things in life
that I don’t care to do.
Competitive sport brings me out in hives
I’m bitter 'bout dark chocolate too.

No tea – drinking dampened leaves
like you’d peel off you shoe seems wrong.
No coffee – I’m the only person alive
who finds the smell a sickening pong.

I won’t eat meat – I can’t eat wheat,
don’t talk to those I don’t know.
A single raindrop puts me in a strop
and a thunderstorm fills me with woe.

My ears are a-buzz with tinnitus
so I’ve thrown my iPod away.
I can’t stand next to speaker stacks
or listen to bands when they play.

Of course, I’ve got a banjaxed back
so I can’t use my new trampoline.
I’ve an irrational hatred of Buffy –
I think she’s a waste of my TV screen.

Eating chillies will give me the hiccups –
I’ll take a pass on those any day
and I’ll have a phobic panic attack
if I drive on a motorway.

For years I suffered insomnia.
Couldn’t sleep, so I had to quit drinking.
I could get lost inside a paper bag,
and I’m hopeless at positive thinking.

So what is there that’s left in life?
What can I bend to my will?
I think I’ll have to eke out my days
in my bedroom – sat terribly still.

Let's Get Fizzy Cool

I have never thought of myself as being a person who enjoys exercise. I think this is principally because sport of any description – with the notable exception of horse riding, natch - brings me out in a rash. Hearing about it, watching it, and most especially being forced to play it – ugh. It just makes me shudder… a long, cold shudder that has been pulled up from the very bowels of hell.

Where does my deep-held loathing of sport come from, I wonder? Is it all just sickening secondary school memories of ducking out of the way of netballs, running miles to retrieve tennis balls, and being whacked in the shins with hockey sticks? That would probably be enough, really. Games and PE were up there with maths and physics as being my most loathed subjects ever at school, and the fact that one had to undertake sports in hideously unflattering gym knickers that left unsightly elasticated grip marks where no elasticated grip marks should be puts it, let’s face it, on top of that pile of misery. At least in maths lessons I could attempt to look intelligent and just be re-running dialogue from Moonlighting in my head. I couldn't do this while I was trying to be sporty in the world’s most unflattering outfit.

Games and PE lessons were – and I won’t go on, because I’m telling you something you all already know – an exercise in the popular, shiny-haired girls lording it over the under-confident bookish nerds like me. And really, what closer definition to hell is there than that, especially when you’re in your formative years?

The fact that I literally have less strength than a hamster (I struggle to open envelopes sometimes, let alone jam jars) meant that things like rope climbing and push-ups were especially torturous for me. I HATE to do badly at things. I really hate it. And boy, was I bad at school sports. I can’t run, not for toffee, not even for a delightfully creamy brie. I have no accuracy or aim. I can’t jump over things, I can’t climb things, I can’t… well, do whatever else it is sporty people like to do. When it comes to all that stuff, I am a big fat zero and it makes me loathe myself when I try. I used to say I wasn't competitive, but then I realised I just don't like to compete if there's no chance at all of me winning, and every chance of me looking like a puffed out loser or getting smacked upside the head with a tennis ball.

I cannot get my head round people doing these things for pleasure, but I guess almost anything is fun when you’re good at it, right? Calculus, torture – possibly even badminton?

Added to this, I used to live within spitting distance (don’t tempt me) of a football ground. I think they wear red, I forget which team – apparently that sort of thing matters a great deal to some people? I’ve never quite fathomed out why. I’m a little bit ‘alt’ looking (you’re a little bit rock n roll) (points for who gets the reference…) and at that point in my life, with my crazy waist-length red, orange and yellow plastic dreadlocks and my youthful waist meaning I still wore pretty little outfits on a fairly regular basis, I looked a lot damn weirder than I do even now with my Mohawk which I love so much. The football fans didn’t like this very much and used to shout pretty nasty things at me as I walked down the street to my own house on match day.

This didn’t happen very often, but enough to be another factor in my general sport-hating attitude. Oh, and pubs that show sport – that’s another one. Being old and grumpy, I refuse to go into a pub unless I know I can sit down. Living in London, this can mean I have to go into a *lot* of pubs before I find one that’s acceptable. There is very little more disappointing than realising that, having trudged around 3 billion pubs, getting more and more thirsty, hungry and irritable, like a child that really needs to go to bed, searching for somewhere quiet to sit and imbibe, thinking you’ve found your oasis – and then realising it’s actually got a big screen showing the f**tball at ear bleeding volumes, and that the other patrons, who were all sitting alone and quiet, nursing their pints like good, peaceful little alcoholics when you walked in (naturally during half time), are going to start leaping to their feet and screeching like monkeys as soon as the ‘show’ begins again.

You’ll be glad to hear I’ve found the perfect solution to this last problem. It’s called giving up drinking and never leaving the house again.

Anyway, I should really stop venting about sports and sports fans, as some of my closest fans fit into that latter category, and we all have our sicknesses, don’t we. I shouldn’t judge. The point of this blog is to say that, despite my loathing of sport, I suddenly seem to have become a person who exercises. A lot. I am even finding myself getting up early to do so. Quite frequently. When did this happen to me??

My first foray into exercise probably began around 12 years ago, when I started doing yoga with the friend I’ve had for longest in my life. I can’t really remember what made me decide to start doing yoga, but it was probably because I wanted to be a bit more like Madonna. Let’s face it, I started counselling because I wanted to be more like Frasier, so Occam’s Razor would suggest that that is the forgotten explanation.

My very first yoga class I remember as being the exact incarnation of the seventh circle of Hell. I can’t think where it was held, but it was in a very big, very bright room somewhere, and all I can really recall is a sense of total outraged indignation that no-one had told me it would be anything like that difficult – and if I had known, there was no way I would have been there. That indignation translated itself into hatred for the teacher, a hatred which burnt red and hot within my stomach. My legs trembled throughout the lesson as if they had the worst DTs in history, and I can recall swearing to myself upon leaving that I would never, never do that to myself again.

However, I somehow ended up going to a regular class with my same friend, first once a week and then twice a week, at a class I could walk to from my house, and I soon realised that I actually loved it. The challenge of it. The magic of the poses that the more experienced people could do and I suddenly realised that I wanted to be able to more dearly than I wanted diamonds. Seeing myself improve, inching along, a tiny bit better each week. The feeling of calm when I left. I was addicted, and for a couple of years, I went to yoga twice a week, went on retreats, knew the chants, was a total convert.

There was one thing that made it very frustrating, though – my total lack of strength. There were many poses which seemed as if they would be forever out of my reach because my arms are weak as matchsticks. I know that there’s a lot more to yoga than arm strength, and that some of the poses I couldn’t do also needed core strength and better alignment and all that. But trust me – my puny arms really let me down. And so I decided to do something about them.

I joined my first gym entirely in order to make my arms stronger so that I could be better at yoga. That was my only ambition - there was no other reason. I remember telling my then boyfriend that I was going to have arms like Sarah Connor's in T2 (the only thing I like about that movie is her arms - otherwise it's *such* a let-down compared to the first one) and him being vaguely horrified. He needn't have worried, it never came to be - my arms are still weaker than a three-year-old child's.

I joined the gym near where I was working at the time and went three times a week at lunchtimes. I would spend the whole morning of every gym day dreading it, but then usually end up quite enjoying it. Aside from anything else, it was the chance to listen to music really loudly for 45 minutes whilst watching aspirational videos on the big screens (I think it's *very* cunning that gyms always seem to show MTV base... no matter how much we all exercise we're never, not having been photo-shopped to fuck, gonna look like those girls, but we keep believing we might one day, so we stick at it), which has always got to be good. In fact, the best thing about that gym was when they got a stash of exercise bikes that let you play Tetris as you cycle. The quicker you pedalled, the quicker the blocks moved. I adore Tetris, I think I probably play an average of 20 games of it every day, so that was an amazing motivator.

I ended up quitting yoga for the gym, something which seems impossible to me now. But no matter how many weights I lifted, my arms never got any stronger, I never got any better at the poses I couldn't do, and it didn't seem cost effective to keep doing both, so I dropped yoga and became a gym bunny. Three times a week of cardio vascular workouts. I shudder at the thought now.

Exercise is a funny thing. It's a bit like cigarettes, or cocaine. No, really, hear me out. You don't necessarily enjoy it while you're doing it, but once you're in the habit, you keep wanting more, and you don't feel quite right if you don't get your fix. I never really loved the gym, but I stuck with it, went to various different ones, even, for a brief insane period, went to spinning classes two or three times a week - if you've never been to a spinning class, don't, you actually think you're going to die the whole way through it - and kept it up until I got made redundant and had to leave due to severe lack of funds.

I was in the habit of exercise by that point and didn't really want to stop, so had a sort of no-man's land period of sometimes going swimming and sometimes riding my bike round the park and sometimes doing nothing at all.

Going to dance classes is actually my all-time favourite way to exercise, and for a brief and wonderous period my DJ life partner and I went to street dance classes that were taught by a French man who looked like Thierry Henry (I might not know about f**tball, but I watch car adverts, alright?) only better looking. And he liked hip hop. I was actually, fully, 100% in love with him which certainly helped, but those classes were ace. They were part of - the only part of, to be fair - the master plan I had that what Twisted Kitten (our DJ duo) really needed to make themselves a professional outfit was not, in fact, learning to work the mixer, but instead learning to body pop. Don't ask me where where I get this stuff... it just comes to me. ;-)

Sadly the classes got cancelled cos mostly we were the only people there, otherwise I'd still be doing them to this day and would probably be dancing onstage with Madonna by now. We tried to find another class, but most street dancing classes seem to be for 13 year olds, or they were on nights when I had uni, so we gave up.

I finally re-joined a gym when I started my PhD. I love my uni gym. It's so cheap it's practically free and it has a pool, which none of the other, much more expensive gyms I've belonged to have. I started off by doing two CV workouts and a swim every week, but somewhere along the line - and again, I can't really remember when or how - I started going to the yoga classes again, and once again got hooked.

This is partly, strangely, the result of my tinnitus. I can't listen to my iPod any more (a lament I could write an entire blog about, oh reader), which really does make the gym interminably boring. True, if I time it right I can watch Gilmore Girls on one of the tellies with the subtitles on, but as soon as I move away from the bikes and onto the cross trainers, I can't really see it any more, so that's not much use. Heaven forbid that I should just concentrate on what I'm doing in the gym. It hurts! You need distraction! As much as is humanly possibly!

Hence, I have pretty much given up on cross trainers and treadmills - my most loathed piece of gym equipment anyway - and am now going to three (count them!) yoga classes a week. As I said earlier, there is something magical about yoga. You watch people do poses that seem to defy possibility. It's like watching Derren Brown, watching a yoga teacher demonstrate a move. And at first you feel like an unfit, lumpen hippo as you attempt to emulate, sincerely believing that they are a shaman employing trickery to fool you and that you will never, ever be able to do what they are doing - which is of course no-one's favourite feeling... but week by week, little by little, you start to improve, until you realise you're doing those formerly impossible things yourself. And that's a pretty awesome feeling. Of course, there's always more impossible things to learn, but isn't that true of life generally?

It was yoga that was responsible for this crazy early morning exercise trend that seems to have sprung up in my life over the past few months. The gym put on a class at 7.45 on a Wednesday morning, which means me leaving my house around 6.45. In the dark and the cold, it was very hard to motivate myself to get there, but now I almost look forward to it. Or at least, I had been until now. To continue the theme of gym-teachers-I-am-in-love-with... I am also, actually, fully, 100% in love with my yoga teacher, Rebecca. My friend P from uni comes with me sometimes to yoga and completely accurately described Rebecca as 'a beautiful angel of perfection.' She's so tiny and bendy and beautiful, I just want to bite her. And she makes me calm and happy. But - the reggae, the reggae - she's leaving! Has, in fact, left! My tiny heart is broken into a million pieces, and I'm convinced the new girl won't be a patch on her. I hope I can continue to get up at 6.45 for this Johnny-come-lately, whoever she may be...

I think it was the fact of all this early morning yoganess that made my first foray into early morning outdoor swimming, as chronicled in this very blog a few posts back, a possibility. I'm swimming in the London Fields Lido every Saturday before work now, and I love it... and I've just started going to the outdoor rooftop pool in Holborn for 8am on a Friday with some of my friends as well. That means almost half of my mornings, I am getting up early to exercise. Twice a week, I get to see sunshine and water doing that beautiful waltz they do with each other and I can kid myself I'm on holiday. I'm sure it can't last. Is this really who I am now?

The thing is, though... it's just so good for me. And I know that sounds stupid because of course it's good for me, that's the whole point. But it's not good for me the way that lentils and broad beans are good for me... things I have to suffer through to get to some benefit which I'm told is there but never really notice until it's taken away...

Exercise, and especially yoga and outdoor swimming, is good for me the way sushi is good for me. I can't believe that sushi is good for me because it's so goddamn delicious it really shouldn't be. And yet I know it is because when I come away from eating sushi, I feel good, not all laden down and guilty, like I do after a Chinese. Yoga and swimming out in the sun iron my brain out. They force me away from the petty little things that I pick at and pick at, the way other people pick at scabs. They are like a magna-doodle for my brain, erasing all the crap and starting afresh. I hope I able to keep this up for a very long time.

Some boys! Some whining!

(NB 1. Keen followers of my blog will note that I have come full circle from the entry of January 2010. I shall try to stop being girly and return to my higher self for the next entry, but for now… indulge me. This is what’s on my mind right now.)

(NB 2. I am in two minds whether or not I will actually publish this blog. The characters are all too real and any relation to actual events isn’t a coincidence at all. The chances are I’ll be too terribly pleased with my wittiness to leave it in the virtual drawer – and if I had, you wouldn’t be reading this paragraph anyway, so it’s a moo point – but still, you know. My finger is hovering with trepidation over the 'publish post' button.

So, in short... if you read this, and you recognise yourself, or think you recognise yourself… you’ll know I fancy you a bit. Don’t go getting too big-headed, though, chances are I’ve changed my mind by now. Ah, Johanna, fickleness is my middle name.) (Well, actually my middle name is something else entirely, but that’s a whole other story.)

I don’t want a boyfriend. I really, really don’t. If I keep telling myself that enough times, sooner or later I’ll believe it, right? No, really – I do mean it. I don’t want a boyfriend, and the reasons for this are as follows:

1. It’s so much less hassle not having to worry about someone else’s opinion of me all the live-long day. I know that if I was a balanced and well-rounded individual, then having a boyfriend wouldn’t need to mean that that was what I ended up doing. But it turns out, I’m not so well-rounded. When it comes to men, as I think I’ve mentioned before, I’m a bit of a mentalist. I don’t think it helps that, for reasons of fate or personality or some crushing combination of the two, I am nearly always sat next to my phone or a computer, so that when someone messages me, I’ll usually reply in about 3 seconds, and I can never *quite* get my head around why other people don’t do the same. So if I’ve, say, texted someone and I’m expecting a reply of some sort, it feels like a very deep and personal rejection if I’ve not had a reply within 15 minutes. Twenty if the recipient having an operation. I know this is unreasonable. I’ve tried to reason with myself. But I never listen and instead, when I’m texting the object of my affection, instead of it being a pleasant and witty exchange of viewpoints, it becomes a nerve-fraught salsa dance along the highest of wires. I might try to delay my own reply, just so I can revel in the feeling of it being my turn, of me having the power for a bit, but I ultimately feel like that’s playing games – and aren’t we all a bit too old of those kind of shenanigans these days?

2. I can sleep so much better alone. I can listen to an audio book without feeling shamed for this slightly nerdy addiction I have and without quibbling over which book to listen to. I don’t need to worry about snoring (mine or the other’s), I can listen to my radio and I can cuddle Joseph Fiennes bear. When I’m sharing a bed with a man, I inevitably sleep badly, get either paranoid or pissed off about snoring and feel that I have to tiptoe around in the mornings when I inevitably wake up four hours before he does, which always royally irritates me.

3. I just don’t get men. I was tempted to write that all men are bastards, but that’s not true, I know that really. There’s at least three of you I can bring to mind of whom I’m reasonably fond, ah ha de ha ha. (Just kidding.) (I hate all of you really.) (No, honestly – I am just joking.) However, I do think John Gray was right. The male population may as well be from Mars as far as I’m concerned. They all seem to think so differently from me, and I’m exhausted from too many years of trying to change my thought patterns to fit in with these alien rhythms. It’s hard to put my finger on exactly what it is, but I just don’t look at the world in the way that most men I’ve encountered in a romantic setting (and maybe that is the key?) seem to. Myself, I understand. My friends – even my male ones, as long as I’m not trying to kiss them – I understand. Living a life populated by just myself and my friends makes perfect sense to me. If you introduce a man, I start to get confused. I don’t know which way is up any more. Things stop making sense and I don’t like it.

4. I am a pretty independent person and I like doing things the way I like them. I also get very nervous about meeting people I don’t want to meet and spending time with other people’s friends, so not having in-laws and in-friends to deal with is a blessing. I have got loads of lovely friends of my own, and without a boyfriend, I have enough time to actually see them all. And none of them confuse me or disappear on me or keep me awake at night as I try to figure them out.

So – the evidence is clear. I don’t want a boyfriend. And yet, and yet… It’s clearly been long enough that I’m pretty much over the romantic disasters of last year. And it’s spring time, which always helps with these things, and, the ultimate truth about me, which I try with all of my logic to over-ride, is that I am a hopeless romantic and I am constantly looking for someone who will rub my feet at night, and whose feet I can rub in return. None of the logic in the world is ever going to fully defeat that fact.

Let’s look at the possibilities: Suitors One, Two and Three.

Suitor Number One is a delightful fellow. Tall, handsome, kind, reliable. I’ve known him for years and always been pretty sweet on him, ever since the time he came to a party at my house when he didn’t really know me and behaved impeccably. Manners, you see. They’re the equivalent of knee-length fuck-me boots in my book.

I recently made a bit of a ham-fisted attempt to woo him, but discovered in the process that he has zero interest. However, I think I’ve actually made a friend there, so I’ve decided not to mind too much about that one, swoon-worthy as the guy is.

Suitor Number Two… well, there hangs a tale. Suitor Number Two seemed keen, keen, keen and got me to the point where I too, was feeling very keen. We had one date, which was spectacular. We ate, talked, laughed, sat gradually closer and closer to each other. I was smitten, I don’t mind telling you. He kissed me good night and asked if I wanted to go out again. I floated home on cloud ten.

However, I have sensed a distinct lessening of interest on the part of Suitor Number Two since then, which has left me scratching my head a little. I am still feeling pretty baffled about that one, but I suspect a need to face the fact that the Red X of Rejection has been stamped on my papers and move on. Plus, I'm a busy woman, you know? I don't have time for dilly dallying. You're either in, or you're out!

And so, Suitor Number Three. The suitor who doesn’t even realise he’s a suitor. Mind you, neither does number one for that matter. But I’ve made my peace with that – many of my greatest love affairs have been played out entirely in my head. This guy is tall and so bone-shakingly handsome he should be in the movies. I have recently discovered that he has the coolest job in the entire universe – I can’t tell you what it is in case reads this, and then I’m rumbled - but I can tell you it makes me think he must be as fascinating as he is gorgeous. We’ve had some Facebook contact, but I’m holding out on making too much of an advance because… (keep telling yourself, Johanna) I don’t want a boyfriend. Remember?

I think perhaps what that actually means is that I don’t want to get hurt again. After years of blind, trusting stupidity, I’m finally learning to be a bit scared. I’m not sure this is a good thing. But I also know I’m sick of being one of Konrad Lorenz’s ducklings, following the first man I see blindly to the ends of the earth, without thinking it through first.

I have no idea if I stand a chance with Suitor Number Three. And I’m attempting to keep a lid on even trying to find out at the moment. Only time will tell, I guess…

It's a Lido Out There (aka So I See you Swimming off with Someone New, I'm like... Haiku)

I've been swimming outside first thing in the morning three times on a Saturday now, and pretty bloody pleased with myself I am truly feeling. Here are three Japanese style poems written about my experiences: two haikus and a tanka. I'll get off the poetry and write some proper blog entries again soon, I promise. Try not to wither away from the disappointment. ;-)

Screwed up insides crunch.

Streams of gold kiss water tips;

My soul smoothing out.

An army of arms

crawl in copycat clockwork.

Breath flows in and out.

Blue above is ironed smooth;

fluid mountain range below.

Swim pool politics.

A punchy whale spouts off.

I clench my eyes shut.

A new poem

This is the first poem I've written without a specific reason (mostly, to be Christmas presents for people) for several years. I'm quite pleased with it. It's quite short, so don't be scared to read it. I hope you like it. I'm not sure what to call it yet.

I want to be as small as possible.

Creep through the cracks between the painting and the frame,

sleep in between the spaces of my ribcage,

a hand of golden sand that waterfalls right through your fingers.

I want to live inside the pocket of my jeans,

pass underneath your radar like a stealthy size six ninja.

I want to be as big as I can possibly be.

My shadow casts its shade over your soul,

when my fingers click, your ears will chime like church bells,

my eyes will burn a migraine in your mind.

Your memory so full of me it creaks and winces,

my voice a siren song you can’t ignore.

I want to be as small as possible.

Disappear in a blink onto the brink of the horizon,

pass through the fabled eyes of pins and needles,

become a ball that falls between the cobble stones.

I want to fill the floorboard gaps when I lie down.

I want to be as small as I can force myself to be.

Ink

As some of you may have seen, I had a new tattoo done last week. My biggest, most expensive, most painful – and probably best loved – tattoo to date. I wonder if pain, size and money will always work in inverse proportion to fondness like that? My guess is it will do; after all, the more we humans invest in things, the more we feel like we should have got out of them. Even if I hated it, I would never be able to see it that way, having been in pain for so many hours and having shelled out so much money that my wallet actually wouldn’t shut before I handed the wodge of cash over. Not that I do, in any way, hate it – I am entranced with it, enraptured. I’m in love with my hips, just as Roger Taylor was in love with his car.

This is my third tattoo that means something. Given that I have (I think, I keep losing count – numbers are really not my strong suit) 24 tattoos, I think this is a level of shallow of which to be proud. That’s a lot of meaningless prettiness, and let’s face it – that’s the best kind.

The first tattoo I had that meant anything in terms of having some significance more than me liking the way it looks is the fairly crappy dragon I’ve got on my stomach, which is now looking so faded and shabby compared to the brilliant black of the new one. It’s not the greatest tattoo in the world and was picked randomly from a piece of flash on the wall of the shop I frequented in Crewe, where I lived in the third year of my first degree. Would I say I regretted it? No, I don’t think so. I clearly could have put something better in that space, but it does mean something and so I do love it.

NB - I only have one tattoo I actively regret, and that’s the big fairy-with-an-kaleshnikov on my right leg. I had that one done really quickly after the genuinely brilliant fairy-with-an-AK on my left leg and this fairy is just trying to catch that one’s vapours. It’s also the only I tried to draw, and given that I can’t draw, it shouldn’t be surprising that it’s not very good. Plus she looks like she’s sunburnt. It’s a shame it’s so very big, but regretting a tattoo really isn’t the ‘my life is over’ disaster that one would think it is. It’s actually more on a par with a hang nail that keeps catching on your jumper. Irritating, but you’ll live. I have vague plans to have a couple of laser sessions on it and have something better put over it, but there’s no massive rush.

So, back to the dragon. I had it done at the end of my first real relationship. My first true love, for whom I fell so hard. I really thought we were forever, and I still think wistfully of him from time to time today, even though he’s now as good as married with two kids. There are times when he looms so large in my subconscious that I can’t quite believe we were only together for a year or so. Our relationship was all fireworks and magic tricks, it was one of the greatest times of my life, but it fell apart for reasons I can’t even really remember now – something to do with his band and me having totally unrealistic expectations, like the foolish 19 year old that I was. It was my first taste of real, grown-up love. In all my memories of that time, the sun seems to be shining. Clearly, this was not the case – but why ruin a good bit of nostalgic mooning with something as tedious as the facts?

What I do remember clearly, though, is getting that dragon done to mark the end of the relationship, to have something on my body that he didn’t know about, so that I was mine again, and not his. Not quite so daft, my 20 year old self, it’s actually quite a canny idea I think. And it means new ink, which is always a winner.

The second tattoo I have that means something – and I only even realised that it does mean something as I started typing this blog – is my trio of Madonna heads, on the inside of my left arm, which I took from a book called Madonna in Art that a different ex boyfriend gave me. I love those Madonna heads.

Madonna means a lot to me. I don’t love everything she does – adopting 12 million kids whose parents, it turns out, are still alive, isn’t really top of my list of Good Things To Do – but nonetheless she is the closest I’ve got to a God, I think. There are three reasons for this. Firstly, and most importantly, the music. Yeah, she’s got it wrong a couple of times, but mostly, she’s got it right, and got it right again and again and again. The longevity of the woman deserves your respect even if, for some odd reason (maybe some kind of childhood accident?) you don’t like her music. I mean, come on – name me one other musician who has been so relevant throughout the 80s, 90s, 2000s and on into this decade… and Kylie doesn’t count! (I don’t really get it with Kylie. She’s got about three brilliant tunes (Come Into My World, It’s In Your Eyes, Confide in Me, oh, and Can’t Get Your Out of my Head… ok, four) and is clearly quite perky and sweet, but other than that, she’s stunningly underwhelming, no?)

The second reason I love Madonna so is that I think she’s beautiful. Her arms look a bit odd these days, but I still definitely would. Have you seen how bendy she is???

The third reason is that, strange baby adopting ways aside, she is a proper inspiration to me on a daily basis. She pulled herself up from nothing and is so totally in charge of everything she does – and everything she does (apart from the babies) (oh, and quite a lot of the movies, I’m not a total idiot) is spectacular. She’s clever and thorough and she’s got balls. We need more women like her in this world. She’s not perfect – she’s got gappy teeth and she gets things wrong sometimes and that song she did with Prince was a massive let-down – but we get so many seemingly perfect women shoved in our faces from all angles that a bit of hard work and grit and imperfection is exactly what we all need.

So yes – that is why my Madonna tattoos mean something to me.

This new tattoo is the third one that has a meaning – and I guess that meaning ties up with what I have just been saying about imperfections.

If I was clever enough, I would now draw a Venn Diagram and insert it into this blog, but it’s late and I’m tired and I’m not sure how I’d go about it. This Venn Diagram would be all the people in the world who have Madonna tattoos, and all the people in the world who have Leonard Cohen tattoos, and where they intersect. If any blog readers fit, like me, into the middle of that diagram, please come round to my house at once so I can marry you.

I didn’t think I liked Leonard Cohen for many years when I was a young, idiot child. This was a time when I thought Derek B (anyone remember his Good Groove?) was god’s greatest gift to hip hop, so plainly, I was not to be trusted. My father is a massive Leonard Cohen fan, a fact that has informed one of the oft-told stories of my heritage. My nan, on hearing this piece of information, warned my mum not to marry him as she thought no man who liked that kind of racket would ever be happy.

I chuckle, but it’s something I don’t really understand. I know the myth is that Leonard Cohen is really miserable – just as the myth is that Morrissey is really miserable – but I don’t really see it. Yeah, both of them have some sad songs, but which decent musical act doesn’t? Bands who only have happy songs end up being like D:Ream, and funny as Brian Cox is, that's not something to be aimed for. Moz n Len also have funny songs, uplifting songs, beautiful songs, fast songs, slow songs… anyone who was just miserable would be the kind of one-trick pony who would get tiresome pretty damn quickly and no mistake.

I realised my error re Laughin’ Len, as I like to call him, around the age of 14. I’m not sure what it was that showed me I was wrong – probably my brother making the same realisation and pointing out my wrong-doing to me. I basically liked anything he told me to like back in those days – apart from the Wedding Present. Never, ever the Wedding Present. I do not approve of Dave Gedge and his dreadful lumpish moaning. But I have loved Leonard Cohen with a love that runs deep and true ever since.

Anthem, the song from which my latest tattoo comes, is my favourite Leonard Cohen song (probably) and it’s a beauty. I had a birthday party a couple of years back which I didn’t enjoy at all – I was ill, and starting to realise that the party lifestyle I was leading wasn’t for me – and I got all a bit overcome at one point and started sobbing. A fairly common occurrence for me. I don’t think it’s really a party unless I’ve spent AT LEAST ten minutes crying somewhere on the premises.

My DJ life partner knew what I needed. She lay me on a soft mattress, stuck some headphones in my ears, and played me Len singing Anthem from his Live in London album. Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything – that’s how the light gets in. Listening to that tune at that moment will remain one of my favourite memories forever, I think. I won’t expound upon the greatness of the lyrics for you, as there would be nothing I could say that would add it to. If you don’t know it, go and buy it from iTunes (yes, BUY IT, I said, give Len your money!) and educate yourself for the better.

I used to have the above line from the song as my ‘something about yourself’ on Facebook, but then the buggers went and changed the profile page, and I knew I needed to rectify the lack of this quote in my life.

I had the idea to have it tattooed somewhere on my person on boxing day. I originally wanted it on my head – which was actually why I got my Mohican – but quickly realised it wouldn’t fit. I pondered on it for a month or so, came up with the idea of having it snaking round my hips a few weeks ago, and got it done as quickly as I could because it seemed such a genius idea I felt that if I left it any longer, someone else would get there first. And it is, I think, my favourite tattoo. There is a crack, a crack in everything… that’s how the light gets in. What could be more perfect?

It hurt a hell of a lot, especially directly over my hip bones, and took ruddy hours, but it was worth it. I’m not sure how I’m going to top it. Any ideas? Answers on a postcard, please…